xp_logs | Poor Unfortunate Souls

Darcy of the no codename and Blink get rid some of the supply of mind-controlling parasitic squidthings.

Daytripper(swimmer), Cyclops and Corsair release more kidnap victims.

With Cyclops literally close on her tail, Amanda swam towards the last of the Lemurians who hadn't joined in the fight. Getting closer, she realised why - they were guarding those individuals who had gone missing. Like Jean and Namor, their heads were covered with squids, keeping them alive and breathing at the bottom of the ocean, but unlike the other two, they seemed inert, hanging motionlessly in a sort of enclosure made of coral and kelp. As they approached, the guards went on the defensive and Amanda bared her needle-sharp teeth, the bloodlust inherent with her transformation rising. Without a word, she barrelled towards the guards, intent on ripping them apart.

There was a certain freedom, an almost animal eagerness Scott could feel driving himself forward, urging him to chase after Amanda, to revel in the slaughter that she was engaging in, to revel in it. It was that voice in the back of his head, the voice that was always there, urging him on, pushing him to let loose to go wild. It was the voice he always...almost always ignored. This time though, it was harder, it took almost everything he had to bury that voice, to keep himself from charging forward as he pulled himself to a halt, a ruby blast lancing out to pick off one the of Lemurians who had been circling around to Amanda's back. "I thought we were meant to be fish, not sharks."

The witch-mermaid turned on him and for a moment it seemed that she would attack him next. They she blinked, a quick movement of nictitating membranes which revealed her own human eyes. She gave hear head a shake. "Sorry, part of the spell. It's kill or be killed down here and the spell's pushing us that way." She took a breath, the gill slits in her neck flexing. "Let's get them out of here and finish this."

Corsair came up from the rear after watching the one called Amanda almost turned on them. He was still holding a spear that he had taken earlier from one of the Lemurians but relaxed his hold on it when she regained her own mind. "Keep focus." He said before swimming past them towards the tank. "Help me with this lock."

How did he do this? They had come all the way across the world, gotten turned into these weird fish things, Scott refused to call himself a Mermaid, and he still acted as if he knew exactly what he was doing. "You know, it wouldn't kill you to you know, act like we saved your life," he muttered under his breath as a flick of his tail propelled him over to the tank to lend his strength to his father's. Really he was accomplished, one of the best tactical minds in the world and just being around his dad made him feel like he was 15 again...there was probably something in there a psychologist would love to get their hands on now he thought about it.

"Since this lot are caged, I don't expect them to be brainwashed like you and your crew," Amanda said to Corsair as she hovered behind the pair - there wasn't enough room for all of them to work - "but be ready, just in case they're a booby trap or something." Absurdly, she snorted - scaly or not, she was essentially topless, except for the ridiculously long hair.

"Agreed." Corsair gritted his teeth as father and son were able to get the lock to bend and eventually break. "I'll open the door, you two stand, or float, over there. If they attack, we'll be ready. If they don't, they'll just swim out of here."

Scott glanced at the tank before nodding, pushing off from the tank, a flick of his tail and wave of his hands as he drifted out of the way, bobbing on the water as his eyes starting to glow red, his iris' disappearing behind the burning energy.

Amanda joined him. "If they are brainwashed," she said. "You stun them and I'll grab them and do the spell, yeah?"

Scott nodded, the muscles beneath his skin bunching as he pressed against the door handle, the metal slowly shifting as the metal grated, "I can do that."

Corsair nodded at the other two before pulling the door open. He was expecting something to happen right off the bat but they sort of floated there for a second before one came out and swam away.

"Okay, not brainwashed. Good for us." Amanda moved to intercept the sailor who was swimming confusedly upwards. "Hey, wait for the rest of them and we'll all go up together." It was hard to tell the man's expression with a squid on his head, but after a moment of staring at her, he hesitantly nodded.

There was an overwhelming temptation to poke at the squids as they moved past, but one Scott managed to hold back. His now dark eyes watched them cluster and move around as he nodded, "Lets head up, sooner were out of here less chance for another surprise to find us."

Namor, Topaz and Jean finish the job, and Namor has emotions that aren't anger or disdain.

Topaz didn't think she could be faulted for warily eyeing the two people swimming beside her. How had she ended up with both mind controlled people? They were fine now, of course - they had been freed, and as far as her empathy was concerned they felt fine.

Still, they had both tried to kill her recently, and if history had taught her anything, it was be careful of things that try to kill you.

Thankfully she was distracted by what she assumed was some kind of fish guard swimming at them with a small tank in its hands. "Oh bugger off," she muttered, gathering some energy in her hand and aiming at the fish thing. The magic seemed to move slowly and in a stream of bubbles, but it still had its desired effect, catching the thing's face in a net and burning it. It screamed, the little tank with a little squid thing falling from its hands.

This was an excellent distraction for Namor to advance with horrible violence. Topaz would have to consider if this was truly her intent, but the Atlantean followed through to batter and bash the Lemurian against a nearby coral bluff. He fought savagely, but the deed took fairly little time. Namor's emotions, too, went from a simmering, repressed anger and resentment to a much sharper, louder flavor of revenge in barely a breath.

And then...

Namor swam back, after having rescued the squid tank cradled carefully. "I see why you needed to rescue Us first. Rough enchantments of that caliber are easily countered by the mages of Lemuria."

There was a thought that kept going through Jean's mind, one that repeated over and over, stuck in between a sense of growing unease: the desire to be free.

They had to continue with the mission, and the only way to do that was to keep the squid there. It was breathing for her, after all. But it was a reminder of what she'd done again: tried to kill her friends.

She didn't say...or rather think...anything as she swam alongside them, her fists clenching in and out as she mentally repeated focusing mantras to herself to keep the squid at bay.

Topaz raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Namor. "Don't start with me, Fish Boy. I'll save you from the knowledge of hearing what we needed to do get down here and rescue your brainwashed arse, but trust me that range of 'enchantments' is wide."

The feeling of revulsion and self-hatred caught Topaz' mental attention, though, and her eyes flickered to Jean. She hesitated before summoning up as much calm as she could manage to imitate and letting it settle on Jean's mind.

Jean's eyes immediately turned toward Topaz as the calmness washed over her--or tried to anyway--and she sensed Topaz's mental signature behind it.

~Please don't.~ she said firmly, with as much politeness as she could muster. The idea of someone trying to control her without her permission so soon after the last thing had the opposite effect, no matter how well intended.

~I'll be fine. Let's just get this over with.~

~You don't have to do anything with it,~ Topaz replied with a shrug, not at all offended. ~Think of it as a blanket. Use it if you want.~

She swam ahead, somehow being the one who took the lead. Probably because she didn't feel like listening to Namor. The tanks they approached were huge, and as loathed as Topaz was to admit it, she was happy she wasn't alone. Doing even this small section by herself would take a lot of work.

"Right then," she said out loud. "Release the squids?"

"Do not harm the squids. They had no part in this," Namor stated in-between dispatching a couple spare guards. He'd been at work while Topaz and Jean had been conversing — while the area wasn't completely clear, they were good enough to begin their dirty work. The water was beginning to get murky with Lemurian, though, so Namor swam closer to the two ladies.

"If you want to impress with your range of enchantments, Stone Girl, you may now try."

"Okay Fish Boy wasn't the most creative, but Stone Girl is just sad." Topaz swam forward slowly, approaching on the tanks and examining it. Don't harm the squids. It was tempting to ignore that, but she wasn't completely heartless. She pressed a hand to the glass, sending a small spark of energy through it, and a web of cracks spread out from underneath her palm, then shattered. The glass bits drifted harmlessly away, and Topaz immediately backed off, waiting for the squids to realize they were free. "Possibly not the most environmental friendly way of doing things, but I can only worry about so much at one time."

The freed squids in the tank began to move. But rather than swim off to live their best squid life, they instead sprang towards Topaz with alarming speed, but found themselves colliding with an invisible wall. Jean put her hand down, but the wall stayed up.

In the back of her mind she felt a sense of dread, and knew it wasn't coming from her.

~We...should go,~ she said. Killing them wasn't an option, but starving them to death seemed equally cruel. She knew they couldn't survive outside the host. She didn't know what else to do.

The thought of that was frustrating.

Yet that thought wasn't shared. Frustration wasn't the emotion portrayed across Namor's face — the Atlantean's gaze was incredibly, almost inhumanly sad as he stared as the undulating mass of squids. His thoughts, however, were his own. It wasn't a minute before he broke from his reflection to get back to business. "Miss Grey. If you can manage enough control, send them to the Deep. There they will feed future generations. Nature is never kind, and some may survive."

Staring at the squids, Jean gave a solemn nod. After a moment, the telekinetic wall extended outward, pushing the squids toward a chasm she knew was a few yards away.

She looked back to the others. ~It's done.~

"Brilliant," Topaz said, backing up. "Let's get out of here before something else decides we look better dead."

She was definitely drinking tonight.