xp_logs | Lost and Found, part six: Full Circle

Alison tries to hold off Morgan, and manages to take out his com with a well-placed laser. She triggers more than she expected. Elsewhere, Nathan hears her call for assistance and decides that it's time to stop letting Konstantakis beat the crap out of him and get down there.

It was only for herself, but she still couldn't keep up this kind of shield forever - thankfully, the blizzard was feeding her enough sound to manage what she was doing now, but for how long? "Of course you're under orders to kill him." Alison didn't call up Nathan again, noting that full force wasn't being used against her. She knew what Morgan could do and this wasn't the worse of it, by far - he wouldn't be testing her shield if he was trying to kill her. "Entire team is. Including whoever's keeping him busy now." She looked up, the light not blinding her or hampering her sight - and focused in Morgan, trying to spot the comm he was using to contact his team. A single, focused laser to take that out. That was all that would be needed.

"You think we want to be taking these kids back?" Morgan demanded, the claws of the exoskeleton digging into her shield. "Any of us? Damn it, Blaire, I don't--" He reeled backwards suddenly as a pinpoint laser actually penetrated his exoskeleton, grazing the body armor at his throat. Where the com-mike was built into the armor. The chatter in his earpiece continued, but he couldn't get orders out, couldn't control the situation, and his tactical imperatives were screaming at the back of his mind now, roaring orders that he couldn't resist. Swearing, he reached out with both claws and tore at Blaire's shield.

Well, she'd be a mite unhappy too if someone killed her comm, Alison thought a bit blankly, even as she scrambled the hell away from the claws of energy ripping through the shield, concentration equally shattered. She sent a few bright pulses of light in his direction, aiming for the face to at least give herself that much cover as she gained more distance. The priority wasn't the kids for them right now - any of them who would catch sight of Nathan...

~CABLE! Report!~

Still no answer.

---

Screaming in his mind. Screaming, buzzing, the all-too-familiar crackle of serious psionic feedback... Askani was shrieking at him, he thought, but he couldn't make out what she was saying. Everything hurt, every nerve in his body howling as if the psionic energy had scorched along each and every single one of them before exiting his body.

The kick that took him in the side actually helped to snap him back to awareness of his surroundings. Gasping for air, Nathan managed to roll and come back staggering to his feet to face Konstantakis, who was already pressing the attack, anticipating every move he made, every attempt to block...

He was slow. Still recovering from the shock to his system, Konstantakis knew, and she exploited it ruthlessly, focusing on her own unique precognitive perception. Punch and block, step and jab and kick, all melded into the flow of time without a ripple.

Nathan took hit after hit as she got around his attempts to block with ease. Unsteady on his feet already, he was soon reeling, trying to back away, get some room. Close quarters were to his benefit, not with her.

Konstantakis went deeper into the timestream, let her awareness of the normal-time world fade to almost nothing. It was dangerous - there was always the chance of getting stuck in the timestream, not being able to decompress back into normal time, but right now she really didn't care. She could see the options he was considering, and move to intercept them all. The more likely a move, the brighter and more attractive it was. She had him on the ropes - she could feel it.

The last time he'd fought Konstantakis had been in training, ten years. He'd been younger, in a fair amount less pain, and they'd been touch-sparring. Nathan gritted his teeth, fighting to concentrate, and telekinetic force sheathed his fists. All he could manage. No shield, not just yet.

Konstantaki couldn't see the enhancement to his fists, but it didn't matter. She could see where he would strike, and arrange to not be there by the time the blow actually landed. Where he was, she was not. Where he was weak, where he was slow, where he was vulnerable - that was where she struck. The imperatives screamed at her, and for once she embraced them.

A particularly well-placed kick sent him stumbling back and to the ground, gasping. Nathan looked up at Konstantakis, not sure what he was going to do next, what he could do without killing her... whether he had the concentration to even do that, take the easy way out like that...

~CABLE! Report!~ Alison's voice snapped suddenly over the coms, and Nathan's eyes widened as he caught the flash from her mind, saw Morgan's exoskeleton advancing on her...

To hell with this, he thought disjointedly, and from somewhere, found the strength to come back to his feet - and take to the air. Askani was snarling in his mind, reminding him of... oh, right, he thought and made the adjustment they'd been talking about for a while now. The firebird-effect sprung into life around him - and hardened.

Ignoring Konstantakis, he flew away, swooping down over the forest at the spot where he could sense Morgan, burning on the astral plane like a small supernova.

---

Kurt meets another Mistra operative and finds out that near-invisibility is an awkward thing. Fortunately, she's summoned elsewhere to deal with her team's wounded.

When he had his breath back, Kurt got up carefully, wincing a little at the bruises he could feel already there, and made for the wrecked helicopter to check for survivors.

A white shape melted out of the snow to intercept him, moving with unnatural speed as it launched itself on the offensive. The whiteness seemed to cling to it, making it impossible for Kurt to tell who he was fighting, where exactly he or she was.

The only thing Kurt could do in that situation was to try and confuse his opponent as much as possible, by teleporting around them and hoping to land the occasional hit where he thought they were. So he did.

The white shape didn't seem bothered by that. It seemed to vanish again, as soon as he did, and reappear as soon as he was back and moving, landing hits of its own with unerring accuracy.

Taking a new tack, Kurt stood stock still, listening - for feet crunching on the snow nearby, primarily, and also breathing.

There was no visible movement, but over to his left, barely audible through the shriek of the storm, was a sudden, soft noise, as if someone had caught their breath.

The next instant, he'd vanished and reappeared close enough to grab at his opponent's arm - or roughly the right area for her arm, he hoped.

He grabbed something, and there was a sudden writhing whiteness there, that resolved abruptly into a slender, Asian woman in body armor. She swore and whipped around in his grasp with lightning speed, an elbow slamming into his already-bruised ribs.

Kurt cried out and seized her other arm, trying to hold her still as she struggled. Knowing the effect teleporting sometimes had on his passengers, he began a dizzying series of jumps, not staying in any one place for longer than a few seconds.

For some reason, she didn't seem as negatively affected as most people he used this trick on. Six jumps in, she'd actually managed to break his grip, land another couple of good hits, and vanish back into the storm - temporarily. Almost instantly, she was blurring out of the snow at him again.

Kurt dropped into a vaguely martial-arts crouch, then launched a kick straight at her as she attacked, hoping desperately it would connect.

The white blur shifted direction mid-lunge, but not enough to avoid the kick completely. Again, the whiteness broke up, revealing the startlingly lovely face beneath, set in determination. "You go near that helicopter, I have to kill you," Isabel Matsuda whispered and got back to her feet, melting into an indefinable blur again and coming at Kurt from a different angle.

Kurt spun in an attempt to follow her, lashing out in what he hoped was the right direction. "The others will be here soon. You are only one person, and I see none of your team-mates here."

"The others are busy, Wagner," her voice whispered from another direction entirely, just before a kick slammed into him from behind. "I don't want to hurt you..."

He gasped in pain and dropped to his knees in the snow. "What is on that helicopter? The children?"

There was no answer for a moment. "Turn around," she finally whispered. "Turn around, go back to your aircraft, and I can leave you alone."

He paused, then answered quietly, "I cannot do that." The next moment, he was back on his feet and launching another attack on the spot where her voice had been.

"Then I'm sorry," her voice said, coming from another direction entirely, and she moved in on him again, or the white blur did.

He stood still again, trying to work out where she was. As before, he listened for any sound that might give her away.

Time, Matsuda thought. She just needed time. Keep him distracted, keep him away from... someone whispered in her earpiece, telling her that Piers was down, and she bit back a curse. No time. She was supposed to recover the wounded, that was her job...

She launched herself at Wagner once more, regretting this. If she could just knock him out, maybe...

Kurt staggered back as she hit him, and was instantly gone, reappearing a few feet closer to the helicopter, panting for breath from the kick he'd just taken to the stomach.

"Izzy!" It was Dyson, hissing over her earpiece. "Lense isn't answering. Find him."

Damn it. Matsuda leapt at Wagner, landing one more kick before she darted away, running into the storm.

---

Morgan, backed into a corner, has no more loopholes to exploit. Then Nathan makes his grand entrance. They both knew it would come to this.

Morgan snarled incoherently and snatched at Blaire. She was shielding, he could feel the resistance as he lifted her into the air. He could break through it, though, he thought. Had to... no, didn't... yes! Pain exploded behind his eyes, and only the howl of his tactical imperatives let him keep hold of Blaire.

"Damn you," he said almost feverishly. "Where's Nathan?" This wasn't... he couldn't keep the options open, couldn't find the loopholes here...

Haroun's voice whispered something over the command channel, but Alison had no time or chance to answer. Holding up a shield of light close to her body, keeping Morgan from crushing her was taking up all her concentration at that moment, the pressure not painful nor ovewhelming - yet. It was, she knew only too well, willpower against willpower in this particular instance. Not just power alone. "Not answering. Probably down." A blatant lie - she had faith Nathan wasn't out, just being kept busy and the thought that there was certainly one person on Morgan's team able to do that blossomed forth clearly. Morgan's new second. But if the answer gave room for Morgan to placate the Mistra imperatives directing his actions, she had no qualms about saying as much.

"Backing me into a corner," Morgan said, his breath catching in his chest at the pain as he squeezed harder. "Stupid... I thought I could..." Wrestling with options. It was all about wrestling with options. He gritted his teeth and threw her aside. Fair chance it would incapacitate her. Good enough to justify letting go. The howl at the back of his head suggested disagreement, but he hadn't lasted this long and not managed to develop a little resistance.

Things moved very quickly, all of a sudden, and Alison figured it was a good thing she'd dated one demented gymnast and two flyers, no less. It gave one a unique perspective when it came to being suddenly relocated in directions one had no business being relocated in. In this particular instance though, Alison could mostly only pack everything she had into the shield, and hope the landing wouldn't involve anything too complicated. Or related to abrupt and painful stops.

Morgan saw her hit the snow and advanced on her, the ground trembling at each step the exoskeleton took. She was moving again, if sluggishly. Her shield must have protected her. He'd really hoped to knock her out. Much less complicated, that way.

The trembling underfoot (and hand, before she scrambled up) was something of a dead giveaway, even if the blizzard was eating up most of the other signs of Morgan's approach - other than the small visual clue that entailed a great big psionically generated exoskeleton, plus TK, headed her way. Sorry, trees. Since she wasn't quite willing to try another pinpoint laser at Morgan just yet, though eventually she would have to at the rate things were going, and because buying more time for everyone by keeping his focus on her wasn't a bad idea at all, Alison spread her hands out to the sides, beams of lasers slicing out at a height of about ten feet, at a calculated angle. High enough to avoid anyone on the ground, but still resulting in trees being neatly cut and collapsing towards Morgan.

Morgan brushed them away impatiently - and then hesitated, his eyes narrowing. He picked one of the trees up, the claw of the exoskeleton closing securely around its trunk, and continued to advance on Blaire. Had to knock her out - knock her out, damn it, he insisted, fighting the tactical imperatives, not kill her. No need to kill her. No orders. He was getting odd little flashes of light disrupting his vision, pulsing in time with the pounding, screaming imperative-driven headache.

Something reached down and grabbed his exoskeleton, picking him up and throwing him at a stand of still-intact trees. It was a jolt, but not a stunning one, the exoskeleton protecting him from the impact. Still, the shock of being unceremoniously flung away like that - who could do that? - was enough that as he got himself upright again, turning to face this new threat, the tactical imperatives actually fell silent.

There was a very large, glowing bird-shape floating there, Nathan levitating at the heart of it like Morgan was at the heart of his exoskeleton. "Tim."

"Nate," Morgan grated, and lunged at him, expecting the arms of his exoskeleton to go through the nifty little visual effect and reach Nathan where he floated inside.

They didn't. His claws were met by another set, just as solid, and one wing slammed into his exoskeleton with an impact that did leave him reeling, even as the two psi-constructs started to grapple with one other.

Well. That was a new trick.