Re: Excalibur: status reports
While he seemed to cooperate, Kitty should have noticed a conniving look in his eyes. Actually, if she had stopped for more than a second to look at him, really look at him, she would have caught it. A telepath would have heard him mentally screaming his plan for escape – which disappointingly amounted only to him, at the first sign she was distracted, ripping her hand off his and running for a glowing exit sign. Shadowcat swore, yelling at him to come back, but the handful of MLF agents that had distracted her were the ones from beneath the party, setting charges beneath the floor. They recognized Pierson as one of their main targets (other than causing general mayhem and chaos), and without the aid of intangibility, had taken this long to catch up with her in the labyrinthine basement. Almost the moment Pierson started to run, Wisdom's voice crackled over the communicator; she hadn't had enough use with it to know the crackling meant some kind of interference rather than equipment failure, but in any rate, she pressed her lips together and hoped he wouldn't need an immediate update. She was a bit distracted.
She took one good look at him running away, clutching his arm, and being surprisingly quick for a crusty old politician, before turning back to the agents and raising an eyebrow at them. It wasn't that she was cavalier in her abilities yet, but more that they were looking at each other, her, Pierson, then back at her, wondering for a moment which one was more important to target first. Hearing Pierson try to open the doors, the sound of him slamming his shoulder against it catching the attention of the men standing in front of her, Kitty took off, running after him, her dress already short and her shoes reasonable. Those god damned days of doing laps around the mansion would finally pay off.
The head of the MRA managed to get the doors open, pushing through whatever debris had blocked the way, and the sounds of gunfire were immediate, unquestionable. Kitty quickened her pace, the MLF agents at her heels but starting to lag, and just before he stumbled out into the line of fire, she grabbed a shoulder and swept him into the outside wall. Behind him, she pressed him into the wall and let the agents run past. Assuming the two of them had continued around the building, they kept going, heading toward the gunfire. Once they had past, Kitty stepped back, letting him out, and turned to see where her pursuers had gone. In slow motion, one of them stumbled backwards from around the corner and fell; another was lifted up by his stomach and flung away from her. The rest crumpled to the ground. As she stepped forward, one hand still very firmly on Pierson's arm, although at this point she doubted he would try to run away from her anymore, she looked around the corner and saw Wolverine and Warpath turning away and starting to practically exterminate another group of fleeing MLF agents.
Wisdom's voice crackled over the comm again. She was silent for a moment, dumbfounded, before turning and looking at Pierson. “Outside. East side of the building. Pierson's safe. A little banged up,” she told Wisdom, raising her bracelet up to her lips to speak into her mic, and added in an awkward attempt to shake her mind off of what she had just seen, “I don't think he likes me.”