Revamped!
Chapter 83: The Contingency Plan Part Three
Outskirts of Town - 19:40 PM
Everyone is suddenly uneasy, looking around them all at once. Nobody wanted to believe that they were the targets of this mission but after seeing what happened to Merida, it was sure likely to be the truth.
"Can we go home?" Emily begs. Her voice shakes, showing her fear.
"Not when we know that someone here wants us dead," Xavier replies.
"Then, can we go to a bunker?"
Xavier rolls his eyes despite Emily being serious when she asked that.
"Xavier," Angela says, "this is dangerous and we already have one down. We have to leave."
"We can't leave when someone out there can sing us to sleep or worse!" Xavier exclaims. "We'll get this bastard."
"Xavier -"
"New plan. We're splitting up."
"Is that a good idea?" Daniel questions.
"We can't travel as a group. We have one down and it'd be easier for whoever is in charge to enclose us in a mousetrap. Remember when we went to SHIELD Island and James said something about going in like the Scooby-Doo gang?"
James lights up at Xavier mentioning his genius words. "I did have a point."
Xavier ignores him and looks back at Daniel. "You agree with me or not?"
"I guess."
"Are you doubting me?"
"I'm doubting everything that's happening."
Xavier huffs because Daniel has a point. "Angela, you're with me. We'll go to the basement. Apollo, Emily, and Daniel will cover the upper floors. James, stay with Iqadi as she continues to pray over Merida."
As they disperse, Apollo looks up on the rooftop and sees something flash in his eyes. There's a man on the rooftop with a weapon of some sort pointed right at them.
"Above!" Apollo exclaims.
As everyone looks up, Apollo throws whips his axe at top speed. The figure who was up there flies off into the night. Emily's scans pick up nothing on him, not even the slightest trace as if he was undetectable and unreadable. Once he's gone, everyone runs inside at top speed to try and catch him before anyone else on the team gets hurt.
-o-
The basement is silent except for Angela and Xavier's footsteps. Their steps are slow and steady, cautious of their surroundings. They hear a drainpipe clank onto the floor so both twins pull out their guns and point. The difference is that Angela's is pointed straight ahead and Xavier's is pointed at Angela.
"Angela, get out!" Xavier exclaims, trying to move his arm away but he can't. "This isn't me!"
Angela's heart stops, unable to understand what Xavier meant. She moves to the side and Xavier's gun follows her every step. Xavier tries his absolute hardest to move his aim but nothing is working.
"Take me out…" Xavier begs her.
"I can't," Angela replies.
Xavier suddenly charges at her, gun still in his hands and pointed at her. Angela leaps forwards, extending her dominant leg to kick him in the chest. Xavier's free hand grabs her ankle when it connects with his chest and tosses her to the side. Angela uses her hands to bounce back on her feet. She turns around and Xavier's elbow is around her neck in a chokehold, squeezing tight.
"Angela -!" Xavier exclaims. "I'm -!"
"I know!" Angela replies.
They wrestled as kids but not like this. They've sparred in The Academy, but not to this point.
A flicker of pain flashes across Xavier's face but it automatically disappears as quickly as it came. Xavier squeezes harder, his grip on Angela so tight that his arm whitens. Her face turns red as she chokes, gasping for air as her knees start to buckle. But Angela finds one last burst of strength and plants her feet firmly on the floor. She grips on Xavier's chokehold and flips him over her back.
Xavier's back hits the floor and he uncontrollably kicks Angela over as well. He grabs Angela's shoulders with a powerful grip but she slams her forehead into his in an explosion of blinding pain.
Both twins fall back. Angela's head is spinning. As she turns around to look at Xavier, she sees him already up on his feet with his gun pointed at her again. Angela takes a breath. She sees that Xavier is fighting with himself like how Merida was. His face is a deathly pale, his eyes flat and devoid of feeling. Xavier swallows, his finger tightening on the trigger as beads of sweat drip down his temple.
Then, by some miracle, Xavier uses all his strength to turn the gun around. To save Angela, he points the gun at his torso and fires at himself.
"No!" Angela screams as Xavier fires again in the same spot.
Xavier could sense Angela staring at him, her eyes burning with tears as he continues to process what he just did. He couldn't take the pressure in his chest combined with the excessive and rapid blood loss at once.
Black spots swim across Angela's vision as she watches Xavier fall to the ground, the gun skittering out of his hand. Xavier did this to send himself down. The first shot went right through him, the bullet clinks on the floor. The second shot, however, was intended to do the same but didn't happen. Angela stumbles over and sees Xavier's uniform staining with blood.
She immediately starts to apply pressure to the wound and tries to call her team for help but has no coms to do so.
-o-
Merida's still unconscious but her heart is still beating and her breathing rate is calm and constant. Iqadi finishes praying and looks up. Her eyes meet James's and he sees that her eyes are red from crying during her prayer. Iqadi still has to explain everything that she knows. She has been silent for her reasons that she thought would benefit them and now she can't believe she's been praying over Merida.
James clears his throat. "Would it be rude for me to pray to your almighty Panther God in this time of crisis?"
Iqadi smiles a little from the corner of her mouth. "Not at all."
They both suddenly jump at the sound of a high-pitched scream for help comes from inside.
"Angela?!" James yells, shrinking to fly to wherever she is.
Iqadi watches him fly off. She mutters curses to herself in her dialect, unsure whether she should be angered or saddened by whatever could have happened in there.
-o-
Above, Apollo, Daniel, and Emily scale the floor. The three of them look around cautiously, Emily and Apollo in front of Daniel in their best attempts to avoid the need for the Hulk.
Emily looks at the windows, squinting her eyes at something coming their way. She points it out and the moment the unknown person from earlier comes crashing through the glass, she begins firing. To her surprise, each of her blasts was dodged without even the slightest graze.
Once the figure lands on his feet, Apollo whips his axe at him. As the weapon soars, the figure bends back. When the axe flies above him, he sticks a glowing rock on the blade part. Apollo's axe stops mid-air. Above, a portal with a border matching the light on the rock opens and his axe flies through.
As Emily lunges towards the figure, Apollo holds out his hand to summon his axe. To his surprise, it never comes.
"How -?!" Daniel asks.
"What trickery was that?!" Apollo screams.
-o-
James flies inside and follows the sound of Angela's voice. It's staggered, rushed, panicked. Based on that alone, he fears what he might see when he finds her. James flies through a doorway and grows back to his normal size when he sees it all: Angela, with her face flushed and eyes red. She's shaking as tears stream down her face, staining her cheeks. Her hands are covered in blood, pressing down on Xavier's torso.
"Oh my god…" James mutters, rushing over to help. "Babe, I got this, you can let go for a moment and take a breath."
Angela hesitates for a second before lifting her hands from the bullet wound. James immediately replaces her pressure with his. As he watches Xavier's unconscious breathing, he looks at Angela who doesn't wipe her bloody hands on her uniform because she just stares at Xavier. James can't even bring himself to think about what it'd be like to watch his twin get shot let alone be covered in his twin's blood.
-o-
Apollo, Daniel, and Emily return outside to Iqadi and Merida, who still hasn't woken up. The three of them report that whoever that was got away and Emily couldn't get a trace on who it was or where he was going, and that Apollo's axe mysteriously flew away to somewhere unknown and he can't call it back. Then, their eyes turn to James and Angela who come out of the building, James and Angela are carrying Xavier and she's keeping the pressure on the wound.
Suddenly, everyone's next movements are automatic: Daniel rushes over to Xavier while the rest of the quinjet. Apollo carries Merida on board and lays her down as Emily disassembles her suit and sits in the pilot's seat. As she starts the engine, Iqadi pulls out the first aid kit just in time for James, Angela, and Daniel to enter with Xavier.
"He's lost a lot of blood," Daniel says as they put Xavier down, "but thankfully he's still breathing."
Emily closes the quinjet and starts flying off as fast as she can. Daniel tears open the first aid kit and bandages the area before proceeding more for now. He hands sanitary wipes to Angela and James so they could wipe their hands clean from Xavier's blood.
"Where are we going?" Emily asks.
"Back to SHIELD?" Apollo guesses. "A hospital?"
"Those would be the worst places to go," James says.
Emily changes the route. "My place it is."
"He shot himself," Angela explains about Xavier, tears forming in her eyes again just saying those words. "I don't know how or why but the gun seemed to be rigged in some way like Merida's earpiece. He was about to kill me but he rebelled and took himself out instead."
As everyone calms down for a second, they catch their breaths as much as they can while still trying to digest all that information. At this point, even that is too much to ask for.
"Okay, so, that bastard - whoever or whatever the hell he was - got away," James says. "Could someone please explain what the hell is going on?!"
Iqadi looks at the ground. Her heart begins to swell as she turns her eyes white, rising up her arms. The night sky becomes darker than it already was as she fills it with thunderclouds and fog. Everyone looks at her with their hands hovering over their weapons as they wonder what she's doing, especially since they're currently flying in the air.
"Someone is taking you all down one-by-one and he won't rest until you're all taken care of," Iqadi states, purposely avoiding their eyes.
"Who?" Emily asks, scared of what the answer will be.
Iqadi looks at them, her eyes opaquely white. Lightning strikes in the sky above them as her expression becomes sharp and her hands turn into fists.
"I am," she admits.
[That last snippet was literally in one of the sneak peeks for this story].
