ataraxionlogs | EVENT: DUPRR ▒ THE SECONDARY SHUTTLE BAY

[ Negative finding elicits no reaction -- certainly nothing like surprise. Erik’s left eye reflects probing lights like a spider’s egg in his skull, stark white against the grisly mangle of the rest of him. He isn’t carrying a flashlight of his own.

He smells like warm iron and oil and death, hair curled stiff with blood, everything tainted with shades of muddy, visceral red. Their latest mess is still drying in his sleeves, greasy ichor smeared dark over plate armor and the prow of his nose.

If he’s injured, it’s impossible to tell at a glance. He isn’t limping.

He hasn’t said much either, all but stone silent since the walls started moving.

A low pulse marks liftoff when he opens his hands out to rise from the floor, barely audible to human ears, distinct for those who know it. It maintains as a warping bass thrum, tangible in boot shanks and axes and iron fillings. He holds at ten feet or so, squinting into the dark, passively aware of however many bits and pieces of DUPRR glistening in what little light there is. ]

[There are a couple scales skinned off Mystique's hip, and a knick scabbing over on the back of her right leg. She's been done bleeding for hours now, thanks to the concerted effort of both nanotechnology and her mutant DNA. Assuming the physics of mutant DNA work within her the same in this world as the other.

Of course, then she looks out into the corpse-strewn hangar, where 'corpse' is a rather generous term for the impoverished slurry of pieces and fluids scattered over the stretch of concrete floor. Mystique doesn't sway on her feet, her balance easy, but there's something slightly a little bit overkill, almost hypertonic about every little move she makes, her head slightly too brisk when she turns to look at the left, the jerk of her elbow too much when she tightens her grip on her knife.

She does have her knife back. It doesn't make her feel better.

Mystique doesn't think she's going into shock or anything, but her imagination freezes up on her when she tries to think of a voice to mimic, in calling out. She blinks hard, then defaults to glancing at Johanna, some of whose blood covering has been of slightly less ambiguous origin than Erik's. Charles can hear her thoughts sputter and start. Best to have walls at their backs. (And this one unbidden, not specifically conscious: Best not to be here at all, really.)]

[Johanna's axe thuds, heavy, against the floor. She leans her weight on it, her arm braced out straight. It might look casual, at first glance, but tension keeps her spine otherwise straight, her arm tense, her grip tight, still tight from her compulsive grab after the axe's sudden pulse from Erik's flight.]

Wow.

[She doesn't even try to whisper. Her voice echoes, muffled only a little by the organic drape of flesh strewn around. Corpses, blood, thick and viscous remains--the smell of it is thick in her nose. Or maybe that's her own blood that she's smelling, smeared all over her face, plastering the front of her shirt to her chest like a second skin. There's a chunk out of her left calf. She shifts her weight to make up for its twinge, her only admission a quick grimace, that she turns into a grin. All teeth. See? Fine.]

Well, shit. Somebody beat us to it.

[She shifts her foot forward, dragging it through pulpy something. Scalp, possibly. With a dispassion born from having seen all of this already, Johanna looks up at the room at large--a quick scan of her teammates, and then beyond them. No sound, no movement. Nothing.

Shit, she thinks. Genuine disappointment.

Decisively, she sticks two fingers in her mouth, and gives a piercing whistle.]

Hey! Anyone around?

[ The clang and the shouting make Fenris twitch in on himself, shoulders bowing tighter and bare feet curling down into the floor—into something that squishes up between his toes. He doesn't step out of it. He's already speckled with blood, red turned black against the shifting blue-white glow of his skin. He hasn't been fully solid in hours. Days. It's hard to tell. ]

Quiet, [ he says from his place at the back of the herd, even and irritable. He doesn't expect to be listened to, doesn't even look at Johanna, busy reloading his gun while there's a moment to do it. When that's done and the hangar is still quiet, he relaxes just enough for his brands to go dark.

When he looks up at Erik, his eyes glint in the dark like a cat's. It's no secret that he can see in the dark. It's even less of a secret that he's watching them—the mutants, the reaver—with as much wariness as he's watching for monsters. If anyone is still alive, they're staying that way. ]

[There's a long lull of silence after Johanna's piercing whistle, the uneasy weight of it smothering and thick in the huge space. A heartbeat, two. Perhaps the shuttle bay really is empty after all, any souls that had been here long departed.

There's a clatter, somewhere in the darkness. Distant. Far away.

A breath, and another bang, something knocked over in haste, closer. Faded sounds grow clearer out of the gloom: wet, guttural noises. Snarls. The recognisable sound of feet hitting the floor, clumsy and uneven.

Running.

There's no more warning before they're on them, launching out of the darkness with no break in momentum, no pause to weigh or understand foe. Rage pulses in black veins splintering across their faces, hands, the snatches of skin visible through tears in their clothes. Angry, insensate screams erupt out of entirely human throats as they leap at the nearest body, teeth bared, clawing at flesh, throats, eyes, no aim in choice of target.

More follow behind them, too many to count as they explode out of the dark, a hoard ready to swarm the group, beat them to the ground.]

[ The nearest body is Fenris', by design: he steps forward to meet them, still a close-range fighter by instinct no matter how good he's gotten with a firearm. Create a chokepoint, give the ranged fighters space to breathe and strategize. Old tactics. Fenris only has time for two rapid head shots—one accurate, one not so much—before they reach him. He goes down easily, head tucked and arm curled around it to protect his face and neck.

He isn't suicidal. His companions have probably seen this trick already. He's half ghost again before he disappears under the swarm, and he only tolerates a few scratches and bites to his back before he braces both hands against the floor and lets the magic burned into his skin tear loose of it. The flare of energy is bright like a sunburst, if sunbursts were ice-cold and packed a punch. Everything within a six-meter circumference flies or stumbles falls away from him.

When he's back on his feet, with four tears in the back of his jumpsuit that he is blaming Johanna for entirely, Fenris drags the nearest one up off the ground and shoves his fist up through the underside of its jaw and into its skull. ]

Fuck sake.

[ --is muttered at the first sound of enemy activity moments after Johanna's ice breaking, but he doesn't bother in cutting an admonishing look aside. Philosophically speaking, this might have happened anyway.

Backpedaling away from taking point as Fenris surges forward, Charles levels gun, and manages not to drop the thing when the end of flashlight catches one of the horrifying faces in its ray, singled out, glancing over the heads of the hoard. He shoots more out of impulse than cold calculation, the monster slipping out of view when the bullet's path sinks into and shatters ridge of eye socket.

His instinct to stay in psychic range of the group trumps the more hysterical desire to run away, but one head shot does not instil in him confidence to fire wildly. There could be allies in the darkness beyond. Any one of his companions could push in front of him at the wrong moment, or he could be jostled and make a mistake, and that indecision paralyses his hands for a few crucial seconds.

Enough for one of them to get close, taking a swipe, a clawing grab at his arm, and he manages to bury gun into its stomach and pull the trigger once, and once more, a noise startled rough from his throat. ]

[ It would follow that Johanna is the first to speak above a whisper. Erik turns his head after her at the sound of her voice, the overall impression of him distinct despite the darkness. Hoe don’t do it.

She whistles.

His eyes roll back to the fore, away from knives and glinting eyes and guns. Oh my god.

The sound of slapping feet and snarling is enough. He splays his hands and one of the secondary bay’s shuttles tears itself apart, armored hull erupting outward into scrap, creeching and scraping like another beast in the shadows. A chunk the size of a VW pile drives into the back end of the hoard from on high, liquefying the rear guard with a wet crunch. Sparks spit between blades of shrapnel churning through zombie meat below, and bullets split along unnatural paths after entry and exit to avoid friendly fire. One round punched through the gut of the thing on Charles rings through the skull of another.

Multitasking. Erik directs death from above like an irritable stormcloud, with a mind for the preservation of his friends. Somewhere in the thick of it, blood splats in an arc high enough to loop over his boot. ]

Edited (im sorry) 2015-04-14 08:10 (UTC)

[Mystique has no reaction for the exchange between Erik and Johanna. Instead, her eyes cut toward the sound of running feet and inhuman screams. Her scaly body drops a few inches closer to the ground, knees folding partway into a crouch, her balance distributed over the balls of her feet with hair-trigger tension.

Which she releases into a kick that goes up one creature's veiny head with concussive, bone-deep force, and she then turns, an axe in hand (not hers). The weapon comes swinging up to cleave deep upside the torso of another one, making its way up the underside of its sternum. Only she realizes, right then, that Fenris has his hand in the freshly-spitted zombie's head (??). Probably already fatal etc. This register's an expression of confusion on her face, for a fleeting instant, before she shrugs it off. Maybe if she hit the gym more often she could do that too.

A yank of her shoulder, and she frees the axe.] Whenever you want her back, [she shouts at Johanna, even while she's running for the next.]

[Johanna, for her part, laughs.

The monsters spill into view; chaos breaks loose--torn up metal and sparks and gunfire and punching right through the soft tissue under goopy chins, and Johanna laughs, pleased, and swings her axe up, two hands, held across her body. Balanced on the balls of her feet, in a moment of composure.

She knows what showtime feels like. She's had her winning coup de grace played out on thousands of broadcasts and rebroadcasts. This is showtime. Axe in both hands, she jumps forward, draws back her strike and heaves it forward--lops off a leg, first, and then yanks her axe free to bury in a head next, skull splitting easily under the razored edge of the axehead. Fresh blood spurts onto her face as she pulls free--but the blood isn't hers, and it isn't eating her flesh, and so Johanna laughs again.]

You take good care of it, or I'm using it on you after this!

[--That's for Mystique. As long as the axe gets some action, right? Because, as much as she wants it back, now is not the time for making demands. She's better off with just the one right now anyways--thanks to her acid burned shoulder. Not a handicap, and proof of that is in the bodies she's leaving behind.

The sting of bullets and the crumpling crash of slabs of deadly metal, forceful enough that it's like a shiver in the air--and the nearby spit of sparks and bone and blood--Johanna is adding to it, steadily, eagerly, expelling a sharp pitched huff of breath with her every strike, her grin fixed in place, white in her blood smeared face. They're mowing right through these motherfuckers. This is more like it.]

[If the Cranks have any concern for their fallen companions or the newly demonstrated threat of fists and axes and large, free-moving bits of metal, they don't show it. Anger is a momentum that doesn't relent, but the horde is thinning, no more spilling out of the dark even as the remaining continue to lunge and leap at their wildly chosen targets, one even making a jump for Erik's floating feet.

Through the gaps in the swarm, a figure may be visible: a woman tentatively emerging from behind the shell of another incomplete shuttle, watching the blur of fighting with wide eyes.]

[ The herd thins, becomes a rowdy, gruesome bar brawl with added murder, and sensing thought and intention, Charles allows himself better confidence in picking them off, some shots more precise than others. A clean strike between the eyes here, a bullet burying into a shoulder or a thigh there. The next one that gets close enough to grab at him gets a bullet tracked all the way from beneath its jaw through the back of its skull and the ceiling beyond, with a spatter of blood in almost 360 degrees.

Let's hope these things aren't infectious! :D

The body is pushed to slump out of the way with a slight stagger on his part, more tired now than panicky, all at once inoculated to gore, and Charles looks up, the track of his eyeline automatically fixing to where a new figure is emerging. His aim kicks up again, wavering hesitantly before immediate, adrenalised impulse can be tempered with observation. ]

Company. Behind that shuttle, straight ahead.

[ The thought is projected broadly to the group, all save for the woman herself, still out of range. ]

Edited (english languidge) 2015-04-20 06:57 (UTC)

[ The ‘crank’ that makes the leap is rewarded by being caught up in midair by a glittering wrap of steel that severs limbs and pinches its torso neatly into thirds in time with a close of Erik’s fist. Flesh parts as easy as cheese pushed through a wire, and he lets the pieces tumble sloppily down into the fray to land on people he purports to be friends with. Sorry, he thinks, without feeling very sorry at all.

The knot of bloody metal left behind is the last to drop.

He’s less and less involved in the core of the slaughter below as the many are mowed down into a more manageable gaggle. Ricochets continue to deflect along impossible paths and the odd figure goes flying with the force of magnetic impalement, but he’s shifted focus over onto the figure Charles has called to their attention.

His descent is swift and quiet and at enough of a distance to spare him contact with the worst of what remains of the original hoard. He’s going after her on foot, circling wide around the ongoing battle behind him, a lone figure on a mission. For her, there’s no question as to whether or not he knows she’s there.

It’s his own team he’s dropped off the radar of. Honestly they should be flattered by the confidence he has in them to take care of the rest on their own. ]

[Mystique twists her axe free of the next crank, steps back out of the line of another creature's shrieking charge. It's about as much acknowledgment to Johanna's yelling as she can spare right now because some of us can't fucking fly around like a magnetic fairy !! christ. After it runs past her, the crank she'd evaded becomes immediately distracted by the real axewoman of the group, leaving the metamorph an instant to glance up at Erik's passing figure.

And then another moment to spot the new arrival. Not that she mistrusts Charles' telepathic share for an instant, but it's a different matter to have visual confirmation. There's an automatic scowl when she locks on to the woman, and she lifts an armored foot off the floor, telegraphing an approach, but

another crank comes shrieking. Not at her, but at the opposite end of the fray where her brother is steadfastly plugging creatures' faces/arms/etc. with bullets. She's been counting his shots, which is a far more relevant measure of time's passage than your conventional minutes and seconds. So it's just as his chamber empties out for his present clip that Charles sees her coming in, the faint uneven hitch to her gait failing to diminish the speed of her sprint by any discernible degree. Her back squares to his back, her feet quick to move their protective circle in any direction that the situation calls.

She cuts the next Crank's head in half, vertically. She doesn't think or say: I've got you, but she does.]

[They're distracted by the fighting, she thinks. She's distracted by the fighting, the various impossible abilities being displayed, the gore and efficiency. One of them is blue, from head to toe. Another keeps glowing. And over their heads, a man is flying.

It's letting her gaze jump to the last again that has her stir from the awed daze, because he's coming down to land, heading towards her. She doesn't spare any hesitation. Regardless of them taking out the same monsters she'd had to run and hide from, she is woefully unprepared to deal with the kinds of phenomena they've displayed. If they don't have good intentions, she doesn't have a chance.

She runs. Turning back behind the shell of the unfinished shuttle and out the other side, ducking low as she moves through a large nest of stacked storage boxes.]

You asked for our help.

[ Erik’s voice rises to ring after her; his pursuit ends before the shuttle, vision prying hard in the dark to see if it’s the one she might have arrived in. It doesn’t look finished. ]

Now you have it. [ Patience comes to him more naturally than it used to. Volume isn’t accompanied by anger. There’s no suggestion of threat to reverberate in the way his speech carries between crates. ] You can take your chances with the dark or you can return the favor.

[ Having someone in his head makes Fenris' skin crawl, but he appreciates the forewarning—not that someone is there, but that the other mutant may be headed in that direction. He follows. He does it as a distance, picking his way through straggling cranks one gunshot or crushed vital organ at a time, but there wouldn't be anything subtle about it even if he weren't glowing like a nightlight in the dark of the shuttle bay. He stays close enough to keep one eye and a fraction of his attention on Erik, so he can—

be a furious witness, he supposes, if Erik tries anything. He's worked out by now that his bullets would likely be useless. ]

[ They're dying out and there are still enough of them to worry about by the time his clip runs out of ammunition and Raven is abruptly there, slotting into personal space like she belongs. Charles flinches a duck at the sound of a monstrous shriek, cut short by fleshy impact of an axe sinking into bone and grey matter. A swing there, a kick there, gore still slick on the ground after it had coming raining down. He is taking care not to fumble ridiculously with the reload.

But he's done, and he shoots the next thing coming, and then, picks off another further off. The fight is basically over by the time he is ready to go at it again, but it's for the best. Erik has slipped out of psychic range, and glowing white magic reflects off spilled gore as Fenris does as well.

He looks over his shoulder. Raven's cobalt skin is navy in the darkness, but her eyes are the same bright yellow. A nod of thanks; ]

Come on.

[ Ladies first, a sort of automatic gesture with his hand for them to move, before Charles is making quick work of closing in on where he'd seen that stranger, where Erik has descended, eager to be back within unusually limited range. Of everyone present, he probably seems the most ordinary, and even then, ordinary is blood spattered and bruised and a little wild eyed. The pistol remains in hand, tucked at his side.

Hello we are here to help don't be alarmed!! ]

[There's a large gap between the far edge of the cluster of stacked crates and the next shuttle shell. She might be able to make it if she bolts for it, but it's going to be risky. Thankfully the man speaks, letting her know roughly where he is, and she flattens herself against the back of one crate stack, listening for his footsteps.]

It seems to me I'd be taking my chances either way.

[She calls back, then moves several stacks over to the left and in slightly, hoping to confuse his idea of her location. He's right, of course - she had asked for help. But she hadn't expected anything like what they'd done, and all the information they'd gathered from the Scylla's flight recorder bobbed around unpleasantly in the forefront of her mind. She hadn't even been sure which were the monsters, when she'd come across them fighting.]

[The blue woman tails her brother toward the cargo stacks, her gait still residually uneven. Her eyes roving the first of the crates with a visible touch of irritation. Wherever Eszter's hidden herself, it doesn't happen to be conveniently at an obvious and accessible exit from the makeshift labyrinth. In the meantime, Johanna's face is burned, Erik's head must be setting a record for traumatic brain injury, the pointy-eared one just got his arm out of a creature's torso, and Professor Charles Xavier just finished capping a dozen veiny zombies. (She might also be a little hangry.) (A little.)

In short, Mystique would like to be able to end this increasingly frustrating game of monsters and morons by seizing that little woman by the scruff of her neck and dragging her out screaming.

When she reaches the nearest pile of crates, she breaks out of her slightly-stilted walk. Instead, she launches herself up, foot and hand, her willowy frame drawing a blue blur up the half-light of the shuttle. She takes the axe with her, and lands light as a cat on top. A running leap takes her up onto the next stack over, moving counterclockwise around the edge, an ear out for the strains of footfalls or conversation. If axes aren't typically equipment utilized to capture, someone forgot to inform her.]

All of that talk promising aid and good will down the drain for fear of the unknown.

[ Derision, exasperation. Exhaustion. It roughs his voice as plainly as it shows in the slope of his shoulders and in a shift of his weight when he turns back to check on the progress of his friends (and also Fenris, who probably doesn’t have friends). He doesn’t have to look to sense Mystique making short work of the crates between here and the constellation of metallic accents around Eszter’s person.

Humans.

The sentiment is written in weary, blood-cracked lines around his face when he looks more directly to Charles, so deeply interred in every muscle fiber and bone that he needn’t think it. ]

She may be armed, [ is what he thinks instead. ] Tell her to be careful.

[ Then he looks to Fenris’s glow for the thousandth time. Unfortunately intrigue is a poor substitute for trust. Past the way he’s glanced to Charles, there’s no outward indication of a private conversation. Only the negotiations he’s having with the DUPRR at a distance: ]

If you’re not here to help, and you’re not here to learn, what are you here for?

[ He sizes up Johanna last, and only in brief while he struggles with whatever minor malfunction involved in setting her slightly apart from his feelings on the human race in general, at the moment. The usual visceral flood of relief at her being (relatively) alright is still there. ]

[ Charles watches and doesn't say anything as Raven springs up, the blunt glint of an axe visible, but he knows a touch of anxiety even before Erik dispenses instruction. He is silent then, too, concentrating instead, the tick of his gaze tracking easily towards the presence of a new mind as if he could see through the crates.

A flick of an acknowledging glance bounces back to Erik. ]

She isn't.

[ Armed.

He decidedly holsters his gun, even if it's a gesture empty of meaning with no scaredy researchers around to see it. Or maybe it's meant for his companions. ]

She moved, several feet leftwards. Listen.

[ That part is for Raven -- and Charles doesn't mean to presume through advisement, because action and intent is not brightly clear in his sister's mind. Impatience, anger, predatory determination, those things are.

This is going to be an exhausting trip back if they have to drag their quarry all the way. ]

You've spoken to us on the network. I'd hoped we could all talk in person, but we have to leave this place. Right now.

[ It does occur to Charles that he is surrounded by impatient people. It's occurred to him before now, too, because he isn't feeling much more generous either. All the same-- ]

You're Eszter, yes?

Edited 2015-04-28 12:10 (UTC)

[ Fenris (who has friends, thank you, three of them by his last count, how many do you have Erik) makes a soft but predictably impatient noise from his wary distance behind Magneto. Introductions are fine when danger is past, but it isn't. It's everywhere. He keeps his attention on Magneto—despite his good manners—his glinting eyes on the blue one while she makes her way over the crates, and his head tilted to aim one long ear into the space behind him, where there are faint noises and potential threats. Johanna counted among them.

But he's paying attention to Xavier, too, however impatiently. Taking cues. He distrusts him that little bit less than everyone else present, and he doesn't follow him in holstering his weapon, but in the silent space after his question, Fenris slackens his shoulders, and the light under his skin disappears like water through a cloth.

It's darker, without him, but that makes it easier to see contrast and discern shapes outside the ring of his glow. ]

Knock her unconscious, [ he suggests under his breath, to no one in particular. ]

[Johanna catches that suggestion, and she grins, grimly, her fingers tight on her axe. Good idea, she does not say, even if it shows in the glint of her teeth.

She has trailed along behind Charles, too; she has kept hold of her axe. But unlike Mystique, she's kept to that position and to the floor--in part because she's in less shape to be scaling boxes in a single bound. And like everyone else, Johanna is equally impatient, equally angry, equally tired--equally so done. Now would be a great time to get an axe in the meat of their target's leg so they can drag her back with them. Or, yeah: knock her unconscious.

But for once, instead of giving voice to all of those ironclad feelings of pissed off--Johanna lets out a breath, shaky--and sags into a crouch, one arm looped around the handle of her axe, like she's holding onto it for support, like she just can't take it anymore.]

If it's Eszter-- she promised to help. [Quiet, a little plaintive, edged with some frustration--but mostly just tired. She's a good actor. The huge chemical burn helps.] You promised. That's what I came out here for, all this fucking way, because--

[--And like she's caught herself, Johanna cuts off there. Swallows, hard.]

He's right. We can't stay. Come with us so we can get out of here.

[Mystique listens.

It helps to calm her down a little. It also helps her close in on Eszter, her gait slower now but still steady, inexorable as a comet seeking a planet to destroy. Heavy boots and an ordinary stride would hit the containers like drums, but she finds her way over in the kind of quiet that is easily obscured by cranky man voices. And Johanna sounding terrifyingly plaintive.

At least, Mystique is decent enough to take the suggestions being bandied about, and turn the axe in her hand. The butt of the handle sits ready instead of the gory blade, more of a blunt trauma opportunity than the presumption to murder. Thus prepared, she watches the squirm of the maze pathways as she closes in. If she finds Eszter, she'll hold at least for a couple seconds. Give this negotiation a chance to actually go somewhere.

Maybe pick a dumber-looking shape to change into. They all have to play their parts.]

EVENT: DUPRR ▒ THE SECONDARY SHUTTLE BAY

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