Cyclops was right and he wishes he wasn't (cyclopswasright) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-08-04 23:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, bella donna boudreaux, clarice ferguson (blink), faiza hussain (excalibur), mewtwo, scott summers (cyclops) |
What’s all this then?
Who: Scott, Clarice, Faiza and Bella Donna, also MewTwo
What: Sneaking into a Cerberus facility
When: 8/1
Where: Some place in Orance County
Status: complete
Rating: PG-13
Triggers: mentions of test subjects
Belle was prepared when Clarice came to pick her up that evening. She had her dark grey tactical gear on, and her bag of toys waiting at her side. She double checked the tranquilizer darts in her pistol before resettling it and waiting. She tapped her foot a little, fidgetting with things to relieve some of her nervousness.
“Ready to go?” The purple woman said. “Scott’s already there.” Her clothing was unchanged from earlier.
Belle nodded, hefting her bag up onto her shoulder. “Sure am. Thanks for helping us out.”
“It’s not a problem. These people have hurt my friends before,” Clarice replied. She didn’t talk about it much, but she’d become good friends with Xi’ain the time they’d all lived together. She’d just never let herself grieve around others. Blink hadn’t wanted to somehow take away from Kitty’s pain.
Belle nodded. “That’s why I’m here, and I’m not leavin’ until we get the person in charge and nail their ass to the wall.” The cost of human life was already too high.
The office building she’d rented was empty, except of course for Scott. She gave him a tight smile, and opened up her bag. “I noticed you don’t take your glasses off, but I brought a nightvision headset anyway. You want it, or should I leave it?” It was too bulky to keep around if she didn’t have to. “Also, you got a way t’ reliably knock out the guards? I don’t even want to be that intrusive, but sometimes shit goes wrong.”
“Leave it, glasses come off and a lot of people get hurt,” Scott replied, stepping away from a wall. He had his visor on, and was wearing a black leather suit. It wasn’t from his dreams, but it was the best he could come up with. “I see everything in red, anyway. I can knock out a guard easily.”
Light concussive shot to the head.
“Fine by me.” Belle said with a nod, and gently put the machine down. “Alright, so we go in and we split up. You get a better look at that door, and see if maybe it’s been left unlocked. I’ll go the other direction, because you don’t put servers behind a massive door like that, but those are our main objective. If shit goes down you either make a lot of noise to draw the guards your way, or we bail entirely.” She pulled out a communicator and handed it over. “Anything to add?”
Scott handed Belle a small object. “We can communicate with this. I’ll want that back after the mission.” He smirked at her.
Clarice tapped her own ear. “Just shout if you need help. I can grab Shepard and be in in a heart beat.
“She sounded eager,” Scott noted. “But I hope we disappoint her.”
Belle nodded. She dug out a tablet and showed it to him. “If anything happens and this has been connected to the servers, it’s more important than me. If you get into a situation where you hafta prioritize, and you pick me over this piece of equipment, I’m going to do creative and horrible things to you.” She tucked it back into her bag, very carefully. “I’m ready if you are. What’s your field name, Cyclops?” She thought she’d heard it right, and she knew better than to yell out ‘Summers’.
Scott nodded. “This first, but I won’t leave you behind if I can help it. And yeah. Cyclops. She’s Blink. What will we call you?”
“Fuck, I don’t care. I’ll know who you’re talking to.” She said with a laugh. She had never needed a name like that before, because she wasn’t trying to live in the same place she was working.
“Okay, Fuck,” Clarice said, rolling her eyes. She lifted her hands and the two of them were now behind door number 1....
“Can you hear me?” Scott asked.
“Loud and clear.”
Belle snorted, but didn’t say anything because it truly didn’t matter. The room was like a ward in a field hospital, but the beds were almost all filled with sleeping people. One was neatly made, and its sensors were off. Belle activated her nightvision goggles and examined one of the patients. They all looked normal, so she shrugged and stepped back. She spoke very softly, so the others would only be able to hear through their communicators. “Alright, Blink, take me behind door number two. Cyclops, let me know if shit goes down. See if you can figure out what the deal with these people is.”
"Should have brought the doctor," he mused. "Blink you listening? Check with F-Excalibur. See if she wants to come in and check on something suspicious. This sure isn't a hospital."
Blink's voice crackled over the comms. "Let me take miss tits behind door number two first, then I'll contact the good doc."
Belle had to suppress a laugh. She didn’t see much harm in someone examining the patients. “Just don’t do anything noticeable.” She also didn’t understand Faiza’s powers.
The server room did actually have a guard. He was watching the security cameras, but Scott was blessedly just out of sight. She shot him in the back of the neck, sighing softly. She checked to make sure the feeds weren’t taping, then hooked her tablet into the closest server. “Do your stuff, little magic box.”
Scott crept around, trying to look at readouts and any information about the patients that might clue them in.
Faiza blinked in a moment later. She was wearing a mask made out of a white headscarf and a chainmail coif. Otherwise she was glad in a white tunic and trousers. There was a broadsword attached to her side. It never hurt to be too careful!
“What’s all this then?”
“I was hoping you could find out.”
Two things happened at about the same time. Warning sirens began blaring throughout the complex, and the door beyond the ward burst open. The German doctor from the video tapes stalked through it, holding a gun out, aiming at Scott. “Willkommen.” She shot to kill him, figuring she could take out the man and then question the woman. “Clearly I should haff killed all the Summerses.”
Meanwhile, the server room was in its own trouble. Belle swore as she tapped the tablet, willing it to go faster. The passed out guard wasn’t moving, but the cameras showed that the hall was now filled with guards. Belle looked at Blink, hoping the pink woman was good in a fight as the men burst in the door.
Scott fell back in a spray of blood. In the next instant it was as though his body exploded, and then reformed. The bullet clattered to the floor between his feet. He banked a beam off of one wall and into an overhead light, sending it crashing down.
Faiza turned away from Sott and pulled apart one of the patients, searching for anything unusual. "Keep me covered! There's something very, very wrong with this man."
Grunting, Scott twisted the dial on his visor and fired directly at the woman.
Clarice flipped, using a wall to propel herself forward and into the first guard. She kicked, spun around, and flung a javelin at the next man. He blinked away.
Belle whistled and stood up, firing at the men who poured through with her tranquilizers. Three fell, and four more took their place. She had to leave the tablet to keep them from coming inside. It was her decision to charge toward them that saved her life.
Monica yelled when Scott’s blast hit her, and she activated the self-destruct remote in her pocket when she got her senses back. Her entire body hurt, but she managed to scramble back into the back room and close the door. It would buy her enough time to flee, she hoped.
The servers in the other room gave no indication of what was about to happen before they exploded, killing the man in the chair. The force from the blast knocked the combatants forward, and Belle was burned by the barrel of one guard’s gun. It wasn’t too bad, but the door to the room was closing, and a set of bars was coming across with it. “They’re trying to trap us in. Blink, get us out of here, but remember what I said about priorities.” She assumed Scott would be a gentleman and give Faiza priority over himself.
Scott shot the door, then turned to deal with some guards that came in from another door. He hit the first man in the head, and then the second man in the head. And then the third man in the head.
Faiza put the patient back together, and stuck something in a plastic baggie. "We really should get out of here, duck." She drew her sword and thwacked a guard with the hilt. "Sorry!"
Meanwhile, Clarice flicked her wrist, and the tablet blinked away. "Hold on." She grabbed for Belle, and teleported them away as a hail of bullets flooded the room.
Belle did as she was told, clinging to Clarice for dear life. She stabilized quickly when they got to the other room. There was a lady in a chain helm fighting with a sword. “And I thought the dreams were weird,” she noted to no one in particular, before grabbing a knife out of its belt and chucking it at one of the guards. It wouldn’t be enough to kill, but a knife to the face was a pretty good deterrent.
The sword-swinger wasn't even trying to be lethal. She was good with the flat of the blade and the pommel and hilt. One guard came up behind Scott and she held out her hand. The man split in half. She waited for Scott to turn around to put him back, and Cyclops shot him in the chest with his eye beams.
"Blink, get us out of here. Extraction point."
Belle couldn’t stop herself from gaping when Faiza used her powers on the guard. She continued to gape until they were teleported to safety. The only reason she stopped gaping, really, was because she was no longer looking at Faiza. She took off the rig for the nightvision goggles and shook her head. “Tell me we at least got something outta that.”
"They're doing something to those men," Faiza said. She left the mask on because she didn't know the stranger. "I'm not sure what, but they've been modified somehow. I didn't have enough of a chance to really look. "
Scott picked up the tablet and looked at it. "Looks like it got fried."
Belle swore a little, facepalming. “Okay. I’ll get the tablet to one of my techs, see if we can get anything out of it. Miz. . . doctor can you give us any idea of what they’re doing, or is ‘something’ all we get?”
Scott tossed it to Clarice. “Get that to Shadowcat, she can get into it quicker if she uses the shi’ar tech.”
“Got it.” She flashed away.
Faiza rubbed the back of her neck. “I think they’re experimenting on those poor blokes. No, I know they are. It’s bloody obvious. I just can’t tell you what, but if I had to guess they’re tweaking DNA.”
“Shit.” Belle noted. “Thank you for your help, Doctor.” She rubbed her face, trying to absorb all that had happened. “She’s goin’ to move again too.” Why couldn’t a simple mission go smoothly? No plan ever worked out like it should. “Is that why they wanted samples from the mutants?” What was their eventual goal?
“That makes sense. They took blood samples and god knows what else from Emma and the others,” Scott replied. “It wouldn’t be the first time in our experience that someone tried to replicate powers.”
Belle sighed. “Okay, how about we all go home and rest up for now. I’ll need to write up what I can remember about the place, and I’d like you guys to do the same. I’d also like to know what all the people who’ve been captured by Cerebus can do, but I understand if you don’t want to give me that, all things considered. Believe me when I say my superiors won’t believe a damn word of any of this.”
“I’ll do what I can, and I’ll have my person forward you the data she recovers,” Scott assured her. He wasn’t sure he could trust her with everything but he’d give her the best information he could.
Or maybe he just didn’t trust who she worked for.
Belle nodded. “Bon. Thank you all again for your help.” She couldn’t wait to get back to Boston, she was going to write up her findings and drink her weight in gin. Then she’d have to mock up something for work, but it was easier to do that while drunk. “If Blink doesn’t mind I’d like t’ take you up on that offer to get back faster.”
Clarice popped back in. “Shadowcat will get a look at it. Where do you want to go?”
“Home,’ Faiza said, smiling. “I think I need a rest after that!”
“Home. Do you want to go straight to Boston, Belle?” Scott glanced at Belle.
She nodded. “Yeah, my room at the Frost Mansion. I can’t go home, that could blow my cover.” She assumed he knew better than to tell Emma about this, but she decided to be sure. “Don’t tell Emma about my involvement. She’s already a potential target, and anyone who knows who exactly I am is also.” She handed him a business card for Fleur DeLis, an information systems consultant. “Have you girl send the information here.”
“I can’t guarantee she won’t pull it out of my brain, but I have some old tricks.” A mental black box, of mental shielding.
Clarice sent Faiza home first. “Ready when you two are.”
Belle nodded, but her stomach had tightened. If his wife could read his mind, then Cerebus might be able to duplicate that. The stakes were getting higher, and they weren’t any closer to having a solution. “I’m ready.”
And the light enveloped them.