Logs:Prometheus: TITANFALL - eXtermination

Prometheus: TITANFALL - eXtermination
cn: bloodshed/violence/a lot of pain
Dramatis Personae Steve, DJ, Ryan, Kitty, Skye, Heather, Polaris, Scott, Hive, Charles, Winona, Sam, Ion, Hank	2023-07-23 << {come the fuck on} >> (in conjunction with raid team, extraction side.)
Location <PRO> Lassiter Research Facility - Ohio
From above, the grounds of Lassiter look almost kind of pleasant, actually. There are manicured grounds spreading around it -- well-tended gardens, courts and fields for recreation; a large and fairly well equipped rec yard, off in the distance plentiful woods. Almost. As the stealth jet hoves into Lassiter's airspace, though, the high fences, barbed wire, fortified guard outposts around the perimeter become more starkly clear. The facility itself is very quiet -- even the resident telepaths can't hear much coming from it, carefully psi-shielded such that currently, only stray wisps of thought -- hope she remembers to feed the dog thank GOD for some quiet this month's been a MESS I hope the board pairs -- fucker ate my yogurt AGAIN, it was LABELLED, ... shit is that a hairy woodpecker or a downy woodpecker, I should text Phil -- come from the guards dotted around the external grounds. Somewhere a few miles away, their buses and drivers have made it to their quiet parking spot; Blink stands ready to portal the teams straight to the facility from there. Somewhere beneath the Blackbird, Lassiter is quiet. At least, until the first flutters of movement outside. The alarms -- both audible and sparking through the guards' minds -- are immediate -- but then. That's what they're here for, right? Steve has been quiet for the last stretch of their flight, head bowed and eyes closed, his prayers audible only in his thoughts where they keep memories of other deployments at bay. He's more heavily armed than most of his teammates, the red, white, and blue of his armor and shield strike a stark contrast to the preponderance of black around him, and though he wears a helmet he is not covering his face. The moment they get the go signal he's up and strapping on his shield. Drops a hand to squeeze Sam on the shoulder as he passes. Sights the distance down as the ramp lowers. Takes an almost leisurely running start, and -- The fingers that clamp down against Steve's shoulders are harder than fingers should be, brighter than fingers should be, the striking blue-black-and-white plumage of a bluejay painted in intricate detail on his bionic limb. "Friend. Know you can do this no parachute thing but --" His expression is flat but his voice is amused, and he shifts his grip, other arm curling around Steve -- a second later the world flutter-warps, blurring around them for just a moment and then settling back into stillness as they alight gently on the roof. "But when you got us -- why." The alarms start jangling almost the moment he is done speaking -- though by the time they start sounding DJ is already back on the jet to grab his next passengers. After another flicker-blur of motion the roof is trembling -- centered somewhere around Ryan's booted feet and vibrating outward with a hum those nearby can feel in their bones. He's taking a hasty step back, his expression largely obscured behind his black bandana save for the sudden widening of his eyes (as if this was not his exact intention) at the quick-spreading cracks in the roof. a small hole starting to crumble its way through where he was just standing. On the roof, the next blur of motion resolves into the outline of Kitty -- black and yellow-piped lightly armoured x-jacket, black gaiter mask pulled up over her nose and mouth, hair braided tight to her head. Twin titanium kali sticks are strapped to her back, a taser holstered on her right side. "-- how did you plan on landing?" She's asking Steve, casual, stepping back from the cracks with more steadiness than the rumble of the roof should warrant (though her boots are ending up just a little higher than the roof, anyway). "I usually do, like, a diving board dive but that seems unideal for you." Her tone is light but her eyes are alert as she unclips one stick. Twirls it, waiting. Skye is visibly jittery but only emits a tiny eep as she's whisked down to the rooftop. She stumbles a couple of steps upon landing and hops over one of the cracks spreading from Ryan's crater. "Hey uh, are just gonna roll with this or...?" She' still backing away from it, though. When Heather appears, black bat in hand (a label on it with an X in the center, with the words apply directly to the forehead) her recorded voice sounds through a speaker mounted to her shoulder, starting with a disapproving click of the tongue. "I hoped for a cool three point American landing. Alas, practicality." Her normally bright colours have been replaced with a tactical black, with only the outline of her dark-purple goggles possessing a flourish of muted colour. She backpedals away from Ryan a few steps to observe this hole situation develop. Polaris could have just flown down, honest! But she doesn't seem at all displeased to be making the trip in DJ's arms instead. Her armor is sleek and fitted with many sheathed throwing knives--gifted by Alma or at least procured from the same source--and she has like DJ a pouch of ball bearings opposite her handgun. "C'mon, he's Captain America. A giant eagle would have swooped down and caught him." She rolls her shoulders and eyes the hole speculatively from a safe distance. "There's a crack in everything," sound like a bit of incongruously idle musing as she looks up. Scott, outfitted with firearms on each hip, announces his arrival with an unsubtle, explosive blast to the area of the roof Ryan has already weakened, materializing already mid-confident stride to the edge of the hole. His sitrep to Hive is succinct -- << We're in >> -- before he is cleanly disconnected from the network. << (we're in) >> echoes back to Scott with a sudden imprinted awareness of the minds on the floor below -- several guards, rapidly alerted from making their rounds, several late-working researchers rousing from their labs in a panic -- before Hive's presence withdraws, settling into an expansive background vigilance riding along in DJ's everywhere-all-at-once mind. With the team safely (such as it is) away, the Blackbird ascends to its holding pattern with only Hank, Sam, and Charles left aboard. Though there's no plan for him to see any combat outside of his skull, Charles is dressed for action in his own armored X-uniform and riding the frankly intimidating combat wheelchair B had built for him, with the mantis-shaped drone is perched sullenly (somehow) on one of his shoulders. << Good hunting, >> his voice is a quiet warmth in the minds of the team. The wailing of the alarms drowns out -- audibly, at least, though to magnetokinetic senses it's -- well, at least noticeable, if not nearly as loud as it probably should be, heavily-shielded power sources with ceramic-composite alloy frames that leave distressingly less to catch and hold than the team would probably like -- the oncoming tide of Sentinels. Quite a lot of them, ascending from the perimeter guard stations, skittercrawling up through the hole that just opened in a rapid clickclickclick of legs. They are wasting no time in assessing the rooftop situation, pairs of Sentinels descending on Scott, on Polaris, on Skye, on Ryan, on Kitty -- probably trying and failing to keep up with Heather and DJ as a barrage of suppression darts thwips out. Beyond these, the minds that the telepaths can feel -- at least four guards rapidly incoming from within, three more pairs beginning to make their way from the perimet -- -- no, wait, one of these is here, now, a sour-faced man kitted out in Company X's best tac gear, dropped onto the roof by a lean stubbly blond who vanishes as soon as he's given his partner a ride. There's an eager gleam in his mind, an eager delight in his expression, and a sharp knife appearing as if by magic in his hand a second before Kitty is oddly twisted out of her current location, reappearing in front of the merc as he jabs his knife up at her. The two Sentinels that have been trying gamely to keep up with DJ vanish, reappearing -- somewhere in a wall below. For just a second -- likely too fast for most to track, he's almost heading towards Kitty, instinctive at the glint of knife, but then with a swift mental assessment of who is being menaced reroutes. The sour-faced merc vanishes, too, reappearing not-quite a story above the ground below before DJ shows back up on the roof to drop right inside. << Handles, please! >> Polaris's request, underlaid with her sense of the slippery Sentinels, is aimed at DJ, though she isn't waiting on aid, however swiftly it might be expected. She zips up over the volley of darts as two of her knives launch themselves and jam, one after another, into joins on the armor of her robotic assailants. Blip-blip-blip-blip. Like a yoyo DJ is back outside, with a quiet cronching of ceramic as Polaris's and Skye's sentinels grow a new stippling of very much magnetic metal bits embedded throughout their frames. And then once again, he is gone. The wave of Sentinels menacing the raiders still on the roof maybe aren't vulnerable to magnetokinesis yet, but they're not immune to kinetic energy -- Scott starts out trying to shoot them down precisely, one by one, and then -- as though impatient with that strategy -- he takes three long steps ahead of his team members to carve out a swathe of the bots at once, with one sweep of his head and one broad blast of red. Then he's dropping back to the rest of the team, turning the implacable gaze of the visor back to the hole he and Ryan blasted through the roof. Another rumble of crumbling rubble, and Scott is dropping -- with a sizable chunk of ceiling -- into the floor below. As the sound of the sentinels starts up, there is a blur along the outline of Heather's body, and then she is off in a streak. The arc of her bat smashes down on darts that seem more likely to make their mark on her team members, then slashes through the air in at the nearest sentinel at a speed that does not quite reach the sound barrier, but nonetheless is difficult to argue with when it is knocked through its skittering comrades. There's a sharp intake of breath when Kitty reappears -- from the teleport, maybe, because she is saying, very unimpressed, "--oh no." Kitty barely looks down at the knife disappearing into her chest, at the distinct lack of blood and entrance wound. "I've been stabbed." The blade shatters (maybe, it is hard to tell what exactly happens when Kitty solidifies and displaces all the atoms that make up the knife blade) the same moment her heavy club of a stick comes up from below to hit, hard, at his groin. There's a frustrated expression from merc when his blade sinks into nothing at all -- clearly he was eager for the blood that never comes. It only lasts a heartbeat, though; his eyes narrow, his smile sharpening. Kitty's club is, a hair's-breadth shy of contact, appearing just beneath Scott's groin (moving at approximately the same velocity it was when Kitty was swinging it. "Oh no," he answers, "I've been hit." Another twist relocates Kitty a few stories up and off the edge of the roof. Heather's Sentinel crunches, skidding to collide with several others. It isn't getting back up, just yet. The two Polaris has stabbed are, more or less, repurposing bits of each other rapidly to make a new Sentinel that slides at Skye's ankles to clamp hard-manacle legs around them. From the felled pile that Scott has carved, several other Sentinels are also taking stock, performing their robotic first-aid, reassembling. Skye dive-rolls aside and comes up easily back onto her feet, lining up the Sentinels re-assembling from Scott's blast and looses a loud BWONG. And then a not-so-loud eep when another newly-refurbished Sentinel gloms onto her feet. Down below, the debris and the team both fall out into a wide and open pleasant -- well, it probably was pleasant before the rubble; at one side of the room there are comfortable couches, a meditative waterfall sculpture; in the center a large snack bar; at the other side some game consoles, ping-pong tables, skee-ball -- nobody in here is taking advantage of the thoughtfully-provided Prometheus Relaxation Room, though. Instead a quartet of mercs are approaching -- one is simply opening fire on Scott when he sees the man. Another hefts -- telekinetically -- one of the large pieces of rubble that has fallen down from the ceiling, sending it thudding towards Scott's midsection. A third is trying to shoot DJ, very optimistically. The last is -- well, he looked like he was getting ready for some malice, but then his expression shifts, turns outward toward the broken roof like he's looking at something just past it. "Holy shit," he's saying, "that's fucking Captain America --" "What the fuck are you talking about," says the ratty-faced telekinetic, staring at Scott, down here in the room with them. "That's just some -- dude." Despite the force of her swing, Heather's recovery back to zipping is near instantaneous. She releases the bat with one hand, snatches another dart from the air and blurs at the reverse-teleporting mercenary as if intent on striking him with it. However, she stops short of doing so, instead kicking at his shin with the tip of her boot at the very last possible moment. A pair of darts thwip harmlessly against Ryan's body armor before Heather's bowled Sentinel crashes into his. He's ignoring his temporarily-thrown-off bots to hop down into the roof hole, too. A stray incredulity ( << fucking skee-ball? >> ) slips past his mind, though mostly he is taking stock of the room: << Hive, floor below us? >> as a tight funnel of whine blasts towards the merc aiming at Scott; to the others, probably unpleasantly loud but to the merc himself, earsplitting. Polaris takes hold of the ball bearing still inside of the resurrected Sentinel hobbling Skye and tears it apart, slamming all the pieces back down as projectiles against the beleaguered robot triage. The telekinetic is, for a moment, evidently seeing fit to clear the rubble from the entrance and drag over a nice stack of meditation cushions for a landing spot for those still coming from above. << Hole please >> is Hive's only response, Scott and Ryan both getting a brief sense -- the clear minds up here, the opaque ones a floor below. << Two more mercs approaching, too. >> Steve may have powers, but at the moment he's simply drawn the MK18 that had been clipped to his harness and neatly aims three-shot bursts at any Sentinel still moving that isn't attached to to one of his teammates before jumping down through the hole in the roof -- just in time to land on a nice soft cushion. "Watch your language," he chides the merc who identified him, "and if you have any sense of honor or justice you will stand down. Now!" "See," Merc 4 is saying, excited, "Captain Fucking Ameri -- shit, sorry." Scott -- unfortunately -- can do nothing about Kitty's club; his own downward velocity only adds to its force as he, the club, and the ceiling plummet. He lands on one knee, is a little slower than usual getting to his feet. His body armor absorbs most of the bullets, though one or two more find their way through the weak spots before Scott aims a broad blast at all four of the mercs, trying to knock them back as he draws his own gun. His voice, still winded from the groin-shot, has a disappointed-schoolteacher quality to it nonetheless. "Don't call me dude," he says -- his visor begins to glow with a new blast for the rude telekinetic, but at Hive's request he is aiming it downward instead, to blow a hole in the floor at the mercs' feet. The hole in the ceiling blossoms into an expanded psionic awareness below: a janitorial pair holed up scared in a side office, an irritated shitfuck trying to get their lab samples back in order before they evacuate, a pair of mercs swivelling rapidly away from where they were heading towards the stairs to instead train their guns on the hole. Another, oddly casual in his mentality, waiting with a quiet expectance now as he takes up position next to his rifle-wielding partner. A fourth irritated at the slowness of the other three, restless-agitated and wanting badly to zip ahead. Up and over the action, Kitty falls for the seconds it takes to get her bearings -- then continues falling as she works her second club out of its holster and embeds it into the wall of the building before solidifying. The fabric of her mask covers the set of her jaw as she hangs onto it. After a moment, she lets go -- pulls the club out of the wall, a little less titanium than it was before -- and starts walking back up invisible stairs to floor three. She slips into the rec room through one wide-view window, intangible -- intangible still when, after the hole in the floor is made, she sinks through it to the second floor, landing behind one of the guards taking aim above. "Hi!" Kitty chirps, reaching through the merc to pull the gun out of his hands with her left arm. Negateleporter is blipping that dart away -- in the direction of Polaris's neck instead of his own, but with his focus there he misses the kick. There's a quiet crack of bones and he yelps, instead shoving at Heather to push her a few feet off the edge of the roof. The floor is cracking where Scott blasts it, crumbling and spilling a wider hole into the floor below. The excited Cap fanboy is -- still looking thrilled -- but then startled -- as he falls below. The guard below opens his eyes wide as Kitty reaches through him, trying uselessly to tug back at the gun that is disappearing through his shoulder -- and then letting out a horrible scream as the tip of the rifle, not quite clear, embeds itself in the back of his shoulder. Nearby, Bored Merc looks absolutely not in the least apologetic -- idly sipping from a thermos of coffee -- as, independently of the suppression grid, a blanket of suppression clamping down heavily on Kitty's power. The Impatient Merc is excited to spring into action -- very, very, very fast action, also-unapologetically yanking the broken rifle from the sad flatscan merc and slamming the butt with speedster-force towards Kitty's ribs. Down below, the second guard -- abruptly has no rifle, either, though his is at least not in anyone's shoulder, just embedded muzzle-down in the floor. With the new telepathic vista opening up Charles had been probing at the human mercs down below -- luckily withdrawing his attention in time to not be stabbed in the brain when one of them becomes one with his rifle. The other he seizes roughly in order to shoot Bored Merc -- until he's abruptly disarmed. Unfazed, Charles directs him instead to slap the coffee up into the metamutant's face and then tackling him. Throughout each of the team's minds in rapid succession, an impression of the suppression-void merc below, overlaid with an image of Matt in a Joker outfit. Beneath this, Hive's mental sense: << (stay the fuck away) >> to the mutants, and << (shoot him, we can't target him) >> to Steve. There's an idle curiosity in the back of DJ's mind as to the limits of NegaMatt's powers -- but regardless he's doing a quick rooftop sweep; Polaris finds herself beside Scott and Ryan on the third floor and Skye -- dropped to land some small distance away from NegaMatt on the second. And then he's back on the third himself, where the guard who has been aiming at Scott finds his gun suddenly vanished -- and, instead, a neat ringing of metal embedded around his wrists. His musing << (does Kitty need evac?) >> does not come with an evac, for the moment giving WrongMatt a wide enough berth. The problem with falling is there is no way to stop falling. Heather flails her arms a bit as she tumbles back off of the roof. She does perform a cool three point American landing, but is disappointed to look around and see nobody notices. << I fell. I require a second floor door, exterior wall. >> And then she crouches to ready for a leap. (<< (Skye --) >> comes with a mental push in Hive's direction: please relay -- and then Ryan is racing -- to the edge of the hole and not quite down it, cautious of NegaMatt below. The thrumming push comes, as a result, a little slantwise, veering diagonally down-and-out towards the wall in the beginnings of a deep tremor. << (we notice) >> whispers Hive in Heather's mind -- and then, obligingly, lightly touches the image to the rest of the team's awareness as well. Scott advances on the remaining third-floor mercs, stepping around the crater he blew in the floor -- he aims a brute-force optic blast at the gun still frantically trying to follow DJ, trying to knock it out of the merc's grasp, and a brute-force physical punch -- with the additional weight of his own handgun -- at the other merc. The telekinetic fussily tending to his array of meditation cushions gets a slightly more apologetic blast -- at least if he goes down, he'll land softer. Skye reorients herself from the latest blip-blur journey and turns just in time to process the instruction from Ryan. She aligns the pitch and angle of her power with Ryan's and cranks it up enough that her "fus ro dah!" sounds less impressive than the splintering crack of the wall. << can't phase keep your distance ( -- bit LATE on the update -- ) >> is bitter-sharp under the pain searing across Kitty's mind -- first in her now-bloody hand, unexpected materialization feeling like a burn under her skin, then in her ribs when the rifle butt slams into her chest. The padding of the X-Jacket is not enough to prevent the crack of at least one rib underneath it. She is not paying attention to the three-point landing. Is trying to dodge the speedster -- or at least, shield herself from further impact attacks with her club and her other arm. NegaMatt splutters indignantly at the thermos jutting up against his face -- "What the f --", stumbling back with a hand held to somewhat bloodied nose as he's tackled. "Oh! Oh shit," says Cap Fanboy, as if only now remembering they're here to fight -- and the man who just tackled NegaMatt is wrenching himself off of his partner to instead tackle Skye. Speedster -- so eager! -- is bringing a small flurry of rifle-hits down against Kitty's club and arm alike, evidently very much a quantity over quality type -- though perhaps at his speeds perfect accuracy doesn't much matter. (Somewhere in Hive's awareness, far below and across the compound, the rest of the team is stepping through a portal, the first children greeting them with teary disbelief.) Heather's leap is timed so that when the wall starts to crumble, she is there with her baseball bat raised, speeding in to swing at the other speedster. Even if the incoming strike might look like a normal one to the speedy fellow, it's still a bat being swung at his hip. Steve had been about to take aim at one of the shooters facing down Scott (and, in a moment, Polaris) but smoothly pivots with the new intel. He crouches down, as much for the cover of his shield as to brace his rifle on his knee for better angle and aim to sweep a burst across Bored Merc's legs. Polaris hits the ground running. When Scott and DJ disarm the mercs who were shooting at the other, respectively, two of her knives are flying--past them, to curve around and sink into the backs of their knees. There is a new pair of guards just arriving -- but there is not, in fact, time to see what they are up to. One of them surveys the scene in stark disbelief before: "What the hell --" "-- I'm not shooting goddamn Captain America." -- and they are retreating. Cap Fanboy, though, is looking up through the hole and just apologizing: "Sorry, sir, sorry!" as Steve's arms jerk out of his own control, instead spraying wide -- unfortunately, also, down in Skye's direction now. The OtherSpeedster twists aside from where he's been assaulting Kitty to meet Heather's baseball-bat swing with the side of his rifle. "Ohhellyeah," comes out in a rapid tumble and, excited about this new challenge he's leaving Kitty instead to bounce up, rifle-butt jammed towards Heather's stomach as he rises and circles to her side. "Let'sfuckinggo." Probably only the X-Men (and Hive) can feel Charles' indignity at seeing his trick reversed. He wrests control of the hapless human merc again, who draws his dart gun and fires it point blank at the still-sputtering but as-yet un-shot metamutant. Heather parries the incoming rifle butt, both of her hands on the bat. With someone more likely to understand her combat banter, she simply offers a cold: "I hope you get arthritis, quisling." She pushes back to push the rifle away, her frame somehow unnaturally solid, and then makes another swing. From his comfortable pile-o-cushions, Telekinetic doesn't seem heavily inclined to go head-on with any of these people -- but he is wrenching (yet again) at the human they're all puppeting around, arm yanking fully unpsionically straight up (with an unpleasant popping of shoulder joint) to shoot the dart futilely into the ceiling again. From the rooftop hole, NegaTeleporter has dragged himself over to blip -- this time, Polaris -- back up onto the roof just above the horde of recently-reassembled Sentinels. The robots have been dutifully preparing for a charge round 2, but do take the time to fire another round of darts, more carefully adjusted for above-the-torso impact. SpeedsterMerc seems to be delighting in this fight, ducking under the swing as if they have choreographed this ballet -- if ballet includes whipping his rifle towards Heather's chin. "Oh come on!" cries the human merc when he's jerked yet again into someone else's control. Or possibly that's Charles. DJ is on the roof again in short order, and now, NegaTeleporter is not, bopping down to join -- well, maybe his partner has moved on by now. When he returns he is starting to lace the reconstituted Sentinels with metal -- not nearly fast enough to outgun the darts, though. With the speedster off her, Kitty is coming back into the fray -- a little slower, her jacket and face both worse for wear, right arm more stiff than before as she gets new grip on her club. Her steps less steady too, solid for once on the thrumming floor. << -- Cap, could use a human assist here -- >> comes in the thoughtspeak equivalent of gritted teeth as she throws her club at NegaMatt's head, following behind it with a sharp upward kick at his groin. Maybe it will work this time! Scott is repeating DJ's earlier question more urgently, << Shadowcat, do you need evac? >> Evidently deciding to be done with the third floor, he's pacing around, drawing on whatever psionic data he can to choose a good location to blast a second hole underneath himself. When he lands on the second floor amid the rubble of the ceiling, he's already straightening up to aim an optic blast at the metamutant, with slightly more force than he usually would, while he still can, and levelling his handgun at the merc's shoulder, in case that doesn't take. Somewhere outside, NegaTeleporter and his partner are deciding this is a good time for a break; maybe they can rejoin the fray later. Somewhere below -- several of the children are freed. Somewhere scattered throughout the complex, the guards are feeling very smug about their impending easy victory against the basement intruders -- though as yet Hive has not quite gotten a lock on what is coming down the pipe. With dance moves of her own, Heather bobs her head to the side to avoid the rifle. Despite her stoic focus, she also seems to be excited at the exchange, a rare opportunity for a 'normal' fight. She keeps her bat positioned defensively, but swings her head down at the bridge of her opponent's nose so that her heavier tactical goggles can contribute. The telekinetic whirls Kitty's club aside; it's circling around to slam towards Ryan's chin. NegaMatt grits his teeth against the blow, face paling and eyes watering. The ripple of suppression expands, now, briefly encompassing all the mutants still on the third and second floor as he draws his gun to take aim -- kind of unfocused through the pain, the shot goes towards Kitty's elbow. The speedster twitches as his excited rapid-dance is thrown off by this rude interruption. He catches Heather's headbutt against his cheek, and the return slam of his boot towards her knee is -- not as fast as it should be, but then, neither is she. He's looking extremely cranky about it. Skye drops hastily when Steve's gun swings toward her. The shots are wild and only one hits, but she cries out with the sharpness of the pain. The ominous rumbling of the floor stops abruptly as the suppression encompasses her. She rolls onto her side, not bothering to get up, and fires three rounds at Cap Fanboy's legs. Ryan has just dropped down to the second floor, been aiming a new blast toward the door out into the hall and hopefully somewhere beyond, the security control -- but the wall stops half-crumbled, vision briefly blurring and his awareness in Hive's mind briefly fuzzing black at the sudden hard slam of club to head as he drops. Maybe it is good that the suppression goes wide because the intense rumbling coming from him was just getting very unfocused. Heather adopts a wider stance to protect her knee, and then strikes at the man's ribs with the butt of her bat. A grimace forms on her face at the beginnings of the rumbling, partially concern, partially the vibration frequency being so different from what she is used to. "You should be ashamed of yourself!" Steve yells at his fanboy. "I'm ashamed of you all." But his attention isn't on the currently neutralized mind-controller, but rather at firing -- another -- three-round burst at NegaMatt's legs. The (once and future)Speedster hisses, stumbling to the side at the strike and thumping heavily against a wall. His expression has soured -- he's apparently not having fun anymore, and ditches the rifle to instead draw his handgun and, with a scowl at the body armor, shoot it at Heather's knee. Cap Fanboy crumples, oddly silent through the pain. His excited expression has twisted into one of malicious fury and the sharp wrench that judders through Skye pulls her up; body hurling itself without her conscious control at the window. NegaMatt is looking oddly wounded at Captain America's disapproval -- but not quite so wounded as he is at the optic blasts or bullets entering his legs. As he falls, gasping through his teeth, the suppression field lifts from almost everywhere except his very immediate vicinity. The guard whose shoulder had kind-of-not-exactly exploded is finally recovering his ability to think through the pain and he's returning the large amounts of ambient gunfire -- two shots aimed at Ryan's head where he lies briefly incapacitated on the ground before he's turning the fire on Skye instead. The telekinetic is reaching out -- yanking, now, at Scott's visor to fling it away and up through the hole. What is DJ doing on the roof? Doesn't matter, there's an abrupt signal flare in their minds that jerks him back inside. Catches the visor, blips it back a second later to where Scott -- is reaching up without much thought (at least, not much thought of his own) to snag it neatly back out of the air, a scant second after it first was torn from him. In lieu of reply to Scott's question, Kitty screams as the bullet tears through her elbow. Just once, though -- after the metamutant falls she's gritting her intangible teeth -- watching Skye hurl herself out a window -- running, one arm limp at her side, to catch up. She dives after her, grabbing onto Skye with her 'good' arm before they both hit disappear into the ground. Heather swings the butt of her bat at the other speedster's face, but the bullet passing through her leg interrupts her from much more follow up beyond that. With her powers re-activating as the bullet exits, there is a dramatic high pressure spray of blood from the wound, that also slows much faster than it would for another person. She grasps at her opponent with one hand to try and stabilize herself with his body. Steve had just straightened up to jump down into the fray. Sees the vengeance in his fanboy's face and hurls his shield at him -- just in time to see the aim of mercenary whose contribution thus far has mostly been screaming. There's not really time for any finesse. He just drops down through the hole and covers Ryan bodily. One round glances off of his armor, but the other punches through just below his right arm. His cry is not loud, half-muffled , but the pain in it blares loud to Ryan's ears as he rights himself to reassess the whereabouts of his teammates, enemies -- and shield. Rippling through Hive's mental network, abruptly -- a debilitating spike of pain, wrenching and sick and bludgeoning at the central node of the hivemind, sending sharp ripples out to all his network. A moment later, the team in the basement chapel has vanished, their portal out closing and their teleporter gone. The basement guards are feeling more smug than ever as they finally deign to close in on the few stranded team members left downstairs -- a good deal of their thoughts revolving around a pair of mutants who have just been teleported into the nearby control room. One is -- fairly untouchable to psionic senses, bristling with the promise of impending brain damage for any mind that dares come near him; the other is idly scanning the security cameras. For just a second there's a panic-spike that touches the others' minds, planting their team's whereabouts, the current guard layout, into their minds. And then it flares out -- a little more flared to DJ than the rest of them. DJ is flitting back down to take the gun from Exploding Shoulder's hands -- it's in his hands for just a second before vanishing, and then he is over by Cap Fanboy -- grabbing the shield and flinging it neatly back towards Steve. It's only just left his grip when that spike of pain jolts through his mind -- and he drops, heavy and unconscious, out of midair to slump atop Cap Fanboy heavily. Polaris ducks under the darts this time, nowhere near so graceful as her earlier dodge, more of a half-control crash to the rooftop. She seizes the now conveniently steel-laced Sentinels, pulls them high up into the air--pulling them apart where her handles allow--and slamming them forcefully back down as a body. "Just--" Then does it again. "--fucking--" ...and again. "--die!" When she scrambles to her feet this time, though, it's not in fear of the (at least temporarily fucking dead) Sentinels. << Hive|DJ! >> she calls out into the void, then she's racing back down through the breach for the others. The (once again)Speedster is, at the moment, just crumpling back against the wall in a brief disorientation. On the ground below, NegaTeleporter looks offended to see Skye and Kitty diving past him, though they pass by too quickly for him to do much more than give a very indignant look. He didn't have such a soft landing. Cap Fanboy is slumped, insensate on the floor beneath DJ. The teleporter, one of the few women at Company X, lean and angular-faced with a blonde bob, has vanished from the control room to reappear in the second floor chaos. She nudges distastefully at DJ's body with the toe of a boot before touching Cap Fanboy's -- he vanishes and, to Charles' senses, at least, reappears in the infirmary. Scott, eyes shut, was reaching for a spare visor, stashed in a slot in his armor, when his arm aborts this movement -- his thanks comes as a wordless << !!! >> and is almost immediately overcome by another wordless << !!! >> of concern. Visor back in place, he wrenches his eyes open -- << What just happened? >> comes across loud and clear to Charles, as he tries to take stock of the last few seconds, both in front of him and with the rest of both teams. << Professor -- Ion? >> is all he can put into words, but it's accompanied by a blur of confusionfearworry. Meanwhile, though, he's aiming an optic blast at the telekinetic, strong enough to knock him into the wall. (This one is a little personal.) In the Blackbird, suddenly, there are two extra people -- a pair of likely disoriented children appearing too quickly to see who dropped them off, though the livewire crackle in Ion's mind is BRIGHT and ringed with pain. He is on the second floor a second later, heavily bleeding from the end of one sleeve, voice teeth-grit strained behind his bandana. "We down," in case nobody got this memo, Dusk's slumped body in his mind, Tian-shin and Kyinha a big questionmark. "-- still got --" His voice is labored but his mind is clear with the thoughts of the kids left in the basement, the knowledge of the (very small) hole in the grid down there, the thought he could still -- maybe, possibly -- get more of them out. Heather holds on to the other speedster with one hand, clutching harder than she possibly could have without Dusk's blood gift, slumps towards him when he crumples back. Her bat clatters against the ground and she forms a fist to slam it in his face, determined to at least keep this one problem out of the fight. "Gun. Cheating. Quisling. Scum." Up in the Blackbird, Charles sucks in a sharp breath. And then another one when he is beset by Sudden Students. Ion's in-person update a moment later is seamlessly annotated with with psionic intel beyond the team's immediate surroundings: no meaningful signal from the basement, the mercenary teleporter still in play and blipping around the facility, the pair of highly anticipated Celebrity Mercs in the nearby control room almost assuredly responsible for what befell the extraction team -- and what might soon before the distraction team, as well. << With no human overseer, at that, >> is his only verbal commentary, dry, as he subtly feels out the less spiky of the two minds, readying his shields. Ryan is wide-eyed, a little breathless, as he struggles back upright -- fingers touching lightly to his cheek and coming away with Steve's blood there. No time to think too much about this, though, he's stepping out from behind Steve and aiming a painful-tight blast towards ExplodedShoulder; it likely won't do any permanent damage but is certainly enough to nauseate and throw off equilibrium. There's another crackle -- it's growing a little more panicked at the unfocused jumps and a lot more pained, but soon enough there is another young teleporter joining the Blackbird crew. In the flash-moment Ion was back in the basement there's more info for Charles's mind -- Tian-shin, depowered but sword drawn where she's protecting Dusk's slumped form now; guards (none too gently) rounding up the rest of the prisoners who had been aiming for the now-defunct portal, much of the wing locked now back in their (securely suppressed) cells. The speedster slumps, finally, against the wall at Heather's final punch. He will be slow for a while. The teleporter is blipping -- behind Scott, where she's aiming her suppression-dart gun at the X-Man for two quick blasts before she is back beside UnconsciousSpeedster to vanish him. The telekinetic lashes out in a panic -- grasping and clumsy, it isn't quite enough to save him from the blow. Half the optic blast catches him, flings him toward the wall -- a scattered chaos of disrupt punch force negalasers dimensional particles sprays chaotic-wide, slamming hard into Steve, into Ryan, into the wall, into Unconscious NegaMatt. In the control room the newly arrived guard is scanning the security cameras -- still oddly casual. Where Polaris was, now she is not. The more spiky mind bristles at Charles's nearby questing. The damage he can do in Charles' lone mind is less intense, but still a sharp and painful flutter as the man tries to find the source. Down below, Kitty is coming up for air, Skye in tow. She marches up an invisible staircase (Skye, kind of floating beside the X-woman) back up to the second floor. Her hand is tight around Skye's arm, face pale and jaw tight with concentration. Maybe, in the chaos, nobody has noticed them return? Both women are ghosts, for the moment, the blood dripping from Kitty's elbow only becoming solid when it falls away to the floor. Heather exhales a relieved sigh when the other speedster slumps, and she pushes herself up to a sitting position slowly (for her). Her lips press into a fine line as she grips her bat, and swats when the teleporter appears briefly within range. Steve catches the shield left-handed and certainly would not have had time to put it between himself and ExplodedShoulder, who Ryan fortunately dispatches. His breathing is labored and he has to lever himself up with the shield before strapping it to his right arm, somewhat covering the blood soaking through the fabric of his armor -- and then is immediately knocked down again by...whatever the hell that was. He's slower to get up this time. But still, he gets up. << They've got Polaris now, as well. >> Charles grimaces, and piles on a layer of deliberately uneven shields to throw off his prickly foe. He reaches instead to seize the intermittently present teleporter as she passes Heather and force her to stay and do nothing else for the moment. << Leave her, she's mine. >> He goes over her weaponry for a flashbang or the like to arm. Scott is reaching out again -- << Sir -- >> before all hell breaks loose -- he swivels at the sound of suppression darts behind him, raising his handgun but finding nobody there to club with it. He smacks the back of his neck irritably, knocking the darts back out, but apparently has no need to test his power to know it's not working, a moment too late for his teammates (sorry!) He looks around the room -- at DJ's unconscious form, at Ryan and Steve, at Kitty and Skye emerging from below, at Heather on the ground. Now Scott clenches his jaw, now he says quietly, "Damn." Reaches out again -- his entreaty, << Professor, >> is quiet. << We're leaving. Can Ion pick some of us up? >> DJ and Heather flash through his mental evacuation triage -- everyone else, he thinks, can probably still maybe walk. He sweeps one arm in a come-on gesture -- "X-Men," comes out automatically, in a commander's tone; a moment later he amends it to, "Team. Move out." He's reaching, with his free hand, to help Kitty, gesturing with the gun toward the hole in the wall to the outdoors. So far the remaining mercs have not noticed Skye and Kitty. Charles can hear intermittent chatter over the security channels -- rerouting a few guards upstairs now Just In Case, an extra set of Sentinels dispatched. Radioing the man in the security control room a location to focus in on as he shifts his security-camera views to the currently very UnRelaxing Relaxation Room with a satisfied << -- ah, gotcha. >> The telekinetic is lashing out, again. The heavy piece of debris shifts off of NegaMatt and slams heavily into Ryan instead. The teleporter pauses, briefly arrested in her motion -- staying put, flaring pain from her mind as Heather's bat crunches into her midsection. Steve switches his gun to his left hand, almost shoots the teleporter until asked to hold off. Frowns. Starts methodically shooting out every camera he sees. Ryan -- could walk. A moment ago, as of Scott's assessment, bruised and battered from the stray optic blast but upright -- but with a sickening crunch he is now, mostly, beneath a piece of ceiling (which is starting to vibrate itself apart. Unfortunately so is the floor below him; fortunately so is a nearer wall and its sole accompanying camera.) DJ was here, and now his body is gone in an ozone pop less quiet and more charged than it normally is. When he appears on the Blackbird there's a brief and disconcerting flicker from its electrical systems, whoops. Thankfully, very brief, and then Ion -- still bloody, more wild-eyed and unsteady on his feet than before -- is back on the second floor. The hijacked teleporter pats herself down and shakes her head. << Blast.>> Charles conveys Scott's request to Ion along with << through that cameras circuit, if you can, >> as he lights up the one above Ryan. << Go, quickly, >> he tells the rest of them, and with that he blanks the teleporter's working memory and forces her to jump to the control room -- directly above Spiky Telepath and Dimensional Shitfuck's heads. When she crashes down onto them Charles pours his light in. It doesn't feel like an attack, warm and amorphous and only painful in its sheer brightness as it engulfs his opponent, seeking a way in. Heather cackles to herself gleefully when the bat connects with the teleporter, and her arm slumps back down into her lap, the bat held loosely. Her face, paler than usual, faces upwards towards the ceiling as she, too, begins to search for cameras to disable. On the Blackbird, Winona, injured herself and using a makeshift sling, helps to tend to the other injured who are being teleported up. Kitty was ready to go, reaching out her one functional hand to Scott after making sure Skye is solid and on solid ground -- and a ghostly chill passes through Scott's body as she sprints through him, one arm still limp at her side, for where Ryan has been crushed. Beside Winona, Sam -- mechanical wings folded at the moment, his focus tightly on those returning to the plane, strong though the temptation is to jump out. The floor cracks and gives beneath Ryan, and together with Kitty and Steve he is tumbling down in a cloud of dust through the -- no, nevermind, the room below him is abruptly extremely tidy and bare, save for the giant hole in its ceiling. The rest of the floor beneath the team on the second floor -- at least, those who are tangible enough for it to matter -- is getting very unsteady. Against Charles' mind, DimensionFucker is -- abruptly disoriented, blinded, which at the moment is as good as incapacitated; he's rubbing at his eyes as if this will clear the intense-brightness-headache and let him get back to rightfully fucking dimensions as is his HOBBY and his JOY. It does not clear anything, alas -- and while he is rubbing, the last of the security cameras goes black on the HighStressRoom. His compatriot, meanwhile, is lashing eagerly for this psionic intrusion, a bright-sharp flare of his own stabbing into Charles's mind. While it is less permanently-damaging than the one he felt echoes of from Hive, in its fierce pain it definitely feels like an attack. Charles hisses a sharp breath, hands going tight on his armrests, whose lasers sadly cannot reach his battlefield. He channels Spiky Telepath's attack, selectively weaking his shield to yield a way into an empty quarter of the endless labyrinth in his mind. "Cere, be ready to sedate me, if you please," he says nonchalantly and, heedless of the pain, throws himself at Dimensional Fucker again. Another wave of...oddly pleasant light floods in, seeks out his target's joy and tries to coax its way inside. "Stars and bloody garters," mumbles Dr. Hank McCoy from his position at the controls, though the version of this swearing in his mind is a bit more colourful. << Blackbird coming down, hold your damned position >> is a small heads up, the noise of the stealth jet coming to settle down as close to B wing as possible probably more obvious. << Professor (SIR) >> is coming bright and anxious, now -- << Is the jet landing? We're -- >> Scott's report is interrupted when Kitty runs through him and falls with Ryan and Steve through the floor by an exasperated, gritted-out << ... >> After a pause, he seems to make up his mind anyway. "Follow them down," he orders. His own power is no longer working and he is moving unsteadily on his feet, but he shepherds the only remaining member of his team on this floor through the convenient hole Ryan left in the ceiling to -- -- a completely empty room. "The fuck?" says Scott -- evidently he was banking on having Ryan or Kitty or both for any wall-forgoing needs -- but he moves on quickly. "Skye, would you --" he gives the wall a vague blow-that-up gesture. The rapid crackling of Ion's -- much smaller, much tighter -- jumps, now, brings Heather to the Blackbird with only a brief and unpleasant zap each. And then he's back inside, annoyed and disgruntled to find his intended targets gone but hopping down the second/first floor hole to nab them. His a tired << (where the fuck) >>, comes a sharp and irritable moment after Scott's, when there is no Kitty, Steve, or Ryan when he hops down to floor 1. The question of their whereabouts is jangling back loud in his mind -- if there's anyone on the mental net left to hear it -- as he picks Scott up and blips back to the jet. Skye is looking a lot paler than she was earlier. Or maybe it wasn't as noticeable when she was translucent. But she nods jerkily at the order and turns to the wall. No gestures or yelling this time, just an eerie rumble that can be felt before it's heard that builds to a deafening CRACK. When she turns to look Scott is gone, and she stumbles through the hole she just blew in the wall, disoriented and no longer very steady. Ion is returning -- crackling out through the fraying wires in the ceiling-hole overhead -- and throws up his one hand in exasperation when now there is nobody left. << {come the fuck on} >> is equal parts plaintive and exasperated. BrainStabber is determined, his attack flaring brighter. DimensionFucker is -- happily succumbing to the very nice mental time Charles is giving him. Work? Nah he's just leaning in to this joy. There is no Skye when Ion reappears -- but what there is is a cheerful welcome committee of Sentinels, skittering down the ruined hole and -- bip! bip! bip! -- shooting their darts towards Ion. Hello! Hi! We're still here! Scott is leaning heavily on Hank's chair, leaning over Hank's shoulder, staring anxiously as Skye stumbles out of the facility toward the jet -- "Where's Ion?" he says. Ion is slapping at the back of his neck as the energy in him -- starts to spill into a wild and crackling fluctuation, power shorting, electricity arcing across his skin. "{Oh, come the fuck --}" But then, he is gone. Dimensional Shitfuck draws his sidearm and casually shoots his partner in the knee. Charles slams his shields down on Spiky Telepath -- he's had enough pain for the moment, probably. "He's -- gone," he says aloud. "But not like the others. I know not where. I have the one who took our people. For the moment." There are no ellipses, but Scott has the sudden unfamiliar yet distinctive sense he's being asked what to do. As the jet's gangway closes again, taking with it their final evacuee, Scott stares at the blown-apart facility, the skittering forms of Sentinels just starting to become visible through smoke and dust in the broken windows, his expression suddenly wavering, his brow pinching under where his X-Suit hood -- pulled off when the telekinetic merc grabbed his visor -- is ripped apart. He presses his lips together. "Lift off," he says, to Hank and not to the Professor. His voice is quiet, heavy with shame. "I'll call Jax."