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xp_logsX-Men vs Crabs, Round One! The city is seeing a wave of scaly attackers, and the X-Men arrive to start fighting them back.
Wildchild and Echo wrangle crabs with nets, and then get an upgrade to the fire hose.
Kyle was already healing easily a dozen little cuts when he shot past Maya on all fours, rolled over on one shoulder, and kicked a crab from its position clinging to a pylon back into the water. "Can you swim? Can you boat?" He said, panting slightly as he popped back upright.
Maya gave him an irritated look as her body twitched at his nearness, she'd been copying Logan given that crabs were not something she had to hold back on, but him being close gave her mind something newer to focus on, without the benefit of his enhanced physiology, unfortunately.
It might have benefitted her considering she was still healing after the beat down the Brotherhood had given them. Not so bad that she couldn’t battle crabs though.
At least she finally had her cochlear implants back.
"I can do anything you can currently do."
"I mean no you can't, but," Kyle said, shrugging. "But close enough. That's a fireboat. I'm thinking we get on, de crab it, and then open up with the fire hose." He grinned wide, showing every sharp tooth. "What's your current leg press? Actually no, not important, first we de crab the boat." He unwrapped a rope line from the pylon, tossed the weighted end to Maya, and then took a leap across to the boat.
"If you turn this into some kind of lesson I'm going to throw you in the ocean where you belong," Maya noted, catching the rope easily before bending down to stab a crab that had been trying to stealth up to her from behind. They might be crabs that she couldn't feel like she could humanoids, and she might not have Kyle's enhanced senses, but that didn't mean her body didn't try to copy what he had to the best of its ability, which seemed to include his increased spatial awareness, even if her lack of actual hearing dulled some of the other abilities. "What do you want me to do with this?"
Kyle snorted. "Career teacher, everything's a lesson." He punted a pair of small crabs - really, normal crab-sized crabs - off the deck. "Tie it to a pylon, and then come across. We're gonna steal nets. You ever do any net fishing?"
Maya looped the rope around the pylon and tied it off with a perfect bowline knot. She didn't mention the fact she'd cheated given she'd been watching various people earlier today doing the same thing. "Do you want me to say it, or do you want to think about that question for a bit longer?"
She grinned at him to take the sting out of her words and jumped easily across the gap to stand on the boat's deck. It was breezy today and the wind pulled at the braids she'd put her hair in this morning, and if they hadn't been in a city currently getting attacked by sealife of the angry variety, she might have actually said she could enjoy this whole thing.
"Come on Mr. Miyagi, show me how it's done."
"Look I don't know what kind of vacations you went on, okay?" Kyle pulled a pair of nets from what looked like a hastily dropped pile of them, and tossed one to Maya. "They're weighted, you can use them to, uh, basically like a lasso, kinda." He swung the net, sweeping easily a dozen watermelon sized crabs off the desk. "You get front, I'll get back and then you get to use the fire hose." Kyle's grin spoke volumes about how much fun that sounded. It sounded like a lot of fun.
“Not the vacation, just the fact that I now know exactly what to do because you did it.” Maya replied but she was smiling because this was definitely more fun than any other mission she’d been on so far. She swung her own net in a perfect imitation of Kyle’s and netted her own set of crabs. “If it’s physical and doesn’t require that I have some kind of odd power to do it, just assume I can do it as soon as you show me, at least when I have my power on, anyhow.”
Kyle shook his head, and flipped the net to dump the crabs in the water. "Yo no, that part I know, it's if you had previous experience. Cause then I don't have to make sure you can see me." He swept another group of crabs off the desk. "Kay, these are gonna keep coming, until we get to that hose. So start netting and moving back, we'll clear ourselves a path."
“Roger, Roger.”
Maya’s voice was a perfect mimicry of the robotic Star Wars creature as she started netting the crabs and sweeping them away from their path. It was less fight for their life and more pest control but after everything, she could totally dig the lower stakes.
"Nerd." Kyle flung a net's worth of grabs over the side of the boat, shaking off a few that were aggressively trying to climb up his armored pants. "Are these getting bigger? Shit."
“Do I look like a Carcinologist?” Maya netted a few more smaller crabs to throw over the side but she could definitely see what Kyle was talking about. She was moving back toward the hose as quickly as she could but it was slow going given the number of crabs that kept coming. “How big can they actually get?
"DO I look like one?" Kyle scoffed. He punted another crab off his leg and then grabbed one the size of a small dog as it tried to climb the side of the boat.
It took another few minutes of netting and fighting crabs before they got to the hose, and then Kyle broke into a grin. "You get to aim. I'll keep it from throwing you into the harbor." He said, uncoiling it and tossing Maya the end. It wasn't hard to turn the hose on, just to keep it from flying around everywhere, he had to put his entire weight on it since it was made to be held by two or more people.
Maya grinned back and took ahold of the hose from the front, trusting Kyle to keep it from overwhelming her. She aimed at the base of the onrushing crabs and worked the hose back and forth as you would with fire, not that she could tell you where she'd learned the technique from. Maybe she'd watched the news at some time in the past and her mind had decided that she needed that knowledge today? She was still learning how to use her mutant powers, and it was a daily discovering of new and interesting things.
The deck of the boat was clear almost too fast, and Kyle directed Maya to aim for the docks. The high pressure water cleared an area in front of the boat for several minutes, and he was considering playing out the hose as long as possible.
And then - a thing pulled itself out of the water and halfway onto the boat. It looked like a crab, it smelled like a crab, it sounded like a crab, it was just too impossibly big and spindly for Kyle's brain to identify it as a crab. He shouted to Maya to aim the hose at the monster-giant-crab-thing, and threw himself on the hose as he opened it fully. "Get it down and then we get the hell out of here!"
Maya braced herself against the deck, and sat down with the hose. Her expert aim sent the crab flying off the side of the boat, and the hydraulic pressure sent her sliding backwards. As the water stopped she scrambled to her feet. "Aye-aye Captain White Man Giving me Orders, sir." she said, with a salute that would have been military precise if it hadn't been for the grin, the wet hair in her face, or the raised middle finger.
Spectrum and Psylocke steam and stab some crabs and talk a little crab-brain-science.
"You know, when I got out of bed this morning, I really didn't think fighting giant seafood would be on the schedule," Nica remarked as she floated down to perch on the roof of a tourist cart that sold postcards, keychains and stuffed animals. Approaching them was a group of crabs the size of horses, waving their claws menacingly. "I didn't know they even got this big!”
“I am in no way an expert in crabs, but I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to,” Betsy said with some trepidation. “I suppose we’ll find out if they taste as good cooked at this size as they do in a clambake though. My powers are nowhere near as convenient here as yours, do these things even have a brain?” She could sense… something from the creatures, but calling it 'thought' seemed to be stretching the definition somewhat.
"They must have, to be able to attack like this," Nica mused. "Or there's something with a brain controlling them. Either way, they have to have a central nervous system to walk and pinch and all that stuff, so you get to stab them there with the purple sword thing?" She was still working on understanding Betsy's powers. "Plus there's the people." She nodded at some locals who were actually standing taking photos of the crabs, oblivious to the potential danger. "Think you can psychically herd them away from the pinch-y death?”
“I do like doing the stabby,” Betsy admitted. “Getting people out of here should probably take priority though. You’d think it’d be easy to convince people not to get themselves pinched in half,” she lamented and pointed to a group of teenagers apparently filming the crabs on their phones. “I’ll start working on crowd control, if you keep the crustaceans at bay?”
Nica snorted and nodded, floating up off the booth and towards the advancing sea creatures. "I almost feel bad doing this," she said to herself as she blasted the front line with infra-red energy. The heat cooked them instantly in their shells, turning them red and sending up a delicious odour that made Nica hungry even as she wrestled with her conscience. That was short-lived, as the living crabs behind started devouring their brethren. "Ew, gross.”
Betsy glanced back at the cannibal crab buffet and grimaced. ~Well, at least it’ll keep them distracted for a while,~ she noted to Nica, while simultaneously trying to convince an elderly tourist couple that they would need to choose another day for their bayside walk. ~Is there any word on where we want these people to go?~
~Inland, away from the water, basically,~ was Nica's reply as she zapped another crab. ~Otherwise they'll be fish food.~
~That might be an improvement for some of them,~ Betsy grumbled and herded a wide-eyed souvenir peddler towards safer ground. ~I think that was the last of them. Are there any crabs left to stab?~
"More than enough for the both of us," Nica replied, floating higher so she could see down towards the harbour. "And I'm not sure, but I think they're getting bigger?"
“I hope I’ll still be able to reach the head,” Betsy said, jogging to where Nica was floating. She held her glowing sword above her head, lunging towards the first crab she saw and drilling the blade to the space between it’s eye stalks. “Might take a bit of a jump but these ones still seem doable."
The crab collapsed, Betsy having evidently poked it in what passed for a brain. "Well, that solves that question," Nica observed, zapping the crabs that were turning their attention to her team-mate. "I just hope you had your Wheaties today, because we're going to be pretty damn busy."
Cyclops and Dazzler make with the zap zap laser beams versus crabs… with tactics.
The crabs had tactics.
Alison did not know how, and did not know why, but she did know one thing for certain: She hated it. So. So much. It was the worst.
"I hate this."
And then a crab flew over her head, crashing into a nearby building.
Shards of concrete and shell peppered Scott's face, leaving him reeling for a moment as he took a step back, a hand instinctively lifting to cover his face before red blasts of energy scythed through the air, clearing the debris raining down on their position as the X-man turned back to the crabs, jumping back immediately to avoid a pointed foot from piercing through him before he was forced to duck and twist away to slide under a pair of pincers. No matter what he did they seemed to be there to keep him from finding his footing long enough to attack. Being stuck on the defensive was not his preferred combat style, not at all. "Can you do something to buy me a few seconds to try something new? Otherwise they're just gonna keep wearing us down."
Despite the utterly poor timing of it, Alison couldn't help but cock an eyebrow involuntarily. "Uh... maybe?" She was already running a pretty high tempo; pushing it harder would start to be dangerously exhausting. The faster the moves, the harder to keep your feet and all that.
Still, it wasn't like she had a better idea at this point. The crabs had shown themselves to be remarkably adept blind-fighters, and their armored exo-whatevers they had were annoying laser resistant. For anything else she was going to have to get... creative.
The song playing on her phone kicked up-tempo, and her body moved to match with barely a twinge of protest. I've got... maybe three minutes like this, she realized, and got started, shifting from the big sweeping punchy lasers from her palms to a more sharpshooter style, using a hand cocked like a gun to fire pencil-thin lasers out of one finger.
Maybe if she could hit a joint or two she'd start to turn some of this around.
It was like watching a fireworks show, lasers filling the air around the girl as Scott was forced to take a step back, one arm coming up to shade his gaze as he took a deep breath. Holding it for a moment before letting it flow out of his lungs as he let his gaze shift forward, narrowing as dark eyes flicked around.
A small smile curled up the corner's of Scott's mouth as a barrage of red blasts sallied forth, weaving through the lightshow that Alison was putting on. Where better to hide an attack than in plain sight. The crabs had shown they could work together, but he'd been doing this for longer. Force blasts tore through walls and roofs, starting a cascade that dropped an avalanche of debris onto the crabs. Those that were fast enough to avoid the rain found themselves trapped in a maze, a firing lane as he inclined his head to Allison. "Care to play?"
"Ooh," Alison said, seeing exactly where this was going. "I do like the way you think. Ladies first?"
The X-man bowed, taking a step back as his arms came up to gesture towards the trapped crabs with a grin. "I wouldn't dream of being anything other than chivalrous. Ladies first by all means."
Alison quirked a lip. "I was referring to you, actually." She stuck out a tongue, obviously teasing in good faith. "Still," both of her hands began to glow a faint shade of lightning. "It would be rude to say no now."
Wolverine, Blink and Dust cooperate to herd crabs right into a killbox.
Standing on top of a museum in Baltimore's inner harbor, Clarice turned in a slow circle, scanning the water below. "And, incoming!" she announced in a semi-chipper tone. Pointing to one of the docks, a large crab claw had chonked itself down on the wooden planks as it hauled the rest of its body out of the water. And where there was one, there were friends. Crabs were apparently worse than teenaged girls going to the bathroom in packs. "Let's get to work."
Sooraya rose from where she had been crouching on a container, scanning some of the dark waters. "There are more over here! It didn't only bring friends, but it looks like they found a couple of bottles of steroids to swallow as well! How big are those things going to get?" She quickly shifted, bringing herself to the ground and divided herself in multiple sharp whips of sand.
Logan turned to look in the direction Clarice was poking and gave a low whistle. "Looks like we're gonna have a shit ton of crab dishes to cook when we're done here. Probably might even tank the market price for crab." He brushed off crab shell, wood splinters, and other detritus that'd accumulated on his uniform. He also shook out his hands then punched his claws through a nearby broken crate to get some of the residue off and be ready for what was coming.
"I mean...I am willing to die eating my weight in sushi," Clarice remarked. After all she had been through, SUV sized crabs were really not as intimidating as they likely should be. Without moving, she opened a portal through one she could see, taking out a sizable crab chunk. "Course, now we have dead, rotted crab just sitting there. That's gonna smell."
"Might be a good idea to send it back into the ocean," Logan paused as he squinted at the waterfront, "though that might mess up the ecosystem down there. We got a nearby incinerator or somethin'? Or maybe we really ought to flood the seafood market and leave the oceans to replenish themselves for a coupla months."
Having divided herself in a few sharp spikes Sooraya dove under a trio of crabs. Six stabs through each of their ganglia and the crabs collapsed on themselves and Sooraya hurriedly pulled herself away from under the beasts. It had taken nearly ten years, but her hobby of cooking had come in handy... Spotting no new crabs for the moment, she spotted another good vantage point and quickly reformed: "I'd go for the incinerator if there is one around. If you do eat seafood, you'd want it to be as fresh as possible. And unless you want to coral some of them alive..."
"Good point. Incinerator it is," Logan said as he ducked under some outstretched crab claws and quickly swiped through several joints until the crabs dropped to the ground. "Probably gonna need you to port 'em into the incinerator, Blink. These friends of ours are gonna be too heavy to move or lift easily." His nose twitched at the smell of all the crab carnage. "Isn't there somethin' 'bout crabs dying in the water that makes the other crabs start dying too? Or did I misremember somethin'."
"Okay, incinerator," Clarice agreed. No one wanted dead rotting giant crab smell. No one. "Uh....I do not see a building that might have one and I am not up for craziness," after being injured on her last mission she was upright and moving, but that was all she could say for this one. Thankfully, she didn't need to do much of that. It also meant though, that her weight limitation with her powers was something she was very much feeling. "Wait, isn't there a medical complex over there?" she pointed.
"Too bad John is on the other side of the world. Would be a whole lot easier." Sooraya muttered as she wheeled around. "It looks like it, but let me go check. Maybe start moving the crabs that way if we can?" She quickly dissolved again and took off in the direction that Clarice had indicated.
Logan looked in the direction Clarice pointed but with the overwhelming smell of crab all around them his nose was useless. "Possibly. If I remember the briefin' right, there probably is. There's a lot concentrated down in the waterfront area normally." He ducked another swing from an outstretched claw and started backing toward the direction of the possible medical complex. "Too bad these suckers won't just step right through your portals."
"Good news, I can move the portals," she was really beginning to feel the strain of using her powers. This was a terrible idea. Well, whatever. Crabs wouldn't port themselves. Lesson learned. Sleep more. "Just need confirmation from Sooraya."
A few moments later Sooraya commed them: "They are firing up the incinerator right now and are making sure that everyone is evacuated. I'm ready to receive them and herd at much as possible over here."
Bevatron and Nightcrawler are nearly overrun while defending Mr Trash Wheel before help arrives.
Baltimore's Inner Harbor was quickly becoming overrun. Earlier, the crabs had been the size of large dogs. Now they were the size of horses, and a few even bigger ones were beginning to clamber up the seawall. Other oversized sea life still out in the water were capsizing small boats and the like. Jean-Phillipe panted as he took in the scene, having already expended a fair amount of his reserves fighting off crabs as they swarmed the area. Farther out, a larger silhouette, almost fifty feet, with prominent eyes, was making its way inward. "What the hell is -that-?" he asked.
Kurt stared at the thing, befuddled. “I do not know, but I can only hope it is not alive.”
"Can you get us onto it?" Jean-Phillipe asked. If it was hostile, better to deal with it while it was still farther out in the water.
"Certainly." He took hold of Jean-Phillipe's shoulder, gave him a moment to brace for the teleport, then they were standing atop the giant thing... which on closer inspection, was certainly not alive. "...I still do not know what this is, or why it has eyes."
Jean-Phillipe was still as puzzled as Kurt. "Certainly some manner of boat, but what...ah!" he exclaimed, spotting a pair of large dumpster containers in the interior. "It would appear to be an automated trash-gathering vehicle." He looked up at where the large eyes were attached to the canopy. "I suppose the eyes are to make it appear more friendly," he guessed.
"Perhaps", Kurt allowed. "It would also make it easier to see from a longer distance, I suppose."
As the vehicle wandered its way further into the harbor, the water around it began to churn with activity. "I think the creatures perceive our vehicle as a threat," he announced as some smaller crabs made their way up onto the deck. "That makes us its defenders, nicht wahr?" he asked, electricity crackling around his hands.
"Wahr", Kurt agreed with a grin and rather better pronunciation. "Though I fear we may be outnumbered."
Jean-Phillipe plucked up a pair of crowbars from where they sat next to the dumpsters, obviously for maintenance or the like. "Then we shall prepare to repel boarders!" he proclaimed with a flourish of one as he tossed the other to Kurt.
He caught it with ease and swept into a brief bow because it seemed like the thing to do. "With extreme prejudice!"
The European duo swashed and buckled their way about the deck of the googly-eyed trash collector, but the crab tide showed no signs of abating. If anything the crabs seemed like they were getting bigger.
The waters suddenly flash boiled as a laser lanced through it, creating the greatest instantaneous seafood boil in history. Two repulsor blasts followed it up, sending geysers of shellfish skyward.
"You know, the metaphors of a happy faced creature who lives down on the docks and funnels literally any trash though its mouth is a little on the nose, even for Baltimore. " Iron Man said as he leveled out his dive, skimming above the water. "Friday, find me any patterns in this attack. Other than 'the X-Men are here so it must be a disaster' pattern. That one I've figured out."
Wildchild and Echo wrangle crabs with nets, and then get an upgrade to the fire hose.
Kyle was already healing easily a dozen little cuts when he shot past Maya on all fours, rolled over on one shoulder, and kicked a crab from its position clinging to a pylon back into the water. "Can you swim? Can you boat?" He said, panting slightly as he popped back upright.
Maya gave him an irritated look as her body twitched at his nearness, she'd been copying Logan given that crabs were not something she had to hold back on, but him being close gave her mind something newer to focus on, without the benefit of his enhanced physiology, unfortunately.
It might have benefitted her considering she was still healing after the beat down the Brotherhood had given them. Not so bad that she couldn’t battle crabs though.
At least she finally had her cochlear implants back.
"I can do anything you can currently do."
"I mean no you can't, but," Kyle said, shrugging. "But close enough. That's a fireboat. I'm thinking we get on, de crab it, and then open up with the fire hose." He grinned wide, showing every sharp tooth. "What's your current leg press? Actually no, not important, first we de crab the boat." He unwrapped a rope line from the pylon, tossed the weighted end to Maya, and then took a leap across to the boat.
"If you turn this into some kind of lesson I'm going to throw you in the ocean where you belong," Maya noted, catching the rope easily before bending down to stab a crab that had been trying to stealth up to her from behind. They might be crabs that she couldn't feel like she could humanoids, and she might not have Kyle's enhanced senses, but that didn't mean her body didn't try to copy what he had to the best of its ability, which seemed to include his increased spatial awareness, even if her lack of actual hearing dulled some of the other abilities. "What do you want me to do with this?"
Kyle snorted. "Career teacher, everything's a lesson." He punted a pair of small crabs - really, normal crab-sized crabs - off the deck. "Tie it to a pylon, and then come across. We're gonna steal nets. You ever do any net fishing?"
Maya looped the rope around the pylon and tied it off with a perfect bowline knot. She didn't mention the fact she'd cheated given she'd been watching various people earlier today doing the same thing. "Do you want me to say it, or do you want to think about that question for a bit longer?"
She grinned at him to take the sting out of her words and jumped easily across the gap to stand on the boat's deck. It was breezy today and the wind pulled at the braids she'd put her hair in this morning, and if they hadn't been in a city currently getting attacked by sealife of the angry variety, she might have actually said she could enjoy this whole thing.
"Come on Mr. Miyagi, show me how it's done."
"Look I don't know what kind of vacations you went on, okay?" Kyle pulled a pair of nets from what looked like a hastily dropped pile of them, and tossed one to Maya. "They're weighted, you can use them to, uh, basically like a lasso, kinda." He swung the net, sweeping easily a dozen watermelon sized crabs off the desk. "You get front, I'll get back and then you get to use the fire hose." Kyle's grin spoke volumes about how much fun that sounded. It sounded like a lot of fun.
“Not the vacation, just the fact that I now know exactly what to do because you did it.” Maya replied but she was smiling because this was definitely more fun than any other mission she’d been on so far. She swung her own net in a perfect imitation of Kyle’s and netted her own set of crabs. “If it’s physical and doesn’t require that I have some kind of odd power to do it, just assume I can do it as soon as you show me, at least when I have my power on, anyhow.”
Kyle shook his head, and flipped the net to dump the crabs in the water. "Yo no, that part I know, it's if you had previous experience. Cause then I don't have to make sure you can see me." He swept another group of crabs off the desk. "Kay, these are gonna keep coming, until we get to that hose. So start netting and moving back, we'll clear ourselves a path."
“Roger, Roger.”
Maya’s voice was a perfect mimicry of the robotic Star Wars creature as she started netting the crabs and sweeping them away from their path. It was less fight for their life and more pest control but after everything, she could totally dig the lower stakes.
"Nerd." Kyle flung a net's worth of grabs over the side of the boat, shaking off a few that were aggressively trying to climb up his armored pants. "Are these getting bigger? Shit."
“Do I look like a Carcinologist?” Maya netted a few more smaller crabs to throw over the side but she could definitely see what Kyle was talking about. She was moving back toward the hose as quickly as she could but it was slow going given the number of crabs that kept coming. “How big can they actually get?
"DO I look like one?" Kyle scoffed. He punted another crab off his leg and then grabbed one the size of a small dog as it tried to climb the side of the boat.
It took another few minutes of netting and fighting crabs before they got to the hose, and then Kyle broke into a grin. "You get to aim. I'll keep it from throwing you into the harbor." He said, uncoiling it and tossing Maya the end. It wasn't hard to turn the hose on, just to keep it from flying around everywhere, he had to put his entire weight on it since it was made to be held by two or more people.
Maya grinned back and took ahold of the hose from the front, trusting Kyle to keep it from overwhelming her. She aimed at the base of the onrushing crabs and worked the hose back and forth as you would with fire, not that she could tell you where she'd learned the technique from. Maybe she'd watched the news at some time in the past and her mind had decided that she needed that knowledge today? She was still learning how to use her mutant powers, and it was a daily discovering of new and interesting things.
The deck of the boat was clear almost too fast, and Kyle directed Maya to aim for the docks. The high pressure water cleared an area in front of the boat for several minutes, and he was considering playing out the hose as long as possible.
And then - a thing pulled itself out of the water and halfway onto the boat. It looked like a crab, it smelled like a crab, it sounded like a crab, it was just too impossibly big and spindly for Kyle's brain to identify it as a crab. He shouted to Maya to aim the hose at the monster-giant-crab-thing, and threw himself on the hose as he opened it fully. "Get it down and then we get the hell out of here!"
Maya braced herself against the deck, and sat down with the hose. Her expert aim sent the crab flying off the side of the boat, and the hydraulic pressure sent her sliding backwards. As the water stopped she scrambled to her feet. "Aye-aye Captain White Man Giving me Orders, sir." she said, with a salute that would have been military precise if it hadn't been for the grin, the wet hair in her face, or the raised middle finger.
Spectrum and Psylocke steam and stab some crabs and talk a little crab-brain-science.
"You know, when I got out of bed this morning, I really didn't think fighting giant seafood would be on the schedule," Nica remarked as she floated down to perch on the roof of a tourist cart that sold postcards, keychains and stuffed animals. Approaching them was a group of crabs the size of horses, waving their claws menacingly. "I didn't know they even got this big!”
“I am in no way an expert in crabs, but I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to,” Betsy said with some trepidation. “I suppose we’ll find out if they taste as good cooked at this size as they do in a clambake though. My powers are nowhere near as convenient here as yours, do these things even have a brain?” She could sense… something from the creatures, but calling it 'thought' seemed to be stretching the definition somewhat.
"They must have, to be able to attack like this," Nica mused. "Or there's something with a brain controlling them. Either way, they have to have a central nervous system to walk and pinch and all that stuff, so you get to stab them there with the purple sword thing?" She was still working on understanding Betsy's powers. "Plus there's the people." She nodded at some locals who were actually standing taking photos of the crabs, oblivious to the potential danger. "Think you can psychically herd them away from the pinch-y death?”
“I do like doing the stabby,” Betsy admitted. “Getting people out of here should probably take priority though. You’d think it’d be easy to convince people not to get themselves pinched in half,” she lamented and pointed to a group of teenagers apparently filming the crabs on their phones. “I’ll start working on crowd control, if you keep the crustaceans at bay?”
Nica snorted and nodded, floating up off the booth and towards the advancing sea creatures. "I almost feel bad doing this," she said to herself as she blasted the front line with infra-red energy. The heat cooked them instantly in their shells, turning them red and sending up a delicious odour that made Nica hungry even as she wrestled with her conscience. That was short-lived, as the living crabs behind started devouring their brethren. "Ew, gross.”
Betsy glanced back at the cannibal crab buffet and grimaced. ~Well, at least it’ll keep them distracted for a while,~ she noted to Nica, while simultaneously trying to convince an elderly tourist couple that they would need to choose another day for their bayside walk. ~Is there any word on where we want these people to go?~
~Inland, away from the water, basically,~ was Nica's reply as she zapped another crab. ~Otherwise they'll be fish food.~
~That might be an improvement for some of them,~ Betsy grumbled and herded a wide-eyed souvenir peddler towards safer ground. ~I think that was the last of them. Are there any crabs left to stab?~
"More than enough for the both of us," Nica replied, floating higher so she could see down towards the harbour. "And I'm not sure, but I think they're getting bigger?"
“I hope I’ll still be able to reach the head,” Betsy said, jogging to where Nica was floating. She held her glowing sword above her head, lunging towards the first crab she saw and drilling the blade to the space between it’s eye stalks. “Might take a bit of a jump but these ones still seem doable."
The crab collapsed, Betsy having evidently poked it in what passed for a brain. "Well, that solves that question," Nica observed, zapping the crabs that were turning their attention to her team-mate. "I just hope you had your Wheaties today, because we're going to be pretty damn busy."
Cyclops and Dazzler make with the zap zap laser beams versus crabs… with tactics.
The crabs had tactics.
Alison did not know how, and did not know why, but she did know one thing for certain: She hated it. So. So much. It was the worst.
"I hate this."
And then a crab flew over her head, crashing into a nearby building.
Shards of concrete and shell peppered Scott's face, leaving him reeling for a moment as he took a step back, a hand instinctively lifting to cover his face before red blasts of energy scythed through the air, clearing the debris raining down on their position as the X-man turned back to the crabs, jumping back immediately to avoid a pointed foot from piercing through him before he was forced to duck and twist away to slide under a pair of pincers. No matter what he did they seemed to be there to keep him from finding his footing long enough to attack. Being stuck on the defensive was not his preferred combat style, not at all. "Can you do something to buy me a few seconds to try something new? Otherwise they're just gonna keep wearing us down."
Despite the utterly poor timing of it, Alison couldn't help but cock an eyebrow involuntarily. "Uh... maybe?" She was already running a pretty high tempo; pushing it harder would start to be dangerously exhausting. The faster the moves, the harder to keep your feet and all that.
Still, it wasn't like she had a better idea at this point. The crabs had shown themselves to be remarkably adept blind-fighters, and their armored exo-whatevers they had were annoying laser resistant. For anything else she was going to have to get... creative.
The song playing on her phone kicked up-tempo, and her body moved to match with barely a twinge of protest. I've got... maybe three minutes like this, she realized, and got started, shifting from the big sweeping punchy lasers from her palms to a more sharpshooter style, using a hand cocked like a gun to fire pencil-thin lasers out of one finger.
Maybe if she could hit a joint or two she'd start to turn some of this around.
It was like watching a fireworks show, lasers filling the air around the girl as Scott was forced to take a step back, one arm coming up to shade his gaze as he took a deep breath. Holding it for a moment before letting it flow out of his lungs as he let his gaze shift forward, narrowing as dark eyes flicked around.
A small smile curled up the corner's of Scott's mouth as a barrage of red blasts sallied forth, weaving through the lightshow that Alison was putting on. Where better to hide an attack than in plain sight. The crabs had shown they could work together, but he'd been doing this for longer. Force blasts tore through walls and roofs, starting a cascade that dropped an avalanche of debris onto the crabs. Those that were fast enough to avoid the rain found themselves trapped in a maze, a firing lane as he inclined his head to Allison. "Care to play?"
"Ooh," Alison said, seeing exactly where this was going. "I do like the way you think. Ladies first?"
The X-man bowed, taking a step back as his arms came up to gesture towards the trapped crabs with a grin. "I wouldn't dream of being anything other than chivalrous. Ladies first by all means."
Alison quirked a lip. "I was referring to you, actually." She stuck out a tongue, obviously teasing in good faith. "Still," both of her hands began to glow a faint shade of lightning. "It would be rude to say no now."
Wolverine, Blink and Dust cooperate to herd crabs right into a killbox.
Standing on top of a museum in Baltimore's inner harbor, Clarice turned in a slow circle, scanning the water below. "And, incoming!" she announced in a semi-chipper tone. Pointing to one of the docks, a large crab claw had chonked itself down on the wooden planks as it hauled the rest of its body out of the water. And where there was one, there were friends. Crabs were apparently worse than teenaged girls going to the bathroom in packs. "Let's get to work."
Sooraya rose from where she had been crouching on a container, scanning some of the dark waters. "There are more over here! It didn't only bring friends, but it looks like they found a couple of bottles of steroids to swallow as well! How big are those things going to get?" She quickly shifted, bringing herself to the ground and divided herself in multiple sharp whips of sand.
Logan turned to look in the direction Clarice was poking and gave a low whistle. "Looks like we're gonna have a shit ton of crab dishes to cook when we're done here. Probably might even tank the market price for crab." He brushed off crab shell, wood splinters, and other detritus that'd accumulated on his uniform. He also shook out his hands then punched his claws through a nearby broken crate to get some of the residue off and be ready for what was coming.
"I mean...I am willing to die eating my weight in sushi," Clarice remarked. After all she had been through, SUV sized crabs were really not as intimidating as they likely should be. Without moving, she opened a portal through one she could see, taking out a sizable crab chunk. "Course, now we have dead, rotted crab just sitting there. That's gonna smell."
"Might be a good idea to send it back into the ocean," Logan paused as he squinted at the waterfront, "though that might mess up the ecosystem down there. We got a nearby incinerator or somethin'? Or maybe we really ought to flood the seafood market and leave the oceans to replenish themselves for a coupla months."
Having divided herself in a few sharp spikes Sooraya dove under a trio of crabs. Six stabs through each of their ganglia and the crabs collapsed on themselves and Sooraya hurriedly pulled herself away from under the beasts. It had taken nearly ten years, but her hobby of cooking had come in handy... Spotting no new crabs for the moment, she spotted another good vantage point and quickly reformed: "I'd go for the incinerator if there is one around. If you do eat seafood, you'd want it to be as fresh as possible. And unless you want to coral some of them alive..."
"Good point. Incinerator it is," Logan said as he ducked under some outstretched crab claws and quickly swiped through several joints until the crabs dropped to the ground. "Probably gonna need you to port 'em into the incinerator, Blink. These friends of ours are gonna be too heavy to move or lift easily." His nose twitched at the smell of all the crab carnage. "Isn't there somethin' 'bout crabs dying in the water that makes the other crabs start dying too? Or did I misremember somethin'."
"Okay, incinerator," Clarice agreed. No one wanted dead rotting giant crab smell. No one. "Uh....I do not see a building that might have one and I am not up for craziness," after being injured on her last mission she was upright and moving, but that was all she could say for this one. Thankfully, she didn't need to do much of that. It also meant though, that her weight limitation with her powers was something she was very much feeling. "Wait, isn't there a medical complex over there?" she pointed.
"Too bad John is on the other side of the world. Would be a whole lot easier." Sooraya muttered as she wheeled around. "It looks like it, but let me go check. Maybe start moving the crabs that way if we can?" She quickly dissolved again and took off in the direction that Clarice had indicated.
Logan looked in the direction Clarice pointed but with the overwhelming smell of crab all around them his nose was useless. "Possibly. If I remember the briefin' right, there probably is. There's a lot concentrated down in the waterfront area normally." He ducked another swing from an outstretched claw and started backing toward the direction of the possible medical complex. "Too bad these suckers won't just step right through your portals."
"Good news, I can move the portals," she was really beginning to feel the strain of using her powers. This was a terrible idea. Well, whatever. Crabs wouldn't port themselves. Lesson learned. Sleep more. "Just need confirmation from Sooraya."
A few moments later Sooraya commed them: "They are firing up the incinerator right now and are making sure that everyone is evacuated. I'm ready to receive them and herd at much as possible over here."
Bevatron and Nightcrawler are nearly overrun while defending Mr Trash Wheel before help arrives.
Baltimore's Inner Harbor was quickly becoming overrun. Earlier, the crabs had been the size of large dogs. Now they were the size of horses, and a few even bigger ones were beginning to clamber up the seawall. Other oversized sea life still out in the water were capsizing small boats and the like. Jean-Phillipe panted as he took in the scene, having already expended a fair amount of his reserves fighting off crabs as they swarmed the area. Farther out, a larger silhouette, almost fifty feet, with prominent eyes, was making its way inward. "What the hell is -that-?" he asked.
Kurt stared at the thing, befuddled. “I do not know, but I can only hope it is not alive.”
"Can you get us onto it?" Jean-Phillipe asked. If it was hostile, better to deal with it while it was still farther out in the water.
"Certainly." He took hold of Jean-Phillipe's shoulder, gave him a moment to brace for the teleport, then they were standing atop the giant thing... which on closer inspection, was certainly not alive. "...I still do not know what this is, or why it has eyes."
Jean-Phillipe was still as puzzled as Kurt. "Certainly some manner of boat, but what...ah!" he exclaimed, spotting a pair of large dumpster containers in the interior. "It would appear to be an automated trash-gathering vehicle." He looked up at where the large eyes were attached to the canopy. "I suppose the eyes are to make it appear more friendly," he guessed.
"Perhaps", Kurt allowed. "It would also make it easier to see from a longer distance, I suppose."
As the vehicle wandered its way further into the harbor, the water around it began to churn with activity. "I think the creatures perceive our vehicle as a threat," he announced as some smaller crabs made their way up onto the deck. "That makes us its defenders, nicht wahr?" he asked, electricity crackling around his hands.
"Wahr", Kurt agreed with a grin and rather better pronunciation. "Though I fear we may be outnumbered."
Jean-Phillipe plucked up a pair of crowbars from where they sat next to the dumpsters, obviously for maintenance or the like. "Then we shall prepare to repel boarders!" he proclaimed with a flourish of one as he tossed the other to Kurt.
He caught it with ease and swept into a brief bow because it seemed like the thing to do. "With extreme prejudice!"
The European duo swashed and buckled their way about the deck of the googly-eyed trash collector, but the crab tide showed no signs of abating. If anything the crabs seemed like they were getting bigger.
The waters suddenly flash boiled as a laser lanced through it, creating the greatest instantaneous seafood boil in history. Two repulsor blasts followed it up, sending geysers of shellfish skyward.
"You know, the metaphors of a happy faced creature who lives down on the docks and funnels literally any trash though its mouth is a little on the nose, even for Baltimore. " Iron Man said as he leveled out his dive, skimming above the water. "Friday, find me any patterns in this attack. Other than 'the X-Men are here so it must be a disaster' pattern. That one I've figured out."
