Siege Perilous - Part 4 - Reckonings
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xp_logsSiege Perilous Day 13 - It’s all hands on deck, which includes Jubilee.
TW: Character death
Sometimes Jubilee wondered if the universe was just out to get her.
There weren’t many of them left, certainly not enough to win this thing. But winning wasn’t needed here, not really.
Here, what they needed was to simply make it impossible for the other side to win either.
Jubilee smiled bitterly and ran a hand over the handheld device she’d fished out of her pocket. It was a portable version of her control panel that she used for her drones.
She may be nowhere near where she had been all those years ago but she could still make a hell of a nuisance out of herself.
“You’d think with so many more people, you’d be better at holding your own.”
Her voice was a whisper but the hack she’d completed earlier allowed her to broadcast quite readily on the Hellfire Club’s frequency. They weren’t all magic users after all, and you had to have a way to talk to the commoners.
Amanda looked around at the sound of the voice before realising it was coming from the hall's sound system. "Ah, the mall rat speaks," she replied, trying to pinpoint where Jubilee might be. It wasn't a remote hack - the Club's security systems were better than that - so she had to be on site. And while Jubilee herself might not be much of a threat, her drones could be damaging. And distracting. All they needed was to buy Selene enough time to finish the ritual. "You lot must be in trouble, if they're bringing the cripple out into the field."
“Better a cripple than a bitch who hurts people 'cause she couldn’t make ‘Daddy’ proud of her.”
Jubilee swiped a hand across the pad, sending a volley of sparks from her drones to harry Amanda. It was just an opening, meant more as a test than any real attack. She needed to know just what she was dealing with here.
“Adam told me all about you growing up together. Just couldn’t cut it, huh?”
Amanda ground her teeth, but kept hold of her temper, for now. "Just 'cause you fucked Adam doesn't mean you know anything about me." she retorted. As the sparks showered her, she put up a smaller version of her shielding spell, almost like an umbrella, with one hand, while with the other she made a sweeping gesture. A sudden wind blew the sparks back towards the drones. "You can't hide forever, Lee."
“There you go again, making all the wrong assumptions”
Jubilee’s voice continued to come from the speakers as she moved her drones quickly out of the way. Tapping out a command, she smiled as she stepped into place at Amanda’s back and launched her own attack from the opposite side.
“You should really watch your back, you know. It’s so easy to get stabbed these days.”
Immediately the umbrella became a bubble and the sparks bounced off it from all sides. "Word of advice, Sparkles, don't announce your sneak attacks," Amanda said with a feral grin. She couldn't lash out directly at Jubilee from within the bubble, but she could impact the environment around her - a muttered invocation and another gesture caused the floor to buckle and ripple.
Jubilee wasn’t spry these days, it’s why she spent so much time out of the direct line of fire and why she went down now. Still, she didn’t need to stand to work.
Drones changed position and started up a predefined explosive run, keeping up the pressure as Jubilee placed her hands on the ground, and wooden floorboards exploded into the air as it headed toward Amanda’s feet.
“It wasn’t a sneak attack, genius. You already knew I was here. Try to keep up, even though I know that’s hard for you. At least, Adam always said you were crap when it came to what he could do. Guess you’re proving him right. Where’s your girlfriend by the way? Thought she’d be here to help you, or did Marie-Ange finally get tired of you too?”
Amanda's spell and Jubilee's floor attack met in the middle, flinging debris across the ballroom. The witch grunted and cracks appeared in the shielding spell from the feedback, but she quickly reacted, this time flinging the pieces of wood at the drones and smashing several of them. "Shut. Up," she growled through clenched teeth as Jubilee's words brought back the unwelcome scene. Not satisfied with flinging items at the drones, she grabbed several candles and their brackets with her magic and threw them towards the annoying mutant.
“I’m sorry, did I hit a nerve?”
Jubilee rolled across the floor, narrowly avoiding being impaled by several candle sticks. The ballroom was beginning to look just a little worse for wear.
“Wonder what your masters are gonna say about all this mess you’re making. Not that you’re that unfamiliar with messes. I mean, you fail all the damn time, it’s almost like you were built to fail. Daddy’s little fuck up. Wasn’t that what Rack used to call you?”
Jubilee took a moment between dodging to tap out another command, sending her remaining drones on a suicide run at a single point on Amanda’s shield.
“You’re failing again now. Not good enough but to be anything but a pawn to whoever wants to use you and you know the really horrible part? You let them do it. You bend over time and again because you know you’re worthless. But it doesn’t help, they just keep leaving, keep disappearing. Nobody wants you, not even good enough to be a battery.”
"SHUT UP!!!" Amanda shrieked, her face twisted with fury and something very close to madness. The drone barrage hit the shield, tearing great holes in it as concentration was completely abandoned. Some reached their target - the cloak Amanda wore over the Inner Court's regalia was torn to shreds, small fires appearing here and there. The cloak wasn't the only casualty, with the plasma burning small holes in the witch's exposed skin. In her state of mind, however, she barely seemed to notice.
Amanda wrenched off her cloak and flung it aside where it smoldered fitfully. With a gesture, she flung the remaining drones into the walls, smashing them into pieces. She advanced on Jubilee, focussed so entirely on her enemy that she paid no attention to the ongoing chaos or the pain of her burns.
Jubilee watched her approach, knowing that her drones were down and there was no way she could move away fast enough. She tapped a command into her device, frying the connections between it and her other equipment as well as starting a self destruct sequence on itself.
With a wry smile, she lifted her hands at the last moment and used her powers to burn off the side of Amanda’s face.
“Merry Christmas, hope you enjoy your present.”
Amanda's world disappeared in a blaze of multicoloured light and searing pain. She turned away from the attack, thrusting her hand out towards Jubilee instinctively. A burst of magical energy picked Jubilee up and pinned her back against the wall, where she hung, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of her. The witch's face, when she turned back, was a ruin of burned flesh and the smell mingled with the scent of singed hair and filled Jubilee's nostrils. But Amanda didn't even register the pain, panting with exertion from the magic expended and from the power of her fury.
Amanda's mouth worked, but no words would come. Instead, she thrust her hand into Jubilee's chest and then pulled it out again, holding the woman's heart. Blood streamed down her arm and dripped onto the floor as she held it up, before it burst into flames. Then she dropped the corpse with a look of disdain.
"I told you to shut up."
Karma comes to Amanda in the shape of her oldest friend and dearest enemy.
TW: Character death
Amanda turned away from Jubilee's corpse, her satisfaction somehow hollow. It had been more difficult than it should have been, killing the cripple, and she had let the woman's motor mouth get to her. The fury which had fuelled her earlier had eased and now she could feel the burns on her body from the drones, feel the crackle of burned skin and flesh and hair at the side of her face. The ear Remy had injured previously was effectively gone now, a stub of charred meat. Sloppy work. Far too sloppy. But still the urge for destruction was there, to burn the world around her even if she burned herself, the bloodlust which would not be sated until the one who had betrayed her was dead.
"This cost you everything, didn't it? And now, surrounded by ashes, you can't even bloody see what the point of victory was."
That voice. That familiar voice. She spun around to face Adam, energy crackling around her fists. "Still spouting off the holier-than-thou shite," she spat, the fury rising again. "You never stop, do you?"
"No, I don't. Because I believe in something." Adam floated down from the air, his hands ringed in concentric circles of white light. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Mandy, because you could have. If- if too many things had been different."
Amanda laughed, high and hysterical. "You're sorry?!" she echoed. "It's too fucking late for sorries. You had your chance and you LEFT ME THERE!!" There was no need to cut herself - she was already bleeding in several places - and the Staff of One came as she intoned the incantation. Its weight was heavy and reassuring in her hands. "You and me. As it should be."
"No, it shouldn't. It should have been us against this madness. Instead... you became no different than Rack." He drew a pair of complex figures in the air in front of him, a white hot shield coming into form in front of him. "You stole power instead of earning it. You took from others instead of learning. That staff is just a sign of your weakness."
At the mention of Rack, Amanda's eyes turned black, empty as pits. "Weak? I'm not the one who's weak. And this Staff is going to be the thing that kills you," she retorted, thrusting the Staff's end in Adam's direction. A bolt of black energy erupted from it, slamming against his shield.
As the energy washed over the shield, Adam waved to the right, and redirected it. The wave of power twisted, spiraled, and smashed directly back into Amanda.
Amanda intercepted it with the Staff, which swallowed the energy into itself. Another gesture with it and the ground surged upwards towards Adam, floorboards twisting and warping into giant hands set to crush him.
Adam whipped his hands around in rapid circles. As each of the hands drove towards him, he disappeared into the teleporting portals he'd opened on either side of himself.
And of Amanda.
The staff snapped like a twig as both hands smashed into the English woman, tossing her back like a rag to skip off the floor.
"I won't fall to the magic you took from others, Mandy. Not against what I've learned."
Amanda raised herself up on her hands and needs, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor. The look she shot him was full of hate, bordering on madness. "You think you're so fucking clever," she snarled as she climbed to her feet, obviously unsteady. The spell with the floor had been intended to crush him and the redirection had hurt her. "Golden boy, one with all the chances. Always bloody interfering. You and that fucking Cajun. He’s the reason she left." Her hands wove intricate patterns, ones Adam had seen before - it was one of Rack's spells. "Fine, let's go back to basics."
Fire erupted from the ground, surrounding Adam. Flames rose above his head, threatening to engulf him.
He whispered a few words, rotating his hands around his body. The flames licked against the white energy shield for a moment. As they intensified, climbing the pillar of energy, they began to change, dispersing above his head in a flock of red coloured butterflies.
"No, you don't get to be the victim, Mandy. You had chances to get out. Chances to change. But it was easier to let Selene give you power instead of having to learn it. It was easier to hurt others and tell yourself the pain and agony that you caused them was their fault because you were the one who hurt first." Adam twisted and a torrent of the same white energy, the likes Amanda had never seen poured from his hands, stripping away her shields like cobwebs in the face of a storm.
"You had chances to escape. To be different. To learn and earn your power instead of taking it from others. But it was too damn hard for you, so you went back to being the victim and going the easy way." Adam said. "That ends. Now."
She flung a bolt of lightning, but he deflected it. Spears stabbed up at him through the floor, but he walked through them unharmed. Enraged, she threw ball after ball of raw magical energy at him, increasingly desperately, until she was only flailing at him with her fists, like a child having a temper tantrum and at last, exhausted, drained of power, she dropped to her knees, panting to catch her breath, strangled sobs choking her. She looked up as he stood over her, eyes cleared of the dark power she'd been using, as clear and blue as they had been when she was just a child.
"Go on, then,"' she managed to choke out, but there was no defiance there. Only misery. "I don't want this. Any of it."
"Yes, you did. If you hadn't, if you'd fought it... this would have been different." Adam held his hands out, palms towards each other as the white energy built up between them. " You've taken too much to ever balance the scales, Amanda. I don't want this either, but the first lesson I learned was that personal isn't the same as important."
The energy grew, until both of them were lost within the diameter of the sphere of light. For a brief moment it flared and as it dissipated and the light died, only Adam remained.
TW: Character death
Sometimes Jubilee wondered if the universe was just out to get her.
There weren’t many of them left, certainly not enough to win this thing. But winning wasn’t needed here, not really.
Here, what they needed was to simply make it impossible for the other side to win either.
Jubilee smiled bitterly and ran a hand over the handheld device she’d fished out of her pocket. It was a portable version of her control panel that she used for her drones.
She may be nowhere near where she had been all those years ago but she could still make a hell of a nuisance out of herself.
“You’d think with so many more people, you’d be better at holding your own.”
Her voice was a whisper but the hack she’d completed earlier allowed her to broadcast quite readily on the Hellfire Club’s frequency. They weren’t all magic users after all, and you had to have a way to talk to the commoners.
Amanda looked around at the sound of the voice before realising it was coming from the hall's sound system. "Ah, the mall rat speaks," she replied, trying to pinpoint where Jubilee might be. It wasn't a remote hack - the Club's security systems were better than that - so she had to be on site. And while Jubilee herself might not be much of a threat, her drones could be damaging. And distracting. All they needed was to buy Selene enough time to finish the ritual. "You lot must be in trouble, if they're bringing the cripple out into the field."
“Better a cripple than a bitch who hurts people 'cause she couldn’t make ‘Daddy’ proud of her.”
Jubilee swiped a hand across the pad, sending a volley of sparks from her drones to harry Amanda. It was just an opening, meant more as a test than any real attack. She needed to know just what she was dealing with here.
“Adam told me all about you growing up together. Just couldn’t cut it, huh?”
Amanda ground her teeth, but kept hold of her temper, for now. "Just 'cause you fucked Adam doesn't mean you know anything about me." she retorted. As the sparks showered her, she put up a smaller version of her shielding spell, almost like an umbrella, with one hand, while with the other she made a sweeping gesture. A sudden wind blew the sparks back towards the drones. "You can't hide forever, Lee."
“There you go again, making all the wrong assumptions”
Jubilee’s voice continued to come from the speakers as she moved her drones quickly out of the way. Tapping out a command, she smiled as she stepped into place at Amanda’s back and launched her own attack from the opposite side.
“You should really watch your back, you know. It’s so easy to get stabbed these days.”
Immediately the umbrella became a bubble and the sparks bounced off it from all sides. "Word of advice, Sparkles, don't announce your sneak attacks," Amanda said with a feral grin. She couldn't lash out directly at Jubilee from within the bubble, but she could impact the environment around her - a muttered invocation and another gesture caused the floor to buckle and ripple.
Jubilee wasn’t spry these days, it’s why she spent so much time out of the direct line of fire and why she went down now. Still, she didn’t need to stand to work.
Drones changed position and started up a predefined explosive run, keeping up the pressure as Jubilee placed her hands on the ground, and wooden floorboards exploded into the air as it headed toward Amanda’s feet.
“It wasn’t a sneak attack, genius. You already knew I was here. Try to keep up, even though I know that’s hard for you. At least, Adam always said you were crap when it came to what he could do. Guess you’re proving him right. Where’s your girlfriend by the way? Thought she’d be here to help you, or did Marie-Ange finally get tired of you too?”
Amanda's spell and Jubilee's floor attack met in the middle, flinging debris across the ballroom. The witch grunted and cracks appeared in the shielding spell from the feedback, but she quickly reacted, this time flinging the pieces of wood at the drones and smashing several of them. "Shut. Up," she growled through clenched teeth as Jubilee's words brought back the unwelcome scene. Not satisfied with flinging items at the drones, she grabbed several candles and their brackets with her magic and threw them towards the annoying mutant.
“I’m sorry, did I hit a nerve?”
Jubilee rolled across the floor, narrowly avoiding being impaled by several candle sticks. The ballroom was beginning to look just a little worse for wear.
“Wonder what your masters are gonna say about all this mess you’re making. Not that you’re that unfamiliar with messes. I mean, you fail all the damn time, it’s almost like you were built to fail. Daddy’s little fuck up. Wasn’t that what Rack used to call you?”
Jubilee took a moment between dodging to tap out another command, sending her remaining drones on a suicide run at a single point on Amanda’s shield.
“You’re failing again now. Not good enough but to be anything but a pawn to whoever wants to use you and you know the really horrible part? You let them do it. You bend over time and again because you know you’re worthless. But it doesn’t help, they just keep leaving, keep disappearing. Nobody wants you, not even good enough to be a battery.”
"SHUT UP!!!" Amanda shrieked, her face twisted with fury and something very close to madness. The drone barrage hit the shield, tearing great holes in it as concentration was completely abandoned. Some reached their target - the cloak Amanda wore over the Inner Court's regalia was torn to shreds, small fires appearing here and there. The cloak wasn't the only casualty, with the plasma burning small holes in the witch's exposed skin. In her state of mind, however, she barely seemed to notice.
Amanda wrenched off her cloak and flung it aside where it smoldered fitfully. With a gesture, she flung the remaining drones into the walls, smashing them into pieces. She advanced on Jubilee, focussed so entirely on her enemy that she paid no attention to the ongoing chaos or the pain of her burns.
Jubilee watched her approach, knowing that her drones were down and there was no way she could move away fast enough. She tapped a command into her device, frying the connections between it and her other equipment as well as starting a self destruct sequence on itself.
With a wry smile, she lifted her hands at the last moment and used her powers to burn off the side of Amanda’s face.
“Merry Christmas, hope you enjoy your present.”
Amanda's world disappeared in a blaze of multicoloured light and searing pain. She turned away from the attack, thrusting her hand out towards Jubilee instinctively. A burst of magical energy picked Jubilee up and pinned her back against the wall, where she hung, gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of her. The witch's face, when she turned back, was a ruin of burned flesh and the smell mingled with the scent of singed hair and filled Jubilee's nostrils. But Amanda didn't even register the pain, panting with exertion from the magic expended and from the power of her fury.
Amanda's mouth worked, but no words would come. Instead, she thrust her hand into Jubilee's chest and then pulled it out again, holding the woman's heart. Blood streamed down her arm and dripped onto the floor as she held it up, before it burst into flames. Then she dropped the corpse with a look of disdain.
"I told you to shut up."
Karma comes to Amanda in the shape of her oldest friend and dearest enemy.
TW: Character death
Amanda turned away from Jubilee's corpse, her satisfaction somehow hollow. It had been more difficult than it should have been, killing the cripple, and she had let the woman's motor mouth get to her. The fury which had fuelled her earlier had eased and now she could feel the burns on her body from the drones, feel the crackle of burned skin and flesh and hair at the side of her face. The ear Remy had injured previously was effectively gone now, a stub of charred meat. Sloppy work. Far too sloppy. But still the urge for destruction was there, to burn the world around her even if she burned herself, the bloodlust which would not be sated until the one who had betrayed her was dead.
"This cost you everything, didn't it? And now, surrounded by ashes, you can't even bloody see what the point of victory was."
That voice. That familiar voice. She spun around to face Adam, energy crackling around her fists. "Still spouting off the holier-than-thou shite," she spat, the fury rising again. "You never stop, do you?"
"No, I don't. Because I believe in something." Adam floated down from the air, his hands ringed in concentric circles of white light. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Mandy, because you could have. If- if too many things had been different."
Amanda laughed, high and hysterical. "You're sorry?!" she echoed. "It's too fucking late for sorries. You had your chance and you LEFT ME THERE!!" There was no need to cut herself - she was already bleeding in several places - and the Staff of One came as she intoned the incantation. Its weight was heavy and reassuring in her hands. "You and me. As it should be."
"No, it shouldn't. It should have been us against this madness. Instead... you became no different than Rack." He drew a pair of complex figures in the air in front of him, a white hot shield coming into form in front of him. "You stole power instead of earning it. You took from others instead of learning. That staff is just a sign of your weakness."
At the mention of Rack, Amanda's eyes turned black, empty as pits. "Weak? I'm not the one who's weak. And this Staff is going to be the thing that kills you," she retorted, thrusting the Staff's end in Adam's direction. A bolt of black energy erupted from it, slamming against his shield.
As the energy washed over the shield, Adam waved to the right, and redirected it. The wave of power twisted, spiraled, and smashed directly back into Amanda.
Amanda intercepted it with the Staff, which swallowed the energy into itself. Another gesture with it and the ground surged upwards towards Adam, floorboards twisting and warping into giant hands set to crush him.
Adam whipped his hands around in rapid circles. As each of the hands drove towards him, he disappeared into the teleporting portals he'd opened on either side of himself.
And of Amanda.
The staff snapped like a twig as both hands smashed into the English woman, tossing her back like a rag to skip off the floor.
"I won't fall to the magic you took from others, Mandy. Not against what I've learned."
Amanda raised herself up on her hands and needs, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor. The look she shot him was full of hate, bordering on madness. "You think you're so fucking clever," she snarled as she climbed to her feet, obviously unsteady. The spell with the floor had been intended to crush him and the redirection had hurt her. "Golden boy, one with all the chances. Always bloody interfering. You and that fucking Cajun. He’s the reason she left." Her hands wove intricate patterns, ones Adam had seen before - it was one of Rack's spells. "Fine, let's go back to basics."
Fire erupted from the ground, surrounding Adam. Flames rose above his head, threatening to engulf him.
He whispered a few words, rotating his hands around his body. The flames licked against the white energy shield for a moment. As they intensified, climbing the pillar of energy, they began to change, dispersing above his head in a flock of red coloured butterflies.
"No, you don't get to be the victim, Mandy. You had chances to get out. Chances to change. But it was easier to let Selene give you power instead of having to learn it. It was easier to hurt others and tell yourself the pain and agony that you caused them was their fault because you were the one who hurt first." Adam twisted and a torrent of the same white energy, the likes Amanda had never seen poured from his hands, stripping away her shields like cobwebs in the face of a storm.
"You had chances to escape. To be different. To learn and earn your power instead of taking it from others. But it was too damn hard for you, so you went back to being the victim and going the easy way." Adam said. "That ends. Now."
She flung a bolt of lightning, but he deflected it. Spears stabbed up at him through the floor, but he walked through them unharmed. Enraged, she threw ball after ball of raw magical energy at him, increasingly desperately, until she was only flailing at him with her fists, like a child having a temper tantrum and at last, exhausted, drained of power, she dropped to her knees, panting to catch her breath, strangled sobs choking her. She looked up as he stood over her, eyes cleared of the dark power she'd been using, as clear and blue as they had been when she was just a child.
"Go on, then,"' she managed to choke out, but there was no defiance there. Only misery. "I don't want this. Any of it."
"Yes, you did. If you hadn't, if you'd fought it... this would have been different." Adam held his hands out, palms towards each other as the white energy built up between them. " You've taken too much to ever balance the scales, Amanda. I don't want this either, but the first lesson I learned was that personal isn't the same as important."
The energy grew, until both of them were lost within the diameter of the sphere of light. For a brief moment it flared and as it dissipated and the light died, only Adam remained.
