Reavers, Part 4

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

***

Too long - this was taking too long! The elevators were locked down,
of course, which meant he took the long way around. And he couldn't
use his telekinesis to fly properly, not in the tight quarters of the
stairwell. Nathan settled for taking three at a time, projecting the
telepathic blurring field out around him as widely as he could. Lee
and Remy weren't warning him about any hostiles in his path, but there
was no point in taking chances.

He could still sense Madelyn, and thoughts that were barely
recognizable as Hank's. Plus one... no, two of the intruders and their
indistinct psi-signatures. And Hank was fighting, he could see through
Madelyn's eyes. Defending her, of course, even in the state that he
was in... of course.

Nathan sensed Moira reaching down their link, either to reassure him
or seeking reassurance. There wasn't time to either accept or provide
it.

***
Hank lunged for the skull-faced man, ignoring the second knife that skimmed
his ribs. He had weight and reach on the other man, at least, and if he
could just get his hands on him...

They grappled, the skull-faced man swearing as he discovered that, as
impaired as Hank's tactical abilities might be, his strength and speed were
as good as ever - maybe even a little better. They both got in a few good
blows, and Hank was bleeding from several superficial cuts, but he was
starting to get the upper hand.

Focused as he was on the fight, he didn't notice the first man getting up
again.

The more-generic commando type grunted as he reached for the handgun in his
belt. "Time to die, mutie," he muttered to himself as he drew a bead on
Hank's unprotected back. But he never fired the shot ? before his finger
reached the trigger, his body went into spasms, smoke and sparks erupting
from the headset and goggles, and with a meaty thump he hit the floor.
Behind him, defibrillator paddles raised, Madelyn looked up from the fallen
body to the two combatants and said, completely deadpan. "Clear."

Taking advantage of the sudden turn in events, the skull-faced man shoved
Hank back away from him, reaching for something they both recognized as Not
A Good Thing. Pulling the pin on the concussion grenade, the intruder
tossed it towards Madelyn as she backed away, reaching for his fallen
comrade and dragging him by one booted foot out of the exam room, as he hissed “Abort, abort, abort" into his collar.

Hank couldn't for the life of him, at this point, have explained what a
concussion grenade did, or even remembered what it was called, but he knew
what it WAS. And it was rolling towards Maddie. He didn't think, just
reacted, lunging towards her, catching her up in his arms and pushing her
into a corner and hunching around her, trying to shield her as best he
could from the inevitable blast. He wouldn't let anything hurt her, he
wouldn't...

Five, four, three, two... Madelyn was counting off the seconds
before the blast, unable to do much more than hope Hank wouldn't be too
badly hurt, half-smothered as she was by blue fur. But the blast never
came. Wriggling, she managed to peek under Hank's elbow at where the
grenade should be, to see twisted fragments of metal hanging in mid-air.
And a familiar shape in the doorway. "Just in the nick of time," she said
to Nathan, sounding muffled. "Guess that makes you a Big Damn Hero, huh?"

Hank turned, still holding Maddie protectively. Nathan was here! Good.
Nathan would help him protect Maddie. "Big hero," he agreed, letting go of
Maddie a tiny bit reluctantly. "But I helped." It was nice, being able to
help, he hadn't been able to do much lately.

Containing the explosion had been a wee bit more of a strain that he
had time to let on just now. Nathan smiled tightly, blinking sweat out
of his eyes, and came over to help the two of them up, giving them a
quick once-over. No immediate pressing need for medical attention.
Good. "Where to?" he asked. "Out to the boathouse?"

Madelyn nodded, even as she was checking out the knife cuts on Hank.
Shallow, not too big... he'd hang on until they got clear. "Yeah, sounds
like the best bet. C'mon Hank, let's get out of here, okay?" To Nathan she
projected #He must have slipped away from Moira to find me. Not that I'm
arguing with the save, but I'd rather avoid him having any more exertion -
it's making him worse.#

Hank nodded. "If you come too," he said, giving her an anxious look. No
more sneaking off by herself, he wasn't going to let her. She could have been
hurt. And he was confused about a lot of things right now, but he knew he
wasn't going to let anyone get hurt if he could help it... and especially
not her. He turned to Nathan. "Was down here all by herself!" he said, in
an aggrieved tone. "Not safe!"

"No," Nathan said a bit grimly. "Not safe at all." He started to turn.
"Stick close to me, both of you," he said, throwing up a TK bubble
around the three of them. "We'll get you out to the boathouse, where
it's secure." He was listening to the coms, for any warning from Remy
or Lee.

Madelyn rolled her eyes a little, but didn't point out who else was
supposed to lock down the medical files with Hank out of commission?
Definitely not the time for asserting her lack-of-helplessness. Taking
Hank's hand with a murmured "C'mon, hon," she obediently followed Nathan to
the escape tunnel.

***
On her way to the mansion, Wanda finds fate conspiring to aid her in a number of ways.


Making it to the bike in record time, Wanda didn't waste much time in
getting the motorcycle started and the helmet on. Reviving the
engine, she tore out of the parking lot and turned sharply onto the
road.

The machine growled under her as she gunned it, not paying any
attention to the speed limit. Leaning over the handles, trying to
eliminate as much air friction as she could, she tried to think of the
best roads and short cuts to take to get back to the school in time.

In the distance, Wanda saw the light start to change and her jaw
clenched. There was no time for this, she thought, and opened
her mind to her powers. It was hard to use her powers without her
hands but damn if she wasn't going to do it this time.

Wires, frayed from a few years of abuse and next on the list to be
replaced, suddenly died. Probably a day or two before they would have
normally but it did the trick and the light flashed green again, to
stay that way until the repair crew could make an emergency stop.

Grinning a little, Wanda dodged around cars in the other lanes as she
barreled through. Pushing her powers was never a fun task but one
that was sometimes necessary. Reaching through the mass of red, she
pushed hard and kept a constant pressure on it.

For a few miles, it all went fine until she noticed the red and blue
lights out of the corner of her eye. Cursing, she tried to ignore it
but then another joined in the chase. A surge of excitement went
through her and she lightly tapped a few strings in their direction.

The first car suddenly swerved—a call came across for a high profile
robbery, a few people had been shot and injured and they were being
called in for reinforcements.

Wanda noticed the other one still on her tail and pulled a little
harder, chaos energy crackling from her hands.

The cop car behind her was a little older, a little more in disrepair.
There had been some cut backs on funds and it was taking longer to
get the cars in better shape or to even bring newer vehicles in.

The driver, a slightly burley old time cop, suddenly cursed as he felt
something hit his tire and the car swerved as the back rear tire went
out. His partner, a small rookie female cop, simply clutched the side
handle as he managed to bring it to a sudden stop.

"Not my damn transmission," he groaned, getting out to check on the damage.

"Is that important?" she asked, a little shaken, and then stared at
the back. The muffler had been jolted loose and had hit the back
tire, causing it to blow.

"How the hell did that happen?"

***
Down by Cerebro, our would-be burglars meet with some furred resistance


"Hurry up!" The skinny man with the laptop pushed his glasses up his
nose and tried not to visibly flinch away from his companion—little
more than a polished steel skeleton with a human head, black hair
slicked back and shiny. A swarm of metal wires connected the cyborg's
eyes to his target, the chrome-steel door leading to Cerebro.
"Christ, Prettyboy, if one of those X-Men comes down here while you're
hooked into the door, what am I supposed to do, hit them with my box?"

"Will you shut the fuck up, Tanner?" Prettyboy replied, his voice flat
and inhuman. "They've got some nasty fucking security on this thing,
and I can't crack it with you yelling in my fucking ear. If an X-Man
comes down here, sing out, and I'll take care of it. Until then, zip
it."

"'Zip it,' 'zip it,' always with the 'zip it,'" Tanner muttered as he
made his way down the hall. "Fucking creepy cyborg."

As Tanner reached the corner, a hand whipped around it to clamp over
his mouth, dragging him out of sight. The cold prick of a razor edge
at his throat joined it a moment later, and hot breath tickled his
ear. He flicked a glance downward and whimpered soundlessly. The
hand was furry. And the thing being held against his throat
was the biggest goddamn sword he'd ever seen outside the movies.

"Do you want to fight me?" a low voice growled in his ear. Tanner
took another look at the sword, swallowed very carefully, and shook
his head even more carefully.

"Good," the voice said. "You value your life?" And that was
something Tanner was abso-damn-lutely clear about, so he nodded—a
little too enthusiastically; he could feel the sword scraping some of
the stubble off his throat, and gulped again.

"I am going to disable your companion now," the voice continued. "If
you warn him, I promise that you will regret it. Do you believe me?"

When Tanner had been a kid, his parents used to take him to the zoo,
and his brother, the asshole, always thought it would be fun to
pretend to feed him to the lions. Tanner had had nightmares about
lions until he was seventeen years old. And something about the smell
of this guy's breath, or the fur, or the hint of a snarl in his voice,
was bringing all that back. He gave another miniscule nod and tried
not to piss himself.

"Good." The man—lion—whateverthehell, X-Man, had to be, turned him
loose, and he sank slowly down to the floor, panting shallowly, with
no desire whatsoever to even poke his head around the corner to try
and find out what the guy looked like.

Prettyboy muttered to himself, trying to make sense of what his probes
were feeding him. It was a retinal scanner, and he'd been ghosting
through those like they didn't exist ever since he got the 'ware, but
this one wasn't just triple-encrypted, it was something like
quintuple-encrypted, and whoever'd programmed the fucking thing
had a hell of a sense of humor. At least Tanner had finally shut up.

Feedback slammed into his brain, a wet electrical crackle, and he
stumbled backward—too far back, his probes were . . . his probes were
gone, diagnostics screaming at him, red light all over his HUD.
Who the fuck? He switched to his backup lenses just in time
to scream and duck a—was that a sword Jesus fucking
Christ—sweeping in at his head. "Tanner, you asshole!"

"F-fuck you," came the weak reply.

Prettyboy snarled. No way he could get the M-4 up in time to do
anything, the guy was too close, and fucking fast--the only
reason he wasn't six kinds of filet by now was the reflexes he'd
gotten with the 'ware. Well, that was just fine. His hand-blades
slid out—full skeletal rebuild was the only way to fly—and he stepped
forward. Reflexes? He hadn't even begun to show this guy
reflexes.

Metal skirled and clanged as sword met hand-blade up and down the
short hallway, Prettyboy forcing the X-Man back one step, then
another. "Yeah, fucker," he snarled, grinning. "I'm the best money
can buy."

The X-Man shook his head, some kind of patronizing fucking smile
flickering across his face, spun away from Prettyboy's lunge, and then
somehow Prettyboy was sliding across the floor on his ass. Right
hand-blade offline, his HUD informed him. Gee, no shit, he
thought, maybe that was because it was fifteen fucking feet away on
the floor with the rest of his goddamn hand? Reports were streaming
in from the other teams—it was fucked, the whole mission was fucked,
and he scrambled to his feet, making best speed away from the X-Man,
scooping up Tanner with his remaining hand on the way.


***
Bad things continue to happen in the boathouse. Revelations occur in more ways than one


The world exploding in sound and light, shards of broken glass and
wood splinters raining down around her didn't keep the lavender cat
from moving. Mao was shoved to the side and off the now
unsteady table and the sight of the smaller cat scrambling away fast
registered on the edge of her field of vision, even as Catseye
realized that she couldn't hear him above the echoing aftershock of
noise in her ears.

She snapped around, focusing on the invaders for a heartbeat, eyes
widening in horror - whatever those things were, it was nothing good.
They'd shot Mao's human and that wasn't good at all either. There was
a distinct lack of blood scent, however - and that was enough for
Catseye to flatten her ears back as she sidled to the side, watching
them intently.

Rats in the house. And rats, every cat knew, were only good for killing.

"The big man is DOWN!" Bonebreaker crowed, circling his arms
rhythmically in a mocking dance. "Fucker didn't even see it comin'!
You two get in there, case the place. Orders say to make it messy, so
let's get to work."

The two fatigue-clad cyborgs stepped through the ruined patio door,
kicking shreds of wood aside. As they crossed into the living room,
they gave Cain's still body a cursory glance.

"Ain't breathin'," the first commented. The second nodded.

"Don't scan for a pulse neither. Dude's stone dead," he replied,
activating his night vision and scanning the boathouse. He saw a flash
of movement before locking his crosshairs on the small kitten hunched
against the kitchen wall. "Hey, target practice."

Sound was returning slowly, and something went very still in Catseye
mind at the mention of the big cranky man whom Mao took care of being
dead. But it was the way one of the humans, who wasn't human at all
from what their scents was telling her, the smell of metal and the
stink of something entirely inorganic, turned to look beyond her with
an expression she recognized only too well.

There was no thought as she gathered herself, only the instinct to
protect driving her forward, and she closed the distance between
herself and the Reaver with desperate speed, checked her instinct to
aim for the neck at the last second and instead leaping for the arm
with a yowl which turned into a low, dull roar to her still damaged
hearing. Front paws slammed into the Reaver's suddenly too small chest
and Catseye's jaw closed down on the forearm with a grinding metallic
sound, the reflex to kick out and shred with her hind claws following
as soon as she made contact, the dim memory that metallic knees were
fragile dancing in the back of her mind.

"Son of a---" the Reaver managed to blurt out before he felt his
forearm splinter under the force of those jaws that just seemed to
come out of nowhere. He backpedaled, overbalancing himself before he
realized he was slipping in a rapidly-spreading pool of blood and
other fluids, natural and artificial, as he was borne down to the
floor.

"Kowalski!" his partner called, switching on the flashlight taped to
his rifle and panning over the room. "What the..."

--

Darkness. Black and numb and cold. Pain was spreading, the only
sensation in the void. He tried to reach out for it with hands that did
not move, tried to look for it with eyes that could not see. The
thunder of guns echoed in his ears for what seemed like an eternity.

The pain was red in the middle of the black. Red in his chest like it
belonged there. Something was there, something that had always been
there, and had just laid forgotten, resting.

It was awakening, very quickly now.

The red became fire, in his chest, in his veins, in his bones. The
void was nothing, and that nothing had held him for long enough. It
could not hold him any more, devoid of feeling, devoid of motion,
devoid of power. All it would take was one more nudge to rise to the
surface, to rise up, simply to rise and say-

"I will not be stopped."

Cain Marko opened his eyes, and sat up.

--

"Kowalski!" the cyborg called, switching on the flashlight taped to
his rifle and panning over the room. "What the..."

He trained his gun on the massive pantherlike creature that crouched
over his partner, tightening his finger on the trigger until...

He felt one massive hand around his neck lifting him off the ground as
his muscles went slack. Being forcibly turned, he looked into the
red-bearded face of the dead man on the floor, who was smiling like a
lunatic released from an asylum, bare-chested with no sign of being
gunned down only minutes before.

"Stay the fuck away from the cat," the dead man said, before closing
his hand in a fist.

A crackling sound Catseye had known all her life reverberated in the
room - bones snapping under intense pressure, like so many fragile
splinters of wood. She paid no attention to it however, the low
rumbling growl in the back of her throat continuing unabated and one
paw batted aside the remaining good arm of the Reaver she'd borne
down. Hard.

MadMetalThing stay down.

The urge to finish him off was held in check, however - whatever he
was, whatever he smelled like, he still sounded human, a part of
Catseye realized. And humans weren't for killing.

Crouching on him carefully, she snapped her head around and started
scanning the darkened room, trying to stop the third one, ready to
move fast in case whatever had been used to take Cain down first was
suddenly aimed at her again. Trying to spot Mao, who by now should
have run the hell out like any smart kitten would do.

Bonebreaker froze, shocked by the sight before him. Well, if the first
barrage hadn't taken Marko down, perhaps heavier artillery would do
the trick. Slamming his fist on an access panel, his integrated
sixty-millimeter chain gun folded out on its mount, the grips fitting
neatly into his hands.

"Laugh this off, motherfucker!" he howled, depressing the triggers and
sending a wave of lead into the boathouse.

Cain turned his head as he felt the spray of rounds pepper his arm and
hip. Turning straight into the barrage, he looked down curiously,
watching the bullets strike his flesh and then fall harmlessly to the
floor, their force expended. Whipping his arm around like a softball
pitcher, he hurled the corpse of Bonebreaker's comrade out the ruined
patio door directly into the line of fire.

"Shit!" the treaded cyborg howled, reversing his treads and peeling
across the deck. He took one look at the body and remembered their
mission imperatives - nothing left behind.

Popping the spoon off a thermite grenade, he tossed it onto the
corpse, averting his eyes from the flash as meat and metal quickly
melted into carbonized ash and slag. As he turned back, his jaw
dropped in horror.

Marko was walking out of the house directly for him.

"Blimey..." he gasped, triggering his communicator. "Bonebreaker here,
we are fucked, mate! Royally fucked!"

"Abort, abort, abort," came the reply. "Tactical plan
delta-delta-tango in effect."

Run for the hills, Bonebreaker translated. He glanced into the
boathouse to where Kowalski was still twitching. "You or me, mate," he
breathed, pulling a lever back on his chassis. The treads unfolded,
and his torso dropped lower into a high-speed configuration, tearing
off the patio and past Marko onto the path.

The bullets ringing out had causes Catseye to react in the most
natural way ever. Get out of the way and flatten down - after scooping
a still stunned and unmoving kitten close to her chest. The one she'd
put down wasn't trying to get up, though from the odd sounds coming
from him she knew he was still alive. But the gun he'd been holding
was out of reach and he wasn't moving either limb anyway. She'd made
sure of that, metallic parts or not.

Carefully picking up the kitten with her jaw, whiskers flicking back
as the awful taste of whatever the Reaver had for blood hit hard,
Catseye padded out of the boathouse, carefully walking around the
still smoldering corpse on the front porch while keeping a wary eye
out for anything else that might try to attack them. And a part of her
attention was firmly fixed on Cain, a low interrogative sound escaping
her as she watched his back.

Cain turned around, giving the cougar-sized purple cat a brief glance.
"Good cat," he boomed, striding back into the boathouse. Looking down
at the wounded Reaver, he crouched to survey the damage. Obvious
compound fracture of the forearm, and his midsection had been shredded
into a goulash of plastic, metal, and viscera. With rock-steady hands,
Cain cradled the moaning cyborg's head, then raised one fist, letting
it fall like a hammer once. The would-be assassin twitched briefly,
then lay still.

Cain looked over his shoulder at Catseye and Mao, then quirked his
mouth in a smile. "Watch the house," he said, striding for the front
door. "I feel like a run."

A faintly miffed sound greeted that request, although Catseye set down
Mao on the slightly charred grass in front of the porch, keeping him
solidly safe between both front paws, and then indulged in a slow,
lazy stretch before turning her head to take a good look at herself.
The contented thought that even with a few scrapes, she still made a
fine looking Very Big Cat indeed was most satisfactory, and with that
she settled down, watching with half-lidded eyes as Cain walked
outside the boathouse.

A guard cat for now she would be.

Comments

[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

Behind him, defibrillator paddles raised, Madelyn looked up from the fallen body to the two combatants and said, completely deadpan. "Clear."

*wipes away tears of laughter* That's classic.

[x-madelyn.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Yes, I arranged an entire scene just so I could make a Firefly joke. Fear me.