Operation: We'll Always Have Paris - Log 6
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xp_logsDoug and Marie-Ange focus on diverting and eliminating some of Fitzroy's forces.
The groups had dispersed, with Marie-Ange and Doug headed out through the east hallway to shadow one of the smaller ballrooms. The sheer size of the club worked to their advantage, as despite having brought in a small army, Fitzoy still lacked the manpower to cover every room, hall and event space.
Non-slip shoes were - Marie-Ange would note later - remarkably lovely to fight in. Better balance than high heels, more protection than bare feet after taking off high heels, and sturdy, and not all that hideous, under the circumstances.
She gave a quick sign to Doug, and pulled cards out of a cigarette packet tucked into her apron. "I have shock and awe." She showed him a trio of cards. "Or tidy murder. " Another trio. "Which to start?" The packet was full of cards, but both of those trios had come up first. The rest went into the hidden places she always tucked cards into, and the apron got twisted around itself into a tight almost-rope.
"Shock and awe is always a solid starting point," Doug opined. Not that he had much to contribute to it - no place to stash flashbangs in his official Hellfire suit, after all. In fact, he had only managed to secret a couple of what Wade would have referred to as 'baby knives' and the smaller pocket version of the telescoping baton he tended to favor for times like these. "Get a couple of them looking the other way so I can trade up." As they closed in on the entrance, they shifted to hand signals - Doug indicating Marie-Ange should move left on entry, to give the best field of view to her right eye, whereas he would break right, leaving his nanite arm toward any danger.
"And get me an ear." Maybe if he could get into their comms, he could locate larger clumps of foes and get them to move toward places where X-Force would have the advantage.
"~Piece~," he hissed after Marie-Ange as she started moving. "Ear ~piece~!"
"I knew you meant technology." Marie-Ange had already darted left, voice a little muffled as she - and more importantly, the silent pair of imaged beasts engaged one of the guards. One great scaly beast, more a gorilla than a monster, tackled, and another threw itself upon the guard. The first got an overlong scaly arm around the guard's head. The second shoved it's already damp paw into the man's mouth, and then dissolved. Ectoplasm went everywhere, including down the guards throat. Marie-Ange's comparatively dry hand clamped around his nose and mouth, and held on as he struggled for air - and struggled against the knife suddenly thrust under his ribs.
Her hand was only dry for so long, and once the guard was on the ground, blank eyes staring up at the ceiling, she wiped it on her apron - and then slipped the comm from the man's ear.
Doug caught the small earbud as Marie-Ange tossed it to him. "Huh," he muttered from where he had darted right, expecting someone to be backing up the other guard. "They must be spread thinner than we thought. Let's see if we can't make that problem a bit worse for them." He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it next to the comm. "Well, their encryption is pretty solid, it'd probably take me longer than we have to force my way in, but if we have their frequency, I should be able to...ah," he said with a satisfied air. "Location ping." He scanned the data that was returning and compared it against his mental map of the club. "All right, closest clumping is down the hall from us. Looks like...four signatures. Let's go hunting."
"Oh, it might take me longer to force, he says." Marie-Ange said. "And then he has the location." She dissolved the knife in her hand and picked up the single guard's legs, dragging him to the right side of the hall. "Hrm. Messy, I suppose he does look dragged..." There was a streak of blood across the floor. A head tilt, and she had an image of a featureless suited figure stepping through the wed blood to leave footprints in the other direction. "I know, we hate the slendermen, but I needed something with feet." She tucked the hand-drawn card away as the figure disappeared leaving the bloody bootprints - as she and Doug went in the opposite direction. "There, now anyone finding that body will go elsewhere."
"Longer to actually listen in on their-" Doug clarified, before noticing Marie-Ange's smirk. "Yeah, yeah, I'm predictable." He stuck his tongue out at her, feeling oh so mature. "Wild goose chase, nice," he approved of her plan after indulging his inner five year old. He had meant to rifle the body for gear before the tableau had been set, but better not to risk disturbing the footprints or the like. Baby knife would just have to put in some work. The pair moved quietly down the hall, covering each others' flanks with the ease of many years of practice. As they reached the door, they paused to hear the shuffling of several sets of feet. None of them sounded like they were moving with urgency - typical 'stand around and wait' goons. Doug again indicated the direction each of them would enter, then counted down from three.
Marie-Ange waited a beat for the guards to react to what she presumed was an alert, and then wandered in. In her hands, an imaged empty serving platter, and on her face, blissful confusion . "Oh no! Is there a fire!?" She waved her phone, once on a selfie - and now on tiktok, blasting Chappel Roan's "Pink Pony Club" "I was looking for my girlfriend, have you seen her? She is blonde and has tattoos? And is probably smoking, why is there an alarm?"
Both guards had started to the door and were now paused, barking orders for Marie-Ange to put down the platter. She did, neatly on the floor, uttering questions of confusion - and then looked up - and threw the imaged platter in one guard's face, following it with a kick to his knee - and a brutal stab to the groin with a suddenly imaged up long knife.
It was a good thing that Doug wasn't the sort to suffer from 'blade envy', because his own knife was little more than a guard to slip between two fingers and an inch or so of blade. But if you went for the soft tissue targets, that could be more than enough. He took advantage of the guards all focusing on Marie-Ange to slip around to the side unnoticed. He was inside his target's guard before the man even saw him, and he struck hard into the throat. He twisted the narrow triangular blade on the way out, ripping trachea and carotid open as he stepped smoothly to a side to avoid getting blood on his suit. The guard began to crumple, clutching feebly at the wound, and Doug yanked the pistol out of his hand as he went.
"I hate you." Marie-Ange said - her own shirt sleeves had blood on them and one hand was sticky with the residue of the dead guard and her own images, and it was infuriating how Doug had avoided messy hands and a messy suit. "Where next? What is the thing the Star Captains say, you have the comm?"
"You do this to me on purpose and I hate that it works," Doug told her with a loud exhale. "It's not even just a 'oh what is a Star Trek' thing, it's a naval thing. 'Conn'. The status of being in command. I mean yes, I -also- have their comm in my pocket, which makes it even worse because it's a pun, and..." He trailed off into indistinct grumpy muttering as he checked for an update on guard movement. "Two doors down on the right, three targets."
"On the move?" The question didn't matter, the door opened to two of the three targets coming into the hallway. Marie-Ange flattened herself against the wall, not even enough time to pull a card before they'd pulled batons. She got her arm up to block one strike, and twisted her wrist, now armored in a freshly imaged gauntlet. The strike hurt regardless, and the armor faded almost as fast as it had appeared - but it had been a distraction and she kicked hard against the guard's knee.
Doug was already twisting toward the second target, too close to bring the pilfered pistol into play - as a ranged weapon, at least. The butt end of the grip, though...a strike to the interior of the elbow robbed his opponent's baton strike of all its momentum, then Doug pivoted to bring it cracking across the temple. As the man began to crumple, Doug drove a knee hard into his midsection, followed by an elbow strike to the back of the neck.
Just as he was starting to drop the guard's limp body to the side, the third of the group stepped out, bringing his own gun to bear, with neither Doug nor Marie-Ange close enough to do anything about it, and the pistol in Doug's hand not anywhere near on target. "Bas!" he barked at Angie, who was still tangled up with her target. The pistol tracked toward him as the cleaner target, and he twisted desperately to provide less of a target, his left hand raised in a futile attempt at protection.
The gun barked twice, and the bullets struck Doug in the forearm.
His -nanite- forearm.
Doug (and likely everyone else) tended to think of the mass of semi-sentient 'friendos' as a solid thing, the same as any other arm. But where flesh and blood is made up of a number of different specialized cells - bone, muscle fiber, blood, and so on - the nanites were all of a similar highly adaptable form. For the most part they mimicked the solidity of bone with flesh surrounding it, because that was what ~user dougramseycypher~ required. But faced with potential impact trauma, they reacted in a wholly different fashion.
Over the span of what to an outside viewer would see as a few microseconds, the nanites created tiny gaps in their form, shredding the bullets into fragments, and then further into almost particulate matter.
::force level outside ideal survival parameters::
::solution - reduce force::
::force equals mass times acceleration::
::solution - reduce mass::
As the bullets deconstructed, the gaps in Doug's 'arm' dispersed the minute pieces over a much wider area, much of it passing over Doug's head and around his sides. What was left scraped at the side of his face, leaving the skin raw but still intact.
Doug blinked in the aftermath, trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Marie-Ange roughly shoved a hastily imaged knife into her target's throat, and pushed him away as he went down, and then tackled the third, the one who had shot at Doug almost in the same motion. He went to his knees at the sudden force, all our of surprise than anything to do with Marie-Ange's strength. She had enough time to strike him once in the ear clumsily before he shouted into his comm - and then another flash of gunfire went off.
Doug was on one knee, his gun extended - the second burst of fire was his, not the guard's. The reflex to return fire despite all the confusion in his mind had been ingrained through repetition over years of training with Remy, Pete, and many others, and once again had served him well. After a scan to ensure all three targets were down and unmoving, he brought the gun up and away, setting it carefully to one side as the fingers on his right hand began to twitch.
"What. The. Fuck."
The groups had dispersed, with Marie-Ange and Doug headed out through the east hallway to shadow one of the smaller ballrooms. The sheer size of the club worked to their advantage, as despite having brought in a small army, Fitzoy still lacked the manpower to cover every room, hall and event space.
Non-slip shoes were - Marie-Ange would note later - remarkably lovely to fight in. Better balance than high heels, more protection than bare feet after taking off high heels, and sturdy, and not all that hideous, under the circumstances.
She gave a quick sign to Doug, and pulled cards out of a cigarette packet tucked into her apron. "I have shock and awe." She showed him a trio of cards. "Or tidy murder. " Another trio. "Which to start?" The packet was full of cards, but both of those trios had come up first. The rest went into the hidden places she always tucked cards into, and the apron got twisted around itself into a tight almost-rope.
"Shock and awe is always a solid starting point," Doug opined. Not that he had much to contribute to it - no place to stash flashbangs in his official Hellfire suit, after all. In fact, he had only managed to secret a couple of what Wade would have referred to as 'baby knives' and the smaller pocket version of the telescoping baton he tended to favor for times like these. "Get a couple of them looking the other way so I can trade up." As they closed in on the entrance, they shifted to hand signals - Doug indicating Marie-Ange should move left on entry, to give the best field of view to her right eye, whereas he would break right, leaving his nanite arm toward any danger.
"And get me an ear." Maybe if he could get into their comms, he could locate larger clumps of foes and get them to move toward places where X-Force would have the advantage.
"~Piece~," he hissed after Marie-Ange as she started moving. "Ear ~piece~!"
"I knew you meant technology." Marie-Ange had already darted left, voice a little muffled as she - and more importantly, the silent pair of imaged beasts engaged one of the guards. One great scaly beast, more a gorilla than a monster, tackled, and another threw itself upon the guard. The first got an overlong scaly arm around the guard's head. The second shoved it's already damp paw into the man's mouth, and then dissolved. Ectoplasm went everywhere, including down the guards throat. Marie-Ange's comparatively dry hand clamped around his nose and mouth, and held on as he struggled for air - and struggled against the knife suddenly thrust under his ribs.
Her hand was only dry for so long, and once the guard was on the ground, blank eyes staring up at the ceiling, she wiped it on her apron - and then slipped the comm from the man's ear.
Doug caught the small earbud as Marie-Ange tossed it to him. "Huh," he muttered from where he had darted right, expecting someone to be backing up the other guard. "They must be spread thinner than we thought. Let's see if we can't make that problem a bit worse for them." He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it next to the comm. "Well, their encryption is pretty solid, it'd probably take me longer than we have to force my way in, but if we have their frequency, I should be able to...ah," he said with a satisfied air. "Location ping." He scanned the data that was returning and compared it against his mental map of the club. "All right, closest clumping is down the hall from us. Looks like...four signatures. Let's go hunting."
"Oh, it might take me longer to force, he says." Marie-Ange said. "And then he has the location." She dissolved the knife in her hand and picked up the single guard's legs, dragging him to the right side of the hall. "Hrm. Messy, I suppose he does look dragged..." There was a streak of blood across the floor. A head tilt, and she had an image of a featureless suited figure stepping through the wed blood to leave footprints in the other direction. "I know, we hate the slendermen, but I needed something with feet." She tucked the hand-drawn card away as the figure disappeared leaving the bloody bootprints - as she and Doug went in the opposite direction. "There, now anyone finding that body will go elsewhere."
"Longer to actually listen in on their-" Doug clarified, before noticing Marie-Ange's smirk. "Yeah, yeah, I'm predictable." He stuck his tongue out at her, feeling oh so mature. "Wild goose chase, nice," he approved of her plan after indulging his inner five year old. He had meant to rifle the body for gear before the tableau had been set, but better not to risk disturbing the footprints or the like. Baby knife would just have to put in some work. The pair moved quietly down the hall, covering each others' flanks with the ease of many years of practice. As they reached the door, they paused to hear the shuffling of several sets of feet. None of them sounded like they were moving with urgency - typical 'stand around and wait' goons. Doug again indicated the direction each of them would enter, then counted down from three.
Marie-Ange waited a beat for the guards to react to what she presumed was an alert, and then wandered in. In her hands, an imaged empty serving platter, and on her face, blissful confusion . "Oh no! Is there a fire!?" She waved her phone, once on a selfie - and now on tiktok, blasting Chappel Roan's "Pink Pony Club" "I was looking for my girlfriend, have you seen her? She is blonde and has tattoos? And is probably smoking, why is there an alarm?"
Both guards had started to the door and were now paused, barking orders for Marie-Ange to put down the platter. She did, neatly on the floor, uttering questions of confusion - and then looked up - and threw the imaged platter in one guard's face, following it with a kick to his knee - and a brutal stab to the groin with a suddenly imaged up long knife.
It was a good thing that Doug wasn't the sort to suffer from 'blade envy', because his own knife was little more than a guard to slip between two fingers and an inch or so of blade. But if you went for the soft tissue targets, that could be more than enough. He took advantage of the guards all focusing on Marie-Ange to slip around to the side unnoticed. He was inside his target's guard before the man even saw him, and he struck hard into the throat. He twisted the narrow triangular blade on the way out, ripping trachea and carotid open as he stepped smoothly to a side to avoid getting blood on his suit. The guard began to crumple, clutching feebly at the wound, and Doug yanked the pistol out of his hand as he went.
"I hate you." Marie-Ange said - her own shirt sleeves had blood on them and one hand was sticky with the residue of the dead guard and her own images, and it was infuriating how Doug had avoided messy hands and a messy suit. "Where next? What is the thing the Star Captains say, you have the comm?"
"You do this to me on purpose and I hate that it works," Doug told her with a loud exhale. "It's not even just a 'oh what is a Star Trek' thing, it's a naval thing. 'Conn'. The status of being in command. I mean yes, I -also- have their comm in my pocket, which makes it even worse because it's a pun, and..." He trailed off into indistinct grumpy muttering as he checked for an update on guard movement. "Two doors down on the right, three targets."
"On the move?" The question didn't matter, the door opened to two of the three targets coming into the hallway. Marie-Ange flattened herself against the wall, not even enough time to pull a card before they'd pulled batons. She got her arm up to block one strike, and twisted her wrist, now armored in a freshly imaged gauntlet. The strike hurt regardless, and the armor faded almost as fast as it had appeared - but it had been a distraction and she kicked hard against the guard's knee.
Doug was already twisting toward the second target, too close to bring the pilfered pistol into play - as a ranged weapon, at least. The butt end of the grip, though...a strike to the interior of the elbow robbed his opponent's baton strike of all its momentum, then Doug pivoted to bring it cracking across the temple. As the man began to crumple, Doug drove a knee hard into his midsection, followed by an elbow strike to the back of the neck.
Just as he was starting to drop the guard's limp body to the side, the third of the group stepped out, bringing his own gun to bear, with neither Doug nor Marie-Ange close enough to do anything about it, and the pistol in Doug's hand not anywhere near on target. "Bas!" he barked at Angie, who was still tangled up with her target. The pistol tracked toward him as the cleaner target, and he twisted desperately to provide less of a target, his left hand raised in a futile attempt at protection.
The gun barked twice, and the bullets struck Doug in the forearm.
His -nanite- forearm.
Doug (and likely everyone else) tended to think of the mass of semi-sentient 'friendos' as a solid thing, the same as any other arm. But where flesh and blood is made up of a number of different specialized cells - bone, muscle fiber, blood, and so on - the nanites were all of a similar highly adaptable form. For the most part they mimicked the solidity of bone with flesh surrounding it, because that was what ~user dougramseycypher~ required. But faced with potential impact trauma, they reacted in a wholly different fashion.
Over the span of what to an outside viewer would see as a few microseconds, the nanites created tiny gaps in their form, shredding the bullets into fragments, and then further into almost particulate matter.
::force level outside ideal survival parameters::
::solution - reduce force::
::force equals mass times acceleration::
::solution - reduce mass::
As the bullets deconstructed, the gaps in Doug's 'arm' dispersed the minute pieces over a much wider area, much of it passing over Doug's head and around his sides. What was left scraped at the side of his face, leaving the skin raw but still intact.
Doug blinked in the aftermath, trying to comprehend what had just happened.
Marie-Ange roughly shoved a hastily imaged knife into her target's throat, and pushed him away as he went down, and then tackled the third, the one who had shot at Doug almost in the same motion. He went to his knees at the sudden force, all our of surprise than anything to do with Marie-Ange's strength. She had enough time to strike him once in the ear clumsily before he shouted into his comm - and then another flash of gunfire went off.
Doug was on one knee, his gun extended - the second burst of fire was his, not the guard's. The reflex to return fire despite all the confusion in his mind had been ingrained through repetition over years of training with Remy, Pete, and many others, and once again had served him well. After a scan to ensure all three targets were down and unmoving, he brought the gun up and away, setting it carefully to one side as the fingers on his right hand began to twitch.
"What. The. Fuck."
