Disclaimer: Goes without saying but I do not own any of the X-Men characters, nor any other Marvel character herein included. They're the properties of the original creators as dictated by official documents, whom you can find out more about in Wikipedia or something. Stan Lee, Marvel Comics, etc.
Rating: T for a bit of violence. I censor profanity like they would in a comic, if I ever use it.
(This story happens in the same timeline/universe as Spider-Man: Repulse, Bruce Banner: The Abysmal, Avengers: The Galaxy's Mightiest, and The Mighty Thor: Moxy. but it's self contained!)
PART 9: Divided.
Ororo was trying to stay focused, but it was very hard. Guilt had her memory running wild and painful. She shouldn't have separated them. She should have accepted Stark's offer. There was a lot that she should have done, and that was getting in the way of what she had to now do. Impeding her ability to discern what she should do in the present.
Ororo could tell she was having an effect outside, but it was hard to know its real impact. It was hard to tell if she was bringing on a storm, or if she was simply generating a cyclical breeze. Yet, there was nothing else she should have been doing.
As she focused again, it seemed to her that the crack was now wider. The connection to nature, to Earth, was a tiny bit more pronounced. It was almost imperceptible, but with the time she had spent focusing on that singular connection, it was clear to her that that was the case.
Then some dust fell on her. Ororo opened her eyes and looked at the few specks of sand lying on the floor. It was a small mound of sand, so small it could hardly fit a handful. Storm looked up and saw nothing that could explain it, and when she looked back down, the particles had moved.
Despite the lack of wind, the specks of source-less debris started circling around her.
"Dust," Ororo whispered, shocked, and all the grains of sand stopped in front of her feet. They did not freeze all of her, Ororo realized, pretty much shocked at what she was seeing. This is remarkable…she can do this?
The grains stood still, and then nudged side to side, as if to spur her.
Wait, the improved connection, was it made by her digging her way in? Storm wondered, looking around. Am I being filmed? Will whatever camera Dark Beast put in here be able to see the dust?
It was likely that that was not the case, but whatever the case, she should take action. Ororo closed her eyes again, and nodded her head in concentration.
Covertly, she whispered down. "Widen the gap you used to get in."
Ororo didn't see it, but she heard it, and within seconds, she felt it. The gap was wider, and the connection to the Earth was more pronounced.
She smiled for a moment, but quickly relaxed and frowned in concentration.
Within minutes, Ororo was secretly manipulating air pressures. She could sense the clouds and the weather around the base, and started directing them.
Dark Beast thought he could maintain a man-made thing in the middle of Earth's harshest environment? Not if Ororo fully unleashed her influence upon it, and that was exactly what she spent the next hour doing. She knew he would be monitoring the weather, just in case Ororo revealed her power. They both would. So she kept her manipulations clever and minute. Her influences would be known only to processes which took a while to develop and fully form.
One can tell when a hurricane is forming, but not when the butterfly flaps its wings and causes it.
While she did this, Ororo planned. Dark Beast was a genius, but evil made him far more predictable than her own Henry. That was why he was the weaker of the two, not to mention that he had never suffered the second mutation, and was thus a far less formidable foe to fight.
Alright. Everything is ready, Ororo realized. Now.
Bad weather was normal in that region, so the increase in rains and cold winds would have come as no surprise. But now, hail began to fall at an abnormally violent rate, and several hurricanes formed and began laying waste to the outside of the base, and all the floors above the surface. The way they were setup, they would continue to do so for a while, even if Ororo was not working them.
She was fairly certain she was underground, and so would Dust's frozen body be, as well as Hisako. Even if that wasn't the case, she trusted Hisako and Bobby to survive anything she threw at them.
It was everyone else who had to worry. And indeed, it took mere minutes for the Dark Beast to come in yelling
"Are you insane?!" Fake Hank screamed, rushing in. "How are you doing this? And why?! You will cause the ordinance to explode!"
Ororo stayed on the ground, her back turned to him, and her eyes closed. She only heard the Dark Beast, but she wanted to make sure.
"No," Ororo said, keeping her expression merciless. "Your masters will. Rather than give them up and let us live, they will trigger them. Or force you to do it. But if I know anything, it's that you will refuse such a thing. You won't die for anyone."
"I will just kill you, then," he said. As if they could see through walls, soldiers started marching inside. Four of them ran in through the door and aimed their guns at her, and still, no Mesmero.
The two would have separated to once again prepare for another team of X-Men.
Thus, Ororo calmly stood up and turned an implacable face towards her enemy. "It is too late. The storm is unleashed and free of my control. This base will be laid to ruins no matter what you do to me. Even this place, which is dug into ice, will be torn down by the raging seas."
As if to confirm, the room viciously shivered and trembled.
"They will trigger the bombs, you mad woman!" Dark Beast protested, in a half roar, and Ororo shrugged.
"We are in the artic," Ororo said, unshaken. "Since only our lives will be lost, that is a risk I am willing to take. Are you?"
Fake Henry squinted his eyes at her, grimacing with anger. Then his evil glare turned on the soldiers, who glanced back at him in response, suspicious. The whole scenario was an improvement on how Ororo thought it was going to go, really.
There was no time to exchange words, the soldiers were very clearly ready for his betrayal. So immediate and surprising action was the Dark Beast's only recourse. Snarling, he lunged at the soldiers, and they opened fire. Ororo stepped back and away from the wall, and prepared to run.
Find the others. Find the bombs. Calm the storm, Ororo repeated to herself, gulping as Dark Beast kicked a rifle away from hitting him. Bullets trailed the floor and the ceiling as he set upon them like a Tasmanian devil, fast and agile despite the lack of the secondary mutation. The soldiers were also trying not to hit each other.
Still, his dark fur was singed by rifle's fire, and that made him roar. With his foot, Dark Beast grabbed a grenade of the man he was wrestling with and threw it at the soldiers on the opposite side of the room, who had shot at him. We can do this, Ororo added in her mind, stubbornly.
One of the soldiers panicked and smacked the grenade away, at the transparent wall.
"Stay with me, Dust," Ororo whispered, steeling herself.
A burst of noise and fire blew the fake wall to smithereens. A great number of glass shards shot out and rained upon Ororo, but she flapped the loose ends of her cape, protecting herself just fine.
The soldiers had been blasted against the walls and were either knocked out, dead, or in-between. Fake Henry, bleeding and growling, hurt by the grenade, struggled to crawl away and towards the door with his right arm. The left was heavily wounded even as he was using it to slap flames out on his legs. It didn't look like he would be able to do much else with it.
Ororo ran in his direction, her intent clear.
"Damn you! Damn you and all your luck! How did you summon the storm?!" Dark Beast demanded. "HOW?"
When she came close enough, he clawed at her, but she stomped on his limb with her boot, making him growl in pain.
Scowling, Ororo looked down on him. "Divine intervention," she told him, mockingly, and kicked him in the face. He took it well, so she kicked him a few more times.
Ororo kicked the vile Dark Beast until he was truly and completely out.
It was very cathartic, but soldiers were outside, and she could already hear them. Were she new to the danger, she might have hesitated, but Ororo Monroe was as seasoned as seasoned could be, so she ran out to meet them.
Ororo had been trained as well as any other X-Men, but she had many years of practice on almost every other X-Men, and a variety of tutors that none of them had ever had access to. Like T'Challa.
She exited the door and cut the distance as fast as she could, since distance was their advantage. Stepping in close to the first of them, Ororo slapped the rifle aside, elbowing the soldier in his masked face, and that hit with a force he didn't expect. Ororo used him as a body shield and charged the rest of the three. That made them miss their fire, and allowed her to engage them in a close fight.
The soldiers knew how to fight, though, so she did not get through it unscathed. By the end of it, the fourth soldier, the one she kept awake and conscious, and throttled by the inside of her elbow, was on the floor gargling on his own teeth.
Ororo snorted a blob of blood out of her nose, and spat it out, and then grabbed him by the collar with a bloodied hand. Her nails were broken, almost every one of them. "Where are my X-Men!?" She yelled, projecting bloody spittle on his face. "Tell me!"
And he did, weakly, point her in the right direction. Grunting, Ororo stood up and moved. As she did so, her eyes glowed with her increasing concentration. It was tougher to summon the winds while being that deep underground, but if there was one thing people needed to remember, it was that Ororo was tougher. Tougher than the Earth.
That was why she commanded it.
Two soldiers turned a corner, but her robes and hair fluttered, and blood shot forth from her hands and clothes as a gust of wind pushed past her to hit them. The two soldiers lost their footing and shot wildly up at the ceiling. They flew back to hit a wall extremely violently. They were immediately rendered unconscious.
Ororo took a deep breath, sensing a lack of stamina. Find them, she told herself.
She marched on and soon had to deal with another patrol of soldiers. Unable to summon winds strong enough fast enough, Ororo was forced to fight them the regular way, again. She won that fight as well. But not without cost. Her eyebrow was blistered, or cut, so now she only had one eye through which she could see clearly. Her capes were shredded. One of the soldiers had actually gotten a bullet to hit her, and even if it had only grazed her forearm, it was still bleeding from the cut.
Find them, Ororo told herself, stubbornly marching onwards.
It took her long minutes, but she made it to another room. The door was left open, and it was showing a cell much like the one she had been in, only it was Hisako who was being held within. Ororo limped her way past the door with as much firmness and dignity as she could muster.
"Armor!" Ororo called out, and Hisako turned to her.
"No, Storm, be careful!" She glanced sideways, and so Ororo turned, ready to face soldiers.
Instead, she faced a very amused Mesmero. Again, she went to sleep, but this time, she woke up immediately after. It was so quick that, for an instant, she thought it was a trick.
Yet, Mesmero was frowning hard, his eyes shut in utter pain as he flinched away. "Argh, my eyes! What is this?!"
Dust, Ororo realized, gritting her teeth in anger. She charged forward and kicked Mesmero in the stomach, sending him falling to the ground with a yelp.
"You damnable bastard!" Ororo yelled, pinning him down so that she could keep her eyes closed and hit him without any risk of being taken over. "You threaten my team? You threaten my X-Men?!"
After a few hits, he stopped yelling, so Ororo stopped punching him. Pulling him up, all while still keeping her eyes shut just in case, she then told him very clearly. "You are fortunate that I have no need to kill you." Then she flung him hard against the floor.
"Bastard," Ororo added again, and then approached the panels.
"Oh my…you look terrible! Are you okay?!" Hisako asked, concerned.
Ororo snorted and spat blood again, and meanwhile, she pulled the lever to open the cell. At least that's what the label said it did, and that's what happened.
"Trust me." Ororo smiled at Hisako, exuding confidence. "I have experienced far worse. Let's go. Knocking out Mesmero will have freed Iceman. He will be coming to help us, but we need to find Dust first."
"I remember where they stored her, follow me!" Hisako said, running out. Ororo was glad to see she was taking the situation as seriously as she should, and not hesitating.
Hisako led Ororo, all while the base shook and trembled, with alarms sounding high on repeat. Piercing. Ororo was limping a bit, but she could still run pretty well. She followed Hisako who, meeting with two different patrols of soldiers, made short work of them. That was a relief, Ororo didn't have many more fist-fights in her. If she even had one.
The corridors were too tight, so the soldiers could hardly get any shots out before Hisako ran into them and smashed them against the walls, or just pummeled them into the ground. And that was if their weapons were shooting lasers, because otherwise, it didn't matter if they were able to shoot. There was nothing they could do against Hisako's very supernatural armor.
"How are we dealing with the bombs?" Hisako asked while they ran.
"First, we regroup," Ororo said. "Then we find a way to communicate with Beast. He will tell us how."
When they found the room where Dust was being kept, they had to deal with the guards there, and afterwards, they saw the deformed ice statue they had been seeking. Sooraya had been frozen in her dust form.
"What do we do? Magma's not here, we can't thaw her out," Hisako said.
Ororo took a breath, trying to think. They couldn't carry her, but she wasn't about to leave Sooraya behind, either. The condition of the base was getting worse, too. Ororo had to get outside and calm the storm because she could only do it fast enough from outside.
"She's dust," Ororo said, wincing with a headache. "We can smash this to bits and just carry them with us."
"Uhhh…" Hisako glanced sideways, doubtful. "We sure about that, Storm?"
Just then, the alarm wheezed into a sudden stop. The two looked around, wondering what was going to happen next.
A broadcast began.
"Right, finally found the off button for that thing. Holy crap." It was Bobby. "I'm pretty pissed right now, so if anyone here doesn't want to be a shattered popsicle, you better clear the hell out o' this base, 'cause I'm coming for all of you. Storm, Beast says it's safe to break dust apart."
Bobby had indeed woken up, and immediately, he had headed towards the communication room, or whatever it might be called. He had already contacted Beast. On top of that, he had correctly guessed that Storm was free.
Hisako shrugged. "Well, alright," she said, and turned on her armor.
Hisako crushed the ice statue and ground it into pieces, and then formed a small mound. Meanwhile, Ororo picked a pack from one of the soldiers. She cleared it of all the weapons and ammo, and other things. Awkwardly, but necessarily, they filled the pack with every frozen piece of dust. More than likely, dirt and specks that weren't part of Sooraya were also bundled into the pack, but that was best. They couldn't risk missing a piece.
"We might be going out into terrible weather, Dust. Get all of you in here," Ororo said outloud, holding the pack open. The grains of sand that had been following her, and helping her, dove into the pack. Ororo tied it close and shut all the straps.
"Wait, what?" Hisako asked, shocked to see that. "Was that - she can do that?!"
Ororo slapped the final strap shut and shook the pack to make sure it was properly secured. "X-Men can do anything," Ororo said, and then handed the pack to Hisako. "Protect it with your life, Armor. That is your teammate."
Hisako's eyes bulged. She glanced down at the pack, and then flung it around her back as she nodded with extreme determination, and turned her armor on. "I will!"
Ororo nodded with her, encouraging her.
"Let us finish this."
Part End: Thank you for reading, please consider leaving a review if you have the time.
Alright, one more chapter to wrap it up. Get some information on who K.I.A. even is, who Dark Beast had been hired by, and final thoughts on how the team performed.