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xp_logsScott and Amanda team up to take on the Starjammers and start breaking them free of the mind control.
It had been a crazy day so far the kind of day that came around...well way too often for Scott's liking. It seemed that this kinda thing was happening more and more often, seemingly every month. The only difference this time, this wasn't something that affected his friend or teammates, this time it had come after his family too, and that was something he'd never get used to. He barely saw his father as it was, and now to have one of their meetings occur in a place like this, it almost didn't seem fair did it? Scott rolled his shoulders with a sigh as he twisted to glance at Amanda, "So...you're the closest thing we have to an expert here...what exactly do we do with this thing?"
"Two part spell," Amanda replied briefly - being in the middle of a battle under the sea was a lot more chaotic than a ground-based melee. Three dimensions, for a start, not to mention the mixture of sand, blood and stray pieces of kelp making things hard to see. "One to break the mind control, which I do down here, and one to get the squid off, which I wait until we're back up top. Less drowning that way." Her grin would have been almost cheeky, if it were not for the needle-like sharp teeth of her transformation.
"Well, that almost sounds easy, I've got to wonder why you even needed us in the..." Scott's voice trailed off as his eyes shifted away from Amanda's razor-sharp grin to glance away behind her shoulder. "Them...that's why we needed to be here. Well, I think we managed to find my father, only I think I kinda wish we hadn't. Whatever you're gonna do Amanda, do it fast."
Corsair and Crew had came into sight but had less joy, more anger in the way they moved. Giving a hand signal, the rest of his crew moved toward the two intruders. "Take them alive, if possible."
"Shit." Amanda considered a shielding spell, but discarded the thought almost immediately - she needed all of her power to break the brainwashing of the squid hats and couldn't spare any for defence. "If they want us alive, that might bring me close enough to do my mojo. But I can't cast it on all four at once - think you can keep the other three back while your dad 'captures' me?"
Scott didn't answer immediately, reaching forward to interlace both hands fingers in front of him and press forward...and just floated there staring at his hands in annoyance. "You know, on land, that would have made a cracking sound, there's nothing about this that I don't hate right now." Twisting to glance over his shoulder at Amanda the man...merman gave a wry grin, "Just don't wait too long, I'm not sure how long I can keep them all distracted."
"I have faith in you, Captain," she replied with a responding grin, before charging towards Corsair with a flick of her tail. Let him think she was attacking him then get in close enough for him to grab her...
That was something Corsair wasn't expecting as the female charged him. He got into stance as she came forward as he swam quickly to his left and grabbed her from behind. The others charged Scott, spreading out to flank him.
Scott let that small grin tug at his lips as his enemies spread out, backpedalling slightly so he could keep them from encircling him as his eyes started to glow red. "You know, you should have all charged me at once, maybe you'd have got to me that way." As he spoke a beam or red force snapped out, colliding with Hezibah's chest, pushing the woman backwards, although the water robbed the strike of it's usual power, her backwards motion cushioned by the liquid around her. "Hmm, this might be a little harder than I thought."
"Oh no, I'm caught, whatever shall I do," Amanda muttered as Corsair wrapped her in a bear hug from behind. Luckily, contact was all she needed, and she cast the spell, disentangling Corsair's will from that of the squid obscuring his features.
Letting go of Amanda, Corsair's hands went to his head. Inside was a battle between his will and the alien parasite that had overwhelmed him. For a moment, it wasn't clear who would win.
It was then he moaned as he was trying to unscramble his thoughts.
Scott desperately waved his arms out at his sides, barely managing to lower himself in the water as Hepzibah shot over his head, her stomach lightly brushing the top of his head as Chod followed closely in her wake, arms held out in a wrestler's grab. "Oh hell no." A force beam at almost blank range forced the man back by a meter, right into Raza's line of fire as a rock thumped off the large man's frame. Even as Chod turned to glare at his teammate Scott span, hands outstretched to grab at Hezibah's hands, her claws bare inches from his face as she hissed at him. "Umm Amanda, how're you doing over there?" Normally the X-man would have been confident he could take on all of the Starjammers without a problem, but fighting in the water was throwing off his game and the shallow cuts on his cheek and shoulder were a testament to his struggle, the wounds bleeding a red mist into the water. At this rate, he wasn't sure who would win this...no that wasn't true, he didn't want to hurt his father's friends so they'd wear him down sooner rather than later.
For her part, Amanda was watching Corsair carefully. Either she'd freed him from the influence of the squid... or she'd turned his brain into cottage cheese. "In a tick, Cyclops!" she called back, before addressing the stunned-looking mer-man. "Uh, Cyclops' dad? Mr. Summers? Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Just feel like morning after a lot of cheap tequila." Lower his hands and looked at the woman before seeing that his son was there, surrounded by his crew. "Can you do that hocus pocus again to my crew?"
"Only one at a time. I'll need you and Cyclops to make sure the others while I'm doing it." As she spoke, Raza was flung past them by an optic blast. "Let's start with him, yeah?"
--
Kyle and Kurt work off some frustration on Lemureans. Biting and stabbing abounds.
"Fuck me, they have tons of those things." Kyle had one hand pressed against a bleeding wound in his side as he swam up to the sleek and so blue he was nearly black shape that was Kurt. The dark and murky water hid the teleporter better than most shadows, and even Kyle had a difficult time picking out details in the other man's face. He pointed with his free hand to the indistinct shapes in the crystalline and coral tanks nestled near clusters of Lemurian warriors. "I mean, fuck, how many people have they fishnapped?" His voice was low and whispered, but furious.
Kurt was even more streamlined in this shape than usual, slipping through the water as if it wasn't there. "Or how many do they plan to?" he said grimly. "There have not been so very many disappearances... yet."
"Or at least not ones anyone knows about." Kyle said darkly. "So here's what I think. I think we go sneak up those guys." He paused, glanced over his shoulder and confirmed that he and Kurt weren't the only ones making a similar plan. "And smash them against the weird squid shit, and kill two fish with one coral or some other kind of crazy water version of two birds one stone." He grinned, showing entirely too many more teeth than he should have had. "I am just real angry at these guys and wanna make 'em bleed."
Kurt's returned smile also showed a flash of fang. "I agree. And if we can break or open the tanks and let the animals escape, all the better."
The guards probably wouldn't fall for the same nurse-shark trick Kyle had done before with a cloud of sand, but he raked his hands through the ocean floor regardless, catching a double fistful of sand and pebbles. But this time, he swam straight for the nearest guard, ducking his head moments before barreling into the Lemurean with his shoulders as he flipped himself over in the water. Fighting in three dimensions was starting to get kind of cool.
Kurt had always rather enjoyed it, and he was making full use of his reshaped body now. As he swam for another guard, he jabbed at him with his marlin spike to put him off balance, before flipping to smack with his tail.
Kyle had half a joke about Pinocchio formed before he was distracted by the ribbons of blood in the water, and had to remind himself who and what he was, and that the 'what' was a human being not a shark. Which led right into him really wanting to make a shark-head joke in a Maui Demigod of The Wind and Sea Hero to All Voice but he was pretty sure the Lemureans wouldn't get it.
He settled for using the massive tail that magic had lent him to slap a Lemurean across the face, sending him - her - it? sprawling into one of the overgrown coral cages. "Nightcrawler, I'm up one on you! I got a guard and a cage!"
"It is a competition?" Kurt returned, halfway amused, and took advantage of still having arms to throw his wounded and reeling guard at the nearest tank. "There."
"Look I gotta either laugh about this or try to figure out if sharks can throw up." The contents of Kyle's stomach were no longer something he wanted to consider, and he was pretty sure he was the kind of shark that sometimes ate sand. He twisted in the water to swim in a circle around his friend and then used the momentum to catch a few of the escaping one-eyed squids with one hand. "Aw, these are fugly as hell." He said, looking at one closely as it struggled in his hand. He considered the thing for a second, shook himself free of the urge to -eat- it and instead sliced it open with his claws, discarding it and moving onto the next.
"Enough", Kurt said calmly, appearing beside him to pull the squid from his hand. "They are animals that have been ill-used, nothing more. Let them go."
Kyle followed the writhing creature with an unblinking stare as Kurt pulled it away. "They're... I ... " He forced himself to blink, and swallowed several gulps of water before speaking again. "I gotta not be here." He said flatly. "There's only one tank of those things left, Kurt, I can't be here. This is..." He gestured at his fins, his face, the gills under his arms. "I gotta not be this much longer."
Kurt nodded immediately, taking a good guess at the problem with Kyle's already feral nature and the shark's instincts. "I will see to the last tank. Would you like to go back to the boat, or watch for more guards?"
"Oh, ima go mess up some guards." Which was quite probably a very bad idea, but Kyle was already gone in a flash of tail and teeth, headlong into the Lemurean guards defending the last tank of creatures. It was easier to remember not to rip-tear-bite when the things he was fighting had faces and voices and opposible thumbs. Kyle threw himself into two-on-one fight with something too close to glee for his own comfort.
Kurt watched this with a little disquiet, making a mental note to nudge Kyle gently towards counselling about it afterwards, then took advantage of the distraction to go and throw the last tank open.
--
Jean-Phillipe and Ev face off against some guards...and Warlord Attuma of the Enormous Ego.
As if the turning into part fish people was not bad enough, there were strange squids that could control people. Of course. Because Jean-Phillipe's existence had not yet gone far enough down the abyss of HP Lovecraft's fever dreams. He was almost certainly never going to be able to eat calamari again. Or half a dozen other sea creatures, at this rate. "The guards," he said, pointing at a holding tank that was encrusted with coral and eerily glowing crystals. "We should do something about those additional squids."
"Going to have to get close to take them out," Ev said softly, tracing the the guards' movements. It went without saying that using Jean-Phillipe's power at range underwater was not an effective strategy. They needed to act like proper electric eels. If they could get there fast enough without being noticed. "Bull rush them when they turn."
"Bien sur," Jean-Phillipe agreed. At least most of them had gotten a chance to understand the mechanics of moving underwater, so when the guards turned, the pair surged forward, electricity crackling around them. Jean-Phillipe took the first, wrapping his arms around the guard as if he were tackling it on dry land. Current arced between them, and the guard crumpled.
Ev's target was felled with the same haste. Now up close to the tank, his aura cast an uncanny glow on the creatures swimming within. They looked peaceful and harmless reflecting his rainbow light. The glare dimmed, not because Ev reduced his aura, he realized immediately, but because something cast a shadow down on them. He twisted out of the way, avoiding impalement by trident so narrowly he felt the bubbles of the weapon rocketing past him. Four more armed guards. They were not going to make this easy. Fine. Ev tore the trident out of the ground and lunged at his attacker, who met the attack with a polearm of its own.
The next guard to move against the pair had a hooked net in its hands, that it dragged through the water to cast over Jean-Phillipe. But the Frenchman shifted to one side, and the metal barbs merely dragged across his skin, leaving some blood in the water but the X-Man unencumbered. "Tabernac," he cursed in a hiss. Then he moved in closer, sweeping a clumsy blow away with one hand and placing the other squarely on the...thing's chest. A flash and a crackle, and a cauterized hole was left in the center of a drifting corpse.
These creatures were strong. Though Ev caught the edge of the polearm between the prongs of the trident, his opponent twisted and tore the weapon out of the mutant's hands. And in the same swift action, he reared back and lunged forward to impale Ev. He had no defense. There was no time to move. Survival instinct took over and without thinking, despite his own warning just a moment ago, he tapped into Jean-Phillipe's borrowed power and generated an untargeted burst of bioelectricity. His charred would-be killer slowly collapsed.
Even though the fish transformation had triggered a sort of re-manifestation in Jean-Phillipe, he had not actually lost all the built up immunity to his own power and general electrical shock that he had gained over the years. He went on his own instinct - if Ev had taken on his power, then he would have a natural immunity as well - the surge had not scarred him in any way. So he took the remnants of the jolt that he had received and redirected it back with interest, pulling charge in through one hand and sending it back out the other, creating a feedback loop between the two men. When the current had built, the Frenchman twisted his hands and snapped a lash of electricity through a broad circle, catching several of the remaining guards in it and leaving them motionless - stunned and twitching at the very least.
"Danger Room when we're done," said Ev, evaluating the scene before them, lightning still sparkling from his glowing fingertips. "Got to know how you did that. Now." He turned to the tank again. "Sushi time."
This was all wrong.
Warlord Attuma, the Barbarian Lord of the Murky Depths, Master of the Deep Legion, Breaker of Oceans (etc) had seen his fortunes pivot in dizzying and frustrating fashion. He had stymied a group of dryskins and taken prisoners - all to the good. But then one of his prized pets had drawn the attention of even more surface filth - bad. One of the dryskins had perplexing demonstrated power and viciousness that drew him like prey to the predator's trap - confusing, but good.
But now the dryskins had somehow discovered and used ancient magic to assault him in the very heart of his power. And not just that, they were winning.
A true fighter and predator - which Attuma of course was - knew when to stand and fight with tooth and claw. But he also knew when to escape the weight of superior numbers. And so, though he wanted badly to tear these interlopers and darken the sea with their hearts' blood, he could already sense the eddies of the tide turning against his plans. The Atlantean would have to be destroyed another day. But escape did not mean he could not make an example of one of his foes as he went.
There. The pair summoning electricity - one dark, one pale. They would die for their temerity. His triple sword in hand, he leveled a heavy blow at the dark-skinned one. "Depths take you," he roared.
It sounded less like a roar and more like angry fish sounds to Ev, who was determined not to be caught unawares again. He parried the blow with a polearm he had retrieved from a fried fishman and swam back to put some distance between them. "We've killed enough of your brothers today," he warned, though he was sure the new enemy could not understand him, "Don't add to the casualty list."
Inability to speak to each other aside, the tone was clear, and Attuma bristled. That a dryskin should have the nerve to... No. He could not lose track of the larger goal. Survival unprepared against this many invaders was less than unlikely. And so he took advantage of Ev's shifting to swim hard for the exit. He took no heed of his guards dying all around - that was their purpose, to vouchsafe his life by spending theirs.
But he would remember this day. And he would repay the cost - with interest.
Crisis averted for now, Ev planted the weapon in the ground and turned back to Jean-Phillipe and the tank once again. "Finish now before we get interrupted a third time."
It was the work of moments to overload the remaining tanks and turn their contents into drifting lumps.
"C'est fini," he reported.
It had been a crazy day so far the kind of day that came around...well way too often for Scott's liking. It seemed that this kinda thing was happening more and more often, seemingly every month. The only difference this time, this wasn't something that affected his friend or teammates, this time it had come after his family too, and that was something he'd never get used to. He barely saw his father as it was, and now to have one of their meetings occur in a place like this, it almost didn't seem fair did it? Scott rolled his shoulders with a sigh as he twisted to glance at Amanda, "So...you're the closest thing we have to an expert here...what exactly do we do with this thing?"
"Two part spell," Amanda replied briefly - being in the middle of a battle under the sea was a lot more chaotic than a ground-based melee. Three dimensions, for a start, not to mention the mixture of sand, blood and stray pieces of kelp making things hard to see. "One to break the mind control, which I do down here, and one to get the squid off, which I wait until we're back up top. Less drowning that way." Her grin would have been almost cheeky, if it were not for the needle-like sharp teeth of her transformation.
"Well, that almost sounds easy, I've got to wonder why you even needed us in the..." Scott's voice trailed off as his eyes shifted away from Amanda's razor-sharp grin to glance away behind her shoulder. "Them...that's why we needed to be here. Well, I think we managed to find my father, only I think I kinda wish we hadn't. Whatever you're gonna do Amanda, do it fast."
Corsair and Crew had came into sight but had less joy, more anger in the way they moved. Giving a hand signal, the rest of his crew moved toward the two intruders. "Take them alive, if possible."
"Shit." Amanda considered a shielding spell, but discarded the thought almost immediately - she needed all of her power to break the brainwashing of the squid hats and couldn't spare any for defence. "If they want us alive, that might bring me close enough to do my mojo. But I can't cast it on all four at once - think you can keep the other three back while your dad 'captures' me?"
Scott didn't answer immediately, reaching forward to interlace both hands fingers in front of him and press forward...and just floated there staring at his hands in annoyance. "You know, on land, that would have made a cracking sound, there's nothing about this that I don't hate right now." Twisting to glance over his shoulder at Amanda the man...merman gave a wry grin, "Just don't wait too long, I'm not sure how long I can keep them all distracted."
"I have faith in you, Captain," she replied with a responding grin, before charging towards Corsair with a flick of her tail. Let him think she was attacking him then get in close enough for him to grab her...
That was something Corsair wasn't expecting as the female charged him. He got into stance as she came forward as he swam quickly to his left and grabbed her from behind. The others charged Scott, spreading out to flank him.
Scott let that small grin tug at his lips as his enemies spread out, backpedalling slightly so he could keep them from encircling him as his eyes started to glow red. "You know, you should have all charged me at once, maybe you'd have got to me that way." As he spoke a beam or red force snapped out, colliding with Hezibah's chest, pushing the woman backwards, although the water robbed the strike of it's usual power, her backwards motion cushioned by the liquid around her. "Hmm, this might be a little harder than I thought."
"Oh no, I'm caught, whatever shall I do," Amanda muttered as Corsair wrapped her in a bear hug from behind. Luckily, contact was all she needed, and she cast the spell, disentangling Corsair's will from that of the squid obscuring his features.
Letting go of Amanda, Corsair's hands went to his head. Inside was a battle between his will and the alien parasite that had overwhelmed him. For a moment, it wasn't clear who would win.
It was then he moaned as he was trying to unscramble his thoughts.
Scott desperately waved his arms out at his sides, barely managing to lower himself in the water as Hepzibah shot over his head, her stomach lightly brushing the top of his head as Chod followed closely in her wake, arms held out in a wrestler's grab. "Oh hell no." A force beam at almost blank range forced the man back by a meter, right into Raza's line of fire as a rock thumped off the large man's frame. Even as Chod turned to glare at his teammate Scott span, hands outstretched to grab at Hezibah's hands, her claws bare inches from his face as she hissed at him. "Umm Amanda, how're you doing over there?" Normally the X-man would have been confident he could take on all of the Starjammers without a problem, but fighting in the water was throwing off his game and the shallow cuts on his cheek and shoulder were a testament to his struggle, the wounds bleeding a red mist into the water. At this rate, he wasn't sure who would win this...no that wasn't true, he didn't want to hurt his father's friends so they'd wear him down sooner rather than later.
For her part, Amanda was watching Corsair carefully. Either she'd freed him from the influence of the squid... or she'd turned his brain into cottage cheese. "In a tick, Cyclops!" she called back, before addressing the stunned-looking mer-man. "Uh, Cyclops' dad? Mr. Summers? Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Just feel like morning after a lot of cheap tequila." Lower his hands and looked at the woman before seeing that his son was there, surrounded by his crew. "Can you do that hocus pocus again to my crew?"
"Only one at a time. I'll need you and Cyclops to make sure the others while I'm doing it." As she spoke, Raza was flung past them by an optic blast. "Let's start with him, yeah?"
--
Kyle and Kurt work off some frustration on Lemureans. Biting and stabbing abounds.
"Fuck me, they have tons of those things." Kyle had one hand pressed against a bleeding wound in his side as he swam up to the sleek and so blue he was nearly black shape that was Kurt. The dark and murky water hid the teleporter better than most shadows, and even Kyle had a difficult time picking out details in the other man's face. He pointed with his free hand to the indistinct shapes in the crystalline and coral tanks nestled near clusters of Lemurian warriors. "I mean, fuck, how many people have they fishnapped?" His voice was low and whispered, but furious.
Kurt was even more streamlined in this shape than usual, slipping through the water as if it wasn't there. "Or how many do they plan to?" he said grimly. "There have not been so very many disappearances... yet."
"Or at least not ones anyone knows about." Kyle said darkly. "So here's what I think. I think we go sneak up those guys." He paused, glanced over his shoulder and confirmed that he and Kurt weren't the only ones making a similar plan. "And smash them against the weird squid shit, and kill two fish with one coral or some other kind of crazy water version of two birds one stone." He grinned, showing entirely too many more teeth than he should have had. "I am just real angry at these guys and wanna make 'em bleed."
Kurt's returned smile also showed a flash of fang. "I agree. And if we can break or open the tanks and let the animals escape, all the better."
The guards probably wouldn't fall for the same nurse-shark trick Kyle had done before with a cloud of sand, but he raked his hands through the ocean floor regardless, catching a double fistful of sand and pebbles. But this time, he swam straight for the nearest guard, ducking his head moments before barreling into the Lemurean with his shoulders as he flipped himself over in the water. Fighting in three dimensions was starting to get kind of cool.
Kurt had always rather enjoyed it, and he was making full use of his reshaped body now. As he swam for another guard, he jabbed at him with his marlin spike to put him off balance, before flipping to smack with his tail.
Kyle had half a joke about Pinocchio formed before he was distracted by the ribbons of blood in the water, and had to remind himself who and what he was, and that the 'what' was a human being not a shark. Which led right into him really wanting to make a shark-head joke in a Maui Demigod of The Wind and Sea Hero to All Voice but he was pretty sure the Lemureans wouldn't get it.
He settled for using the massive tail that magic had lent him to slap a Lemurean across the face, sending him - her - it? sprawling into one of the overgrown coral cages. "Nightcrawler, I'm up one on you! I got a guard and a cage!"
"It is a competition?" Kurt returned, halfway amused, and took advantage of still having arms to throw his wounded and reeling guard at the nearest tank. "There."
"Look I gotta either laugh about this or try to figure out if sharks can throw up." The contents of Kyle's stomach were no longer something he wanted to consider, and he was pretty sure he was the kind of shark that sometimes ate sand. He twisted in the water to swim in a circle around his friend and then used the momentum to catch a few of the escaping one-eyed squids with one hand. "Aw, these are fugly as hell." He said, looking at one closely as it struggled in his hand. He considered the thing for a second, shook himself free of the urge to -eat- it and instead sliced it open with his claws, discarding it and moving onto the next.
"Enough", Kurt said calmly, appearing beside him to pull the squid from his hand. "They are animals that have been ill-used, nothing more. Let them go."
Kyle followed the writhing creature with an unblinking stare as Kurt pulled it away. "They're... I ... " He forced himself to blink, and swallowed several gulps of water before speaking again. "I gotta not be here." He said flatly. "There's only one tank of those things left, Kurt, I can't be here. This is..." He gestured at his fins, his face, the gills under his arms. "I gotta not be this much longer."
Kurt nodded immediately, taking a good guess at the problem with Kyle's already feral nature and the shark's instincts. "I will see to the last tank. Would you like to go back to the boat, or watch for more guards?"
"Oh, ima go mess up some guards." Which was quite probably a very bad idea, but Kyle was already gone in a flash of tail and teeth, headlong into the Lemurean guards defending the last tank of creatures. It was easier to remember not to rip-tear-bite when the things he was fighting had faces and voices and opposible thumbs. Kyle threw himself into two-on-one fight with something too close to glee for his own comfort.
Kurt watched this with a little disquiet, making a mental note to nudge Kyle gently towards counselling about it afterwards, then took advantage of the distraction to go and throw the last tank open.
--
Jean-Phillipe and Ev face off against some guards...and Warlord Attuma of the Enormous Ego.
As if the turning into part fish people was not bad enough, there were strange squids that could control people. Of course. Because Jean-Phillipe's existence had not yet gone far enough down the abyss of HP Lovecraft's fever dreams. He was almost certainly never going to be able to eat calamari again. Or half a dozen other sea creatures, at this rate. "The guards," he said, pointing at a holding tank that was encrusted with coral and eerily glowing crystals. "We should do something about those additional squids."
"Going to have to get close to take them out," Ev said softly, tracing the the guards' movements. It went without saying that using Jean-Phillipe's power at range underwater was not an effective strategy. They needed to act like proper electric eels. If they could get there fast enough without being noticed. "Bull rush them when they turn."
"Bien sur," Jean-Phillipe agreed. At least most of them had gotten a chance to understand the mechanics of moving underwater, so when the guards turned, the pair surged forward, electricity crackling around them. Jean-Phillipe took the first, wrapping his arms around the guard as if he were tackling it on dry land. Current arced between them, and the guard crumpled.
Ev's target was felled with the same haste. Now up close to the tank, his aura cast an uncanny glow on the creatures swimming within. They looked peaceful and harmless reflecting his rainbow light. The glare dimmed, not because Ev reduced his aura, he realized immediately, but because something cast a shadow down on them. He twisted out of the way, avoiding impalement by trident so narrowly he felt the bubbles of the weapon rocketing past him. Four more armed guards. They were not going to make this easy. Fine. Ev tore the trident out of the ground and lunged at his attacker, who met the attack with a polearm of its own.
The next guard to move against the pair had a hooked net in its hands, that it dragged through the water to cast over Jean-Phillipe. But the Frenchman shifted to one side, and the metal barbs merely dragged across his skin, leaving some blood in the water but the X-Man unencumbered. "Tabernac," he cursed in a hiss. Then he moved in closer, sweeping a clumsy blow away with one hand and placing the other squarely on the...thing's chest. A flash and a crackle, and a cauterized hole was left in the center of a drifting corpse.
These creatures were strong. Though Ev caught the edge of the polearm between the prongs of the trident, his opponent twisted and tore the weapon out of the mutant's hands. And in the same swift action, he reared back and lunged forward to impale Ev. He had no defense. There was no time to move. Survival instinct took over and without thinking, despite his own warning just a moment ago, he tapped into Jean-Phillipe's borrowed power and generated an untargeted burst of bioelectricity. His charred would-be killer slowly collapsed.
Even though the fish transformation had triggered a sort of re-manifestation in Jean-Phillipe, he had not actually lost all the built up immunity to his own power and general electrical shock that he had gained over the years. He went on his own instinct - if Ev had taken on his power, then he would have a natural immunity as well - the surge had not scarred him in any way. So he took the remnants of the jolt that he had received and redirected it back with interest, pulling charge in through one hand and sending it back out the other, creating a feedback loop between the two men. When the current had built, the Frenchman twisted his hands and snapped a lash of electricity through a broad circle, catching several of the remaining guards in it and leaving them motionless - stunned and twitching at the very least.
"Danger Room when we're done," said Ev, evaluating the scene before them, lightning still sparkling from his glowing fingertips. "Got to know how you did that. Now." He turned to the tank again. "Sushi time."
This was all wrong.
Warlord Attuma, the Barbarian Lord of the Murky Depths, Master of the Deep Legion, Breaker of Oceans (etc) had seen his fortunes pivot in dizzying and frustrating fashion. He had stymied a group of dryskins and taken prisoners - all to the good. But then one of his prized pets had drawn the attention of even more surface filth - bad. One of the dryskins had perplexing demonstrated power and viciousness that drew him like prey to the predator's trap - confusing, but good.
But now the dryskins had somehow discovered and used ancient magic to assault him in the very heart of his power. And not just that, they were winning.
A true fighter and predator - which Attuma of course was - knew when to stand and fight with tooth and claw. But he also knew when to escape the weight of superior numbers. And so, though he wanted badly to tear these interlopers and darken the sea with their hearts' blood, he could already sense the eddies of the tide turning against his plans. The Atlantean would have to be destroyed another day. But escape did not mean he could not make an example of one of his foes as he went.
There. The pair summoning electricity - one dark, one pale. They would die for their temerity. His triple sword in hand, he leveled a heavy blow at the dark-skinned one. "Depths take you," he roared.
It sounded less like a roar and more like angry fish sounds to Ev, who was determined not to be caught unawares again. He parried the blow with a polearm he had retrieved from a fried fishman and swam back to put some distance between them. "We've killed enough of your brothers today," he warned, though he was sure the new enemy could not understand him, "Don't add to the casualty list."
Inability to speak to each other aside, the tone was clear, and Attuma bristled. That a dryskin should have the nerve to... No. He could not lose track of the larger goal. Survival unprepared against this many invaders was less than unlikely. And so he took advantage of Ev's shifting to swim hard for the exit. He took no heed of his guards dying all around - that was their purpose, to vouchsafe his life by spending theirs.
But he would remember this day. And he would repay the cost - with interest.
Crisis averted for now, Ev planted the weapon in the ground and turned back to Jean-Phillipe and the tank once again. "Finish now before we get interrupted a third time."
It was the work of moments to overload the remaining tanks and turn their contents into drifting lumps.
"C'est fini," he reported.
