Chapter 9: Out Of The Frying Pan ...


The group of Avengers and X-Men blasted, punched, and sliced their way through the Shi'ar until the battle spilled out into the arena itself, back through the same door Noh and Logan had entered and out into the middle of the large dome. The gathered spectators shouted out their disapproval but also seemed to be torn between the fight below them and the one on the screen as K, Thor, Rachel were simply tearing through the capital city.

At their arrival, far more Shi'ar fighters poured into the arena — many of them similarly clad in decorative armor. They were clearly more or less the gladiators of the area, huge and loud and hard to stop even as Tony's playlist just kept going above the sound of their war cry.

The group of rescuers were quickly surrounded by Shi'ar, though the advantage here was that they had a little more room to stretch than when they were in the tunnels. Kate and Clint could pull out some of their explosive arrows and trick shots now that they were a little more spread out, and Cassie didn't hesitate to go giant to just start crushing Shi'ar with fists and feet. Noh and Tommy both were speeding through the field and seemed to be working in tandem, calling out to each other on which clumps of Shi'ar they wanted to take for themselves. Tyler and Logan were tearing into Shi'ar left and right, while Tammy had helped Sophia get close enough to one of the gladiators that he could hear her singing to him to turn on his fellows. And Hisako seemed to be honestly enjoying herself as she fought alongside Cassie.

Rico was teamed up with Jana and trying to watch out for the youngest of their group as best he could, but he took a solid hit and went sprawling away from her. Jana spun to see what had happened and then gasped when she saw the Shi'ar who had hit Rico. She was good at self-defense, really — and she'd been working hard in her classes — but this guy was simply huge and grabbed both of her hands in one of his, pitching her across the arena.

She was sure she was headed for the pit in the center of the arena when someone grabbed the back of her uniform and pulled her back to solid ground.

She gasped in a breath and turned to see Logan and she couldn't help but look surprised as she muttered out a quick, "Thanks."

"Keep away from the big ones — you haven't learned that stuff yet," he told her before he dove right for the guy that had thrown her. She watched him go for a second and realized quickly she needed to look away a split second before his claws made contact with the center of the guy's head.

When she looked away, though, it was to look down into the pit that she'd almost been thrown into, and she let out a gasp of both surprise and relief when she saw who was in it. "Guys! I found them!" she called out over the comms, mentally running through who all was missing besides the three on the television screens. "It's everyone but Scott — do we know where he is?"

"He's with K," Noh said over the comms. "I'm not sure where he is, since he's not on screen, but he's with them."

"How's everyone looking, kiddo?" Clint asked, and though he likely thought he sounded calm, it was clear he was worried even over the comms.

"Um. They're in a pit ... it's kinda hard to see down there, but…" Jana examined the edges for a moment and flattened herself as she tried to get a better view. "Tied up, it looks like."

"Noh, you can run down there," Logan said. "Go take a peek. See what you need."

Noh paused in tearing apart the Shi'ar around them and glanced Logan's way with a sharp nod before he ran past Jana and straight down the side of the pit, where the rest of their teammates were.

Their captured teammates were, in fact, bound and looking rather worse for the wear, though Noh didn't know how much of that was from the fight at the mansion. He of course went right to Jubilee to wrap her up in a tight hug and kiss her quickly, half carrying her around as he looked over the others, who seemed surprised — and a little relieved — at his sudden appearance. "Clint, if I could borrow you or Logan for a little lock picking," he called up, looking over his bound friends.

"Collars?" Logan asked as he and Clint shared a look.

"The Shi'ar equivalent thereof," Noh agreed.

"I'm on it," Logan said before he slipped over the edge of the pit and more or less just fell straight down, using his claws to slow his descent against the wall. He went straight to Jubilee and cut her restraints off before he started going down the group one by one, ending with Kurt, who had kept pushing others ahead of him.

"It's good to see you, Logan," Kurt said with a little smile. "Who else came?"

"The ones you'd expect — and the junior team," he replied. "Got Stark with us too."

"The junior squad came with?" Bobby raised both eyebrows high.

"Well, most of 'em," he replied. "You have a debt to repay when we get back, popsicle."

"Me? What did I do?"

"I had to bribe Leslie Ann to not follow. We're taking 'er on a little trip when we get back."

"She'll be ready to face anything by the time you're through with her," Natasha said with a little smirk Logan's way.

"You were," he countered with a matching smirk.

"Thus proving my point," she said, glancing up at the edge of the pit for a moment. "Let's get out of here, shall we?"

Bobby started up an ice pillar that took those that couldn't fly up while Storm simply lifted up in flight. Kurt teleported up as well and was almost immediately mobbed by several bamfs who were clearly happy to see their big brother alright.

"How'd you guys find us, anyway?" Peter asked Jana as she was waiting at the edge of the pit to offer a hand up to anyone who needed or wanted it — and she couldn't help but smirk his way.

"Actually, we just found you and went from there," she said. "Noh scanned for your life signs."

Peter let out an exaggerated shudder and patted his hands over himself. "I feel violated. Should I feel violated?"

Jana rolled her eyes at him. "Don't be such a baby," she told him, and he grinned outright at her and burst into action alongside her, his web-shooters gone but the super strength coming in handy as he tossed one of the Shi'ar gladiators into the bit.

"See you you like it!" Peter called down after the falling Shi'ar, and Jana couldn't help but snort.

The battle in the coliseum was building as the main forces of the X-Men started the offensive on the Shi'ar that had started to pour in around them from the spectator stands — unwilling to allow their prisoners to simply walk away from what was to be a punishment of death.

Logan was in a much better mood now that they at least had their friends out of the hole... when he got hit with some new weapon that seemed to act a lot like the Kree stasis fields. But unlike the Accuser weapons, whoever was in it was certainly not simply frozen to the spot — not without electrifying pain, that is. When Logan hit the ground, several Shi'ar rushed in and simply started tearing into him while he was still stunned.

"Thieves and cowards stealing and bending Kree technology — scavengers and cretins," Noh was muttering, falling into Kree; his invectives became more creative as he rushed to help Logan, though Peter and Jana were closest and rushed to help as well.

And above them, Storm was finally starting to get the feel of the alien atmosphere, bending its odd weather patterns to her will with devastating results that the Shi'ar clearly were not used to coping with — hurricane-force winds and driving rain amid the carefully aimed lighting strikes, though one was bound to go wide.

The rough wind was enough to help drive back the rush of Shi'ar that had come after Logan, and Noh picked up the stunned Wolverine with a shuddering gasp as some of the electricity from the Shi'ar weapon moved through him as well before he got Logan to a different corner of the arena and worked quickly to disable the field as best he could. He had pushed aside the pain to his audio cortex, but his hands were still shaking; the weapon seemed to be designed to keep someone from rescuing whoever was trapped in it.

When at last the field dropped, Logan was still completely out and looking fairly torn up — the metal in his bones an unfortunately excellent conductor for this kind of Shi'ar device. And Noh wasn't doing too well, either, the electrical overload required more healing than he had food reserves to do at the moment. So neither looked that good when Peter and Jana rushed over to defend their friends.

"Oh, ouch," Peter said, wincing hard when he saw how Logan was torn up.

"We got this," Jana assured Noh, settling into a fighting stance that had both Peter and Noh glancing at each other and looking a bit proud of the little teenager.

Across the arena, Clint had found Natasha and just about dropped everything to run over to her and kiss the living daylights out of her, which had her laughing at him.

"What, were you worried about me?" she teased him as, as soon as the kiss broke, the two of them fell into their familiar back-to-back fighting style.

"I never worry about you. That's a waste of energy," he said in a tone that anyone nearby heard and knew that it was a rote response.

"That's too bad. If you were worried, I was going to have to ease your mind."

"He-ey." Clint turned to Natasha and shook his head at her. "That's mean."

"I'm not known for playing clean," she pointed out with a smirk before she snuck a little kiss and the two of them burst forward together to help fight the Shi'ar.

There was a rumbling noise near where Remy was fighting alongside Kate and Kurt — who were surprisingly not sporting the same level of PDA as the other Hawkeye, though that might have been because they had their hands full. In an instant, the rumbling turned into a roar as Brye hit the battlefield with her new monster friend, still clinging onto his head and looking like she was having the time of her life.

Remy let out a string of Cajun invectives when he saw the huge beast, and Kurt had quickly teleported out of its path to grab Kate as well and get her out of the way — though Kate was grinning as she watched Brye and her new friend cut a wide swath through the Shi'ar.

"The real problem here will be that she'll ask if she can take him home with her," Kate told Kurt with a troublemaking grin.

"And from the way Remy is swearing, I'm not sure if he's horrified or wondering if it would be good in the gumbo," Kurt teased.

"Oh, both. Obviously," Kate agreed with a grin as she started to fire into the now scattering Shi'ar who were running from Brye and her friend.

Meanwhile, overhead, Tammy and Tony were proving to be a pretty good team. Tammy was able to toss soldiers and hold them back and generally make them easier targets for Iron Man's weaponry, and Tony made sure to keep half an eye on the junior X-Man and make sure she didn't get hit while she was exposed in the air.

He had just turned to tease her when his armor made him dart out of the way of incoming artillery — and right into the path of modified blaster bolts that managed to get around Tony's detection system. In an instant, he'd lost control of his navigation and stabilization systems — and he was quickly losing altitude in a downward spiral for the dirt.

"Oh, crap!" Tammy gasped and simply dove after Tony, reaching out a hand to slow his uncontrolled descent so that it wouldn't be as much of a shock when she stopped him and then scooped him out of the air, one hand still extended as she stopped just short of actually picking him up herself. She set him down on the ground gently and then landed beside him with a concerned frown. "You okay in there?" When she got no response, she started to panic and called out for help.

Clint was the closest to her position, and he and Natasha made their way over to where Tammy was crouched by the downed Iron Man and still holding back Shi'ar forces telekinetically to keep him from taking any further damage.

Clint looked over the scene and quickly crouched down beside Tammy to make sure she was alright too while Natasha pried open Tony's face plate, frowning as she checked him over until she gave Tony a little look and smacked him on both cheeks. "Wake up, you idiot. You scared the new bride," she told him sternly before she looked up at Tammy with a reassuring smile. "He's fine; he was just knocked out."

Clint glanced over too and nodded, patting Tammy's shoulder. "Just dazed. Would have been a lot worse if you hadn't caught him. You okay, though?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just wasn't sure—" Tammy swallowed and nodded as she got to her feet and knocked over a line of Shi'ar soldiers with a glare. "I'm fine. I've got this," she told the two Avengers as she took up a position beside the still-dazed Iron Man.

Meanwhile, on the ground, Kurt was getting progressively angrier as he grimly tore into the Shi'ar. He'd been in a good mood, but once he saw that both Logan and Tony were out, he got a lot more serious about making them suffer. Kate was right beside him as much as possible, her own sword in play as the two of them all but danced through Shi'ar together.

Kurt whipped into a graceful backward somersault, swords singing through the air, and when he landed, he got one sword into a Shi'ar guard that had just hit Rico backward a few steps — when a second one seemed to appear nearly out of thin air and stabbed him from behind.

Kate screamed out when she saw what had happened and didn't hesitate to run the offending Shi'ar through, though she was exposed as she tried to catch Kurt as best she could and very nearly was run through herself before Rico tackled the guy from behind and pounded on him until he stopped moving. When he turned back to Kate, she was clearly upset beyond words as she looked over Kurt, and Rico's eyes went wide as he saw the little bamfs hopping around and looking very concerned as well.

"Tyler, I think we could use a hand here," Rico called out, though before he got the chance to say much more, the bamfs glanced at him and decided they agreed with his assessment, taking all three of them to a spot much closer to where Tyler was surrounded by a small knot of Shi'ar so that Rico could jump in to help him fight his way through and get to where Kate had Kurt's head in her lap and her bow in her hands, shooting back anyone who looked like they might come close to try and finish off her injured husband.

It was clear that the MVP for this battle was quickly going to Storm as she simply flattened any Shi'ar she looked at with the winds and rain — and those that weren't convinced to retreat with that were either swept up in a tornado or struck with lightning in a most spectacular fashion. Which made it that much more terrifying for all those paying attention when the winds upticked for a second then fell completely flat as the Shi'ar managed to hit Storm with the same twisted stasis field they'd used on Logan.

She dropped fast, though Bobby managed to catch her as he skated underneath her. But he quickly realized that the stasis field was more than just that when he got hit hard with the same thing Noh had, and the two of them fell the remaining few feet when Bobby's ice shattered beneath them. Hank rushed over to where the two of them had fallen, meaning three more senior X-Men were now down or otherwise occupied.

"Take out the creeps with those stupid … whatever the heck they are!" Peter shouted out in a clearly half panicked tone.

The kids on the junior team — and the few senior squad members that were left — turned their attention to the Shi'ar with the field generators, though it was Cassie who found the easiest way to deal with it, simply stepping on the devices and crushing them beneath her feet, though she let out a loud gasp and had a serious limp after she'd crushed the generators, with that leg almost completely numb.

As soon as the stasis fields were out of play, Tommy zipped over to where Jubilee and Remy were colorfully exploding Shi'ar left and right. "I think it's time to bring the house down," he told the two of them.

"Do your thing," Jubes said. "I want to get everyone out of here before this gets much worse."

Tommy nodded his agreement. "I'll be back to explode things with you to cover our exit," he promised the two of them before he zipped off to start blasting Shi'ar back from the injured members of their team so he could get them out of the arena.

The junior squad was fighting better than they ever had before — likely because they were fighting for the first time for their lives together. Tammy was blowing back waves of soldiers; Brye and her new friend were a terror unto themselves; Hisako and Cassie were once again proving to be a giant problem for bad guys; Rico and Tyler were bashing their way through anyone that got close; and even little Jana and Sophia were fighting better than they had before, with Sophia turning Shi'ar soldiers to their cause and Jana stubbornly defending the fallen Wolverine with every trick she could remember from her classes.

At the peak of the battle, as the junior team was doing a fine job of holding back the Shi'ar from the wounded senior members and the half-crippled Iron Man, the din of the battle fell to the wayside as the piercing cry of the Phoenix echoed over the city. Everyone in the arena paused to look toward where the sound had come — only to see the massive firebird in the night sky, far larger than life and imposing even at such a distance.

"We need to get out of here now!" Noh shouted over the comms. "Tommy, get everyone to the ship. Fast."

Tommy had already swept Storm up into a bridal-style carry as soon as Hank and Forge had figured out how to disable the electrical stasis device and shot a look over at Hank. "Like I wasn't doing that already?" he pointed out before he sped off with the injured weather goddess — and the bamfs joined in the evacuation effort, teleporting their injured or unconscious friends while the junior squad did their best to hold back the Shi'ar in the meantime.

Though that job had become a bit easier, since the Shi'ar were all in a solid state of panic at seeing the Phoenix in full fire when she was supposed to have been executed. It was now more a matter of just scattering them than anything else — and Brye and her new friend were thoroughly enjoying themselves at that task.

So it was really just bad luck that Jana didn't see the Shi'ar soldier who decided to take an angry potshot at her, and she let out a little 'oof' of surprise and pain when she took the shot to her shoulder and was knocked nearly flat by it.

A moment later, a couple of the bamfs appeared, looking concerned for both her and Logan, though she simply gritted her teeth at them. "Take him back quick," she insisted. "He's knocked out."

The little guys chattered at her, and one of them even lightly smacked her in the head before, in a poof of smoke, she found herself on Noh's ship — with Logan arriving later with a couple of bamfs who didn't look the least bit apologetic even as Jana read them the riot act for not listening to her.

With Tommy and the bamfs working on concert, then, it wasn't long before everyone from the arena had reached the ship — and now, it was simply a matter of rescuing those who were in the capital city.