Logs:Bomb Squad

Bomb Squad
cn: violence, blood
Dramatis Personae Mystique, Akihiro, Heather, Cyclops, Catalyst
In Absentia	2024-08-21 "Great. His corn has popped."
Location <NY> Sebonack Clubhouse - The Hamptons
A large segment of this elite clubhouse is reserved, today, for a private function. The Senator being wined and dined is not actually a member here, but several of his top donors are and have Strong Opinions about the post-Prometheus future of mutant research. Was Mystique invited to this exclusive get together? Probably not, but the tech tycoon whose face she is wearing was -- it'll probably be some days yet before the news gets wind of his disappearance on his yacht in the Mediterranean. Tonight nobody is questioning his arrival, Lexus RX pulled up in between the Senator's BMW and their guest host's Cybertruck. Probably nobody is really questioning the companions with him, either -- even for a casual dinner he probably needs an aide, probably needs a driver. Probably, if he weren't so fashionably late, someone would question the explosives they brought along in the trunk for the rest of the dinner party's cars, but just at the moment the parking lot is quiet as the Brotherhood gets out. "These two," Mystique is indicating the BMW and the Cybertruck with a flick of Someone Else's Hand, this body reedy and balding. "There should be an Escalade here, too. Three birds..." Not exactly one stone, but who's counting. The driver door to the Lexus clicks open and out steps Akihiro, the heels of his black dress shoes clacking against the pavement as he draws himself out of the seat. He glances around the lot in a manner that would suggest he’s security rather than just a chauffeur. “I’ll take a walk and put eyes on it.” His tone is even and his face is unreadable but there’s a hint of anxiety in the way he tugs at the leather gloves he’s wearing. It’s soon forgotten and he makes his way to the trunk. In a lower he voice he adds, “Watch your backs please. Something about this is making my ass itch.” Unfortunately, the ostentatious colour scheme that Heather prefers does not exactly match up with the appearance of an aide, so instead she is wearing a white collared shirt, a smart black blazer and matching slacks. Tinted sunglasses cover her eyes. Her shoes, however, are still beat-up purple and green runners, only visible once she gets out. "This is amazing," says Heather about the Cybertruck in her recorded voice, "It is almost a shame to improve it." She shakes her head mournfully, but opens the trunk to start readying one of the explosives for deployment. "Is your ass allergic to something?" There is an Escalade here, further down the row, shiny and beetle-black, and thought the parking lot may be empty it is not totally deserted, for the driver's door is opening now, and then slamming. The man who gets out of the Escalade may not be who the Brotherhood expected to entrap, but -- then again perhaps they could have predicted this. Cyclops does not look like he came here to wine and dine -- he's wearing all black, with a disappointed-but-not-surprised frown affixed beneath his visor. "Go home," is all he says. The passenger door can be heard opening, but Cyclops's passenger isn't immediately visible to the Brothers. By the time Catalyst appears around the other side of the vehicle, she has a Chinese longsword bared, though reversed, the blade pointed politely up behind her right arm. "How many innocent people are you willing to sacrifice here to make your point?" "There are no innocent people here." There's a naked contempt in Mystique's borrowed voice, though she hasn't yet deigned to look towards the X-Men. "Only those who would see our kind back in cages and the sycophants wetting themselves at the thought they might find favor from these fascists." She's been inspecting the undercarriage of the Cybertruck but rises, now, smooth; from one outstretched hand a small grenade is flung towards the X-Men, its sudden flashBANG coming just on the heels of her words. "Thank god our kind has no end of bootlickers of our own to assist them in their dirty work." When the flash bang goes off Akihiro explodes into motion, his claws extending and slicing through the Cybertruck’s door, before he wrenches it free and slings it towards Cyclops’ general direction. Despite this its Catalyst he approaches, shrugging out of his coat. “You can still leave. These people aren’t worth dying over.” Despite his words he raises his hands, one to protect his face and the other his ribs. "Home? Considering what happened to our last home," Heather says flatly to Scott, "This is more cautious." She shields her face from the flash of the grenade's detonation then zips forward towards Tian-shin, thrusting her palm out towards the woman's midsection. Her voice continues playing while she does this, though with a doppler effect. "Look at these cars. They are not innocent." WHAM! Sort of incidentally -- Scott was aiming to knock the flashbang away -- the Cyberdoor gets knocked aside in a flare of red, spinning away to slam with a sharp clash of metal into the parked cars opposite. As their alarms begin to split the air in a piercing, discordant chorus, Cyclops shakes his head and regains his balance, planting his feet. The next blast is aimed forcefully at Akihiro, before -- resuming his dogged stride forward -- the one-eyed gaze fixed on Mystique again. "Our kind will see no end of persecution while these people have reason to fear us." Can anybody hear him over the car alarms? Who cares. Catalyst throws up her sword arm to shield her eyes from the flash, and while she's too slow to actively fend Heather off there is a sword in front of her now, if still held in a largely defensive grip. "And the staff? Caterers? Press?" Her voice is very loud, but it sounds more like an inability to regulate her volume post-concussion grenade than actual yelling. "How far are you willing to rationalize?" She's still trying to get her eyes to focus on either the speedster or the samurai, but there's a sudden wrenching pain coming from inside Akihiro's body where the water molecules in his blood are pulling apart into their component elements. "These people should fear us." Mystique's snarl looks awkward on the soft and reedy face she is wearing. "Instead you blithering idiots would have them sleep sound on their mountains of blood money for the sake of --" Perhaps somewhere among the grenade and the many car alarms she is thinking better of continuing her no doubt Overly Dramatic Monologuing about the X-Men's priorities or comprehension of how carbombs work. While Cyclops is eyepunching Akihiro, she's flinging a quite well-aimed throwing knife towards Catalyst's leg, and tucking and rolling impossibly fast toward the opposite row of cars to send another flying towards the Cyclops's hand. Akihiro catches the incoming blast from the corner of his eye and dives forward, rolling over his shoulder and landing in a two-point sprinters start. The muscles across his body tense and ready themselves for an explosion of movement but all that comes to an abrupt stop as he crumples into himself as white hot pain envelops his entire body, his veins swelling to the point they look like they may burst at any moment. A strangled cry catches in his throat and a yellow foam starts forming at the corners of his mouth. Just when it looks like he may lose consciousness the light leaves his eyes and a ferocious roar tears loose from his throat. The entirety of his attention is on Catalyst now, the samurai gone and replaced by an animal, some feral thing in the shape of a man. A heartbeat later and he explodes into motion loping forward on all fours before flinging himself at the other martial artist, his fingers curled into claws. Heather furrows her eyebrows and scowls at the mentioning of the other workers connected to the event, but reels a few steps back from Catalyst, to stay clear from Mystique's throwing. "You should not cook him," she warns with a slight frown, though her attention has turned towards Cyclops, where she zooms towards him to kick his shin. Resigned, now: "Great. His corn has popped." Cyclops's gaze follows Mystique to the other row of cars with another broad, sweeping flare of red, rattling along the queue with explosions of breaking taillights; he's rather too busy with this to block the knife, and when it stabs into his palm, his aim with the visor goes wild -- or, not his aim but his precision, the beam suddenly shrinking pencil-thin as it ricochets off the last car into the BMW; rather than shaking it on its wheels it merely leaves a small hole punched into the trunk. He does not look down at his hand as he removes the knife, his head turning with a wordless shout of dismay to the explosion of violence at his side. His injured hand clenches around the throwing knife (with an accompanying snarl of pain), his free hand darts up to his visor, and after a moment, with laser precision, there is another flare of red, pinged off the broken side mirror of the Cybertruck's door onto the door itself back outward, in an effort to buffet Akihiro back with another blast of crimson. For juuust a moment, that is; when Heather kicks him, his leg buckles and the light disappears with an "Oof!" "Your shifty leader threw a grenade, and you lecture me?" Catalyst dives out the way of Akihiro's charge. As she flips to her feet she finally turns her sword to an upright grip and turns to fend off Akihiro should he charge again. "You could at least try to have a sane and stable--" Perhaps she should have heeded the lecture, but perhaps she would still have gotten a knife sunk into her lower thigh. It misses the artery but drops her flat. She angles the sword up to skewer Akihiro if he pounces. From the clubhouse itself there is a fair bit of commotion. Maybe it's easy to miss the noise over the yelling, the blaring car alarms, but it's easy to see all the same when the doors open and a confused and uncertain mix of determined security and gawking house staff pour out of the door. At an upstairs balcony there are several rich people in various states of alarm and indignation that their dinner has been so disrupted. Mystique is springing back to her feet, stepping just so on the broken Cybertruck door -- it veers the aim of Scott's doubly-ricocheted beam off its trajectory, sending it high up over the whole fray to crack-crack loud and ominous at the support of the clubhouse balcony. The rich gawkers scream -- does it push them all back inside rather than further to the edge of the balcony with their cellphones, no it does not. As they move the balcony creaks and wobbles, shivering dust down on the actual innocents below. "Oh dear, your poor darling genocidal lambs are in danger." Her fingertips have pressed over her mouth in mock-horror. "If only some brave mutant heroes were here dedicating themselves to making sure every poor human bigot gets a fighting chance to slaughter us another day. -- Brothers, to me." She's gesturing them imperiously back to their own stolen truck. Despite missing Akihiro is quick to react, sliding his hand across the ground to leap at the downed Catslyst with zero regard for his flesh, the tip of the blade slipping between his ribs and through his liver, staining his button down a deep crimson. Right before his teeth can clamp around her throat another flash catches his attention, causing him to throw himself backwards away from the woman, blood spraying for a moment as the sword slips back out. His dark eyes frantically search before lighting onto Cyclops and with another explosion of movement he quickly closes the distance and in an attempt to capitalize on the man’s buckling leg. Just when it looks like he might go for another tackle he flips mid air and drops his heel towards the other man’s head in a near perfect execution of the rolling thunder kick. If he heard Mystique’s words he makes no attempt to acknowledge them. While Heather readies to switch dance partners with Akihiro, she glances back towards Mystique with a quick nod, and then squeaks out a huff. She leans over and jabs at Akihiro's shoulder a few times with her index finger as soon as her finishes executing the kick, then zips backwards again towards the vehicle in case she attracts his ire. "We need to go. You are the driver. Pedal to the metal." To Cyclops and Catalyst, she offers a two-fingered salute, "You can stay. They will surely see you as cool heroes. Not more shifty mutants." There's another, less precise flare of red as Cyclops goes down, so bright that the spraying blood seems black by comparison; this one is not a fancy rebound shot, but an outward blast of force that knocks Akihiro's aim at least away from the visor's one eye. It doesn't entirely redirect the kick away from Cyclops, but he braces his (already-injured) arm protectively to absorb the blow, perhaps with the logic that he may as well consolidate his wounds and leave one arm free. His teeth are bared back at Akihiro as he unspringily tries to spring back to his feet. He doesn't reply to either Mystique's or Heather's taunts, but he does (kind of petulantly?) hurl the bloodied knife at the Lexus's rear tire. Catalyst is slower to rise, and quite liberally splattered with blood though it is not at all easy to discern how much of it is actually hers. She glares daggers of her own at the Brothers' truck as it peels out. Its engine stutters ominously...then evens out as she tears her eyes away. "Ta ma de--" probably is not appropriate mission language by Cyclops's standards, but between the blaring alarms and screeching tires and screaming people he might not catch it clearly enough to look up later. Catalyst definitely should not yank that knife out of her leg, but she does anyway and does not immediately bleed out as she limp-runs to herd away the people frozen like deer in the headlights under the collapsing balcony.