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xp_logsCypher, Heat Wave and Lucky streak hit the labs, and find plenty of opposition.
The fire evacuation door that was Doug, Alex, and Arthur's entry point was halfway between the reception area and the labs and offices at the rear of the building. Thankfully, the latch was vulnerable to a bit of jimmying from the outside, and Doug made quick work of it with a long slim folding knife. "In we go," he told the other two men with him as he held the door.
Arthur was through first, and everything was very, very taupe in the way that office buildings aspired to be. There weren't even any placards on the wall between the reception entrance and a series of doors with small, thin windows and shiny brass doorknobs. All very non-descript, but the three men knew better.
"Three blondes walk into a bar," the ex television star whispered cheerily, having shed the holo projector, but the weight of the silence only seemed to grow. This only made Arthur chattier.
"Is it a mass-murderer federal holiday or something? I didn't get a ping on Google Calendar."
Alex peeked around Arthur as they made their way into the hall. "All seems very Q-word," he reported, tapping the earpiece tucked into his ear. It felt weird and he didn't love it.
"I'm not going to ask why you are putting mass murderer federal holidays on your calendar," Doug told Arthur with a shake of his head. He had a definite appreciation for Alex's refusal to use the actual word 'quiet' - after all, the minute you said it was a little -too- quiet...
He heard a clatter down the hall, and held up a hand to halt his partners. "Looks like not everyone took the day off," he murmured, pulling his collapsible baton out of a pocket and snapping it out.
And just like that, every single door in the tiny hallway opened, in unison, and a set of navy-blue uniformed men and women poured into the hallway. Not exactly like the Crazy 88s, but close enough to where there had to be some coordination going on.
"Are you kidding m--" was all Arthur could could say before they were in the melee.
Alex, stupidly, hadn't thought to bring a weapon of any kind, and he was regretting that now as they were thrown full force into a fight. Still he dove in with the only assets he had - his fists and feet. He felt a couple noses break under his knuckles, and he wasn't afraid to aim a few kicks at groins. Dirty, but effective.
Doug's mental image was more the hallway full of Agent Smiths in the second Matrix movie, but the gist was the same no matter which action movie it made them all think of. Enemies overwhelming the heroes through sheer force of numbers. Of course, that presumed all the antagonists were trained in fighting together - in actuality, they were most likely to get in each other's way. "Keep moving, don't let them pin you down," he told the other two, in the brief lull before the chaos of the fight. He moved slowly, methodically down the hall, a second baton appearing in his other hand and fending off attackers. Everywhere he went, brutally twisted knees and lumps at the back of the skull followed - a series of incapacitating but probably nonlethal takedowns.
Where Doug opted to go high, Arthur made his way high — a vault here, a twist there, a flip overhead — across the room, confusing those who tried to beat or stab him in the too-tight confines of the hallway. His work was distraction, and his powers ensured that any potentially fatal blow was met with a lucky slip of the foot or snag of the carpet.
Still, there were more guards than there should have been.
"Where the hell did all these idiots come from?" Doug muttered. They'd intentionally come after hours and when the offices should have been empty. Why were so many people still there, then? Was it a trap? Then he spotted a couple people in white labcoats hustling toward one of the labs. The urgency in their body language caused a click in Doug's intuition - they were here to destroy evidence, maybe even the entire office area. "We need to get to the labs!" he called to the other two, shouldering one of the guards into a wall to try and clear a path.
It would've been so easy to clear a path if he just...Alex cut that thought off at the feet, settling instead for kneeing another guard in the groan and ducking around a clumsy man in a lab coat who clearly had no fighting skills, taking off for the lab.
"Sorry. Very sorry!" Arthur, still experimenting with hallway parkour, had positioned himself behind Alex and quickly disarmed the guards that were down while picking off any of their adversaries smart enough to go for either of his fellow mutants while they were busy fighting individually. Luckily, the narrowness of the hallways created a bottleneck and, between the three of them, they made steady progress through the guards toward the lab on pressure point or knockout at a time.
Doug was the first one through the door, but he ducked and let out a short yelp as one of the technicians took a shot at him. "That tears it," he said, dropping one baton and drawing a pistol from the small of his back. "All bets are off," he told the other two. If people were shooting at them, they really didn't want the evidence that the Xavier's team was there to get. Which made it all the more important that they retrieve it.
"Got it," Alex said with a nod, shuffling uncertainly. Guns were one thing he couldn't bounce back from. Torture at the hands of a mutant supremacist? Cool. Arm torn open by a beast? No problem. Gun? It was probably lucky they had the master of luck with them.
Speaking of which, Arthur was plenty busy attempting to secure the door. The small collection of guns and tasers he had collected from the mess of prone, but still breathing, bodies outside had been happily discarded, but the locks operated via a keycard— BAM.
Seeing an open target, the technician refocused his aim and shot very poorly toward Arthur, but his bullet instead hit the door key control. There was the very unlikely sound of a lock engaging.
Doug's return shot sent the technician crumpling to the ground, clutching his leg and grunting in pain. Doug cleared the gap to the man and kicked his pistol aside, over to Arthur's little collection. "Heat Wave, make sure everyone's tied up," he said, fishing a bundle of zipties out and tossing them to Alex. He covered the room with his own gun while that was happening, taking a moment to pop a flash drive into one of the workstations to begin sucking down whatever data the techs hadn't managed to delete.
"I think we're going to need an alternate exit," he observed, looking at the remains of the keycard scanner.
...While Tarot, Jewel and the Invisible Girl are more direct and use the front door.
"Yes, excellent idea. Be our ace in the hole." Marie-Ange said, as Sue flickered invisible. She glanced once more at the doors, and her invulnerable partner in literal crime, and gave a diffident shrug. "I expect this to be messy." She fully intended to use Jessica as a human shield if she had to. The brash younger woman could take hits and keep going. "Stay close." With a woman whose powers and personality both seemed to be "hit things" and no way to keep any of this subtle, the only plan, even if it was a ridiculous one, was a loud and ugly frontal assault.
She flipped a card from her sleeve, and an enormous turtle like creature sprang up out of nowhere, and charged the door, moving far faster than any turtle that size ought to have been inclined to do naturally. It hit the doors, and kept going until it sloshed into wet goo that began steaming away.
Jessica watched as Marie-Ange's whatever the fuck it was smashed through the doors. Sue was invisible next to her, and she felt excitement begin to tingle along her spine. She floated up into the air and clenched her fists.
Screams came from the reception area itself as Marie-Ange's projection crashed the doors, followed by the flashing of a small blue light by the ceiling - the alarm had been tripped. Which meant that they wouldn't be facing just the receptionists.
"Messy is my middle name." Jessica stated happily as she rocketed forward, following the same path that the turtle had taken. As she neared the next area she began to curl inward, making herself as small and dense as possible. She smashed into two solid objects along the way and, going by the screams that followed, she figured they were the bad guys. Jessica arced upwards and uncurled, hair whipping in the wind created by the maneuver. Her brown eyes scanned the area below her while her face contorted into a serious expression. "Surrender now or prepare to be punched." She declared evenly.
At least the alarm could not go to the NYPD. The office's research and records and samples - and many were far worse samples than just tissue and DNA - would get them arrested too, and by far higher up than the New York Police Department. It would go to private security already in the offices. Even if they had an emergency call to the police, the phones were already - hopefully - cut off by Sue's work with the cameras.
The response came not in words, but in the form of a dozen uniformed men and women charging into the room from various side rooms and offices. Security for the research lab, apparently, who didn't appreciate the intrusion.
"Does that speech ever work?" Sue asked evenly from Jessica's side before she stepped back and to the side. She wasn't a match for her friend in the front line, but that wasn't what she did. The blonde quickly circled away from the group, reaching out to knock aside a gun trained on Jess as she did so. Her invisibility meant they never saw her coming, and she intended to make the most of it dealing with these blue clad goons, putting action to her thoughts she reappeared to drive a kick into one unsuspecting man before throwing up a small forcefield to block an incoming baton and seizing a chair which she threw at the baton wielder before she faded out of sight again and moved on to the next group, aiming to sow as much confusion as she could while Jess kept their attention on her.
Reluctant to get into the actual fray, Marie-Ange hung back. Too many of her fight tactics were of the lethal and bloody kind, and with Jessica and Sue taking on the private security, it left her available to block off the broken front door with a wall of imaged wood. Now at least, no one would get out easily.
Jessica sighed in annoyance as one of the security officers attempted to strike her with a baton. The weapon glanced off of her skin and, though she felt no pain, she could tell that the blow probably would have hurt pretty bad if she was a normal person. Then again, it didn't mean it didn't piss her off. The man came in close, attempting to strike her again, but she casually slapped the weapon away.
"Don't be stupid." She declared as she easily lifted the man off of the ground. "That is no way to treat a-" She began before real, actual pain lanced up her back. She turned to see another of the security officers, this one with a gun, standing behind her. She sighed before she casually tucked the man she was holding beneath her arm. She walked toward the gun toting guard, whose eyes had grown wide. The sound of gunfire rang through Jessica's ears as the man shot her once, twice more. The bullets hit her and she knew she'd have bruises tomorrow, but they ultimately clattered to the floor. As she drew in close her hand shot out and grabbed a hold of the gun.
"That. Hurt." She ground out, the gun breaking into pieces in her hand. She hefted the man out from under her occupied arm and raised him into the air. She brought him down, hard, into his fellow officer. A crunch filled her ears as both men fell to the ground, but she ignored it as she launched herself back into the air. "Getting mad enough at one motherfucker to beat him with another motherfucker. First time for everything, I guess." She muttered as her eyes scanned the small space "Hey, Sue, you holding up okay?" She called.
"Well you know the whole people trying to shoot us isn't doing much for my temper I'll admit" Sue replied, "You know, when I suggested we go out clubbing together I didn't really mean go out clubbing people across the head together. It's a great bonding experience I'm sure but how bout next time we do a more normal girls night. We can eat junk food, watch anything but a horror movie and tell lurid stories of Warren Worthington. Not that I'm not glad to be here with you guys but getting shot at has never really been high on my list of the most enjoyable activities well ever really."
A metallic skittering sound cut the conversation short as a cylindrical object tumbled across the floor in front of them. Before they could react, the flashbang went off. The 170 decibel bang and the flash of intense light staggered them, knocking their inner ears out of balance and blinding them. As they staggered about with the security team equally incapacitated, several shots rang out. It was a completely different sound from the service weapons the men were carrying. The aim was different too, as one round caught Jessica in the back of the neck and the second at the base of her skull.
Reinforcements had officially arrived.
Jessica howled as the sound lanced across her ears only for her scream to grow even louder as the two shots hit their mark. She hit the ground hard, her invulnerable body cracking it slightly, and brought her hands up to hold where she'd been hit. She hadn't been pierced, but the edge of her vision was beginning to go black.
"Fucking whore!" She screamed. "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT! THAT FUCKING HURT!" She howled. She wasn't sure if she was whispering or screaming, thanks to the grenade, and she honestly didn't care. Heat welled up in her and she felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes.
Sue span around in the direction of Jessica's voice, her eyesight full of flashes and stars. Instinctively she dropped and threw a forcefield up around herself as she strained to get her vision back. "Jee...Jewel," she remembered the codename just in time, "Are you ok, what's happening?"
"Move on the rest of them. Keep them contained to this room." The voice was muffled by the visored helmet the woman was wearing. The security guards were not trained operatives, but under her direction began to come together and volley fire in something resembling a unit. Her shots, on the other hand, were precise, forcing them to find cover and nearly striking a few. "Units three and four, converge on my position. All other units, lock down the building. No one comes in and no one leaves."
"Pull back!" Marie-Ange. "Eye-Gee, keep yourself covered. Jay, go aerial" She whipped a card from her sleeve and the floor erupted into hard metal spikes. She could barely keep them stable and keep them from stabbing through Sue and Jessica - but since both could protect themselves, her attention was far more on impeding movement towards Sue. They needed that information as quickly as possible and without disrupting Sue's hacking.
Instantly Sue threw herself out of sight a force field coming up to envelop her as she fell into a sprinters stance dashing across the floor putting all her trust in her abilities to protect her from the gunfire flying across the room. She dived behind a table grabbing a keyboard and screen as she slid across the surface. "Ok Storm, lets see what you've really got," she muttered to herself as her fingers flew across the screen.
Jessica's head pounded and she fled back toward the offices, moving through the air as close to the ceiling as possible, as per Marie Ange's orders. She was still in pain and heat was swelling in her gut as her anger rose to the surface. She rocketed into the office space and quickly lowered herself, skidding to a stop on the floor. She turned and casually lifted a nearby desk and swiftly placed it in front of the doorway before stacking another on top of it. She then floated back up and pressed her back flat against the ceiling. When those motherfuckers got through her barrier, she was going to dive bomb the hell out of them.
The spikes in the carpet retreated, leaving the entire floor a mushy, wet mess, and as fast as they went, a mesh of interlocking gold and copper plates wrapped around Marie-Ange's torso and face, leaving only her eyes and ears uncovered. It would buy her seconds - only as long as she could hold her breath, but all they had to do was get out.
The wall blocking the exit collapsed with a splash, and she ran.
"Tear gas." The woman said quietly. There were the pings of a half dozen pins before the canisters vomiting gas started to fall amongst the mutants.
Coughing Sue tapped a last command into the keyboard she set up a download to the USB drive she'd set up earlier for an eventuality like this before abandoning her position as she scrambled after Marie-Ange wrapping the strongest forcefield she could around herself. She didn't care about letting light in, she could barely see past the tears, all the blonde wanted to do was get away from the gas before it overwhelmed her. So she rushed after her teammates, barely able to see and actually bouncing off the walls as she followed the map she had in her head.
Outnumbered and outgunned, it’s time to make a break for it.
The appearance of the woman in tactical armor was a turning point. Guards were now being reinforced by better armed men and their fire was becoming concentrated and accurate. She was already moving men in pairs to shrink their defensive space and create crossfire opportunities. Unless they were willing to up the body count, the mutants were going to be overwhelmed sooner than later.
The fight that had already not been going splendidly took a turn for the worse, and Alex was quickly realizing he was going to go down if he didn't do something fast.
"Anyone got an escape plan?" He called as he ducked around a hit. He was starting to get tired.
Doug had started out the fighting in an attempt to avoid lethal tactics, mostly so there wouldn't have to be Yet Another Discussion about the difference between X-Force's methods and the other various groups at the mansion. But when their opponents' guns had come out, and their tactics had turned more serious, so too had his. He could see the woman directing the attack, but she was canny and wasn't allowing anything like a clear shot to her through the reinforced positions of guards.
It did not escape his notice that they'd been penned up inside an area with no doors or windows to make their escape through. "The way I see it, we need to make a hole - either in the building, or in them."
Sue peeked out from behind cover and immediately pulled it back as bullets ricocheted off the floor near her.
"You know I think they plan to make putting a hole in them difficult," she noted dryly. "It might be easier to put a hole in the building, we can always send an apology card later," Sue stated as a bullet hit the desk she was sheltered behind, chipping off a piece of wood which arced lazily over the top of the table to land next to her.
Jessica cursed before she pressed her fingers to the comm in her ear. "Fuck! Marie-Ange, make a call! Have Alex blow this place to hell and lets get out of here." She cursed again. "I can carry anyone who needs it and I’ll knock down any wall that gets in my way." …
"Surfer boy, consider those your orders." Marie-Ange's voice was tight and rough through the mesh of imaged disks covering her lower face and chest - she was trying not to double over to cough out the tear gas, and her eyes and nose were already running. "Jewel pull Cypher and me out. Lucky, find us a path!" Then she did lurch towards Jessica, staggering and desperately trying not to choke.
The blond man blinked, his eye lit up like a star, from where he had been hunkered down near the front of the group. He had been slightly chanting "shield them" over and over instead of listening, with only his own luck as a bulwark, but it had been rather effective.
That was until his concentration wavered and Arthur did a double take at the code-name. Sure enough, a bullet almost immediately grazed by his head, but that was enough to get his head back in the game.
"It is a wall! How do you get lucky with a..." Arthur refocused, standing. They had truly been back into a corner, and who knew which wall was even to the outside? He sighed, but a stupid idea was already brewing.
"Wait."
Arthur grabbed a loose lab stool and sat it before him. He mumbled resignedly, "My power is awful," to the group before spinning himself dizzy and launching headfirst, chair now aloft, in a random direction toward a random wall.
There was a loud bang as the metal seat of the stool tore through drywall and into what had once been an airvent, now sealed and painted over. There was a slight whistling in the air as the weak point was now exposed, but if one looked closely they could see that the mortar was riddled with tiny holes. Odd, that. Even odder, there seemed to be garbage glued frame of the once vent.
The blonde man, woozy, waved toward the hole.
Jessica rolled her shoulders and threw back her hair. It was time to be a bulldozer. She charged forward with incredible speed, lowering her shoulder as she went. With minutes shed reached the wall, moving with all the force of a speeding train. There was an almighty "BOOM" as she collided with the weakened area that Arthur had exposed for her. The wall crumbled like a piece of paper under her power, leaving a massive hole. As she floated just outside of it, a small cloud of angry, buzzing things swarmed around her. She frowned, before pressing her fingers to her com.
"Wall's down. Coming back for pick up. Tarot, it looks like my demolition pissed off some bees. Cover up and get ready." She reported before she flew back into the building.
Bees. Of course it was bees. The perfect cherry on top of the 'fuck you' sundae this had become. But at least there was an exit now. Doug covered his nose and mouth with one arm and continued to fire as he made his way toward the breach.
While everyone made their way to the breach, Sue, as she always did, was moving against the flow. She threw herself down next to the computer holding her USB drives, staring desperately at the screen as data was gradually backing up to her device. "Come on, come on, come on, finish already." she muttered as bullets whined past her. She snatched at the USB drive as the percentage point ticked over as two bullets shattered the computer's side burying themselves in the innards of the machine. "Ok, I'm done."
If Marie-Ange had been inclined to swear. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" might have been her response to Jessica having grabbed the back of her coat and yanking her - and Doug (who, Marie-Ange thought, was probably quoting Hamilton's Cabinet Battle #2 -right now-) and Arthur out just a hair ahead of the explosion.
As it was, they moved too fast for anything more than a surprised shriek to escape her mouth, and it was sheer dumb luck, thank you Arthur Centino, that their landing was a well padded pile of cardboard next to a dumpster, and not the road, or a speeding truck, or anything else in the path of Alex's destruction.
"Invisible Girl, shield yourself," Alex snapped, waiting for her to do so before backing up as close to her as he could, spreading his arms out. Two large rings of red energy began swirling around his body, and after a moment blew out from him, ripping the office apart, and blowing through the walls that didn't already have holes in them.
As the energy died away Alex stumbled a bit, shoulders slumping forward. "Alright, how do we get out now?”
Sue glanced at the hole Jessica had flown out of and then back at Alex, "I've got an idea, but you're not going to like it. You're really not going to like it." she warned. Not giving him a chance to question her warning Sue grabbed Alex and pulled him out of the whole as the Sapien League opened fire on their old position. Wrapping her arms tightly around Alex Sue threw out a forcefield surrounding them in the best protection she could offer. A wordless cry of exultation tore from the blonde's mouth, quickly replaced by a groan of pain as the spherical forcefield that encapsulated them bounced against the side of the building before flying out away from the building and the sapien League leaving only the sound of the air rushing past them as the ground grew closer and closer.
"What're youAAAAHHHH OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Alex's questioning was cut off as Sue pulled him out the fucking window. "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?!" He tried to scream, but his voice was whipped away by the air as they plummeted to the ground. Alex didn't waste time trying to scream, but he also didn't hide the fact that he was clinging to Sue as they fell too fast and not fast enough at all.
The protective bubble broke after they bounced against the ground a few times, leaving the blondes laying on the ground, groaning. Alex rolled to stare at the sky, adrenaline flooding through him as a slow grin pulled at his face.
"Let's go again."
The fire evacuation door that was Doug, Alex, and Arthur's entry point was halfway between the reception area and the labs and offices at the rear of the building. Thankfully, the latch was vulnerable to a bit of jimmying from the outside, and Doug made quick work of it with a long slim folding knife. "In we go," he told the other two men with him as he held the door.
Arthur was through first, and everything was very, very taupe in the way that office buildings aspired to be. There weren't even any placards on the wall between the reception entrance and a series of doors with small, thin windows and shiny brass doorknobs. All very non-descript, but the three men knew better.
"Three blondes walk into a bar," the ex television star whispered cheerily, having shed the holo projector, but the weight of the silence only seemed to grow. This only made Arthur chattier.
"Is it a mass-murderer federal holiday or something? I didn't get a ping on Google Calendar."
Alex peeked around Arthur as they made their way into the hall. "All seems very Q-word," he reported, tapping the earpiece tucked into his ear. It felt weird and he didn't love it.
"I'm not going to ask why you are putting mass murderer federal holidays on your calendar," Doug told Arthur with a shake of his head. He had a definite appreciation for Alex's refusal to use the actual word 'quiet' - after all, the minute you said it was a little -too- quiet...
He heard a clatter down the hall, and held up a hand to halt his partners. "Looks like not everyone took the day off," he murmured, pulling his collapsible baton out of a pocket and snapping it out.
And just like that, every single door in the tiny hallway opened, in unison, and a set of navy-blue uniformed men and women poured into the hallway. Not exactly like the Crazy 88s, but close enough to where there had to be some coordination going on.
"Are you kidding m--" was all Arthur could could say before they were in the melee.
Alex, stupidly, hadn't thought to bring a weapon of any kind, and he was regretting that now as they were thrown full force into a fight. Still he dove in with the only assets he had - his fists and feet. He felt a couple noses break under his knuckles, and he wasn't afraid to aim a few kicks at groins. Dirty, but effective.
Doug's mental image was more the hallway full of Agent Smiths in the second Matrix movie, but the gist was the same no matter which action movie it made them all think of. Enemies overwhelming the heroes through sheer force of numbers. Of course, that presumed all the antagonists were trained in fighting together - in actuality, they were most likely to get in each other's way. "Keep moving, don't let them pin you down," he told the other two, in the brief lull before the chaos of the fight. He moved slowly, methodically down the hall, a second baton appearing in his other hand and fending off attackers. Everywhere he went, brutally twisted knees and lumps at the back of the skull followed - a series of incapacitating but probably nonlethal takedowns.
Where Doug opted to go high, Arthur made his way high — a vault here, a twist there, a flip overhead — across the room, confusing those who tried to beat or stab him in the too-tight confines of the hallway. His work was distraction, and his powers ensured that any potentially fatal blow was met with a lucky slip of the foot or snag of the carpet.
Still, there were more guards than there should have been.
"Where the hell did all these idiots come from?" Doug muttered. They'd intentionally come after hours and when the offices should have been empty. Why were so many people still there, then? Was it a trap? Then he spotted a couple people in white labcoats hustling toward one of the labs. The urgency in their body language caused a click in Doug's intuition - they were here to destroy evidence, maybe even the entire office area. "We need to get to the labs!" he called to the other two, shouldering one of the guards into a wall to try and clear a path.
It would've been so easy to clear a path if he just...Alex cut that thought off at the feet, settling instead for kneeing another guard in the groan and ducking around a clumsy man in a lab coat who clearly had no fighting skills, taking off for the lab.
"Sorry. Very sorry!" Arthur, still experimenting with hallway parkour, had positioned himself behind Alex and quickly disarmed the guards that were down while picking off any of their adversaries smart enough to go for either of his fellow mutants while they were busy fighting individually. Luckily, the narrowness of the hallways created a bottleneck and, between the three of them, they made steady progress through the guards toward the lab on pressure point or knockout at a time.
Doug was the first one through the door, but he ducked and let out a short yelp as one of the technicians took a shot at him. "That tears it," he said, dropping one baton and drawing a pistol from the small of his back. "All bets are off," he told the other two. If people were shooting at them, they really didn't want the evidence that the Xavier's team was there to get. Which made it all the more important that they retrieve it.
"Got it," Alex said with a nod, shuffling uncertainly. Guns were one thing he couldn't bounce back from. Torture at the hands of a mutant supremacist? Cool. Arm torn open by a beast? No problem. Gun? It was probably lucky they had the master of luck with them.
Speaking of which, Arthur was plenty busy attempting to secure the door. The small collection of guns and tasers he had collected from the mess of prone, but still breathing, bodies outside had been happily discarded, but the locks operated via a keycard— BAM.
Seeing an open target, the technician refocused his aim and shot very poorly toward Arthur, but his bullet instead hit the door key control. There was the very unlikely sound of a lock engaging.
Doug's return shot sent the technician crumpling to the ground, clutching his leg and grunting in pain. Doug cleared the gap to the man and kicked his pistol aside, over to Arthur's little collection. "Heat Wave, make sure everyone's tied up," he said, fishing a bundle of zipties out and tossing them to Alex. He covered the room with his own gun while that was happening, taking a moment to pop a flash drive into one of the workstations to begin sucking down whatever data the techs hadn't managed to delete.
"I think we're going to need an alternate exit," he observed, looking at the remains of the keycard scanner.
...While Tarot, Jewel and the Invisible Girl are more direct and use the front door.
"Yes, excellent idea. Be our ace in the hole." Marie-Ange said, as Sue flickered invisible. She glanced once more at the doors, and her invulnerable partner in literal crime, and gave a diffident shrug. "I expect this to be messy." She fully intended to use Jessica as a human shield if she had to. The brash younger woman could take hits and keep going. "Stay close." With a woman whose powers and personality both seemed to be "hit things" and no way to keep any of this subtle, the only plan, even if it was a ridiculous one, was a loud and ugly frontal assault.
She flipped a card from her sleeve, and an enormous turtle like creature sprang up out of nowhere, and charged the door, moving far faster than any turtle that size ought to have been inclined to do naturally. It hit the doors, and kept going until it sloshed into wet goo that began steaming away.
Jessica watched as Marie-Ange's whatever the fuck it was smashed through the doors. Sue was invisible next to her, and she felt excitement begin to tingle along her spine. She floated up into the air and clenched her fists.
Screams came from the reception area itself as Marie-Ange's projection crashed the doors, followed by the flashing of a small blue light by the ceiling - the alarm had been tripped. Which meant that they wouldn't be facing just the receptionists.
"Messy is my middle name." Jessica stated happily as she rocketed forward, following the same path that the turtle had taken. As she neared the next area she began to curl inward, making herself as small and dense as possible. She smashed into two solid objects along the way and, going by the screams that followed, she figured they were the bad guys. Jessica arced upwards and uncurled, hair whipping in the wind created by the maneuver. Her brown eyes scanned the area below her while her face contorted into a serious expression. "Surrender now or prepare to be punched." She declared evenly.
At least the alarm could not go to the NYPD. The office's research and records and samples - and many were far worse samples than just tissue and DNA - would get them arrested too, and by far higher up than the New York Police Department. It would go to private security already in the offices. Even if they had an emergency call to the police, the phones were already - hopefully - cut off by Sue's work with the cameras.
The response came not in words, but in the form of a dozen uniformed men and women charging into the room from various side rooms and offices. Security for the research lab, apparently, who didn't appreciate the intrusion.
"Does that speech ever work?" Sue asked evenly from Jessica's side before she stepped back and to the side. She wasn't a match for her friend in the front line, but that wasn't what she did. The blonde quickly circled away from the group, reaching out to knock aside a gun trained on Jess as she did so. Her invisibility meant they never saw her coming, and she intended to make the most of it dealing with these blue clad goons, putting action to her thoughts she reappeared to drive a kick into one unsuspecting man before throwing up a small forcefield to block an incoming baton and seizing a chair which she threw at the baton wielder before she faded out of sight again and moved on to the next group, aiming to sow as much confusion as she could while Jess kept their attention on her.
Reluctant to get into the actual fray, Marie-Ange hung back. Too many of her fight tactics were of the lethal and bloody kind, and with Jessica and Sue taking on the private security, it left her available to block off the broken front door with a wall of imaged wood. Now at least, no one would get out easily.
Jessica sighed in annoyance as one of the security officers attempted to strike her with a baton. The weapon glanced off of her skin and, though she felt no pain, she could tell that the blow probably would have hurt pretty bad if she was a normal person. Then again, it didn't mean it didn't piss her off. The man came in close, attempting to strike her again, but she casually slapped the weapon away.
"Don't be stupid." She declared as she easily lifted the man off of the ground. "That is no way to treat a-" She began before real, actual pain lanced up her back. She turned to see another of the security officers, this one with a gun, standing behind her. She sighed before she casually tucked the man she was holding beneath her arm. She walked toward the gun toting guard, whose eyes had grown wide. The sound of gunfire rang through Jessica's ears as the man shot her once, twice more. The bullets hit her and she knew she'd have bruises tomorrow, but they ultimately clattered to the floor. As she drew in close her hand shot out and grabbed a hold of the gun.
"That. Hurt." She ground out, the gun breaking into pieces in her hand. She hefted the man out from under her occupied arm and raised him into the air. She brought him down, hard, into his fellow officer. A crunch filled her ears as both men fell to the ground, but she ignored it as she launched herself back into the air. "Getting mad enough at one motherfucker to beat him with another motherfucker. First time for everything, I guess." She muttered as her eyes scanned the small space "Hey, Sue, you holding up okay?" She called.
"Well you know the whole people trying to shoot us isn't doing much for my temper I'll admit" Sue replied, "You know, when I suggested we go out clubbing together I didn't really mean go out clubbing people across the head together. It's a great bonding experience I'm sure but how bout next time we do a more normal girls night. We can eat junk food, watch anything but a horror movie and tell lurid stories of Warren Worthington. Not that I'm not glad to be here with you guys but getting shot at has never really been high on my list of the most enjoyable activities well ever really."
A metallic skittering sound cut the conversation short as a cylindrical object tumbled across the floor in front of them. Before they could react, the flashbang went off. The 170 decibel bang and the flash of intense light staggered them, knocking their inner ears out of balance and blinding them. As they staggered about with the security team equally incapacitated, several shots rang out. It was a completely different sound from the service weapons the men were carrying. The aim was different too, as one round caught Jessica in the back of the neck and the second at the base of her skull.
Reinforcements had officially arrived.
Jessica howled as the sound lanced across her ears only for her scream to grow even louder as the two shots hit their mark. She hit the ground hard, her invulnerable body cracking it slightly, and brought her hands up to hold where she'd been hit. She hadn't been pierced, but the edge of her vision was beginning to go black.
"Fucking whore!" She screamed. "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT! THAT FUCKING HURT!" She howled. She wasn't sure if she was whispering or screaming, thanks to the grenade, and she honestly didn't care. Heat welled up in her and she felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes.
Sue span around in the direction of Jessica's voice, her eyesight full of flashes and stars. Instinctively she dropped and threw a forcefield up around herself as she strained to get her vision back. "Jee...Jewel," she remembered the codename just in time, "Are you ok, what's happening?"
"Move on the rest of them. Keep them contained to this room." The voice was muffled by the visored helmet the woman was wearing. The security guards were not trained operatives, but under her direction began to come together and volley fire in something resembling a unit. Her shots, on the other hand, were precise, forcing them to find cover and nearly striking a few. "Units three and four, converge on my position. All other units, lock down the building. No one comes in and no one leaves."
"Pull back!" Marie-Ange. "Eye-Gee, keep yourself covered. Jay, go aerial" She whipped a card from her sleeve and the floor erupted into hard metal spikes. She could barely keep them stable and keep them from stabbing through Sue and Jessica - but since both could protect themselves, her attention was far more on impeding movement towards Sue. They needed that information as quickly as possible and without disrupting Sue's hacking.
Instantly Sue threw herself out of sight a force field coming up to envelop her as she fell into a sprinters stance dashing across the floor putting all her trust in her abilities to protect her from the gunfire flying across the room. She dived behind a table grabbing a keyboard and screen as she slid across the surface. "Ok Storm, lets see what you've really got," she muttered to herself as her fingers flew across the screen.
Jessica's head pounded and she fled back toward the offices, moving through the air as close to the ceiling as possible, as per Marie Ange's orders. She was still in pain and heat was swelling in her gut as her anger rose to the surface. She rocketed into the office space and quickly lowered herself, skidding to a stop on the floor. She turned and casually lifted a nearby desk and swiftly placed it in front of the doorway before stacking another on top of it. She then floated back up and pressed her back flat against the ceiling. When those motherfuckers got through her barrier, she was going to dive bomb the hell out of them.
The spikes in the carpet retreated, leaving the entire floor a mushy, wet mess, and as fast as they went, a mesh of interlocking gold and copper plates wrapped around Marie-Ange's torso and face, leaving only her eyes and ears uncovered. It would buy her seconds - only as long as she could hold her breath, but all they had to do was get out.
The wall blocking the exit collapsed with a splash, and she ran.
"Tear gas." The woman said quietly. There were the pings of a half dozen pins before the canisters vomiting gas started to fall amongst the mutants.
Coughing Sue tapped a last command into the keyboard she set up a download to the USB drive she'd set up earlier for an eventuality like this before abandoning her position as she scrambled after Marie-Ange wrapping the strongest forcefield she could around herself. She didn't care about letting light in, she could barely see past the tears, all the blonde wanted to do was get away from the gas before it overwhelmed her. So she rushed after her teammates, barely able to see and actually bouncing off the walls as she followed the map she had in her head.
Outnumbered and outgunned, it’s time to make a break for it.
The appearance of the woman in tactical armor was a turning point. Guards were now being reinforced by better armed men and their fire was becoming concentrated and accurate. She was already moving men in pairs to shrink their defensive space and create crossfire opportunities. Unless they were willing to up the body count, the mutants were going to be overwhelmed sooner than later.
The fight that had already not been going splendidly took a turn for the worse, and Alex was quickly realizing he was going to go down if he didn't do something fast.
"Anyone got an escape plan?" He called as he ducked around a hit. He was starting to get tired.
Doug had started out the fighting in an attempt to avoid lethal tactics, mostly so there wouldn't have to be Yet Another Discussion about the difference between X-Force's methods and the other various groups at the mansion. But when their opponents' guns had come out, and their tactics had turned more serious, so too had his. He could see the woman directing the attack, but she was canny and wasn't allowing anything like a clear shot to her through the reinforced positions of guards.
It did not escape his notice that they'd been penned up inside an area with no doors or windows to make their escape through. "The way I see it, we need to make a hole - either in the building, or in them."
Sue peeked out from behind cover and immediately pulled it back as bullets ricocheted off the floor near her.
"You know I think they plan to make putting a hole in them difficult," she noted dryly. "It might be easier to put a hole in the building, we can always send an apology card later," Sue stated as a bullet hit the desk she was sheltered behind, chipping off a piece of wood which arced lazily over the top of the table to land next to her.
Jessica cursed before she pressed her fingers to the comm in her ear. "Fuck! Marie-Ange, make a call! Have Alex blow this place to hell and lets get out of here." She cursed again. "I can carry anyone who needs it and I’ll knock down any wall that gets in my way." …
"Surfer boy, consider those your orders." Marie-Ange's voice was tight and rough through the mesh of imaged disks covering her lower face and chest - she was trying not to double over to cough out the tear gas, and her eyes and nose were already running. "Jewel pull Cypher and me out. Lucky, find us a path!" Then she did lurch towards Jessica, staggering and desperately trying not to choke.
The blond man blinked, his eye lit up like a star, from where he had been hunkered down near the front of the group. He had been slightly chanting "shield them" over and over instead of listening, with only his own luck as a bulwark, but it had been rather effective.
That was until his concentration wavered and Arthur did a double take at the code-name. Sure enough, a bullet almost immediately grazed by his head, but that was enough to get his head back in the game.
"It is a wall! How do you get lucky with a..." Arthur refocused, standing. They had truly been back into a corner, and who knew which wall was even to the outside? He sighed, but a stupid idea was already brewing.
"Wait."
Arthur grabbed a loose lab stool and sat it before him. He mumbled resignedly, "My power is awful," to the group before spinning himself dizzy and launching headfirst, chair now aloft, in a random direction toward a random wall.
There was a loud bang as the metal seat of the stool tore through drywall and into what had once been an airvent, now sealed and painted over. There was a slight whistling in the air as the weak point was now exposed, but if one looked closely they could see that the mortar was riddled with tiny holes. Odd, that. Even odder, there seemed to be garbage glued frame of the once vent.
The blonde man, woozy, waved toward the hole.
Jessica rolled her shoulders and threw back her hair. It was time to be a bulldozer. She charged forward with incredible speed, lowering her shoulder as she went. With minutes shed reached the wall, moving with all the force of a speeding train. There was an almighty "BOOM" as she collided with the weakened area that Arthur had exposed for her. The wall crumbled like a piece of paper under her power, leaving a massive hole. As she floated just outside of it, a small cloud of angry, buzzing things swarmed around her. She frowned, before pressing her fingers to her com.
"Wall's down. Coming back for pick up. Tarot, it looks like my demolition pissed off some bees. Cover up and get ready." She reported before she flew back into the building.
Bees. Of course it was bees. The perfect cherry on top of the 'fuck you' sundae this had become. But at least there was an exit now. Doug covered his nose and mouth with one arm and continued to fire as he made his way toward the breach.
While everyone made their way to the breach, Sue, as she always did, was moving against the flow. She threw herself down next to the computer holding her USB drives, staring desperately at the screen as data was gradually backing up to her device. "Come on, come on, come on, finish already." she muttered as bullets whined past her. She snatched at the USB drive as the percentage point ticked over as two bullets shattered the computer's side burying themselves in the innards of the machine. "Ok, I'm done."
If Marie-Ange had been inclined to swear. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" might have been her response to Jessica having grabbed the back of her coat and yanking her - and Doug (who, Marie-Ange thought, was probably quoting Hamilton's Cabinet Battle #2 -right now-) and Arthur out just a hair ahead of the explosion.
As it was, they moved too fast for anything more than a surprised shriek to escape her mouth, and it was sheer dumb luck, thank you Arthur Centino, that their landing was a well padded pile of cardboard next to a dumpster, and not the road, or a speeding truck, or anything else in the path of Alex's destruction.
"Invisible Girl, shield yourself," Alex snapped, waiting for her to do so before backing up as close to her as he could, spreading his arms out. Two large rings of red energy began swirling around his body, and after a moment blew out from him, ripping the office apart, and blowing through the walls that didn't already have holes in them.
As the energy died away Alex stumbled a bit, shoulders slumping forward. "Alright, how do we get out now?”
Sue glanced at the hole Jessica had flown out of and then back at Alex, "I've got an idea, but you're not going to like it. You're really not going to like it." she warned. Not giving him a chance to question her warning Sue grabbed Alex and pulled him out of the whole as the Sapien League opened fire on their old position. Wrapping her arms tightly around Alex Sue threw out a forcefield surrounding them in the best protection she could offer. A wordless cry of exultation tore from the blonde's mouth, quickly replaced by a groan of pain as the spherical forcefield that encapsulated them bounced against the side of the building before flying out away from the building and the sapien League leaving only the sound of the air rushing past them as the ground grew closer and closer.
"What're youAAAAHHHH OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Alex's questioning was cut off as Sue pulled him out the fucking window. "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?!" He tried to scream, but his voice was whipped away by the air as they plummeted to the ground. Alex didn't waste time trying to scream, but he also didn't hide the fact that he was clinging to Sue as they fell too fast and not fast enough at all.
The protective bubble broke after they bounced against the ground a few times, leaving the blondes laying on the ground, groaning. Alex rolled to stare at the sky, adrenaline flooding through him as a slow grin pulled at his face.
"Let's go again."
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