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xp_logsArriving at Penn Station, Artie and Kevin work on evacuating the building without causing a panic.
"Penn Station. Totally different the first time I came through here in '58. That's when it was the old building. Classic. Vince Scully hated the new building, Said that you used to enter New York like a god, and now you had to scurry in like a rat." Kevin said, half to himself as the descended through the concourse. Penn Station was a massive complex, with two concourses above the rail level, serving 1200 trains a day. It was impossible to clear or guard completely, leaving them to hope that the intelligence was correct and these 'Tunnelers' would be emerging from the old Lake Shore Limited line. It would be smaller, easier to block off.
Artie nodded absently before replying in a line of text that flashed Kevin's eyeline, "and it all looked like something out of Breakfast at Tiffany's, huh? I hear that was a great movie." He looked up at the display boards around the concourse and smiled for a moment, closing his eyes in concentration. The screens flickered and went dark for a moment before lighting up again. "Trains replaced by buses dep 31st St." "Severe delays on line. Alternate transport advised." "Train cancelled. Alternate transport advised." "Line closed due to accident."
Stock still and staring into space, he managed one more line of text. "I have all the visual displays on the concourse covered." Knots of confusion spread from commuters to station staff and back.
"Capote was highly overrated." Kevin said, starting to track the crowd. "And a prick."
He moved behind a pillar for a moment and stepped out as a Penn Station security guard. "Alright people, LSL is temporarily being closed off. Take it down to the Hudson River line."
The signs flickered for a moment and began to read that as well. It was suddenly possible to pick the difference between the regular commuters, angry and resigned but hurrying to the next available option and the tourists, who stood there staring. "You need anything else?" Artie asked Kevin as yellow "out of order" signs appeared on the toilet doors. "I can give you one more thing."
"Yeah, give me a little smoke. The cattle aren't moving fast enough."
Artie nodded and bit his lip. Smoke began to drift through the air, thickening as people noticed it, billowing up from the LSL line and out of the toilets. The station staff stopped frantically calling each other and trying to reassure passengers and began to encourage them to evacuate.
"Keep moving, people. It's safely contained but we need to get repair people in here to fix it." Now staff that might have questioned him were doing the job for them. Kevin used his pillar trick again, this time coming out the other side looking normal. He pinned a badge on to the breast of his suit.
"Tone down the smoke a bit. One of these guys is likely to pull the fire alarm."
The smoke began to clear, still visible but less ominous.
"Ma'am, bad place to stop to check your phone. Keep moving please." Kevin went over and pulled out the bright traffic cones he'd brought and placed them in a line along the floor.
"That should give us fifteen or so. Let's hope our terrorists are the time conscientious types."
Amanda and North search for the Tunnelers, and wind up in literal hot water.
"I can't see bugger all with all these people," Amanda complained to her companion as they searched the crowded concourse for anything suspicious. "I'm gunna see if I can get the city to cooperate. Think my name REALLY loud if you see anything?" Already she was starting to sink into the tiled floor, using a pillar and North's own size to avoid being spotted.
"I will scream it," he promised. Back against the pillar, he waited for her to do her thing, his bulk and crossed arms looking enough on the side of unfriendly that his continued surveillance went uninterrupted despite the evacuating masses.
Turned out North did not actually have to do any screaming for his colleague. At least, it sounded like there was a whole crowd doing it on his behalf from a distance down the concourse.
"Bollocks." Amanda paused half-way in her descent into the floor. For a moment she debated which way to go, then made up her mind. "Whatever it is, it's likely to be for us. I'll pop up behind for the sneak attack, yeah?" And then she was gone before North could stop her or suggest a better plan. Amanda's confidence in New York tended to border on "stupidly cocky".
The screaming was two-fold. On the surface, the terrified screams of people surrounded by smoldering trash cans, and burning luggage, and licks of flame catching clothes and newspapers and making phones explode into hot plastic shrapnel, and above that, like the echo of a demonic bell was a pained laugh that drilled its way into the thoughts of the crowd. The creature - it was barely a man - pulsed flame around a charred skeleton and threw fire at seeming random, never hitting the panicked crowd but splatting like napalm against the walls, vendor stalls and piles of luggage waiting to be loaded into trains.
A displeased expression crossed North's face as he studied what he could through the gaps of the panicked crowd. People scrambled out of the way, earlier grumblings at the inconvenience of being re-routed forgotten in the face of escaping such monstrosity. Rather than wading through the thronging sea of bodies, the German man waited by the pillar until the skeletal (ha-ha) man was close enough to see him.
"Thank you," North said. "It was getting rather chilly in here. It has been a pretty cold season this year, ja?"
A stream of liquid fire made an impossible ninety-degree turn in response, and spread to coat the ground at North's feet.The flaming skeleton gave it only a moment's notice, and returned to madly throwing flame and heat around wildly.
It was one of these random fireballs that nearly hit Amanda as she appeared out of the floor behind him. She yelped and shielded, the flames licking harmlessly across the spell's surface. "Seriously?" she demanded of no-one in particular. Or possibly the city itself. "Flaming skeleton guy?" This was going to make things a bit more difficult.
The screaming resolved itself into a words, still at a volume level best described as "Unnecessarily Intense", but now an unending string of uncreative profanity, calling the trapped crowd "bitches" and "fucks" and directing even worse language at the newcomers. The puddles of fire pulsed with every word, and plopped and splashed on floors and walls - and rarely, fleeing people.
Amanda winced at the stream of high-pitched psionic profanity in her head. "Fucking 'paths," she grumbled to herself. "Oi, bozo!" she called out. "You want a fight? You've got one!" At her gesture, the fire sprinklers above the Morlock switched on, drenching him in water.
The fire hissed where the water hit it, but did not diminish and the steam smelled of burned mildew and metal. "Get wrecked fucks!" The words came from everywhere, but the jawbone of the flaming skeleton moved along with them, in a steady stream of filth. "I'll fuck you and your mum and your dog!" His bones turned inside the fire that sheathed him and he slid towards Amanda on a path of flame.
"You are not really my type." A spray of white foam arced towards his flaming back, followed by short bursts of the same substance from the fire extinguisher North had appropriated and was in the process of emptying at the Morlock, dodging the counter attack that came at him in a series of hit and misses. He recognized by now that the creature was stalling for time and thought this as hard as he could to Amanda, while wondering how their attacker would hold up against bullets.
"Wow, and Jubes says I have a potty mouth," Amanda muttered, catching North's eye and nodding. The city didn't make her telepathic, but the Morlock was the city, as much as the bricks and mortar and traffic. Water wasn't working, so she decided to go a bit more basic and with a gesture, she hurled chunks of the tiled and concrete floor and walls at the burning figure, intent on battering him unconscious.
When the foam splattered against the flaming skeleton, he shuddered and screamed in pain, but the fire blazed to consume the foam. This two-pronged assault had finally eared his full attention. "Die gene traitor bitches!" The flaming skeleton man thing "yelled", in a telepathic voice that felt like the smell of burning hair tasted. One flame-sheathed bone arm snapped around, and he began pitching wads of fire at Amanda and North, missing his mark whenever one of Amanda's chunks of City cracked against his bones, but increasing his assault until the fires elsewhere diminished, and his focus was entirely on the pair of mutants he fought. The volley was impossible to entirely avoid, and one smacked into Amanda's shoulder, burning red hot through the thick leather coat.
North ducked behind a pillar, looking more than a little singed around the edges. He glanced at Amanda, appreciating that her assault had not abated. But the cylinder was getting lighter by the minute, and the nearest one was a good quarter mile away. Pointing the nozzle around the pillar, he let off another stream of foam as he hefted it on to his shoulder and launched it at Fever Pitch's face. Then drawing a gun from its holster, he fired at it.
Fire. I'm on fire. Fuckfuckfuck. Ignoring the flames licking at her braid and adding the smell of burnt hair to burnt leather, Amanda switched tactics. Time to finish this, preferably before she actually started with the second and third degree burns. She cast her shielding spell again, but this time as a bubble around the flaming skeleton. Fire needed air, after all. Slowly closing her fist, she shrank the bubble around their foe, until it was compressing him tightly.
Wherever the foam spray had hit the flaming skeleton, the fires bubbled and dulled, until they were little more than a dully glowing flame barely sheathing the bones. But as Amanda's shield tightened, the other flames brightened, going white-hot even blue-hot. The mental word-vomit also flared, growing from simple profanity to the worst sorts of language, insults that had nothing to do with Amanda or North, but were just plain noxious words chosen to shock.
And then it stopped, all at once.
The fires went out, the bones collapsed into a man-shaped heap that left a greasy film on the ground, not unlike smeared butter, and then the fires on the ground began to splutter and fade, only lingering where they had contacted something flammable.
That 'something flammable' included Amanda's jacket. But before she could actually drop and roll, she was engulfed in heavy wool, hands patting out the flames on her shoulder and back. "Ta, North," she said gratefully, looking up at her teammate. "That was a little too close for comfort."
He helped her up, surveying the destruction around them. "Might have been roasted alive without you." Squeezing her uninjured shoulder in his own expression of thanks, he jerked his head at the stairs to the platform. "Come, we should see what he was distracting us from."
Callisto, Domino and a giant lizard with an attitude to match.
The concourse of Penn Station was never quiet, and this day was no exception, with commuters heading home, shoppers browsing, and all levels of New York's vibrant city life engaged in doing their own thing. Certainly no-one looked twice at the two dark-haired women working their way through the crowds, obviously on the lookout for someone.
Callisto was the one who knew the faces they were looking for, of course, and she was glancing about as they walked, occasionally stealing a look at the woman beside her. "So... what can I expect from you when we actually find someone?" she murmured. "Tentacles? Glowing eyes? Lightning bolts?"
Domino laughed aloud at this, hands shoved in her jacket pockets. She was wearing her favourite leather jacket. Callisto was also wearing a leather jacket, and scuffed motorcycle boots, and jeans - though hers were old and faded, not dark and skinny like Dom's. But they were basically wearing the same outfit, and it was sort of hilarious.
"Guns." They walked a few more steps; she could feel the other woman looking askance at her. "You can expect guns. And shooting. And probably swearing - the two seem to go hand-in-hand a lot of the time."
"You're planning to... shoot stuff. Oh... kay. Okay, good. I guess I th- ooohhh shit. We... have a Tunneler. Two o' clock, dark shirt, dark hair. Don't be fooled by her human-shaped exterior..."
Not too much longer, thought Scaleface, as she pretended to be very interested in the time. Well. She was interested in the time, but probably not for the same reasons as all these norms were. Pathetic really. Stretching her neck, she felt a satisfying pop. Reaching down to her hands, she was about to crack her knuckles when she stopped mid-joint. Was that....No....it couldn't be. Instantly, her eyes narrowed and she reminded herself not to react quite yet. She clenched her hands and made eye contact, trying to let the other woman feel every ounce of her betrayal.
Callisto raised her eyebrows - well, eyebrow; the other didn't work very well. She saw Scaleface see her. Slowly, she lifted her hand, clenched into a fist. Her middle finger rose from it into the air.
Callisto smiled.
"Oh my god. We've been called out to settle a Mean Girls spat. Just great," Dom muttered. "Okay, you break left, try and intercept her. I'll come around the back, we'll take her down." With that she split off, weaving through the people streaming out of the station, one hand slipping into her jacket to finger her firearm.
In frame and height, Callisto was hardly the most imposing of figures, and yet she cut an easy swathe through the crowd as she headed off to the left, her trajectory and eventual intention obvious.
Fuck this. There was still enough time, and really, there was nothing Callisto could do to stop this. It was already in motion. Without even bothering to look around her, she grinned, her teeth starting to elongate and sharpen as she fell into her familiar lizard body. A roar escaped her lips, and her clothing began to tear, revealing a large reptilian, sharp claws and even sharper teeth to match. People ran screaming, which probably was counter productive to mass casualties, but this was personal.
Great. Right out of the gate and already the full Godzilla. Dom cursed and picked up the pace. "Get out of here!" she shouted at the hapless bystanders gawking at the giant lizard-thing, though really, who could blame them? "Go on!"
Callisto broke into a run, now, every part of her moving with perfect economy, not a scrap of energy wasted, not the slightest misstep.
Scaleface held her ground, her sheer size and weight making her a practically immovable object. There was no sense in doing anything other than try to watch Callisto and anticipate her movements. A sick copy of a smile spread across her face, making her hybrid face even more disconcerting. "Come on," she growled, her eyes narrowing. "Stop wasting time and let's get on with it!"
"Well, if you insist..." Callisto didn't stop before reaching Scaleface; she didn't even slow down, just leapt into the air, twisting and bringing her heavy-booted foot round with an impact that would've knocked any man clean off his feet and into the nearest wall.
But Scaleface, of course, was no man.
The pain was intoxicating. While the force was there, it didn't fully knock Scaleface off her feet. A slight wobble true, but nothing a shift of gravity wouldn't fix. Growling, the reptilian reached out with an arm and tried to rake Callisto.
"Hey!" The lid of a trash can sailed into Scaleface's side, propelled by a not-too-impressive throw from Domino. She didn't want to start shoot unless she absolutely had to, and from the looks of it Callisto packed enough of a punch that she might be able to knock her out with another few blows. "Why don't you pick on someone... your... own size?" She hadn't really thought that one through.
Scaleface barely registered the trashcan lid against her rough skin. "Where's the fun in that?," she rasped, her grin only deepening. And as if to further the point, she tripped one of the bystanders, sending them flying into the wall. "You can't stop us, you know. Don't bother trying."
"Sorry, everyone loves a trier, and you know I love to be loved," Callisto said, launching into another flying kick, this time pivoting at the last moment to walk up Scaleface's body and launch a foot into the side of her head.
While the two Morlocks bantered Dom was busy sizing up her foe. Well, not sizing up - she knew she was huge - but more contemplating the woman-lizard shift. If she shot off the lizard's toe would the woman be missing one as well? What about a tail? How did that track?
Toe seemed to be the safest bet, so as the lizard-woman paused, slightly stunned by Callisto's kick, Dom raised her firearm and took aim at one of her huge, scaley feet. Hopefully bullets would make a bigger impression than trash cans.
Scaleface shrieked in pain. Even though she had superhuman strength and stamina, she wasn't bulletproof. Lifting her foot, she snarled and reached for the nearest bench. Growling, she raised it over her head and threw it at Callisto, oblivious to the fact that it was the other woman who had shot her. In Scaleface's mind, this was all Callisto's fault.
Normally dodging large projectiles came naturally to Callisto, but perhaps she hadn't expected to be the focus of retribution on this occasion, because she didn't quite manage on this occasion - she lunged to the side at the last moment but a leg of the bench still caught her on its way past, sending her staggering sideways. Winded, she clutched her side where it had hit, blinking as white blotches of pain swam in her vision.
Well that had worked - sort of. Domino didn't really want to draw Scaleface's ire, given that she was pretty vulnerable to benches, but she also didn't want to see what would happen if she didn't do something to pull attention away from Callisto.
So. Tail it was.
The shock of her tail being shot at was worse than her toes. At least there her nails were able to deflect some of it, but her tail? Anger was quickly taking over, and it was all that Scaleface could do to try to direct it. "Who the fuck are you," she growled out, whirling around and trying to place the other woman. "You're on the wrong side you know!"
"Yeah, uh," Dom said, taking several rapid steps backwards, out of swiping distance. "About that. I dunno if killing hundreds of people is the best way to convince somebody you're the good guys. Y'know?"
"We take care of our own," Scaleface raged, lashing her tail out at Domino with all her might. "We don't abandon people."
Any response from Domino was interrupted as she threw herself to the side to avoid the vicious whipcrack of the lizard's tail. She hit the ground with an 'oof', the impact jarring her arm and making any thought of firing off another round unthinkable - but luckily, it didn't matter. Callisto had recovered, and now she turned her attention back to their assailant. She bolted toward the giant lizard, shrugging her jacket off as she went and whirling it around in her hand. She'd twisted it into a makeshift rope by the time she was springing into the air, and she slung it around Scaleface's neck like a makeshift garotte, hauling it tight.
"Neither do I," Callisto muttered as the lizardwoman spluttered in her grip.
The reptilian's instant reaction was to reach up and try to pull either Callisto or the garotte off, but due to the tightness, and the angle, it was practically impossible to get her large claws under the cloth. Shaking furiously, she tried with all her might to jostle Callisto enough to let go, but it was to no avail. Air was quickly running out, and Scaleface tried desperately to slam her back into the wall, but in the process, lost her balance, and managed to do more damage to herself than Callisto. Not that it mattered -- soon afterwards, everything went black.
Callisto hopped nimbly off the lizard, shaking her jacket out and throwing it back on, wincing in the process.
"'kin cracked a rib," she said, punctuating her words with a kick to the prone mutant's side. Then she turned back to Domino.
"'Someone your own size'?" she said. "Really?"
Jubilee and Gabriel trade blows - and philosophical arguments - with Cybelle
They weren't the only ones out on the concourse looking for the Tunnelers, but with the typical New York crowds, they might as well have been. Even with the descriptions Callisto had provided, it was the proverbial nail in the haystack. Or Morlock in commuter traffic.
"Everything here is so... unfortunate." Gabriel wrinkled his nose as he stared at the big board in front of him, and the hordes of people scurrying underneath it. It was fitting that trains to New Jersey left from a drab, dirty and nondescript terminal underground. Everything about Penn Station was bleak; every floor tile and every column reinforcing just how subterranean the building was. "A bunch of sewer moles or whatever they are ought to fit right in."
Jubilee didn’t answer right away, her attention on the people around them as she looked for the mark – she glanced sideways after a moment and raised an eyebrow.
“Dude, how much of the world have you actually seen?”
The wall on their left started to sag. Like cloth, the stone seemed to fold in on itself, then fall away entirely. On the other side stood Cybelle, hands outstretched.
"Well, well," she said, grinning. "Look what we have here." It was not a nice grin, as there were far too many teeth for that.
"This," Gabriel said, as he took a very large step back out of immediate caution, "from you." He surveyed her for a second. "You, who came through a wall." Lacking the patience or manners to stand on ceremony, he did the only thing a brash mutant 20-something with no fighting training would. Shift into high-gear and charge toward her.
It was an ill-considered move. As he approached her, operating on his own time, a few lingerings droplets of mist hovered in the air. As he darted, moving around the stragglers at Penn Station without much elegance, they touched his clothes. A sudden sizzling noise stopped him in his tracks, not much further than he'd been than he started. "Oh fuck."
"A commendable attempt," Cybelle mocked. "Would you perhaps like to try again?"
It was times like these that Jubilee remembered her own youth, and the look on Remy's face when something particularly addle brained happened. It was the only reason she didn't give Gabriel a steady stream of swearing as she lit up the area, sending a multitude of sparks to burn off the droplets of acid.
"Dude, really? You come into my city, you disrespect my train station, you disrespect me. The hell you think you're doing?"
"I think I'm taking back power from people like you, little girl!" Cybelle threw her hands out, sending a cloud of acid fog at the newcomers. "Now die and let me get back to work!"
As the fog creeped toward him, Gabriel took a step in the other direction, bolting past Jubilee and toward a group of people that Artie was herding aboveground. To have a fighting chance against this woman, he needed to disappear. Then he could speed into thin air and take her by surprise.
"Dude, power that you can take with violence is just an illusion," Jubilee replied, almost gently given that they were in the middle of a fight. "But I doubt you're gonna recognise that, which is pretty damn sad. I mean, I'd rather not spend time beating the crap out of you, but if you insist."
Jubilee had spent the time she was talking well, using her powers to catch each of the air droplets and burn them up before they could do any real damage. The other thing she hoped was that Cybelle would focus on her and give Gabriel time to get closer.
"Shut up!" Cybelle flung more of her acid around. The walls of the tunnel started to melt. "I don't need to be lectured from people who know nothing of the challenges we face every single day! Don't you dare take the high and mighty route with me!" She was angry, and the cloud of acid started to thicken.
Among the benefits of moving in a separate time-space (or adjacent timeline or however the physicists might explain it): Gabriel saw the cloud coming before Cybelle did. He stopped suddenly, appearing behind her for a split-second, then sped back up and watched it dissipate. "Fuck," he muttered, his eyes lighting on one patch of mist that seemed particularly thing. Lacking better options, he tried to get a running start so he could vault over it and get to Cybelle.
“You’re not the first person to sing that tune, kid,” Jubilee replied, using more of her power to catch the new burst of acid, even as she avoided the parts flung directly toward her with a series of acrobatic moves – hoping Gabriel’s speed would see him through, and that he was getting closer to knocking Cybelle out. “Most of the time, you’ll find people willing to put innocents at risk for so-called good reasons, don’t think twice about doing it for a bad one. You don’t have to live in the dark, you know.”
"When you're rejected by the light, darkness is all you have left." She had completely lost track of the goal now, too caught up in her pain and dwelling on the past to keep her mind on the present.
Without much warning, Cybelle had the wind knocked out of her, as a fist wrapped in cloth hit her in the jaw with surprising force. Gabriel stood above her, the bottom of his jeans looking slightly worn from where he hadn't managed to clear Cybelle's cloud. "Jesus." Looking down at her, he caught sight of some red patches on his ankles, but otherwise, it didn't seem like she'd eaten through his skin. "I'm expensing new jeans."
Jubilee sighed as Cybelle went down – rubbing a weary hand over the back of her neck to rub out kinks as she cleaned up the last of the acid with well placed sparks.
“Dude, I will give you the money for new jeans if you let me be in the room when you ask North for that,” Jubilee replied with a grin as his words filtered through the layer of tiredness currently trying to descend. Using her powers in any fine-tuned way always seemed to cost more in terms of energy then the big flashy explosions. “C’mon, Gabe. Secure sleeping beauty for transport and hopefully everyone else is doing as well as we just did.”
"Penn Station. Totally different the first time I came through here in '58. That's when it was the old building. Classic. Vince Scully hated the new building, Said that you used to enter New York like a god, and now you had to scurry in like a rat." Kevin said, half to himself as the descended through the concourse. Penn Station was a massive complex, with two concourses above the rail level, serving 1200 trains a day. It was impossible to clear or guard completely, leaving them to hope that the intelligence was correct and these 'Tunnelers' would be emerging from the old Lake Shore Limited line. It would be smaller, easier to block off.
Artie nodded absently before replying in a line of text that flashed Kevin's eyeline, "and it all looked like something out of Breakfast at Tiffany's, huh? I hear that was a great movie." He looked up at the display boards around the concourse and smiled for a moment, closing his eyes in concentration. The screens flickered and went dark for a moment before lighting up again. "Trains replaced by buses dep 31st St." "Severe delays on line. Alternate transport advised." "Train cancelled. Alternate transport advised." "Line closed due to accident."
Stock still and staring into space, he managed one more line of text. "I have all the visual displays on the concourse covered." Knots of confusion spread from commuters to station staff and back.
"Capote was highly overrated." Kevin said, starting to track the crowd. "And a prick."
He moved behind a pillar for a moment and stepped out as a Penn Station security guard. "Alright people, LSL is temporarily being closed off. Take it down to the Hudson River line."
The signs flickered for a moment and began to read that as well. It was suddenly possible to pick the difference between the regular commuters, angry and resigned but hurrying to the next available option and the tourists, who stood there staring. "You need anything else?" Artie asked Kevin as yellow "out of order" signs appeared on the toilet doors. "I can give you one more thing."
"Yeah, give me a little smoke. The cattle aren't moving fast enough."
Artie nodded and bit his lip. Smoke began to drift through the air, thickening as people noticed it, billowing up from the LSL line and out of the toilets. The station staff stopped frantically calling each other and trying to reassure passengers and began to encourage them to evacuate.
"Keep moving, people. It's safely contained but we need to get repair people in here to fix it." Now staff that might have questioned him were doing the job for them. Kevin used his pillar trick again, this time coming out the other side looking normal. He pinned a badge on to the breast of his suit.
"Tone down the smoke a bit. One of these guys is likely to pull the fire alarm."
The smoke began to clear, still visible but less ominous.
"Ma'am, bad place to stop to check your phone. Keep moving please." Kevin went over and pulled out the bright traffic cones he'd brought and placed them in a line along the floor.
"That should give us fifteen or so. Let's hope our terrorists are the time conscientious types."
Amanda and North search for the Tunnelers, and wind up in literal hot water.
"I can't see bugger all with all these people," Amanda complained to her companion as they searched the crowded concourse for anything suspicious. "I'm gunna see if I can get the city to cooperate. Think my name REALLY loud if you see anything?" Already she was starting to sink into the tiled floor, using a pillar and North's own size to avoid being spotted.
"I will scream it," he promised. Back against the pillar, he waited for her to do her thing, his bulk and crossed arms looking enough on the side of unfriendly that his continued surveillance went uninterrupted despite the evacuating masses.
Turned out North did not actually have to do any screaming for his colleague. At least, it sounded like there was a whole crowd doing it on his behalf from a distance down the concourse.
"Bollocks." Amanda paused half-way in her descent into the floor. For a moment she debated which way to go, then made up her mind. "Whatever it is, it's likely to be for us. I'll pop up behind for the sneak attack, yeah?" And then she was gone before North could stop her or suggest a better plan. Amanda's confidence in New York tended to border on "stupidly cocky".
The screaming was two-fold. On the surface, the terrified screams of people surrounded by smoldering trash cans, and burning luggage, and licks of flame catching clothes and newspapers and making phones explode into hot plastic shrapnel, and above that, like the echo of a demonic bell was a pained laugh that drilled its way into the thoughts of the crowd. The creature - it was barely a man - pulsed flame around a charred skeleton and threw fire at seeming random, never hitting the panicked crowd but splatting like napalm against the walls, vendor stalls and piles of luggage waiting to be loaded into trains.
A displeased expression crossed North's face as he studied what he could through the gaps of the panicked crowd. People scrambled out of the way, earlier grumblings at the inconvenience of being re-routed forgotten in the face of escaping such monstrosity. Rather than wading through the thronging sea of bodies, the German man waited by the pillar until the skeletal (ha-ha) man was close enough to see him.
"Thank you," North said. "It was getting rather chilly in here. It has been a pretty cold season this year, ja?"
A stream of liquid fire made an impossible ninety-degree turn in response, and spread to coat the ground at North's feet.The flaming skeleton gave it only a moment's notice, and returned to madly throwing flame and heat around wildly.
It was one of these random fireballs that nearly hit Amanda as she appeared out of the floor behind him. She yelped and shielded, the flames licking harmlessly across the spell's surface. "Seriously?" she demanded of no-one in particular. Or possibly the city itself. "Flaming skeleton guy?" This was going to make things a bit more difficult.
The screaming resolved itself into a words, still at a volume level best described as "Unnecessarily Intense", but now an unending string of uncreative profanity, calling the trapped crowd "bitches" and "fucks" and directing even worse language at the newcomers. The puddles of fire pulsed with every word, and plopped and splashed on floors and walls - and rarely, fleeing people.
Amanda winced at the stream of high-pitched psionic profanity in her head. "Fucking 'paths," she grumbled to herself. "Oi, bozo!" she called out. "You want a fight? You've got one!" At her gesture, the fire sprinklers above the Morlock switched on, drenching him in water.
The fire hissed where the water hit it, but did not diminish and the steam smelled of burned mildew and metal. "Get wrecked fucks!" The words came from everywhere, but the jawbone of the flaming skeleton moved along with them, in a steady stream of filth. "I'll fuck you and your mum and your dog!" His bones turned inside the fire that sheathed him and he slid towards Amanda on a path of flame.
"You are not really my type." A spray of white foam arced towards his flaming back, followed by short bursts of the same substance from the fire extinguisher North had appropriated and was in the process of emptying at the Morlock, dodging the counter attack that came at him in a series of hit and misses. He recognized by now that the creature was stalling for time and thought this as hard as he could to Amanda, while wondering how their attacker would hold up against bullets.
"Wow, and Jubes says I have a potty mouth," Amanda muttered, catching North's eye and nodding. The city didn't make her telepathic, but the Morlock was the city, as much as the bricks and mortar and traffic. Water wasn't working, so she decided to go a bit more basic and with a gesture, she hurled chunks of the tiled and concrete floor and walls at the burning figure, intent on battering him unconscious.
When the foam splattered against the flaming skeleton, he shuddered and screamed in pain, but the fire blazed to consume the foam. This two-pronged assault had finally eared his full attention. "Die gene traitor bitches!" The flaming skeleton man thing "yelled", in a telepathic voice that felt like the smell of burning hair tasted. One flame-sheathed bone arm snapped around, and he began pitching wads of fire at Amanda and North, missing his mark whenever one of Amanda's chunks of City cracked against his bones, but increasing his assault until the fires elsewhere diminished, and his focus was entirely on the pair of mutants he fought. The volley was impossible to entirely avoid, and one smacked into Amanda's shoulder, burning red hot through the thick leather coat.
North ducked behind a pillar, looking more than a little singed around the edges. He glanced at Amanda, appreciating that her assault had not abated. But the cylinder was getting lighter by the minute, and the nearest one was a good quarter mile away. Pointing the nozzle around the pillar, he let off another stream of foam as he hefted it on to his shoulder and launched it at Fever Pitch's face. Then drawing a gun from its holster, he fired at it.
Fire. I'm on fire. Fuckfuckfuck. Ignoring the flames licking at her braid and adding the smell of burnt hair to burnt leather, Amanda switched tactics. Time to finish this, preferably before she actually started with the second and third degree burns. She cast her shielding spell again, but this time as a bubble around the flaming skeleton. Fire needed air, after all. Slowly closing her fist, she shrank the bubble around their foe, until it was compressing him tightly.
Wherever the foam spray had hit the flaming skeleton, the fires bubbled and dulled, until they were little more than a dully glowing flame barely sheathing the bones. But as Amanda's shield tightened, the other flames brightened, going white-hot even blue-hot. The mental word-vomit also flared, growing from simple profanity to the worst sorts of language, insults that had nothing to do with Amanda or North, but were just plain noxious words chosen to shock.
And then it stopped, all at once.
The fires went out, the bones collapsed into a man-shaped heap that left a greasy film on the ground, not unlike smeared butter, and then the fires on the ground began to splutter and fade, only lingering where they had contacted something flammable.
That 'something flammable' included Amanda's jacket. But before she could actually drop and roll, she was engulfed in heavy wool, hands patting out the flames on her shoulder and back. "Ta, North," she said gratefully, looking up at her teammate. "That was a little too close for comfort."
He helped her up, surveying the destruction around them. "Might have been roasted alive without you." Squeezing her uninjured shoulder in his own expression of thanks, he jerked his head at the stairs to the platform. "Come, we should see what he was distracting us from."
Callisto, Domino and a giant lizard with an attitude to match.
The concourse of Penn Station was never quiet, and this day was no exception, with commuters heading home, shoppers browsing, and all levels of New York's vibrant city life engaged in doing their own thing. Certainly no-one looked twice at the two dark-haired women working their way through the crowds, obviously on the lookout for someone.
Callisto was the one who knew the faces they were looking for, of course, and she was glancing about as they walked, occasionally stealing a look at the woman beside her. "So... what can I expect from you when we actually find someone?" she murmured. "Tentacles? Glowing eyes? Lightning bolts?"
Domino laughed aloud at this, hands shoved in her jacket pockets. She was wearing her favourite leather jacket. Callisto was also wearing a leather jacket, and scuffed motorcycle boots, and jeans - though hers were old and faded, not dark and skinny like Dom's. But they were basically wearing the same outfit, and it was sort of hilarious.
"Guns." They walked a few more steps; she could feel the other woman looking askance at her. "You can expect guns. And shooting. And probably swearing - the two seem to go hand-in-hand a lot of the time."
"You're planning to... shoot stuff. Oh... kay. Okay, good. I guess I th- ooohhh shit. We... have a Tunneler. Two o' clock, dark shirt, dark hair. Don't be fooled by her human-shaped exterior..."
Not too much longer, thought Scaleface, as she pretended to be very interested in the time. Well. She was interested in the time, but probably not for the same reasons as all these norms were. Pathetic really. Stretching her neck, she felt a satisfying pop. Reaching down to her hands, she was about to crack her knuckles when she stopped mid-joint. Was that....No....it couldn't be. Instantly, her eyes narrowed and she reminded herself not to react quite yet. She clenched her hands and made eye contact, trying to let the other woman feel every ounce of her betrayal.
Callisto raised her eyebrows - well, eyebrow; the other didn't work very well. She saw Scaleface see her. Slowly, she lifted her hand, clenched into a fist. Her middle finger rose from it into the air.
Callisto smiled.
"Oh my god. We've been called out to settle a Mean Girls spat. Just great," Dom muttered. "Okay, you break left, try and intercept her. I'll come around the back, we'll take her down." With that she split off, weaving through the people streaming out of the station, one hand slipping into her jacket to finger her firearm.
In frame and height, Callisto was hardly the most imposing of figures, and yet she cut an easy swathe through the crowd as she headed off to the left, her trajectory and eventual intention obvious.
Fuck this. There was still enough time, and really, there was nothing Callisto could do to stop this. It was already in motion. Without even bothering to look around her, she grinned, her teeth starting to elongate and sharpen as she fell into her familiar lizard body. A roar escaped her lips, and her clothing began to tear, revealing a large reptilian, sharp claws and even sharper teeth to match. People ran screaming, which probably was counter productive to mass casualties, but this was personal.
Great. Right out of the gate and already the full Godzilla. Dom cursed and picked up the pace. "Get out of here!" she shouted at the hapless bystanders gawking at the giant lizard-thing, though really, who could blame them? "Go on!"
Callisto broke into a run, now, every part of her moving with perfect economy, not a scrap of energy wasted, not the slightest misstep.
Scaleface held her ground, her sheer size and weight making her a practically immovable object. There was no sense in doing anything other than try to watch Callisto and anticipate her movements. A sick copy of a smile spread across her face, making her hybrid face even more disconcerting. "Come on," she growled, her eyes narrowing. "Stop wasting time and let's get on with it!"
"Well, if you insist..." Callisto didn't stop before reaching Scaleface; she didn't even slow down, just leapt into the air, twisting and bringing her heavy-booted foot round with an impact that would've knocked any man clean off his feet and into the nearest wall.
But Scaleface, of course, was no man.
The pain was intoxicating. While the force was there, it didn't fully knock Scaleface off her feet. A slight wobble true, but nothing a shift of gravity wouldn't fix. Growling, the reptilian reached out with an arm and tried to rake Callisto.
"Hey!" The lid of a trash can sailed into Scaleface's side, propelled by a not-too-impressive throw from Domino. She didn't want to start shoot unless she absolutely had to, and from the looks of it Callisto packed enough of a punch that she might be able to knock her out with another few blows. "Why don't you pick on someone... your... own size?" She hadn't really thought that one through.
Scaleface barely registered the trashcan lid against her rough skin. "Where's the fun in that?," she rasped, her grin only deepening. And as if to further the point, she tripped one of the bystanders, sending them flying into the wall. "You can't stop us, you know. Don't bother trying."
"Sorry, everyone loves a trier, and you know I love to be loved," Callisto said, launching into another flying kick, this time pivoting at the last moment to walk up Scaleface's body and launch a foot into the side of her head.
While the two Morlocks bantered Dom was busy sizing up her foe. Well, not sizing up - she knew she was huge - but more contemplating the woman-lizard shift. If she shot off the lizard's toe would the woman be missing one as well? What about a tail? How did that track?
Toe seemed to be the safest bet, so as the lizard-woman paused, slightly stunned by Callisto's kick, Dom raised her firearm and took aim at one of her huge, scaley feet. Hopefully bullets would make a bigger impression than trash cans.
Scaleface shrieked in pain. Even though she had superhuman strength and stamina, she wasn't bulletproof. Lifting her foot, she snarled and reached for the nearest bench. Growling, she raised it over her head and threw it at Callisto, oblivious to the fact that it was the other woman who had shot her. In Scaleface's mind, this was all Callisto's fault.
Normally dodging large projectiles came naturally to Callisto, but perhaps she hadn't expected to be the focus of retribution on this occasion, because she didn't quite manage on this occasion - she lunged to the side at the last moment but a leg of the bench still caught her on its way past, sending her staggering sideways. Winded, she clutched her side where it had hit, blinking as white blotches of pain swam in her vision.
Well that had worked - sort of. Domino didn't really want to draw Scaleface's ire, given that she was pretty vulnerable to benches, but she also didn't want to see what would happen if she didn't do something to pull attention away from Callisto.
So. Tail it was.
The shock of her tail being shot at was worse than her toes. At least there her nails were able to deflect some of it, but her tail? Anger was quickly taking over, and it was all that Scaleface could do to try to direct it. "Who the fuck are you," she growled out, whirling around and trying to place the other woman. "You're on the wrong side you know!"
"Yeah, uh," Dom said, taking several rapid steps backwards, out of swiping distance. "About that. I dunno if killing hundreds of people is the best way to convince somebody you're the good guys. Y'know?"
"We take care of our own," Scaleface raged, lashing her tail out at Domino with all her might. "We don't abandon people."
Any response from Domino was interrupted as she threw herself to the side to avoid the vicious whipcrack of the lizard's tail. She hit the ground with an 'oof', the impact jarring her arm and making any thought of firing off another round unthinkable - but luckily, it didn't matter. Callisto had recovered, and now she turned her attention back to their assailant. She bolted toward the giant lizard, shrugging her jacket off as she went and whirling it around in her hand. She'd twisted it into a makeshift rope by the time she was springing into the air, and she slung it around Scaleface's neck like a makeshift garotte, hauling it tight.
"Neither do I," Callisto muttered as the lizardwoman spluttered in her grip.
The reptilian's instant reaction was to reach up and try to pull either Callisto or the garotte off, but due to the tightness, and the angle, it was practically impossible to get her large claws under the cloth. Shaking furiously, she tried with all her might to jostle Callisto enough to let go, but it was to no avail. Air was quickly running out, and Scaleface tried desperately to slam her back into the wall, but in the process, lost her balance, and managed to do more damage to herself than Callisto. Not that it mattered -- soon afterwards, everything went black.
Callisto hopped nimbly off the lizard, shaking her jacket out and throwing it back on, wincing in the process.
"'kin cracked a rib," she said, punctuating her words with a kick to the prone mutant's side. Then she turned back to Domino.
"'Someone your own size'?" she said. "Really?"
Jubilee and Gabriel trade blows - and philosophical arguments - with Cybelle
They weren't the only ones out on the concourse looking for the Tunnelers, but with the typical New York crowds, they might as well have been. Even with the descriptions Callisto had provided, it was the proverbial nail in the haystack. Or Morlock in commuter traffic.
"Everything here is so... unfortunate." Gabriel wrinkled his nose as he stared at the big board in front of him, and the hordes of people scurrying underneath it. It was fitting that trains to New Jersey left from a drab, dirty and nondescript terminal underground. Everything about Penn Station was bleak; every floor tile and every column reinforcing just how subterranean the building was. "A bunch of sewer moles or whatever they are ought to fit right in."
Jubilee didn’t answer right away, her attention on the people around them as she looked for the mark – she glanced sideways after a moment and raised an eyebrow.
“Dude, how much of the world have you actually seen?”
The wall on their left started to sag. Like cloth, the stone seemed to fold in on itself, then fall away entirely. On the other side stood Cybelle, hands outstretched.
"Well, well," she said, grinning. "Look what we have here." It was not a nice grin, as there were far too many teeth for that.
"This," Gabriel said, as he took a very large step back out of immediate caution, "from you." He surveyed her for a second. "You, who came through a wall." Lacking the patience or manners to stand on ceremony, he did the only thing a brash mutant 20-something with no fighting training would. Shift into high-gear and charge toward her.
It was an ill-considered move. As he approached her, operating on his own time, a few lingerings droplets of mist hovered in the air. As he darted, moving around the stragglers at Penn Station without much elegance, they touched his clothes. A sudden sizzling noise stopped him in his tracks, not much further than he'd been than he started. "Oh fuck."
"A commendable attempt," Cybelle mocked. "Would you perhaps like to try again?"
It was times like these that Jubilee remembered her own youth, and the look on Remy's face when something particularly addle brained happened. It was the only reason she didn't give Gabriel a steady stream of swearing as she lit up the area, sending a multitude of sparks to burn off the droplets of acid.
"Dude, really? You come into my city, you disrespect my train station, you disrespect me. The hell you think you're doing?"
"I think I'm taking back power from people like you, little girl!" Cybelle threw her hands out, sending a cloud of acid fog at the newcomers. "Now die and let me get back to work!"
As the fog creeped toward him, Gabriel took a step in the other direction, bolting past Jubilee and toward a group of people that Artie was herding aboveground. To have a fighting chance against this woman, he needed to disappear. Then he could speed into thin air and take her by surprise.
"Dude, power that you can take with violence is just an illusion," Jubilee replied, almost gently given that they were in the middle of a fight. "But I doubt you're gonna recognise that, which is pretty damn sad. I mean, I'd rather not spend time beating the crap out of you, but if you insist."
Jubilee had spent the time she was talking well, using her powers to catch each of the air droplets and burn them up before they could do any real damage. The other thing she hoped was that Cybelle would focus on her and give Gabriel time to get closer.
"Shut up!" Cybelle flung more of her acid around. The walls of the tunnel started to melt. "I don't need to be lectured from people who know nothing of the challenges we face every single day! Don't you dare take the high and mighty route with me!" She was angry, and the cloud of acid started to thicken.
Among the benefits of moving in a separate time-space (or adjacent timeline or however the physicists might explain it): Gabriel saw the cloud coming before Cybelle did. He stopped suddenly, appearing behind her for a split-second, then sped back up and watched it dissipate. "Fuck," he muttered, his eyes lighting on one patch of mist that seemed particularly thing. Lacking better options, he tried to get a running start so he could vault over it and get to Cybelle.
“You’re not the first person to sing that tune, kid,” Jubilee replied, using more of her power to catch the new burst of acid, even as she avoided the parts flung directly toward her with a series of acrobatic moves – hoping Gabriel’s speed would see him through, and that he was getting closer to knocking Cybelle out. “Most of the time, you’ll find people willing to put innocents at risk for so-called good reasons, don’t think twice about doing it for a bad one. You don’t have to live in the dark, you know.”
"When you're rejected by the light, darkness is all you have left." She had completely lost track of the goal now, too caught up in her pain and dwelling on the past to keep her mind on the present.
Without much warning, Cybelle had the wind knocked out of her, as a fist wrapped in cloth hit her in the jaw with surprising force. Gabriel stood above her, the bottom of his jeans looking slightly worn from where he hadn't managed to clear Cybelle's cloud. "Jesus." Looking down at her, he caught sight of some red patches on his ankles, but otherwise, it didn't seem like she'd eaten through his skin. "I'm expensing new jeans."
Jubilee sighed as Cybelle went down – rubbing a weary hand over the back of her neck to rub out kinks as she cleaned up the last of the acid with well placed sparks.
“Dude, I will give you the money for new jeans if you let me be in the room when you ask North for that,” Jubilee replied with a grin as his words filtered through the layer of tiredness currently trying to descend. Using her powers in any fine-tuned way always seemed to cost more in terms of energy then the big flashy explosions. “C’mon, Gabe. Secure sleeping beauty for transport and hopefully everyone else is doing as well as we just did.”
