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xp_logs2024-01-07 03:37 pm
xp_dominion) wrote in xp_logs2024-01-07 03:37 pm
Behold A Pale Horse - Part 6
Conduit and the rest of the eyes in the sky continue to direct resources around the scene.
Nodding, Liam clipped the earpiece Darcy handed him on the collar of his shirt and picked up the binoculars heading closer to her edge, surveying what was going on. "Can you.... that guy in the middle," he was waving a gun around, though not shooting people, at least not yet.
Darcy focused her scope. "Dark blue shirt with the logo waving the gun? Yes, but..." She tapped her comm. "Tarot, is there anyone nearby that can swipe the gun from the dude in the dark blue shirt? And maybe knock him out, while we're at it? Wanna save my shots for people that actually–" she broke off as her roommate's voice entered her ear, and as she adjusted her scope she saw a brief flash in the mob pounding on her roommate's shield. 'I don't fucking think so,' she snarled quietly, pulling the trigger without hesitation."–deserve it," she finished, letting out a slow breath.
"Directing Skin towards Dark Blue Shirt and Company." Marie-Ange answered, and then her voice dropped to a near inaudible mumble as she switched to a private channel to relay those instructions. "I have Angel as eyes in the sky, if Spot needs a break, call him in." She came back to Darcy - and Liam - with a lighter tone. She'd sent that boy up to make use of his eyesight, but not without attempting to give him an out that would not hurt a teenager's ego. "Apologies for the codename, I only know three fictional ginger cats."
"I don't think he'd appreciate Simba, even if it's some level of appropriate," Darcy replied dryly. "Are you sure you trust Wings and I in the same area where mayhem is happening? I'm touched by this trust in our collective ability to rein the other in." She was grinning as she said it, lightly scanning the area through her scope. A flash of purple caught her attention, but it was Madin, working in tandem with Sue. That was nice to see. "You got anything, fuzzbutt?"
"A desperate need for a codename you guys don't pick," he responded automatically, eyes glued to the scene below. "11 o'clock, waving.... is that an ax? Who has an ax in NYC?"
"Calm your shorts, Slinky Malinki. Generally you get to choose your own codename. But until you have one, I'm running through every fictional and not-so-fictional cat I can." Darcy's voice was light, but she was all business as she focused on the crowd. "Yeah, that's a–" she cut off as the person started to swing, focusing down and taking a shot as the crowd around the ax-wielder screamed and scattered. "Taken care of. Tarot, can Day get the city to do some composting?"
"Quite." Marie-Ange's comm went quiet for a moment. "She reports Clan Akkaba movements, map coming to your phones now." A few taps, and both Liam and Darcy had phone screenshots, marked up with colored lines from reports. Below, the street shifted, asphalt and concrete stretching around a sewer grate heading towards the dead body. Rats peeked up through the grate, and swarmed the dead man.
Death faces Wanda, Topaz and seemingly the city itself.
He had forgotten a cardinal rule of teleportation: do not attempt to do so around a probability-manipulator. Especially not one that specialised in chaos. The pain was one thing, but it was sheer luck he hadn't ended up inside a wall -- and while luck was something he now had in abundance, he'd be a fool to rely upon it.
He didn't have a choice. Whether this version of her had known him or not, he remembered her. And he knew Maximoff's powers well enough to know she could ruin this.
It would have to be a chase, then.
Death unceremoniously kicked open the door of the laundromat he'd found himself in and strode back into the street. Sharpening his hands into talons, the Horseman buried them into the side of the building and began a swift ascent. Once he'd achieved sufficient altitude he turned to scan for a familiar power signature.
A flock of pigeons exploded into his face. in a cloud of feathers, beaks and claws. Then they retreated just as abruptly, leaving Death smeared with pigeon poop and scattered feathers, a kind of urban tarring and feathering.
Death flinched back in surprise, swiping a hand in front of his face to bat away the avian assault even as the flock disappeared in a rush of wings and angry babble.
Where did-
Wanda stood in the middle of the street he'd just left, awash in bright red as the chaos swirled around her hands. Her face hardened in the glow as she felt - saw - touched the pieces of Arthur's powers that had been absorbed by Death. The light around her vanished as she widened her arms and gave him a smile - 'come and get me' she basically said as the roof under his feet suddenly gave out, concrete crumbling into fine sand.
Without missing a beat Death thinned and curved the bones of his tibia and fibula into a flexible configuration designed to absorb and return the force of impact. The instant his feet hit the ground all the energy of his fall was redirected into a burst of speed in Wanda's direction. His breathing fell into the easy regularity of a practised athlete, his grotesquely bowed legs pumping beneath him like pistons.
Very well. Wanda wasn't the only one who could pull a few strings.
The Horseman's left eye flared.
The force of Death's impact on the ground rode the wave of stolen luck and slammed into Wanda, causing her to stagger as the street beneath her own feet started to go. It was like a punch to the gut, kidney, and heart all at once, with her vision exploding in a sea of white and red as Arthur's powers hit her like a truck. She could feel the ribbons of her strings start to untie and loosen and she cursed as she tried to move out of the way.
But Death was moving impossibly fast, faster than she could avoid without a distraction. Wanda slammed her hands down on the street, sending her powers in front of her as quickly as she could, focusing on pulling those lost strings back to her right as he stepped onto the manhole cover.
Pressurised steam and decaying pipes met Wanda's powers with an explosion that, for something without actual fire, was quite impressive.
Chunks of metal and asphalt hurtled toward the Horseman at terminal velocity, yet somehow his body contrived to be in the path of none of them. The steam was more problematic. Mutant auras were easy to detect in a crowd, yes, but he still needed eyes on their physical bodies.
Death felt a disproportionate stab of outrage at the city that seemed bent on thwarting him and the people who sought to delay him. It needed an outlet.
The power he'd taken from Centino lacked the ability to view lines of probability he'd been able to perceive with similar mutations, but the theory stood: it had to be tempered with balance. Pull too hard in one direction and the results became erratic. Keep pushing, and it could even result in a backlash. It was one of the reasons having two probability-wielders on the same field often required careful coordination.
Wanda's attack had created quite a bit of debris. It was the work of a moment to scoop up a piece of loose pavement. Then, without bothering to aim, Death hurled the chunk of concrete into the cloud of steam like a cannon.
Let it be a lucky shot.
For one moment - less than a second, less than heartbeat - Wanda's world was awash in grey. The vibrant hues of reds that colored her world every time she used her power was snuffed out as her own strings, for that one moment, went utterly slack. Her eyes widened.
Something snapped and fizzled within her, her vision once again blood red. There was no time. Almost every possibility led to those grey, dull strings. Almost.
Because where Death had dug up the pavement, he'd left deep crevices in the already broken stone and concrete. Twin bolts of entropic energy slammed into the projectile as true as Wanda could even as she was trying to move quickly backwards. It shattered in half, one part ending up in a taxi windshield while the other one nearly took out Wanda's legs. Pelted and cut with debris, Wanda was bleeding but very much alive.
And pissed.
The Horseman hefted another piece of concrete, jogging it in one hand like a baseball.
"Entertaining as this may be, only one of us bleeds," Death called into the dispersing vapour. "How long do you-"
A weather-stained gargoyle, split from its cornice, struck Death directly across the shoulders.
No amount of armour or physical augmentation could counter gravity. The Horseman went down.
That felt personal. Wiping blood out of her eyes, Wanda made a note to buy Amanda's next few rounds at Harry's.
"Oh, I will last as long as I need to, bleeding or not." She crouched down and laid a hand again to the ground. "But I'd like to move this along."
The street, already broken and cracked from the exploding pipes, groaned from under the weight of the broken gargoyle that lay across Death. It didn't take much nudging from Wanda to convince that portion to give way in a quiet rumble, taking Death - and his new concrete friend - down into the sewers below.
"And, considering I'm pretty sure I nearly died, you little shit, I hope that hurt."
It did not. In fact, it only enraged.
Death erupted from the rubble and launched himself upwards, catching himself on the lip of the street to lever himself up through sheer arm strength alone. The pulse of anger was back, stronger now, and Death felt his vision constrict to a black-edged tunnel of fury. Caution and strategy evaporated: suddenly all he could think was how dare she.
He saw her retreating aura just as she disappeared around a corner. Bracing himself like a runner, Death changed. Spine and arms lengthened beneath his jointed armour, and he exploded after her on all fours with the power of a lunging tiger.
And then he wasn't.
Not because he had stopped on his own, but because twin spikes of pure, magical energy had burst out of the ground on his left and his right, effectively skewering him as he tried to leap.
Marius Laverne had never met Topaz, not really. She had been a teenager, and he never had a reason to really see her as anything more than his friend's student, or Amanda's duckling, or "the magic kid who screwed up again."
So Death couldn't have been prepared for the young woman who stepped out from behind the smoldering ruins of a car, magic sparking around her fingers as the spikes holding Death in place crackled dangerously. Nor could he have been prepared for the sudden onslaught of fury, outrage, all-consuming anger that suddenly flooded his mind on repeat.
Death's entire body seized as the smouldering rage roared into an inferno. His own, his attacker's, the rioters', the very city's -- it all screamed through an ever-tightening echo chamber of hate that scoured his soul like acid. As he writhed between the two spears of light he managed to form one thought:
Empathy--
Topaz wasn't stupid enough to get close, or to let up on her emotional assault. She kept her distance as she slowly circled, watching Death writhe as much as the spikes would allow. And for good measure, she sent a magical shock through them with a click of her fingers. Then she tapped her ear piece.
"I've got him pinned down. Probably won't be moving any time soon, but if someone wants to get here with better containment-"
Death shrieked as the current of magic hit him. He'd experienced pain before, but nothing like this. It cut through even the onslaught of emotions, like loops of razor wire constricting around his heart. Something wrong, unendurable--
Neither knowing nor caring the destination, the Horseman disappeared.
Wanda's voice came across the comms. "Shit, he just teleported out of our area. Does anyone have eyes on him?"
"Nowhere in a five-mile radius," Topaz added. "Something tells me he got as far as he possibly could."
Thanks to her powers, Hope and Artie are able to do something no one ever had: ambush Death.
What had that attack been? He hadn't been able to absorb it. Magic. It must have been magic. Death's skin still crawled beneath its armour, his chest throbbing. Painful, but he could bear it. He merely needed time to get steady again.
By arresting his teleportation before completing the process he could stand just askew of the world, not close enough to touch, but close enough to observe what transpired around him. Distorted, perhaps, like looking at the world through smoked glass, but there was one thing he could always perceive: other mutants. Their signatures luminesced through the darkness like stars. If any came close, he would know.
Between was a poor place to recover. The sulfurous air was breathable, but barely -- the power excavated from his genetic memory could compensate only so much. It wasn't a place meant to sustain life. The atmosphere was so corrosive even his armour was beginning to blacken. Soon he would need to emerge.
Soon. But not yet.
There... he had vanished yet again. Hope 'narrowed' her eyes a little as her ghost form floated above the battlefield. So far she had not been able to do much, just a little scouting... But she had noticed an odd shimmer when he seemed to vanish the last time, like something she could see from the corner or her eye, but unable to quite define it.
Luckily her ghost form did not need to blink and she sunk into herself, staring at where she'd seen that strange shimmer again. If only she could grasp it... she could track him...
When Death had vanished again, Artie had stopped, taking stock of the situation. His powers weren't suited to this kind of drawn out battle. He looked around, spotting... Hope? It might have been Hope, shimmering in the air. He hoped so, because otherwise there was another player on the field.
The odd shimmer from the corner of her eyes flickered as she focused on it more and more and she reached out, letting the waves roar up just a little in the back of her mind. Not on her way to the astral plane, but just touching that other world... slowly the flickers began to come together, almost forming like a smooth dome, but then in the shape of a person.
Passing through the veil was like stepping through a spider web. The gateway of Between stretched greasily across his skin before disgorging him back into reality. He staggered a step and caught himself against a wall, heaving as his lungs transitioned from one atmosphere to another. The effects of Topaz's magic still crackled across his nerves like an electric current. The Horseman stood there, panting.
There... his now aura blazed a strangely muted orange, threaded with red, but the shape was unmistakable. 'Everyone...' Her mind rang out. 'I can now track our opponent when he shifts out of reality. I suggest we make use of the next time he does so...'
Artie needed mobility to be any use when Death reappeared. It was a hard sell in Manhattan but the regular traffic had cleared in the chaos, cars and pedestrians fleeing from the battles. He began to move through the abandoned cars, looking for something suitable, settling on a range rover. Well, someone was going to have fun with insurance.
Breathing steadied, the Horseman slipped Between once more. Death's steps in the twilight world became surer as the lingering effects of the last attack finally began to leave his system. Maximoff was still somewhere nearby, fouling teleportation. He needed to create distance.
No sooner than Artie had taken a seat behind the range rover's wheel then the radio clicked on and Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones began blaring: 'Hey, ho, let's go, hey ho, let's go." came the signature opening, and then the first verse, apparently stuck on repeat: "They're forming in straight line / They're going through a tight wind / The kids are losing their minds / The blitzkrieg bop."
Artie nodded. "Got it," he replied through synthesiser and comms. God knew if Amanda could hear the response. He threw it into gear, mounting the curb and taking out a pair of trash cans as he moved past a car stalled in the street.
The effects of the empathic attack were finally wearing off. At last clarity was returning. His blind teleport had taken him from the city center; he should return if possible. He strove for efficiency.
Time to get his bearings. Once more, the Horseman prepared himself to slip back into reality.
The colors of his aura slowly became less muted, the flickers and shimmering decreasing. " Be ready everyone! He is going to appear any moment now..." Hope quickly projected, lifting her arm and pointing: "... right there!"
It was a little like the parting of the Red Sea. As soon as Hope had spoken, the road ahead of Artie rose up, as if someone had pinched the surface and pulled upwards. Cars, trash cans, newspaper boxes, all sorts of debris all rolled down either side of the black peak in a clatter. Then the road sank down again, flat, unencumbered, a straight line between the Range Rover and the spot Hope had indicated.
I live my life a quarter mile at a time rang in Artie's ears as he hit the clutch and accelerator, revving the engine. Three, two, one... go. He put it into gear and took off, getting as much juice out of second as he could before shifting into third and hitting 45 miles an hour.
The rev of an engine itself wasn't particularly notable, but it did seem odd it appeared to be getting closer. Automatically, Death turned in the direction of the sound.
This would only work if he could keep Death in one place. Artie couldn't cloak the whole road but could create a bubble of illusion 30 feet wide and tall across it. Within it, the world fractured, splintered and recombined, whirling around Death.
The Horseman's perceptions spun in a disorienting kaleidoscope of shapes and colors. The sudden clash between the visual input and what his body knew to be true struck him with a wave of motion sickness severe enough to make him stagger.
Unfortunately, the direction he stumbled was away from the building and into the street.
The problem with an illusion like this was that once it was up, nothing inside the field was visible outside. Artie had a ten count before he'd be there. "Hope! Location!"
Quickly turning her head, Hope blinked once at the car quickly speeding at them, Artie's aura full of determination blazing from behind the wheel. "Two'clock for if you turn now!" She hurriedly projected, a little piece of her scouting training under the Archduke surging to the fore.
Artie adjusted his trajectory slightly and drove straight into the illusion he couldn't drop without losing the element of surprise. His car hit something and he jerked forward and back in the seat, airbag inflating and sending searing pain across his face as his nose broke.
As it turned out, the ability to absorb and neutralize the vast majority of mutant powers was less effective against a direct hit from an SUV.
Death landed in the windshield of an entirely different car, which came as a shock since he had never seen the first. From his point of view, the brief period he'd spent airborne had only been an extension of the labyrinthine riot his eyes were reporting. It was, therefore, something of a surprise when the visual distortions vanished to reveal a steaming and hugely dented range rover directly in front of him.
The Horseman stared at the car in disbelief.
"What sort of absolutely mental . . ."
"He is distracted and weakened for the moment. Take your chance everyone!" Hope projected as widely as she could, keeping a close eye on the situation in case Death decided to vanish from sight again.
Death had just enough time to register a familiar pop of displaced air somewhere above, instantly followed by another almost on top of him. A dark figure reaching for him from within a wash of brimstone filled his vision. Three-fingered hands gripped the Horseman by the arms, and then both were gone.
Artie watched him vanish, dizzy and dazed from the impact and began to slowly climb out of the car, pain shooting through his neck and shoulders to match the sharp stab from his nose and ribs.
Death had definitely vanished from sight for the moment. If she'd been corporeal, Hope would have let out a small sigh, but for now she simply floated over to the truck to check on its driver. Death might return soon enough and they needed to be ready.
Doug and Kevin support the spotting efforts, with Sydney employing his decades of experience as a sniper against their foes.
"Fuck, I hate urban combat." Kevin said, pivoting around the roof with his scope, bouncing from situation to situation, occasionally pausing to look with his mutant augmented vision. "Avenue C is open again. Send any groups out that way."
"Could be worse, last time I was in a spot like this, we were in Pripyat." Doug hummed a snatch of music to himself before settling in and scanning the streets below with his binoculars.
"Pripyat? Interesting asshole of the Soviet Union to be in. Sorry, Ukraine now." Kevin went back to his scope. "I once had a tremendous meal there. 1986. We thought we had a line on an even bigger breakup of the USSR at the time."
"We were running an enhanced assassin to ground at an old bolt-hole there. Matter of fact, I was the one in your spot on that one," Doug admitted, nodding at the rifle. ~Sexy sniper man, you come pick up lady friend, Wade only charge you fi'dolla~. The sting of memory made him wince, but not enough to take his focus away. "I make a group of Clan Akkaba mystics trying to marshal in a bodega, six hundred yards."
"I got them." Kevin sighted down the scope, muttering to himself. "Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine." There was a brief crack and the cult member in the centre, wearing the blood red mantle with the Clan Akkaba sigil in the middle dropped as part of his head disappeared in a plume of gore. The rest scattered in all directions.
"I love when the 'leaders' feel the need to wear something conspicuous and self-identifying. Makes things so much easier. Sefton, body on 6th and Avenue C."
Doug cocked his head, guessing the line was something Kevin did to settle himself before a shot. "Ulysses?" he asked as he kept scanning.
Kevin nodded. "Tennyson, not Joyce. Ugh, Joyce." He said. Very few of the team had ever witnessed him behind a sniper rifle on the rare occasions that called for it. "This is a fundamentally stupid plan, when you think about it. Containment can't last more than twenty minutes tops. It's basically a suicide run for Clan Akkaba. I wonder what bullshit they fed to the jabronies in the FoH to get them here?"
Doug had not expected to hear a word he associated with a professional wrestler coming from Kevin, but he rolled with it. "I mean, I imagine they didn't have to sell it too hard. Yell some slogans, beat up some 'muties', it's basically free admission to the buffet for them." He scanned a clump of FoH that was starting to form. "They probably left out the 'suicide run' part. Ballcap and megaphone, four-seventy-five," he called out the next target.
Kevin exhaled and the rifle sang. The bullhorn exploded, driving shards of plastic into the man's face. He clutched at his wounds, still alive, as the rest of them scattered for cover. "That should keep them occupied for a few minutes." Through all, Doug had only seen Kevin kill two targets outright.
"That's gonna leave a mark," Doug observed mildly. It certainly didn't bother him - bigots and fanatics deserved whatever they got, popping up like this and attacking innocents. And there was something to be said for injuries causing more chaos and delay - a body could be simply left behind, but an injured comrade would require first aid, and slow the entire group. "Not seeing any priority targets, dealer's choice."
"We stand down active shooting for a moment." Kevin said, his finger coming off the trigger and resting against the guard. "Backup Lewis moving people around. That Death figure is the priority, but he's not the only focus." He wished that the man had shown up in his scope, but so far the battleground was blocked by buildings. Instead, his eye returned to the scope, steadily breaking the neighbourhood into quadrants and working through them.
Doug dutifully picked opposite quadrants, so that between them they would constantly have half the field in view. "Checking in with Tarot as well," he noted, tapping his earbud to activate the internal microphone.
The eyes in the sky notice a certain feline getting into trouble.
He wasn't overly bothered by the litany of cat- names, they hadn't gotten to the worst ones he'd heard over his life yet. And anyways, maybe he did need one? Sorta? He wasn't okay with being on a team, but this was extenuating circumstances. "Everyone's behaving for the moment," he reported, eyes firmly on the crowd and looking for targets. He wasn't going to get caught not taking this seriously.
Darcy let out a thoughtful hum, map spreading across her mental landscape. "What's that group on our 2? Looks like hostiles chasing one of ours? Heathcliff, get me eyes on that, not dots."
Shifting, he raised the binoculars to check and..."It's uh...? Cat. Our Cat. The Other Cat!" he wasn't nearly as good at code names, "She needs an assist!"
Darcy cursed in three languages as she focused through her scope. "I'll protect her. Scan for others that you can send to Tarot to help, okay kitten?" Certain Liam would listen, she focused her mind entirely on the shots. Connections between devices dipped for several moments as her consciousness withdrew from the devices she'd been boosting as she breathed and shot. 'One.. Two.. Three.. where, yes, there they are. Four.'
It was morbid, but as she watched Sharon scarper to safety she couldn't help but remark, "The plants are going to be gorgeous in spring. All this fresh fertilizer."
"Ew," Liam commented, breathing out as he saw Sharon get to safety, "That's... not wrong. But not what I want to think about," though he did start humming The Circle Of Life under his breath.
Despite the momentary respite, Sharon finds herself in a dire situation, where only luck can save her.
Provoking a group of anti-mutant activists might have been a mistake.
It had been instinctual. She'd seen a telltale cluster of bodies huddled around someone screaming on the ground, drawn the obvious conclusions, and taken the nearest exposed back as an invitation. Insofar as the intent had been to draw attention away from the original target the strategy had been a success. Unfortunately, that attention had been shifted to the man-sized purple felid tearing into their compatriot.
Sharon ran.
She hadn't realized how disorienting it would be to navigate the mass of noise and bodies. She couldn't see or smell any group to rejoin, and the bluetooth in her collar was saying things she couldn't process through the chaos. At full-shift she didn't have a way to respond anyway. She simply ran.
Curiously, several of her pursuers seemed to have disappeared along the way. This was not something she currently felt the need to examine. Unfortunately this mysterious thinning of the herd had stopped once she'd turned down a side street and into an alley she'd thought had an outlet. It did not. The men had hemmed her in before she'd realized her error. Now they were advancing.
Sharon crouched low, preparing to attack. Even in her pure form she lacked the extra length of cartilage that would have allowed her to roar like a true big cat.
Instead, Sharon screamed.
"Jesus fuck, get it to stop making that noise!" snapped one man, flinching back.
Beside him, a woman with hair tied back in a severe french braid raised her rifle. "On it."
The shot went wide, ricocheting off the metal siding of an old ice cream truck to sling back and into the unlikely target of her partner's forehead, who dropped in a spray of gore amongst the clicking of jammed guns. There was a brief glint, a mirror reflection or a spark, before the streetlights suddenly all died, leaving the remainder of the small group holding weapons they were frantically trying to reload blind in the ambient, smoky dusk.
Sharon's collar crackled, otherwise silent for a moment, before a sharp, "Go!" lit up her spine.
The command bypassed Sharon's higher brain functions and wired itself directly into her legs. The cat shot forward, bounding between legs as she did. One of the men, quicker than the others, raised a taser and took aim.
An angry gust of wind blew through the corridor of the alley at a mysteriously opportune time, sending the taser darts wide, as a shadow dropped from its until now unseen perch in an overhead fire escape. The three remaining activists turned, an unlucky one ripping out his own throat as claws drew across. "You're going to want to run now," Felicia snarled, low, her goggles reflecting back green in the light at the pair. "If you're lucky we won't chase you."
Sharon spun around at the sound and nearly skidded over in shock.
Felicia?!
Felicia has claws?!?!
Sharon surged to Felicia's side, boiling with adrenaline as she drew herself between the older woman and their would-be assailants. She braced her feet, stared directly into the eyes of the man trying to apply pressure to the ruins of his friend's neck, and screamed.
They flinched, their friend forgotten as they raised their hands and stumbled back. Felicia smiled, and they entered directly into the path of a full rolling dumpster, having gained speed and now crushed them, pinned and useless against the alley brick wall.
"I thought I told you to go," Felicia teased, giving her a wink before turning away as the pair of activists fought for breath. "Come on. Let's get you somewhere quieter."
Sharon gazed in naked adoration as a low duet of agonized moans began, hardly able to believe what had just happened. Felicia had come to save her. Felicia, who had claws.
This was the very best day of her life.
Heart swelling, tail lashing, Sharon followed.
Nodding, Liam clipped the earpiece Darcy handed him on the collar of his shirt and picked up the binoculars heading closer to her edge, surveying what was going on. "Can you.... that guy in the middle," he was waving a gun around, though not shooting people, at least not yet.
Darcy focused her scope. "Dark blue shirt with the logo waving the gun? Yes, but..." She tapped her comm. "Tarot, is there anyone nearby that can swipe the gun from the dude in the dark blue shirt? And maybe knock him out, while we're at it? Wanna save my shots for people that actually–" she broke off as her roommate's voice entered her ear, and as she adjusted her scope she saw a brief flash in the mob pounding on her roommate's shield. 'I don't fucking think so,' she snarled quietly, pulling the trigger without hesitation."–deserve it," she finished, letting out a slow breath.
"Directing Skin towards Dark Blue Shirt and Company." Marie-Ange answered, and then her voice dropped to a near inaudible mumble as she switched to a private channel to relay those instructions. "I have Angel as eyes in the sky, if Spot needs a break, call him in." She came back to Darcy - and Liam - with a lighter tone. She'd sent that boy up to make use of his eyesight, but not without attempting to give him an out that would not hurt a teenager's ego. "Apologies for the codename, I only know three fictional ginger cats."
"I don't think he'd appreciate Simba, even if it's some level of appropriate," Darcy replied dryly. "Are you sure you trust Wings and I in the same area where mayhem is happening? I'm touched by this trust in our collective ability to rein the other in." She was grinning as she said it, lightly scanning the area through her scope. A flash of purple caught her attention, but it was Madin, working in tandem with Sue. That was nice to see. "You got anything, fuzzbutt?"
"A desperate need for a codename you guys don't pick," he responded automatically, eyes glued to the scene below. "11 o'clock, waving.... is that an ax? Who has an ax in NYC?"
"Calm your shorts, Slinky Malinki. Generally you get to choose your own codename. But until you have one, I'm running through every fictional and not-so-fictional cat I can." Darcy's voice was light, but she was all business as she focused on the crowd. "Yeah, that's a–" she cut off as the person started to swing, focusing down and taking a shot as the crowd around the ax-wielder screamed and scattered. "Taken care of. Tarot, can Day get the city to do some composting?"
"Quite." Marie-Ange's comm went quiet for a moment. "She reports Clan Akkaba movements, map coming to your phones now." A few taps, and both Liam and Darcy had phone screenshots, marked up with colored lines from reports. Below, the street shifted, asphalt and concrete stretching around a sewer grate heading towards the dead body. Rats peeked up through the grate, and swarmed the dead man.
Death faces Wanda, Topaz and seemingly the city itself.
He had forgotten a cardinal rule of teleportation: do not attempt to do so around a probability-manipulator. Especially not one that specialised in chaos. The pain was one thing, but it was sheer luck he hadn't ended up inside a wall -- and while luck was something he now had in abundance, he'd be a fool to rely upon it.
He didn't have a choice. Whether this version of her had known him or not, he remembered her. And he knew Maximoff's powers well enough to know she could ruin this.
It would have to be a chase, then.
Death unceremoniously kicked open the door of the laundromat he'd found himself in and strode back into the street. Sharpening his hands into talons, the Horseman buried them into the side of the building and began a swift ascent. Once he'd achieved sufficient altitude he turned to scan for a familiar power signature.
A flock of pigeons exploded into his face. in a cloud of feathers, beaks and claws. Then they retreated just as abruptly, leaving Death smeared with pigeon poop and scattered feathers, a kind of urban tarring and feathering.
Death flinched back in surprise, swiping a hand in front of his face to bat away the avian assault even as the flock disappeared in a rush of wings and angry babble.
Where did-
Wanda stood in the middle of the street he'd just left, awash in bright red as the chaos swirled around her hands. Her face hardened in the glow as she felt - saw - touched the pieces of Arthur's powers that had been absorbed by Death. The light around her vanished as she widened her arms and gave him a smile - 'come and get me' she basically said as the roof under his feet suddenly gave out, concrete crumbling into fine sand.
Without missing a beat Death thinned and curved the bones of his tibia and fibula into a flexible configuration designed to absorb and return the force of impact. The instant his feet hit the ground all the energy of his fall was redirected into a burst of speed in Wanda's direction. His breathing fell into the easy regularity of a practised athlete, his grotesquely bowed legs pumping beneath him like pistons.
Very well. Wanda wasn't the only one who could pull a few strings.
The Horseman's left eye flared.
The force of Death's impact on the ground rode the wave of stolen luck and slammed into Wanda, causing her to stagger as the street beneath her own feet started to go. It was like a punch to the gut, kidney, and heart all at once, with her vision exploding in a sea of white and red as Arthur's powers hit her like a truck. She could feel the ribbons of her strings start to untie and loosen and she cursed as she tried to move out of the way.
But Death was moving impossibly fast, faster than she could avoid without a distraction. Wanda slammed her hands down on the street, sending her powers in front of her as quickly as she could, focusing on pulling those lost strings back to her right as he stepped onto the manhole cover.
Pressurised steam and decaying pipes met Wanda's powers with an explosion that, for something without actual fire, was quite impressive.
Chunks of metal and asphalt hurtled toward the Horseman at terminal velocity, yet somehow his body contrived to be in the path of none of them. The steam was more problematic. Mutant auras were easy to detect in a crowd, yes, but he still needed eyes on their physical bodies.
Death felt a disproportionate stab of outrage at the city that seemed bent on thwarting him and the people who sought to delay him. It needed an outlet.
The power he'd taken from Centino lacked the ability to view lines of probability he'd been able to perceive with similar mutations, but the theory stood: it had to be tempered with balance. Pull too hard in one direction and the results became erratic. Keep pushing, and it could even result in a backlash. It was one of the reasons having two probability-wielders on the same field often required careful coordination.
Wanda's attack had created quite a bit of debris. It was the work of a moment to scoop up a piece of loose pavement. Then, without bothering to aim, Death hurled the chunk of concrete into the cloud of steam like a cannon.
Let it be a lucky shot.
For one moment - less than a second, less than heartbeat - Wanda's world was awash in grey. The vibrant hues of reds that colored her world every time she used her power was snuffed out as her own strings, for that one moment, went utterly slack. Her eyes widened.
Something snapped and fizzled within her, her vision once again blood red. There was no time. Almost every possibility led to those grey, dull strings. Almost.
Because where Death had dug up the pavement, he'd left deep crevices in the already broken stone and concrete. Twin bolts of entropic energy slammed into the projectile as true as Wanda could even as she was trying to move quickly backwards. It shattered in half, one part ending up in a taxi windshield while the other one nearly took out Wanda's legs. Pelted and cut with debris, Wanda was bleeding but very much alive.
And pissed.
The Horseman hefted another piece of concrete, jogging it in one hand like a baseball.
"Entertaining as this may be, only one of us bleeds," Death called into the dispersing vapour. "How long do you-"
A weather-stained gargoyle, split from its cornice, struck Death directly across the shoulders.
No amount of armour or physical augmentation could counter gravity. The Horseman went down.
That felt personal. Wiping blood out of her eyes, Wanda made a note to buy Amanda's next few rounds at Harry's.
"Oh, I will last as long as I need to, bleeding or not." She crouched down and laid a hand again to the ground. "But I'd like to move this along."
The street, already broken and cracked from the exploding pipes, groaned from under the weight of the broken gargoyle that lay across Death. It didn't take much nudging from Wanda to convince that portion to give way in a quiet rumble, taking Death - and his new concrete friend - down into the sewers below.
"And, considering I'm pretty sure I nearly died, you little shit, I hope that hurt."
It did not. In fact, it only enraged.
Death erupted from the rubble and launched himself upwards, catching himself on the lip of the street to lever himself up through sheer arm strength alone. The pulse of anger was back, stronger now, and Death felt his vision constrict to a black-edged tunnel of fury. Caution and strategy evaporated: suddenly all he could think was how dare she.
He saw her retreating aura just as she disappeared around a corner. Bracing himself like a runner, Death changed. Spine and arms lengthened beneath his jointed armour, and he exploded after her on all fours with the power of a lunging tiger.
And then he wasn't.
Not because he had stopped on his own, but because twin spikes of pure, magical energy had burst out of the ground on his left and his right, effectively skewering him as he tried to leap.
Marius Laverne had never met Topaz, not really. She had been a teenager, and he never had a reason to really see her as anything more than his friend's student, or Amanda's duckling, or "the magic kid who screwed up again."
So Death couldn't have been prepared for the young woman who stepped out from behind the smoldering ruins of a car, magic sparking around her fingers as the spikes holding Death in place crackled dangerously. Nor could he have been prepared for the sudden onslaught of fury, outrage, all-consuming anger that suddenly flooded his mind on repeat.
Death's entire body seized as the smouldering rage roared into an inferno. His own, his attacker's, the rioters', the very city's -- it all screamed through an ever-tightening echo chamber of hate that scoured his soul like acid. As he writhed between the two spears of light he managed to form one thought:
Empathy--
Topaz wasn't stupid enough to get close, or to let up on her emotional assault. She kept her distance as she slowly circled, watching Death writhe as much as the spikes would allow. And for good measure, she sent a magical shock through them with a click of her fingers. Then she tapped her ear piece.
"I've got him pinned down. Probably won't be moving any time soon, but if someone wants to get here with better containment-"
Death shrieked as the current of magic hit him. He'd experienced pain before, but nothing like this. It cut through even the onslaught of emotions, like loops of razor wire constricting around his heart. Something wrong, unendurable--
Neither knowing nor caring the destination, the Horseman disappeared.
Wanda's voice came across the comms. "Shit, he just teleported out of our area. Does anyone have eyes on him?"
"Nowhere in a five-mile radius," Topaz added. "Something tells me he got as far as he possibly could."
Thanks to her powers, Hope and Artie are able to do something no one ever had: ambush Death.
What had that attack been? He hadn't been able to absorb it. Magic. It must have been magic. Death's skin still crawled beneath its armour, his chest throbbing. Painful, but he could bear it. He merely needed time to get steady again.
By arresting his teleportation before completing the process he could stand just askew of the world, not close enough to touch, but close enough to observe what transpired around him. Distorted, perhaps, like looking at the world through smoked glass, but there was one thing he could always perceive: other mutants. Their signatures luminesced through the darkness like stars. If any came close, he would know.
Between was a poor place to recover. The sulfurous air was breathable, but barely -- the power excavated from his genetic memory could compensate only so much. It wasn't a place meant to sustain life. The atmosphere was so corrosive even his armour was beginning to blacken. Soon he would need to emerge.
Soon. But not yet.
There... he had vanished yet again. Hope 'narrowed' her eyes a little as her ghost form floated above the battlefield. So far she had not been able to do much, just a little scouting... But she had noticed an odd shimmer when he seemed to vanish the last time, like something she could see from the corner or her eye, but unable to quite define it.
Luckily her ghost form did not need to blink and she sunk into herself, staring at where she'd seen that strange shimmer again. If only she could grasp it... she could track him...
When Death had vanished again, Artie had stopped, taking stock of the situation. His powers weren't suited to this kind of drawn out battle. He looked around, spotting... Hope? It might have been Hope, shimmering in the air. He hoped so, because otherwise there was another player on the field.
The odd shimmer from the corner of her eyes flickered as she focused on it more and more and she reached out, letting the waves roar up just a little in the back of her mind. Not on her way to the astral plane, but just touching that other world... slowly the flickers began to come together, almost forming like a smooth dome, but then in the shape of a person.
Passing through the veil was like stepping through a spider web. The gateway of Between stretched greasily across his skin before disgorging him back into reality. He staggered a step and caught himself against a wall, heaving as his lungs transitioned from one atmosphere to another. The effects of Topaz's magic still crackled across his nerves like an electric current. The Horseman stood there, panting.
There... his now aura blazed a strangely muted orange, threaded with red, but the shape was unmistakable. 'Everyone...' Her mind rang out. 'I can now track our opponent when he shifts out of reality. I suggest we make use of the next time he does so...'
Artie needed mobility to be any use when Death reappeared. It was a hard sell in Manhattan but the regular traffic had cleared in the chaos, cars and pedestrians fleeing from the battles. He began to move through the abandoned cars, looking for something suitable, settling on a range rover. Well, someone was going to have fun with insurance.
Breathing steadied, the Horseman slipped Between once more. Death's steps in the twilight world became surer as the lingering effects of the last attack finally began to leave his system. Maximoff was still somewhere nearby, fouling teleportation. He needed to create distance.
No sooner than Artie had taken a seat behind the range rover's wheel then the radio clicked on and Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones began blaring: 'Hey, ho, let's go, hey ho, let's go." came the signature opening, and then the first verse, apparently stuck on repeat: "They're forming in straight line / They're going through a tight wind / The kids are losing their minds / The blitzkrieg bop."
Artie nodded. "Got it," he replied through synthesiser and comms. God knew if Amanda could hear the response. He threw it into gear, mounting the curb and taking out a pair of trash cans as he moved past a car stalled in the street.
The effects of the empathic attack were finally wearing off. At last clarity was returning. His blind teleport had taken him from the city center; he should return if possible. He strove for efficiency.
Time to get his bearings. Once more, the Horseman prepared himself to slip back into reality.
The colors of his aura slowly became less muted, the flickers and shimmering decreasing. " Be ready everyone! He is going to appear any moment now..." Hope quickly projected, lifting her arm and pointing: "... right there!"
It was a little like the parting of the Red Sea. As soon as Hope had spoken, the road ahead of Artie rose up, as if someone had pinched the surface and pulled upwards. Cars, trash cans, newspaper boxes, all sorts of debris all rolled down either side of the black peak in a clatter. Then the road sank down again, flat, unencumbered, a straight line between the Range Rover and the spot Hope had indicated.
I live my life a quarter mile at a time rang in Artie's ears as he hit the clutch and accelerator, revving the engine. Three, two, one... go. He put it into gear and took off, getting as much juice out of second as he could before shifting into third and hitting 45 miles an hour.
The rev of an engine itself wasn't particularly notable, but it did seem odd it appeared to be getting closer. Automatically, Death turned in the direction of the sound.
This would only work if he could keep Death in one place. Artie couldn't cloak the whole road but could create a bubble of illusion 30 feet wide and tall across it. Within it, the world fractured, splintered and recombined, whirling around Death.
The Horseman's perceptions spun in a disorienting kaleidoscope of shapes and colors. The sudden clash between the visual input and what his body knew to be true struck him with a wave of motion sickness severe enough to make him stagger.
Unfortunately, the direction he stumbled was away from the building and into the street.
The problem with an illusion like this was that once it was up, nothing inside the field was visible outside. Artie had a ten count before he'd be there. "Hope! Location!"
Quickly turning her head, Hope blinked once at the car quickly speeding at them, Artie's aura full of determination blazing from behind the wheel. "Two'clock for if you turn now!" She hurriedly projected, a little piece of her scouting training under the Archduke surging to the fore.
Artie adjusted his trajectory slightly and drove straight into the illusion he couldn't drop without losing the element of surprise. His car hit something and he jerked forward and back in the seat, airbag inflating and sending searing pain across his face as his nose broke.
As it turned out, the ability to absorb and neutralize the vast majority of mutant powers was less effective against a direct hit from an SUV.
Death landed in the windshield of an entirely different car, which came as a shock since he had never seen the first. From his point of view, the brief period he'd spent airborne had only been an extension of the labyrinthine riot his eyes were reporting. It was, therefore, something of a surprise when the visual distortions vanished to reveal a steaming and hugely dented range rover directly in front of him.
The Horseman stared at the car in disbelief.
"What sort of absolutely mental . . ."
"He is distracted and weakened for the moment. Take your chance everyone!" Hope projected as widely as she could, keeping a close eye on the situation in case Death decided to vanish from sight again.
Death had just enough time to register a familiar pop of displaced air somewhere above, instantly followed by another almost on top of him. A dark figure reaching for him from within a wash of brimstone filled his vision. Three-fingered hands gripped the Horseman by the arms, and then both were gone.
Artie watched him vanish, dizzy and dazed from the impact and began to slowly climb out of the car, pain shooting through his neck and shoulders to match the sharp stab from his nose and ribs.
Death had definitely vanished from sight for the moment. If she'd been corporeal, Hope would have let out a small sigh, but for now she simply floated over to the truck to check on its driver. Death might return soon enough and they needed to be ready.
Doug and Kevin support the spotting efforts, with Sydney employing his decades of experience as a sniper against their foes.
"Fuck, I hate urban combat." Kevin said, pivoting around the roof with his scope, bouncing from situation to situation, occasionally pausing to look with his mutant augmented vision. "Avenue C is open again. Send any groups out that way."
"Could be worse, last time I was in a spot like this, we were in Pripyat." Doug hummed a snatch of music to himself before settling in and scanning the streets below with his binoculars.
"Pripyat? Interesting asshole of the Soviet Union to be in. Sorry, Ukraine now." Kevin went back to his scope. "I once had a tremendous meal there. 1986. We thought we had a line on an even bigger breakup of the USSR at the time."
"We were running an enhanced assassin to ground at an old bolt-hole there. Matter of fact, I was the one in your spot on that one," Doug admitted, nodding at the rifle. ~Sexy sniper man, you come pick up lady friend, Wade only charge you fi'dolla~. The sting of memory made him wince, but not enough to take his focus away. "I make a group of Clan Akkaba mystics trying to marshal in a bodega, six hundred yards."
"I got them." Kevin sighted down the scope, muttering to himself. "Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine." There was a brief crack and the cult member in the centre, wearing the blood red mantle with the Clan Akkaba sigil in the middle dropped as part of his head disappeared in a plume of gore. The rest scattered in all directions.
"I love when the 'leaders' feel the need to wear something conspicuous and self-identifying. Makes things so much easier. Sefton, body on 6th and Avenue C."
Doug cocked his head, guessing the line was something Kevin did to settle himself before a shot. "Ulysses?" he asked as he kept scanning.
Kevin nodded. "Tennyson, not Joyce. Ugh, Joyce." He said. Very few of the team had ever witnessed him behind a sniper rifle on the rare occasions that called for it. "This is a fundamentally stupid plan, when you think about it. Containment can't last more than twenty minutes tops. It's basically a suicide run for Clan Akkaba. I wonder what bullshit they fed to the jabronies in the FoH to get them here?"
Doug had not expected to hear a word he associated with a professional wrestler coming from Kevin, but he rolled with it. "I mean, I imagine they didn't have to sell it too hard. Yell some slogans, beat up some 'muties', it's basically free admission to the buffet for them." He scanned a clump of FoH that was starting to form. "They probably left out the 'suicide run' part. Ballcap and megaphone, four-seventy-five," he called out the next target.
Kevin exhaled and the rifle sang. The bullhorn exploded, driving shards of plastic into the man's face. He clutched at his wounds, still alive, as the rest of them scattered for cover. "That should keep them occupied for a few minutes." Through all, Doug had only seen Kevin kill two targets outright.
"That's gonna leave a mark," Doug observed mildly. It certainly didn't bother him - bigots and fanatics deserved whatever they got, popping up like this and attacking innocents. And there was something to be said for injuries causing more chaos and delay - a body could be simply left behind, but an injured comrade would require first aid, and slow the entire group. "Not seeing any priority targets, dealer's choice."
"We stand down active shooting for a moment." Kevin said, his finger coming off the trigger and resting against the guard. "Backup Lewis moving people around. That Death figure is the priority, but he's not the only focus." He wished that the man had shown up in his scope, but so far the battleground was blocked by buildings. Instead, his eye returned to the scope, steadily breaking the neighbourhood into quadrants and working through them.
Doug dutifully picked opposite quadrants, so that between them they would constantly have half the field in view. "Checking in with Tarot as well," he noted, tapping his earbud to activate the internal microphone.
The eyes in the sky notice a certain feline getting into trouble.
He wasn't overly bothered by the litany of cat- names, they hadn't gotten to the worst ones he'd heard over his life yet. And anyways, maybe he did need one? Sorta? He wasn't okay with being on a team, but this was extenuating circumstances. "Everyone's behaving for the moment," he reported, eyes firmly on the crowd and looking for targets. He wasn't going to get caught not taking this seriously.
Darcy let out a thoughtful hum, map spreading across her mental landscape. "What's that group on our 2? Looks like hostiles chasing one of ours? Heathcliff, get me eyes on that, not dots."
Shifting, he raised the binoculars to check and..."It's uh...? Cat. Our Cat. The Other Cat!" he wasn't nearly as good at code names, "She needs an assist!"
Darcy cursed in three languages as she focused through her scope. "I'll protect her. Scan for others that you can send to Tarot to help, okay kitten?" Certain Liam would listen, she focused her mind entirely on the shots. Connections between devices dipped for several moments as her consciousness withdrew from the devices she'd been boosting as she breathed and shot. 'One.. Two.. Three.. where, yes, there they are. Four.'
It was morbid, but as she watched Sharon scarper to safety she couldn't help but remark, "The plants are going to be gorgeous in spring. All this fresh fertilizer."
"Ew," Liam commented, breathing out as he saw Sharon get to safety, "That's... not wrong. But not what I want to think about," though he did start humming The Circle Of Life under his breath.
Despite the momentary respite, Sharon finds herself in a dire situation, where only luck can save her.
Provoking a group of anti-mutant activists might have been a mistake.
It had been instinctual. She'd seen a telltale cluster of bodies huddled around someone screaming on the ground, drawn the obvious conclusions, and taken the nearest exposed back as an invitation. Insofar as the intent had been to draw attention away from the original target the strategy had been a success. Unfortunately, that attention had been shifted to the man-sized purple felid tearing into their compatriot.
Sharon ran.
She hadn't realized how disorienting it would be to navigate the mass of noise and bodies. She couldn't see or smell any group to rejoin, and the bluetooth in her collar was saying things she couldn't process through the chaos. At full-shift she didn't have a way to respond anyway. She simply ran.
Curiously, several of her pursuers seemed to have disappeared along the way. This was not something she currently felt the need to examine. Unfortunately this mysterious thinning of the herd had stopped once she'd turned down a side street and into an alley she'd thought had an outlet. It did not. The men had hemmed her in before she'd realized her error. Now they were advancing.
Sharon crouched low, preparing to attack. Even in her pure form she lacked the extra length of cartilage that would have allowed her to roar like a true big cat.
Instead, Sharon screamed.
"Jesus fuck, get it to stop making that noise!" snapped one man, flinching back.
Beside him, a woman with hair tied back in a severe french braid raised her rifle. "On it."
The shot went wide, ricocheting off the metal siding of an old ice cream truck to sling back and into the unlikely target of her partner's forehead, who dropped in a spray of gore amongst the clicking of jammed guns. There was a brief glint, a mirror reflection or a spark, before the streetlights suddenly all died, leaving the remainder of the small group holding weapons they were frantically trying to reload blind in the ambient, smoky dusk.
Sharon's collar crackled, otherwise silent for a moment, before a sharp, "Go!" lit up her spine.
The command bypassed Sharon's higher brain functions and wired itself directly into her legs. The cat shot forward, bounding between legs as she did. One of the men, quicker than the others, raised a taser and took aim.
An angry gust of wind blew through the corridor of the alley at a mysteriously opportune time, sending the taser darts wide, as a shadow dropped from its until now unseen perch in an overhead fire escape. The three remaining activists turned, an unlucky one ripping out his own throat as claws drew across. "You're going to want to run now," Felicia snarled, low, her goggles reflecting back green in the light at the pair. "If you're lucky we won't chase you."
Sharon spun around at the sound and nearly skidded over in shock.
Felicia?!
Felicia has claws?!?!
Sharon surged to Felicia's side, boiling with adrenaline as she drew herself between the older woman and their would-be assailants. She braced her feet, stared directly into the eyes of the man trying to apply pressure to the ruins of his friend's neck, and screamed.
They flinched, their friend forgotten as they raised their hands and stumbled back. Felicia smiled, and they entered directly into the path of a full rolling dumpster, having gained speed and now crushed them, pinned and useless against the alley brick wall.
"I thought I told you to go," Felicia teased, giving her a wink before turning away as the pair of activists fought for breath. "Come on. Let's get you somewhere quieter."
Sharon gazed in naked adoration as a low duet of agonized moans began, hardly able to believe what had just happened. Felicia had come to save her. Felicia, who had claws.
This was the very best day of her life.
Heart swelling, tail lashing, Sharon followed.