Logs:I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Ion, Jax, Scott, Amo, Kiri, Regan, Leo, Charles, Ryan
In Absentia Hive, Sriyani	2024-10-12 "You fucking kidding with this shit?" (Right after a crash Landing & a Call to Arms; part of Mojo World plot.)
Location <GEN> Hammer Bay
It's very late, but Genosha's capital city hasn't been sleeping. Several lively parties that had been going along the beach, largely packed with reveling tourists, have broken up in terrified screaming rush as the ship crashed down. Several hovercraft are coming in fast, and there are higher-flying drones sweeping the beach with bright spotlights that pincer down on the shipwrecked mutants and their alien friends. From the craft in the lead -- sleek and fast and rapidly nearly on top of the ship, stamped bold with the insignia of the Genoshan Magistrates -- comes a warning blared loud and clear. "{By order of the Genoshan Magistrates, all manifested X-Gene carriers must report to Genegineering for processing. Unprocessed mutants are in violation of the law. Do not resist or you will be terminated.}" The warning, given first in Genoshan, is very considerately repeated in English in the next moment. The crashing ship has spilled its passengers out along the sand, in various states of disrepair. Some of the survivors are getting up, but others are decidedly not. Somewhere among the dazed and panicking aliens and the wreckage of ship-parts that had peeled off before the thing shrunk back down into a rock there is Joshua, bloody and somewhat battered where he's lying half-under a piece of what once might have been an engine. The broken engine-part is leaking something slick and acrid onto the beach; Joshua is leaking, far more identifiable dark-red and sticky where a sliver of the broken engine has jammed itself up into his back. He starts to struggle upward as the Magistrates close in, but the jagged metal bits inside him make this a more difficult enterprise than he had maybe planned for. Slumping back down is not, unfortunately, any more pleasant. He grimaces up at the lights overhead. "... perfect." His low grumble is mostly lost to the droning of the hovercraft and blaring of the Magistrate's warning. Ion has fared a little better. Probably being able to discorporate himself before impact has helped with this. He's flickered back into existence more or less the same instant the ship has also discorporated, and he is not bothering to pay much attention at all to the incoming Magistrates. Or, at least, not much attention to their warning; he is directing an immediate and fierce lightning-arc towards the nearest of the ships, together with an irritated sucking of his teeth. "You fucking kidding with this shit?" He could be asking anyone with this question but his scowl is directed very much heavenwards. "-- sugar, don't move." Jax does not look like he is Actively Bleeding at this moment, crumpled not far from Joshua in a small pool of shadow. He does look pretty woozy, rubbing at his head like he's kind of shocked that it isn't bleeding, and there is a noticeable bend in his other arm that should not be there. He isn't quite standing, just dragging himself a little closer to Joshua. A very brief flash severs the metal bit from the rest of the engine -- unfortunately still very much impaling Joshua but at least not tethering him in place, now. "-- Ion." His voice is steady, though the tension in it is clear all the same. "You ain't gonna fry 'em all and I'onno if Joshua's gonna be up to -- how many folks can you move." Scott tucked and rolled and tumbled a little further down the beach than most, and as he gathers himself ploddingly up to his feet, swaying a little with either wooziness or exhaustion or just unsteady in the sand, the faint crimson glow of his eyes is tilting across the shipwreck and shipwrecked, then up at the drones circling the beach. For an instant they blaze brighter before one of the floodlights finds him -- in the sudden glaring light Scott sets his jaw, then falls back in a hobbling stagger back toward the group -- his visor's slitlike eye gleams back into view, fixing first on Ion and then dropping to Jax. "Got your back," is all he says, before it lifts up to the sky again. Amo’s rattling cough is, at first, the only sign she’s around. The sand shifts nearby and it’s more similar to a boulder emerging from the beach than a person. Some sand trails off of her torn clothes and broken remains of her armor, but most still sticks to her in a coated combination of blood and sweat. She coughs again and spits out a globule of sand and blood, then sucks in a pained breath through red stained teeth as she drags herself over. Once Jax untethers Joshua from the rest of the engine, she sinks into a clumsy crouch beside Joshua, and places a steadying hand to keep him from slumping back and impaling himself further into the piece of metal. Her eyes draw upward briefly, toward the floodlights and their repeated announcements, then back down. “I’ll follow your leads.” Perhaps Kiri's power cushioned her fall somewhat reflexively, for she's scrambling to her feet in short order looking little worse for the crash. "{Curse you maggot-eaten traitors!}" she shouts back at the Magistrates, also in Genoshan, "{May you and all your filthy ancestors rot unremembered!}" Though she does not translate this into English, her tone certainly sounds invective. But just in case that was unclear, she underlines her point by hurling one of the hovercraft sidelong into another. Between Ion and Kiri, several of the hovercraft are destabilizing and tumbling to crash into the sand, sending several of the stragglers scrambling rapidly away from the debris. There are many more incoming, though -- quite a few manned by Magistrates in their hulking armor, together with a fleet of automated drones. Some Sentinels, some boxier spikier contraptions of Genosha's own make. Among them, probably only Kiri is familiar enough to visually identify the octahedron shapes of the Magistrates' flexible suppression grid deployment drones, though between the very many shapes cluttering the air and the darkness of the landscape, it's probably very easy to miss them flitting through the crowded sky as they fan out. Several of the nearer drones are shooting -- swift and immediate, both suppression darts and live fire. At Ion, at Kiri, at Jax, they do are not seeming to distinguish between Offensive uses of mutant powers and otherwise. The door of one of the downed hovercraft nearby pops open, dispensing a trio of armored Magistrates. One of them is flinging several baseball-sized projectiles towards the nearest clumps of survivors; each sphere dispenses a wide net, heavy and weighted where they're coming down to blanket the people on the sand, their wire mesh humming low with a nonlethal but definitely disruptive jolt of stunning electricity. Joshua is leaning heavily against Amo's steadying hand, very inconsiderately likely getting a good deal of blood on her. It's this fact more than anything else that prompts him to grimace, shift slightly, offer a mumbled apology. He is trying, without much success, to pull himself more upright. He hasn't gotten very far in this painful effort when the heavy shock of the net bears down around him -- for a moment he's just tense, a little twitchy, but then this wide net, at least, vanishes, reappearing to fall with a WHUMP over the Magistrates who'd just sent it. Ion is vanishing in a hurry when the shooting starts, a brief but strong jolt coursing through Kiri as she, too, is yanked out of immediate firing range. Or, immediate firing range for those bots; they land a little closer to Jax et al (with a small and circuit-frying stop through one of the Magistrates in their hefty mech armor) so not exactly out of hot water. Ion is shaking his head, jaw set as he looks over the beach. "Be real damn risky. Ain't near enough wires for no big jump. If your elf-girl --" He's shooting another crackling bright bolt at one of the firing drones, equally maybe to knock it out of its deadly orbit and to light up a stretch of the beach, a deep frown on his face as he tries to pick familiar shapes out of those still unconscious or recovering along the sand. A shield appears brief overhead to deflect that first barrage, though it's clear enough from Jax's pallor that he does not likely have too many of those left in him. Far easier at least is simple illumination, and there are numerous glowing lights blooming in the air around them, picking the drones out of the darkness and sticking a bright 🙏 -shaped target for Scott on each. Another glow, smaller, blooms on Joshua's torso as Jax pulls the bloodied torn fabric aside to better expose the impaling wound. "Can you patch this?" he's asking Amo, and to Joshua, low and urgent, "M'sorry, honey, but you might be our only ride out right now." Though after a second thought here he's casting around, kind of anxious and kind of intense, and reaching -- hesitant -- for the iridescent crystal once he spies it. Amo flinches against the shock of the net and her armor instantly reacts, rippling across her in a thick layer—but not quick enough to protect against all of it. She’s left gagging for a moment, even as the net disappears, but soon after she’s replacing her hand back on Joshua, giving a sharp nod of confirmation to Jax. Perhaps her own hasty “Sorry-“ doesn’t make much sense at first, but it’s very soon explaining itself as armor suddenly activates across him. Hard rock blooms up inside Joshua’s wounds and spreads outwards to the surrounding skin in place of blood. The wound itself surrounding the shard of metal turns into a thick protective layer and the armor expands—filling in empty space to isolate and lock the impaled sliver stiffly in place. She slots her arm underneath him now to help pull him upright. “We gonna have to move—sitting ducks.” ZLAT, a few of the swarming drones go down spewing sparks and smoke even before Jax spotlights them, and in the suddenly starkly illuminated battlefield Scott is gladly beaning several more out of the air in a series of bright, nigh-simultaneous webs of ricochets that tint the beach in flashes of red. Then he glances down at the teammates and blasts the remaining two Magistrates unceremoniously into the side of their vessel, their heavy armor flattening with a crunch of rending metal as if they'd been hit with a bus. Another optic blast knocks the hovercraft into a sharper tilt in the sand, caves in part of its hull. "Think those things are all the cover we can hope for on this beach," he shouts, over sprays of answering gunfire, "-- need to get out of the open." Kiri shakes off her jolting transportation and looks around, gritting her teeth. She turns up the gravity around one of the Sentinels firing at them, jerking everything nearby violently toward it. Whether she successfully crushes any of the drones, she does spot one of the suppression grid generators in the process. "Those robots!" She gesticulates a bit too wildly to make clear which of the many robots she means. "Diamond-looking ones -- they make suppression field! {Twice-cursed corpse-eating --}" She hurls the cluster of drones she gathered at one of the suppression bots. There are more drones crashing down to earth -- here and there a loud accompanying yell, though in the darkness and chaos and deafening thunder of gunfire it is hard to tell whether these are noises of alarm or pain, as those who can move scramble to get out of the way or drag their less mobile companions to what tenuous safety can be found. There are more bots, dark and arachnid where they are beginning to swarm over the dunes onto the beach. The bright flares of their energy-beam blasts PEW PEWing away light up the darkness and sear fierce and painful towards the gathered group. Though Kiri has knocked one of the suppression bots out of the air there are quite a number more starting to dot the stretch of beach, some of them burrowing down into the sand once they have landed. One remaining Magistrate has been downed since Ion's shocking path through him but now he is getting back up, the larger outer shell of armor peeling away to crumple in pieces on the ground and a sleeker slimmed-down armor suit still surrounding the man rising from the wreckage. He is shooting several humming bola-like weapons at Scott and Ion and Kiri alike, heavy and constricting all on their own even before the fierce charge they carry. Joshua sucks his breath in through his teeth. He's stiffened, momentarily freezing as the armor sprouts in and in him, but then just nods gratefully as he struggles to his feet. He and Amo have vanished and reappeared under the sheltering hull of the broken hovercraft -- for better or for worse, also pretty close to the still-attacking Magistrate. Not that Joshua is attacking him; he's just looking a little paler, a little more peaked; the work of switching powers does not look like much in him except exhaustion. He is peeling himself unsteadily from Amo's grip, bracing a hand against the broken hull of the craft as he staggers towards its door, partially caved in but still more or less intact in the frame. "{You fucking kidding with this --}" Ion's voice is probably not very audible over the din but the flash of his hook as his hand is thrown up in sheer exasperation is probably easy to read all the same. The crackle of lightning starting to course down his arm as he eyes the rising Magistrate balefully is easy to read, too. But then he looks at Joshua stumbling towards the door and nods, the lightningglow fading away. He gestures sharp and a little dismissive to the stone Jax has picked up. "{-- don't fucking think about it, Sunshine. Just keep him the fuck alive, I try to round people this way --}" And with a shiver of energy and a whiff of ozone, he has vanished. "There's a lotta ro --" Jax is starting to protest, until Kiri's clarification. He's closing his eye against the clutter of chaos and refocusing. Here and there and there his spotlight targets are picking the smaller diamond shapes out of the clutter, though there and there and there the lights come too late to stop the drones burrowing into the ground. There are glowing X's etched on the sand where they've buried themselves all the same. His jaw tightens and with a definite look of misgiving in Joshua's direction he pockets the crystal. Tiny brief flashes in the dark are severing at the cords of the energized bolas as he drags himself upright and starts to stumble towards the downed hovercraft. Scott knocks the Magistrate in his Matryoshka-doll armor flat on his back into the wreckage of his own suit, not quite fast enough -- one of the charged-up bola weights just slings past him but the other whaps him across the chest with its energized cord, and Scott goes down. Only for long enough to throw it away from him, but a few seconds is a few seconds. He doesn't waste time getting fully to his feet, but tries to shoot down the indicated bots one by one, or two by two, less capable of trick shots with the way they're spreading out; there and there where X marks the spot, the blasts are sending up fountain-like sprays of sand. Kiri whoops her appreciation when Scott takes the Matryoshka Magistrate down again, and shifts her attention to the suppression bots furthest out from his blast zone. There's no finesse to what she's attempting, just a brute force crush down into the sand where the drone has rooted itself, then performing the same procedure on one at the other end of the widening arc, and then she's on the move again. She does not look extremely sanguine about their prospects, but she's ululating loud and determined as she tries to sweep another flight of drones out of the sky. It takes Amo a moment to reorient under the shelter of the hovercraft, and she reluctantly allows Joshua to peel away—only so she can brace her arms up against the energy-beam blasts from arachnid bots that careen their way. She whooshes out a breath against one that hits her squarely in the chest, but she recovers to kick an armor covered leg at a bot that skitters too close, sending it out from under the cover of the hovercraft, then continues to back up along with Joshua. The Matryoshka Magistrate is not getting back up, as his suit crumples over him. There are now several other Magistrates zooming out of their craft to thud down onto the sand. One is firing those bolas again -- at Joshua, at Jax, at Amo -- while the other is opting for tranquilizing darts at Scott and Kiri. Drones have been falling out of the sky -- though not all of them the intended drones; the Sentinels are veering in small clusters to protect the suppression bots, several of them swooping in to take hits for the smaller boxier drones. A moment later there's a faint humming, largely lost in the din. What isn't lost is the way the suppression field snaps into place -- the many downed bots mean it doesn't yet have full coverage of the beach, but there is a wide triangle invisibly blanketing the segment that Joshua and his cohorts are currently in. There are more lights veering in -- along the roads, through the sky, coming in fast from the city, small clusters of guards escorting large hovering meatwagons closing in almost eagerly to load up fresh cargo for the jails. Not far up the beach there's -- actually, this blip of arrival is almost certainly lost in the chaos. Several new figures and then several more manifesting among the insanity, somewhere just out of range of this first blanketing supression, their appearance half-lost to darkness and tumult. The bots can no doubt clock Regan easily enough but the first impression the human Magistrates have is the sudden rending agony of their mech suits apparently filling up. Teeming with swarms upon swarms of viciously biting bugs, burrowing hungry deep tunnels all through their flesh. Leo has been striding forward -- and then sharply back when he first does reach the edge of the suppression field, invisible but acutely present to his cluttered senses. Around him bots are starting to malfunction and then to go inert. It's kind of indiscriminate in a wide field around him, Sentinels and suppression bots both slowly grinding to a halt. Though his reach is not nearly wide enough to touch the incoming reinforcements, there is a growing swath of relative quiet in his vicinity -- well, maybe except for the screaming of the Magistrates. He's slower, more tentative, as he continues towards Joshua and friends. "I'm very sorry we are so late." Joshua is taking full advantage of Amo's armor, ducking as much as he can behind her as he stumbles for the door. It's enough that the bola does not catch him squarely, does not land and hitch as it is meant to. The THUMP of the weighted ends against his ribs is still likely not at all pleasant, and the jolt, though brief, drops him to the ground just shy of actually reaching the door handle. He's pushing himself laboriously back up when the grid slams down, and when he opens the door it's just the damaged inside of the hovercraft there on the other side. He slams it closed again with a sharp hiss of dismay, slumping exhausted against the side of the hull with one trembling hand pressing over his face. When the grid goes down again he's slower to recover, his hand dropping heavily to his side and his expression bleak as he looks at the door. And then -- looks past the door? Eyes a little wider, brows lifting. He's breathing out a sharp ragged gasp of laughter, shaking his head when Leo comes into view. "Get a faster boat, man." Ion has largely not been visible, since he vanished. There are figures from farther down the beach being deposited rapidly nearby Joshua's alcove, a constant crackle that leaves behind stray Weirdos and aliens alike. At least until the next trip; when Beast coalesces on the sand Ion snaps into visibility along with him, sparks all extinguished now in the sudden dampening field. 'You fucking kidding me?' is just signed this time -- at first incredulous but halfway through, when the grid goes down again, when Leo comes into view, though, the sentence ends absolutely gleeful. Jax's hand claps to his mouth, whatever sound was startled out of him swallowed between the thud of falling drones and the crash of the ocean. "Leo --" He swallows, hastens closer as he takes a quick stock of the relative quiet around them and the rapidly incoming reinforcements. He looks very much like he would like to hug the other man but what he says instead is: "We got a lot of people still scattered around unconscious or hurt and can't move so good, can you help -- help us -- we're gonna have to be quick." The prison wagons' escorts turn away as one and go back the way they came, leaving their charges unprotected and confused. Most of the incoming Magistrate hovercraft recall their drones and curve away. A few linger to shoot down the remaining drones before obediently returning to their bases, as well. The screaming Magistrates on the beach turn and fire on their more psionically resistant comrades. Somewhat disquietingly, they continue screaming and writhing through this entire process, until there are no functioning Magistrates or drones left on the beach, whereupon they all fall unconscious to the sand. Though their attackers' sudden collective change of heart might be familiar to Hive's friends and former teammates, Hive themself isn't really sensible at all until a voice that isn't exactly a voice whispers across their mind in thoughts that feels like their own -- that are their own. << (Welcome home) >> With this, too a distant impression of warmth like sunlight dappled through dense foliage, easing pain and re-orienting the disoriented. The lightshow emanating from where Scott is still crouched in the sand cuts off abruptly with the hum of the grid, even the glow of the visor extinguished. He's quick enough to pluck out and discard the tranq dart, though as he hauls himself to his feet to make for the fallen hovercraft, surrounded by its uncannily growing crowd of Mojo refugees, his steps have already begun to drag, and even with a previously-unconscious blobby alien suddenly propped against him to nudge him along he's staring with astonishment down the beach at the approaching Brotherhood members, then tilting his head up, the visor's glow blinking back out just seconds after it flares back to life, as Scott closes his eyes as if to soak in the nonexistent sun. << Good to be back, >> he's thinking, relief sparking bright and delighted through his spreading drowsiness. Perhaps the suppression grid snaps in place just in time for Amo, to stop the growing rock from consuming her entirely in response to the electrified bolas that had twined and slammed around her. She breaths out in shaking disbelief, at the approach of reinforcements—those she doesn’t know personally but can sense mean safety, now. Her armor ripples back to life, then fades back as she eases into the light of the psionic sway. “Made it.” Escapes her, weakly. Being depowered does not cut off Kiri's battle cry, but the grid going back down and the (not) strange (not) voice in her head does startle her out of it. When a moment later she spots her Brothers coming to the rescue she picks up the ululating back up, triumphant now where it was defiant before. << {I raise up the cry and they come straightaway!} >> she thinks, ecstatic and amazed as she helps an injured Pyro limp over to where the refugees are gathering. << {Praise the gods who turn away our enemies and bring our allies!} >> Not the allies she was calling for, granted. She looks up toward the city up past the dunes, knowing her sister and the Resistance cannot be far away, must be waiting for a chance to swoop in and help. Knowing, too, that it would be impossible to keep all who came back with her from Mojo safe there. "Do we get out of here now?" The door that Joshua has been straining for does open, now, yanking away from his reach like some cruel joke. Or not so cruel -- it's not the wrecked hovercraft or Genosha at all on the other side, but the familiar expanse of Evolve's upstairs. The Ne'ilah service that had been going on here has been hastily rearranged to make room for incoming patients, mats and cots starting to line the floor alongside plentiful medical supplies. There is plentiful food as well, intended for break-fast but no doubt just as delicious as a homecoming meal after weeks of making baffling meals from the Mojo pantry. Ryan is propping the door open against one wheel of his chair, taking a quick survey of the scene outside and only relaxing, slightly, when he spots Jax. "Hope y'all hungry, folks have been cooking all evening," he offers in greeting. "C'mon, get inside, we'll see your people home safe."