After the soldiers outside had gotten tired of shooting at Blob and being unable to kill or even harm him, the soldiers had gotten furious and decided to breach the side of the building with explosives, while others had cordoned off the area from curious onlookers. Blob did not move from the front door, and only when he felt the blast, did he sigh.
"Well, guess there's no point in standing in front of the door..." Blob remarked, calmly walking off the steps even as soldiers continued to frantically shoot at him. The bullets as, usual, didn't even ricochet, due to his capacity to absorb kinetic energy. He saw where they were going, and eventually just decided to start walking up to them, snatching their high caliber weapons away, and bent the barrels. More high-speed helicopters appeared, soldiers rappelling down to try and overwhelm the defenders. They then started trying to tackle and dogpile him, but Blob, calmly and carefully removed them, doing his best not to injure anyone.
Soldiers that successfully stormed the old shelter were greeted by a woman seemingly made of Diamond swiping her hand through rifles and breaking them in half, shoving soldiers into the walls, while Kurt indulged in acrobatics, kicking weapons out of the hands in jumps and flips in every direction, or even grabbing them out of hands with his unusually shaped feet. Teleporting soldiers back outside...three miles away in all directions. Some reappeared-on top of roofs utterly bewildered. or on the curb of streets. Or in shops, scaring customers in them. Mystique, well aware that she was indestructible in comparison to the people attacking her, did her best to move fast, to avoid getting in extended fights, never hitting anything more than a shoulder or thigh. Kurt himself had cautioned against killing anyone...the nature of their powers gave them such a physical advantage even a mild blow to somewhere vital could become fatal at worst, crippling at least.
Blob started gently tossing them as Mystique tossed them outside, where they started running away, realizing they were completely outmatched.
"THAT'S RIGHT! RUN AWAY, SCHWEIN!" Kurt yelled, the blue skinned, furry teenager shaking his fist like an angry old man at the fleeing ORCHIS soldiers. Mystique retaking her normal skinned form in her Emma Frost guise, flesh looking like she wore a skintight white catsuit.
He turned to her. "You and your large friend did good by us. But..."
"Yes?" Mystique asked.
"Why were you here to rescue me in particular?" Kurt wondered. "You didn't know about the Pipeline when you found us, that much is clear. But you knew about me...how?"
"Oh, Kurt..." Mystique said, face twisting in sorrow. "There's so much I have to tell you...I...I..."
"Yes?" Kurt asked.
Mystique was about to tell him the fiction she and Toad had come up with earlier, when she remembered Zarda's warning from earlier:
A relationship built on lies shall collapse on those same lies that were meant to hold it up.
"I was present the night you were born..." she said. "I knew your Mother. She and I...we're old enemies. I confess to you here and now, I attempted to kill her due to our disagreement about you."
Kurt stepped back hesitantly.
"I swear, Kurt, I'm not here to hurt you..." Mystique said. "I may not like your Mother, but that dislike doesn't extend to you. I...I tried to stop her. From giving you up the night you were born. I lost."
Kurt tried to process this.
"Why were you enemies?"
"Differences in morals..." Mystique answered. "But I am not your enemy, Kurt."
"What does it matter you what happens to me?" Kurt asked quietly, raising an eyebrow.
"Because...because I care about your fate, Kurt. I know I have no way of proving anything I have said to you, so I ask for a chance to prove my intentions," Mystique said.
Kurt narrowed his eyes, looking deeply troubled.
"I did not believe you were lying earlier when you said you were here to help us. I have no reason to disbelieve what you say now," he replied quietly, and carefully.
Then he pointed his finger at her almost accusingly. "I will continue to trust you for now, Fraulein...but make no mistake...I will have MANY questions for you once we are out of danger. You will answer ALL of them. So help me, if I catch even a whiff of dishonesty, I'll teleport you somewhere you will not like," he emphasized, glaring.
"Deal?"
"Deal," she replied just as carefully.
Kurt's face softened. "Very well then, Emma. Please follow me. Can your large friend join us?"
"Uh...I got something to do, folks..." Blob replied.
Mystique/Emma blinked. "Do? In Germany?"
"Yeah. Kind of important..." Blob answered, waving at them as he began to go down the street. "I'll catch up with you later..."
"Huh...that was odd..." Mystique noted.
"Where in the Ark of Noah is HE going?" Kurt wondered.
"We have no time to figure it out. I trust him to handle himself, Kurt," Mystique assured. "Let's go rejoin your friends..."
"Yes, let's," Kurt replied, nodding, running on all fours down to the lower basement, Mystique not far behind...
Just then, they felt a rumble, and all the lights they had restored to working condition inside flickered out and went dead. A minor glance at a window made Mystique realize other lights in other buildings had gone out...the streets silent, the sounds of cars gone...
...
Power Princess, Toad, Piotr, and Forge hastily moved the injured on some type of gurney Forge had built that hovered of its own accord down the long stretch of tunnels cleared out by a combination of Piotr's strength and other machine's Forge had built that led into the sewer system, cavernous and ancient in places. It was a very narrow convoy, and for every milestone, a strange purple force field sprang up behind that convoy, to block any attempts by those with purely human DNA to pass through (All the Human Volunteers had a wrist device that would let them pass through the field.). Forge had clearly taken no chances. Kurt had stayed behind to fend off the first wave while Piotr, the secondary guardian of the pipeline, was protecting the convoy itself, which had frantically taken all their most vital pieces of intelligence and burned the rest in their evacuation.
"We're making good time..." Forge promised as the convoy hurried through the sewer system, the injured and sick on their hover-gurney's protected by a device on their neck emitting the same type of purple force field as what kept turning on behind by the time the last rear members were through the checkpoint.
Forge stopped, his cybernetic eye scanning above him. "ORCHIS seems to have given up shooting at your giant buddy, Toad. They're trying to breach the side of the building now."
"Hurry Comrades, we have not one moment to waste!" the teenaged Piotr exclaimed going ahead, his steel skin and eyes gleaming even in the darkness, like his shiny but messy black metallic hair.
"Stick close, Rasputin!" Forge called out. "The unit lives and dies on cohesiveness!"
"Sir, yes sir!" Piotr replied, not wandering too far from the rest of the convoy keeping pace.
"I'll relax once we're in more open parts of the sewer..." Forge said to the others. "My SWA is hidden here. It can get you all into Site B, pretty handily."
But as they entered more cavernous sections of the sewer, where there was more room to maneuver, a blast ahead rocked the sewers slightly.
"Crap..." Forge snarled. "Stealth devices, all of you!"
Mutant and Human activist alike hit a button on the wrist device Forge had given them and a weak optical camouflage field enveloped each individual member. It didn't QUITE hide them, more like make them very, very translucent. But combined with the low level of light, they WERE practically invisible.
"You all know the drill. Head to the Evac site. I'll draw their fire. The strangers come with me," Forge instructed. "Piotr, we'll need you also..."
"Yes sir!" Piotr replied enthusiastically.
Forge signaled Toad and Power Princess to get behind a support pillar as he did.
Forge saw the Team of ORCHIS Soldiers file in with submachine guns with laser sights attached.
"ATTENTION MUTANTS AND MUTANT SYMPATHIZERS!" The Soldier leading the unit shouted. "YOU ARE ALL UNDER ARREST FOR TRAFFICKING! SURRENDER NOW, AND YOU WILL BE TREATED FAIRLY WITHIN REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS FOR PRISONERS!"
"And if we do not?" Piotr snapped, stepping out of cover. The very sight of Piotr made them step back, the high-tech combat monocles they wore giving them crazy readings.
"What will you do then?! We were helping people escape a brutal regime your western governments have used as a convenient enemy to have around for decades! It should have been YOU that the ones we are protecting turned to!" Piotr said angrily, clenching steel fists. "Instead, your masters waste millions of dollars funding these stupid search teams!"
Piotr rushed them before the lead soldier could call for his surrender, snatching the gun effortlessly from the Soldier's hand, while Forge fired a strange pink bolt of energy at another, freezing them in place while Piotr grabbed one by the leg and hurled him brutally into the others, making one double over by giving him relatively light tap to the abdomen, snatching three bullets out of the air fired at him a second later as Toad fired a glob of Mucus at a Soldier's feet, preventing them from moving properly while Power Princess sprinted into the large team at high speed, smashing and kicking weapons out of hands, but pointedly doing her absolute best to avoid actually hurting the soldiers, who were baffled by what seemed to be just a beautiful but ordinary woman in a cocktail dress effortlessly running circles around hardened veterans, but she possessed an impossible strength and speed, snatching weapons out of hands and dodging attacks rather than directly harm the soldiers, while Piotr acted in a very similar manner, making sure to move as fast as he could at all times to never give the enemy a static target, while making sure to never do worse than toss them lightly into their fellows.
Toad was the most acrobatic, his super long tongue moving as fast as his arms and legs did as he back flipped, somersaulted, cartwheeled, and rebound off walls to avoid attacks, all while using his tongue to snatch guns and knives out of hands. He didn't dare hit try directly hitting the soldiers with anything but globs of mucus at their feet, because he, as nearly everyone else, was aware at this point that a direct punch from someone with only mild superhuman strength was still more than capable of collapsing rib cages and liquifying organs, and NO ONE there was stupid enough to inflict serious, lasting injuries that couldn't be treated and recovered from relatively quickly. Killing any of them, even seriously injuring one, would just throw fuel on the fire and make the next response even more aggressive. The important thing was disarming them before they could hurt anyone not nearly as tough as the people attacking them. Forge kept firing at reinforcements, freezing them in place on a neurological level, adjusting the setting on his pistol to deliver a wide dispersal wave of pink energy that caught multiple reinforcements at once. Power Princess tossed them aside to get glued nonlethally to the floor by Toad and his mucus. Soon, every soldier had been neutralized, and left relatively intact or unharmed save a bruised rib or two and were glued to the floor. Forge took a smoke grenade out of his army fatigue jacket and popped it, tossing it while signaling to the others to follow him...
"They send more and more every time..." Forge grumbled as they left the successfully routed but still alive team. "It's actually a rather practical approach, in truth...just throw enough men and bullets at a problem, and eventually, someone goes down...It helps that they're often armed with M60's and Shotguns..."
"What do they do to Mutants they capture?" Toad asked as they ran for their lives or hopped, in his case.
"They keep them in special cells until they want to study them. Then they perform all sorts of invasive procedures on you. Sometimes they even make you fight other mutants just to collect data," Forge answered grimly as he led them down a particularly narrow passage, tapping a few particular bricks in a sequence, causing a section of the sewer wall to split open and they went down it, the wall closing behind them as they did.
"Krasnya Komnata had a similar set up..." Piotr grimaced as he ran with them. Power Princess winced as she felt the waves of emotional pain from him. "They would not feed you until you fought and learned the lessons. They try to break you. ORCHIS is no different."
Soon, they reached a cleared-out section of the sewer that led to the run-off. The smell was horrendous. Everyone that had fled with them was waiting, and at the center of the chamber, a strange arch of metal, connected to various steel cables hooked to a computer console. They all looked extremely frightened. Toad realized it wasn't the first time they had bailed out like this.
"Everyone, get ready! I'm activating the SWA in a few minutes!"
"SWA?" Princess asked.
"Spatial Warping Arch. It folds space, allowing you to transition seamlessly from one location to another," Forge answered as he headed over to the machine.
"You built this?" Power Princess asked of Forge as he began to tune his machine, clearly impressed. "What is your mutation? Superior Intelligence?"
"Technically. It's...complicated..." Forge answered as he ran checks on the machine. "I built it, but I honestly don't know how it works. At all. I'd have to take it apart to know. And I still need to gather the actual materials necessary."
"How can you build something when you don't know how?" Toad wondered.
Forge shrugged as he completed checks. "I think I do all the complex stuff unconsciously when I put it together. Like I'm in a trance or something."
"How come these people aren't afraid of you?" Toad questioned in a half accusing manner, remembering the earlier reaction Forge and the others had expressed at the fact 'Emma' was a shapeshifter and intent on directly calling Forge out. "I mean, being able to invent science fiction devices outta anything with the right materials-like, say, a Gamma Bomb, for instance...that sounds a whole lot scarier than shapeshifting..."
"These people know what it takes to kill me. Any one of them could pull it off," Forge scoffed as he calibrated final coordinate checks "But a shapeshifter, a real, genuine shapeshifter that can not only alter its appearance, but probably other aspects of its DNA? Your best chance if you are not exactly like it, or you don't have a nuke...is to slow it down and then run..."
The machine hummed to life.
"You couldn't ask me and the others to NOT see the horrible threat that thing you're traveling with poses, and when even the rest of my friends, who are not all that skilled at science can put two and two together the way I did, and actively URGE ME to pull the trigger...?"
He shrugged as red electricity crackled on the archway.
"You're very, very lucky Kurt was with you...and that me and the others trust him that much..." Forge finished dismissively to Toad. "Count your blessings, kid..."
"That thing you call Emma is going to be a huge problem down the road. Mark my words..." Piotr agreed, folding his arms.
Just then the machine shut off, sparks erupting from the console. "What is wrong, Forge?" Piotr asked.
"DAMMIT!" Forge snapped, as he pulled out a strange, multicolored handheld scanning device and ran it over. "Bastards brought some sort of EMP device...my God, they blacked out Friedrichstrasse..."
There was a pounding on the sewer wall above them.
"I'm gonna need a couple of moments to reboot it. Go and investigate where that pounding is coming from!" Forge ordered Toad and Power Princess. "Everyone else, get close to me!"
"Gotcha!" Toad said as the other human volunteers and mutants gathered around Forge, some trying to assist him in fixing the machine.
"I sense...something feral..." Zarda said as her black stilettos clicked on the sewer floor as she followed Toad. "Maddened by torments long before you drew breath."
"So, does this 'Something Feral' got anything like a bazooka or death ray?" Toad wondered.
"No..." Zarda trailed, frowning as she focused on the spot in the sewer ceiling where the pounding got closer and closer.
"Then what?" Toad asked, growing more nervous as the pounding sound began to genuinely rattle the area near it.
"Something more practical at the ranges it will fight us..." Zarda trailed as a lone figure burst from the ceiling, spreading dust and debris everywhere and making them back away.
Piotr had both his fists up, but he was still a teenager. He had already run into one Mutant who could turn herself into diamond. And he had only met a handful of Mutants who could punch through streets like he could.
He was dressed in mostly black armor with exposed arms wearing thick, armored gloves that stopped just under the elbow. The chest portion was a dark blue color that terminated above where the navel should be, before it became black like the rest of the armor. His mask was bizarre, and seemed to have a wide sort of facial shielding that covered the sides of the face and all of the nose and terminated upward in a flat, yet curving, horn like manner. The lenses of his mask were a dark red color and his mouth was exposed, giving away tan skin, thin lips, and a jaw covered by blonde stubble.
The man stood up, Toad gulping as he was slightly taller than Zarda, and was built like a champion weightlifter.
"Lotta runts here..." the man grunted, sniffing them. "Some genuinely strange scents too...like yours, lady..." he muttered, glaring at Zarda.
"I'm from out of town," Zarda replied, hands going to her hips.
"Figured..." the man grunted before looking at where the others were.
"Forge! Come on out!" the man barked.
Forge turned pale as he heard the voice, looked up and saw the man himself.
"Get this machine working..." he whispered to one of the Human volunteers, handing him the strange scanner. "I'll buy you as much time as I can. Use this to effect repairs. Do exactly what the display tells you to do. And work fast. This is gonna be bad."
He stood up, walked slowly forward, drawing his high-tech pistol and pointing it at the man.
"Been a long time..." Forge said. "I thought you died at Khe Sahn..."
"Would have been better if I had...for both of us..." the man replied, staring at Forge's limbs. "Though you didn't come out of that one looking like a spring chicken either..."
"You're with ORCHIS?" Forge asked, not taking his aim off the man's skull.
"Afraid so, Forge. Nothing personal, really. But ORCHIS...made me an offer I couldn't refuse..."
"You must know what they put their Mutant captives through," Forge accused.
"I do."
"Then WHY?!" Forge demanded.
"Don't be naive, Forge," the man grunted, seemingly ignoring Toad and Zarda. "You know I've always hated it. Being a Mutant...and I'm sure some of your friends hate it too. Look at us! Forced to spend our lives in shame and in hiding, fearing the lynch mobs of our nightmares..."
The man stepped forward.
"Look at your friends! Look at how unlucky they are, how deformed! Look at how the X-Gene ruined their lives," he snapped, gesturing to them. "Look at how it's ruined your life! Spending your days on the run from every last major government of note! " The man seethed.
"ORCHIS tortures our kind, and you're helping them! You've gone insane!" Forge accused. Toad and Power Princess slowly backed away.
"I cannot spend the rest of my life like this," the man said quietly, clenching his fists, his mouth curling into an open snarl that bared his sharp, canine fangs. Toad gulped as he beheld them. Whatever the X-Gene had done to him must have driven him over the edge, Toad realized.
"Constantly being reminded...every time I stare in a mirror..." the man snarled bitterly.
"You would condemn innocent people just to be free of the X-Gene? I got free way out right here, collaborator," Forge growled, leveling the pistol right at his foe's head.
"All you had to do was ask..."
"They asked me to make an offer. They want you alive. It's because I know you, that they are willing to make...concessions...if you surrender to me..." the Man began.
The man pointed at the arch. "You're not getting out of Germany, Forge. ORCHIS is tired of chasing you. SHIELD is tired of chasing you. Your ability makes you a threat to global security. They'll kill you if you won't see reason, just to make sure the Chinese and Russians or whoever else doesn't get you."
"I surrender to you, I'll be a slave forever, and everyone I'm trying to protect will never see the light of day again," Forge snapped.
"Not necessarily..." the man began. "ORCHIS can make your...stay...comfortable...all you have to do is help us invent equipment to counter superhuman abilities, and they would be willing to grant you MANY concessions..."
"Never!" Forge snapped, aim rock steady. "I'll just be helping slay my own kind! And then when there are no more, I'll be slain too!"
"Society won't survive the shock of Mutant existence being revealed with no way to counter it..." the Man criticized. "Even if the majority of us are weak freaks who don't have a higher goal than flipping burgers, it's the ones like you and me that will be the real problem to them."
"You're not even willing to try accepting what you are, yet you think you're fit to decide if we can remain mutants!" Toad finally spoke up in an indignant manner. "You got such a problem being a mutant? Why the hell do the rest of us gotta suffer?"
"It's not personal, kid, honest..." the man said. "But our kind is just too dangerous to let roam with no checks in place. ORCHIS doesn't want to kill Mutant's. ORCHIS doesn't even want to strip all Mutants of their powers. Genocide isn't practical OR fashionable anymore for the West unless it is FAR outta the public eye. Korea and Vietnam taught us that. We just want to shut down and remove the X-Gene for the people that no other, practical countermeasure could be used against."
"I saw Mutants killed in their facilities. Some from being pitted against other mutants!" Forge snapped. "Every ORCHIS bastard I ever met thought they were entitled to decide the fate of those they had in their clutches."
"A few are inevitably going to die. But only because they're so in love with the idea of their powers, of how it makes them superior, that eventually it'll override their common sense. Power without Consequence, without Responsibility, all because of a quirk in genetics..." The man sneered back at Forge.
"The ones who have the power to back up that viewpoint will inevitably set themselves up as Gods," the man continued as he took a step closer, making them all tense, especially Zarda, who sensed that the source of all his rage is intense self-loathing. "Ruling their little fiefdoms, proclaiming Humanity should step aside for their betters. It'll be The Red Skull all over again. Except this time, you'll need a lot more than Captain America and me to stop the Mutant Pretenders to his goals."
The man held out his hand. "Give me the Pistol, Forge."
"It NEVER stops at just a few. You've dishonored yourself. Thrown your lot in with butchers just because you can't stand looking exactly like your father under that mask," Forge dismissed. "It shouldn't be up to ORCHIS which Mutants get to keep their powers, and who doesn't. Why should THEY get to decide if we live or die?"
"Someone has to. Most Mutants won't be objective about it. They'll inevitably think they can have their cake and eat it too. That they can just FORCE their existence on Society, and Society will just have to sit there and take it like good, modern, tolerant humans do," The man said firmly, sizing up all his immediate opponents, preparing for the fight. "Have you never asked yourself just WHY an ordinary person should be forced to accept a man who can create earthquakes that register ten point zero on the Richter Scale living next to him? With no means of stopping him should he just one day decide everyone around him has to die?"
Forge didn't answer back. The man took a step forward.
"Why should ordinary people tolerate someone who can invade their minds whenever they want? Or someone like me, who can't be put down with Assault Rifles? What if it was just somebody like ME, Forge, who decided he wanted to rip open everybody in a Super Mall? Everybody in that mall who couldn't get out in time would die. And so would the first responders AND SWAT."
Forge didn't answer except to say; "Don't make me do this. You were a brother in arms, once."
"That's why I'm here, trying to convince you and these others to surrender before ORCHIS becomes more willing to resort to even harsher methods to capture you. I'll make SURE you and the rest get treated fairly. Even by their OWN admission, you've played it very smart, Forge, not killing or maiming any of their operatives. That's why they've decided to try Negotiation," The masked man replied quietly. "All you gotta do is drop your weapon..."
"You know we can't do that," Power Princess responded angrily. "This is insanity! You're hunting your own kind for an empty hope, twisted by hatred! There is no cure for Mutation! You should just accept it. Stop listening to ORCHIS, please!"
The masked man shook his head. "No. None of us deserve these abilities. We could destroy the world if we roam free."
Forge fired; this beam was at full strength, slamming the man backward, the beam penetrating through his armored body completely.
He hit one end of the chamber, slumping to the ground.
"You left me no choice. I'm sorry," Forge said in a quiet voice, his face twisted into a sad grimace.
"So am I..." The Masked Man said back, steam escaping his mouth. To everyone's horror, the wound had already sealed up.
Forge gestured for everyone to get back as the man rose.
"I always wondered if you could survive heart shots..." Forge muttered.
"Remember my old callsign in the Unit?" The man growled at Forge; teeth bared as he stalked towards them.
"Yeah, I remember it," Forge grunted back, retreating from his advance.
"Good, because that's what you've just brought down on you..." the man snarled, sharp, bone claws extending from the tips of his fingers and thumbs by an inch and a half.
"We tried to do this the easy way, the Graydon Creed Way...now? Now we do things the Wolverine Way!" Wolverine snarled, leaping for Forge in a feral manner, swiping for his face. Forge barely rolled to the side and fired, but Wolverine had already dodged it and he sprinted towards Forge again, this time successfully tackling him.
Forge's mechanical arm could handle the superhuman strength from Wolverine best, but his organic arm got scratched badly. Zarda tried to tackle him, but Wolverine seized her by the throat and violently slammed her into the floor with a brutal toss, only for Toad's tongue to wrap around his arm and fling him away. Toad didn't dare hold onto him any longer than he had to. Forge's organic arm had gotten cut pretty badly. One good slash and with all the blood and muscle tissue required to move his tongue the way it did, he'd likely bleed out in minutes from any damage Wolverine could do. He fired Mucus where Wolverine landed, and the Mutant snarled as he struggled to free himself from the Mucus that was already setting like industrial glue.
He snarled his super sharp claws already tearing away at it when Piotr rushed him.
"Hey, Rosomakha!" Piotr yelled as his steel-colored fist went flying at Wolverine's skull.
"The Koloss says Iz Rossi s lyubov'yu!" Piotr snapped as his fist punched Wolverine hard into a wall of the chamber, making even more of an extreme crater than Forge's pistol had.
Piotr only glared as Wolverine got up, growling.
"YOU WANT A PIECE OF KID COLOSSUS! BRING IT! I'LL SEND YOU TO THE BIG SCRATCHING POST IN THE SKY, ROSOMAKHA!" Kid Colossus bellowed as he and Wolverine charged each other, no mercy shown as claw tried to find something soft enough to tear, and hyperdense knuckles tried to pound a brain hard enough that it wouldn't heal, sparks flying from bone claws meeting steel skin and blood specks flying from a jaw healing as fast as it was dislocated, from bones healing as fast as they were shattered. Kid Colossus actually had to resort to clenching both his fists together to stun Wolverine for more than a few seconds, while Wolverine seemed to become stronger, the angrier he seemed to get, but Kid Colossus fought just as brutally to keep up, aided by Forge grabbing his pistol and shooting Wolverine while Zarda tackled him, punching him repeatedly.
"Your truly horrific self-hatred is doing NOTHING but making you a threat to your own people!" Zarda yelled at him, trying to restrain him.
"I'm the only one who wants to give them a normal life..." Wolverine snapped, getting free and clawing her face.
Even he stood back a bit, staring as her scratched face, yielded neither blood nor muscle, but gray clay with veins of glowing gold running through it...
"What the hell?" Wolverine snapped, before lunging at her again. But this time she was ready, lifting him up with a pink field of energy and violently slamming him into the floor repeatedly until he stopped moving...and then brutally slamming him a few more times just to be sure before releasing him.
Wolverine POUNCED as soon as she released her telekinetic grip, slashing brutally with his claws, gobs of wet looking clay going everywhere as Zarda was attacked. Even Forge's pistol shots didn't seem to be doing anything. Wolverine was in the grip of some sort of terrifying rage spreading Zarda's clay everywhere in the chamber as he kept slashing and slashing, roaring like a beast from the blackest depths of hell...
Kid Colossus rushed Wolverine but this time he was ready, back flipping over Piotr and getting him in a headlock, cutting off the boy's air supply as Piotr struggled viciously to free himself though he was starting to lose consciousness...
Toad fired a MASSIVE ball of Mucus, at Wolverine's face. a split second later launching his tongue at Piotr's legs, yanking Kid Colossus out of Wolverine's grasp just as the massive ball of mucus hit his face. Wolverine was instantly, frantically clawing at the substance, but Toad fired another large ball of Mucus at Wolverine's feet, then one at both arms, before collapsing himself at the strain of burning through his internal reservoir. Wolverine kept savagely clawing but because the mucus was already somewhat drying out, all he was doing was spreading it, and he couldn't even move due to his feet being glued to the floor.
Forge cranked up the pistol to max damage and disabled its safety settings. The beam that shot out blasted Wolverine right through the wall and kept going, collapsing the hole he made behind him. The pistol smoked, caught fire, and Forge quickly tossed it, watching it explode violently into a million, unrecoverable fragments, just as it was designed to prevent forensic reconstruction and reverse engineering.
"Is he dead, Forge?" Piotr asked Forge, coughing.
"Not even close. His mutation has gotten stronger..." Forge noted, clutching his injured arm. "He would have only been able to take a quarter of that kind of punishment back in the old days. But however strong he is now, even he will need a while to dig himself out of the rubble."
Forge frowned. "The increased regenerative ability has made him reckless. The old him would have been much more calculating..."
Forge's frown took on a sad countenance.
"Tet Offensive was when he broke. Poor guy started to hallucinate seeing some guy called 'Sabretooth' everywhere. Probably his father, or something..." Forge muttered, before turning to the other mutants and humans who had been frantically conducting repairs as the fight had gone on.
"You're injured..." Piotr pointed out.
"I'll live..." Forge replied, fishing a case out of his fatigue's pocket, pulling a small syringe with a glowing blue liquid in it, injecting it into his neck and the wounds started immediately closing.
"Sitrep." he barked.
"We're done! It's good!" the human man who had been given the scanner shouted.
"I'll be there in a sec..." he breathed as he remembered Power Princess getting slashed up.
He then turned to Zarda, her entire body warping and shuddering unnaturally as all the clay Wolverine had clawed from her body flung itself back into her, her face sealing up bloodless wounds until she was as immaculate as she had been before the fight started.
"That's Asgardian Tech..." Forge said in shock, stepping back as he looked at Toad, who had just barely started to recover.
"I was wrong, kid. You ain't working for ORCHIS at all. What the hell are you mixed up in?"
"It's a long story. I told you, I'm with Natisk," Toad answered, looking at Piotr. "You okay, Piotr?"
"I will live, Comrade," Kid Colossus breathed as Forge hurried to the machine. "ORCHIS seems to have stepped up their game, Forge..."
"They have. I can only imagine what chaos they caused above," Forge said grimly. "My God, an EMP of that size, just to catch us..."
"You sure it was them?" Zarda asked.
"ORCHIS has had it in for me for a while. They know I could help them hunt my kind more efficiently. It seems it's gotten to the point they'd even use old friends to get to me and Kurt...AND Piotr..." Forge answered as he repowered the machine, entered its coordinates, and red lightning traveled across the surface of the arch device before a warping effect in the air of some sort appeared in the space beneath the arch.
"I've set the coordinates for the Morlock Tunnels in Austin..." Forge said. "They won't be expecting you. The Coordinator of the Tunnels there is a Mutant named Caliban. Show him this," Forge said, reaching into his jacket and tossing Zarda a war medal.
"A Bronze Star..." Zarda said quietly, examining it.
"Once you do, recite the code phrase; 'Greetings from Wyndam's Gardens.' He'll know you're friendly..." Forge added. "Now go!"
"I'm guessing the entire pipeline in Western Germany is at risk," Forge said as he entered additional commands into the strange monitor. "All of you go on ahead without me, I have a different destination...and I gotta make sure ORCHIS can't salvage this device..."
"Where are you going?" Toad asked.
"If Natisk needs to find me, tell him I'm consulting Doctor Wyndham..." Forge said to Toad and Zarda as the others started going through the warp in the arch...just as Kurt opened the secret entrance to the chamber everyone had originally come through with Mystique following close behind.
"Forge! Man, I'm so sorry! They freaking swarmed us up there!" Kurt exclaimed.
"No time to talk Kurt! You and Piotr are heading with our guests to Austin, Texas!" Forge said firmly. "Get in the warp."
"Got it!" Kurt replied, following the others.
Toad jumped into the warp also...
Forge took out a small, hand built silver remote, hitting a series of buttons to start the countdown.
Just then, Wolverine finally managed to burst through the debris with a bestial roar.
Forge's eyes widened. He raised his mechanical arm, and it split apart in an orderly manner, reforming and reconfiguring into some type of energy cannon.
Wolverine squinted at Forge as the cannon was leveled at him, with Forge pulling out a Bowie Knife from the confines of his upper fatigues.
"I always knew you were holding out. I always knew..." Wolverine muttered.
"Do you still see him, Creed?" Forge asked.
"I! WILL! NOT! DIE! LOOKING LIKE! SABRETOOTH!" Wolverine bellowed, sprinting at Forge on all fours like a cheetah.
The blasts from Forge's arm cannon leveled the ground in from of him and any part of the chamber it hit, which started to collapse from the already severe structural damage as. Terrible, pulsing orbs of red escaped out of the mouth of the cannon, but Wolverine was ready, evading it all as he again pounced on Forge.
Bone claws glanced off cyborg metal and cold knife steel, leaving hair line gouges with each slash. His arm cannon was soon disabled, and he resorted to using it like a club, battering Wolverine with it repeatedly, slashing at him also, But Wolverine was recovering from injuries faster and faster, and Forge's blood went cold when he realized Wolverine was slipping back into that enraged, psychotic state that had so badly damaged that Asgardian Construct...
Forge was under no illusions of his current chances against Graydon. Even with his cybernetic enhancements, Graydon Creed was just BETTER, even without the enhanced regeneration. Forge was exhausted, older than Graydon's seeming perpetual youth and hadn't seen regular combat on a daily basis in years. Either he escaped Wolverine NOW, while he still could, or he'd be turned into sliced ham by the deranged bastard.
Thirty seconds left before the machine detonated. Forge threw all he had into clubbing the increasingly enraged enemy Mutant to the floor, beating him mercilessly, until he himself was exhausted and Wolverine had been smashed repeatedly into the floor again, before he was running for his life...
He could hear the snarling man starting to recover already from the incredibly savage beating. Three seconds left.
Forge leapt into the warp just as time ran out, Graydon's claw swipe just a centimeter from reaching the lower half of Forge's spine before he made it to the warp.
The machine exploded, and Graydon was buried alive in the collapsing chamber.
...
Zarda, Mystique, Piotr, Kurt and the other arrived in dimly lit tunnels with evidence of air conditioning given the cool draft that hit them and found dozens and dozens of AR-15's trained on them by various Mutants, most quite ugly and malformed. One particularly almost gargoyle like mutant with pale skin tone and an almost saurian profile with yellow eyes, covered in large, ragged clothes.
"Are you Caliban?" Zarda asked, stepping forward.
"Who wants to know?" the gargoyle like Mutant asked.
Zard held up Forge's Bronze Star. "Greetings from Wyndham's Gardens," Zarda said calmly.
The Gargoyle like Mutant stepped forward.
"I'm Caliban. Forge sent you, huh? Never seen you before," he growled, looking the gorgeous yet completely out of place Zarda over, getting an instinctive unease around her for reasons he couldn't explain. But she didn't feel like a Mutant to him.
"They're legit, Caliban..." Kurt spoke up.
"Totally!" Piotr agreed.
"Sure..." Caliban said, thick, clawed fingers taking the War Medal.
"But you two being here to vouch for her puts me at ease."
"Hey..." one of the Human Volunteers who had escaped with them said. "We're short one..."
Everyone looked around. With a start, they realized Toad was missing.
"Where's Toad?!" Mystique asked in a quiet panic. "God, I was supposed to be watching out for him!"
...
Toad did not appear in a tunnel like he expected. He leapt out instead to what looked like the crumbling ruins of an ancient castle. He was at the top of a tower, seeing the Black Forest of Germany all around him, including the Danube River in the distance.
"Hello, Mortimer."
Toad spun around, and spotted Loki, with her hair a brilliant white color, yet still completely youthful in every other respect, standing, clutching her spear.
"Loki?" Toad asked softly. "What's up?"
"Do you still have that spear tip I gave you?" Loki asked.
Toad fished it out of his pocket, accidentally cutting his thumb in the process.
When that happened, strange green cracks of light appeared across the entire surface of the floor.
"What's going on?" Toad asked, realizing there was still blood on the spear tip he moved to wipe it off, only for Loki to rush forward and grab his wrist firmly, but not enough to hurt him.
"I'm sorry Mortimer. But I'm afraid you can't wipe that off just yet. It's essential to the ritual..."
"Huh?" Toad asked.
"Within these ruins, is something very special..." Future Loki said. "A window, in this reality..."
"Window in reality?" Toad repeated.
Loki frowned.
"Much was sacrificed to give this universe a fighting chance. Many will never know the silent efforts of countless heroes who gave up everything to make sure this reality didn't turn into one of countless trash fires littering the Multiverse like untreated bedsores," Loki explained. "The only truth of this sacrifice is hidden here, where the last remaining part of the truth simultaneously must and must not exist..." Loki explained...
"You lost me," Toad sheepishly admitted.
"Within this Castle, the last window to what this reality originally was and originally would have ended as, is still here. A Schrödinger's Sub-Reality. Where it is ending and beginning and where you must now venture," Loki answered. "When you see, you will understand why things were done the way they were...and why they must be done again, even though its already happened and never occurred at all and is happening and not happening."
"This is one of those Absolute Point things you were talking about, isn't it?" Toad asked in suspicion.
Loki only smiled.
"My, My, even so close to my Prophesied End, you continue to surprise me..." she admitted. "You really are one of the most perceptive versions of you in all the Multiverse, Mortimer. Let's see how well that serves you going forward."
"Prophesied End?!" Mortimer exclaimed before it clicked.
"You're gonna die!" Toad said in horror.
Loki nodded. "Within seventy-two hours on my end of things by my estimate. Tying up loose ends."
"You're from the future!" he said as the realizations hit faster and faster. "How far into the future?"
"Thirty Thousand of your years. After my death, time travel by anybody from past the thirty-thousand-year mark becomes nearly impossible for anyone, and then traveling only to fixed points backwards, with no way forwards..." she said.
"Why?" Toad asked.
"Because it was an Absolute Point that it be so..." Loki answered. "That's as much as I dare to tell you on that particular subject for now..."
An ancient, broken open wooden door swung open.
Loki escorted Toad down an ancient stone staircase.
"What do I do once I'm on the other end of this window?" he asked her.
"Follow the instructions of who you meet," she said as they reached the bottom of a grand chamber, full of old tapestries, rotted furniture. In the old ruins, Toad spotted a glowing green light coming from a crack in the middle of the floor, little green striations of light spreading out across the floor from it.
"The Spear tip..." Loki gestured. "Grasp it and jam the point into the light."
Toad took the spear and approached, hesitantly, he turned, glanced at Loki.
"Good luck, Mortimer," Loki said sincerely.
Toad nodded and without fanfare, jammed the spear tip into the crack...
The world flashed green around him, and Toad stood up, surrounded by runes that glowed green...and a badly damaged military facility around them. He saw the broken sign labeled TRISKELION, LEVEL 7 in large black font on a concrete barrier and spotted a figure sitting on a makeshift throne of debris close by, surrounded by shadows. He saw the profile, saw her clutching a spear.
"Loki?" Toad called out hesitantly.
The figure leaned forward, and Toad was taken aback by the figure in the long, dark green gown, wizened and elderly, with long flowing golden hair.
"Yes, Portent of the New Future. I am Loki. Custodian of the new future. Welcome to the end of the old one."
"Old Future?"
"This reality you are is in a state of simultaneously existing and not existing...while being in a technical loop of Causality," Old Loki answered. "It was the world the reality as you know it was originally like, on its way to becoming a dead end like so many others. Until a few especially determined sorts chose to break the rules so hard that the Reality you are currently in had no choice but to become what you knew on your end, whatever it was."
Old Loki seemed to glower. "Tell me, young man...your reality? Does it look anywhere near as hopeless as the wreckage you see around you?"
Toad shook his head. "It's the eighties, where I am. Soviet Union is dying. Nobody knows what comes next after that. Mutants are still in hiding because the public doesn't know about us. But it's not hopeless..."
Old Loki sighed.
"Then it wasn't for nothing..." she said. "I think hearing that from you is what helps me endure this..."
"Huh?" Toad grunted.
"Dear Boy..." she said patiently with a small, weak smile. "By your perspective, you will only undergo this ordeal once. But due to the nature of what I did, I am forced to relive these moments with you for eternity. I never remember the beginning or end of the cycle. To me, it's like meeting you for the first time. I have no idea how long I have been reliving the end of this reality. This could be the first time we have ever talked, or the millionth."
"But why go to such lengths to rewrite reality, or whatever you did?" Toad asked, raising an eyebrow.
Old Loki smiled and rose from her throne.
"Walk with me...and you will see how often the Multiverse is unfair to its heroes..." she trailed.
Toad hopped alongside Loki as she slowly strode the ruins...