Chapter 10 Here Comes the Cavalry
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.
Cain Marko looked about the dungeon. Everyone had an inhibitor collar on. Fortunately enough, part of his powers were that they were "unihibitable." However, he was strapped to the walls of the dungeon by solid blocks of pure adamantium, and his hands and feet were bound to each other so that he could not possibly escape. It would have been different if he could have had a running start. His mutation warped the laws of relativity, allowing him to pick up lots and lots of mass as he accelerated, much as Blob gained mass when attached to a large gravitational force. The force and momentum in his body could increase even to the point of being able to break a wall of adamantium, if he were able to get enough speed. But when motionless, the Juggernaut could not managed to break free of such a solid, powerful metal.
Cain wondered at the limits of his power. Surely, even he had some limits. Something had to be able to kill him, although so far nothing, not even a full-power mindblast from Xavier, could hurt him for more than a few hours. Certain temperatures and chemicals could make him dormant, as they did in his stasis chamber, but they couldn't kill him.
Valkyrie had come to take Wanda and Talia out. Cain had screamed at this, but he was powerless to do anything about it. He quickly quieted down and glowered at the dungeon.
Mystique had followed the Red Skull, and realizing that on her own she would not be able to stop him from doing whatever he wanted with Kurt, was trying to pick the locks on Juggernaut's shackles, but without any success. To avoid detection, she was taking the form of a mouse, although her tail was forming into various keys. Before she had tried to rescue him, she had made him aware of her presence by scurrying around on the floor in front of him and slowly morphing into various rodents with the letters of her codename printed successively on each one. So Cain didn't try to crush the mouse near his hand, which he might have done had he not known who it was.
Kurt was in another dungeon now, with Wanda tied up in a chair in front of him, and with the Red Skull behind a pane of glass, holding Talia by the throat. Kurt held in his hands a sword.
"You must decide, Kurt. Kill Wanda or I will strangle Talia." The Red Skull's grip was tightening, and Talia struggled fruitlessly against his grip. "I'd say you have another minute before her trachea collapses."
Kurt looked back and forth at Talia and Wanda. "Do it," murmured Wanda. "Kill me. Don't let our daughter die."
Kurt looked back at Talia. She was flailing, but each kick was less powerful than the last. She was dying. He looked at Wanda and raised the sword.
"Decapitate your Gypsy slut!" roared the Red Skull.
Kurt prepared to deal the fatal blow.
Suddenly the stone wall behind the Red Skull blew out in a flash of green. He lost his grip on Talia, who fell to the floor.
A white-haired girl with two black stripes appeared in the doorway. She lifted her green goggles again and blasted the Skull in the chest. He was pushed back slightly, and then recovered and drew a pistol and shot the girl in the chest. With a normal bullet. She collapsed.
Another girl, Kitty this time, charged at the Red Skull. He shot at her, but she phased through the bullets and ran through him, then solidified and kicked him from behind. He turned around to reveal emerald quartz armor underneath his green uniform, which had protected him from Slayer's blast. He grabbed at Kitty, who phased again.
From behind, an explosion knocked the Red Skull over. Tabitha stood over his body, gloating.
At that moment, Valkyrie and Pocket charged in. Tabitha jumped out of the way, and from the opening that Slayer had blasted, X23 appeared, making a prodigious leap onto Valkyrie, tearing into her with her claws. Pocket withdrew a special grenade from his sleeve, that would utterly destroy anything within a five-foot radius but nothing outside, and tossed it at Tabitha.
Slayer, with the last of her strength, blasted the grenade, totally disintegrating it, before it got near Tabitha. Then she lost consciousness. She was kept alive, however, by the healing factor that Sinister had added to her.
Tabitha quickly bombarded Pocket with her energy charges, knocking him out completely.
X23 and Valkyrie were locked in mortal combat, neither one taking too much damage. X23's healing factor was slightly better than Logan's making her even more of a match for Valkyrie on the recuperation front.
Tabitha now began attacking the Red Skull, who was surprisingly agile in dodging her energy charges.
Kitty, meantime, phased herself over to Kurt and Wanda and freed them from their necklaces by phasing them off of them. Wanda was too drugged with power-suppressing drugs to be able to do more than light up her hands, but Kurt immediately teleported to the battle that was going on.
Grabbing Valkyrie, he teleported her around the room multiple times, leaving her somewhat weakened and exhausting himself. He slumped into a corner to recuperate, and X23 then attacked with a vengeance, attempting to rip Valkyrie from limb to limb.
Kitty managed to phase herself through various areas of the castle to find the dungeon where the other mutants were being held. She quickly freed them all, including Juggernaut, who charged through the walls to join battle against the Red Skull. Exchange and Upload had also managed to join battle by this time, knocking Kurt and Tabitha out. X23 had managed to dodge both men, and Juggernaut, not having his helmet to shield him from their powers, simply grabbed a chunk of rock and threw it at them to keep them away from X23.
Realizing that he was beaten, the Red Skull retreated to a corner of the room and slipped out using a secret trapdoor. Exchange and Upload followed suit. Juggernaut, however, managed to catch Valkyrie and to prevent her from leaving as he slowly crushed her head.
"Wait, no!" hollered Logan. "Don't kill her Cain, you don't want to go back to what you were!"
Cain considered a moment, and then knocked Valkyrie out with a swipe of his fist. He ran to another room, and came back with a metal beam which he twisted around Valkyrie so she couldn't get loose. "When she has healed enough to be out of danger, let's put an inhibitor collar on her!" he stated.
During this time, Mystique had run to Kurt to make certain that he was all right, which it appeared he was. Being the only mutant here other than X23, Juggernaut, and Kitty who was not either exhausted or whose powers had not been somewhat suppressed by drugs, she immediately called out to X23 to come with her to check out Baron Zemo and Captain Axis.
By the time they got to the infirmary, though, Zemo and Axis were gone, apparently having been spirited away by the Red Skull after he had departed. So the only captives they had taken were Valkyrie and Pocket.