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The explosion Amira witnessed knocked the X-Girls and Misfits off their feet.
"What the hell—?" Rogue started to ask as a squad of men in green uniforms with heavy duty weaponry and robotic parts rushed in.
"Whoever they are, they've made a tremendous mistake in coming here." Ororo said as she took to the air, her eyes glowing.
One of the invading Reavers aimed his weapon at her and fired. A bright yellow beam struck Ororo in the chest. With a cry she plummeted to the ground.
"Why you filthy—" Rogue growled as flew at them. One of the Reavers adjusted his weapon and fired. Instead of a single narrow beam, a wide arc was fired. It continued to expand until it filled the entire arena.
Rogue fell out of the sky. "Dammit!" She cursed as she pulled herself off the ground. "That hurt! Waitaminute," Rogue asked as she looked at scraped and bruised arms. "That hurts. I'm supposed to be invulnerable!"
"I've got a bad feeling about this." Althea winced as she tried to summon water from the sprinkler system. Nothing happened. Scott put a hand up to his visor to blast them with similar non-results.
"I can't hear them." Dead Girl said as she looked around. "I can't here the dead anymore!"
"Power disruptor." Donald Pierce grinned as he strode in. "Picked it up from Intergang. Costly, but so worth the effort; let's see how good you freaks are when you no longer have your powers for the next few hours."
"There's nothing mutant about these." Rina growled as she unsheathed her claws. Then she winced and let out a groan, slowly sinking to one knee.
"Perhaps." Pierce raised an eyebrow. "But now you have no healing system to prevent it from hurting when you do that; or to stop the bleeding." He was right. Rina was bleeding from the wounds opened up when her claws came out. Pierce grinned. "For that matter, no healing factor means that the Adamantium in your body is poisoning your systems. You'll be dead in a day or two anyway. Not that you'd live that long in any case."
"This is bad." Angelica gulped. Althea took out her nunchuks.
"I don't need powers to kick your sorry tail." She warned him. Pierce yawned extravagantly.
"Really? One girl with sticks against two dozen men with guns. I doubt it. And even if you could—" Pierce's grin turned predatory. "What about the rest of your friends? What do they bring to the party? What's to stop me from simply filling them full of lead?" Althea hesitated. There was no way she could get over to Pierce and his men before they fired. And even if she managed to avoid getting shot, the others would get hit. They were out in the open. Pierce had them over a barrel.
"Finally!" Pierce enthused. "I'll finally show those fools in the Inner Circle that mutants aren't the pinnacle of evolution! Without your powers you're no better than anyone else! Even less, since you've let your powers become a crutch. I know what my colleagues in the Circle say, oh yes I do. They think I'm a weak nobody because I can't control minds or shoot lasers from my head. But you know what? In less than five minutes I have done what Emma Frost, the Hellions, Cobra, and the rest have failed to do. And when I am done here with you ladies, I'll do the same thing to your boyfriends at the Institute. My colleagues will then name me, White King and one day—I will by the Lord Imperial. And then I—"
"I, I, I. Do you ever stop talking about yourself?" Amira snorted as she walked in the wrestling arena through the hole the Reavers blew. "And I thought Frosty the White Witch had ego issues."
"Well well, the last of the Omega Hellions." Pierce smirked. "I'll have to mention to Frost that I cleaned up her mess for her."
"You better get used to cleaning up, because when we're through with you Donny, the only thing the other Hellfart Club members will let you do is scrub toilets." Pierce went red.
"Shoot her!" The Reavers opened fire with submachine guns. Amira leaped, ducked, and twisted out of the way of the bullets.
"This is easier than playing Dance Dance Revolution." Amira smirked. She plucked her knife from its sheath and hurled it at the Reavers. Pierce shrieked shrilly and ducked. After a moment of cringing cowardly on the ground, Pierce got up and patted himself, trying to make sure he didn't have a knife protruding from anyplace unwanted.
"You missed, bitch!"
"Wasn't aiming for you," Amira pointed. Pierce turned behind him. The Power Disruptor gun crackled with electricity as Amira's knife stuck out of its energy source. The Reaver holding it tossed it aside right before it exploded. "Aww, did I break your little toy?"
"Kill them all!" Pierce shrieked. The Reavers raised their guns. Amira leapt out of the way. As the Reavers tried to shoot her, the others took the chance to break for cover behind rubble and seats.
"Now what do we do?" Kitty shouted as bullets cracked all around them. "Like, we're helpless!"
"Speak for yourself." Gilaad snorted as he pulled a gun from a holster hidden under his arm and opened fire on the Reavers.
"You have a gun?" Ororo gaped in horror and disbelief.
"I was a soldier." Gilaad shrugged as his bullets took out the treads of one Reaver whose lower body was replaced by a tank-like body.
"We're X-Men! We don't use guns." Scott snapped. Gilaad looked at him in disbelief.
"Yeah, cause guns are so muchmoredangerous than anything you guys can do." He said sarcastically as he fired again. "Sorry I can't fart thunderbolts or laserblasts, so I'll have to use something else in order to live through a firefight!"
"How'd you learn to shoot? Aiming for the heads of children?" Amira asked as she took cover with the others and started flinging rocks and other bits of debris at the Reavers. Her enhanced muscle control gave her superior hand-eye coordination and added some force to her throw, as one Reaver found out the hard way as a rock smashed into his face.
"How'd you learn to throw stuff? By chucking rocks at soldiers?" Gilaad shouted back as he shot another Reaver.
"As a matter of fact…yes!" Amira shouted back.
"Terrorist!" Gilaad spat.
"Tyrant!" Amira replied.
"Can you two give it a rest?" Scott groaned.
"SHUT UP!" Amira and Gilaad snapped. After a few minutes the Reavers guns started to 'click' signifying they were out of ammo.
"Now!" Althea shouted as the X-Men and Misfits rushed the Reavers before they could reload.
"The Thunderbolt is through hiding from you jabronis!" Kyle roared as he flattened one Reaver with a powerhouse punch to the jaw. "I don't need my powers to smack you down!"
"Hiya!" Althea shouted as she kicked another Reaver in the face. Amira imitated her in doing the same to another Reaver. Amira's style of fighting was less like martial arts and more acrobatic, like those of Kim Possible or Harley Quinn.
"Watch out!" Rahne shouted to Amira as one Reaver got a bead on her. Amira turned around and ended up staring down the barrel of a gun. She gulped and mentally said the Shahada.
Kyle grabbed the Reaver from behind in a suplex and flipped him over. "Take that jabroni!"
"You—you saved me?" Amira asked in disbelief. Kyle shrugged gruffly.
"You may be a crazy, psycho-bitch, but I'm not gonna let anyone pound your face in…except me."
"Gee thanks." Amira drawled. Kyle hurled himself at another Reaver who was trying to sneak up on Kitty.
As the battle turned against him Pierce decided to handle things from a distance. As he turned to runaway, Amira tackled him from behind.
"Leaving so soon Donny boy?" Amira asked. Pierce tried to blast her with a hold out gun imbedded in his robotic arm. She ducked and grabbed Pierce's arm and pulled with all her strength. While she had only a little enhanced strength, it was enough to tear off Pierce's robotic arm.
"YAAAH!" Pierce shrieked as he grasped at the sparking stump of his robotic arm.
"Count yourself lucky I didn't do that to your real hand. Now unless you want me to jam this," Amira held up Pierce's severed arm which oddly enough, was clenched into a fist except for his middle finger. "In a very unpleasant place, I suggest you leave: Now."
Pierce ran. The Reavers followed him, save for a handful that were unconscious or—in the case of the ones Gilaad shot—dead.
"I can't believe it." Ororo trembled as she stood over a dead Reaver. "You—you killed them."
"They were shooting at us." Gilaad pointed out. "We had no powers or abilities to take them down without deadly force. It was them or us. Frankly, I'd prefer us."
"You have no business owning one of those!" Ororo said in something close to a shriek.
"It's perfectly legal! Both in Israel and here!" Gilaad shot back. "And your powers are more dangerous than a bazooka!"
"It's not the same thing!" Ororo protested.
"The hell it isn't!"
"Enough!" Althea said. "We don't have time for this, and frankly Storm, I have to agree with Gilaad. But in any case, we have more immediate issues."
"What do we like, say when the police show up?" Kitty asked as she turned green and looked away from the dead Reavers.
"Say that diamonds are a cop's best friend." Amira said suddenly. As everyone looked at her, she continued. "I once heard Monet bragging about how she got out of trouble in Boston by saying that to the cops. Boston is Emma Frost's town. The cops won't touch her or anyone who claims a connection to her."
"Joy." Rogue said as she rolled her eyes.
"Come on let's get back to the Institute." Scott groaned. "The Professor's not going to like this."
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A/N: I almost forgot, part of the spiel about the nature of battling evil was taken from a comic strip by D.C. Simpson. Just thought I'd put that in for copyright purposes.
The female X-Men and Misfits endured Pierce's assault, but what else does the Hellfire Club have in store for them? Find out next time!