Note: Does everyone remember the '60s incarnation of Marvel Girl? Good, because I briefly ref her most notorious costume. In Kitty's very, very first appearance in the comics (the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga, no less), she was walking home from ballet class, which is another ref. The "art of war, profession of peace" schtick paraphrases an excellent line from the JAG episode "Into the Breech."
Lamentings heard i' the air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events
- 'Macbeth,' Act 1, Scene 3
"No," Ace said, literally putting her foot down. The foyer's marble tiles cracked beneath her heel, and all the kids flinched. "No way."
"Ace, they're not gonna go out there and get us all killed," Wolverine said, trying to get through to her on this subject. He hadn't even gotten to the Blackbird when she'd started arguing the point, and he'd abandoned that duty to come to Beast's defense. Now, a full five minutes later, she was still going strong, and he was getting annoyed. "They ain't S.H.I.E.L.D.'s finest, but they're not half bad either."
The kids, wearing their uniforms and ready to go, looked pleased at that bit of praise. He'd have to make up for it later with a particularly grueling Danger Room run.
She shook her head vehemently. "I don't care how well-trained they are - they're still kids, and kids will screw things up. The last thing we need is for this to turn into a clusterf-"
"Language," Wolverine cut in. God knew he got griped at enough for that; he wasn't going to let her get away with it.
Ace gave him a dirty look and continued, "Into a messy situation."
"Look," Cyclops said, in full leader mode. "We're going with you. That's it."
"Look," Ace shot back, somehow managing to loom over him despite being a good foot shorter, "you're NOT. That's it."
Wolverine didn't quite manage to swallow an exasperated snarl. At this rate, they'd get out to the mystery base and find only tumbleweeds.
"May I make a suggestion?" Beast said, raising a finger as though he was back in the classroom correcting lab groups, instead of breaking up a clash of titans.
"Go for it, Hank," Wolverine said, crossing his arms and glaring at Ace. She'd always been too damn stubborn. It wasn't a bad quality. Not always. But "not always" sure as hell didn't include right now.
Beast stepped in between Ace and Cyke, forcing them to back away from each other. "Carol has raised a good point. You are children. But Wolverine has also made a good point. Therefore, I suggest that we take only the most experienced of the students."
"Man, they get to have all the fun!" Bobby protested.
"Trust me, icecube, this is not going to be fun, not if the professor's right," Logan said. Bobby just kept looking disgruntled.
"Deal," Cyke said, and Jean nodded behind him.
All eyes turned to Ace. She shook her head. "I'll do it, but only if you get me a better outfit. I can't fight in the one you guys gave me the other day."
Wolverine made a face. Ace had some strange ideas about what to wear into battle, he remembered. "Why not?"
She started ticking items off on her fingers. "Armor I don't need, gloves I don't need, material's too heavy, black's not my color."
Jean exchanged an eloquent glance with the adults and gestured for Ace to follow her upstairs. "Let's, ah, see what we have."
"In the meantime," Beast said as they left, "I would like to explain a few things to everyone. The first is that those of you who stay behind will possibly be taking a trip to Muir Island, depending on how Professor Xavier's phone call turns out."
"Yes!" Bobby exclaimed, exchanging high-fives with Sam.
"If you don't," Beast continued, warning now, "you'll need to be on your best behavior anyway. The professor is not in the most forgiving of moods right now."
"Is Dr. MacTaggert goin' t'be all right?" Rahne asked, anxious enough to make her Scottish accent sharpen. Her little face was tense with worry, and Logan knew why; Moira had been like a mother to the girl, and Rahne was nothing if not protective of her pack. He kind of understood the feeling, himself.
"She'll be fine," he said, before Beast could. "Got that Cassidy fellow right there, remember?"
Rahne nodded, still scared for her mother-figure, but fighting hard not show it.
A cough from the top of the stairs made them all look up. Jean was walking back down. "Carol's going to use one of my old uniforms - the green one."
"The one with the skirt?" Cyke asked, and Logan had to look away before someone saw him smirking.
Jean was clearly flustered. "No. I couldn't fight in that thing. Remember?"
Beast clapped his hands together; a teacher's trick to recapture lost and straying attention. "Anyway, you should all give the professor a wide berth today, unless he says otherwise."
Bobby snapped off a mock salute, trying too hard to be funny. "Aye aye, sir!"
Logan caught his eye, growled, and had the satisfaction of watching the kid go slightly pale.
"Sorry for the delay," Ace said from the second floor - she'd always been pretty quick with that kind of stuff - skipping the stairs and flying down instead.
And everyone stared.
The only thing they recognized was the white-striped hair - and even that had been yanked back into a short, bristly ponytail. Gone was the black-and-green uniform. In its place was an emerald suit with a large white, fabric 'X' crossing the chest and back, and a pair of boots that looked a lot like Storm's. And somewhere along the line, she'd scrubbed off the heavy purple makeup that usually painted Rogue's face. It still looked like her, sort of, but if they'd had any illusions about who was in charge before, they didn't now. The person that touched down on the cracked floor wasn't Rogue at all.
Ace caught the look on everyone's face and chuckled. "Take a picture, it'll last longer."
"Whoa," Evan said, wide-eyed.
"I don't know if this makes it less freaky, or more," Bobby said, scratching his head. He was promptly elbowed in the ribs by both Jubilee and Sam. "Ow!"
"Okay," Ace told them, all business once again. "Gather the chosen ones and let's go."
Combat readiness was Wolverine's area of expertise, so he uncrossed his arms and started pointing. "Cyke and Jean to the X-jet. The rest of you - go do homework."
The other kids started whining and moaning about the cruelty of life, but Logan didn't care. He grabbed Dacosta by the collar as the boy turned to leave and added, "When Kitty gets back from ballet, and the elf gets back from wherever, fill them in."
"Right," Roberto said, looking smug that he'd been chosen to do something. Wolverine let him go, confident that the little overachiever would fulfill his given duties, and joined the four others heading for the jet.
Dr. Moira MacTaggert, being one of the few people in the world who not only knew about mutants but spent the better part of her life with them, had seen and heard just about everything. She was rarely caught by surprise, and ever since Charles Xavier and Eric Lensherr had had their falling-out, she'd made it a point to stay as far removed from their back-and-forth game as possible, and to have really good security, because it was no secret that she sided with Charles.
The call from Charles, occurring just a handful of hours after he'd left, was alarming, since it effectively told her that the game had new players, and that those players were serious. Her first reaction had been disbelief. Her second reaction had been a grudging admiration for someone who could get past the thorough barrage of background checks that she ran on applicants to the Muir Island Research Center. Her third reaction, though, was the one propelling her now.
She strode down the hall with the phone in one hand and her adminstrator's passcard in the other, intent on seeing for herself what Dr. Milbury was doing. Somehow he'd knocked out the security cameras in his rented lab space, and Moira had no desire to wait for backup. Sean was not in residence at the moment, and the next available source of muscle was the police on the mainland. It would take them nearly forty-five minutes to get there. Far too long, in her opinion.
"This is a dangerous man," Charles repeated into her ear, urgent. "You shouldn't try to confront him on your own, Moira!"
"He's in my lab, in my Center," she said, more furious than scared. "He's lied to me, and abused my goodwill, and ye should be feelin' less worried for me and more for him."
"Moira, I can't emphasize this enough," he said, now boarding on pleading. "If you go in alone, you could very well be killed. Please, reconsider!"
She reached the door and slid her card through the lock; the light flashed green immediately and she put her hand on the door's handle. "Too late for that, Charles. I'll call y' back."
Moira hung up on him before he could respond, tucking the phone into her lab coat's big pocket and removing the small pistol she'd purchased years ago, after her Glasgow clinic had been burglarized by teenagers looking for drugs. As far as protection went, it wasn't much, but it was all she had.
And then she pushed open the door to Milbury's lab, feeling a surge of adrenaline with just a thrill of fear mixed in, and found herself brandishing a gun at a completely empty room.
"What the devil...?" she said in Gaelic, shocked clear out of English.
It was gone, all of it; all of the file cabinets were standing empty and open, all the countertops were cleared of trays and flasks, and the room's computers were all staring back at her with blank blue screens.
Five minutes ago, before the security cameras malfunctioned and Charles had made his call, the lab had been a busy, humming hive of experiments and documents. The sheer volume of the research materials made it impossible for someone to remove it all in days, let alone a space of minutes.
She looked around the room, peering cautiously around the equipment still left with horror movies in mind, and when she was satisfied that there was no one lurking in wait, she fumbled for the telephone and dialed Charles' number.
"Moira?" he answered, sounding almost panicked, and she felt slightly gratified to know that he still worried about her.
"Right here, Charles. You're not goin' t'believe it," she said, looking around the room again herself. "The bloody lab is empty."
"Empty?"
"Empty," she repeated. The refrigerator door was standing open, so she walked over to investigate. "Milbury, Sinister - whoever he is, he's gone, and he's taken his things with him... and fifty liters of PCR ingredients! Those belonged to the Center - do ye have any idea o' how expensive that bloody stuff is? Fifty liters!"
Charles, a good deal calmer than she was, said, "But he isn't there?"
"No," she said, shutting the refrigerator. Slamming it, more accurately. "And it's lucky for him he's not. He did this in five minutes, Charles! Wiped the computers clean, too, it appears. A dozen years of work, gone in five minutes - and what am I goin' t'base my next project on, now that he's ripped away the research that'd prove it?"
"But he is gone?" Charles pressed again, and it sank in that he was still very much concerned for her.
"Yes. We're safe," she said, allowing her tone to soften. "We're all of us safe, accushla."
"Thank goodness," he said, with genuine relief. "Be careful, though, Moira - Sinister could still be there, or he could return. Remember, he's a shapeshifter."
"I'll put the Center on lockdown if I have to," she said, which meant DNA scans on everyone and more sealed doors than the Americans' Pentagon, and that appeared to satisfy him, because he bid her goodbye and hung up.
She turned off the phone, fuming over the disappearance of crucial data and a brilliant scientist, and noticed out of the corner of her eye another missing piece of expensive Center equipment. "That son o' - he took the bloody centrifuge!"
Cyclops was the first one to board, as usual, and as he warmed up the engines Professor Xavier entered the hangar. He disembarked long enough to ask, "Professor - is everything okay at Muir Island?"
"Thankfully, yes," the professor said, with obvious relief. "Moira - Dr. MacTaggert - said that Milbury was at the Center, but he was gone by the time that I called her. Apparently, in the five minutes he was left alone, he cleaned out his allotted lab space, purged the computers of his research data, and then simply vanished without a trace."
"Busy guy," Cyclops said, frowning slightly. That sounded like teleportation, and that was never a good thing when the bad guys had it. It would have been nice if they still had Gambit to quiz, but that was such an utter impossibility that he shook his head at himself. Not even worth considering.
He still didn't know why Remy had just picked up and vanished - well, okay, he did know, but he didn't understand it at all, and he liked it even less. Sure, there had been times when he'd wanted to walk away from the Institute too, and there had been that once, years ago, when he'd made it all the way to the bus station before realizing what he would be throwing away if he left. The Institute was more than a school. It was more than a home. In its walls he'd discovered his life's purpose, and been given a dream worth pursuing at all costs. Scott Summers could no more abandon the X-Men than he could stop breathing.
And that was why he couldn't understand why someone would leave over a situation that was likely temporary, especially after all the slack they'd been cutting Gambit.
"Yes, which is why I think this mission is more imperative than ever," the professor said, nodding. "If Sinister is at all involved with Apocalypse, we may be facing a more dire threat than we imagined."
"Are you coming with us, Professor?" Jean asked, walking into the hangar with Beast and Carol. Storm appeared behind them a split second later.
The professor appeared to consider it for a moment, then shook his head ruefully. "No. Although my telepathy might be useful, I think I would prove more of an impediment than anything else."
"You just need something with more mobility," Carol said, lightly touching the arm of his wheelchair as she headed toward the Blackbird. "Something that terrain doesn't affect."
Something that terrain didn't affect... Cyclops had thought about it before, after the difficult escape from Apocalypse's tomb in Egypt, but now he began to wonder again. What kind of a machine would that take? If they came back from this, he and Beast needed to investigate it further.
Wolverine boarded, barking "Let's move it," over his shoulder, and Cyclops gave the professor a nod before returning to his place in the pilot's chair.
He started the engines, checking automatically to make sure that everyone was safely harnessed into their seats, and opened the hangar doors. The take-off sequence was something he'd done a hundred times, but he never relaxed.
Not paying attention could lead to big problems, especially when it came to aviation. He knew that firsthand.
This time, as always, everything proceeded smoothly, and the Blackbird was up in the sky and on its way to Utah. Cyclops was more at home in the air than he liked to think; it was genetic, it had to be. His father had been a pilot, and he sort of remembered hearing that his grandfather had been too. Still, he'd been terrified of planes for a long while after the accident, and it wasn't until Professor Xavier had shown him the Blackbird that he even wanted to go near one.
He pushed the engines to their top speed. They'd make Utah in roughly half an hour. Way too late, his mind told him. The soldiers would all be dead, and the killers would be long gone.
A movement at the corner of his vision - which was admittedly a little more limited than most people's - caught his attention, and he turned away from the controls to see Carol up out of her seat and rummaging through one of the compartments.
"What are you doing?" he asked point-blank. He knew they had to cut her some slack, too, but he was getting tired of her strangeness. To be completely honest with himself, he was getting tired of her because he wanted Rogue back. The dynamics of the team were all skewed without her, and Carol's presence wasn't helping to unskew them.
"Looking for something," Carol answered, completely unruffled.
Wolverine made an amused noise, then said, "We don't have any, Ace, so you might as well stop now."
Carol did stop, putting her hands on her hips. "I can't see why you don't. What happens if you have to fight somewhere cold - Siberia, Antarctica... Canada?"
"Uniforms are insulated," Wolverine informed her, scowling a little at the "Canada" bit, and for some reason Carol returned to her seat in a visible huff.
"Take all the fun out of it," she muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. "What's the point of globe-trotting if you can't wear a bomber jacket?"
Cyclops shook his head, not understanding that in the slightest, and turned back to the controls.
"We're not doin' this for fun," Wolverine said behind him. Obviously they weren't finished with the conversation. Feeling only a little guilty for eavesdropping, Cyclops set the autopilot and focused on what the two were saying. "And what do you need those jackets for, anyway? Not like you feel the cold."
"I can't remember if I told you and you've forgotten, or if I didn't tell you and I've forgotten," Carol said, her tone wistful and full of something like bitterness.
Wolverine said something under his breath that sounded like, "Yeah, ain't it a bitch?" but Cyclops wasn't sure. Wouldn't have surprised him; the older mutant's experiment-induced amnesia was a well-known point of frustration. Cyclops and the rest of the X-Men had learned long ago to steer clear of that topic.
Carol snorted. "But the end result is the same: I wear them because I like them. I used to have a nice set of ribbons to pin on them, too, before the Air Force decided I wasn't their problem anymore."
"That last part I did know," Wolverine said. "And I also know you need to calm down."
At that, Cyclops couldn't help but turn to look at them. Sheer amazement would do that. Wolverine, telling someone to be calm? Twilight Zone stuff, definitely. Almost as weird as Jean dumping Duncan, he thought, and hoped Jean didn't pick up on that thought or the feeling of exhilaration that went with it.
"This is not a good time for me, Logan," Carol said, warning. "A lot of my former colleagues are getting killed - a lot of your colleagues, too. I know you don't have fond memories of S.H.I.E.L.D., but loyalty used to be one of your better-"
Wolverine growled - a low, threatening sound that, as always, made the hairs stand up on the back of Cyclops' neck. He didn't like to admit it, but sometimes Wolverine really creeped him out. "I got yer point, okay?"
I think Wolverine might have met his match, Jean's voice whispered in his mind, laughing a little.
I think you're right, he answered. I just hope we're not going to meet ours.
Don't worry so much, Scott.
I can't help it, he told her, and it was the truth.
She knew it and made the telepathic equivalent of a resigned sigh. We're going to be fine.
He wanted to believe that she was right, but he doubted it. A lot.
Apocalypse watched his Horsemen at work, and he was pleased. They did his bidding well. Death in particular impressed him, although Pestilence's performance was admirable, and War's ferocity was not to be slighted.
A worker drone crept around him, connecting wires to the sarcophagus. Having a cluster of attendants responding to his every whim was not a novel experience, but it was one he had been too long without, and he reveled in it even as he plotted the drones' demise. He had already abandoned the monitoring system Essex had set up for his use, lest it contain some seed of duplicity. The use of his telepathy was draining him, but it was a necessary expenditure. His golden room was nearly finished; he could afford it.
He had not seen Essex through his Horsemen's eyes in some time, and the tinkerer's absence made him suspicious. It was unlike Essex to obey completely; he was scheming something. Of that Apocalypse was certain. The only question was of what form this new betrayal would take.
Apocalypse reached out through the minds of his Horsemen, sending them all on a search of the base. They scoured the buildings, looking for anything that Essex might have left, and when, after the better part of an hour, they found nothing, Apocalypse was most displeased.
He brooded over the problem for several minutes, leaving his Horsemen to their own devices as he did. Perhaps Essex had not risked his neck so openly. Perhaps he was counting on others to fulfill his betrayal. Yes, that fit his cowardly nature perfectly.
With this new, highly probable plan in mind, Apocalypse took control of Death's body and propelled him into the air, looking through his eyes to see if any company was on the horizon. The effort tired him more than he expected, and he realized he would have to limit himself to mere observation from this point on. Unfortunate, especially considering what Death's keen
vision showed him.
The black jet was far off still, but it was approaching swiftly, and Apocalypse began to laugh when he realized who Essex had sent. The drones scurried away, frightened, and he laughed harder.
Revenge.
He only wished he could be there. And that, of course - that infuriating physical inability to do as he wished - made him all the more eager to see the X-Men ground into dust.
Carol stared out of the window with undisguised anxiety. The scenery had given way to desert hills, all soft browns and beiges, and the thick black columns of smoke had stood out in sharp contrast from a long ways off. She could only imagine what the nearest fire departments were thinking - a fire, where there was supposed to be nothing but sand and rocks?
Now, as they closed in on the final miles, she pressed her face to the curved glass and prayed that she would see some sign of life, of resistance, of a problem under control. She was trained in the art of war, but liked better the profession of peace.
"Please, please," she murmured, but all those hopes were dashed when the base came into view.
The neat rows of buildings were scorched and blackened. The satellite dishes and other communication equipment were utterly gone, broken off at their bases and flung to the ground. The tarmac lay in ruined, cratered chunks, and there were suspicious patches of red everywhere.
"We'll have to land off-base," Cyclops said, and it sounded like he was trying very hard to hold it together.
"Oh my God," Jean said, showing her horror more freely. "Do you think anyone's alive down there?"
"I hope so," Beast said. He didn't sound very confident.
Logan said nothing. Neither did Storm, although her eyes narrowed.
Cyclops set the jet down on the far side of the tarmac, well away from the craters and buildings. Carol barely waited for the landing gear to kiss the ground before she was out of the aircraft. The ground-level view was even worse, and for a moment she could do nothing but stare. She remembered this place - the pilots joking in the building over there, before and after they ran missions, and the engineers scurrying around between those three buildings just before major tests... She had been stationed here right after the NASA accident, learning how to cope with her new powers, and she remembered standing on watch under the wide night sky, with the stars filling her vision whenever she looked up. She'd felt a peace here. This was a secret place, yes, but the work being done wasn't intended to harm, military funding or not. It was just science. And now...
The X-Men had filed out of the jet behind her, and she knew without looking that they had similar reactions. Devastation was devastation; it just hurt her more because she knew the place and the people.
"It looks like a war zone," Beast said.
Logan sniffed the air and growled, popping his claws. "It's close enough to one. And we got some combatants still hangin' around."
Carol asked, "How many?"
He growled again. "Not sure."
They set off in a cautious trek toward the heart of the base, with Carol and Logan taking point. She flew at the level of the buildings' roofs, looking for trouble from that direction, while Logan prowled on the ground. Beast and Storm stopped at every fallen soldier; he checked for a pulse if the body was reasonably intact, and she made a small, quick ritual gesture every time he shook his head. Cyclops and Jean trailed behind, looking utterly shocked. Carol would have felt sympathy for them, but she was too busy building a seething, righteous anger against whoever had done this.
It wasn't long before they came across a group of bodies that were hideously deformed - nothing more than skin and bones, almost drowning in their body armor.
Carol had never seen anything like it, but judging from the haunted expression that crossed Logan's face, he had. Not bothering to descend, she called down, "What is it?"
It took him a second to answer, and when he did, his voice was unusually flat. "Just memories. Saw a lot of folks who looked like that in Poland, once. Some of them were still movin'."
Her own memories clicked into place; there were rumors that Logan had been involved with the end of the World War II operations in Europe, and that he'd been around for the rescuing of more than one concentration camp.
For the first time since they'd landed, Cyclops spoke up. "What could do this to someone?"
Storm, finishing with her round of gestures, stood and looked past Logan at the buildings. "I don't know, but I think we're about to find out."
Carol turned and saw three figures waiting for them, all seated atop what looked like robot horses. Two women and one man. One of the women had green skin and a wild mane of brown hair, and, oddly, flowing pink clothes and a jaunty pink ribbon around her forehead. The other woman had ash-gray skin sunken over a tiny, gaunt frame and a light dusting of gray hair. Her
outfit was deep purple with a white skeleton decorating it, and Carol was ready to bet even odds that this was the person responsible for the skeletonized soldiers.
The man was tall and imposing, dressed in a suit of colored metal armor and chainmail. A mace hung from his belt, and two sword hilts jutted from his back. He looked like the guy in charge, and Carol was not surprised when Logan pointed at him with his claws and growled, "Okay, bub, just who are you clowns supposed to be?"
"We are the Four Horsemen of the dread lord Apocalypse," the man proclaimed. He thumped his chest with one fist. A red glow flared to life at the impact, then faded. "War."
"Famine," the skeletal woman said, spreading her bony hands.
The green-skinned woman cackled. "Pestilence!"
"Death," a new voice said, somewhere above them, and Carol looked up with horror.
He descended slowly - a minor deity coming to the mortal realm. His short blonde hair shone gold in the sunlight, creating a striking complement to his sky-blue skin. His costume was a far darker navy, streaked through with a bold, angular pattern of red lines, but it too shone in the reflected light of the massive, impossibly graceful metal wings that spread from his back. Even
with the distance between them, Carol could see the cold, dead expression in his eyes, the utter lack of humanity. He radiated it the way War radiated destruction.
An angel of death. A fallen angel, whose god-given wings had been stripped away by earthly devils, and who wore a face she knew too well. He stopped his descent a yard over her head and twice as far away, hovering in place with a few deft wingbeats.
"Warren," Carol said, so softly no one heard her, not even Logan. Then she snapped out of it and shouted, "It's Warren!"
Death looked at her, cold fire burning. "Warren Worthington no longer exists. I am Death, proud Horseman of En Sabah Nur, the Alpha and Omega, and my lord orders us to slay all who call themselves X-Men!"
"Oh yeah?" Logan shouted up at him. "You think you can do better than yer boss?"
Death gestured imperiously, and the other three Horsemen spurred their horses and joined him in the sky. He spread his wings further and declared, " 'For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?' "
Cyclops said, "I'm thinking that means 'yes'."
Carol wasn't religious, but she had a sudden burst of memory and recognized Death's words as a line from Revelation. She fell back a few feet, preparing to run as soon as she had to, and yelled down, "Close - it means go for cover!"
Pestilence whooped with laughter and spurred her horse forward towards Carol, holding her hands high. Carol feinted left, then kicked out with one foot and caught the green woman in the torso. She didn't fall, but she was thrown off-course and had to circle around. By the time she came back into range, Carol had left the fight and was trying to get back to the Blackbird and the onboard weapons systems.
"Come back, come back!" Pestilence cried out. "What's wrong - do I make you sick?"
"No, but more of those puns might," Carol said to herself, and ignored the taunting for a moment. Pestilence's new course blocked the direct path to the Blackbird, so Carol abruptly changed her own course and shot upwards, climbing faster than the mechanical horse could ever hope to. Then she flipped around and headed back down, getting a few seconds' precious lead on the Horseman. In the breathing space thus gained, she looked down at the base, trying to calculate her next move.
War and Famine were pursuing the X-Men, who had all followed Carol's advice and run - except for Logan. He was standing his ground and facing off against the one Horseman left.
"You should not have trespassed against the dread lord," Death said, circling above Logan's head like a vulture. "It is futility. Apocalypse is eternal! Apocalypse is indestructible!"
"Apocalypse," Logan said, visibly unimpressed, "is full of crap."
Death's wings bristled, and his face twisted in anger. "Resist him and be OBLITERATED!"
And with that, he dove at Logan, who had his claws out and ready. Metal met metal in a flinching screech, and then Carol had to fly behind a row of buildings and could no longer see the fight.
Pestilence cackled close behind her, and Carol decided that whoever had named her was dead-on. The green woman was a pest, all right. And now who's making bad puns?
She flung herself to the right a split-second before sharp metal hooves raked the air, blessing her precognitive seventh sense all the way, and immediately brought her fist around to knock Pestilence out of her saddle.
The green woman fell without a sound, and the horse, suddenly bereft of a rider, hovered for a moment before descending itself.
Carol didn't wait to see Pestilence hit the ground, but darted back toward Logan and Death.