2013.07.14 - What Was Yours is Mine

One thing can always be said about the Arctic region. It's cold. This particular region sees almost constant daylight through the season though it never gets particularly bright, most of the illumination nothing more than refraction from the snow.

Months ago the secret facility which is housed in this area had seen its share of bloody combat from another group of mutants. Trask himself had operated out of this location, having captured and imprisoned several of the X-Men.

If Mystique is aware of that part, she isn't choosing to care about it. This facility holds other treasures, ones of much greater importance to her.

A quick jump from her teleporter of choice drops the small team a short walk away from where the base's doors can be found, just a short walk inside of an ice cave. When the others had finally escaped they had significantly damaged the complex, bad for the remaining people stationed here but good for an unexpected drop-in from even less kind visitors. Security is lacking. Some systems are yet offline. Staff and guard numbers alike had been cut down, reducing much of their work to salvage operations over continuing their research. However, this place still works well for housing things they do not wish the world to see.

Mystique aims to change that.

Huddled into a heavy fur-lined parka, dressed in solid white over solid black, the metamorph looks to the others with a malicious twinkle in her eyes.

"Today we forgo the stealth, children. Get inside, eliminate anyone foolish enough to stand in our way. All I ask is that you try to keep from damaging their equipment."

There's still Sentinels inside. They used to build the things right here. This..is what she's after.

Omega Red doesn't like cold weather. He spent fifty years inside a frozen block of ice, his mind trapped and dormant, dreaming of the things he would do when he awoke. He has no intention of going back to that hell, even for a moment. While he did not refuse the mission, obviously, he made it clear to Mystique that he was doing so out of loyalty and respect for the mission...and that he expected that the risk he was taking for the cause would be remembered. When she declares that stealth isn't important, Arkady sees only one thing: the artificial warmth inside the base itself, the promise of safety from this damnable, biting cold. His parka is as thermal as they get, the fur-lined hood casting shadows across his face, shadows that only highlight the gleaming, almost glowing red of his eyes. His tentacles spill down from within his parka, thrashing about before him, the carbonadium gleaming and making a slick, metallic noise as they're unlashed and thrashing as he goes to charge, mouth closed to keep out the chill. He doesn't mind being the first into the battle, the 'tank', as it were. He was built for murder and now he's been given license, so a-murdering he will go...

Mystique may not desire stealth, but Strilka knows that she doesn't have the same frontal assault panache their male companions do. Let's face it, when a nearly-seven-foot-tall muscled behemoth and a six-plus-foot-tall, winged wildman launch themselves at you, you know you're in trouble. That's when the guns come out and the bullets start flying.

However, when a five-foot-something slip of a girl does the same, you pause... to figure out whether or not she's for real. While that has its own advantages (not the least of which is that the guys with guns are going to focus on the monsters first), the Ukrainian archer still prefers a certain amount of distance between her and her targets. It gives her more time to dodge and more time to aim. While she doesn't require much time for either, every microsecond helps. She's been hit before. She doesn't much like it.

So, you know, she lets the Russian Behemoth and the Scraggle Shrike launch themselves into the fray with careless abandon, while she gives Mystique a glance, one brow lifted lightly, and slips into the shadows behind them nonetheless. She has hardware that could deal a great deal of damage. But that would be counter productive to Mystique's plans. Better, instead, to find higher ground and snipe...

And God knows she's good at that.

"I don't get why you guys are being such babies about the cold." Mimic's wings fold gracefully behind him as he lightly lands on the snow with his broad, snowshoe-like feet. He still wears a basic sleeveless jumpsuit, which either means that his beard is somehow magically protecting him from the cold, or something else is. "What, am I the only one who thought to bring Iceman's powers with him? Some planners you are..."

Having been warned away from damaging the equipment, Mimic forgoes what would seem like the obvious option: an optic blast through the doors. Instead, he begins covering his body with ice armor until he's covered in thick layers of ice plating and ice spikes. Following Omega Red's lead, he leaps into the air and begins travelling toward the nearest entrance at a high rate of speed courtesy of a hastily-constructed ice slide.

A tank, a sniper, and a wildcard. Mystique likes to have her bases covered. Most of these mutants have had to cut back since following the move to Bastion, either relinquishing certain violent behavior or finding more limited and controlled situations in order to let them free. Some proper downtime is important to everyone, and not everyone can cut loose by kicking back with a drink and a book.

Poor Arkady's been looking bored half to death just a few hours ago. Strilka, it's no surprise that she prefers to remain in the shadows, earning a yellow-eyed stare and a subtle nod of encouragement from the shapeshifter. They have their tanks, let them draw the enemy fire. Mimic..? He's well prepared for this run. Just another reason for her to have brought him with. One should identify their resources and use them accordingly, never squander them.

Not that there isn't room for her to have a little fun, herself. With the door soon laying in ruin she unzips her parka and brings out a cut-down and suppressed G36K assault rifle.

"In case anyone here needs proper motivation, remember that this facility was built solely to bring harm to our kind. Because of that, it is also very sturdy." In other words? Cut loose, and have fun at the expense of everyone else.

The base alarm works..in a fashion. With the doors completely removed there's a squawking of a klaxon, somewhere. Red lights start to flash, where they still happen to work. Parts of the facility don't have power. Some of the interior doors are frozen over due to a concentration of thermal correction. The people inside are divided, and now they're scrambling. They do have proper counter-measures, they just need to find them first.

This won't end well for them.

Omega Red begins making shish-ka-bob, only he does it in his own preferred way - with human beings. He skewers the first guard he encounters on the tip of a carbonadium coil, driving it through his belly and out through his back. He lashes the other tentacle around another, wrapping tight around his neck and beginning to drain the life from him, the cold weighing in on him and requiring him to feed almost constantly to keep the slowing of his metabolism at bay. He drives the left coil into yet another soldier, stacking the corpses two, three, four deep on that one, enjoying the terror the mere sight spreads mingling with the actual damage he does. As he and Mimic join together in literally kicking in the door, he snarls, "What is American movie cliche? Ah, yes! HERE IS THE JOHNNY!" he laughs wickedly, blood soaking into his parka as he moves deeper within, bullets riddling his body, either doing no damage or being healed away by the life he absorbs from the skewered.

Strilka is happy to make sure that bringing countermeasures to bear will be the last thing any of the stupid humans in this godforsaken facility ever do. She makes shish-ka-bobs of her own... though her skewers are a little more traditional, if carbon fiberglass and fletching may be said to be so. She does pause, when she first sees Red's tentacles come out to play. And the way he uses them?

Wow. Okay. That's not a sight that'll leave her anytime soon. Particularly given how good she as at tracking particulate matter and trajectories.

She doesn't spare Mimic more than half a glance at his criticism of the others for not having his powers of mimicry, or his retention of the X-Men's abilities. She has little love for the American Gene Team, but they're also no longer very high on her radar. Not with places like this to plunder.

She slips in behind both of the men, springing from shadow to shadow, firing off shots, and looking for some way to get higher. Finally finding her way up into half-demolished rafters, she scuttles along, looking for the best access into the central hangar where the damned robots are kept.

Once inside, Mimic begins letting loose on anyone who happens to be stupid enough to not hide under the bed. Or rather, he lets loose on all the ones Omega Red doesn't get to first. Unlike Red, he prefers to take his enemies out by flash freezing them in place, leaving perfectly preserved human sculptures. Occasionally, he lets loose an optic blast to take out an enemy that's out of the range of his other powers, but given the environment inside there aren't many opponents who fit that description.

Covered in ice, his wings are useless for flight. However, combine thin feathers with ice and you've got very sharp bladed implements. Add a heavy dose of bestial strength and you've got the perfect close-quarters weapon for chopping up anyone who happens to get behind you. Which, against all odds, someone actually manages to do. With a swift downward stroke from one of his iced up wings, Mimic cleaves a hapless human in half, although he misses out on Cool Points by using a slightly diagonal rather than a straight vertical cut. Still, cleft is cleft.

Bullets impact with his armored body, forming little impact craters in the ice. However, the flesh beneath it is safe and sound, and the armor itself is repaired almost as quickly as it's damaged.

Some people rush forward to try and contain the invasion. Others try to run away, mostly the researchers, plain old workers, and soldiers in search of better gear. These are the individuals which Mystique focuses on, loosing short, controlled automatic bursts that drop several mid-sprint in a crimson spray. Shooting people in the back has never been a problem for her. It means she gets to mow down more of them more quickly and with less effort.

Further inside some of the automated defenses still work, dropping gun turrets from the ceiling that promptly try to locate the threats with their twin barrel arrays already winding up in preparation.

One such turret gets jammed as a former blue limb, now a solid titanium rod, gets rammed through the barrels, locking them solid.

Deeper into the base, as Strilka soon discovers, the maze of corridors opens up into a much larger hangar which has seen far better days. Structural damage is everywhere. Piles of rubble and darkened stains mar nearly every inch of floor. Here..there are Sentinels. Many have been badly damaged, dropped, piled on top of one another. Some are little more than scrap and slag. Part of the floor had been ripped to pieces by a high-yield powerplant going critical and detonating, leaving behind perilous footing. There's also trace evidence of what might have been an acidic fluid that eroded part of the concrete away.

Some of them, precious few, look like they might have a fighting chance of operating again.

Those soldiers that bothered to deal with their body armor are quickly finding that it's not all that effective. Against bullets, maybe. Against arrows, tentacles, and ice shards, not so much.

One of those ice sculptures ends up shattering into thousands of fragments, of ice and occupant alike, scattering across the floor to a blue-hued grin.

Omega Red presses deeper and deeper into the complex, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. The trail is jagged and haphazard, some flung over his shoulder, some stomped beneath his boot. About a third are withered husks, drained of life by the death spore which spills from his pores and draws the energy of anything living to feed his bestial hunger. The laughter gives warning, echoing off the metal walls. Omega Red is in his element. Omega Red is having -fun-. "Pathetic! Weak! You call yourselves men? Bigger fights I have been having from angry bunnies! Come, little bunnies, let me make of you a stew!" he snarls, finally reaching the edge of the hangars and labs that Strilka has already infiltrated. A flame-throwing robot pops up, an automated turret blasting fire at him. Omega snarls in rage, shedding his flaming parka like a skin, the puckered burns on his albino flesh blistering and oozing pus for a moment before he shatters it by smashing both fists together around it, "FOOLS!"

To Strilka, those spores around the Russian are like a foggy cloud she can see far more clearly than any of the humans can. And when she sees their effect? Right. Staying well out of reach of that shit.

As it is, however, she's quite definitely far enough away for it not to be much of a problem. She survey the damaged hanger and moves toward the likeliest of the robotic candidates. God knows, she's already spent enough time inside one of these things. She knows how they work. She's poured over the schematics for hours long before now. And, she smiles as she sees one hanging in its rocker with its chest hung open.

Softly humming a light tune from her childhood, she looses a scattershot arrow to take care of a small cadre of guards who thought they'd find refuge within the hanger and lay ambush. No one said she couldn't blow up flesh and blood. So, just to finish them off, she drops an arrow grenade in their midst... well away from the important technology.

Now unmolested, she crawls up into the chest of the robotic monster and starts pulling and swapping its circuit boards, hooking a wifi transmitter into a juryrigged interface so she can use a smartphone upload a couple of very useful apps.

Presently, the thing's eyes light up and it straightens in its cradle. Strilka taps her hand lightly against its bulkhead. "Good boy," she says in Ukrainian. "Time to show the humans what it feels like, da?"

She taps her phone and it starts powering up...

All of this 'therapy' has apparently been good for Mimic. He still might have the grooming of a prisoner, but he certainly doesn't move like someone who has spent several years behind bars. At this rate, there won't be any humans left long before he starts breathing hard. Over the chaos, he calls out "Careful guys, I think they're about to break out the billy clubs!" A loud explosion can be heard as he blows up a wall that appears to be void of anything of value. A muffled scream can be heard on the other side of the wall as the room briefly explodes into a shower of red light.

"Well Red, looks like you're doing okay here, maybe I should go help out the chick? I think she might like me." He looks over his shoulder just in time to see Strilka let loose an arrow into a group of people, which then explodes. Mimic turns his head back around. "Nah... nevermind... she's probably fine."

Alarms? What alarms? Mystique's taken care of that little annoyance. By the time she goes running back out into the halls she looks just like one of those soldiers, jabbing a finger in the air and yelling "They went that way!"

Twenty feet further down she seals the door behind them and locks it tight, trapping a handful of people in one of the slightly chillier rooms. Just in case she needs someone to interrogate later. Or copy. Or kill. Yellow eyes flicker, then she steps out of the borrowed role and back into her black on blue with red trim ensemble.

"Such simple-minded creatures."

It's like a teenager being given the keys to a Ferrari. This base, for better or worse, is becoming hers to command. There's only so much of value left behind, but as Strilka has discovered it happens to have just enough of what she desires. It isn't long before she, too, is standing beside one of the giant metal constructions, almost lovingly sliding fingertips across the cool metal shell of its leg. "Hello again, lovely."

They attacked mutants right there in New York City. Captured and killed her kind. They've been fielded in other parts of the globe, hunting and exterminating her species.

Here, today, she starts to turn the tables on their creators.

Another glance is given to Strilka. Another nod of encouragement. "Let's see if this one will dance for us."

And do try not to bring the roof down on their heads.

Omega Red has begun to take things out on inanimate objects, having broken a prong off of a forklift, wielding it like a broadsword as he hunts down stragglers. The only reason some of them keep fighting is simple: they have nowhere to go. They can face death at the hands of the mutants or they can tough it out trying to survive in the subzero cold without supplies or hope of rescue. At least this way, they can pretend they died for something. All Arkady cares about is that they die. He swipes his makeshift weapon in a sweeping arc, taking three heads with a single swing, their neck-stumps geysering gore in an unholy mimicry of celebration, falling away from him as he closes his eyes, nostrils flaring as the crimson copper tang of their deaths fills his nose, as he feels the life shudder out of the soldier beneath his boot, his eyes shrivelling in his skull like raisins. At Mimic's words, he laughs, shaking his head, "I think she might be more than you can handle, Mimic. Judging by her aim, her senses are not addled..."

By the time Mystique has entered the hanger and made her own greeting to the darkened Sentinels, Strilka's little experiment is proving quite successful. The young woman swings lightly off the robot, onto the cradle, thumbing her phone. Its arms move and it closes the open bulkhead on its chest. The archer grins and thumbs her phone again. The machine disengages from its cradle and lands with a heavy thump on its feet on the hangar floor.

Strilka looks around. She gives Mystique a jaunty salute and finds a more convenient place to perch while she directs her electronic minion. As a squad of guards, late to the party, emerge into the cavernous chamber from the complete opposite direction to the mutants' approach, Strilka grins fiercely "Hallo, boys..." and engages the targeting system. "Good-bye, boys."


 * FOOM!*

One can only play with ones toys for so long before one gets bored. This is what's happening to Mimic at this point. More soldiers are scoring hits on him, and he's killing them in more lackadaisical and/or whimsical ways. He holds his hands up above his head, and a ball of snow begins to form between them. Within an instant, the snowball is nearly twice his size. With a well-aimed throw, he hurls the giant snowball at two of the guards. The force of the throw makes them both part of the snowball, and leads to them both being splatted in dramatic fashion against a wall.

"Damn, these things are awesome." Having never been on the receiving end of a Sentinel attack, Mimic only beholds the giant robots with a sense of wonder. "We've got to take one of these back with us. The Genoshan Museum is going to need a few trophies if we really want to start bringing in the tourist dollars."

Here's the moment where the remaining opposition realizes that they've just lost this battle, hardcore. The sight of Omega Red with part of a forklift turned broadsword has one man yelling "Oh god, retre--!" before getting cut down by a mostly blunt instrument traveling with a substantial amount of force.

Inside the hangar, terror is taking on yet another form. One of the Sentinels, their own creation, is powering up. Without their signal. Turning on them.

The blinding flash of light only further triggers recent memories in Mystique's mind. Mutants being vaporized by those same energy cannons. Gone in a split second. There's nothing left of the humans caught within the beam, leaving various pieces of weapons, appendages, and neatly melted scalps to fall to the floor. The only sign that anyone had ever stood there. The wall behind them pops and sizzles, reinforced concrete flash-boiled by the intense weapon. It's terrible, it's gruesome...

It's perfect.

"Very good."

Mimic's bringing in some of the outside snow, just in case anyone here forgot what it looks like. As far as attacks go, giant snowballs aren't anything that these guys are expecting to encounter.

No victory cry is necessary. No declaration is required. The humans know who's taking over. Their time upon this planet is over. Success is assured, now she needs to see to final preparations.

"I have other uses in mind for these creations. Omega, take the vehicle bay to the south. No one leaves. Mimic, secure the control room on level three. If anyone looks useful, allow them to breathe. Strilka..." she trails off, pointing right at a spot on the wall across the hangar. "Beyond that wall lies containment cells. I will verify that they are empty, then you will destroy them. Only mutant blood leaves this place."

Omega Red nods obediently to Mystique, grinning broadly as he looks up at the massive robot. He remembers watching images of the Sentinels on television, admiring their capacity for destruction even if he didn't like the target. Now, though, now...he can only imagine the wicked things they can do under the command of Genosha. "As you wish," he smiles to Mystique, heading off to the vehicle bay. He searches out any straggles her can find, subjecting them to whatever torments he sees fit, and continues to feed his appetite, as much for pleasure as for survival now.

Strilka gives Mystique a sharp smile and a jaunty salute with a pair of fingers off her brow. She'll wait for the all clear. Then, oh, yes. She'll cut loose with the walking canon.

Who knew that high-energy weaponry could be so much FUN?!!

It occurs to the Ukrainian that she really needs to get herself a bunch of these and take them to Kiev. Introduce them to the government bastards that approved the pogrom. That would also be fun.

And immensely satisfying.

"Copy that, copycat." Mimic takes a hastily-constructed ice slide in the direction of the nearest lift. But rather than wait for the lift to come up (and doubtless bring nasty surprises with it), he simply crams his fingers between the elevator doors and rips them out of their place. Sticking his head into the elevator shaft, he looks up and fires an optic blast to destroy the elevator. His way now clear, he enters the vacant elevator shaft, and begins forming ice under his feet. In seconds, a platform has been formed. The platform gets taller at a breakneck speed, sending Mimic up through to the third level much faster than he would have gone if he had waited on an elevator.

Arriving at his destination, he finds more people who haven't been killed yet. Anyone with a military uniform is quickly flash frozen or optic blasted into oblivion. Those with technician uniforms or suits find sturdy ice prisons being formed around them.

When the threats are neutralized and the animals have been put in their pens, Mimic finds the smartest-looking one and approaches him with the evilest look he can muster. A transparent crowbar forms in his hands, which he holds menacingly. "You know, torture can be broken down into a few basic 'groups'. Here in my hand I have Blunt, Sharp, and Cold. If you start telling me secrets, I'll hold off on the whole 'making you talk' thing."

There's always someone that tries for flight instead of fight. In this case a trio of individuals were high-tailing it to snow mobiles parked within the garage.

They don't make it.

The dull grey hues of the interior are starting to look quite a lot more colorful, varying shades of red painting an alarmingly high percentage of the available surfaces. A few new doorways have been created, thanks to optic blasts and Sentinel weaponry. The holding cells are nothing more than charred slag, erasing any evidence of their former purpose.

Those left alive that Mimic rounded up are, shockingly, all too eager to share some interesting stories with the guy. They never got paid to put up with this sort of treatment, they were supposed to be safe, no one was supposed to know they were here! A whole lot of good that did for them all. They should prove quite useful in reconfiguring some of these Sentinels, particularly once the proper technical minds from the Brotherhood's ranks get called in to begin their work.

Mystique can offer these three praise later, if they really need it. She's guessing they won't, the task itself had fulfilled any such need. There's still much work left to do, however. There's armories to raid, databases to plunder, technology to steal, and survivors to intimidate further.

Perhaps the next time she raids a secret facility she can find one in a warmer climate.

Omega Red collects more than his share of trophies. Vodka, yes, anything alcoholic gets thrown into a rucksack, especially the chilled bottles found in the liquor cabinets of the officers, the aged stuff that can keep the edge off a cold night at a lonely outpost. And cash, plenty of it, whether it be from the wallets of the dead or from the safe he ripped out of the wall. Omega isn't above being petty, and has no moral qualms about stealing (or morals in general, for that matter). Were this a solo mission, any females they came across might have found themselves in a precarious position, but he's found that sort of behavior is frowned upon by modern operatives, especially when a woman is in command of them. Such is life. He will have his pick of the pens when he gets back to Genosha, if he needs that sort of entertainment. He looks over the Sentinels with a gleam in his crimson eye, a cigar clenched between his teeth and an open bottle of vodka in one hand, the sack of his loot thrown over one shoulder, "Even all missions are such rich, fat pigs for the slaughter, Mystique, I am thinking this partnership, this alliance, is going to be most fruitful indeed!" he laughs. He so loves it when a plan comes together.

Strilka doesn't particularly need the praise, no. She's got the chance to play with some very big, very deadly toys. Ones that don't promise to bore her any time soon.

It is, however, easier to take the Sentinels to the Brotherhood, rather than have the Brotherhood come to them... particularly when the sound of helicopter gunships can be heard at the very edge of her hearing.

"We have company, incoming," she tells Mystique, speaking Russian -- since more of the party understand that and, let's face it, Mimic's enjoying himself upstairs. "Gunships. I can hear them. Time to go." Unless, of course, the Metamorph wants to let Strilka take her new toy out for a spin.

Though, perhaps, that's best left saved for another day. Another target.

Mimic has also brought trophies down, after clearing a bigger pathway through the multiple floors with an optic blast. A giant ball of ice drops three floors, but manages to survive the impact. Inside the ball, a handful of the smartest-looking (and most cooperative) scientists and technicians are being kept, looking for all the world like hamsters in an oversized hamster ball. They look shaken up by the impact, but mostly unharmed.

As he drops through the floor to follow his new pets, Mimic spreads his deiced wings. "Hey guys look! I taught them a trick. Go on, mush!" And with that, the humans begin walking forward causing the giant hamster ball to slowly move in the direction of the doorway. Mimic widens this with yet another optic blast. "Now hurry out of here before you run out of air."

"Well, that was fun."

As soon as the hamster ball is in range, it vanishes through a teleport gate, much to the shock of the prisoners inside. "See you guys on the other side." He takes off, gliding toward the gate on his feathered (and stolen) wings.