Sinister Designs: Chapter 12
The last thing Nightcrawler said to Logan was that he found the cell block, and that it was at the north side of the basement. Then, in rapid succession, communication came to an abrupt end and things got very, very noisy up above. Storm's little "present" to Mr. Essex had finally touched down.
Logan only called out for his partner once as he ran. He wasn't about to waste his breath, or clog up the frequency, if the elf wasn't able to hear it. He ran full-tilt down the hallway, which was disturbingly bare of occupants, hoping to get to Nightcrawler's side before anything permanent happened.
Moira's voice was the next to come through the comlink. "Storm, this is Moira! Nightcrawler brought Isidro an' I to the jet and went back in! His comlink's gone, but he's all right!"
"Phase two, people!" Storm shouted, her words just understandable over the ferocious winds outside.
Phase two already? Logan thought. They must have taken care of those bots outside pretty quick. We're getting pretty good at this.
"The big man's still near the cell block, so be careful!" Moira continued.
At that precise moment, the double-doors in front of Logan parted, and he was assaulted by the sight and scent of that very "big man". A very big, very pissed man. He lunged for Logan.
"First that blue faggot, now you!" he spat. "How many more of you are there?"
Logan ducked under the Blob's first swing. Unfortunately, this guy took up the whole damn hallway. Getting by him was going to be a problem.
"You wanna bet I can't carve you up like a Christmas ham, bub?" Logan warned.
"Yeah! Sure! I'll even double down!"
Logan ducked another clumsy swing. Fat was supposed to jiggle, wasn't it? This guy didn't "jiggle". Sumo wrestlers would have killed for this guy's build. But they'd be embarrassed to death by his technique. Logan couldn't tell whether his enemy was unskilled at combat, or maybe he'd let his temper get the better of him. In either case, he didn't feel like waiting for his aim to improve. Just after the next fist that sailed over his head, Logan slashed in at a prodigious amount of flesh.
Two problems. First, it was harder to go through this guy than he thought it should be. Next, and more importantly, there wasn't that much blood. Oh, he cut a good swath, all right, and it probably hurt like hell, but there just wasn't much there to bleed. Blobbo here had so many dense layers of fat protecting him that it'd take Logan all day to cut down to something vital.
Pain spurred the Blob to speed. He grabbed Logan's left wrist, crushing every vein and artery under his fingers. Then he slammed him into the wall. And then the next wall. And the ceiling, and the floor, and back to that wall again... As bright flashes burst in front of Logan's eyes, he picked up the barest hint of sulfur. As his vision failed completely, that smell suddenly became overpowering. Blob shouted, the world lurched, and suddenly Blob's voice was a bit softer with distance and Logan was lying on the floor of the hallway. He wasn't the least bit surprised to look up at Nightcrawler as his vision finally cleared.
"Oooh, he's not going to like me for this," Nightcrawler said as he looked past Logan, back to where the Blob must be.
It smelled like the Blob was only a dozen or so yards down the hallway, and it sounded like he was taking his frustration out on the walls. Logan staggered to his feet, shaking out his crushed arm.
"Think you could've gotten us a little more breathing room, partner?" He got a closer look at Nightcrawler, who was suspiciously pale. "Okay, maybe not..."
Nightcrawler smiled weakly and gestured down the branching hall. They weren't within sight of their enemy, but they could sure hear him.
"FINE! ANOTHER ONE! BRING IT ON, TIN MAN!" the Blob roared from around the corner.
"Did you think I was dumb enough to come alone?" Nightcrawler asked.
"Actually, yes, I did. And you blocked off the way to the cells, unless you're thinkin' of another one."
BANG. SMASH. CRUNCH. The combined sounds of battle and whatever-the-hell-was-going-on-upstairs pounded away at their ears and nerves.
"We have to get the rest of the prisoners," Nightcrawler said. "Before those two bring everything down around our ears." He grabbed Logan's shoulder. "I get us both there, you open the cells?"
"Do it."
Just before they teleported, both men had the chance to see Colossus' gleaming silver body as he sailed by the hallway in front of them.
Nightcrawler and Logan reappeared in the cell block. Blob, in his rage, had done a number on a few of the cells, but the rest were sealed off and in pristine condition. Nightcrawler stumbled to the right and slumped against the wall, trembling with fatigue and gasping for breath.
"All yours," he wheezed.
Logan ran down the row of cells. There were only a dozen of them left intact. This wasn't going to take long. At least, he hoped it wouldn't take long. In one cell, he saw a half-starved man in filthy fatigues, sitting on the floor. Logan immediately leapt to the cell. The prisoner watched with wide eyes as Logan slashed through Plexiglas shield and reinforced bars, then kicked in his improvised door.
Logan extended his hand into the cell. "You the one who talked to Moira?"
The man nodded as he stood up. "She's next door, y'all aughta get her first."
"We already did. Come on, it's your turn."
The prisoner accepted some help from Logan, but not much. He looked half dead, but his spirit wasn't completely broken. Damn, he seemed familiar, but Logan couldn't quite place where he'd seen or smelled him before. The prisoner looked down at the rifle Logan had strapped across his chest.
"Yeah, that's for you, if you know how to use it," Logan told him.
"Damn straight I can," he answered.
Logan pulled the loop back over his shoulder and gave him the weapon. "I was hopin' I wouldn't be hauling this thing around for nothin'. What's your name, soldier?"
"Sergeant Martin, sir."
Logan looked back at Nightcrawler, to see if he'd caught his breath over the past few seconds. Apparently not; he'd need a little more time. And Logan wasn't so sure teleporting their latest addition would be a good idea anyway: he might not be able to handle the shock. As he looked around to see just what else could go wrong, he saw a dark furry lump huddled in the corner of the cell directly across from Martin's. He couldn't make out too many details, but he could tell that the lump was watching them, eyes unblinking and glittering in the dim red light.
"Moira said that there's your buddy, Hank," Martin told him. "They been pretty rough on him."
Oh Jesus, Hank... Logan made himself look away to Sgt. Martin, who was deftly checking the rifle's clip and chamber.
"Look, our ticket out of here is sitting by the wall, and no matter what you think, I don't want you shooting him," Logan said as he pointed to Nightcrawler.
It wasn't easy to see Nightcrawler in the shadowy red light, but Sgt. Martin must have managed. He looked in Nightcrawler's direction, seemed to be focusing in, and then gasped in shock and almost dropped his rifle.
"Oh my Lord, you got away," he said, his voice trembling. "You... Stryker didn't kill you... You got away..."
Stryker? This guy recognized Kurt from his association with Stryker? He wasn't aiming the rifle at Nightcrawler, and he didn't seem angry. It was more like overwhelming relief. Nightcrawler's confused look told Logan he didn't recognize him either. Okay, fine, a mystery to explore once they got out of there. Logan went to Henry's cell and cut his entry.
This time Logan didn't need to kick it in. Because something hit him from behind, hard, and blew him into the cell; bars, shield, and all.
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Rogue came back to Cyclops after absorbing Jamie's power. They had to work fast. Jamie's duplicates were down to a couple dozen, and one winked out every few seconds. They couldn't provide confusion cover much longer. And the giant robot, which Cyclops had just knocked down to its knees, was getting up again.
Without turning around, Cyclops handed back his visor with his bare hand. "Do it now!"
She plucked the visor from his grasp, then held his hand in hers. Cyclops immediately fell to his knees, his optic blast waning in strength. God, it felt like he was being buried under wet cement. Being smothered. He clung to consciousness like a drowning animal to a log.
Professor, guide them... I can't...
Harold Trask finally got to his feet. The pounding had stopped. There were no enemies in front of him, and the entire institute to destroy. He raised his arm... only to have his aim deflected AGAIN by Cyclops! What was this freak made of? He should have run out of power long ago! As he swung down, another beam caught his arm. And then another. And another. In seconds, his main gun was pinned in mid air, trapped between continuous streams of red. He tried to pull it down, but for once his amplifier suit just wasn't strong enough. What the hell was going on? Had the deviant figured out how to split and reflect his beam? He looked down to see six Cyclopses... but they had long hair...?
Then something bright red smashed up under his chin like an uppercut from a heavyweight, and something else smashed into the back of his head, and now his head was pinned in place, the same as his arm...
Rogue made a mental note to never, ever, EVER touch Mr. Summers again. Not unless her life depended on it, and maybe even then. Kurt was no problem. Logan she could handle. Magneto and Pyro she didn't want to dwell on too much, but she could find a way to withstand it all. Scott Summers was a nightmare!
The power was bad enough. How the hell did he keep his neck in one piece? It was as if someone shoved her head back every time she opened the visor! This man must have the neck muscles of a gorilla, even if he didn't look it.
But then came his psyche. Battered, self critical, perfectionist, micro-managing, overcome with guilt and grief for his fiancée's loss. Stay in control every inch of your life. Never let your beams out, even for the briefest second, or the world suffers for your weakness. Imperfection is death. She channeled it into anger; every single bit of it. This was HER place. These were HER students, HER responsibility. They looked to her for leadership, for command decisions. She would rather die than let them down.
Rogue stood where she was, holding Cyclops' bare hand, while Cyclops himself crumpled on the muddy field. She fired on the suit as it once more aimed for the institute, and its aim went up into the air. One of her two "non-powered" duplicates stood behind her, whaling away at her back with tree limb. She only split off one "Rogue-clops" with every hit; if she was Jamie, there would have been at least five each time. But with every "Rogue-clops", they came closer and closer to pinning that monstrous machine down.
Six of her pinned the thing's primary weapon arm in the air, and ten more pinned its head in place, which made sure that the rest of the body wasn't going anywhere. It flailed with its other arm, kicked out with its feet, but none of the duplicates was close enough to be hit. For the moment, it was helpless. For the moment only.
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Judy put her shaking hands over Jamie's heaving chest. He needed a rib cage. He needed the bleeding to stop. He needed everything at once. A little voice reminded her that she couldn't affect living material, only "dead" things like plastic, stone, or seasoned wood. She couldn't do what she was about to do.
Tears flowed down her cheeks as she touched the right side of his chest. "I can't do this," she sobbed. "I can't do this."
Under her hand two shattered ribs came together and reformed.
Behind her, the students whispered.
We gotta get him to the infirmary.
What if his back's broken?
Professor said to stay here.
If we don't get him there he'll die!
What do we do when we get him in there? I'm not a doctor. Do you know how to stop internal bleeding?
"I can't do this," Judy kept sobbing. "I can't do this." Two more ribs reformed. She moved her hand up. "I can't do this."
Artie was first to realize what Judy was doing. He knelt by her and watched as that horrible, ugly dent in Jamie's chest slowly filled back up.
He looked back to the group and whispered, urgently, "She's putting his chest back together!"
"No I'm not!" Judy shouted, still crying. "I can't do that!"
But her hands moved further up Jamie's chest, and the sternum continued to raise to its correct position.
Artie swallowed. His voice trembled. "It's okay, Judy," he whispered. "You're doing okay."
"I can't do this," she kept repeating.
"Yes you are. Keep going. It's okay. You're doing okay."
The rest of the students gathered around, as Judy worked. The whispered encouragements. They held their breath. They watched as Jamie's entire chest reformed under the hands of a girl who couldn't stop crying.
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One instant, Logan was making a new door for Henry's escape. The next, he was blown into Henry's cell by some kind of white energy stream. Nightcrawler had the time to stand up, and Sgt. Martin had the time to turn towards the attack, when that same white energy came for them. They wound up sprawled on the floor, as Nathaniel Essex walked calmly out of Sgt. Martin's cell.
Nathaniel's hands tingled a bit. They always did that after a particularly strong energy surge. He'd drained most of his power with that first shot, but Weapon X warranted it. He couldn't take the chance of him recovering any time in the next five minutes. The other two were simple enough. All that was left was Henry, curled up and submissive in his cell, too frightened to emerge. He looked down at Richard Martin, unconscious a few feet away. It was a nice idea, trying to reprogram his system to create the controlling serum, but it just never bore fruit. And considering the rifle the man had been cradling, he wasn't as broken as he thought. Too dangerous. Best deal with him now, then see what he could do about the rest before leaving.
Before he could consider the problem further, something big, hairy, and very fast tackled him. It and Nathaniel both fell into Martin's cell. Nathaniel wound up on his back with a snarling, ape-like Henry on his chest, his royal blue fur black in the eerie red light. Nathan let loose with another bolt of white before Henry got the chance to go further, but Henry avoided it, bouncing back to the Plexiglas cell shield and clinging like bizarre furry spider. His fanged grin was not as feral as Nathan thought it should be.
"You always were an arrogant prick, Nathan" Henry rumbled.
Nathaniel smiled despite himself. So the procedure hadn't robbed Henry of his sentience after all! There was some hope yet for future applications! He had no time to think on this, though: Henry wasn't about to give him the chance. He leapt again.
This cell gives him too much room, Nathaniel thought as he missed yet again. I have to get into confined quarters if this is going to work.
He edged back to the previously-secret opening in the back of the cell. The service hallway between cells was too small for Henry; Nathan would have the advantage then. But Henry made short work of that plan. His third bounce off the walls landed him between Nathaniel and the egress, and suddenly Nathaniel was face down on the cement floor with Henry pounding away.
For a great deal of his life, Henry held back. He held back when he played with childhood friends. He held back in Jr. High School football. He held back in his schoolwork. All to give the veneer of "normalcy". Even when he studied under Professor Xavier, he held back during training sessions. If he lost control of his strength, people could die. Now he tore into Nathaniel with everything he had. He removed his scrubs with a few swipes of his claws. He pounded at his ribs with his fists, he put all his weight behind his knee in the small of Nathaniel's back. If Nathaniel was going to bring the beast out, he was going to get every square inch of it.
So blind was his rage that he didn't initially notice that Nathaniel wasn't bleeding. No ribs had broken. No vertebrae had popped. After three seconds of continuous assault, the man should have been a mangled pile of flesh. He wasn't. In fact, when Henry reared back for another blow, he saw something that stopped him cold:
Sometime during the fight, Nathaniel had turned to metal. The exact same way as Colossus. For a moment, Henry was looking at Piotr, and wondering how he'd gotten there so fast.
And Nathaniel looked back at Henry with a slight, confidant smile. "You were saying, Henry?"
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For the first eighteen years of his relatively short life, Piotr Rasputin had never found an equal. Now, in the space of a single year, "worthy foes" were coming out of the woodwork.
Blob was bleeding, somewhat, from that slice from Logan, but he stood up to Colossus' pounding all too well. Worse, Colossus just couldn't seem to budge him. Once he planted his feet on the ground, the Blob was the ultimate immovable object. It didn't make much sense: anything that heavy should be warping the metal corridor under his feet. Colossus should be able to toss him the same way he had been thrown.
Blob just wasn't going to let him by, and Nightcrawler hadn't returned for him. So much for that "snatch and grab" plan. He told Kurt he was too heavy to teleport with...
Cyclops always said the battle plans were the first casualties of war, he thought. My mission must now be to keep this thing busy for the rest of the team.
He stood his ground, crouched and wary. The corridors echoed with the noise from Storm's tornado far above.
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Jubilee, Rosa, Theresa, and Rhane are coming your way, the Professor thought to Rogue. John has the unit's mutant detector in a loop for now, but he'll only be able to give us a few seconds more.
We have a window, Rogue thought back. And when Katherine gets over here, we'll take advantage of it.
She actually felt that last hit from her duplicate. With her armored uniform, and Jamie's ability to absorb and channel kinetic energy, Rogue shouldn't have been able to even notice it. Even more telling, two extra bits of consciousness were no more. And finally, nothing more split off. She had run out of Jamie's power, and her first two duplicates were gone. God only knew how long the rest of her duplicates would last now. She let go of Cyclops before she drained him into a coma. The giant robot jerked around like a man who'd caught his arm and neck in a couple of snares. Its armor was finally deforming with stress under the onslaught. Maybe, just maybe, they could take off the arm...
Two powered duplicates winked out, and now that arm only had four streams on it. Rogue Primary intensified her beam on the giant's neck. They had to remove the sensor array. They had to make sure it couldn't see to blunder its way into the institute. And they had to open up a spot in the armor for Katherine to get through.
The rest of the students had finally made their way to Rogue's side. Jubilee's hair glistened with blood, but otherwise she was standing on her own, looking more angry than hurt. Bad, but at least serviceable. It was Katherine she worried about. Not much could hit her in her phased state, but that weapon flung her away like a rag doll. Even as Kitty approached she was trembling as if cold. Jubilee they could replace in this plan, but it all hinged on Kate. Rosa ran out to help Kate to the group.
"I hope you're up to this, Kitty, because you're our best shot!" she barked, keeping her gaze pinned on the struggling behemoth.
"There's some sort of force field built into the unit," Kitty said, her voice a little unsteady. "But I've figured out its frequency by now. Gimme another shot, and it's mine."
"Lee, Siryn, concentrate your fire on the neck," Rogue ordered. "Rhane, you're the strongest. On my mark, boost Kitty up as close to the neck as you can. Rosa, stay by me."
Rhane shifted, from pure wolf to the kind of bipedal humanoid that special effects teams would envy. The group now fought with an ear-splitting accompaniment in the key of F minor. It covered up any speech, including the angry profanity Jubilee was surely spitting. The remaining two "Rogue-clops" duplicates on the arm gambled that they'd so damaged the weapon that they could concentrate totally on the neck.
A combination of red force, plasma "firecrackers", and sonic power tore into that one spot.
Three more duplicates disappeared.
And suddenly the suit's head popped off like a champagne cork. It sailed over the rest of the combatants, and against all odds, managed to fall cleanly into the deep end of the pool. Siryn's scream ended and she sat heavily on the ground, gasping for air.
"Move it, gals!" Rogue shouted.
Kitty clung to Rhane's back as she half ran, half loped into the field. The suit was now free, but badly off-balance, blind, and deaf. It could blunder anywhere. It dropped to its hands and knees, then started to rise again. The last few duplicates surrounded and pinned it at the waist, but they wouldn't be around much longer. Rhane ran in between two of the duplicates and leapt up. She got a second jumping point on the thing's bent knee, but from there she had little to gain altitude from. Kitty pushed off at the apex of Rhane's leap, and from then on she kept drifting up to the unit's shoulders, to the opening that sparked in the moonlight. If only the Rogues could keep it pinned a little longer, she'd have a perfect shot...
More Rogues disappeared. There were only two keeping the suit in one place now. Katherine dropped onto the shoulders, phased and intangible, and once more hit something solid and unyielding. No problem. She knew that would happen. It was the open neck she needed. She scrambled to the opening and reached in.
She was still blocked.
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Hank was now on the defensive. He'd unloaded everything on Nathaniel before he was armored, and it didn't seem to have done much. Now he seemed to be facing an older version of Colossus. There was no possible way he could get through that armored skin.
The good part? Nathaniel wasn't any faster armored up. That cell, small as it was, gave Henry just enough room to avoid his blows, and then his blasts. And now that he and Nathaniel were roughly the same width in the shoulders, Nathaniel wasn't going to be using that thin "escape corridor" in the back either.
"Stalemate, Nathan," Henry said. "You're not getting away, you know. The second that Logan gets up, he'll make you into aluminum siding."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that so soon, Henry," Nathaniel answered calmly as he unleashed another bolt. "I can do this all day, and it looks like you're getting tired. All I need to do is wing you. And I doubt even the Wolverine can recover from a missing throat. In fact, let's go test that hypothesis, shall we?"
He moved for the hole in the bars, directly under where Henry was clinging. And in that moment, with all the power Henry had in his newfound forced mutation, he felt very, very impotent. If he did nothing, Nathan could well fulfill his threat. Even if he didn't kill Logan, he could easily kill Kurt and Martin. And if he took the bait and got into hand-to-hand... well, if Colossus' Danger Room tests were any indication, Henry wouldn't last very long.
He landed on Nathan and shoved him face-first into the ragged edge of the bars and plastic shielding. Maybe he could blind him. Maybe this armor wasn't as tough as Piotr's. Maybe Nathaniel wasn't as physically strong as Piotr.
Nathaniel spun about, grabbed Henry's arm, and punched him in the face over and over.
Henry's last lingering thoughts were, Then again, maybe so...
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"You're a mutant," Colossus panted. "You're working for someone who tortures mutants. How can you betray your own?"
"Don't fuckin' gotta answer you," Blob said. "Don't fuckin' gotta answer to nobody!"
Both of them were getting winded now. They had gone through several rooms of machinery, smashed samples, "uncleaned" clean rooms. Colossus had done what he could to lead his enemy away from where Logan and Nightcrawler saw prisoners and test subjects, and so far it seemed to have worked; they hadn't run into anyone else. But right now, evacuating everyone was going to be impossible with this raging bull down below, and he just couldn't seem to do anything but exchange blow for blow. At least the Blob was slow: Colossus landed two punches for every one of his. It was like hitting a brick of solid clay. If only he could pick this fat man up, he could get him out of the way!
"Colossus, Banshee and Iceman are coming down," Storm said through this comlink. "Have you been able to pry your friend up from the floor yet?"
"Nyet," Colossus snarled softly through his teeth.
"Tell us where ye are, an' we'll be right there!" Banshee's voice came through.
Colossus swung at Blob with deliberate clumsiness. He hit the wall beside him instead, sending noisy shockwaves down the hallway and severely deforming the metal.
"Gonna make you into a hub cap," Blob was threatening. "Gonna make pig sticker into a rake. Gonna make blue boy wish he was dead."
Blob hadn't noticed, but Colossus had: it was very quiet down here now. Storm must have lifted the tornado. Colossus rushed at the Blob one more time. Blob grabbed Colossus' metal fists and held. It became a pushing match, strength against strength. Colossus was strong, Colossus was big, Colossus had height and limb length, but Blob had all the mass in the world, it seemed. The two stood there, jerking from one side to the other, trying to gain the advantage, for several seconds.
The push war went on until Banshee cut a hole in the ceiling fifteen feet down the hallway. Colossus had expected it; needless to say, his enemy hadn't. Blob dropped Colossus' hands and instinctively tried to cover his ears, but Colossus was fast enough to grab the big man's wrists instead. Banshee hovered in the middle of the hallway, the very walls reverberating with his tones, and focused his voice on the mountain man. Iceman dropped down behind Banshee and put both his hands on the floor.
Blob struggled to turn around. He ground his teeth and pushed against Colossus' grip. He lifted up one foot and put it down... right on a very slick mixture of ice and slush. He slipped. For a brief instant, his feet were no longer planted on solid ground.
"You're MINE!" Colossus roared as he lifted the Blob bodily over is head.
Blob thrashed about, but now his centralized mass became a severe disadvantage. There was no way he could twist out of Colossus' hands. Banshee cut open a swath of the ceiling big enough for even the Blob to sail through. Bobby walled himself and Banshee in with ice as the winds sucked up everything lighter than a hundred pounds. For Storm hadn't dispelled the tornado: she'd merely lifted it up a bit, to where it wasn't scouring the ground clean.
And Blob looked up into the gaping maw of darkness and light and debris, and knew too late what Colossus was about to do.
Storm looked on, impassively, as Colossus threw the huge man out of the hole. The Blob sailed close to the tornado, hovered there as he flailed about, then was slowly sucked up into its vortex, gaining speed every instant. He screamed at them, he gestured rudely, he made threats that Storm couldn't hear. Then, just as the other three amplifier suits had done, he too disappeared into the debris cloud that stretched far, far into the night sky.
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"NO! You're not keeping me out!" Kitty screamed, pushing down at the invisible shield inside the giant robot's open neck.
The last duplicate was gone. Rogue was alone, now, and she didn't dare shoot with Kitty on the suit. She didn't dare send the thing that off-balance. The robot lurched forward. Kitty clung on, her legs flailing about. The thing stood up and whirled around with its weapon arm, sweeping across the broad side of the institute. Rogue held her breath.
Nothing fired.
Finally, Kitty disappeared into the stump of its neck.
She fell into the darkness, into a tangled maze of electronics, fiber optics, gel, motors and servos. She spread out like a skydiver, maximizing the damage from her lethal touch. She caught a glimpse of a man in a chair, screaming soundlessly, his body taut and trembling, before falling back into the suit's dark interior once more. In three seconds flat she emerged underneath it and dove into the mud, where she made a hard right turn and began her "underground swim" to safety.
The suit jerked and flailed. Its damaged arm spun at the shoulder so wildly that it literally unhinged. The spasms sounded like they tearing it apart from the inside. The dreadful scream of rending metal was like an animal being slowly dismembered. It took ten long seconds for the "screaming" to stop and the behemoth to lay still on the battlefield, its neck steaming.
Kitty surfaced a few feet away from the hulking machine. Panting, shaking, the world spinning around her. Oh God, I'm gonna be sick... She fell to her hands and knees. She felt like she was going to throw up, but she couldn't seem to follow through. Rhane came up beside her.
"Tell me..." Kate swallowed. "Tell me... it's not moving..."
"I think ye killed it," Rhane whispered.
Rogue leaned against a broken tree and closed her eyes. They did it. It was finally down. Finally. Jubilee and Siryn sat on one of the few existing patches of grass. Rosa crouched nearby.
"Rogue," Scott rasped. "I need my visor."
Visor? She didn't need it anymore? Rogue blinked, then removed the visor. Cyclops' power was gone. If only the rest dwindled away so easily. She handed it to Scott, who hadn't bothered to stand up yet: he just slipped the visor on from where he laid on the grass. He slowly lifted his head and looked at the motionless enemy in front of them.
"Good job, Rogue," he said softly. "Very good job."
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Nathaniel had just landed his fourth punch on Henry in two seconds when his world imploded, spun, darkened, and snapped back. To the rest of the world, Nathaniel disappeared in a puff of sulfurous blue smoke. Then he reappeared with Nightcrawler a few feet down the corridor.
Nightcrawler felt like someone had punched him in the chest, hard. He'd meant to go further with Nathaniel, to get him out of the basement entirely and let him be sucked up in the tornado like everyone else. But he just couldn't manage it. He couldn't go more than a few feet with this man. He staggered. Nathaniel shoved him away, but seemed just as unsteady on his feet. Both stayed where they were, Nathaniel leaning against the wall, Nightcrawler crouched on all fours.
Then Nightcrawler's tail twitched, and he gave him a sly, predatory smile. "So. Teleporting doesn't agree with you, Mein Herr?"
Nathaniel, looking much more like Colossus than he had a right to, swung around and fired a white bolt from his fist, but his aim and balance hadn't recovered yet. Nightcrawler grabbed Nathan's leg with his tail and teleported again. And again. Just a few feet each time. Just a few feet. One more teleport looked like he might take Nathaniel down entirely...
Someone did pass out with the last 'port. Unfortunately, that someone was Nightcrawler. He slumped to the ground while Nathaniel fell to one knee, gulping in deep breaths of air.
A few seconds to recover, Nathan thought. That's all I need. A few seconds. Then everyone here is dead, and I can leave. A few seconds...
As he was recovering, he saw motion up ahead of him. He looked up and directly into the barrel of a rifle, which was in the hands of Richard Martin. No quips, no pithy sayings, no nothing. Nathaniel just got a faceful of bullets.
The sound jolted Nightcrawler back to complete awareness. A couple ricochets punched him where they hit his armored uniform. Nathaniel fell, then, still encased in metal, but with an angry, red gash in the exact center of his forehead. Sergeant Martin had very good aim.
As Kurt laid there, gathering enough strength to move, he heard metallic "clicking" sounds. The rifle must have run out of bullets, and Martin was still pulling the trigger.
"Goddammit, don't do this to me," Martin choked. "I can't be out."
Kurt slowly pushed himself up on his arms. "It's all right, Sergeant Martin. I think... the danger has... passed..."
He trailed off as he finished his sentence. Sergeant Martin wasn't aiming at Nathaniel anymore. He had the barrel of his rifle pressed up under his own chin.
He pulled the trigger twice more before Kurt scrambled over and ripped the weapon out of his grasp. "What are you DOING, man?"
Martin didn't look at Kurt so much as he looked through him. "I thought there were more bullets 'n that. I thought there were more. Clip should've held more. Why'd they have to shoot them all off? Why... why'd they..."
As Hank and Logan stirred, Richard Martin collapsed into a sobbing heap. Kurt stared, torn between offering assistance or embarrassing the man further. He hesitantly reached out and touched Richard's shoulder.
Logan stood up and moved out of Hank's cell. "Damn good grouping," he noted softly, nodding toward Nathaniel. "That from our boy over here?"
Kurt nodded, and his voice was just as soft. "When I grayed out, he took Nathan down."
"Looks like grabbing the rifle was a good idea."
Kurt's voice was even softer. "The gun may have saved us. What saved Herr Martin was that he ran out of bullets."
To be concluded