Beyond Evolution

No Cadre attack had ever gotten this far before.

Every broadcast channel was devoted to the attack now, the arenas and the island temporarily forgotten. This assault might be starting to make Mojo nervous, but it was good TV. And it would be even better TV when it was finally put down. Even as the Cadre fought their way closer to his broadcast room, his inner sanctum, Mojo wasn't capable of thinking they might actually defeat him.

He'd given the order to move his most prized new acquisitions -- his precogs, his cyberpath, his healer -- and a small contingent of his guard quickly mobilized to pull them from their rooms. They'd been kept in relative comfort so far, but now their security was more important than their willingness to assist Mojo voluntarily. Whatever goodwill he'd had with them could surely be rebuilt. Now, they were dragged roughly from their rooms and hustled down the halls, moving quickly to get them away from the fighting. Until they were under lock and key again, they were vulnerable to attack. Or to rescue.

Mojo himself had retreated to the broadcast room, the doors barricaded. His elite guard stood ready to defend him. Spiral, his most trusted, stood by his side with a weapon in each of her six hands, her attention laser-focused on the doors. If the Cadre could break those doors down, every one of them was ready to explode into action.

This was the moment when the Cadre's attack would truly succeed or fail. And Mojo, surrounded by his beloved TV screens, was confident it would fail.

(Open to Cadre fighters + captives being moved! Please stick to the separate headers for liberating the prisoners and attacking the broadcast room.)

(Open for people destabilizing the school -- no fighting yet!)

WHO: Jessie Vale (PREVIEW) & Jane Brown (VISIONARY).
WHERE/WHEN: Jane’s room | Backdated to June 14th(ish), before Jane’s entry.
WHAT: In which two precogs foresee their meeting.

( But, its better being with a bunch of others, trust me on that. )

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!))

WHO: Jessie (PREVIEW) & Sarah Vale (NETWORK).
WHERE/WHEN: Sarah’s room / Recently.
WHAT: Tabloid Headline: “I didn’t realize my twin sister was an alien!” among other serious and sad Vale matters.

( I have located unpleasant information. )

Earth's atmosphere was crowded with ships. The Skrull warships, looming like waiting predators over major cities in every country, casting shadows the size of the cities themselves. Beneath them, the haze of drop ships bearing their cargo of Skrull warriors to the ground. The first of them had already landed, but as the soldiers they carried made their way into the fight there were still more pouring forth, filling the skies in an ugly jumble of metal and exhaust. And now, the second wave of human fighter jets, going in guns blazing as what remained of the first wave still smoked on the ground. They had made the mistake of being cautious before; they wouldn't make it again. But they were badly outnumbered, and one by one the Skrull warships were targeting them and taking them down.

Overhead, the sky darkened just a fraction more -- it looked like dusk in some of the more populated areas, they sk was a patchwork of gray, it was hard to even tell where the newest arrivals had appeared. To most of the people down below, all the ships looked the same.

But to the Skrull fighters, to Xavin, to Hannah Altman if she could still see the skies, they were something very different.

They were Kree.

The Kree ships opened fire almost the moment they uncloaked, and in all the chaos, it might have taken the people below a moment to realize that they were firing on the Skrulls. The long, bloody history between the Skrull and the Kree wouldn't mean anything to those on Earth, but they were about to reap the benefits. More than that -- in among the Kree ships were a few smaller fighters whose weapons were hybrids, just like the teams piloting them. The Knights of the Infinite had bided their time, waiting for the moment when they might stand a chance at ending the Kree-Skrull war for good, and this was it. Because somewhere on the planet below was Dorrek VIII, Kree-Skrull hybrid and heir to the Skrull throne, the one who could wield Excelsior and unite the two enemy empires.

Some of the Kree ships swooped in for a quick landing, Kree and hybrid warriors pouring out to join the fight on the ground, while others stayed in the sky to lend their support to the human fighter jets. With their almost-human appearance, the Kree could just about blend in in all this chaos -- their blue-skinned brethren stayed in the sky for now, and maybe that would help convince the humans that these new arrivals were on their side. Only minutes after their ships had first appeared, radios worldwide were chattering with new orders. New ships are friendlies. Do not engage. If people actually listened, this might just be enough to turn the tide.

Weaving in and out of the chaos, its flight path distinctly more daredevil than the military precision of the Skrull and the Kree, was one more ship. The name painted on the side of it was Starjammer. The crew inside were races nobody on Earth had ever seen or heard of -- except for one, and he was the reason they too were lending their firepower to Earth's defense. He called himself Corsair. When the dust settled, if the people of Earth and their new allies managed to push the Skrulls back and save themselves, there were people at Xavier's who might know him, from pictures at least, by another name. Christopher Summers.

If, that is, they managed to push the Skrulls back.

[OPEN TO ALL THOSE STILL AT THE SCHOOL,
INCLUDING ANYONE LATER HEADING FOR THE TUNNELS!]

It came over cloudy without warning and against all the forecasts, a great shadow cast over the city of New York that had heads turning up in confusion, sunglasses pulled from the bridges of noses and phones being lowered from ears. Was it going to rain? Storm? Did they need to change their plans for the day? If the heavens opened and a sudden downpour hit the state then it could ruin the holiday.

But it wasn’t really a cloud and it wasn’t just New York City, it was happening all across the world and as any device with a camera was instantly pointed skyward when people realised what it was they were seeing news stations in every country, on every continent, started getting the alerts in floods and waves. They were ships. Huge dark ships bearing down on major cities to settle in the sky, black and ominous and miles wide. Screams filled the air as those people not rooted to the spot started to panic and bolt in every direction, running for cover, taking shelter in any building that wasn’t closed for the holiday.

Even before every show and movie was interrupted by an emergency news broadcast an announcement went through the halls of Xavier’s School for the Gifted, sweeping across the network as well: they were going into lockdown, the school’s defence system was going on high alert, no one was to leave the grounds for their own protection, they should all be ready to head for the Danger Room at any moment. Seconds later they would understand why, if they didn’t look out the closest window and see the ship over the city they only had to turn on a TV or a radio or glance at their social media feeds.

Earth wasn’t just under attack. Earth was being invaded.

[ OPEN FOR REACTIONS ]
PLEASE SEE OOC TO FOLLOW BEFORE TAGGING IN