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xp_logsOOC: Huge thanks to Redhawk for socking the Mistra characters. He's an action genius and he really made this log.
Nathan arrives at Columbia University to take Amanda out for the afternoon after their respective Saturday appointment. Mistra is waiting. He fights back, only to discover a horrific change in Mistra's tactics. Amanda tries to help save some of the innocent bystanders, but has a close encounter herself, leading Manuel, back at the mansion, to make a very unpleasant discovery about his powers. Dr. Strange attempts to help. And the battle seems about to end in Nathan's surrender...
It had been a good plan, Nathan decided, to leave the car on the campus and walk to Jack's. As well as making it easier to meet Amanda after her lesson with Strange, it also ensured that he had to walk back, which was proving to be a better way of calming down after this morning's session with Jack than he'd expected.
The session hadn't been quite as bad as last week's - no crystallized furniture or anything - but the fresh air and the sunlight was still having a very salutary effect. And stealing Amanda away for the afternoon - he couldn't wait to see her reaction to what he had in mind - was only going to chase away the last of the post-therapy blahs. Approaching the parking lot, he looked around for Amanda, thinning out his shields just a little, hoping to catch her thoughts. The campus wasn't as crowded as it might have been, but there were still a good number of people around.
Amanda skipped down the steps of Strange's building, a small backpack full of magic books swinging from one strap over her shoulder. The session had been a good one, Strange had been pleased with her, and now she was meeting Nate and having some fun. Just the two of them, no other complications or demands. She scanned the campus, trying to spot him, and grinned when she caught sight of him over by the parking lot - he was so tall he was easy to see. She dodged around a group of students discussing summer school woes, and gave him a wave as she caught his eye.
Nathan waved, smiling as he saw how cheerful she looked. She was cheerful, he was cheerful at not actually having to meet her magical tutor again - it was all good. Chuckling, he walked into the parking lot and towards the car he'd brought this morning. He'd picked it randomly out of the ones in the garage, simply the basis that it was a rather nice shade of blue. There were some fringe benefits to having to avoid taking the same car every Saturday.
...there was something hot in his pocket. Why was there something hot in his pocket? Nathan frowned and dug out his keys, then winced, dropping them as a painful tingle shot up his arm. "What the fuck?" he muttered, bending to pick them up.
It was the medallion, he realized once he had the keys in his hand again - the little silver protective charm Amanda had given him, that he was using at her suggestion as a keychain. Scowling more deeply, he looked around, letting his shields down a little farther as he continued to walk towards the car, trying to get a stronger impression of the psychic atmosphere, looking for the threat. Amanda was still quite a distance away, and he made another beckoning motion, thinking that it would maybe be a good idea if they got out of here relatively promptly. When he was several steps away, he clicked the button on the little remote to disengage the car's alarm.
And the car blew up.
It happened so fast. One minute she was watching Nate head towards the car, dropping something and bending to pick it up, beckoning her over... And then it seemed like the world was full of fire and noise and smoke as the car vanished into a fireball. Amanda stood stock-still, ignoring the screaming people fleeing around her, even when they buffeted her in their rush to get away. She took a step towards the burning wreck of the car, then another, still trying to comprehend that Nate had been there, that he'd been there and now there was nothing but a burning, smoking mess, fragments of metal raining down around the scene.
Then it hit her like a fist, and she opened her mouth and screamed his name.
Pain, heat, the crushing impact of the explosion against the last-second, desperate TK shield... and then he was sprawled on the pavement, seeing stars and tasting blood as he tried desperately to draw air back into his lungs. He heard Amanda scream and tried to get up, to convince his limbs to work...
#...get down,# he thought feebly at her, willng her to hear him. #Down...#
And then he nearly screamed as well as something hit him, an invisible wave of splintering force that burned through his mind, breaking through his shields and stealing away his control over his TK.
---
Morgan, safe in his observer's station across the street from the parking lot, smiled thinly as the carefully-planted car bomb detonated. "Team One, move up. Team Two, secure the perimeter." he subvocalized, then grinned as he activated his gift.
In an instant, his exoskeleton shimmered into a being, a hazy golden construct with two wicked-looking clawed arms and himself safely tucked away inside the construct.
"Miller, Kowalski, take point. Lee, you're backup. Go!" he subvocalized as Miller (a almost effeminate-looking man dressed in a Mets jersey) and Kowalski (a fireplug of a man with diamond-hard claws) charged towards the burning fire. Lee, a built black man, faded towards the panicking civilians, all the while concentrating his dampening gift on Nathan - enough to take away his firepower, but not so much as to turn him into a spasming corpse. They had all been briefed on the virus, and there was no point in going to all this trouble to bring back a dead body.
Nathan, you tool! Just give it up, old man. You're outclassed this time. Morgan thought silently as he studied the scene from his vantage point inside his twenty-foot-tall construct. "Team Two, we may have collateral here. Dark-haired girl, fits the description of one of Cable's students. Take her." he subvocalized, spotting Amanda's sprawled form.
---
#Down...# Nate's voice, in her head. Nate alive! Then Amanda realised what he was so desperately trying to tell her and she reacted, dropping instantly to the ground before crawling towards a collection of bushes near the path. As she made her way towards a hiding place, she peered across at the parking lot, trying to see Nate in all the confusion. Then movement registered in the corner of her vision, movement that wasn't panicked fleeing, but purposeful, intent.
---
Get up! Nathan snarled at himself, clawing his way feebly back to his feet and half-staggering over to the questionable cover of another car. He looked around for Amanda and couldn't see her. Desperately, he tried to reach out to find her thoughts, but nearly toppled back to the pavement as the screaming pain in his head soared to a crescendo.
Scrambled, he thought disjointedly, coughing on blood. Scrambled... scrambler... there was an anti-psi somewhere. Jamming his powers.
Oh, shit.
And this had to happen on the Saturday that he'd bowed to Jack's dislike at him coming armed to their sessions and left his gun in the fucking car.
Miller and Kowalski reached Nathan at approximately the same time. "Go on, make a move." taunted Kowalski, his fingertips turning a glittering crystal color as he talked. He waved them around in Nathan's face for emphasis. "I'm just itching for an excuse to cut the great Cable."
Miller, for his part, adjusted his Michigan State Spartans hat and cracked his knuckles. "You're coming home." the slender man said with a lisp. "Don't make this any harder than it has to be. You're sick, confused. You need help."
Engaging him - they were engaging him instead of just going for the takedown, which was boggling, but if it was the only chance he was going to get he'd take it. He had to find that anti-psi. Grabbing onto the car for support - it wasn't really an act, he did sort of need it - he straightened, glaring right back at them even as he tried to focus on the source of the jamming wave.
"Fuck you," he snarled, all too aware of the screaming, panicking, all too innocent bystanders. Get out, he thought at them desperately, get away... "Going to take more than a couple of second-gen bunglers to take me down, boys." Couldn't let the feral get in close and as for the other... unknown quantity. Fuck, it had been so much easier when he'd known everyone coming after him...
Kowalski just smiled at Nathan's defiance, then raked his diamond-hard claws across Nathan's chest, shredding clothes and flesh with equal efficiency. As Nathan reeled back against the car, Miller smiled sadly and grabbed his wrist, applying an amount of pressure just shy of turning the bones into powder. "I'll tell you this one more time - will you come quietly?" he asked, still lisping.
Overhead, Morgan frowned at Miller and Kowalski. "This is taking too long. We need to _move_! NYPD's been notified and is scrambling Code: Blue. We have two minutes." he subvocalized. "Team Two, what's your status?"
There. Nathan found the center of the jamming wave - Just figure out where the pain's coming from, the voice of one of his instructors echoed in his memory - and smiled tightly, his eyes watering at the added pain of the other operative's crushing grip.
"Neither of you were... very well briefed, were you?" he asked in as conversational a tone as he could manage, and then moved abruptly, putting every bit of strength he had and what little telekinesis he could muster into throwing the slender man off-balance and into his feral partner.
Neither went down, but the grip on his wrist slackened, just for an instant, and Nathan broke it and took off at a dead run, charging in the direction of the jamming wave's source. Take out the anti-psi and the situation changed in his favor. Get his TK back and he could go toe-to-toe with anything Mistra could throw at him.
Morgan cursed as Nathan made his break for Lee. "Lee, he's on you. Fade, fade, fade!" he subvocalized urgently, then swung his construct over at Nathan, swiping at his running form with a claw made purely of force. "Team Two, collateral damage. Now!" he called to the other team.
---
Over by Amanda, a dredlocked black man in a business suit grinned in a truly sick way as fire suddenly blazed around his body, the flames burning blue-and-white with their extreme heat. Under his feat, concrete softened and stretched like taffy left out in the sun.
He glared at a fleeing human, and that human ignited like a torch. The human only had a few seconds to scream before the flames snuffed out his life.
An agonised scream caught Amanda's attention, dragging it away from the two men advancing on Nate. The stench of burned flesh filled her nose, and she half-gagged. How...? Then she saw the pyrokinetic, a gleeful expression on his face as he looked at another person, this one a girl in halter and shorts, and she burst into flames.
"No, you don't, you sick fuck," she whispered to herself, and dug into her jeans pocket, pulling out a handful of grey sand. She climbed to her feet, keeping as low as possible, casting the sand in the man's direction and incanting the sleep spell as she did.
The black man staggered as the sleep spell clawed at his mind, but apparently Mistra's mental disciplines and training was enough for him to overcome the spell - at least partially. He yawned mightily as he spun around, looking for the source of the attack. Idly, he glanced at a dog that was running away from him, and the canine ignited and died within a breath's space.
"Target confirmed" he subvocalized into his throat-mike. "Moving to engage now."
Fuck, Amanda thought as the black man shrugged off the spell and turned towards her. She ducked behind a bench, readying the shielding spell but not casting it just yet - it took up way too much energy. Besides, she wasn't positive it'd hold against something that hot. Bloody fuckin' buggery hell, this is not my idea of a good afternoon...
Then she remembered Nate's and Pete's lessons about using whatever weapons came to hand, and she glanced up to the building behind her. Nice big windows. Excellent. Her hand closed over a chunk of metal - car fragment, still warm - and she lobbed it, not at the man, but at the window, shattering it into a millions shards. Then, with the man's attention momentarily distracted, she scooped up the glass (and bits of foliage, and dirt, and stray pieces of rubbish - she was in too much of a hurry to be picky) with her telekinetic spell and flung it directly at the man's face.
The black man, military-trained and used to this tactic, merely frowned and ignited the cloud of material headed for his person. By the time it got to his skin, most of it had burned away to nothing and the remainder too small to cause much serious damage. The few larger pieces that did hit drew burning red blood that ignited the pavement and dirt as it dripped to the ground.
Still, the tactic did succeed in one thing - it got his attention and it annoyed him. He took a step or two towards the witch, his manic grin still stretched across his burning features. "Amanda, is it? If you know what's good for you, you'll tell your friend Nathan to stand down. Or else we're going to kill everyone in a four city block radius. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Under his breath, he subvocalized "Take her."
With a pang of irritation, Amanda watched the man shrug off what she'd thought was a good piece of lateral thinking on her part. She really, really, really hated military training. She edged away, keeping the bench between them. "What makes you think he'd listen t' me?" she asked, a quaver in her voice. Let them think she was scared - well, she was, but if they thought she was helpless, she might have a chance. As the burning man advanced, she could feel the heat coming off his skin in waves, and released the shielding spell, a faint blue haze surrounding her.
The burning man shrugged as Amanda spoke. "Me? Nothing. You're more useful to us unconscious." And then the Chinese girl, who had been sneaking up behind Amanda, jammed her shotgun into her ribs.
"Say goodnight." she hissed into Amanda's ear with a truly obnoxious Brooklyn accent.
Fear bloomed into terror - guns were bad, she could do fuck-all against a metallic weapon... Reacting purely on instinct, Amanda cast one of Rack's spells, even though doing it would drain her reserves. The air crackled with ozone as electricty flared around her.
The electricity sprayed outwards in lethal arcs, but before they could go to ground through anything vulnerable they all changed course and slammed into a young man standing ten feet away, who just laughed. "Thanks, I needed the charge." he said, pushing his hood back to reveal a bald head with a Chinese dragon tattooed on the left side of it.
The Chinese woman smiled thinly and pulled the trigger of her shotgun.
There was no time for Amanda to scream, just a moment of heart-stopping terror, total certainty that she was dead this time for sure... Something slammed into her chest, and she only had a brief instant to wonder where the blood was before the pain dropped her like a stone.
The Chinese girl gestured, and her shotgun disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. "The girl is down." she subvocalized. "Moving on."
She walked away from Amanda's fallen body without a backwards glance. The electrokinetic, now arcing randomly about his body, released fat wands of electricity into buildings and passers-by on his side of the parking lot, causing his victims to twitch and convulse before their brains shorted out.
---
Something reached out of nowhere and smashed him into the pavement. No TK shield to blunt the impact this time, and Nathan felt himself teetering on the verge of blacking out. You pass out, you're done, a voice snarled at him from the back of his mind. You're back on a plane for Mistra. And Amanda...
Amanda. He pushed himself up, not looking back to see who had attacked him. The source of the jamming wave was still there, if fleeing, and he started to run again, staggering at first and then more quickly, dodging and weaving between the cars, trying not to hear the change in the screaming.
It was a tall black man who made the mistake of looking back over his shoulder at him, and Nathan saw the recognition in his eyes. Rage surged through him and as he chased the man up onto the grass he grabbed a handy garbage can and threw it. The anti-psi fell, and Nathan crossed the remaining distance between them while he was still rising to his feet, trying to get his balance back.
No words, not this time. Nathan struck hard and struck fast. He lunged, grabbing the other man's head and twisting, snapping his neck.
---
As the electrokinetic and the pyrokinetic and the Chinese girl worked their own particular brand of havoc, a fourth figure joined them - a girl dressed, absurdly, as a Catholic schoolgirl. She shook out her long black hair and flicked her fingers at a parked car, which promply imploded on its own centerpoint, then erupted into a fireball as the gas tank cooked off. The girl giggled at the destruction she had wreaked, and then moved over to the next parked car to repeat the process. "Goddamned foreign cars!" she giggled.
Unnoticed by the foursome, Amanda sat bolt upright, her eyes blazing crimson.
---
The jamming wave died. Nathan let the body drop, his eyes closing for a moment as the psychic pain drained out of him like water through a sieve. In an instant, he got a telepathic snapshot of what was happening, what the other team was doing... and who was commanding this little operation.
He whirled, eyes fixed on Morgan's construct as the other telekinetic moved towards him.
"Lee is down. Repeat, Lee is Down." Morgan subvocalized. "Everyone pull back." He then smiled at Nathan, and gave him a little jaunty wave with a telekinetic claw. "Hello, Nathan." he said. "Pity it has to end like this. You're coming back with me. They want you back, Cable." And then without further ado Morgan grabbed at Nathan with one telekinetic fist, trying to rip Nathan's arm out of its socket, force him to spend time and energy reinforcing his body as opposed to attacking full-bore. The other claw skewered a nearby parked car, hefting it effortlessly in preparation to throw.
---
The shotgun back in her hands, warm from use, the Chinese girl studied the battlefield coolly, picking her targets. She dropped them quickly and efficiently, going for the easy shots. Like shooting fish in a barrel, she thought. This wasn't a customary form of containment, but then, this wasn't your average retrieval mission. Word had come down from high that special measures were required.
"Excuse me, young lady, but this is a college. And I don't appreciate all this violence. Students are trying to study."
The voice behind her was male, polite, almost gentle, but edged with something that could only be called cold fury. The Chinese girl turned to find a bookish, dark-haired man in a suit looking at her disapprovingly, arms folded over his chest. "I really must insist you leave," he added.
"Who the hell are you?" the Chinese girl asked, and got no answer, only a deeper frown. "Doesn't matter. Time to die, Pops." she said, then pointed the shotgun right at the older man's midsection and pulled the trigger.
The shotgun blast passed through the man, whose form wavered like smoke, and he shook his head, chidingly. "Now, that was rude," he said. "And didn't they teach you anything about astral projection? You can't shoot what isn't actually in front of you. Education standards today..." He reached out with his hand, pointing at her forehead. "Sleep," Strange commanded, pushing the command deep into her brain.
The Chinese girl collapsed gracefully as her body shut down in sleep. Her shotgun clattered to the ground beside her.
"Much better," said Strange, and the astral form winked out. Over in the shadowed doorway of his building, the man himself opened his eyes and stepped cautiously out. His students - not just Amanda, but the remaining survivors of the attack - needed him.
---
"Looking well, Morgan," Nathan gritted, feeling an ominous pop in his shoulder before he could use his own telekinesis to stop it from becoming any worse. "Really...trying to make me regret not... finishing you off the last time...aren't you?" He wrenched the car away from Morgan and used it to smash at the construct.
Didn't get through, of course. Wouldn't be that easy, not with him... Morgan was good, very good. Maybe knowing who was after him wasn't preferable after all. Nathan gritted his teeth, feeling the strain as he warped the car with his telekinesis, spinning out razor-sharp strands of metal and using them to stab at the construct, seeking a way through.
Morgan grunted as he felt the metal spikes slam into his exoskeleton, trying to find a way in. The claw trying to rip Nathan's arm off grew more slender as Morgan redistributed the force to protect his body. He threw what was left of the car - not at Nathan, but at a small cluster of passers-by who were watching in horror from the supposed safety of a nearby building.
"Give up, Cable." he grunted. "You can maybe take me, but not all of us." And with that, Miller and Kowalski both attacked - Miller with a lazy-looking slap, and Kowalski looking to aid Morgan's attempt to rip Nathan's arm off by cutting at the strained shoulder.
Nathan desperately deflected the car away from the civilians, but knew as he did it that he was leaving himself open. The little man in the baseball cap nearly took his head off with one casual blow, and Nathan felt the feral's claws cut into his shoulder. Dazed, he lashed out on reflex, using his telepathy to target and his telekinesis to smash them away, the attacks unfocused but as strong as he dared make them, given that he was still in Morgan's grip.
#I'm not... going BACK!# he sent viciously at Morgan, and vaporized the pavement beneath his construct.
Miller and Kowalski went flying backwards, to land in a very untidy pile. Miller got back to his feet quickly, but Kowalski rose slowly and was clearly favoring one leg heavily.
Morgan's construct stumbled briefly at the pavement beneath the construct's feet detonated. The grip on Nathan's arm was removed entirely as Morgan struggled to catch his balance. But as soon as he did, he went for the grab again, trying for that same arm again. He didn't say anything, but his expression was almost one of detatched peace.
Miller rushed back towards Nathan, cocking a fist back to try to send Nathan into La-La Land. Absurdly, his tongue was sticking out absently, like its owner had more important things to do than worry about keeping it where it belonged.
Nathan threw up a partial shield, stumbling backwards as Morgan's telekinetic claw slammed into it. He saw the calm in Morgan's eyes, remembered feeling that himself. The utter certainty that what you were doing was right, that there were no questions, no qualms, just the mission...
He sensed, rather than saw Miller running at him, and calm was suddenly the last thing on his mind. "No! Dammit, NO!" he snarled, looking in that direction and seeing, as he had with Betsy, every cell in the man's body outlined in dull gold.
This time there was no reason to hold back, to divert the power elsewhere. He let it go, let it all go, right at the running man, and saw/sensed/heard him turn into shimmering glass mid-step. The silent howl of agony nearly sent him to his knees, but Nathan lashed out again, at the glass statue that had been a man, and it shattered into a million pieces.
Kozlowski literally howled as Morgan shattered. He charged forward. heedless of his clearly broken leg, snarling and growling as he advanced. His claws were outstretched for Nathan's throat.
That's new, thought Morgan to himself as he watched - felt - the transfiguration of Miller into glass. He let Nathan go and moved his construct back, demonstrating a new level of agility and coordination as he jumped it onto the side of a building, then ascended the building rapidly. "Team One leader, falling back to rendezvous point," he subvocalized, already writing off Kozlowski. They had no telepaths, thus no way to drag a feral out of a berserk state. "Team Two, any success?" Hopefully this new tactical idea of the directors would be more effective.
Nathan registered Morgan's retreat, but didn't spare the effort for a parting shot. He turned to face the running, clearly beserk feral, and struggled to visualize internal damage. Heart, lungs, organs, crushed and pulped beyond the reach of any healing factor to repair, at least not quickly...
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and made it happen. Still a few steps away, the feral stumbled and went down.
Nathan did as well, almost in the same instant. His legs gave out all at once and suddenly he was on his hands and knees on the pavement, struggling to catch his breath as darkness pushed in at the edges of his vision.
Too much, he thought dimly, a coughing spasm hitting him. Blood at the back of his throat - the virus? But it wasn't over, he told himself feverishly, sensing the others, the ones that hadn't fallen back. Not done yet.
"Amanda," he muttered and launched himself back to his feet, running again. Adrenalin was a godsend.
---
Bodies. Bodies everywhere amid the havoc that the second team had wreaked. They were killing civilians, what were they doing killing civilians? Searching desperately for Amanda's thoughts, Nathan stopped dead at the sight of a tall, thin, thoroughly familiar figure striding out into the chaos.
"Strange!" he called out, or tried to - the words were barely out of his mouth when a crackling energy discharge slammed into him and he hit the ground again, his muscles spasming under the electrical assault and a scream wrenching itself free from his throat.
The electrokinetic with the dragon tattoo smiled as random bolts of electricity whirled about him, arcing from one point on his body to another in semi-random patterns. He was grinning ferally as he pointed again at Nathan. "Fry!" he said as thick whirling ropes of lightning streaked out from his hands.
"Avert!" Strange cried, waving his hand across in a vaguely Tai Chi-like motion. The next wave of electricity was deflected away from Nathan - barely - and Strange began to approach Nathan. The strain was starting to show on his face - his mental vision was filled with the deaths of the innocent, the cold professional ruthlessness of the killers. "What the devil is all this, Dayspring?" he demanded when he was a few steps away from the fallen ex-merc.
Gasping as he pushed himself up to his hands and knees, Nathan ignored Strange for the moment and lashed out at the electrokinetic. His focus was shot, but he still had power to spare, and the tattooed operative grunted as he was thrown back thrown the air until he had an abrupt encounter with a tree.
Not unconscious, Nathan knew; just stunned. He hauled himself to his feet, swaying dangerously as he staggered in that direction. #Alpha-class mutants,# he sent rapidly at Strange, not sure where he was finding the concentration to project. #Special ops training, psionically conditioned.#
"Psionically?" A calculating expression crossed Strange's face as he reached out with his magic, trying to tweak the auras of the operatives still upright and causing havoc. Not the brightest move on the academic's part; it was as he'd extended his senses into an icy chasm. There was a sensation of coldness, of rigidity, freezing him in place, pulling him further in. With a strangled cry he managed to wrench his awareness away, vaguely realizing he'd started bleeding from the nose.
The electrokinetic groaned as he clutched at his head, and then tried to keep his poor abused spine from feeling any additional pain. His bell had fairly clearly been rung, and reason hadn't quite checked in 100% yet.
The tree behind him, though, exploded as a fat stroke of lightning arced through its trunk, flashing the water inside the plant into steam.
Nathan frantically redirected the wood shrapnel away from a pair of terrified students who'd taken refuge beside a set of stairs. His distraction gave the electrokinetic a moment longer to recover, and another lightning bolt came at him. Nathan dove out of the way, hitting the ground harder than he'd meant to. But lightning wasn't something he could deflect.
The electrokinetic staggered back to his feet, and switched tactics. Instead of throwing bolts of lightning, he let the current flow from him, creating a bubble of potential energy that would fry anything that came within the circle. The field crackled as several insects and burning bits hit the field and disintegrated.
He walked towards Strange and Nathan, smiling the whole time. All he had to do now was get close to them.
"This is bloody insane," muttered Strange, shocked out of his usual composure by the violence around him. He threw up a mystical shield around himself and Nathan, but it would only buy them time - his powers were over-stretched and he was still reeling from his ill-fated attempt to control the operatives.
---
Amid the chaos, Amanda stood jerkily, her feet too close together to make for a truly stable stance. She clumsily raised her hands towards the Mistra operatives, and in a voice very clearly not hers, said "No more!"
Turning away from the charred remains of a woman and child who had stupidly opted for trying to hide instead of running, the pyrokinetic's eyes widened briefly before his sneer reappeared. "What, you need a more permanent invitation to stay unconscious?" Raising his voice so that he could be heard over the din, he continued. "Either you convince Cable to lay down his arms and surrender to us, or we're just going to keep killing. Old, young, male, female, black, white, it doesn't matter. Well, if I can kill more whiteys, that's all good. Point is, you're gonna be _wading_ in blood if you both don't surrender. You hear me, Cable?"
---
Nathan heard the threat - no, not a threat, a statement of fact, that still-cool, logical part of him amended - over the din. The adrenalin rush that had sustained him this far faded abruptly, leaving him cold and shaking.
Surrender, or they wade in blood. Innocent blood. They'd come to a school, if not the one he'd feared, but did it really matter in the end? Same consequences. Same horrible consequences, and all these deaths were on his conscience, all because of him...
There couldn't be any more. Not one. "Strange," he said softly, pushing himself back up to his knees, staring fixedly at the electrokinetic as he approached. "Drop the shield around me."
"You want me to what?" Strange replied, glancing at the merc in surprise. Then he caught the expression on Nathan's face, and he nodded. The shield contracted, until it surrounded the academic alone.
There was part of him that was screaming, shouting that this wasn't happening, that he wasn't going to do this. Not again, he'd said. Never again. Rather be dead.
But there wasn't a choice. Too much else at risk. Amanda was somewhere here, and all of these kids, all of these kids who hadn't done anything but linger outside to enjoy the Saturday afternoon...
He stayed on his knees, folding his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. "Standing down," he called, aloud and telepathically, amazed when his voice stayed perfectly steady.
The electrokinetic was soon joined by the Catholic schoolgirl and the black man in a suit (he was no longer on fire). The three of them looked at Cable with wary respect. "Come quietly, then." the girl said as the two men closed in on him, the pyrokinetic reaching for one arm and the electrokinetic the other.
"NO!" came that Spanish-accented voice from out of Amanda, as she jerkily and clumsily ran towards where Nathan, Strange, and the Mistra operatives stood. "No surrender!" she said again, still in that too-deep-for-her male voice.
She tripped over a piece of debris and fell face-first, lacking any of her usual grace and scraping the hell out of her hands and forearms as she hit. She screamed then, a deep man's yell from a slender female throat.
Rather than get up, she stayed down, but even from her prone position the glow coming from her eyes, the red glow, was clearly visible. Psionically, a bloom of pure emotion eminated from Amanda and ripped into the Mistra operatives - tripping as many different empathic triggers as possible.
There was only one exception to the wave - the emotions bent _around_ Nathan, leaving him untouched.
Strange had been drawing on his remaining resources, trying to think of a spell that would solve this situation, when he saw Amanda stumbling forward. To his eyes, her aura was all wrong, energy poured into a vessel it was not meant to, and he knew immediately this was not his student. Then the empathic wave hit, and he crouched down, expanding his shield to cover as many remaining bystanders as possible, but leaving Nathan and the Mistra operatives untouched.
Screaming. They were screaming now too, their powers going insane just as his telekinesis had when Manuel had accidentally triggered him months ago, and Nathan barely managed to get out of the way as flame erupted on one side of him and electricity on the other. The girl wasn't screaming. She wasn't doing anything, just standing there as if she was frozen in a moment. But the other two...
Had to stop them. They could do even worse damage, completely by accident. Rolling back to his feet, Nathan closed a telekinetic shield around the pyrokinetic, forcing his flames inwards, compressing them around his body. To the electrokinetic, he gave the same treatment as he had the feral earlier, exploding his heart and tearing his internal organs apart. Knowing that for him, at least, it would be permanent.
The pyrokinetic struggled against both his triggers and the telekinetic bell-jar that was placed around him. The flames passed around him and through him harmlessly, but his chest heaved and his dark skin turned even darker as he struggled to draw oxygen through the bottled-up flames. After a few minutes of struggle, he slumped against the invisible barrier in death.
Nathan let him fall, staring down for a moment at the two bodies. He raised his head and look at the girl who was still frozen, unmoving. Dead, though, he thought, not sensing any mental activity. Quite dead.
His legs buckled suddenly, and he slumped to the ground, another coughing spasm stealing away his breath. On his hands and knees, he saw Amanda lying not far away, her eyes still glowing. #Manuel?# he thought weakly, but the coughing got more violent and he doubled over, gasping for air.
Amanda rolled onto her back clumsily, and tilted her head so that she could look at Nathan, albeit upside-down. "Estupido." she whispered, vocal cords too abused to make herself heard any louder than that. "Muy estupido." she whispered, then the red glow died from about her eyes and it was as if someone had cut the strings - Amanda immediately lolled to one side, clearly unconscious.
Sirens filled the air as police and fire crews drew near. "By the crimson bands of Cytorrak, never have I seen such insanity," Strange muttered to himself as he let down his shields with a sigh of relief. He stumbled to where Amanda's limp form lay. All signs of that alien aura were gone and he knelt to check her pulse and her aura for signs of damage. She was unconscious, bruised and battered, but she would recover, in time.
A burst of coughing caught his attention and he looked over at Nathan. "They were after you?" he asked, although he knew the answer to that.
Nathan nodded weakly, trying to catch his breath. But he couldn't stop coughing. It was as if something was ripping inside his chest, and the taste of blood in his mouth was so strong he nearly choked. He knew what this was.
#I was one of them,# he sent back faintly. #One of their children...# He was on the verge of real shock, he knew, and pulled himself back through sheer force of will. Breathe, he told himself. Shallowly if you have to...
Air first. Then back to his feet. "I should... need to get her out of here," he said, his voice nearly as ravaged as Amanda had been. His eyes roamed their devastated surroundings for a moment and he reeled a little. "Have to g-go."
Strange frowned at the state of the man, and at his proposal. "It would be wiser to await medical attention, he said, his voice clipped and formal. Then he followed Nathan's gaze across the ruined campus and he visibly flinched. "Who were these people, that they would engineer such carnage?" he whispered, his lips white from the strain of blocking out the multiple levels of pain and suffering his powers allowed him to see. "And you say you were one of them..."
No. No explanations. Not now. He couldn't... "There... will be a s-sweeper team," Nathan said, each word labored, agonizing. He had to stay on his feet, stay in the moment. No matter how badly he wanted to fall. "If they... find her, they'll take her. She's powerful... they know that now. They... take powerful ch-children. It's what they do. Take them and... turn them into..." He gestured weakly at the bodies of the two operatives. "I h-have to get her out of here."
"No, that won't do, that won't do at all..." Strange looked down at the still, white face of his student, imagining Amanda as one of those... No, he wouldn't let that happen, not after everything else that had been done to her. He scooped her up in his arms, surprised at how light she was. "Take her. Get her out of here. I'll take care of whatever follows." He gave Nathan a stern look. "And later, much later, when you are fit, you and I are going to discuss this."
Nathan took him from her, forcing his damaged arm to move, slide under her shoulders. He couldn't meet Strange's eyes. Couldn't let himself... Amanda was all that mattered, the only thing that mattered right now. Turning, he started off at a staggering run. Somewhere safe, he thought dizzily. A phone...? Call the mansion, call...
#Charles...?# he thought desperately, willing the Professor to hear him. #Charles, please...#
Nathan arrives at Columbia University to take Amanda out for the afternoon after their respective Saturday appointment. Mistra is waiting. He fights back, only to discover a horrific change in Mistra's tactics. Amanda tries to help save some of the innocent bystanders, but has a close encounter herself, leading Manuel, back at the mansion, to make a very unpleasant discovery about his powers. Dr. Strange attempts to help. And the battle seems about to end in Nathan's surrender...
It had been a good plan, Nathan decided, to leave the car on the campus and walk to Jack's. As well as making it easier to meet Amanda after her lesson with Strange, it also ensured that he had to walk back, which was proving to be a better way of calming down after this morning's session with Jack than he'd expected.
The session hadn't been quite as bad as last week's - no crystallized furniture or anything - but the fresh air and the sunlight was still having a very salutary effect. And stealing Amanda away for the afternoon - he couldn't wait to see her reaction to what he had in mind - was only going to chase away the last of the post-therapy blahs. Approaching the parking lot, he looked around for Amanda, thinning out his shields just a little, hoping to catch her thoughts. The campus wasn't as crowded as it might have been, but there were still a good number of people around.
Amanda skipped down the steps of Strange's building, a small backpack full of magic books swinging from one strap over her shoulder. The session had been a good one, Strange had been pleased with her, and now she was meeting Nate and having some fun. Just the two of them, no other complications or demands. She scanned the campus, trying to spot him, and grinned when she caught sight of him over by the parking lot - he was so tall he was easy to see. She dodged around a group of students discussing summer school woes, and gave him a wave as she caught his eye.
Nathan waved, smiling as he saw how cheerful she looked. She was cheerful, he was cheerful at not actually having to meet her magical tutor again - it was all good. Chuckling, he walked into the parking lot and towards the car he'd brought this morning. He'd picked it randomly out of the ones in the garage, simply the basis that it was a rather nice shade of blue. There were some fringe benefits to having to avoid taking the same car every Saturday.
...there was something hot in his pocket. Why was there something hot in his pocket? Nathan frowned and dug out his keys, then winced, dropping them as a painful tingle shot up his arm. "What the fuck?" he muttered, bending to pick them up.
It was the medallion, he realized once he had the keys in his hand again - the little silver protective charm Amanda had given him, that he was using at her suggestion as a keychain. Scowling more deeply, he looked around, letting his shields down a little farther as he continued to walk towards the car, trying to get a stronger impression of the psychic atmosphere, looking for the threat. Amanda was still quite a distance away, and he made another beckoning motion, thinking that it would maybe be a good idea if they got out of here relatively promptly. When he was several steps away, he clicked the button on the little remote to disengage the car's alarm.
And the car blew up.
It happened so fast. One minute she was watching Nate head towards the car, dropping something and bending to pick it up, beckoning her over... And then it seemed like the world was full of fire and noise and smoke as the car vanished into a fireball. Amanda stood stock-still, ignoring the screaming people fleeing around her, even when they buffeted her in their rush to get away. She took a step towards the burning wreck of the car, then another, still trying to comprehend that Nate had been there, that he'd been there and now there was nothing but a burning, smoking mess, fragments of metal raining down around the scene.
Then it hit her like a fist, and she opened her mouth and screamed his name.
Pain, heat, the crushing impact of the explosion against the last-second, desperate TK shield... and then he was sprawled on the pavement, seeing stars and tasting blood as he tried desperately to draw air back into his lungs. He heard Amanda scream and tried to get up, to convince his limbs to work...
#...get down,# he thought feebly at her, willng her to hear him. #Down...#
And then he nearly screamed as well as something hit him, an invisible wave of splintering force that burned through his mind, breaking through his shields and stealing away his control over his TK.
---
Morgan, safe in his observer's station across the street from the parking lot, smiled thinly as the carefully-planted car bomb detonated. "Team One, move up. Team Two, secure the perimeter." he subvocalized, then grinned as he activated his gift.
In an instant, his exoskeleton shimmered into a being, a hazy golden construct with two wicked-looking clawed arms and himself safely tucked away inside the construct.
"Miller, Kowalski, take point. Lee, you're backup. Go!" he subvocalized as Miller (a almost effeminate-looking man dressed in a Mets jersey) and Kowalski (a fireplug of a man with diamond-hard claws) charged towards the burning fire. Lee, a built black man, faded towards the panicking civilians, all the while concentrating his dampening gift on Nathan - enough to take away his firepower, but not so much as to turn him into a spasming corpse. They had all been briefed on the virus, and there was no point in going to all this trouble to bring back a dead body.
Nathan, you tool! Just give it up, old man. You're outclassed this time. Morgan thought silently as he studied the scene from his vantage point inside his twenty-foot-tall construct. "Team Two, we may have collateral here. Dark-haired girl, fits the description of one of Cable's students. Take her." he subvocalized, spotting Amanda's sprawled form.
---
#Down...# Nate's voice, in her head. Nate alive! Then Amanda realised what he was so desperately trying to tell her and she reacted, dropping instantly to the ground before crawling towards a collection of bushes near the path. As she made her way towards a hiding place, she peered across at the parking lot, trying to see Nate in all the confusion. Then movement registered in the corner of her vision, movement that wasn't panicked fleeing, but purposeful, intent.
---
Get up! Nathan snarled at himself, clawing his way feebly back to his feet and half-staggering over to the questionable cover of another car. He looked around for Amanda and couldn't see her. Desperately, he tried to reach out to find her thoughts, but nearly toppled back to the pavement as the screaming pain in his head soared to a crescendo.
Scrambled, he thought disjointedly, coughing on blood. Scrambled... scrambler... there was an anti-psi somewhere. Jamming his powers.
Oh, shit.
And this had to happen on the Saturday that he'd bowed to Jack's dislike at him coming armed to their sessions and left his gun in the fucking car.
Miller and Kowalski reached Nathan at approximately the same time. "Go on, make a move." taunted Kowalski, his fingertips turning a glittering crystal color as he talked. He waved them around in Nathan's face for emphasis. "I'm just itching for an excuse to cut the great Cable."
Miller, for his part, adjusted his Michigan State Spartans hat and cracked his knuckles. "You're coming home." the slender man said with a lisp. "Don't make this any harder than it has to be. You're sick, confused. You need help."
Engaging him - they were engaging him instead of just going for the takedown, which was boggling, but if it was the only chance he was going to get he'd take it. He had to find that anti-psi. Grabbing onto the car for support - it wasn't really an act, he did sort of need it - he straightened, glaring right back at them even as he tried to focus on the source of the jamming wave.
"Fuck you," he snarled, all too aware of the screaming, panicking, all too innocent bystanders. Get out, he thought at them desperately, get away... "Going to take more than a couple of second-gen bunglers to take me down, boys." Couldn't let the feral get in close and as for the other... unknown quantity. Fuck, it had been so much easier when he'd known everyone coming after him...
Kowalski just smiled at Nathan's defiance, then raked his diamond-hard claws across Nathan's chest, shredding clothes and flesh with equal efficiency. As Nathan reeled back against the car, Miller smiled sadly and grabbed his wrist, applying an amount of pressure just shy of turning the bones into powder. "I'll tell you this one more time - will you come quietly?" he asked, still lisping.
Overhead, Morgan frowned at Miller and Kowalski. "This is taking too long. We need to _move_! NYPD's been notified and is scrambling Code: Blue. We have two minutes." he subvocalized. "Team Two, what's your status?"
There. Nathan found the center of the jamming wave - Just figure out where the pain's coming from, the voice of one of his instructors echoed in his memory - and smiled tightly, his eyes watering at the added pain of the other operative's crushing grip.
"Neither of you were... very well briefed, were you?" he asked in as conversational a tone as he could manage, and then moved abruptly, putting every bit of strength he had and what little telekinesis he could muster into throwing the slender man off-balance and into his feral partner.
Neither went down, but the grip on his wrist slackened, just for an instant, and Nathan broke it and took off at a dead run, charging in the direction of the jamming wave's source. Take out the anti-psi and the situation changed in his favor. Get his TK back and he could go toe-to-toe with anything Mistra could throw at him.
Morgan cursed as Nathan made his break for Lee. "Lee, he's on you. Fade, fade, fade!" he subvocalized urgently, then swung his construct over at Nathan, swiping at his running form with a claw made purely of force. "Team Two, collateral damage. Now!" he called to the other team.
---
Over by Amanda, a dredlocked black man in a business suit grinned in a truly sick way as fire suddenly blazed around his body, the flames burning blue-and-white with their extreme heat. Under his feat, concrete softened and stretched like taffy left out in the sun.
He glared at a fleeing human, and that human ignited like a torch. The human only had a few seconds to scream before the flames snuffed out his life.
An agonised scream caught Amanda's attention, dragging it away from the two men advancing on Nate. The stench of burned flesh filled her nose, and she half-gagged. How...? Then she saw the pyrokinetic, a gleeful expression on his face as he looked at another person, this one a girl in halter and shorts, and she burst into flames.
"No, you don't, you sick fuck," she whispered to herself, and dug into her jeans pocket, pulling out a handful of grey sand. She climbed to her feet, keeping as low as possible, casting the sand in the man's direction and incanting the sleep spell as she did.
The black man staggered as the sleep spell clawed at his mind, but apparently Mistra's mental disciplines and training was enough for him to overcome the spell - at least partially. He yawned mightily as he spun around, looking for the source of the attack. Idly, he glanced at a dog that was running away from him, and the canine ignited and died within a breath's space.
"Target confirmed" he subvocalized into his throat-mike. "Moving to engage now."
Fuck, Amanda thought as the black man shrugged off the spell and turned towards her. She ducked behind a bench, readying the shielding spell but not casting it just yet - it took up way too much energy. Besides, she wasn't positive it'd hold against something that hot. Bloody fuckin' buggery hell, this is not my idea of a good afternoon...
Then she remembered Nate's and Pete's lessons about using whatever weapons came to hand, and she glanced up to the building behind her. Nice big windows. Excellent. Her hand closed over a chunk of metal - car fragment, still warm - and she lobbed it, not at the man, but at the window, shattering it into a millions shards. Then, with the man's attention momentarily distracted, she scooped up the glass (and bits of foliage, and dirt, and stray pieces of rubbish - she was in too much of a hurry to be picky) with her telekinetic spell and flung it directly at the man's face.
The black man, military-trained and used to this tactic, merely frowned and ignited the cloud of material headed for his person. By the time it got to his skin, most of it had burned away to nothing and the remainder too small to cause much serious damage. The few larger pieces that did hit drew burning red blood that ignited the pavement and dirt as it dripped to the ground.
Still, the tactic did succeed in one thing - it got his attention and it annoyed him. He took a step or two towards the witch, his manic grin still stretched across his burning features. "Amanda, is it? If you know what's good for you, you'll tell your friend Nathan to stand down. Or else we're going to kill everyone in a four city block radius. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Under his breath, he subvocalized "Take her."
With a pang of irritation, Amanda watched the man shrug off what she'd thought was a good piece of lateral thinking on her part. She really, really, really hated military training. She edged away, keeping the bench between them. "What makes you think he'd listen t' me?" she asked, a quaver in her voice. Let them think she was scared - well, she was, but if they thought she was helpless, she might have a chance. As the burning man advanced, she could feel the heat coming off his skin in waves, and released the shielding spell, a faint blue haze surrounding her.
The burning man shrugged as Amanda spoke. "Me? Nothing. You're more useful to us unconscious." And then the Chinese girl, who had been sneaking up behind Amanda, jammed her shotgun into her ribs.
"Say goodnight." she hissed into Amanda's ear with a truly obnoxious Brooklyn accent.
Fear bloomed into terror - guns were bad, she could do fuck-all against a metallic weapon... Reacting purely on instinct, Amanda cast one of Rack's spells, even though doing it would drain her reserves. The air crackled with ozone as electricty flared around her.
The electricity sprayed outwards in lethal arcs, but before they could go to ground through anything vulnerable they all changed course and slammed into a young man standing ten feet away, who just laughed. "Thanks, I needed the charge." he said, pushing his hood back to reveal a bald head with a Chinese dragon tattooed on the left side of it.
The Chinese woman smiled thinly and pulled the trigger of her shotgun.
There was no time for Amanda to scream, just a moment of heart-stopping terror, total certainty that she was dead this time for sure... Something slammed into her chest, and she only had a brief instant to wonder where the blood was before the pain dropped her like a stone.
The Chinese girl gestured, and her shotgun disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. "The girl is down." she subvocalized. "Moving on."
She walked away from Amanda's fallen body without a backwards glance. The electrokinetic, now arcing randomly about his body, released fat wands of electricity into buildings and passers-by on his side of the parking lot, causing his victims to twitch and convulse before their brains shorted out.
---
Something reached out of nowhere and smashed him into the pavement. No TK shield to blunt the impact this time, and Nathan felt himself teetering on the verge of blacking out. You pass out, you're done, a voice snarled at him from the back of his mind. You're back on a plane for Mistra. And Amanda...
Amanda. He pushed himself up, not looking back to see who had attacked him. The source of the jamming wave was still there, if fleeing, and he started to run again, staggering at first and then more quickly, dodging and weaving between the cars, trying not to hear the change in the screaming.
It was a tall black man who made the mistake of looking back over his shoulder at him, and Nathan saw the recognition in his eyes. Rage surged through him and as he chased the man up onto the grass he grabbed a handy garbage can and threw it. The anti-psi fell, and Nathan crossed the remaining distance between them while he was still rising to his feet, trying to get his balance back.
No words, not this time. Nathan struck hard and struck fast. He lunged, grabbing the other man's head and twisting, snapping his neck.
---
As the electrokinetic and the pyrokinetic and the Chinese girl worked their own particular brand of havoc, a fourth figure joined them - a girl dressed, absurdly, as a Catholic schoolgirl. She shook out her long black hair and flicked her fingers at a parked car, which promply imploded on its own centerpoint, then erupted into a fireball as the gas tank cooked off. The girl giggled at the destruction she had wreaked, and then moved over to the next parked car to repeat the process. "Goddamned foreign cars!" she giggled.
Unnoticed by the foursome, Amanda sat bolt upright, her eyes blazing crimson.
---
The jamming wave died. Nathan let the body drop, his eyes closing for a moment as the psychic pain drained out of him like water through a sieve. In an instant, he got a telepathic snapshot of what was happening, what the other team was doing... and who was commanding this little operation.
He whirled, eyes fixed on Morgan's construct as the other telekinetic moved towards him.
"Lee is down. Repeat, Lee is Down." Morgan subvocalized. "Everyone pull back." He then smiled at Nathan, and gave him a little jaunty wave with a telekinetic claw. "Hello, Nathan." he said. "Pity it has to end like this. You're coming back with me. They want you back, Cable." And then without further ado Morgan grabbed at Nathan with one telekinetic fist, trying to rip Nathan's arm out of its socket, force him to spend time and energy reinforcing his body as opposed to attacking full-bore. The other claw skewered a nearby parked car, hefting it effortlessly in preparation to throw.
---
The shotgun back in her hands, warm from use, the Chinese girl studied the battlefield coolly, picking her targets. She dropped them quickly and efficiently, going for the easy shots. Like shooting fish in a barrel, she thought. This wasn't a customary form of containment, but then, this wasn't your average retrieval mission. Word had come down from high that special measures were required.
"Excuse me, young lady, but this is a college. And I don't appreciate all this violence. Students are trying to study."
The voice behind her was male, polite, almost gentle, but edged with something that could only be called cold fury. The Chinese girl turned to find a bookish, dark-haired man in a suit looking at her disapprovingly, arms folded over his chest. "I really must insist you leave," he added.
"Who the hell are you?" the Chinese girl asked, and got no answer, only a deeper frown. "Doesn't matter. Time to die, Pops." she said, then pointed the shotgun right at the older man's midsection and pulled the trigger.
The shotgun blast passed through the man, whose form wavered like smoke, and he shook his head, chidingly. "Now, that was rude," he said. "And didn't they teach you anything about astral projection? You can't shoot what isn't actually in front of you. Education standards today..." He reached out with his hand, pointing at her forehead. "Sleep," Strange commanded, pushing the command deep into her brain.
The Chinese girl collapsed gracefully as her body shut down in sleep. Her shotgun clattered to the ground beside her.
"Much better," said Strange, and the astral form winked out. Over in the shadowed doorway of his building, the man himself opened his eyes and stepped cautiously out. His students - not just Amanda, but the remaining survivors of the attack - needed him.
---
"Looking well, Morgan," Nathan gritted, feeling an ominous pop in his shoulder before he could use his own telekinesis to stop it from becoming any worse. "Really...trying to make me regret not... finishing you off the last time...aren't you?" He wrenched the car away from Morgan and used it to smash at the construct.
Didn't get through, of course. Wouldn't be that easy, not with him... Morgan was good, very good. Maybe knowing who was after him wasn't preferable after all. Nathan gritted his teeth, feeling the strain as he warped the car with his telekinesis, spinning out razor-sharp strands of metal and using them to stab at the construct, seeking a way through.
Morgan grunted as he felt the metal spikes slam into his exoskeleton, trying to find a way in. The claw trying to rip Nathan's arm off grew more slender as Morgan redistributed the force to protect his body. He threw what was left of the car - not at Nathan, but at a small cluster of passers-by who were watching in horror from the supposed safety of a nearby building.
"Give up, Cable." he grunted. "You can maybe take me, but not all of us." And with that, Miller and Kowalski both attacked - Miller with a lazy-looking slap, and Kowalski looking to aid Morgan's attempt to rip Nathan's arm off by cutting at the strained shoulder.
Nathan desperately deflected the car away from the civilians, but knew as he did it that he was leaving himself open. The little man in the baseball cap nearly took his head off with one casual blow, and Nathan felt the feral's claws cut into his shoulder. Dazed, he lashed out on reflex, using his telepathy to target and his telekinesis to smash them away, the attacks unfocused but as strong as he dared make them, given that he was still in Morgan's grip.
#I'm not... going BACK!# he sent viciously at Morgan, and vaporized the pavement beneath his construct.
Miller and Kowalski went flying backwards, to land in a very untidy pile. Miller got back to his feet quickly, but Kowalski rose slowly and was clearly favoring one leg heavily.
Morgan's construct stumbled briefly at the pavement beneath the construct's feet detonated. The grip on Nathan's arm was removed entirely as Morgan struggled to catch his balance. But as soon as he did, he went for the grab again, trying for that same arm again. He didn't say anything, but his expression was almost one of detatched peace.
Miller rushed back towards Nathan, cocking a fist back to try to send Nathan into La-La Land. Absurdly, his tongue was sticking out absently, like its owner had more important things to do than worry about keeping it where it belonged.
Nathan threw up a partial shield, stumbling backwards as Morgan's telekinetic claw slammed into it. He saw the calm in Morgan's eyes, remembered feeling that himself. The utter certainty that what you were doing was right, that there were no questions, no qualms, just the mission...
He sensed, rather than saw Miller running at him, and calm was suddenly the last thing on his mind. "No! Dammit, NO!" he snarled, looking in that direction and seeing, as he had with Betsy, every cell in the man's body outlined in dull gold.
This time there was no reason to hold back, to divert the power elsewhere. He let it go, let it all go, right at the running man, and saw/sensed/heard him turn into shimmering glass mid-step. The silent howl of agony nearly sent him to his knees, but Nathan lashed out again, at the glass statue that had been a man, and it shattered into a million pieces.
Kozlowski literally howled as Morgan shattered. He charged forward. heedless of his clearly broken leg, snarling and growling as he advanced. His claws were outstretched for Nathan's throat.
That's new, thought Morgan to himself as he watched - felt - the transfiguration of Miller into glass. He let Nathan go and moved his construct back, demonstrating a new level of agility and coordination as he jumped it onto the side of a building, then ascended the building rapidly. "Team One leader, falling back to rendezvous point," he subvocalized, already writing off Kozlowski. They had no telepaths, thus no way to drag a feral out of a berserk state. "Team Two, any success?" Hopefully this new tactical idea of the directors would be more effective.
Nathan registered Morgan's retreat, but didn't spare the effort for a parting shot. He turned to face the running, clearly beserk feral, and struggled to visualize internal damage. Heart, lungs, organs, crushed and pulped beyond the reach of any healing factor to repair, at least not quickly...
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and made it happen. Still a few steps away, the feral stumbled and went down.
Nathan did as well, almost in the same instant. His legs gave out all at once and suddenly he was on his hands and knees on the pavement, struggling to catch his breath as darkness pushed in at the edges of his vision.
Too much, he thought dimly, a coughing spasm hitting him. Blood at the back of his throat - the virus? But it wasn't over, he told himself feverishly, sensing the others, the ones that hadn't fallen back. Not done yet.
"Amanda," he muttered and launched himself back to his feet, running again. Adrenalin was a godsend.
---
Bodies. Bodies everywhere amid the havoc that the second team had wreaked. They were killing civilians, what were they doing killing civilians? Searching desperately for Amanda's thoughts, Nathan stopped dead at the sight of a tall, thin, thoroughly familiar figure striding out into the chaos.
"Strange!" he called out, or tried to - the words were barely out of his mouth when a crackling energy discharge slammed into him and he hit the ground again, his muscles spasming under the electrical assault and a scream wrenching itself free from his throat.
The electrokinetic with the dragon tattoo smiled as random bolts of electricity whirled about him, arcing from one point on his body to another in semi-random patterns. He was grinning ferally as he pointed again at Nathan. "Fry!" he said as thick whirling ropes of lightning streaked out from his hands.
"Avert!" Strange cried, waving his hand across in a vaguely Tai Chi-like motion. The next wave of electricity was deflected away from Nathan - barely - and Strange began to approach Nathan. The strain was starting to show on his face - his mental vision was filled with the deaths of the innocent, the cold professional ruthlessness of the killers. "What the devil is all this, Dayspring?" he demanded when he was a few steps away from the fallen ex-merc.
Gasping as he pushed himself up to his hands and knees, Nathan ignored Strange for the moment and lashed out at the electrokinetic. His focus was shot, but he still had power to spare, and the tattooed operative grunted as he was thrown back thrown the air until he had an abrupt encounter with a tree.
Not unconscious, Nathan knew; just stunned. He hauled himself to his feet, swaying dangerously as he staggered in that direction. #Alpha-class mutants,# he sent rapidly at Strange, not sure where he was finding the concentration to project. #Special ops training, psionically conditioned.#
"Psionically?" A calculating expression crossed Strange's face as he reached out with his magic, trying to tweak the auras of the operatives still upright and causing havoc. Not the brightest move on the academic's part; it was as he'd extended his senses into an icy chasm. There was a sensation of coldness, of rigidity, freezing him in place, pulling him further in. With a strangled cry he managed to wrench his awareness away, vaguely realizing he'd started bleeding from the nose.
The electrokinetic groaned as he clutched at his head, and then tried to keep his poor abused spine from feeling any additional pain. His bell had fairly clearly been rung, and reason hadn't quite checked in 100% yet.
The tree behind him, though, exploded as a fat stroke of lightning arced through its trunk, flashing the water inside the plant into steam.
Nathan frantically redirected the wood shrapnel away from a pair of terrified students who'd taken refuge beside a set of stairs. His distraction gave the electrokinetic a moment longer to recover, and another lightning bolt came at him. Nathan dove out of the way, hitting the ground harder than he'd meant to. But lightning wasn't something he could deflect.
The electrokinetic staggered back to his feet, and switched tactics. Instead of throwing bolts of lightning, he let the current flow from him, creating a bubble of potential energy that would fry anything that came within the circle. The field crackled as several insects and burning bits hit the field and disintegrated.
He walked towards Strange and Nathan, smiling the whole time. All he had to do now was get close to them.
"This is bloody insane," muttered Strange, shocked out of his usual composure by the violence around him. He threw up a mystical shield around himself and Nathan, but it would only buy them time - his powers were over-stretched and he was still reeling from his ill-fated attempt to control the operatives.
---
Amid the chaos, Amanda stood jerkily, her feet too close together to make for a truly stable stance. She clumsily raised her hands towards the Mistra operatives, and in a voice very clearly not hers, said "No more!"
Turning away from the charred remains of a woman and child who had stupidly opted for trying to hide instead of running, the pyrokinetic's eyes widened briefly before his sneer reappeared. "What, you need a more permanent invitation to stay unconscious?" Raising his voice so that he could be heard over the din, he continued. "Either you convince Cable to lay down his arms and surrender to us, or we're just going to keep killing. Old, young, male, female, black, white, it doesn't matter. Well, if I can kill more whiteys, that's all good. Point is, you're gonna be _wading_ in blood if you both don't surrender. You hear me, Cable?"
---
Nathan heard the threat - no, not a threat, a statement of fact, that still-cool, logical part of him amended - over the din. The adrenalin rush that had sustained him this far faded abruptly, leaving him cold and shaking.
Surrender, or they wade in blood. Innocent blood. They'd come to a school, if not the one he'd feared, but did it really matter in the end? Same consequences. Same horrible consequences, and all these deaths were on his conscience, all because of him...
There couldn't be any more. Not one. "Strange," he said softly, pushing himself back up to his knees, staring fixedly at the electrokinetic as he approached. "Drop the shield around me."
"You want me to what?" Strange replied, glancing at the merc in surprise. Then he caught the expression on Nathan's face, and he nodded. The shield contracted, until it surrounded the academic alone.
There was part of him that was screaming, shouting that this wasn't happening, that he wasn't going to do this. Not again, he'd said. Never again. Rather be dead.
But there wasn't a choice. Too much else at risk. Amanda was somewhere here, and all of these kids, all of these kids who hadn't done anything but linger outside to enjoy the Saturday afternoon...
He stayed on his knees, folding his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. "Standing down," he called, aloud and telepathically, amazed when his voice stayed perfectly steady.
The electrokinetic was soon joined by the Catholic schoolgirl and the black man in a suit (he was no longer on fire). The three of them looked at Cable with wary respect. "Come quietly, then." the girl said as the two men closed in on him, the pyrokinetic reaching for one arm and the electrokinetic the other.
"NO!" came that Spanish-accented voice from out of Amanda, as she jerkily and clumsily ran towards where Nathan, Strange, and the Mistra operatives stood. "No surrender!" she said again, still in that too-deep-for-her male voice.
She tripped over a piece of debris and fell face-first, lacking any of her usual grace and scraping the hell out of her hands and forearms as she hit. She screamed then, a deep man's yell from a slender female throat.
Rather than get up, she stayed down, but even from her prone position the glow coming from her eyes, the red glow, was clearly visible. Psionically, a bloom of pure emotion eminated from Amanda and ripped into the Mistra operatives - tripping as many different empathic triggers as possible.
There was only one exception to the wave - the emotions bent _around_ Nathan, leaving him untouched.
Strange had been drawing on his remaining resources, trying to think of a spell that would solve this situation, when he saw Amanda stumbling forward. To his eyes, her aura was all wrong, energy poured into a vessel it was not meant to, and he knew immediately this was not his student. Then the empathic wave hit, and he crouched down, expanding his shield to cover as many remaining bystanders as possible, but leaving Nathan and the Mistra operatives untouched.
Screaming. They were screaming now too, their powers going insane just as his telekinesis had when Manuel had accidentally triggered him months ago, and Nathan barely managed to get out of the way as flame erupted on one side of him and electricity on the other. The girl wasn't screaming. She wasn't doing anything, just standing there as if she was frozen in a moment. But the other two...
Had to stop them. They could do even worse damage, completely by accident. Rolling back to his feet, Nathan closed a telekinetic shield around the pyrokinetic, forcing his flames inwards, compressing them around his body. To the electrokinetic, he gave the same treatment as he had the feral earlier, exploding his heart and tearing his internal organs apart. Knowing that for him, at least, it would be permanent.
The pyrokinetic struggled against both his triggers and the telekinetic bell-jar that was placed around him. The flames passed around him and through him harmlessly, but his chest heaved and his dark skin turned even darker as he struggled to draw oxygen through the bottled-up flames. After a few minutes of struggle, he slumped against the invisible barrier in death.
Nathan let him fall, staring down for a moment at the two bodies. He raised his head and look at the girl who was still frozen, unmoving. Dead, though, he thought, not sensing any mental activity. Quite dead.
His legs buckled suddenly, and he slumped to the ground, another coughing spasm stealing away his breath. On his hands and knees, he saw Amanda lying not far away, her eyes still glowing. #Manuel?# he thought weakly, but the coughing got more violent and he doubled over, gasping for air.
Amanda rolled onto her back clumsily, and tilted her head so that she could look at Nathan, albeit upside-down. "Estupido." she whispered, vocal cords too abused to make herself heard any louder than that. "Muy estupido." she whispered, then the red glow died from about her eyes and it was as if someone had cut the strings - Amanda immediately lolled to one side, clearly unconscious.
Sirens filled the air as police and fire crews drew near. "By the crimson bands of Cytorrak, never have I seen such insanity," Strange muttered to himself as he let down his shields with a sigh of relief. He stumbled to where Amanda's limp form lay. All signs of that alien aura were gone and he knelt to check her pulse and her aura for signs of damage. She was unconscious, bruised and battered, but she would recover, in time.
A burst of coughing caught his attention and he looked over at Nathan. "They were after you?" he asked, although he knew the answer to that.
Nathan nodded weakly, trying to catch his breath. But he couldn't stop coughing. It was as if something was ripping inside his chest, and the taste of blood in his mouth was so strong he nearly choked. He knew what this was.
#I was one of them,# he sent back faintly. #One of their children...# He was on the verge of real shock, he knew, and pulled himself back through sheer force of will. Breathe, he told himself. Shallowly if you have to...
Air first. Then back to his feet. "I should... need to get her out of here," he said, his voice nearly as ravaged as Amanda had been. His eyes roamed their devastated surroundings for a moment and he reeled a little. "Have to g-go."
Strange frowned at the state of the man, and at his proposal. "It would be wiser to await medical attention, he said, his voice clipped and formal. Then he followed Nathan's gaze across the ruined campus and he visibly flinched. "Who were these people, that they would engineer such carnage?" he whispered, his lips white from the strain of blocking out the multiple levels of pain and suffering his powers allowed him to see. "And you say you were one of them..."
No. No explanations. Not now. He couldn't... "There... will be a s-sweeper team," Nathan said, each word labored, agonizing. He had to stay on his feet, stay in the moment. No matter how badly he wanted to fall. "If they... find her, they'll take her. She's powerful... they know that now. They... take powerful ch-children. It's what they do. Take them and... turn them into..." He gestured weakly at the bodies of the two operatives. "I h-have to get her out of here."
"No, that won't do, that won't do at all..." Strange looked down at the still, white face of his student, imagining Amanda as one of those... No, he wouldn't let that happen, not after everything else that had been done to her. He scooped her up in his arms, surprised at how light she was. "Take her. Get her out of here. I'll take care of whatever follows." He gave Nathan a stern look. "And later, much later, when you are fit, you and I are going to discuss this."
Nathan took him from her, forcing his damaged arm to move, slide under her shoulders. He couldn't meet Strange's eyes. Couldn't let himself... Amanda was all that mattered, the only thing that mattered right now. Turning, he started off at a staggering run. Somewhere safe, he thought dizzily. A phone...? Call the mansion, call...
#Charles...?# he thought desperately, willing the Professor to hear him. #Charles, please...#
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