2012-10-29 META: Sabotage

''Deep underground, subway tunnels old and new create an entirely different facet of New York. The tunnels made by men and machines are connected and extended by those who must live hidden in order to survive. ''

''The foundations of all of New York's great buildings rest on bored-out, unsteady ground. Millions of citizens step willingly into the vast trap of the underground every day. While security in the main areas of the subway is quite tight, it is only meant to detect mundane threats and doesn't extend into the abandoned and unofficial regions of the dark.''

Deep under New York City's underbelly, in another sublevel of dark, dank, and dangerous, a pair of unlikely allies cruises toward a shaft that will take them into the tunnels.

"You know your role?" Lodestar casts a glance at Chimera, who stands beside him on the hovering platform.

"I know my role," she says with a derisive snort. "Do you know your place?"

"My place is where I make it." Lodestar is unimpressed. "Watch yourself or I may choose yours next."

Chimera doesn't dignify that with a response. She checks her communications device, only to find that it's not working this deep. Telepathy it is. She touches the minds of other Marauders--Vanisher, Scrambler, Vertigo, and the rest. "We're in place. Just see that you do your part," she reports.

They come to the shaft and Lodestar sends them shooting upward without further comment.

The NYPD and the Subway Authority are out in full force in the upper levels of the tunnels. They haven't missed the rumours and another terrorist attack, especially on the scales seen so far, is unacceptable to the powers that be. No one is in a good mood today. Subway cars are as crowded as usual but this time there are patrols moving through them. The platforms are backed up as people have to pass through random checks in addition to the precautions being taken at the turnstiles when people enter the system.

"It's already a police state," a young businessman mutters to his friend as his bag is checked for the third time. "No idea what those muties are worried about. We're already here."

There is something odd going on underground. Telepathic odd. And that is enough to draw Nate into the subway and... see lots of cops. Probably related. He is still seeing bright spots of light before his eyes. After images from being blinded by a laser, so his vision is poor, but underground at least he doesn't need the black sunglasses he has been using for almost two weeks. At least the vision problems have forced him to rely harder on his telepathy, giving him some much-needed practice. He scans minds for information, and then tries to blur his presence from all minds, as he leaves the subway car and searches for paths deeper underground.

Police barricades? Peh. Child's play. The best way to circumvent any security is to simply become a part of it, which Mystique has no trouble accomplishing. She passes right through New York's finest with a loaded gun at her hip, close enough to catch the scents of cologne and bad breath as she goes. If they had any idea that they were so close to a terrorist of her profile! Their loss, her gain. She makes it into the lower tunnels without breaking a sweat or losing her breath, safely passing outside of their influence before shifting into someone completely different. Down here, it's a different world. A different way of life. It's one which she will happily shake up in order to further disrupt things for the humans top-side. Today is ripe with opportunity, all she needs to do is find where the party is starting then pick which side to support. It could be the good guys. It could be the bad guys. It could also just be her own side. Such excitement, such possibility!

The Family is one of if not the most powerful crime family in NYC, few people have as many ears on the take as the Family. Fewer still have as many soldiers. None of the others have Jackie. His Uncle set up a rule, stay out of politics, and for the most part Jackie never questioned it. Jackie's not a hero, but he's not a shmuck either, and terrorism is bad for business. Not to mention the soul. So when the rumors came, Jackie listened, then he let his soldiers know he'd be unreachable for the day, business he said. A couple grand and one beating later have led Jackie here, to the subway. <> Jackie's eyes narrow at the voice in his head and his hair falls to cast his face in shadow as he steps out of the maintenance closet he Shadow Walked into from somewhere else, "Shut up." he says to the voice. It offers a little chuckle in response but obediently remains quiet for now.

Even outside of her status as one of the X-Men, Psylocke has been keeping close tabs on her underworld contacts throughout the United States - and, on a hunch following intercepted 'weapon' shipments, also in Asia - and it's a gestalt of these two sources that brings her here today alongside one of her most trusted teammates. It didn't take much to put two together; first, that the mysterious Wardens were inbound on some unknown purpose, and second that they had among their number two at least two known quantities. Riptide and Vertigo.

Having worked together on the acquisition of data from the offices of Governors Castrovenes and Sometimes, and sharing a common outlook on recent events, Betsy's first choice for a partner on this was naturally Wolverine. She's holding a telepathic link with him now, as she makes her way stealthily through the less-travelled maintenance tunnels of the subway system. A feat that was much simpler when she only had a vague background hum to account for, but the nearer she draws to the presumed 'Ground Zero', the more interference there is.

Crowds. There had to be a crowd.

She expected to deal with the usual psychic noise of cityfolk, but with the authorities out in force and a ripple of uncertainty and panic running through the mob, it makes her job that much harder and more complicated. Enough so that - dissecting the mess of neutral pathways - she almost misses the telltale resonance of another empowered consciousness at work.


 * "I've got something."| She carefully transmits to her partner, doing her best to simultaneously block out extraneous interference and keep her own powers stealthy. |"Faint. But it looks like I'm not the only one getting inside peoples' heads today."|

Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na naanaanaa naaa BAAATMAAAN, BAAATMAN. NaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNa BAAAATMAAAN BAAATMAAAN, BAAATMAN, BAT-MAN!

Thank God Deadpool's not a psychic, or else he'd be blaring that annoying tune across the psychic airwaves, so to speak. Does thinking loudly draw psychic attention? Or is it the sort of screen only a madman would conceive of?

Deadpool is keeping ably up with his accountabillabuddy, moving along with quick, ninja-like steps. His is the stride of a man with absolute ninja skills and not a care in the world. It seems he could care less about who 'wins' today, too. He's armed to the teeth- guns, more guns, knives, swords, daggers, dirks, bodkins, stilettos, katanas, rifles, grenades. None of his equipment makes a noise, and even his breathing is kept to soft, irregular breaths to conceal the sound.

"Nananananananananananana baaamnnn, baamnn," he hums, rather obtrusively as he trots along shortly ahead of Mystique. "Pow! Kasplots! Zoinks!" The Merc with the Mouth goes back to humming some obtrusively annoying song that sounds like it belongs to a campy 60's TV show.

So this turns you on, huh Jackie? Trapped in an underground steel tube with the biggest superhero sausage fest ever? At least we're mostly Marvel here, and not doing some crazy JLA crossover thing where Superman is mucking through the mud with Wolverine. ...though that would be kind of awesome. ...damn, now I'm getting all kinky. Where was I?

NANANANANANANANNAANANA BAAAATMAAAAAAN!


 * "Gettin' the feeling it's been like that for a while, Bets."|

Dressed in a black and gray facsimile of his X-Uniform, Wolverine's been keeping pace with his teammate through the tunnels. Now that he /knows/ - which is marginally better than merely /feeling/ - that there may be something deeply troubling at the heart of these registration proceedings, convincing him to come along was easy; keeping him from the Subway once rumours of the Wardens' imminent presence surfaced would have been the harder feat, in fact. When the crush of alert security personnel and annoyed commuters hits his nostrils, a few faint misgivings creep into the back of his thoughts, but they're nothing he hasn't faced and suppressed a thousand times previous; being around so many damn /people/ is not the feral X-Man's cup of tea.

Vertigo is standing on a subway car with the masses, her long green hair tucked up in a white scarf. Under her long trench coat, her shiny gold-trimmed red boots are visible. Riptide and Blockbuster aren't far from her, their Warden costumes hidden under workmen's jumpsuits. If one's travelled the subways long enough, it's easy to tell when a turn the body expects isn't taken, or the slope shifts under the tracks. Vertigo knows the subways and feels it when they've just passed the point of 'known territory' and are entering into the field of Lodestar's influence.

''Why not simply blow it all? Can't we just set the tunnels on fire?'' she wanted to know going in, but Sinister had cut her off. Control. It was all about control. Cutting out the other factors. There'd be time later for pure mayhem--as though subway trains headed for a collision weren't enough.

Chimera steps back as Lodestar and Scrambler disrupt the systems controlling the subway cars, shift the connections, put the pieces into place. |"Ready for your last show?"| she asks Vertigo, then laughs. She can feel the disgust the others feel at this ridiculous Wardens charade. When they're unmasked for real, for the world to see, it'll be the final nail in the coffin. Anyone can wear a mask and claim to be a hero or a villain but there's nothing to make it true either way.

An observant hero or villain will easily pick out the shifts in the crowd, the small signs that show trouble is headed in a very specific direction. In a system on full alert, it shouldn't be so easy to pass through the authorities to get on this car or that car. It's the work of a moment to step on board with the rest of the lambs on their way to slaughter. The lights of passing subway cars flash into corners that have remained unlit for ages. The oddest part is how many people seem oblivious to the little signs that add up to a prickle on the back of the neck and an arrow that points toward TROUBLE down a set of tracks that should have been shut down years ago.

Nate telepathic senses reveal what is going on before he sees it (he can't see very well, anyway). Telepathic manipulations, normal folks under some kind of control and a bunch of killers in costumes. There are others in the periphery too, including someone talking with himself (not all that rare) and yeah, an insane guy (not too uncommon either!). The killers are the main problem, though. One if a telepath or something, and telepaths tend to spot him quickly. So he hits Chimera first. With telepathy of all things, since trying to fire a telekinetic blast to a target inside a crowd without seeing well is dumb, even for Nate. Also, he has a few seconds to 'aim', which rarely happens when fights are going. So probably the first thing the Warden/Marauders know about the plan going south is Chimera's head exploding. Well, figuratively. Nate's psychic blasts are like a hammer. All power, no finesse.

Mystique, in all of her guises, is incredibly difficult to find on any psychic network. Where others might be shining beacons of light, she's more of a mysterious, shrouded knot of thoughts, memories and energy. Getting a lock on her thoughts is quite the challenge. Locating her isn't any easier.

Unfortunately, her travel companion shares absolutely no such blessings.

"Would you kindly give it a rest, dearie?" she retorts. Today's festivities has her wearing the mask of Tonya Harris, complete with green eyes, straight black hair which falls to the center of her back, jeans, hiking boots, and a brown leather bomber jacket. While bringing this loud-mouthed mercenary with her questions her very sanity, there are two key points which led to such a decision. The man is a walking armory, if she needs something more substantial then all she need do is remove it from his person. The other selling point is that he's an absolute loon. If she's looking for chaos, confusion, and disruption of an entire city's daily operations, he's not a bad one to have along for the ride. The fun part is that they're both unpredictable, neither of them can be trusted.

"Ah, and there are our new friends. Smiles on, first impressions and all." Tonya's memorized the layout of these tunnels, dating back over the span of many decades. Getting an up to date layout of the tunnels hadn't been easy, but she knows this one was supposed to be decommissioned. The activity occurring within confirms it, spotting the group by following the sounds of their conversation. Her smile is on, her concealed weapon's safety off. "Salutations to you all! Delightful day to cause a bit of a ruckus, no?" Oh, bugger. Someone's already begun without her! Mystique sides to Deadpool, "Be a dear and take care of that one, would you?" She's motioning toward Nate as she says it.

<> 'Dante' says inside Jackie's head as it looks around and sees things that Jackie himself cannot. <> The voice is cut off as Jackie intentionally walks directly under a bright light and follows the movement of the crowd, the hands in his pockets wrapping around the holstered machine pistols inside. He sighs a soft sigh relief before allowing the crowd to push him out of the light, <> Dante scolds petulantly at Jackie catches sight of the mayhem's beggining. He moves for the nearest bit of cover, not sure who's who yet and not wanting to unload a hail of gunfire at the wrong people. Shouldn't terrorists be easier to spot. They're always easy to spot in the movies dammit.

For Psylocke, the trick isn't reading how the crowd is feeling-- it's preventing herself from being utterly distracted by it. A mind held under thrall simply doesn't function like an ordinary brain, the divergent, orchestrated entropy of their thought patterns becoming something quite unnatural. Too lawful to be real. She's focusing in on this odd phenomenon when she senses something else - approaching the approximate location of she and her partner. Something rapidly becoming more than a fringe concern. Her body stills as she plunges deeper into the astral.



Her voice sounds... strained, as though this second presence unnerves her more than the first. Physically, her pulse and breathing have quickened, and violet eyes slip through the darkness toward the squat, muscular form of Wolverine. "Go!" She calls out, shutting down their direct mental link for the moment - it's a clean break, but she's clearly now dealing with too much to maintain it. Looks like there's nothing 'faint' about the signals she's getting, after all.

Searching for calm, Betsy inhales a lungful of rank, stagnant air. And then she fires up her telepathy again, doing everything in short, calculated bursts rather than try to keep focus. A sharp signal to Logan, giving him a momentary vision of Nate's exact location. Along with a simple, emotional message: protect him. Then she's dipping out and back in, this time firing off a suggestion to the crowd, seeing if she can use the immediate aftermath of the powerful stranger's assault to break the suggestion on those within the subway cars. The telepathic equivalent of a wake-up call. Moving at the same time, she reaches behind to unsheath the long, hundredfold steel of her favoured katana. She doesn't need telepathy...

To understand that this situation is about to get messy.

"You know, I've been getting this weird tickle on the back of my neck for the last twenty minutes," Deadpool tells Mystique as they round a corner. "Like this weird feeling as if some vast, kind of impatient writer is trying to force the narrator of my existence into a realization. Like I'm... like I'm on some kind of /rail/," he says, stepping on the rusty tracks and following them along. "Like I'm a railway machine, and this whole outing is being... roaded somewhere. Is there a word for that feeling? Like when it's so obvious?"

Deadpool jumps off the track and abruptly takes a left. No you don't. Turn around and get back on Maleficent's plot train. Don't wanna! You can't make me!

"Aww, damnit," Deadpool grouses about nothing in particular, following along with Mystique just as he had been the entire time.

At the sounds of the telepathic assault (I bet it went SQLORTCH or something. Telepathic sounds must be so weird! I can't wait for the next pose to find out if it blew his head up  SHUT UP DEADPOOL.) Deadpool slips around by Mystique, watching the assault on the two guys. It looks legit. They look like they are Up To No Good, which is Deadpool's raison d'etre. Fancy, he's speaking French!

"I can fix them up. This right here? Flash fry a grue in twelve seconds flat." He produces a bottle of unhealthy looking gelatin, strapped to some kind of accelerant, strapped to what looks like a cannibalized Tickle Me Elmo and a lighter.

"Fire'n the hole!" he announces, and flings the homemade napalm right at the two guys who are either exploded or not.

"Going," Wolverine replies when the link snaps. With no immediate incidicators to point him in the right direction, he just picks a direction and runs, trying his damndest to find something - anything - amidst the foul air of the tunnel and distant smells of humanity to guide him on his way. Soon, he can feel the ground beginning to quake gently beneath his feet and hear the distant, but swiftly approaching roar of a chugging engine.

He is relieved, then, when his teammate re-estamblishes mental contact; anything to get him out of the way before the train bears down on him. The tracker in black pauses for a moment as foreign sights and sounds briefly fill his consciousness, pointing him directly to...

... some... guy with funky hair.

Who is on a train that's speeding through the tunnels.


 * "Shit."|

After glancing over his shoulder, he sets his jaw, spins around and sprints /towards/ the locomotive barreling towards him, squinting his eyes as its front lights grow increasingly more difficult to bear. When the two are but seconds from colliding, he sharply and suddenly turns, leaps at one of the walls, and plants the soles of his boots against it; his sprint continues along it for a couple of steps before he bounds off to hurl himself at a pair of subway doors that he knows will be there by the time he hits the car.

Hopefully, nobody is crowded around it, because he's leading with a set of claws that'll slice through the doors as if they were water. Once he lands inside, he takes a moment to gather himself before standing so that he can push his way through the crowd in search of Nate.

Or, you know, terrorists. Whichever comes first.

Chimera has been so focused on manipulating the subway system and the citizens of New York that she hasn't been watching the Astral. In her defence, she's doing an astounding amount of work. Of course, that means that when Nate hits her with a psychic blast with all the power of a cruise missile, the backlash of her illusion unravelling is catastrophic.

A wave of pain and nightmare rolls through the underbelly of New York. Great dragons rise up everywhere, thrashing and throwing people in all directions, even rocking subway cars off their tracks. The pain of Nate's blast stabs through all the minds Chimera was touching as she strikes out blindly to try and hurt him in return. Chaos and panic reign everywhere her preternatural calm had been in play.

The Marauders themselves and their ally are not unaffected. Vertigo panics, her dizzying and awful power washes through the entire subway line on which she's riding. |"We're under attack,"| crackles over the communications devices, in Vanisher's voice, before the comms are momentarily disrupted. |"Take action."|

Logan clears the subway car doors just before Lodestar's powers surge out of control, tearing through the electrical systems and the third rail. Tracks twist and melt, the power goes out for miles, transformers explode, subway cars crash and buckle.

The worst of the damage is confined to the isolated areas in which the drama of the Wardens' reveal was to play out. The tunnels fall dark save for fires burning and sparks fountaining from broken electrical conduits.

Hundreds of terrified, disoriented people are trapped on the trains down here with those on missions to stop the Marauders and Wardens, haunted by luminous green ghostly dragons that continue to wreak havoc even as Chimera's mind recoils and her body collapses. As she crumples, a spindly black figure appears from nowhere to scoop her up and spirit her away.

Nate winces at his psychic blasts kinda 'rebounds' and spreads all over the network of mind-controlled folks in the subway. That woman doing the puppeting was certainly very skilled, unfortunately so. And it looks she passed out, which is a good thing. Now, he had just jumped into the lead car (phasing through the wall), and a few seconds later, well, everything goes south. The lights go out, Wolverine claws himself a hole in, the train derails and he is hit with the thoughts of thousands panicking humans.

On he other hand, lights are out, so it doesn't matter he is half-blind. Haha. Why is the whole thing spinning, though?

Nate groans, rising up all his psi-shields, falls to his knees, hit by Vertigo's vertigo. "Stop!" He shouts. His telekinetic power spreads all over the subway cars as he grabs them, making it glow with golden light, preventing it from crashing, and protecting passengers and mutants. He can now see Wolverine, too. "What the hell... Weapon-X!?" He kind of recognizes the short, clawed mutant.

"Nice throw, to be certain, but you're attacking the wrong individuals, dear." Sigh. "I can see this is going to take a slightly more proactive approach," Mystique mutters to herself through that different voice and accent. Before she can really do anything at all, everything else happens on its own accord. Including the lights going out all around them.

"..Splendid."

Things are going every which-way other than what she had been counting on. Highly exciting, indeed! One format of chaos has been substituted for another, it's not the planned show but it sure is a spectacle worthy of being witness to. Still... She wants some fireworks. A lot of people in an old tunnel with a lot of disorientation going on, and no one's able to see? Hmm, options.

In the faint, flickering light of scattered fires, Mystique suddenly grabs Deadpool by the shoulder as she helps herself to some of the explosives that he's got about his person. "Go forth and enjoy yourself, darling. Make a scene of it, it'll be smashing!" she encourages with a quick pat to the shoulder she had grabbed.

Speaking of smashing... Mystique/Tonya's procured block of C4 is going to find itself adhered to one of the subway walls, the mutant infiltrator's hands deftly situating and arming the charge to a timer. As long as we're all going for significant disruption of the mass transportation network, let's add a little more to it all! Five minutes should suffice, she'll want to be out of the concussion's path. If that doesn't sate her needs for explosions, the frag grenade now tucked into her pocket might help with that. While everyone else worries about trains and passengers, she's going to bring the roof down on their heads.

In the center of the thickest knot of the crowd the sudden mental blow catches Jackie by surprise. He's not used to psychic assaults, one because he's a mob guy and that's not a work hazard generally speaking and two... there's already someone in his head, and other people don't often climb in there to toy with it. It's best for all if Jackie remains in control of that guy after all. Unrestrained psychic feedback however... The hitman goes down, his knees buckling as his hands come up to grab either side of his skull. To make matters worse, the sudden onset of vertigo (the adjective not the person) forces his stomach to heave, forcing out it's contents violently. Then comes the mass panic. Then the last of the lights around Jackie flickers, explodes in a shower of sparks, and dies.

One could not have created a worse series of events to trap the Host in if one had designed it. The iron like control Jackie keeps on The Darkness is cracked by the mental assault, fissured by the sudden loss of balance and nausea, crushed to dust beneath the waves of panic he feels washing over his darker half from all of the sweet innocent flesh around him, and then blown away like chafe in the wind by the sudden and complete lack of light. He feels the carress of tentacles over him, the cool sliding grip of Darkness as dozens of clawed hands cradle Jackie with something akin to protective possession, and where most are afraid of the dragons, those closest to the downed hit man suddenly remember why all living things fear the Dark. Unable to assert control over the Darkness, the horrors of the first evil, of the Abyss, pour out of Jackie, taking the shapes and forms of his nightmares. Monsters and demons, bat like winged creatures, long hungry living oozes with countless gaping maws, things made almost entirely of boney spines and claws, wyrms and insects with shining spined carapace armor, pour from the shadows around the downed stunned hit man with superhuman speed. Those that ran from Dragons now run towards them, because something else, something worse, is growing, something uncontrolled and horrifying. And hungry.

<> hisses a hundred, a thousand, a thousand thousand voices matching an equal number of eyes that appear everywhere all at once. "noo..." Jackie mutters weakly as he's beared to the ground by the panic, the pain, and the mental assault.

It's some small, merciful fortune that Psylocke has lowered the field of her psychic awareness. Even semi-dormant, the backlash through her neural pathways to the brain is immense; a flood of near-crippling transmitted agony that would have dropped her like a sack of bricks scant few years ago. Gritting her teeth, the violet-eyed telepath steadies herself with a shake of her head, releasing a hiss of breath that's part anger and part relief. At least she's still--

The tunnel wall to her left suddenly explodes with virulent green light, the roaring maw of one of Chimera's draconic legion slamming into her flank before she can react to its presence beyond the futile raising of her mundane blade. Japanese steel contorts into a resonant warble as it fails to soak the impact, scattering from Betsy's grip to clatter uselessly to the pitch-dark floor. A moment later she follows it, tucking into a roll off one well-muscled shoulder.

"/Bloody hell/," She spits, breathless and already tensing to evade the beast's lashing tail. It cleaves through a few trailing strands of purple hair, en route to devastating a strip of halogen lighting overhead. Sparks trail downward, catching blaze to cables beside the track. Through the rising flame, Psylocke emerges like a vengeful furie, directing the confusion and pain of that psychic backlash into a telepathic suckerpunch that scatters the raging wyrm into a thousand falling fireflies. Snorting, Psylocke spins away to retrieve her fallen weapon.

A beat later, she's into a low, parkour-esque sprint through the ravaged tunnels, closing in rapidly upon the location of the nearest halted train. Even with her senses suppressed, she can feel the disorientation and panic of those onboard. She continues on, flipping through a further pair of Chimera's dragons to land in a skidding crouch before the front carriage of that glowing subway car, blade held sidelong and violet gaze intent upon the shadows beyond.

The shadows that are hissing, moving, /screaming/ down the next section of tunnel toward her. Looking for the cause of this chaos, she just finds more chaos; but she trusts her partner to handle the first. So it's toward the fleeing figures and the dark, tendrillous, hunting darkness. Shuddering instintively, feeling the flood of pure fear emanating from the black, Psylocke thrusts herself up on powerful legs and continues forward, gently probing onward...

With a mind that's likely not ready for what it's about to find.

"I can do a scene. I can do a scene that'll make Liberacci look like a well-bred English gentleman," Deadpool mutters, running off. "Ciruit breakers! Those are important." He draws an oversized automatic pistol and empties five or seven rounds into it with a snappy burst of fire. The gunshots echo and resound in a million directions, adding to the cacophany. He starts running towards the sound of the din, shaking his head. "I really hope this doesn't turn out to be the time this chick screws me over," he grumbles. "Messing with the subway? What kind of stupid job is this? If I /took/ the subway, I'd probably be a lot more irritaaaaa..."

"Hot Asian Ninja chick?!" he says, staring at Psylocke, clearly agog. His automatics hang down at his side as he watches Psylocke and Wolverine tearing through the subway trains. "My cup runneth over!" he declares. He glances around, then slaps his last piece of demolition C4 against what looks like a fairly important support structure right over the main shunt switch for the trains. That should create some carnage when he sets it off.

And then, all hell breaks loose. At least for most everyone there. Demons of manifest horror- slithering nightmares of eldritch and fevered imagination- leap and crawl towards Deadpool. The lights flicker and dim, stuttering listlessly as a serpentine form draws near.

It rises, human arms, human face- cold blue eyes and the whispering features of a spectre, burning with supernatural luminance.

"This can't be! It's... impossible!" Deadpool cries, holding a gun up. He takes a step back, then another, as a luminous finger extends, accusatory, a dagger of ghastly ice aimed at his chest.

Yyoooooouu.... killled me...Waaaaade!

Five gunshots ring out and a katana swipes irritably through the spectre's form. With an almost startled look, it dissipates back into formless shadow. Deadpool stares down the sights of his gun at the swirling mists.

"Uh. Yeah. That's why it's /impossible/ for you to still be here, dipwad." He hunkers down near the swirling, serpent mist. "YOU ALWAYS WERE A TOOL, JACK!" he hollers at it. "Just so you know? You were a /lousy/ roommate," he says, stomping. "You /can't cook/," he adds, stomping more. "You /can't play guitar/, you stole /all/ /my/ /snacks/," stomp stomp stomp, "and AT YOUR FUNERAL I PLAYED N'SYNC AND MADE OUT WITH YOUR SISTER!" STOMP STOMP STOMP.

"Man, I hated that jerk."

There's a dramatic pause, and then a burst of fully automatic fire rips through the shadowform that Psylock's attacking. Do bullets hurt abyssal eldritch demons? If you're The Deadpool, and firmly believe they /should/, and you're rescuing a /super hot Asian ninja/, they sure better! Or else this whole sort of 'white knight' thing is going to kind of fall apart. CHAAAARGE! Screaming at the top of his lungs, sword in one hand, pistol in the other, Wade flies forward right into the melee, laughing uproariously at manifestions of his deepest fears. As he's done his entire life. If you can't beat 'em, go insane and laugh them to death, because why not.

A FEW SECONDS AGO Wolverine runs along a wall like a goddamn ninja before forcefully boarding a speeding train with the help of his adamantium claws.

NOW Wolverine gropes for a pole, a chair, anything to help him to his feet as he bounces along the floor of the subway car. Up is left. Right is purple. Vomit is occasionally spewing from the one-time assassin's mouth, and most of it is - mercifully - running towards the hole in the doors to leave a foul trail behind them. His claws are gone; he had the good sense to sheath them once he he realized that remaining upright would be a luxury.

A healing factor, as it turns out, is of limited help in cases of extreme Vertigo.

"/Wolverine/," the clawed mutant sharply corrects when Nate calls out to him. He can barely focus on the psychic - who seems to simultaneously be right next to and a thousand feet away from him - but his ears are working /just fine/.

"HKK--" he tacks on a moment later, when the train jostles and that sandwich he had for breakfast works its way back out.

After spitting a mouthful of something awful out, he manages to get first a hand, then both arms wrapped around a pole, which he uses to slowly haul himself up off of the ground. Once upright, he plants one foot forward, freezes when the whole world wobbles and wavers around him, and struggles to keep another wave of nausea from overtaking him.

"Gonna kill 'em," he growls to himself, clinging to his nice, relatively stable pole for dear life. Most people might go with 'I can /do this/!' or other, more straightforward means of self-motivation; Logan just sticks with what ne knows.

For clarification, when Wolverine says 'like a Ninja', he's referring to Me, Deadpool. Because I'm better than Wolverine is, at whatever it is Wolverine does. And apparently that's ninjaing. Ninjaning? Ninjitsu. WOLVERINE SMELLS LIKE OLD SOCKS

The dragons wither and die as the emergency lights come up on the trains, casting everything in a weird blue glow. The generators here in the intersection where the Wardens were going to make their big reveal also reset and one of the four massive spotlights flickers to life. Two pinpoint red lights high in the darkness mark cameras that seem to be functioning as well.

On Nate's train, people are fortunate. Injuries are minimized and even before the lights come up, they're not left alone in the dark with all that fear and disorientation. There is still a great deal of, to be delicate, collateral damage. Also, the engine is completely derailed and the front of the first car smashed in.

Vertigo has recovered her composure, which is worse for everyone than when she'd lost it. Her patience has worn thin and when she sights Nate, he's the focus of her fury.

"You. Traitor. Fool. They'll put a leash on you," she hisses as she sends another wave of her power down the train. "Kill them all, kill the sympathizers twice," she orders Riptide. Riptide's Warden uniform shreds as he transforms and rips through the cars toward Nate.

Blockbuster leaps out of the broken front car, running to join Arclight. "That there," she calls, pointing down at the train car where Jackie's Darkness is running amok. "Do we--" She gets no further as Mystique's bomb goes off, then Deadpool's. The entire tunnel shakes and begins to collapse. Only a wave of Arclight's power pushes back as one side of the structure comes down, preventing one train and their escape route from being buried. She can't do anything about what's happening beyond that point. The effects of the bombs are only starting to reveal themselves as the earth overhead shifts ponderously.

Citizens are fleeing the trains, fleeing the dragons and the Darkness. Unwittingly, they're fleeing directly toward the Marauders remaining to hold the intersection and the platform where Lodestar and Chimera stood just moments ago.

Nate grins, sensing the subway slows down without casualties. "Wolverine? Alright. I am Nate Grey..." uh, someone is ranting at him. Oh yes, one of the killers. He frowns, glares... and gets hit by the vertigo again. Oooh, room spinning like crazy. Nate does not even see Riptide coming, although he pulls back his telekinesis to protect himself with a forcefield the best he can. It is not very much, he can't concentrate.

Spectral dragons? Not a huge deal, right? Mystique's outside of the worst of that, anyway. The shadows, though..! She takes cover on a small platform by a maintenance door as the charges bring down much of the tunnels, hands clamped over her ears as the dust and debris goes flying. She would be grinning like an absolute fiend if it weren't for the shadows themselves getting involved with the festivities. It's hard to tell if they pose any threat or if they're for intimidation purposes only, but she's not real keen on finding out what they're capable of! That's not all, either. Someone around here tampered with her spur of the moment cave-in. A minor inconvenience, as it sure sounds like there's more to come now that the tunnels are drastically weakened.

An exit strategy would be very useful about now. And, gods help her, the way that Deadpool ran off in looks like a good way to go. He can still be useful by distracting anyone along the way. She just..has to run into those shadows.

Being in the middle of a warzone is tough when one has nothing but fists and a .45 sidearm at their disposal. Plus, Mystie doesn't feel like announcing her armed status to the world just yet. What's a girl to do?

She starts by vaulting over the railing, clearing one of the animated shadows and dodging another as she runs toward literal ground zero. There's a flash of vertigo coming f rom one direction, confirming her thought to go the -other- way before it gets to be any worse. Then, when this agent of the Brotherhood had the whole place all to herself, now she's finding the split packets of resistance. Deadpool's shooting at the shadows, among other things. That doesn't seem to work too well, but they don't seem to be too tough. Good to know. Some ninja gal's fighting one of the dragons, which -is- a threat, after all. Blending into the darkness isn't so easy when it's trying to attack her. So, path of least resistance, Mystique opts to play the role of some unarmed citizen that's fleeing the scene. Who'll be the wiser?

Walking the seedy underpaths of the world, interacting with the monstrously improbable - or merely outright monstrous - one hears rumours of primordial evils darker than any that walk the face of the earth. Beings so twisted that to see them in their primal, physical form would be to look into the very face of destruction. As a telepath, Psylocke is familiar enough with the workings of the human mind that she has come to consider this myth. No matter how wild and varied the experience of man, he will always imagine something worse-- the boogeyman, the lurking creature in the cupboard. These childlike fears are a way to cope with what's real.

After all, if there's always something worse, what you face now must be possible to overcome.

But her probing mind finds something... ineffable. Too vast to comprehend, too bleak to maintain any desire to. Panic grips her like a vice. A dawning sense that she not just seen, but /been seen/. Retreating from the astral, she draws a tremulous breath, grip tightening upon her hundredfold steel that she might seek some small, physical comfort. She feels so small. So weak. Like a child lost in the dark of a bedroom, nightlight stolen away. Horrors lurking. Even as she thinks it, she realizes how ludicrous it is. She begins to laugh. Desperately.

An excruciatingly solid limb explodes from the shadows, erupting through a blind spot that shouldn't be there to catch the X-Woman deep across the gut. Lungs exploding, she folds like an origami crane, dropping to both knees as though none of her training - or her incredible powers - could ever have prepared her for a single, well-aimed kick. Violet eyes blossom with tears, ripples of blood creeping through the whites as she strains to see in the pitch-- but she can't. Everything is obfuscated, whether by darkness alone... no. Something shifts.

And she becomes aware that she can't see because she has no eyes. Feeling the thick flow of crimson lifeblood down her cheeks, Psylocke lifts her hands and rends at her broken visage, reaching out with her telepathic senses to see through eyes of electric, psionic fire.

The figure standing over her is sleek and powerful, corded with finely-sculpted muscle, a stalking, creeping predator of tremendous grace and strength. Part woman and part panther. It's only once she reaches the apex of this awesome, astounding creature that she realizes what she's seeing. Sleek purple hair frames cruelly beautiful features, the dancing flame in violet eyes akin to the very fires of Hell. This woman is a killer, it's clear. This woman is also her.

"You..." whispers Betsy, reaching downward and fumbling for her weapon. It's not there.

"You." Echoes the perfect creature of shadow and death, as a cascade of searing bullets erupt through her hot Asian torso, leaving neat holes that close over as she smiles, and takes a single, perfectly-judged step forward. Raising a long, toned arm, she summons forth a spitting beam of telekinetic energy. Her opposing limb rises to shift the deadly blade into a double-handed grip, the stance of an executioner assumed as easily and naturally as though she were born to it; and, Betsy realizes, she was. This isn't herself she faces.

This is the body she stole. The body she doesn't deserve. The woman who died in her stead. 'Sometimes,' she recalls her own words, so recently spoken, 'I believe that all we have left, is borrowed. That we buy our time here by the actions we choose to take...'

What has she done to earn the right of another's existence? How has she earned a second chance? Forced others to fight her battles, striven for mastery of her powers only to be here, now, a creature bound by rage at the circumstance of a past she should long have left behind, forging uncertain alliances held in secretive seclusion from people she dares to call her friends... a life spent trading in doubt and endless, unanswered questions. Without the hard, steely certainty of the statuesque woman looming over her, Betsy Braddock doesn't deserve to draw another breath. Empty eye sockets continue to drop away what little time she's purchased with her laughable, futile actions. If she can't succeed in protecting those she purports to serve...

What right does she have to protest this end?

In the darkness of the tunnels, Psylocke hangs her head, wrapped in the black illusion of the foremost evil as she submits to the torment of her own brutal judgement. Heedless of the fast, furious efforts of the manic red blur scant feet away; or the yet more pressing concern of the falling masonry seconds away from burying her forever in the affliction of her torment.

That. Is. Enough. Jackie's teeth clamp down over a mouth filled with the taste of bile and Italian food, his lips peeling back in a grimace of pain and determination. Vertigo's attention shifts elsewhere, the effects of the psychic backlash fade quickly, and lightless tunnel or not, Jackie does not offer up his control easily and never for long. He puts a hand firmly against the floor of the car and pushes himself upright, surging against the dozens of demonic hands that, in mockery of keeping him safe, try to hold him down. "You broke the rules." he says, spitting to the side to clear his mouth, the saliva hitting a Darkling in the eye. Jackie has good aim. "You broke my rules." he says again. He reaches out before him, his arm vanishing into the shadows so that he can find the thing on the Other Side, his fingers closing around it's throat. "And so you suffer the consequences." ||B-But Jackie boy!|| whines the voice plaintively, ||Was only to-GACGH!|| the grip is only physical as a manifestation of the mafioso's will, it's his iron stubbornnes that truly shuts the Darkness down.

As the lights flicker on and off fitfully, the endless horde of demonic creatures, the living nightmares, hurl themselves at victims, only to explode into black and gray ash just as they were about to sink their teeth, claws, blades, whatever into the nearest soft pink (or purply ninja like) fleshy thing. Where once chaos reigned and fear ran unimpeded, where primordial ineffable evil spawned, now there's only a man with glowing sickly yellow eyes. "THAT IS ENOUGH!" his voice rings down the tunnel in anger as his hands dip into his coat and come back out holding the machine pistols he packed away just for the threat of terrorists his sources warned him about. "Stupid. Mother. Fucking. Bombers!" his eyes track the area, seeking out anyone who might fit the profile of a terrorist. "You have any idea how hard it will be to get to midtown with these fuckin' trains out!?! Some of us have shit to do tomorrow!"

Logan strains towards the next pole down for what seems like an eternity as his eyes and stomach conspire against him; it's only when the rainbow haze clinging to everything begins to recede that he's able to make the the journey without losing his balance again, and once he's there, he gives himself a second to regain his composure while Vertigo rants.

When he opens his eyes, a storm of whirling bone is slicing towards them, joined by a wave of colourful, distorting force that threatens to bring him to the ground again; the train's opposite wall crumples when he hurls himself against it just in time to escape the latter, and with a grimace, he considers his options for dealing with the former and pushes himself back to his feet.

It doesn't take long; there aren't very many, and Nate's difficulties reduce them even further. There's a man at the eye of that rending gale, and with a few long steps and a dive, Wolverine aims to make it two.

"Get up, Grey!" he snaps as wicked claws burst through the skin between his knuckles. They're quickly brought to bear in a cross before his body in the hopes of turning aside - or better yet, removing - a couple of Riptide's spiny protrusions before he's in the middle of the worst fight cloud in history.

Deadpool goes in swinging and shooting. To no avail! Why not? At least he tried. He looks around, a bit confused, then looks down at Psylocke. "Um. Are you ok?" he asks her, clearly feeling a bit embarassed about the whole white knight thing.

He looks at Logan, and there's an impression of him narrowing his eyes as the former Weapon-X project goes... wolverine on whatever he's fighting.

"So, like, I just met you. And this is crazy. But I'ma shoot those guys over there, so, uh... call me, maybe?"

Deadpool unlimbers his assault rifle. Except it's not an assault rifle- it's an AA-12 automatic machine shotgun loaded with alternating rounds of tungsten slugs and old fashioned lead buckshot. Probably not more than an inconvenience to Wolvie, sure... but good lord does it make a noise. And leave big ol' .68 calibre holes in things.

And needless to say, Deadpool starts laying down some serious Supporting Fire around Logan to help the guy chew bigger holes in the competition.

Citzens fleeing the trains have rushed toward the light in the intersection, directed by conductors and police, but things can only get worse for them from here. The ceiling of the intersection groans and buckles as the support system slowly destabilizes in the wake of the bombs. Arclight's initial surge dampened the effects of the bombs set by Mystique and Deadpool but this area was created from old passages or freshly dug and reinforced by Lodestar's metalwork - the structure is not anywhere near up to modern code.

Arclight and Blockbuster are left to try holding back the wave of earth that rolls down into the intersection. Blockbuster catches a massive support beam sliding his way and uses it to - whether he means to or not - divert a rockslide from dozens of terrified people. Arclight brings her hands down again, sending an answering wave back up to block the worst of the collapsed earth surging into the crowd but she can't stop the landslide that washes down the walls and against the train where Logan and Nate are fighting Marauders, as well as the one opposite, trapping and burying dozens. Jackie's train is the only one left unaffected--good thing, too, because the lights are still on.


 * "Remove yourselves,"| a cold voice says over the Marauder comms. |"You hardly needed to be here at all."|

Vanisher appears behind Vertigo, chuckling softly. "Come, pretty. The master has spoken," he says as he whisks her away.

As the first wave of earth stops moving, the intersection is filled save for the area Arclight and Blockbuster have managed to defend in front of Jackie's train. The other tunnels down which the trains arrived are blocked and slowly filling as the entire area continues to destabilize. To get from those trains into the intersection would require great risk and a journey over an ever-rising, shifting obstacle course of stone, steel, earth, and debris.

Riptide is trapped on the train with Nate and Wolverine for the moment, the whole thing rocks as the earthslide hits it and the citizens on it are obviously terrified. Riptide is all but invulnerable when he's moving at this speed, bullets or anything getting close to him are diverted by his whirlwind and flung outward in all directions as fast as they approached.

Nate's telekinesis turns aside some of the bone and bullets but the man is moving with incredible speed. When Wolverine steps into range, the hail of bone intensifies. Riptide aims projectiles at Logan's face to try and blind him as he backs off for a moment to reassess the threats. He only needs to hold out long enough for Vanisher to return for him.

Get up, he says? Good plan, but where is up, again? Nate feels dizzy enough to be sick, and it is a good thing he skipped breakfast. Then a few of Riptide's shards hit him, and a couple get through his imperfect shields, cutting him painfully. Vertigo leaving, and the pain of the cuts, make him able to focus his mind again. The closest hostile mind is Riptide's, so he grabs it and tries to make him stop spinning (and tossing stuff at him). |"Freeze"|. Hopefully just as Wolverine hits him.

The shadows disappear. In their stead is some voice yelling out about hunting down terrorists or some such. Add to this the idea that the ninja femme seems to be defeated by something unseen and Mystique has an excellent plan spring to mind. Three birds with one stone, right here. Instead of bolting for the safety of more distant tunnels she comes to Psylocke's aid, trying to help the other woman to her feet. "C'mon then, dearie, now isn't the time to stop and smell the mold. Up with you!"

Bird one: Terrorists tend not to look like civilians that are helping downed hero-types.

Bird two: Ninja-girl is vulnerable. It's a perfect opportunity for the metamorph to nudge her way in and get her talons into another potential new recruit. Psylocke could become a useful ally.

Bird three: Cover. Psylocke's a fighter. So is Deadpool, who is already doing an exemplary job of providing some of that cover (and possibly being an easy target for anyone hunting down people looking like terrorists.) Mystique can have herself a skilled fighter or two to help lead her out of here, which could mean that she doesn't have to break her cover. Make herself a 'friend' here and now and she'll get the benefit of doubt later. It's simple, it's usually effective, and it could potentially pay off in spades.

When the tunnels begin to collapse a second time it's all that she can do to keep from grinning, knowing exactly who caused that amount of destruction to happen. Not only will this take months to sort out, it also wasn't caused by any mutant ability. Everyone will be pointing fingers, but will anyone have any proof to back it? She could nudge this situation in any direction, even using it as leverage to ally herself with the Marauders if the need arose. Another complex web of lies has begun. All that she needs to worry about now is getting out of here.

"I say, now seems like the proper moment for us to be making tracks, if you'll pardon the expression," Mystique offers to Psylocke, and Deadpool if he's still able to hear her over all of the noise. "I believe I know a way out of here, no time like the present!"

Jackie looks around a the entire scenario and, quite frankly, realizes he's in out of his depth here. Costumes are all alike to him, equally foolish hero and villain alike, and so he cannot tell any one from another. Arclight and the big guy seem to be saving people and stopping the roof from collapsing in, or trying to, so obviously they're okay, and then there's the normal chick helping the purple Asian ninja (which he's certain means he's stepped into one of those silly Japanese cartoons) and of course, the subway itself is starting to collapse. There is no one yelling about Allah, or Mother Russia, or some sort of freaky mutant equal rights thing, there's just bombs and chaos. Where the hell are the terrorists? Dust settles around him from the cracks in the ceiling and Jackie's eyes track the area once more, "Fuck it." he states simply, tucking his guns away. This is not what he came here for, he came here to be John McClane dammit, but there's no obvious Hans Gruber and this is just getting to be crazy. But most of all, more then the rest of it, Jackie just isn't a hero. Kill the bad guys? He can do that. No bad guys? ... Call Superman or whatever. Jackie doesn't do janitorial work. The hit man drops to the ground and rolls quickly beneath the train, letting the shadows of the car over him swallow him whole. Miles away he steps out of a tunnel in Central Park and grimaces, swatting dust from his coat, "I need a drink." he mutters to himself.

It's like something out of a fairytale. A real one; not the watered-down, modern hokum fed to bratty babes by parents too steeped in the 'evolved' conservative attitude to feed them the truth. When the master of the Darkness fights back against it, bringing it under sway, Psylocke snaps to with a tremendous gasp - a woman surfacing from the choking grasp of the ocean. Chest heaving, she falls forward onto an extended palm, striking the filthy stone at the same moment that a huge scattering of shock-rent brick explodes beside her. Danger.

Shaking her head, struggling to find her bearings in the chaos raging against all her senses, the telepath is easy prey for the descending Mystique. Glance lashing to the stranger who addresses her, Betsy is forced to draw a swift conclusion and allow herself to be helped aright. Her hand, no longer fumbling as it was in her haunting shadow-vision, closes around the carefully-wrapped hilt of her katana, a rise to her full height coming as another swathe of rubble begins to tumble in her direction. Turning from the hip, she lashes out with her mind's eye, violet wings of electric fire spreading about her stern countenance.

Brick explodes into dust, the thickly cloying mist settling about her shoulders and coating that distinctive purple hair as she turns back to 'Tonya', eyes partly lidded against the billowing irritant. All around, she can feel people's fear and anxiety...

"If you know the way," she says in spite of her more heroic instincts. "Then lead."

Sweeping her blade around to its sheath across her back, she shifts in a half-circle around the other woman, her psychic senses still raging as she tries to fight the lingering despair of moments before. Because that was no illusion, she knows; some dark manifestation instead of her innermost horrors, and before her now is another abject failure. How many more have died, or been critically injured in the explosive events of the last half hour?

 She transmits, rather more weakly than her usual standard, enough to just barely reach his mind - and there's no guarantee it won't trickle into somebody else's. Everything about her is weakened, slowed. 

Deadpool promptly puts his back to Mystique's and backs her up the escape hatch, a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. He shakes his head- this has gotten confusing on several levels, even for the insane merc. But he knows how to cover a target, and he does his best to make sure Mystique or Psylocke don't take a stray bullet on the way out.

A bone shuriken flies out and buries itself right between Wolverine's eyes before he can go through with throwing himself at Riptide; it won't /blind/ him, but it sure as hell stops him. He quickly turns his face away and tries to track each projectile that follows by the tell-tale whistle of it slicing through the air; there are a few too many, too quickly, with too much noise from collapsing tunnels and fleeing people to cut them /all/ down before they hit him, however. By the time Nate makes his play, there are more bone spurs /in/ Logan than around him, and he is gingerly bracing a hand against a slanted wall to mantain his balance.

He's sporting a few bullet holes too, for that matter; thanks a lot, Deadpool.

His ears are ringing, rivers of blood trickle down his face and the rest of his body, and the his head is still swimming a little from Vertigo's powers; on the up side, though, Riptide seems to have stopped.

"Hnh," he grunts as he pulls on a piece of bone shallowly embedded in his chest.


 * "Train,"| he replies to Betsy. It's clipped, angry; there isn't much space for language in his thoughts right now.

/Now/ he completes that dive, hurling himself at Riptide with a savage growl in his throat and the liberated bone shard pointed squarely at the Marauder/Warden's belly.

Vanisher pops in, surveys the scene, laughs, then pops out as fast as he came. Riptide is injured as well, bleeding from bullet wounds. He choked on blood and gasps, "Go ahead." Then he grins at Logan. "Traitor."

Arclight and Blockbuster are alone with the crowd and the remains of the collapse that continues to shift and threaten. They keep it at bay for their own safety but it does look to the casual observer, and the casual smartphone wielder, that they're saving a good number of people.

The way out down the remaining passage is stable for the moment. Lights are growing in the distance as distress calls and tracking beacons bring service and emergency vehicles creeping down into the once-abandoned tunnels.

Nate stands, leaning against a wall because he is still dizzy. Looks like Wolverine got the speedster, which is great. Because he has some kind of sharp thing that looks like a bone needle sticking off his shoulder (ow). His uniform slowed it down enough it is only about two inches deep. Pulling it out still makes him grind his teeth. He also notices people are still panicky, but that is pretty normal.

Except it is because the tunnel is collapsing, not because mutants are fighting each other. Crap! "Can you handle that guy?" He asks Wolverine. "I am going to try to keep the tunnel whole while the people flee." He steps out of the car and reaches up to the ceiling. He is not an architect, but where he sees concrete very cracked and dirt falling, he creates a TK shield.

As far as coming into a volatile situation with absolutely no plans went, things here have shaped up quite nicely! Mystique got to have some fun, has some more fun being led out of harm's way (psychological manipulation can be ever so satisfying,) and none of the bad points can be traced back to her, save for one insane mercenary whom no one would likely believe, anyway. Even then, she would only be down one more personality. Just add it to the ever-growing list! Tonight will be a time to follow the news, though she may have to record the stuff with all of the work she has left to do. "Right over here!" she guides Psylocke to an exit route, followed behind by the trigger-happy Deadpool. She'll worry about offering the ninja woman some contact info once they're all in the clear.

Without the advantage of a broad telepathic view, Psylocke relies on reading the raw emotion in her fellow X-Man's voice to build a picture of the circumstance inside the train-- the one she passed earlier, trusting that he had that half of the situation under control. She still does; but she can't curtail some concern at glancing back toward it, through the rubble and the smoke and the creeping veil of terror overwhelming her senses.


 * "I'm... heading topside with a civilian and--"| How does she even describe Deadpool? She doesn't even try. |"I can't do much more. I'm sorry. I'll s..."| The telepath's signal fades badly at the last, warbling into silence as she follows Mystique's direction and takes the vanguard like the motormouthed merc takes the rear, moving quickly upward into the stark light of day.

An escape route, but into what? It seems nothing has been improved by the day's events...

Despite his promise soon after boarding - despite the bone spur he's got buried in Riptide's stomach - Wolverine wants the Marauder alive, so his reply to his fellow mutant's accusation is a right cross--enough, he hopes, to keep him docile for a while.

"No problem," he gruffly assures Nate as he hoists Riptide onto his shoulder.


 * "Some kid's holdin' it together. For now. I'm on my way up."| Beat. |"Gonna be bringin' a friend along..."|

When Nate takes up the burden of holding the subway tunnels to prevent further fatalities, Arclight and Blockbuster make for the shadows. It can only be assumed that the Vanisher collects them somewhere out of sight. That leaves Nate as the sole identified mutant in throngs of angry civillians. However, some recognize him from the subway where he saved lives and kept the crash from being worse than it could have been. Instead of anger, he receives only cooperation, and at worst a wide berth, until the emergency crews can take over. The death toll is significant but it could have been so much worse.