X-Men Mission: Lone Sentinel 3
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xp_logsWolverine has made it to the party to try and turn the tide, but finds his opposition ready for him.
The setup couldn’t be worse. A partially ruined building, no idea what the target really was, and Magneto himself, which compromised Wolverine’s ability to join the main battle. Instead, he needed to work around the edges, use his senses to find targets, and strike from surprise. When the switchboard went down, worry crept in. It meant Jean had gone down and fast. Looking at it, it was a good place for a trap.
Alarm bells were going off in Logan's head and his instincts were screaming they needed to leave now. Too many things were swinging the Brotherhood's way and it felt like a well executed plan was coming together for the other side. The X-Men were used to adjusting and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, but after everything else that'd happened recently, he didn't need any more losses on his conscience. He weaved from one pile of rubble to another with his gaze constantly scanning for anyone coming his way. It was eerily too quiet. Not even the distant sounds of the battle he knew were going on broke the stillness. His breath was slow and steady despite his heart pounding in his chest. He clenched his hands until the leather gloves creaked. Skeleton full of metal and utterly useless.
An itch between his shoulder blades let him know someone was watching and Logan rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck from side to side as his gaze darted faster through the shadows looming around him. He took several deep sniffs while the claws on his right hand slid free with a soft snickt. Nothing but dirt, dust, and old metal. The trappings of a demolished building with the scent of active beings laid over it. Nothing close, nothing concerning, but he had a suspicion his senses were lying to him in some way. This was the perfect setup for an ambush if he ever saw one.
Angelo Unuscione savored the moment. The predator was getting some small inkling of what it was to be prey - Logan clearly suspected there was someone near him, but Unus, as he preferred to be called at times like these, knew that the same field that protected him from most forms of harm would also keep his scent away from the powerful nose of the feral he was currently stalking. And suspecting that a foe was somewhere nearby was of almost no use when the foe could take you at an unsuspecting angle.
Over the years, he had trained with wrestlers and grapplers of all sorts - classic Greco-Roman pankratiasts, judokas, and more, to learn the best ways to use his own invulnerability to best effect. Leverage was the key. He knew Logan carried more weight than his short appearance belied due to the metal suffusing his bones, but as Archimedes had said, "give me a place to stand and I will move the earth". With the proper fulcrum and angle, anyone could be toppled.
Well, almost everyone.
Coming up from cover just outside of Logan's peripheral vision, Unus surged forward like a sumotori in the tachi-ai, the initial charge of the match. At the moment of contact, he lowered his shoulder, coming just under Logan's arm and driving upward into his armpit, creating just enough lift to take the other man up off his feet and toward the ground.
Logan grunted at the impact, reflexively reaching forward to grab his attacker as his feet started to leave the ground. Scentless. This fight was going to be a bitch with this asshole. He also seemed to know just how to use Logan's abilities against him. He gritted his teeth as his back hit the ground while his body was already tensing to spring back to his feet.
He rolled to the side and snarled as he flew back up into a crouch, staying low and dodging back out of Unus' reach. He needed to keep the asshole in sight. That'd be his only saving grace right now. Logan only hoped his own enhanced senses were fast enough to combat whatever this guy had up his sleeve. They'd already lured him into the perfect ambush setting. What else did they have planned?
Unus allowed the escape. This might be a fight for much more than the points and satisfaction of a competitive match, but he still revelled in providing the first fall of the combat to his opponent. Now it was time for the feral to understand that he had already lost. "Come, Logan," he said, his arms spread wide to make a tempting target. "Strike me. If you can."
Logan roared as he ran for Unus. It was a stupid move he knew but it had to be done. He had to figure out what exactly he was up against, if only to know what he needed to do to survive as long as he needed. If he needed to be a distraction then so be it. He could likely heal from it and recover. He swiped both hands violently through the air, hoping for a misstep or a fall.
Unus slid backward with a circling step, standing side-on to Logan, raising a bent forearm toward the swipe. The claws met at his arm...and stopped. "Untouchable," he murmured with a smirk, then twisted his arm so that Logan's claws slid down toward his wrist, finding no purchase, and then the momentum took them past the end of Unus' fist and toward the ground. Moving with that momentum, he grabbed at the arm closer to him, one hand clamping down around the Canadian's wrist while he pressed his other arm painfully into the shoulder socket, pressing downward even as he wrenched upward with the hand on the wrist.
Logan bit back a scream at the pain that tore through him. He attempted to twist free, digging his feet into the ground for purchase and pushing away hard from the man. A trap. It was all a fucking trap and they should've known better. Their arrogance and their complacency got them here. He kept wary eyes on Unus as he kept out of range as best he could while wrenching his shoulder back into place. "What do you assholes want with this place anyway? Logan snarled.
Unus grinned the grin of a man who knows that the referee is about to raise his hand to signal victory. It had been almost too easy, not that it had stopped him from enjoying every second of it. Move, countermove, maneuver had all been carefully calculated. "That is for us to know, and you to understand when Magneto wills it," he told Logan. "But first..." He thought about watching the final stroke, but then he decided that turning his back to walk away would give Logan that much more knowledge of how thoroughly he had been beaten.
"CANNONBAAAAALLLLLLLL!" The sun suddenly disappeared over Logan and he only had a moment to look up before the massive body of the Blob smashed into him. The impact of the tremendous mutant drove them through the floor and then through the next level of subbasement and then through the next. It was only the massive concrete foundation that stopped them, cratering with the impact. Any other man would have been liquefied by the impact. Only his adamantium laced skeleton kept his body together, although the skin was broken and ruptured across his entire body, venting gouts of blood. The impact had also thoroughly scrambled his brain, leaving him lying unconscious.
Blob dusted himself off as he got up and began to climb. "Hey, U-hole!" Unus hated that nickname. "Tell Mags Wolverine is out of the picture for now. Unless he's got a use for a mutant pancake."
Such a puerile nickname. "Go fuck yourself, Blob," Unus tossed back at the crater as he continued walking.
***
“I don’t think I need to point out just how dangerous Wolverine is. Adamantium skeleton, claws that can cut through pretty much anything, a healing factor so strong that he might actually be unkillable and when he goes berserk, he’s been able to shrug off pretty much anything you do to him. We need to fight him smart. Fortunately, he’ll be deployed obliquely to Magneto, so it means he’ll be coming with a smaller group and be easy to isolate.”
Footage of Wolverine tearing through foreign mercenaries started playing behind him. “While the skeleton is unbreakable, the meat is not. Tendons, muscles, joints, all vulnerable to leverage. Likewise, do enough damage all at once and it takes time for everything to reform and bounce back. We give him a target to frustrate him, keep him distracted until we’re in the position to drop the fucking world on him.”
Dust finds an enemy uniquely suited to dealing with her sandform.
There was movement. Dust could sense the area around her coming to life as Brotherhood began to appear and confront the X-Men. Without the switchboard, all she could do was stick to the job Cyclops had given her – try and pinpoint additional forces on the ground and report back when she had a solid idea of the numbers.
The ground beneath her shivered slightly as Avalanche knelt, hands braced palm down against bare earth, and smiled. He could sense the minute shifts in sand on the ground, sense the base components of the sand. Given the information he'd been given, he knew what the silicon-based sand meant, knew a mutant lurked there in the gentle sway of particles. What was she up to, the little mutant made of sand? What was she thinking?
What decisions was she making?
"Hello, ammódi mágoula," Avalanche whispered, focusing his powers downward, increasing the strength of the vibrations as he watched the pieces of her shift to accommodate the movement.
Sooraya could feel herself shaking, both with the tremors on the ground below her as well as the faint vibrations she felt in herself. The sand particles that made up her other form danced with them, fiercer and fiercer when the vibrations increased. Her first instinct was to rush away, but instead she calmed herself and completely stopped moving... simply becoming a full part of the ground beneath her.
"You are the wrong type of sand for this place, ammódi mágoula. Hiding will not help you," Avalanche half-smiled. She'd actually made his job easier, he thought. There was a cohesion between the particles of her form that natural sand, natural earth, didn't possess. The debrief had mentioned low-grade psi ability as the answer, but it was so interesting to see it at play.
Still, he had a job to do, so as she attempted to become one with the ground, Avalanche tilted his fingertips upward just a bit, directing the vibrations he'd sent to shake the earth beneath her upward, into her form itself.
Sooraya felt the vibrations launch her sandform into the air, almost outside her will and instinctively she threw herself upwards, pulling herself out of range of the vibration. He knew she was there anyway. Rising into the air she dove into the rubble from the destroyed wing, vanishing two pieces of masonry.
Once she reached a spot where she could remain hidden for a moment, she shifted back, crouching on the ground. After radioing a quiet report to Cyclops, she refocussed. He could clearly find her in her sandform, but her human form might offer a chance, depending on if he could notice her through the earth. Quietly, she waited.
It might have been amusing, how she tried to hide better after he told her hiding wouldn't help, but instead it just made Avalanche shake his head. Perhaps, though, she hadn't heard him. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he dug his fingertips into the earth below them and bellowed, "You cannot hide from me, ammódi mágoula."
Eyes narrowing, Avalanche focused his powers enough to bring the bits and pieces of rubble Dust sheltered behind down around her ears.
Sooraya maintained her human form for a little longer, but as soon as the first larger pieces of debris came down, instinct took over and she shifted into her sandform. It didn't matter... he was able to find her anyway. She could completely withdraw, but that wasn't an option here. Confronting also wasn't the most attractive choice either. Leading him on a merry goose chase might distract him at least a little and she could draw him away from her teammates till she could. So she slithered through the cracks in the rubble and reformed into her humanoid form a couple of meters away, waving at him.
No killing, Avalanche reminded himself, frowning as he focused further, increasing the intensity of the vibrations he sent through the ground toward the bits and pieces of silica that made up Dust's form. It took a great deal of effort to maintain that level of precision -- attempting to disrupt her cohesion without bringing everything around them tumbling down. The pieces of rubble that she'd been hiding behind had been one thing. Collapsing all the other buildings around them would be something else entirely.
Even with his increased concentration, there were small rumbles and shifts beneath their feet as Avalanche directed his powers into the woman.
She shuddered as the vibrations didn't just 'shake' her, but they thundered through her. She shuddered and shivered as they increased even more and when she raised her hand, little streams of sand fell from her fingers... With effort she pulled the particles back and shifted back to her cloud form, letting out a mental sigh of relief when she felt the thundering vibrations lessen and then completely fade.
Rising further from the ground she formed herself into several sharp tendrils and decided to go for the confrontation. Within seconds she had crossed the distance, lashing out with two of the sharp tendrils. Blood finally welled from a deep cut.
Feeling the blood trailing down his cheek, Avalanche grinned at the silica sandblast hovering near him. He tilted his head to the side, catching the rivulet of blood on his tongue as gravity brought it close enough, then said, "Oh, ammódi mágoula..." Was it regret he felt? Not at all. More like a bit of pity, a dash of disappointment. She should have been more fun to play with. This entire exercise wasn't going to impress anyone.
Drawing his hands up from the ground, Avalanche shoved his palms toward Dust, fingers spread wide and vicious as he thrust all his power toward her swirling form. She would learn, this X-Man, that dancing through the wind granted her no reprieve from his abilities. Instead, he forced even more power into the vibrations, taking her to pieces one grain at a time.
This time it wasn't just thunder... it was a complete hurricane as the vibrations thundered through her and she fought to keep her sand form intact. It took all her mental energy though and she could no longer stay in the air, various particles slowly starting to trickle to the ground and the rest of her form soon followed. The feeling of the vibrations were lesser here and desperately she struggled to pull one tendil of razor sharp sand together and she lashed out, aiming for his eyes.
She missed them, but managed to get him straight across the forehead. Blood immediately welled up, running into his eyes. Sooraya focussed to try again, but she couldn't pull together a second thread whip and all the little particles fell on the ground, uselessly.
Avalanche hissed as another cut opened on his face, the blood running through his eyebrow to dribble into his eyes. Shaking his head in an attempt to keep from being completely blinded, he focused his powers on the sand again, feeling its cohesion waning even as he growled in irritation. He hadn't expected to come out of this battle unscathed, but sandcuts were almost like papercuts, just deeper. They still stung like hellfire.
Keeping the vibrations he created from entering the earth proper was a struggle at this point, given the sheer strength with which he had to generate them, but despite the bass rumbles beneath them, none of the other buildings collapsed. Avalanche grinned through the blood half-coating his face now. He would win this. He would prove himself.
'Relentless' shot through her as Sooraya struggled to pull together something of herself. If it wasn't something of her sandform, maybe she could at least return to her human form. But each time she got something of the mental picture together, the vibrations thrummed through her and... it was almost like she didn't know where she ended or began anymore.
Macabre grin still spread across his lips, Avalanche actually managed to laugh as he watched Dust's sandform beginning to properly disintegrate. "Yes!" He increased the intensity of the vibrations he was creating, fingers flexing.
What was up? What was down? Was she flying? Or lying on the ground? Sooraya just wanted to curl up as it became worse and worse, but she knew she couldn't. If she did she'd die. But what was she? And how? She felt hazy and it only grew worse as the shaking continued, rolling through her and around. All she could do was lay there, until in the end everything faded.
Still grinning, Avalanche forced his powers through the silica sand for several more long moments just to make sure that Dust had lost all cohesion, then stopped. He wiped his face with the back of his arm, then more carefully checked the cuts the X-Man had left him with. Nothing he wouldn't heal from.
Job done, he turned to see how the other members of the Brotherhood were faring.
***
“Before anyone makes any jokes, understand that in her way, Dust is one of the most dangerous X-Men. Immune to psionics in her sand form, capable of generating sand blades and storms capable of cutting through steel or stripping the flesh off of bones. Fortunately, the credo of the X-Men has kept her from developing some other potentially dangerous tricks, but as is, she can reshape the nature of a battlefield in moments.”
“Her sand form is somewhat vulnerable to water, but mostly, sonics and vibration are the key weaknesses. The sand form takes concentration to maintain and if she as to keep reforming it, keeping key parts together under pressure, there’s a good chance it will overwhelm her endurance, forcing her back into normal form and completely vulnerable. Fortunately, we have someone here who fits the bill for this particular job.
Nica discovers that a form she thought was invulnerable very much can be endangered.
They’d deployed in strength and had been closing on the Brotherhood when the world fell in. Nica saw Marvel Girl go down and felt the switchboard flip off. It didn’t come back up, which meant Psylocke was also in trouble. Brotherhood were appearing left and right, ambushing the X-Men. Fortunately, what were they going to do against her?
She banked, avoiding a blast from the woman with the dragon wings and strafed the mutants below with another wave of infra-red heated air. Who else was left?
Seemingly oblivious to the fighting going on around her, a white-haired woman with white eyes and a purple suit strolled out onto the battlefield and stepped over an unconscious X-Man to pick a flower. "Look at you. You don't belong here," she said, smelling the flower. "A bit out of season."
Nica's eyes narrowed. "You don't belong here, either," she replied, hovering in mid-air above the woman, confident in any potential attacks passing through her. "So why don't we both agree to leave while we still can? You take your people and I take mine."
The woman glanced toward the girl floating up in the air. She gave her a smile. "Oh. You're adorable," she said with amusement, tossing the flower aside.
"All shiny and full of hope."
A ghostly white light started to bleed out of her eyes, radiating from each bit of bare skin before coalescing at the tip of her finger. She pointed it at Nica like a gun, and the white light shot at her. The moment it struck, it sent her crashing down to the ground.
"Let's talk."
Nica looked up from where she was collecting herself, confused and shocked that the energy had impacted her. "What the fuck?" she said, mostly to herself. But the enemy was coming and Nica was damned if she was going to find the X-Man on her knees in the dirt. She struggled to her feet, brushing down her uniform. "Clever trick," she said as the woman approached. "Keep back - I have my own energy beams, thank you very much."
The moment Nica got to her feet, the woman used an energy whip to knock her off them again. "I know," she said.
Her fingers began to move as if she were playing a harp, and she started to draw the stored energy out of Nica. "And they're quite the spectrum. But sometimes you're just here to be made an example."
Nica gasped as light began seeping out of her body, drawn towards the white-haired woman. "What are you...?" she choked out, clutching her stomach and doubling over. It felt like her very bones were being liquified and she dropped to her knees again, unable to stay on her feet. To her horror, when she looked down at herself, her body was wavering, becoming transparent - as if the woman was stripping away her very self.
After a certain point, the woman stopped, strolling up to Nica and crouching down to plant a kiss on her forehead with a slow smile.
"Good night," she said. Standing up, she calmly walked away, singing a merry song.
"Good night sweetheart, well, it's time to go...I hate to leave you but I really must say...well, good night sweetheart, good night."
Nica barely felt the kiss - her skin, her muscles, her bones... everything was cold, insubstantial. All she could do was huddle on the ground, trying to focus as hard as she could on existing. Because it felt like if she didn't, she'd fade away entirely.
***
“Spectrum. She’s young. Her training is shaky. Most important is that she’s insecure about herself and if she’s ready to be an X-Man. Which is good, because properly trained, she might end up being the most powerful mutant on the team. She commands energy; converting it to blasts, seeing it in all waves, converting her whole body for the purpose of flight and combat. Fortunately for us, when the telepathic switchboard goes down, she’ll look for orders first instead of taking the initiative.”
He pointed at the white haired woman in front. “Pull energy from her. Enough that she feels it. That will take her will to fight out. She’ll have it in her head that her energy form is invulnerable. Take that away from her and we won’t have to worry about her for the rest of the fight.”
Maya discovers that her powers aren’t always enough.
The facility was half in ruins, but it offered up a unique path to where Magneto was positioned. Maya could make out a route up the building that was completely shielded from view. If she could make it up, she’d be able to get the drop on him, and without a bit of metal on her, maybe take him out before he even knew she was there.
Maya’s eyes scanned the area, keeping to the shadows as she looked for signs of life. Surely they wouldn’t leave such access completely unguarded?
Except, she couldn’t see anything. She was still weeks from the operation that would replace the broken cochlear implants so she’d have to hope there weren’t sounds she was missing.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped carefully from her hiding spot and headed swiftly to the start of the route she’d spies, dropping into her powers to borrow Felicia’s abilities at stealth.
"Who brought this ratoncito to the fight, neh? Can't be the X-Men. Magneto said... he said, they're bad. Big bad fighters, no?" A woman dropped down in front of Maya. She was covered in dark fur with a white face and stomach, with cat-like features. Her body was long and lean, and a dark tail swished behind her as she crouched, watching Maya through slitted eyes. "I don't see no big bad fighters here."
Maya smiled as her eyes flashed, her body language changing completely to match the woman in front of her.
It felt weird given that she didn’t have the same mutation, but she’d been dancing for years, leaving her body flexible enough to mimic within human limits the abilities of the cat woman in front of her.
“Sorry, I’m sure your speech whatever it was was very intimidating but I couldn’t understand a word you said.”
"Disrespectful little puta. That makes this easier." She moved in a flash, closing the distance between them and launching a kick at her head. Maya sidestepped it, but found her counter-punch inexplicably blocked by the woman's other leg as she rotated impossibly fast and shoved them back apart.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not polite to call people names?”
Maya couldn’t match the woman’s speed, her body was still human even if her power was pushing it to the lines of tolerance. She’d be injured after this, not the least she to muscles and tendons pushed hard.
She needed to go in hard, and do as much damage as she could. Which meant using skills she hadn’t touched since the fight with the Maggia.
She pulled the daggers from the inbuilt sheathes that Wade had gifted her so long ago and threw them, pushing at her power to go for non-lethal spots despite its urge to do otherwise. Yes, she used North’s instincts but he’d trained her long enough that she could fight with her own as well
"Oh, you like it sharp? Here's the thing... mine is natural." The woman ducked two swings and flashed her claws at Maya before scoring four shallow cuts across her right bicep.
Great Spirit. That hurt like crazy. She wasn’t fast enough to do this well, and she certainly didn’t have the reach. She needed to be smarter than her opponent.
Maya pulled back, trying to put distance between herself and the cat woman in front of her as she looked around for inspiration. She just needed an advantage, even a small one.
"No one coming to save you, chica." She darted in, raining blows down on Maya. Surprisingly, the X-Man was able to block them, as if the woman was deliberately slowing down a touch, hammering away and forcing blocks from her right arm. She finally pivoted out, scoring three slices across Maya's left hand as she did.
She was playing with her, just like an enormous cat would. Maya knew she had to do something different, especially since she could feel the wounds on her arms stinging and flowing with a thin trickle of blood.
She couldn’t lose a lot before she’d start to get woozy and this fight would be over before it even started.
With that in mind, she kicked the dirt from her feet into the woman’s face as she dove into a backward roll, coming up close to a short length of rebar she’d spotted in her earlier look around.
She couldn’t match the woman for speed but she certainly had enough strength from dance training to beat the ever-loving crap out of her.
"More toys? If you want." She dodged the first and then the second swing, allowing them to just miss, as the fanged smile on her furred face grew wider. As the third swing came in, she bent herself back and tore one claw down the inside of Maya's forearm. The gash ran from her wrist to her elbow, only an inch away from opening up her radial artery.
"Why are you talking so much?" Maya finally replied, the irritation of fighting someone who could move faster than her and hit her despite the advantages she had of being able to tell where the blows were coming from getting the better of her. What good was being able to know what was going to happen when she couldn't move fast enough to prevent it? "Do you like the sound of your own voice so much?"
Maya had dropped the length of rebar and was holding her hand over the wound in her arm, trying to get some distance between herself and the alley cat she was facing. If she could stay away from her, maybe she could just throw things until the other woman got tired. She couldn't take much more blood loss, that was for sure.
"You never asked my name. That was impolite. You should always ask the name of the person you think you get to be the one to beat on." The woman moved fast, bouncing between three different perches, getting around behind and dizzying Maya before landing squarely between her shoulderblades with both feet. Maya crashed to the ground, the wind knocked out of her, with the woman on her back and trapping her.
"My name is Thornn, little X-Man. I came here to stop the government hunting mutants, and you came to protect them." Her claws flashed in front of the prone girl's eyes. "Normally, I'd take your eyes for that, but el jefe had said we have to play nice. So this time I just mark you and you remember when you wake up, you should be dead." The claws flashed and one was dragged from her forehead and across her eye, just skipping over the actual eyeball and down into her cheek. Then a blow crashed into the back of her head and Maya felt nothing at all.
***
“This is Echo. Physical and reflexive mimicry. Use a move in a fight against her, she’ll not only remember but she’ll add it to her toolkit immediately. She’s also young, inexperienced, cocky, and has been coddled her entire time in the mansion to think she’s special and her powers are all she needs to focus on in combat. We’re going to prove her wrong.”
There wasn’t an image of her, but a series of computer wireframe animations showed the abilities. “Her attitude is her key vulnerability. She’s arrogant enough to think she can go toe to two with anyone, not properly factoring in physically enhanced differences. She also has little practical experience in combat, despite her would be bad-ass posturing. Things like conserving your energy and not trading blows with people who heal won’t enter into her mind until too late.”
The setup couldn’t be worse. A partially ruined building, no idea what the target really was, and Magneto himself, which compromised Wolverine’s ability to join the main battle. Instead, he needed to work around the edges, use his senses to find targets, and strike from surprise. When the switchboard went down, worry crept in. It meant Jean had gone down and fast. Looking at it, it was a good place for a trap.
Alarm bells were going off in Logan's head and his instincts were screaming they needed to leave now. Too many things were swinging the Brotherhood's way and it felt like a well executed plan was coming together for the other side. The X-Men were used to adjusting and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, but after everything else that'd happened recently, he didn't need any more losses on his conscience. He weaved from one pile of rubble to another with his gaze constantly scanning for anyone coming his way. It was eerily too quiet. Not even the distant sounds of the battle he knew were going on broke the stillness. His breath was slow and steady despite his heart pounding in his chest. He clenched his hands until the leather gloves creaked. Skeleton full of metal and utterly useless.
An itch between his shoulder blades let him know someone was watching and Logan rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck from side to side as his gaze darted faster through the shadows looming around him. He took several deep sniffs while the claws on his right hand slid free with a soft snickt. Nothing but dirt, dust, and old metal. The trappings of a demolished building with the scent of active beings laid over it. Nothing close, nothing concerning, but he had a suspicion his senses were lying to him in some way. This was the perfect setup for an ambush if he ever saw one.
Angelo Unuscione savored the moment. The predator was getting some small inkling of what it was to be prey - Logan clearly suspected there was someone near him, but Unus, as he preferred to be called at times like these, knew that the same field that protected him from most forms of harm would also keep his scent away from the powerful nose of the feral he was currently stalking. And suspecting that a foe was somewhere nearby was of almost no use when the foe could take you at an unsuspecting angle.
Over the years, he had trained with wrestlers and grapplers of all sorts - classic Greco-Roman pankratiasts, judokas, and more, to learn the best ways to use his own invulnerability to best effect. Leverage was the key. He knew Logan carried more weight than his short appearance belied due to the metal suffusing his bones, but as Archimedes had said, "give me a place to stand and I will move the earth". With the proper fulcrum and angle, anyone could be toppled.
Well, almost everyone.
Coming up from cover just outside of Logan's peripheral vision, Unus surged forward like a sumotori in the tachi-ai, the initial charge of the match. At the moment of contact, he lowered his shoulder, coming just under Logan's arm and driving upward into his armpit, creating just enough lift to take the other man up off his feet and toward the ground.
Logan grunted at the impact, reflexively reaching forward to grab his attacker as his feet started to leave the ground. Scentless. This fight was going to be a bitch with this asshole. He also seemed to know just how to use Logan's abilities against him. He gritted his teeth as his back hit the ground while his body was already tensing to spring back to his feet.
He rolled to the side and snarled as he flew back up into a crouch, staying low and dodging back out of Unus' reach. He needed to keep the asshole in sight. That'd be his only saving grace right now. Logan only hoped his own enhanced senses were fast enough to combat whatever this guy had up his sleeve. They'd already lured him into the perfect ambush setting. What else did they have planned?
Unus allowed the escape. This might be a fight for much more than the points and satisfaction of a competitive match, but he still revelled in providing the first fall of the combat to his opponent. Now it was time for the feral to understand that he had already lost. "Come, Logan," he said, his arms spread wide to make a tempting target. "Strike me. If you can."
Logan roared as he ran for Unus. It was a stupid move he knew but it had to be done. He had to figure out what exactly he was up against, if only to know what he needed to do to survive as long as he needed. If he needed to be a distraction then so be it. He could likely heal from it and recover. He swiped both hands violently through the air, hoping for a misstep or a fall.
Unus slid backward with a circling step, standing side-on to Logan, raising a bent forearm toward the swipe. The claws met at his arm...and stopped. "Untouchable," he murmured with a smirk, then twisted his arm so that Logan's claws slid down toward his wrist, finding no purchase, and then the momentum took them past the end of Unus' fist and toward the ground. Moving with that momentum, he grabbed at the arm closer to him, one hand clamping down around the Canadian's wrist while he pressed his other arm painfully into the shoulder socket, pressing downward even as he wrenched upward with the hand on the wrist.
Logan bit back a scream at the pain that tore through him. He attempted to twist free, digging his feet into the ground for purchase and pushing away hard from the man. A trap. It was all a fucking trap and they should've known better. Their arrogance and their complacency got them here. He kept wary eyes on Unus as he kept out of range as best he could while wrenching his shoulder back into place. "What do you assholes want with this place anyway? Logan snarled.
Unus grinned the grin of a man who knows that the referee is about to raise his hand to signal victory. It had been almost too easy, not that it had stopped him from enjoying every second of it. Move, countermove, maneuver had all been carefully calculated. "That is for us to know, and you to understand when Magneto wills it," he told Logan. "But first..." He thought about watching the final stroke, but then he decided that turning his back to walk away would give Logan that much more knowledge of how thoroughly he had been beaten.
"CANNONBAAAAALLLLLLLL!" The sun suddenly disappeared over Logan and he only had a moment to look up before the massive body of the Blob smashed into him. The impact of the tremendous mutant drove them through the floor and then through the next level of subbasement and then through the next. It was only the massive concrete foundation that stopped them, cratering with the impact. Any other man would have been liquefied by the impact. Only his adamantium laced skeleton kept his body together, although the skin was broken and ruptured across his entire body, venting gouts of blood. The impact had also thoroughly scrambled his brain, leaving him lying unconscious.
Blob dusted himself off as he got up and began to climb. "Hey, U-hole!" Unus hated that nickname. "Tell Mags Wolverine is out of the picture for now. Unless he's got a use for a mutant pancake."
Such a puerile nickname. "Go fuck yourself, Blob," Unus tossed back at the crater as he continued walking.
***
“I don’t think I need to point out just how dangerous Wolverine is. Adamantium skeleton, claws that can cut through pretty much anything, a healing factor so strong that he might actually be unkillable and when he goes berserk, he’s been able to shrug off pretty much anything you do to him. We need to fight him smart. Fortunately, he’ll be deployed obliquely to Magneto, so it means he’ll be coming with a smaller group and be easy to isolate.”
Footage of Wolverine tearing through foreign mercenaries started playing behind him. “While the skeleton is unbreakable, the meat is not. Tendons, muscles, joints, all vulnerable to leverage. Likewise, do enough damage all at once and it takes time for everything to reform and bounce back. We give him a target to frustrate him, keep him distracted until we’re in the position to drop the fucking world on him.”
Dust finds an enemy uniquely suited to dealing with her sandform.
There was movement. Dust could sense the area around her coming to life as Brotherhood began to appear and confront the X-Men. Without the switchboard, all she could do was stick to the job Cyclops had given her – try and pinpoint additional forces on the ground and report back when she had a solid idea of the numbers.
The ground beneath her shivered slightly as Avalanche knelt, hands braced palm down against bare earth, and smiled. He could sense the minute shifts in sand on the ground, sense the base components of the sand. Given the information he'd been given, he knew what the silicon-based sand meant, knew a mutant lurked there in the gentle sway of particles. What was she up to, the little mutant made of sand? What was she thinking?
What decisions was she making?
"Hello, ammódi mágoula," Avalanche whispered, focusing his powers downward, increasing the strength of the vibrations as he watched the pieces of her shift to accommodate the movement.
Sooraya could feel herself shaking, both with the tremors on the ground below her as well as the faint vibrations she felt in herself. The sand particles that made up her other form danced with them, fiercer and fiercer when the vibrations increased. Her first instinct was to rush away, but instead she calmed herself and completely stopped moving... simply becoming a full part of the ground beneath her.
"You are the wrong type of sand for this place, ammódi mágoula. Hiding will not help you," Avalanche half-smiled. She'd actually made his job easier, he thought. There was a cohesion between the particles of her form that natural sand, natural earth, didn't possess. The debrief had mentioned low-grade psi ability as the answer, but it was so interesting to see it at play.
Still, he had a job to do, so as she attempted to become one with the ground, Avalanche tilted his fingertips upward just a bit, directing the vibrations he'd sent to shake the earth beneath her upward, into her form itself.
Sooraya felt the vibrations launch her sandform into the air, almost outside her will and instinctively she threw herself upwards, pulling herself out of range of the vibration. He knew she was there anyway. Rising into the air she dove into the rubble from the destroyed wing, vanishing two pieces of masonry.
Once she reached a spot where she could remain hidden for a moment, she shifted back, crouching on the ground. After radioing a quiet report to Cyclops, she refocussed. He could clearly find her in her sandform, but her human form might offer a chance, depending on if he could notice her through the earth. Quietly, she waited.
It might have been amusing, how she tried to hide better after he told her hiding wouldn't help, but instead it just made Avalanche shake his head. Perhaps, though, she hadn't heard him. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, he dug his fingertips into the earth below them and bellowed, "You cannot hide from me, ammódi mágoula."
Eyes narrowing, Avalanche focused his powers enough to bring the bits and pieces of rubble Dust sheltered behind down around her ears.
Sooraya maintained her human form for a little longer, but as soon as the first larger pieces of debris came down, instinct took over and she shifted into her sandform. It didn't matter... he was able to find her anyway. She could completely withdraw, but that wasn't an option here. Confronting also wasn't the most attractive choice either. Leading him on a merry goose chase might distract him at least a little and she could draw him away from her teammates till she could. So she slithered through the cracks in the rubble and reformed into her humanoid form a couple of meters away, waving at him.
No killing, Avalanche reminded himself, frowning as he focused further, increasing the intensity of the vibrations he sent through the ground toward the bits and pieces of silica that made up Dust's form. It took a great deal of effort to maintain that level of precision -- attempting to disrupt her cohesion without bringing everything around them tumbling down. The pieces of rubble that she'd been hiding behind had been one thing. Collapsing all the other buildings around them would be something else entirely.
Even with his increased concentration, there were small rumbles and shifts beneath their feet as Avalanche directed his powers into the woman.
She shuddered as the vibrations didn't just 'shake' her, but they thundered through her. She shuddered and shivered as they increased even more and when she raised her hand, little streams of sand fell from her fingers... With effort she pulled the particles back and shifted back to her cloud form, letting out a mental sigh of relief when she felt the thundering vibrations lessen and then completely fade.
Rising further from the ground she formed herself into several sharp tendrils and decided to go for the confrontation. Within seconds she had crossed the distance, lashing out with two of the sharp tendrils. Blood finally welled from a deep cut.
Feeling the blood trailing down his cheek, Avalanche grinned at the silica sandblast hovering near him. He tilted his head to the side, catching the rivulet of blood on his tongue as gravity brought it close enough, then said, "Oh, ammódi mágoula..." Was it regret he felt? Not at all. More like a bit of pity, a dash of disappointment. She should have been more fun to play with. This entire exercise wasn't going to impress anyone.
Drawing his hands up from the ground, Avalanche shoved his palms toward Dust, fingers spread wide and vicious as he thrust all his power toward her swirling form. She would learn, this X-Man, that dancing through the wind granted her no reprieve from his abilities. Instead, he forced even more power into the vibrations, taking her to pieces one grain at a time.
This time it wasn't just thunder... it was a complete hurricane as the vibrations thundered through her and she fought to keep her sand form intact. It took all her mental energy though and she could no longer stay in the air, various particles slowly starting to trickle to the ground and the rest of her form soon followed. The feeling of the vibrations were lesser here and desperately she struggled to pull one tendil of razor sharp sand together and she lashed out, aiming for his eyes.
She missed them, but managed to get him straight across the forehead. Blood immediately welled up, running into his eyes. Sooraya focussed to try again, but she couldn't pull together a second thread whip and all the little particles fell on the ground, uselessly.
Avalanche hissed as another cut opened on his face, the blood running through his eyebrow to dribble into his eyes. Shaking his head in an attempt to keep from being completely blinded, he focused his powers on the sand again, feeling its cohesion waning even as he growled in irritation. He hadn't expected to come out of this battle unscathed, but sandcuts were almost like papercuts, just deeper. They still stung like hellfire.
Keeping the vibrations he created from entering the earth proper was a struggle at this point, given the sheer strength with which he had to generate them, but despite the bass rumbles beneath them, none of the other buildings collapsed. Avalanche grinned through the blood half-coating his face now. He would win this. He would prove himself.
'Relentless' shot through her as Sooraya struggled to pull together something of herself. If it wasn't something of her sandform, maybe she could at least return to her human form. But each time she got something of the mental picture together, the vibrations thrummed through her and... it was almost like she didn't know where she ended or began anymore.
Macabre grin still spread across his lips, Avalanche actually managed to laugh as he watched Dust's sandform beginning to properly disintegrate. "Yes!" He increased the intensity of the vibrations he was creating, fingers flexing.
What was up? What was down? Was she flying? Or lying on the ground? Sooraya just wanted to curl up as it became worse and worse, but she knew she couldn't. If she did she'd die. But what was she? And how? She felt hazy and it only grew worse as the shaking continued, rolling through her and around. All she could do was lay there, until in the end everything faded.
Still grinning, Avalanche forced his powers through the silica sand for several more long moments just to make sure that Dust had lost all cohesion, then stopped. He wiped his face with the back of his arm, then more carefully checked the cuts the X-Man had left him with. Nothing he wouldn't heal from.
Job done, he turned to see how the other members of the Brotherhood were faring.
***
“Before anyone makes any jokes, understand that in her way, Dust is one of the most dangerous X-Men. Immune to psionics in her sand form, capable of generating sand blades and storms capable of cutting through steel or stripping the flesh off of bones. Fortunately, the credo of the X-Men has kept her from developing some other potentially dangerous tricks, but as is, she can reshape the nature of a battlefield in moments.”
“Her sand form is somewhat vulnerable to water, but mostly, sonics and vibration are the key weaknesses. The sand form takes concentration to maintain and if she as to keep reforming it, keeping key parts together under pressure, there’s a good chance it will overwhelm her endurance, forcing her back into normal form and completely vulnerable. Fortunately, we have someone here who fits the bill for this particular job.
Nica discovers that a form she thought was invulnerable very much can be endangered.
They’d deployed in strength and had been closing on the Brotherhood when the world fell in. Nica saw Marvel Girl go down and felt the switchboard flip off. It didn’t come back up, which meant Psylocke was also in trouble. Brotherhood were appearing left and right, ambushing the X-Men. Fortunately, what were they going to do against her?
She banked, avoiding a blast from the woman with the dragon wings and strafed the mutants below with another wave of infra-red heated air. Who else was left?
Seemingly oblivious to the fighting going on around her, a white-haired woman with white eyes and a purple suit strolled out onto the battlefield and stepped over an unconscious X-Man to pick a flower. "Look at you. You don't belong here," she said, smelling the flower. "A bit out of season."
Nica's eyes narrowed. "You don't belong here, either," she replied, hovering in mid-air above the woman, confident in any potential attacks passing through her. "So why don't we both agree to leave while we still can? You take your people and I take mine."
The woman glanced toward the girl floating up in the air. She gave her a smile. "Oh. You're adorable," she said with amusement, tossing the flower aside.
"All shiny and full of hope."
A ghostly white light started to bleed out of her eyes, radiating from each bit of bare skin before coalescing at the tip of her finger. She pointed it at Nica like a gun, and the white light shot at her. The moment it struck, it sent her crashing down to the ground.
"Let's talk."
Nica looked up from where she was collecting herself, confused and shocked that the energy had impacted her. "What the fuck?" she said, mostly to herself. But the enemy was coming and Nica was damned if she was going to find the X-Man on her knees in the dirt. She struggled to her feet, brushing down her uniform. "Clever trick," she said as the woman approached. "Keep back - I have my own energy beams, thank you very much."
The moment Nica got to her feet, the woman used an energy whip to knock her off them again. "I know," she said.
Her fingers began to move as if she were playing a harp, and she started to draw the stored energy out of Nica. "And they're quite the spectrum. But sometimes you're just here to be made an example."
Nica gasped as light began seeping out of her body, drawn towards the white-haired woman. "What are you...?" she choked out, clutching her stomach and doubling over. It felt like her very bones were being liquified and she dropped to her knees again, unable to stay on her feet. To her horror, when she looked down at herself, her body was wavering, becoming transparent - as if the woman was stripping away her very self.
After a certain point, the woman stopped, strolling up to Nica and crouching down to plant a kiss on her forehead with a slow smile.
"Good night," she said. Standing up, she calmly walked away, singing a merry song.
"Good night sweetheart, well, it's time to go...I hate to leave you but I really must say...well, good night sweetheart, good night."
Nica barely felt the kiss - her skin, her muscles, her bones... everything was cold, insubstantial. All she could do was huddle on the ground, trying to focus as hard as she could on existing. Because it felt like if she didn't, she'd fade away entirely.
***
“Spectrum. She’s young. Her training is shaky. Most important is that she’s insecure about herself and if she’s ready to be an X-Man. Which is good, because properly trained, she might end up being the most powerful mutant on the team. She commands energy; converting it to blasts, seeing it in all waves, converting her whole body for the purpose of flight and combat. Fortunately for us, when the telepathic switchboard goes down, she’ll look for orders first instead of taking the initiative.”
He pointed at the white haired woman in front. “Pull energy from her. Enough that she feels it. That will take her will to fight out. She’ll have it in her head that her energy form is invulnerable. Take that away from her and we won’t have to worry about her for the rest of the fight.”
Maya discovers that her powers aren’t always enough.
The facility was half in ruins, but it offered up a unique path to where Magneto was positioned. Maya could make out a route up the building that was completely shielded from view. If she could make it up, she’d be able to get the drop on him, and without a bit of metal on her, maybe take him out before he even knew she was there.
Maya’s eyes scanned the area, keeping to the shadows as she looked for signs of life. Surely they wouldn’t leave such access completely unguarded?
Except, she couldn’t see anything. She was still weeks from the operation that would replace the broken cochlear implants so she’d have to hope there weren’t sounds she was missing.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped carefully from her hiding spot and headed swiftly to the start of the route she’d spies, dropping into her powers to borrow Felicia’s abilities at stealth.
"Who brought this ratoncito to the fight, neh? Can't be the X-Men. Magneto said... he said, they're bad. Big bad fighters, no?" A woman dropped down in front of Maya. She was covered in dark fur with a white face and stomach, with cat-like features. Her body was long and lean, and a dark tail swished behind her as she crouched, watching Maya through slitted eyes. "I don't see no big bad fighters here."
Maya smiled as her eyes flashed, her body language changing completely to match the woman in front of her.
It felt weird given that she didn’t have the same mutation, but she’d been dancing for years, leaving her body flexible enough to mimic within human limits the abilities of the cat woman in front of her.
“Sorry, I’m sure your speech whatever it was was very intimidating but I couldn’t understand a word you said.”
"Disrespectful little puta. That makes this easier." She moved in a flash, closing the distance between them and launching a kick at her head. Maya sidestepped it, but found her counter-punch inexplicably blocked by the woman's other leg as she rotated impossibly fast and shoved them back apart.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not polite to call people names?”
Maya couldn’t match the woman’s speed, her body was still human even if her power was pushing it to the lines of tolerance. She’d be injured after this, not the least she to muscles and tendons pushed hard.
She needed to go in hard, and do as much damage as she could. Which meant using skills she hadn’t touched since the fight with the Maggia.
She pulled the daggers from the inbuilt sheathes that Wade had gifted her so long ago and threw them, pushing at her power to go for non-lethal spots despite its urge to do otherwise. Yes, she used North’s instincts but he’d trained her long enough that she could fight with her own as well
"Oh, you like it sharp? Here's the thing... mine is natural." The woman ducked two swings and flashed her claws at Maya before scoring four shallow cuts across her right bicep.
Great Spirit. That hurt like crazy. She wasn’t fast enough to do this well, and she certainly didn’t have the reach. She needed to be smarter than her opponent.
Maya pulled back, trying to put distance between herself and the cat woman in front of her as she looked around for inspiration. She just needed an advantage, even a small one.
"No one coming to save you, chica." She darted in, raining blows down on Maya. Surprisingly, the X-Man was able to block them, as if the woman was deliberately slowing down a touch, hammering away and forcing blocks from her right arm. She finally pivoted out, scoring three slices across Maya's left hand as she did.
She was playing with her, just like an enormous cat would. Maya knew she had to do something different, especially since she could feel the wounds on her arms stinging and flowing with a thin trickle of blood.
She couldn’t lose a lot before she’d start to get woozy and this fight would be over before it even started.
With that in mind, she kicked the dirt from her feet into the woman’s face as she dove into a backward roll, coming up close to a short length of rebar she’d spotted in her earlier look around.
She couldn’t match the woman for speed but she certainly had enough strength from dance training to beat the ever-loving crap out of her.
"More toys? If you want." She dodged the first and then the second swing, allowing them to just miss, as the fanged smile on her furred face grew wider. As the third swing came in, she bent herself back and tore one claw down the inside of Maya's forearm. The gash ran from her wrist to her elbow, only an inch away from opening up her radial artery.
"Why are you talking so much?" Maya finally replied, the irritation of fighting someone who could move faster than her and hit her despite the advantages she had of being able to tell where the blows were coming from getting the better of her. What good was being able to know what was going to happen when she couldn't move fast enough to prevent it? "Do you like the sound of your own voice so much?"
Maya had dropped the length of rebar and was holding her hand over the wound in her arm, trying to get some distance between herself and the alley cat she was facing. If she could stay away from her, maybe she could just throw things until the other woman got tired. She couldn't take much more blood loss, that was for sure.
"You never asked my name. That was impolite. You should always ask the name of the person you think you get to be the one to beat on." The woman moved fast, bouncing between three different perches, getting around behind and dizzying Maya before landing squarely between her shoulderblades with both feet. Maya crashed to the ground, the wind knocked out of her, with the woman on her back and trapping her.
"My name is Thornn, little X-Man. I came here to stop the government hunting mutants, and you came to protect them." Her claws flashed in front of the prone girl's eyes. "Normally, I'd take your eyes for that, but el jefe had said we have to play nice. So this time I just mark you and you remember when you wake up, you should be dead." The claws flashed and one was dragged from her forehead and across her eye, just skipping over the actual eyeball and down into her cheek. Then a blow crashed into the back of her head and Maya felt nothing at all.
***
“This is Echo. Physical and reflexive mimicry. Use a move in a fight against her, she’ll not only remember but she’ll add it to her toolkit immediately. She’s also young, inexperienced, cocky, and has been coddled her entire time in the mansion to think she’s special and her powers are all she needs to focus on in combat. We’re going to prove her wrong.”
There wasn’t an image of her, but a series of computer wireframe animations showed the abilities. “Her attitude is her key vulnerability. She’s arrogant enough to think she can go toe to two with anyone, not properly factoring in physically enhanced differences. She also has little practical experience in combat, despite her would be bad-ass posturing. Things like conserving your energy and not trading blows with people who heal won’t enter into her mind until too late.”
