Disclaimer: AU to X3! Not making any money from this. Corrinth owns Stifle and Vixen, Blaze and Shockwave are mine, Marvel retains all rights to all other characters, all knowledge of US military comes from watching Stargate SG1!
Above and Beyond: Scene 13"Have you got her?"
"Yes."
"You're sure this time?"
"Yes Logan, I'm positive," Stifle snapped. Wolverine shook his head a little and prepared his wires. This time when he touched them to Kitty's skin, he was ready for her to phase through them. He wouldn't be caught out again like last time. He needn't have worried, as Stifle had indeed quashed Kitty's powers this time. How Kitty had managed to employ her skill whilst unconscious, Logan had no idea. Ilehana however had a theory.
#Their scientist haven't put them very deep under at all. The unconsciousness in some cases even resembles what's supposed to happen in cases of hospital anaesthesia gone wrong. They are paralysed, unable to communicate, but more or less awake and certainly able to feel pain.#
The thought made Logan shudder. On the trolley, Kitty gasped and blinked her eyes. Stifle kept her hold over her as a precaution in case Shadowcat slipped through the table. Logan patted Kitty's hand as the girl looked up at him with a bewildered expression. Wolverine then glanced at Stifle, who nodded.
"That's all the X-Men," she confirmed, "Do you want to try and explain?"
"I'll give it a try," offered Logan. He left Stifle to help Kitty sit up. Going to the front of the room near the door, turned and faced them all. "Alright," Wolverine began with a growl that cut through a few conversations amongst the reawakened X-Men. "I know a lot of you are feeling pretty rough. I've got bad news, Ilehana's diagnosed that however crummy you're feeling, you'll live.
"We're on Kincaid's prison ship," Logan continued, "Heading into Seattle with Gambit and Mystique at the controls. This is Stifle for those of you who don't know, she's our British field agent and she's helping out. Blaze is upstairs in Kincaid's office trying to find out where the kids are being held."
"Why is Mystique helping?" Nightcrawler asked gently, rubbing bruises on his arms with his three-fingered hands.
"We said we'd wake the Brotherhood," Logan replied, looking over to where the Blob was laid out on the floor, seeing as no trolley bed would support that much weight.
"We are not going to?" Nightcrawler needed clarification.
"No," Logan replied crossly. "She can come down here and wake them herself. We've got to concentrate on getting all of you invalids off this stinkin' boat when we get into dock. How many of you can…"
Wolverine was cut off by the sound of someone thumping hard against the outside of the barricaded room. He half turned round, lips drawn back over his teeth in a silent snarl. Tensing the muscles in his neck, he let his claws slip through his knuckles. The doors and clumsy barricade shuddered as someone charged it from the other side. Wolverine took a slow, deep breath. If they got through here, all kinds of Hell would be let loose. He would see to it personally.
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Up on the bridge, Gambit and Mystique worked in silence. Concentration was evident on both their faces as they tried hard to keep the ship on the straight and narrow. The coastguard had started asking them for identification five minutes ago. So far they had remained anonymous, bringing the vessel in as a ghost ship. The weather had followed them in towards shore. Lightning cracked across the sky yet again. Gambit gaped as the white light illuminated the storm-lashed deck. Blaze was out there, in front of a firing squad and tied to a pole. As Gambit watched, a GRSO man threw a bucket of water over the fire mutant. Blaze recoiled, and Gambit winced with her, his anger brewing. He knew how repulsive Blaze found cold water. They wouldn't get away with this.
Splaying his fingers on both hands, Remy pressed them to the glass of the observation window. His adapted uniform gloves were missing three fingers. Instantly as his skin touched the glass his mutation kicked in. Across the surface of the glass tiny citrus and strawberry coloured lights flashed and sparkled. The glass started to glow, taking on Gambit's kinetic attack. All he had to do was charge it enough so that when he removed his hands the whole thing would shatter outwards. Shards of glass created in the blast would rain down on the GRSO troops below, and Gambit could rush to rescue his teammate.
"You fool, what are you doing?" Mystique snapped. "Blaze is…" Gambit argued, but Mystique was having none of it. "So far the storm has kept everyone oblivious to the fact the ship is moving. Look at the horizon; can you see the lights? That's the city. Very soon someone is going to realise what we are doing and come running. They will be all over us like flies on a corpse. We have to get the ship into dock. Nothing else matters."
Gambit slowly pulled his power back from the glass, leaving it undamaged. He turned away from Blaze's predicament and glowered at Mystique, "Why? Why is it all dat matters? What you got planned when we get into dock?"
"Kincaid's menace and insanity will be exposed. Mutants everywhere will see the pictures of this ship of horrors and refuse to take any more. Together the Brotherhood of Mutants, every likeminded mutant on the planet, will rise up and overthrow the humans who treat us like lab rats and worse."
Gambit cringed at the commitment in Mystique's voice. That, he thought, is exactly what we don't need to happen right now. He was about to tell her as much, when suddenly the whole ship trembled from bow to stern. The excruciating sound of metal plates scraping against each other filled the air. Mystique's face lit up. This was a surprise that even verged on pleasant.
"Time to make ourselves scarce," she advised Gambit, peeling her hands from the controls. Remy would have argued, but he saw the men on the deck below pointing to the fast approaching skyline of streetlights. A few of them had even thought to turn and look up at the bridge observation window. Gambit backed away from the glass gingerly, and followed Mystique out of the room. A few moments later and a gang of GRSO troops overran the bridge. They found the bodies of their colleagues, but no matter what they tried they could not adjust the ship's controls. Neither could they slow the runaway vessel down. It was heading into the harbour too fast. Worst of all, there was some kind of interference on all the radio frequencies. They couldn't warn harbour patrol or the coastguard. This was going to be a disaster of catastrophic proportions.
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"Grrragh!" Logan roared; as he single-handedly took out the few GRSO men brave enough to come into the holding bay after they had demolished the barricade. The men hit the floor in pieces, and no more followed through the double doors. One of the watching X-Men cleared their throat on the brusque silence that followed. Logan started to turn to look at them, but abruptly stopped. A frown crossed his face, and then became a deeply lined scowl. Stifle piped up, "What is it?"
"Everyone grab hold of something," Wolverine replied earnestly.
"Why?" Dell probed, feeling confused.
"Because I can't move," explained Wolverine, "Magneto is here…"