Angelo knew that tensions were rising, but tensions had been rising for a long time, in his estimation. He wasn’t certain that he knew of a time when things had de-escalated as far as the mutant situation went. And in his case in particular it was definitely true; his mutation was obvious, and always on. He could turn it off for brief periods of time (or rather, force it into hiding), but he’d lost the desire to do that long ago. He wasn’t ashamed of his mutation in the slightest, even if some people outside of the school still stared at him because of it.
And so he was out now with his friends, and his mutation was on full display. Things had been tense politically, but he hadn’t had anyone attack him for it or anything like it. Yet.
They were outside one bar, ready to move on to the next, debating if they should bother Blink to make them a portal or just call an Uber. It was the middle of the night, after all, and she deserved sleep like everyone else. Ange had taken the moment to light up another cigarette, fine either way and more interested in discussing the day’s football match with Jono. It was because of that that he didn’t notice the group across the street, staring at them with growing disgust.
What did catch his attention was the sudden explosion of glass as a beer bottle was thrown and hit the wall next to him. “What the fuck!”(Open to Friengelos)
Jubilee should have learned by now. Saying things like "What's the worst that could happen?" when getting roughly man-handled by some three-eyed mutants towards the arena entrance was tempting fate. Granted, fate had already fucked them over yet again, but still. She'd looked over towards Alani, in a similar situation, and tried to give her friend a reassuring grin. "We've dealt with a lot of really messed up things, it'll be fiiiiine." Okay, so Jubes didn't necessarily believe it'd be fine, but she did have faith that whatever this was going to be it was something they could handle.
She kept that thought up even as she was tossed on ceremoniously onto the sandy ground of the Colosseum beside Alani, heard the roar of the packed crowd, and had the big entrance doors slammed shut behind them.
Yup. Totally fine!
You know, until the chimeras showed up.
"Ah fuck." The two story-tall beasts roared, causing Jubes to flinch, upon their entrance from an elevator hidden in the arena floor. At least Mojo was sticking with the mythological version so far as Jubes could tell, with the quadrupedal beasts sporting head's of lions, with a secondary goat's head protruding from it's back. It's long serpentine tails ended with a snake's head. Of course, the leathery wings would allow the things to take flight too as if things weren't bad enough.
"Okay, okay, we've got this," Jubilee said, both to reassure Alani and herself. She raised her hands, and felt the familiar pulse and power of her unrestrained fireworks shooting upwards in a dazzling display the crowd ate up. At least these assholes weren't lying about getting their powers back in the arena itself. The second surge of streaming lights was directed at the leftmost chimera, smacking it in the lion's head and causing it to growl even as it took a step back.
Score one for the good guys! It was all well and good until the goat's head on it's back swiveled, and fired lasers from it's eyes proving that these definitely weren't just mythological representations. Fortuitously, she'd dove to the side that ended in a roll as the lasers turned the sand where she'd been to glass. Great! Just great!
The pits smelled like blood and sweat and fear, the musk hanging heavy both in the tunnels leading out to the arena, and in the pits themselves where the gladiators were kept. The pit master -- an excessively large and muscled man with three eyes and three arms -- spoke to the Xavier’s residents who were just starting to wake up from a sleep they didn’t remember falling into.
“Listen up, maggots! You’re fresh meat for the pits, now. Do well enough out there and you’ll be a gladiator. Don’t do enough and you’ll be another bait dog for the real show. Now get changed.” There were traditional gladiator garments to the side, waiting, and a group of soldiers with weapons that crackled with electricity to use as cattle prods to get them to move.
“That collar round your neck’s got your powers shut off, so don’t even think about trying something. They’ll come back for the fights and that’s it. Down that hallway there is where you’ll sleep and eat. And down that one’s where you can train. This way’s the arena. Some of you will be seeing that very soon. Now get moving!”(Open to arena ppl! Also of course starting now there will be 24/7 coverage of the pits and arena!)
The crystals thrummed with energy as Selene placed the dagger against her palm and pulled hard, cutting her hand open and clenching a fist, drops of red landing against the stones. Her voice took on and otherwordly tenor as she recited words in a language that Earth was never meant to hear. The crystals glowed, bathing her in their light, and a chorus of screeches from the depths of what was known aired themselves in her chamber.
She was going to become a Goddess of Death.
It was only fitting that the other Gods would join her.
And she had the perfect slaughterhouse of offerings for them.
At the school it grew dark despite the hour, heavy clouds forming out of seemingly nowhere, blocking out the sun. Figures came into being on the lawn, each giant, roughly the height of the school. Hel with her daggers and Fenrir with his brute force. Hades with an army of Titans, and Cerberus with a bark that could instill mind-numbing fear. Anubis with his ghost-jackals, each intangible and impervious to injury, yet able to bite and rend and tear at flesh; with his power to pull the soul physically from the body, destroying it as it came. Shinigami, the duo Japanese Gods, with their ability to cast illusions. Ahriman with its cadre of demons. Al Puch with its disease and pestilence spread by touch.
They were here to reap the school, with next to no one left to stop them.(School fight thread! Feel free to npc Titans and demons, or if you’d like to take on a god (silly, silly humans) just let us know and we’ll have them step on you! Kidding, but really feel free to ask us to npc against you or write it as you go! Also Titans, demons, and jackals will all be dragging victims out to the front to be reaped, enjoy!)
Hope Lee knew how to throw a party.
A more relaxed than stately affair had the guests mingling in a larger ballroom, but had run of the entire ground floor. There was music, food, and good company. Hope Lee hadn’t only invited her niece’s friends, but seemingly a grand deal of people. Neighbors. Some minor celebrities that lived around Beverly Hills. Business leaders. Someone running for a state position in government during the next cycle. Those people’s family and friends. Chances are Hope was getting something out of each attendee even if it was only a connection; Hope Lee was charismatic, knew how to be open-handed when it mattered, and was a skilled networker. People brought others that they assumed she’d want to meet, and the guest list was hardly enforced. The more the merrier, it seemed.
That’s how they infiltrated easily. It wasn’t difficult in the slightest, but even if it had been they were well trained, highly skilled. There was a mission, and they were here to fulfill it without hesitation or concern about collateral damage. Such was their mandate. Some were dressed as business people, one as young, ‘hip’, twenty-sometimes that could have been friends of the target’s niece. No matter what they wore they wouldn’t have stood out more than the ‘weirdo’ covering his face in all black standing off to the side looking uneasy.
It was the Jade strike team. One of several utilized by their consortium for overseas missions involving high-value, dangerous targets.
Their leader was a man in his sixties, fit with graying hair, and dressed as a business executive. He tapped a mic hidden in his cufflink to signal that they were starting soon. The target was speaking to someone, laughing merrily, while accepting a drink from her stately butler.
A double tap of the comlink and the signal was sent. The first shot came from a woman in a flowing red dress whose wrist had opened, and then a pistol unfolded. The shot rang out before anyone could react; that was the benefit of having their bodies literally built to be their weapons and gear. Bodies collided, and people screamed. Blood splattered from kinetic force and pooled out on the ground. There was a stunned second as the majority of the guests reeled to figure out what happened, and then — the party broke down into chaos, and Jade’s heavy hitters with all their augmentations and moved in, weapons and other abilities primed.
Whether Athens had missed or the target had sacrificed someone else instead, the butler — Brad — lay dead on the ground.
“Find her,” London commanded, nonplussed, but already scanning the crowd with the systems in his eyes. Things had turned out far more interesting than he anticipated, but knowing who their target was they ought to have known that.
Patience was something Jubilee was absolutely shit at. That was obvious to anyone had met her for more than five minutes. She got involved in everything and anything, was excitable, and didn't back down from any sort of adventure or apocalyptic future. If anything she really wasn't used to be on the sidelines, and she was less still used to being on the sidelines when it seemed like a giant bulk of her friends were gone. Only a handful of those were supposed to have gone. She could have made her peace with that, ultimately, because it wasn't a new thing around the school that sometimes people were headhunted for things by people who had knowledge beyond all others. Nate Grey had proven that, and Layla Miller had cemented it.
Except the other disappearances where when things got hairier, and it was impossible to sit still. Molly. Emmy. Autumn. Paige. Bobby. Kitty. More names, a lot of names were now missing and much like Cal and the others (veterans of this type of thing, really) she would have traded herself for any of them in a heartbeat. Stupid, probably, but still something they'd all have done. She couldn't, and that was tough to come to terms with. It wasn't at all like other missions where they got to pick and choose. Sure, she was Jubilee: she was still bright and positive to all the students that needed it, but it was gnawing at her more and more while the need to just give into that for a moment grew.
That's probably why she found herself downstairs on the way to certain mythological entity: the basement man. If there was anyone who knew about lamenting for a few seconds it was him, and beyond that keeping along a similar vein she wanted to check on him, to see how he was dealing with this. Jono took things harder than most, and while Ange was still here, Paige was not. Alani was not either even if they'd been angry or upset with her before she left (really bad timing, Layla). When he didn't have to come up for things like food or water it made it easier for him to lose himself, and that's why Jubilee was now knocking on his door. Loudly. "Open up, Jono! I know you're there and I know you've felt me coming, and also because I made as much noise as possible!" She knocked again just to show that she wasn't going to go away, but the occupant of the basement sanctuary probably knew that by now anyway. "I promise, no fireworks either."
Wait, was that something she could ever promise successfully when Jono was around? "Okay, okay," she called through the door once more. "Maybe fireworks, but also brooding?"
It wasn't until they had teleported (or flown) back up to the jet that they got the messages about the school. It was always a risk, the X-Men leaving and having to turn off, shut down, or delay comm communication with the mansion until their mission was completed, but it was necessary. If something was bad enough that they were being called in, it needed their full attention. And there were things in place to keep the school safe, with or without them there. The other teams, the medlabs, the security system, the Danger Room. Something happening was regrettable, but possibly, and certainly something that could be handled until they got back.
Except, maybe, in the event of a highly potent drug being unleashed on unsuspecting mutants in New York and a telepathic directive to attack the school at full force, apparently with caveat warnings about things like the Danger Room, the teleporters, the healers, and so on to make for maximum devastation.
The Bird was already in motion, flying fast without waiting for everyone to find their seats or get comfortable. It wasn't fast enough, though. "We have to get back there." Mimic had turned in his seat, looking to the soldiers who didn't have the luxury of a handheld that would let them know what was going on. "They sent a counterattack to our school. There's children there." Switches were being flipped as the X-Men moved from where they were, including Cal and Rahne from the cockpit. "We have to get back. The Blackbird will bring you back to the school. We can protect you there, and help these others. You're welcome to stay there, or go where you think is best. But we have to get there now. You can come with us, or you can stay in the jet. If you're worried about them," their charges who didn't seem much like they would be of any help to anyone in a fight, even themselves, "we have teleporters that can take them to safe spaces until we're done. No one will be able to reach them but us until they're safe." Granted, one spot was galaxies away and the other was in a hell dimension, but. Details. "Or you can stay on the Bird with them. It'll protect itself though; try anything with it and you'll end up flying." Come help the X-Men, have the Kick-addled mutants placed into their teleporters protection, or stay onboard the jet until it landed and decided to let them go. The choice was theirs, but they needed to make it fast. The X-Men were already disappearing one by one, taken back to Xavier's.(Open to all! Continuation of fighting, set a few hours after the previous threads -- let's say deep night because that's when the best kind of fighting happens! Skills people, you have the option of staying on the jet/Limbo/Dyson Sphere. Soldiers, you can stay with them in whichever place, or help with the fighting at the school. Sorry they don't have time to get you handhelds yet! Things are definitely going from bad to worse on the ground; the Kick seems to be amping up rather than going away, and mutants are blocking various ways into the Danger Room (and starting to target the helpers like teleporters and healers). Keep making life hell, good luck!)
Over a densely populated area of Westchester County, far from the facility the X-Men had infiltrated but dangerously close to the school, a contingency plan was being put into play. The attack on the facility hadn’t been entirely unexpected; the program’s founders had considered everything, every worst case scenario they could come up with, and they had known that if an attack came it would come from Charles Xavier and his X-Men. The school had enjoyed a relative degree of safety so far, it was simply too public to ever be targeted, but there were plans in place to deal with it and the teams it housed if they ever directly threatened the program. And now they had. A single team could be dealt with at the site along with their mutant subjects, but there had never been just one team at Xavier’s -- the arrival of another highly-trained team could turn the tide in their favor, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Nobody else could be allowed to leave the school grounds.
A direct attack on the school was still out of the question, but there were other ways.
Downtown, the clouds of aerosolized Kick were almost invisible as they drifted through the city. People breathed them in without even knowing. It only took a moment for the mutants in the crowd to begin feeling its effects, like amphetamines coursing through their veins, their abilities heightened beyond what they’d ever been capable of before. The slightest telepathic push was enough to tip them over into violence. From the safety of a government helicopter circling overhead, a psion gave them that push and more. Xavier’s. It was all they could think about, getting to the school and wreaking havoc, every other impulse overpowered by that one need. Once it was in their heads, there was no forgetting it. One by one they turned, on foot, in the air, teleporting, whatever would get them to the school fastest.
Alarms sounded as the mob of people reached the school’s front gate and tore through it, shrugging off whatever damage the security systems were able to do along the way. They didn’t feel the pain, or care about it. All they cared about was reaching the people inside and tearing them to pieces.
Henry Gyrich smiled tightly as the report came in. That ought to keep them busy.((School attack thread! Mutants of all kinds are attacking the school, but it's going to get around pretty quick (aka: feel free to already know in your tags!) that they're not under their own control so try not to kill them! Mutants will also be making it hard to get into the Danger Room (blocks of all kinds, cybers making its programming weird, etc), so teams try and protect the kids since they have no protection right now!))
Fucking Valentine's Day. Angelo had never really had feelings about it one way or another in prior years (beyond the familiar pain of watching so much of his money disappear on dates with all the trappings), but this year was spectacularly terrible in a way that he just knew was going to linger through for years to come. Jono nearly dying, his powers freaking out for some reason, cramped quarters that he knew would end up causing questions about how sociable he was or wasn't being, and of course the annoying reminder of love everywhere today. That was a word he would like to forget for several lifetimes, but like with pink elephants the less he tried to think about it the more he found it -- and Mexico -- on his mind.
Memories and ghosts had him essentially wishing he could just breathe smoke instead of air, going outside for what felt like the millionth time that day. It was cold and annoying, but the small backyard was still better than being inside the smaller-seeming space inside, shared with everyone else. Shared with his friend who he knew could tell something was wrong. Had he really thought he could come back here and just leave it completely behind? Fuck.
He flicked the cigarette butt out into some leftover snow, sinking back into the plastic-striped beach chair that was serving as a piece of patio furniture and rubbing at his eyes with a hand. He was ready to look normal if he had to because there was someone nearby, but even thinking about it made his head vaguely ache. His phone was sitting out in the backyard's snow somewhere or else he would have checked to see if this had all been sorted out yet so that they could go back.
Would it be weird for him to take off to 'the store' and pretend traffic was so bad that he had to stay in a motel for some reason? ….Probably. Time to light a new cigarette.
(Open to Jubilee, but also this whole post can be used for other threads for people at safehouses if people want!)
Cities were being evacuated.
All over the world where those massive ships hovered, menacing and far above the city streets, civilians were being told to drop everything and get out. New York City was no exception. Civilians flooded out of the shadow of the ship, there was screaming, crying, cursing in all directions as they made their desperate bid to get away from what had to seem like certain death. There were abandoned cars lining the streets, an open door chime pinging and echoing off the concrete and glass around it, a car alarm going off further down the street with the amber signal lights flashing. There was debris everywhere, it truly was a scene right out of a movie. It was eerie, unnatural.
They didn’t have a teleporter on hand any more. Galactica was in space. Bouncer was busy transporting people from the school to somewhere safer. Heist might have a copy but she was engaged in the fighting and couldn’t be reached over the comms. So they took the Blackbird, rounded up a team of mutants and went to fight in those deserted city streets, to stop the aliens from getting a foothold out there in the human world while those was the school fought them back. They were really the first and last lines of defence. Mutants, saving the world all over again because the human military didn’t have a hope in hell of doing it by themselves. That had to be obvious to them. It had to be.
The Blackbird dropped the team off in the middle of the city: Verve took point as the only X-Man that could be spared, and she had given everyone an earpiece in the Blackbird, she’d grabbed a bunch from the school before leaving. The craft circled overhead after they had jumped or rolled or otherwise launched themselves out of it and onto the street below, piloted remotely by her mutation, sent away to a safe distance until they needed it again.
Just as they had at the school smaller ships began to fill the sky above them, around them. They didn’t even need to exchange words, they knew why they were all here, she’d already given them her pep talk on the short flight over here, standing behind the pilot sea. Verve only looked at the small hit squad she’d grabbed and gave them a decisive, hard nod. They balled their fists, they gritted their teeth, they made themselves ready for this to be a last stand. Then they engaged the enemy as the ships came bearing down on them, a dark flock of locusts.
It was no time to hold back, not for any of them. It was time to fight for their lives and their world.
Again.
The carnage, the panic, the fear. All of the negative emotions flooding throughout the school only fueled the ghosts further, making the apparitions more clear and their attempts at gaining corporeal form stronger. They moved throughout the grounds, watching as the undead and the possessed did their work, and themselves took to appearing in sudden and terrifying ways to those trying to run, or those that were already safe in the Danger Room. The few times that a skeletal hand did become real and make contact, tearing at hair or skin, the Danger Room itself became suddenly active, sims appearing to fight the ghosts away from the students and others seeking shelter.
The one that had started it changed his form, shifting down to the ghostly visage of a five year old girl, her throat slashed, still holding onto a teddy bear. This was how he appeared in the Danger Room, moving to a girl with a phone in her hands. Help me. It was spoken out loud and in Priya's head. You have to stop the bad man that did this. If you give Mr. Cody to us then we can finally rest.
He didn't stick around for questions, disappearing and moving back through the mansion, enjoying the fighting going on in the different areas, the destruction they were raining down on themselves. As soon as these people gave up Drake, he could drag him into hell himself. And his cousin, for good measure. And everyone that the man had ever spoken to. And then enjoy the finale that these reanimated creatures were building to.
He'd enjoyed evil in life well enough, but evil in death, as it turned out, was even more fun.
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