X-Men Mission: Clan Akkaba - Domination
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xp_logsCalled to North Africa by X-Force, the X-Men start with a bit of recon - Blink and Psylocke team up to scope out the compound.
“Do you think they all use the same architect? Or is there some catalog for ominous compounds that I just don’t know about?” Betsy was trying to keep her voice light to hide how badly the oppressive building was starting to get to her, not at all helped by the general feeling of panic she could sense in the hot night air. Panic presumably originating from the very kidnapping victims they were there to rescue. “I have been thinking about furthering my education, I wonder if there are some courses in evil lair design I could take?”
"There's a catalog," Clarice answered, "Villainous Decor R Us. I'll loan you my copies so you can see if you want a subscription for yourself," stepping up to the telepath, she took a deep breath. She was not fond of the idea of someone in her head, even one of her teammates. Just because it was the best option did not mean she had to like it. "You ready then?"
“That would be great. I have been thinking about livening up the suite some, and some skulls and red uplighting would be just the thing,” Betsy smiled beatifically. The other woman’s discomfort was strong enough to pick up even without peeking and she didn’t want to add to it by appearing too serious. “I’ll keep the connection as light as I can; basically I’ll point you in the direction where the mental signals are strongest, you'll get as close as you can, then I'll scan them to identify whether they’re friend or foe. Does that sound doable?”
"Yeah, let's just....sorry if my brain's a bag of cats, I'm just the meatsuit it's trapped in," Clarice replied, squaring her shoulders. It wasn't personal and she was glad that Betsy wasn't taking it that way. Despite living with telepaths for half her life, she actually didn't have them in her head very often, so this was weird. Not bad though. Just different. "I've got some great Pinterest Pins for that sort of decor, too. Maybe some faux poison bottles? A bit of cobweb?" She teleported in, grateful that Betsy felt more like a...presence that got more or less intense depending on how she moved.
~I’m just here for the ride, really. Probably a lot like when you carry someone through a portal, actually,~ Betsy replied with a mental equivalent of a shrug before getting back on task. ~I can sense three different groups, but it’s too faint to tell who they are from this distance,~ she said and passed Clarice the directions to each of them, highlighting one. ~This one is probably the strongest of them.~
Heading in the direction of the strongest group, Clarice physically shrugged. She had no idea if that translated mentally or not, but it felt weird to say 'shrug' silently in her head. "A lot lighter though," she was limited by mass when teleporting, though she had managed some fairly extreme numbers when properly motivated. Most of the time it was never more than a person or two. She could lift a person, usually, in a fireman's carry so it wasn't that much to her thinking.
~Probably, yeah. Switchboard is fine but when I need to actually keep close contact with everyone it starts getting tricky, I can’t imagine it’s any easier when having to move them physically,~ Betsy continued before laying out a clearer map of the rooms ahead of Clarice. ~OK, you’re getting close so this would probably be a good time to get sneaky. I think it’s mostly kids in there, and they seem pretty scared so I doubt it’s voluntary. Two guards as far as I can tell but some of them are asleep so I can’t be sure.~
Sneaky? She was purple! But she did her best, moving silently and sticking to the shadows as much as possible. Two guards was nothing, but they weren't ready to alert anyone that they were here. Stealth over beating people. "You get the impression there's like....a central core and the prisoners are around that core?" Clarice asked, moving away from where the guards were. For a large compound, it all seemed to focus on something in the middle.
As Clarice got closer, Betsy discreetly prodded at the minds of the people she was approaching to get a better idea of who they were. ~Tsk tsk, seems that there’s another guard there who has fallen asleep on shift. A mutant of some sort but can’t tell his powers from here. Apart from him and the two from earlier these are all prisoners.~ She thought about Clarice’s question, charting out all the pings and tracing the pattern between them. ~It does seem like they have been gathered around something. It would be easier to keep them all in one place, not spread out like this,~ she admitted. ~It might make our job easier though - if you go around the perimeter you probably won’t run into anyone and we won’t have to double back.~
"Yeah, but pong and spoke...something's not kosher," she whispered, "I wanna know what's in the middle."
Clarice was not there to see it, but Betsy’s eyes went unfocussed for a moment, then widened. ~Uh oh. More people incoming, magic users as far as I can tell, and they are not keen on being disrupted. We should cut this short… Can you get back here?~ On second thought that was probably a silly question to ask a teleporter.
Reappearing instantly next to Betsy, Clarice looked at her, "Of course," she answered. "Can you get out of my head now? Please?”
“Only if you promise to take me back to the Blackbird,” Betsy replied. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”
Considering what they're facing, the X-Men go in for shock and awe, with Dominion andMarvel Girl Phoenix as the Shock.
"And there we go." Betsy's telepathic map imprinted across the whole team through the mental network. "In my experience, a group of guys chanting in the middle of an armed compound is a bad thing. I think we focus on them, see if we can interrupt whatever it is they think they're trying to accomplish here."
Jean nodded. "Sounds like a plan," she said. "I think I saw some flash grenades in one of their storage rooms. Perhaps we could use their weapons against them along with our own?"
"TK-directed flash grenade. That's all kinds of nasty in my head." Kane switched between the map in his head and the one he had visual on. "You start raining in the flash bangs and I'll hit them as they start reeling. Deal?"
Jean saluted. "Deal," she said with a light grin. "Give them the old razzle dazzle."
She nodded back behind them. "They're this way." A few minutes later after raiding the storage room, Jean had the flash bangs in hand.
"We just need to time this with the others, make sure they get the hostages out of the way." Kane said as they moved quickly into position, ready to make their move on the circle.
"Like I wouldn't?" Jean mused. "I'll keep an ear out." She tapped her temple.
"Technically keep a brain out? Is that the right expression?" He mused, breaking off with her in order to set up his own ambush. Shock and awe indeed; a nice reminder why you don't target mutant kids under the X-Men's watch.
"Close enough," Jean replied, scanning the group as they assembled to make a note of where everyone was. All they could do was hope that the other team would get the hostages out fast enough before they got too far in the ritual.
But before they knew it, Jean paused and sent a mental image to Garrison. ~They're clear. Get ready for the boom. In 3...2...1~
BOOM! BOOM!
Two loud bangs echoed throughout the chamber, sending out smoke. They had been set off at the same time, floating in midair before dropping halfway down. Then came another, and another.
The circle started to scatter as Kane appeared through the smoke, moving faster than any human ever could. He slammed into the group, muting his impact to avoid any deaths, but sending them flying. One moved for a gun, but Kane crushed his fingers with a backhanded swipe.
"Phoenix, don't let any of them flank me..." Phoenix... That was on the nose.
It seemed Jean hadn't heard him judging by the man that had started to run toward Garrison, readying his weapon to fire, but that man soon slammed head first into an invisible wall at full speed and dropped to the ground with a heavy thud like a stone.
"You got it," she said, telekinetically plucking the gun from the unconscious man's hand before breaking the gun into pieces.
Another two men ran toward Jean but got a flash grenade thrown near their feet instead, disorienting them before she sent them colliding into an actual wall.
"I feel a little like Batman."
"You look nothing like Christian Bale." Kane disarmed two of the men who charged him. "Or Michael Keaton." A clipped punch dropped another. "Michelle Pfeiffer. That I will give you."
"A blonde?" Jean used one of the men's hoods to blind him as he came at Garrison before smacking the man in the forehead with the butt of his gun to knock him out. "I'd say more Uma Thurman or Yvonne Craig."
One of the men tried shooting at her, but met a shield instead. Jean narrowed her eyes, telekinetically ripping the gun from his hand. She then used his hood to lift him off the ground, hanging him from one of the decorative poles that jutted from the ceiling so he was about 15 feet off the ground.
"Now sit there and consider rethinking your life choices."
"Confession time. I've only seen the two Michael Keaton ones and the newer series." The offhanded conversation didn't mesh with the terror being caused as Kane leveraged his speed and power to pack them into clusters and break them apart again.
Jean shrugged. "Same," she admitted as one of the guys Garrison sent flying bounced off the shield.
"Are we interrupting you?" one of the men shouted, but Jean sent a telekinetic blast to knock him back.
"Not really, carry on."
"So which one was Yvonne Craig?" He picked up one of the men with one arm and flung him underhanded into another two. "Was she in the one with George Clooney?"
"Look, we surrender, alright!"
"In a sec. We're trying to figure something out." Kane shot back.
Lifting a couple of men above her head telekinetically, they flailed about as Jean snorted. "God no. Adam West. At least the 60s ones were trying to be campy. Clooney had Alicia Silverstone and bat nipples."
She glanced up at the men. "Come on, you've seen the Batman movies, right? Help me out here. Tell him it wasn't great."
"LET US DOWN!" one shouted.
Jean rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you're not missing much."
"I guess we should let them give up." Kane sighed, reaching back and tossing a bundle of zip ties to Jean before moving from man to man himself, locking them up by the wrists and the ankles. "So, where was the main show here? Out here or elsewhere in the compound?"
The man motioned with his head towards the building ahead of them.
"I guess that's next. So, what, after we clean this up, watch the Adam West Bat-Man on the plane home?"
Jean gave the floating men and the one hung up by his hood their wish to be grounded before hog tying them each separately. "Only if you're prepared for the height of 1960s camp."
Next up is Team Awe - Colossus and Nightcrawler, who literally drop into the ritual.
Light flickered from the doorways set in the round concrete building and voices chanting in an unknown language began to rise in volume and pitch, working themselves up to a crescendo. To those familiar with magic, it was obvious they were getting to the important part of whatever ritual they were doing.
"Well, Herr Sefton, it looks like we have some work cut out for us." he told his partner. He'd found himself liking the German mutant, issues of faith aside. He was one of those rare few who walked the walk and didn't just talk the talk and he always tried to respect that. "Probably a goodly number of people around the perimeter, so if you're feeling up for it, you could drop me from above?" he asked. ":The more distracting I can be, the more you can do what you do unimpeded. Just be cautious, gunfire tends to ricochet off of my body. I'd hate to have to patch you up." he said with a smile. "We still need to expose me to, how did you call it, proper Deutschenbier?" he said with a chuckle. "And then I can repay the favor with vodka."
Kurt considered this idea, a smile slowly growing on his face. "I think that would do very well, and I have not done much teleporting today, so I should be able to manage it. What comes after will only be very short jumps, also... and yes, later there can be Deutschenbier."
"Excellent. Then, any time you're ready..." he said, staying in his human form to make the load far less on his friend. He didn't want to kill anyone, ever, but he was perfectly OK with knees and elbows and shoulders and collarbones being broken. Those would heal and serve as an excellent object lesson about getting in Colossus's way.
"You may wish a moment to prepare yourself", Kurt said, reaching for his shoulder. "I am told the first time I take a passenger can be hard on them."
He nodded, then took a slow and deep breath before releasing it. "Go." he said, and then they both disappeared in a cloud of dark blue smoke.
Shortly afterwards, the cultists found themselves either with an extremely heavy silver man falling on them from a great height, or a smaller blue figure cackling like a maniac as he popped in and out, hitting or kicking and gone again before they could retaliate.
Pyotr was careful to not actually kill anyone - he had no desire to and, as deluded as they were, these were just men. Men could change. Develop. Grow. Elbows, collarbones, and knees, however, were all fair game. They'd heal eventually and during their convalescence maybe they would examine their life choices. Unlikely, but it could happen. Bullets ricocheted off his metal body, to their great consternation, and did no damage to anything save his uniform. Sorcerers, strange men waving their hands in the air and speaking in strange tongues, those he left for the Amazing Nightcrawler.
The Amazing Nightcrawler was making short work of the sorcerers, always with an eye to where Colossus was so he could at least guess where the bullets were likely to be. "Sometimes", he called over between jumps, "I drop them in bodies of water to swim home. Have you seen one?"
"No, but you're lucky we're so close to a coast." he said back as he reached out and with a almost tender gesture shattered a guard's collarbone, which dropped him screaming. "I hope these men get prompt medical attention. Nothing I'm doing will kill anyone but it cannot be pleasant trying to drag yourself to medical care with various bits of you quite broken. Or so I imagine." he said with a gentle voice as he reached out to destroy another man's elbow.
“We can call the ambulance anonymously after we leave “, Kurt said in a casual tone calculated to unnerve the guards.
"We could!" Pyotr said agreeably as he dispatched another two men. "It seems that they're finally getting the message, Nightcrawler." he mused. "They seem to be heading away from where we are. Hardly sporting of them. Should we let them go?"
“If they are not leaving the building, I think we should follow them”, as Kurt turned to do just that. “Our job may not be complete.”
"You move far more quickly than I do. Perhaps you could dispatch them, or perhaps herd them back this way?" he said. "Could be an option - we definitely don't want to leave any bad people with guns or spells around." It still sounded ridiculous to be worried about something from children's tales but this night had disabused him of that notion - spellcasters were very real. Luckily, they had no better luck than the folks with guns at penetrating his hide, but why take chances?
“I will knock out those I can”. Kurt agreed, “and chase back those who need attention from Colossus.”
"Broken joints, handed out on demand." he joked, then cracked his knuckles. So far, if all the X-Men missions were like this one, he wasn't going to worry too much about getting hurt.
Once Colossus and Nightcrawler are done clearing out the bad guys, Blink, Pyslocke and Spectrum come in to free the victims of the ritual.
Dungeons like this were not Clarice's favourite places. It made no difference if they were dark and dank, wet and smelling or cold bright clinical lights. She hated them all and this one was no exception. "Let's get these guys off the wall and out of here," she instructed, standing in the middle of the space mentally triaging people before going to the worst looking and slicing through their restraints with a tiny sliver of portal. "Let's hurry so they keep breathing!" At least this time she didn't need to euthanize anyone.
Betsy was just glad this particular group of insane cultists had decided against metal restraints for their ritual. Her uniform’s switchblade could handle a lot but sawing through steel would have taken a lot more time, and these children — prisoners — didn’t look like they had a lot of it. Once again she wished she had a more physical powerset because as it was, she had to get each of them down while constantly worrying that one of the others would stop breathing because she was taking too long.
Nica, the third member of the rescue team, was doing her part by providing light for the other two, hovering in the air in the round, stark room, with an arched domed roof and almost as large as a concert hall. It had been hastily made of rough concrete, with four doorways each facing a compass point - north, south, east and west. And on the floor in the centre was the obligatory arcane circle, lines radiating to the three groups of prisoners tied to stakes set in a large triangle shape. The circle itself was shrouded in shadows that Nica's light couldn't pierce, and she wisely stayed away from it. Magic was just... too much and she wasn't messing with it for anything.
"I'll free the other group," she said to Betsy and Clarice, seeing both were occupied with their own groups, leaving the third still tied up. "I can---" Whatever it was she'd been about to say was interrupted by a blast of some kind of energy, smoky black and crawling over her light form as if trying to extinguish it.
"You'd do better to pay attention to your own welfare, child," cackled the source of the energy, a white-haired woman dressed in the Clan Akkaba robes of dark maroon. It was obvious she'd been on the receiving end of the shock and awe attack of the other team, one arm dangling uselessly by her side and blood dribbling from the corners of her mouth. But she obviously had some power left, as she gestured and flung the youngest X-Man into a wall, which she struck with a crunch and fell to the ground. Whatever magic the woman was using, it countered Nica's powers.
At the charge of ozone, Clarice half turned, leaving the girl she had just moved to free. She wasn't going anywhere for a minute or so. "Yeah, no," Clarice sighed, over it all. People weren't evil per se, but they clearly lost sight of things like morals when trying to accomplish their goals. Then again, so had she, "It's like this. You can limp away and maybe live. Or I'm gonna cut you limb from limb until you beg me for death, but you're done either way." A portal began to glow from her hand, starting as a sliver of purple before growing large enough to cut someone in half.
While she scanned the new threat and mentally readied herself for another battle, most of Betsy’s attention stayed on getting the prisoners to whatever relative safety she could offer them. There wasn’t much she could do against magic anyway, even less she could do against someone that could take down Nica and Clarice. But maybe she could save these prisoners.
The witch seemed a little taken aback by Clarice's speech, looking with uncertainty from her to Betsy. Then she seemed to make her decision, and flung another dark-shrouded bolt of energy towards the teleporter, aiming to wrap her in its coils - clearly the mutant needed her hands to use her powers.
Clarice did like to use her hands to aim her portals and whatnot. It made life much, much easier. Did she actually need to do it? No. It was just...her aim was otherwise mostly shit. Some of the coils were caught in her portal and sent elsewhere, but the rest hit her, wrapping around and tightening, preventing her from aiming more portals, "Oh, come on," Clarice groaned, mostly to herself.
Glaring, she sent a portal trying to go for a wrist. Something important, but not guaranteed lethal. She wasn't actually wanting to kill this bitch. It hit her in the hip. Damnit!
Gently putting down the girl she had just freed, Betsy sighed and let her psychic blade materialise in her hand. It was shorter than usual, shaped and balanced for throwing rather than slashing. “It really has been a rather long day, and I have neither the time nor the patience for you right now,” she told the wounded witch in a conversational tone, before launching the glowing knife towards her. If Clarice’s portal didn’t put her out hopefully that would.
It turned out a combination of things would work - as Clarice's portal glanced off the witch's hip, she staggered into the path of Betsy's psi-blade, which sank into the space between her eyes. The woman stiffened, eyes rolling up in her head before she collapsed into a limp heap.
There was a groan from Nica and the young X-Man stirred and pushed herself up on her elbow. "Man, that sucked," she said, rubbing at her forehead. "Have I mentioned I hate magic?"
"Fair," Clarice commented, "I think the only people that like it are the people that have it," she went to check on Nica quickly, "You okay?"
“Yeah. Just a bit rattled.” Nica climbed to her feet. “Let’s get them free before anything else happens.”
“As far as I know not even all magic users are fans,” Betsy said, looking from the unconscious woman to Nica and back again. “She is unlikely to be getting up any time soon, but there are still a bunch of people tied to the wall, and I don’t think the three of us can get them all down before someone bleeds out. I’ll ping the rest of the team and see if they can come lend us a hand.”
Faced with something not of this world, the rest of the team comes in to help rescue efforts. And find a surprise.
The air felt ionized as the X-Men gathered in the room. It was enough to make the hairs on their arms raise. The sensation was slowly disappearing as the minutes ticked by but it didn't stop the feeling of uncertainty. Whatever the group had sought to do, they had made something happen. The centre of the room, encompassed by the arcane circle, was shrouded in thick, black smoke.
Jean brought up a hand, turning her head as if hearing something.
"There's someone in there," she said quietly. "Be careful."
Opening a portal like a shield, Clarice tried not to twitch. "What's that thing Rogue used to say?" she asked the older X-Man, "This is twitchier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."
Kurt was hovering near the door, ready to go in at a moment's notice. "Can you tell how many are in there?"
From where she was freeing the last of "her" group of captives, Nica looked up, eyes glowing deep red and then ultraviolet as she cycled through the wavelengths. "Just the one?" she said, sounding uncertain. "There's a blob about the size of a person in infra-red, anyway. But the... spell is messing with the light waves." She said the word "spell" as if she was spitting out something that tasted bad.
Colossus stood by, apart from the others, ready to do his part if anything was asked of him. He was still the new guy on his first major deployment and so far he felt like a fifth wheel. Sure, he'd worked with Nightcrawler to clear the facility of hostiles, dragging them far enough out that they could receive medical attention and leave the base clear, but he felt superfluous. Unnecessary. But if they needed him, he was here to serve as he could.
"Even if it is a trap, there's a chance they are a victim. Fuck it." Kane said. "Nightcrawler, Blink, prep for an immediate teleport out if I yell. Psylocke, bridge what I'm seeing with the team." He crept forward, moving carefully in the gloom. As he got closer, the figure was obviously unconscious, lying on the floor. He let out a breath. "Phoenix and Blink, we have one down in here. Looks all clear. Psylocke, see if you can keep him out while they check him. No risks."
Passing the visual from Kane to the rest of the team didn’t require much concentration, so Betsy had a chance to get a good look in herself, both through Kane’s eyes and telepathically. Her eyes widened as she studied the passed out form. ~I can keep him unconscious without any trouble, but his mind is unlike anything I’ve come across before. There is something very wrong here, in case any of you had missed it.~
"None of this is right," Clarice pointed out, though this was far from the first mission like that. Far from the last one, too. Teleporting to the other side with Kane, she knelt down to take vitals. She hadn't brought the medic bag on this mission, not because they didn't need it, but because she was needed for more important things. They would just have to take their chances.
Kurt arrived seconds later with Jean in tow, considering the threat at least temporarily neutralised. "Different in what way, Psylocke? Has he been altered, or does it seem natural?"
Jean's eyes fluttered for a split second as she adjusted to the abrupt change in location, then crouched down, examining the young man for injuries. "I believe it's natural. Without a more thorough exam, it's safe to say physiologically he's not human. But beyond that, I'm not sure. He seems to have some bumps and bruises from the arrival. No severe injuries, though. And his clothes seem...pretty opulent."
"So we have a rich dude from another dimension?" Nica said, mostly rhetorically.
"Does it work like that? I mean, summoning a... you know what, it doesn't matter. We've got prisoners to get out of here and back home to focus on." Kane said, shaking his head. "Someone grab Sleeping Beauty and we'll figure things out on route."
"On it." Colossus said, moving to gently pick up the unconscious figure. He was careful to not exert too much pressure and to not aggravate any injuries the man may possess that he couldn't see.
Kurt looked around at his teammates, the unconscious man in Colossus' arms, and the twelve freed prisoners. "...I think the jet will be a little crowded on the way back."
“Do you think they all use the same architect? Or is there some catalog for ominous compounds that I just don’t know about?” Betsy was trying to keep her voice light to hide how badly the oppressive building was starting to get to her, not at all helped by the general feeling of panic she could sense in the hot night air. Panic presumably originating from the very kidnapping victims they were there to rescue. “I have been thinking about furthering my education, I wonder if there are some courses in evil lair design I could take?”
"There's a catalog," Clarice answered, "Villainous Decor R Us. I'll loan you my copies so you can see if you want a subscription for yourself," stepping up to the telepath, she took a deep breath. She was not fond of the idea of someone in her head, even one of her teammates. Just because it was the best option did not mean she had to like it. "You ready then?"
“That would be great. I have been thinking about livening up the suite some, and some skulls and red uplighting would be just the thing,” Betsy smiled beatifically. The other woman’s discomfort was strong enough to pick up even without peeking and she didn’t want to add to it by appearing too serious. “I’ll keep the connection as light as I can; basically I’ll point you in the direction where the mental signals are strongest, you'll get as close as you can, then I'll scan them to identify whether they’re friend or foe. Does that sound doable?”
"Yeah, let's just....sorry if my brain's a bag of cats, I'm just the meatsuit it's trapped in," Clarice replied, squaring her shoulders. It wasn't personal and she was glad that Betsy wasn't taking it that way. Despite living with telepaths for half her life, she actually didn't have them in her head very often, so this was weird. Not bad though. Just different. "I've got some great Pinterest Pins for that sort of decor, too. Maybe some faux poison bottles? A bit of cobweb?" She teleported in, grateful that Betsy felt more like a...presence that got more or less intense depending on how she moved.
~I’m just here for the ride, really. Probably a lot like when you carry someone through a portal, actually,~ Betsy replied with a mental equivalent of a shrug before getting back on task. ~I can sense three different groups, but it’s too faint to tell who they are from this distance,~ she said and passed Clarice the directions to each of them, highlighting one. ~This one is probably the strongest of them.~
Heading in the direction of the strongest group, Clarice physically shrugged. She had no idea if that translated mentally or not, but it felt weird to say 'shrug' silently in her head. "A lot lighter though," she was limited by mass when teleporting, though she had managed some fairly extreme numbers when properly motivated. Most of the time it was never more than a person or two. She could lift a person, usually, in a fireman's carry so it wasn't that much to her thinking.
~Probably, yeah. Switchboard is fine but when I need to actually keep close contact with everyone it starts getting tricky, I can’t imagine it’s any easier when having to move them physically,~ Betsy continued before laying out a clearer map of the rooms ahead of Clarice. ~OK, you’re getting close so this would probably be a good time to get sneaky. I think it’s mostly kids in there, and they seem pretty scared so I doubt it’s voluntary. Two guards as far as I can tell but some of them are asleep so I can’t be sure.~
Sneaky? She was purple! But she did her best, moving silently and sticking to the shadows as much as possible. Two guards was nothing, but they weren't ready to alert anyone that they were here. Stealth over beating people. "You get the impression there's like....a central core and the prisoners are around that core?" Clarice asked, moving away from where the guards were. For a large compound, it all seemed to focus on something in the middle.
As Clarice got closer, Betsy discreetly prodded at the minds of the people she was approaching to get a better idea of who they were. ~Tsk tsk, seems that there’s another guard there who has fallen asleep on shift. A mutant of some sort but can’t tell his powers from here. Apart from him and the two from earlier these are all prisoners.~ She thought about Clarice’s question, charting out all the pings and tracing the pattern between them. ~It does seem like they have been gathered around something. It would be easier to keep them all in one place, not spread out like this,~ she admitted. ~It might make our job easier though - if you go around the perimeter you probably won’t run into anyone and we won’t have to double back.~
"Yeah, but pong and spoke...something's not kosher," she whispered, "I wanna know what's in the middle."
Clarice was not there to see it, but Betsy’s eyes went unfocussed for a moment, then widened. ~Uh oh. More people incoming, magic users as far as I can tell, and they are not keen on being disrupted. We should cut this short… Can you get back here?~ On second thought that was probably a silly question to ask a teleporter.
Reappearing instantly next to Betsy, Clarice looked at her, "Of course," she answered. "Can you get out of my head now? Please?”
“Only if you promise to take me back to the Blackbird,” Betsy replied. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”
Considering what they're facing, the X-Men go in for shock and awe, with Dominion and
"And there we go." Betsy's telepathic map imprinted across the whole team through the mental network. "In my experience, a group of guys chanting in the middle of an armed compound is a bad thing. I think we focus on them, see if we can interrupt whatever it is they think they're trying to accomplish here."
Jean nodded. "Sounds like a plan," she said. "I think I saw some flash grenades in one of their storage rooms. Perhaps we could use their weapons against them along with our own?"
"TK-directed flash grenade. That's all kinds of nasty in my head." Kane switched between the map in his head and the one he had visual on. "You start raining in the flash bangs and I'll hit them as they start reeling. Deal?"
Jean saluted. "Deal," she said with a light grin. "Give them the old razzle dazzle."
She nodded back behind them. "They're this way." A few minutes later after raiding the storage room, Jean had the flash bangs in hand.
"We just need to time this with the others, make sure they get the hostages out of the way." Kane said as they moved quickly into position, ready to make their move on the circle.
"Like I wouldn't?" Jean mused. "I'll keep an ear out." She tapped her temple.
"Technically keep a brain out? Is that the right expression?" He mused, breaking off with her in order to set up his own ambush. Shock and awe indeed; a nice reminder why you don't target mutant kids under the X-Men's watch.
"Close enough," Jean replied, scanning the group as they assembled to make a note of where everyone was. All they could do was hope that the other team would get the hostages out fast enough before they got too far in the ritual.
But before they knew it, Jean paused and sent a mental image to Garrison. ~They're clear. Get ready for the boom. In 3...2...1~
BOOM! BOOM!
Two loud bangs echoed throughout the chamber, sending out smoke. They had been set off at the same time, floating in midair before dropping halfway down. Then came another, and another.
The circle started to scatter as Kane appeared through the smoke, moving faster than any human ever could. He slammed into the group, muting his impact to avoid any deaths, but sending them flying. One moved for a gun, but Kane crushed his fingers with a backhanded swipe.
"Phoenix, don't let any of them flank me..." Phoenix... That was on the nose.
It seemed Jean hadn't heard him judging by the man that had started to run toward Garrison, readying his weapon to fire, but that man soon slammed head first into an invisible wall at full speed and dropped to the ground with a heavy thud like a stone.
"You got it," she said, telekinetically plucking the gun from the unconscious man's hand before breaking the gun into pieces.
Another two men ran toward Jean but got a flash grenade thrown near their feet instead, disorienting them before she sent them colliding into an actual wall.
"I feel a little like Batman."
"You look nothing like Christian Bale." Kane disarmed two of the men who charged him. "Or Michael Keaton." A clipped punch dropped another. "Michelle Pfeiffer. That I will give you."
"A blonde?" Jean used one of the men's hoods to blind him as he came at Garrison before smacking the man in the forehead with the butt of his gun to knock him out. "I'd say more Uma Thurman or Yvonne Craig."
One of the men tried shooting at her, but met a shield instead. Jean narrowed her eyes, telekinetically ripping the gun from his hand. She then used his hood to lift him off the ground, hanging him from one of the decorative poles that jutted from the ceiling so he was about 15 feet off the ground.
"Now sit there and consider rethinking your life choices."
"Confession time. I've only seen the two Michael Keaton ones and the newer series." The offhanded conversation didn't mesh with the terror being caused as Kane leveraged his speed and power to pack them into clusters and break them apart again.
Jean shrugged. "Same," she admitted as one of the guys Garrison sent flying bounced off the shield.
"Are we interrupting you?" one of the men shouted, but Jean sent a telekinetic blast to knock him back.
"Not really, carry on."
"So which one was Yvonne Craig?" He picked up one of the men with one arm and flung him underhanded into another two. "Was she in the one with George Clooney?"
"Look, we surrender, alright!"
"In a sec. We're trying to figure something out." Kane shot back.
Lifting a couple of men above her head telekinetically, they flailed about as Jean snorted. "God no. Adam West. At least the 60s ones were trying to be campy. Clooney had Alicia Silverstone and bat nipples."
She glanced up at the men. "Come on, you've seen the Batman movies, right? Help me out here. Tell him it wasn't great."
"LET US DOWN!" one shouted.
Jean rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you're not missing much."
"I guess we should let them give up." Kane sighed, reaching back and tossing a bundle of zip ties to Jean before moving from man to man himself, locking them up by the wrists and the ankles. "So, where was the main show here? Out here or elsewhere in the compound?"
The man motioned with his head towards the building ahead of them.
"I guess that's next. So, what, after we clean this up, watch the Adam West Bat-Man on the plane home?"
Jean gave the floating men and the one hung up by his hood their wish to be grounded before hog tying them each separately. "Only if you're prepared for the height of 1960s camp."
Next up is Team Awe - Colossus and Nightcrawler, who literally drop into the ritual.
Light flickered from the doorways set in the round concrete building and voices chanting in an unknown language began to rise in volume and pitch, working themselves up to a crescendo. To those familiar with magic, it was obvious they were getting to the important part of whatever ritual they were doing.
"Well, Herr Sefton, it looks like we have some work cut out for us." he told his partner. He'd found himself liking the German mutant, issues of faith aside. He was one of those rare few who walked the walk and didn't just talk the talk and he always tried to respect that. "Probably a goodly number of people around the perimeter, so if you're feeling up for it, you could drop me from above?" he asked. ":The more distracting I can be, the more you can do what you do unimpeded. Just be cautious, gunfire tends to ricochet off of my body. I'd hate to have to patch you up." he said with a smile. "We still need to expose me to, how did you call it, proper Deutschenbier?" he said with a chuckle. "And then I can repay the favor with vodka."
Kurt considered this idea, a smile slowly growing on his face. "I think that would do very well, and I have not done much teleporting today, so I should be able to manage it. What comes after will only be very short jumps, also... and yes, later there can be Deutschenbier."
"Excellent. Then, any time you're ready..." he said, staying in his human form to make the load far less on his friend. He didn't want to kill anyone, ever, but he was perfectly OK with knees and elbows and shoulders and collarbones being broken. Those would heal and serve as an excellent object lesson about getting in Colossus's way.
"You may wish a moment to prepare yourself", Kurt said, reaching for his shoulder. "I am told the first time I take a passenger can be hard on them."
He nodded, then took a slow and deep breath before releasing it. "Go." he said, and then they both disappeared in a cloud of dark blue smoke.
Shortly afterwards, the cultists found themselves either with an extremely heavy silver man falling on them from a great height, or a smaller blue figure cackling like a maniac as he popped in and out, hitting or kicking and gone again before they could retaliate.
Pyotr was careful to not actually kill anyone - he had no desire to and, as deluded as they were, these were just men. Men could change. Develop. Grow. Elbows, collarbones, and knees, however, were all fair game. They'd heal eventually and during their convalescence maybe they would examine their life choices. Unlikely, but it could happen. Bullets ricocheted off his metal body, to their great consternation, and did no damage to anything save his uniform. Sorcerers, strange men waving their hands in the air and speaking in strange tongues, those he left for the Amazing Nightcrawler.
The Amazing Nightcrawler was making short work of the sorcerers, always with an eye to where Colossus was so he could at least guess where the bullets were likely to be. "Sometimes", he called over between jumps, "I drop them in bodies of water to swim home. Have you seen one?"
"No, but you're lucky we're so close to a coast." he said back as he reached out and with a almost tender gesture shattered a guard's collarbone, which dropped him screaming. "I hope these men get prompt medical attention. Nothing I'm doing will kill anyone but it cannot be pleasant trying to drag yourself to medical care with various bits of you quite broken. Or so I imagine." he said with a gentle voice as he reached out to destroy another man's elbow.
“We can call the ambulance anonymously after we leave “, Kurt said in a casual tone calculated to unnerve the guards.
"We could!" Pyotr said agreeably as he dispatched another two men. "It seems that they're finally getting the message, Nightcrawler." he mused. "They seem to be heading away from where we are. Hardly sporting of them. Should we let them go?"
“If they are not leaving the building, I think we should follow them”, as Kurt turned to do just that. “Our job may not be complete.”
"You move far more quickly than I do. Perhaps you could dispatch them, or perhaps herd them back this way?" he said. "Could be an option - we definitely don't want to leave any bad people with guns or spells around." It still sounded ridiculous to be worried about something from children's tales but this night had disabused him of that notion - spellcasters were very real. Luckily, they had no better luck than the folks with guns at penetrating his hide, but why take chances?
“I will knock out those I can”. Kurt agreed, “and chase back those who need attention from Colossus.”
"Broken joints, handed out on demand." he joked, then cracked his knuckles. So far, if all the X-Men missions were like this one, he wasn't going to worry too much about getting hurt.
Once Colossus and Nightcrawler are done clearing out the bad guys, Blink, Pyslocke and Spectrum come in to free the victims of the ritual.
Dungeons like this were not Clarice's favourite places. It made no difference if they were dark and dank, wet and smelling or cold bright clinical lights. She hated them all and this one was no exception. "Let's get these guys off the wall and out of here," she instructed, standing in the middle of the space mentally triaging people before going to the worst looking and slicing through their restraints with a tiny sliver of portal. "Let's hurry so they keep breathing!" At least this time she didn't need to euthanize anyone.
Betsy was just glad this particular group of insane cultists had decided against metal restraints for their ritual. Her uniform’s switchblade could handle a lot but sawing through steel would have taken a lot more time, and these children — prisoners — didn’t look like they had a lot of it. Once again she wished she had a more physical powerset because as it was, she had to get each of them down while constantly worrying that one of the others would stop breathing because she was taking too long.
Nica, the third member of the rescue team, was doing her part by providing light for the other two, hovering in the air in the round, stark room, with an arched domed roof and almost as large as a concert hall. It had been hastily made of rough concrete, with four doorways each facing a compass point - north, south, east and west. And on the floor in the centre was the obligatory arcane circle, lines radiating to the three groups of prisoners tied to stakes set in a large triangle shape. The circle itself was shrouded in shadows that Nica's light couldn't pierce, and she wisely stayed away from it. Magic was just... too much and she wasn't messing with it for anything.
"I'll free the other group," she said to Betsy and Clarice, seeing both were occupied with their own groups, leaving the third still tied up. "I can---" Whatever it was she'd been about to say was interrupted by a blast of some kind of energy, smoky black and crawling over her light form as if trying to extinguish it.
"You'd do better to pay attention to your own welfare, child," cackled the source of the energy, a white-haired woman dressed in the Clan Akkaba robes of dark maroon. It was obvious she'd been on the receiving end of the shock and awe attack of the other team, one arm dangling uselessly by her side and blood dribbling from the corners of her mouth. But she obviously had some power left, as she gestured and flung the youngest X-Man into a wall, which she struck with a crunch and fell to the ground. Whatever magic the woman was using, it countered Nica's powers.
At the charge of ozone, Clarice half turned, leaving the girl she had just moved to free. She wasn't going anywhere for a minute or so. "Yeah, no," Clarice sighed, over it all. People weren't evil per se, but they clearly lost sight of things like morals when trying to accomplish their goals. Then again, so had she, "It's like this. You can limp away and maybe live. Or I'm gonna cut you limb from limb until you beg me for death, but you're done either way." A portal began to glow from her hand, starting as a sliver of purple before growing large enough to cut someone in half.
While she scanned the new threat and mentally readied herself for another battle, most of Betsy’s attention stayed on getting the prisoners to whatever relative safety she could offer them. There wasn’t much she could do against magic anyway, even less she could do against someone that could take down Nica and Clarice. But maybe she could save these prisoners.
The witch seemed a little taken aback by Clarice's speech, looking with uncertainty from her to Betsy. Then she seemed to make her decision, and flung another dark-shrouded bolt of energy towards the teleporter, aiming to wrap her in its coils - clearly the mutant needed her hands to use her powers.
Clarice did like to use her hands to aim her portals and whatnot. It made life much, much easier. Did she actually need to do it? No. It was just...her aim was otherwise mostly shit. Some of the coils were caught in her portal and sent elsewhere, but the rest hit her, wrapping around and tightening, preventing her from aiming more portals, "Oh, come on," Clarice groaned, mostly to herself.
Glaring, she sent a portal trying to go for a wrist. Something important, but not guaranteed lethal. She wasn't actually wanting to kill this bitch. It hit her in the hip. Damnit!
Gently putting down the girl she had just freed, Betsy sighed and let her psychic blade materialise in her hand. It was shorter than usual, shaped and balanced for throwing rather than slashing. “It really has been a rather long day, and I have neither the time nor the patience for you right now,” she told the wounded witch in a conversational tone, before launching the glowing knife towards her. If Clarice’s portal didn’t put her out hopefully that would.
It turned out a combination of things would work - as Clarice's portal glanced off the witch's hip, she staggered into the path of Betsy's psi-blade, which sank into the space between her eyes. The woman stiffened, eyes rolling up in her head before she collapsed into a limp heap.
There was a groan from Nica and the young X-Man stirred and pushed herself up on her elbow. "Man, that sucked," she said, rubbing at her forehead. "Have I mentioned I hate magic?"
"Fair," Clarice commented, "I think the only people that like it are the people that have it," she went to check on Nica quickly, "You okay?"
“Yeah. Just a bit rattled.” Nica climbed to her feet. “Let’s get them free before anything else happens.”
“As far as I know not even all magic users are fans,” Betsy said, looking from the unconscious woman to Nica and back again. “She is unlikely to be getting up any time soon, but there are still a bunch of people tied to the wall, and I don’t think the three of us can get them all down before someone bleeds out. I’ll ping the rest of the team and see if they can come lend us a hand.”
Faced with something not of this world, the rest of the team comes in to help rescue efforts. And find a surprise.
The air felt ionized as the X-Men gathered in the room. It was enough to make the hairs on their arms raise. The sensation was slowly disappearing as the minutes ticked by but it didn't stop the feeling of uncertainty. Whatever the group had sought to do, they had made something happen. The centre of the room, encompassed by the arcane circle, was shrouded in thick, black smoke.
Jean brought up a hand, turning her head as if hearing something.
"There's someone in there," she said quietly. "Be careful."
Opening a portal like a shield, Clarice tried not to twitch. "What's that thing Rogue used to say?" she asked the older X-Man, "This is twitchier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."
Kurt was hovering near the door, ready to go in at a moment's notice. "Can you tell how many are in there?"
From where she was freeing the last of "her" group of captives, Nica looked up, eyes glowing deep red and then ultraviolet as she cycled through the wavelengths. "Just the one?" she said, sounding uncertain. "There's a blob about the size of a person in infra-red, anyway. But the... spell is messing with the light waves." She said the word "spell" as if she was spitting out something that tasted bad.
Colossus stood by, apart from the others, ready to do his part if anything was asked of him. He was still the new guy on his first major deployment and so far he felt like a fifth wheel. Sure, he'd worked with Nightcrawler to clear the facility of hostiles, dragging them far enough out that they could receive medical attention and leave the base clear, but he felt superfluous. Unnecessary. But if they needed him, he was here to serve as he could.
"Even if it is a trap, there's a chance they are a victim. Fuck it." Kane said. "Nightcrawler, Blink, prep for an immediate teleport out if I yell. Psylocke, bridge what I'm seeing with the team." He crept forward, moving carefully in the gloom. As he got closer, the figure was obviously unconscious, lying on the floor. He let out a breath. "Phoenix and Blink, we have one down in here. Looks all clear. Psylocke, see if you can keep him out while they check him. No risks."
Passing the visual from Kane to the rest of the team didn’t require much concentration, so Betsy had a chance to get a good look in herself, both through Kane’s eyes and telepathically. Her eyes widened as she studied the passed out form. ~I can keep him unconscious without any trouble, but his mind is unlike anything I’ve come across before. There is something very wrong here, in case any of you had missed it.~
"None of this is right," Clarice pointed out, though this was far from the first mission like that. Far from the last one, too. Teleporting to the other side with Kane, she knelt down to take vitals. She hadn't brought the medic bag on this mission, not because they didn't need it, but because she was needed for more important things. They would just have to take their chances.
Kurt arrived seconds later with Jean in tow, considering the threat at least temporarily neutralised. "Different in what way, Psylocke? Has he been altered, or does it seem natural?"
Jean's eyes fluttered for a split second as she adjusted to the abrupt change in location, then crouched down, examining the young man for injuries. "I believe it's natural. Without a more thorough exam, it's safe to say physiologically he's not human. But beyond that, I'm not sure. He seems to have some bumps and bruises from the arrival. No severe injuries, though. And his clothes seem...pretty opulent."
"So we have a rich dude from another dimension?" Nica said, mostly rhetorically.
"Does it work like that? I mean, summoning a... you know what, it doesn't matter. We've got prisoners to get out of here and back home to focus on." Kane said, shaking his head. "Someone grab Sleeping Beauty and we'll figure things out on route."
"On it." Colossus said, moving to gently pick up the unconscious figure. He was careful to not exert too much pressure and to not aggravate any injuries the man may possess that he couldn't see.
Kurt looked around at his teammates, the unconscious man in Colossus' arms, and the twelve freed prisoners. "...I think the jet will be a little crowded on the way back."
