2013.07.05 - Breaking In, Breaking Out

It's been a while now, though for some mutants the matter had never been forgotten about. Mystique's got a plan for everything, and it helps when Magneto's vision happens to parallel her own. Now seems like the right moment to dust off a particularly aged piece of unfinished business, and she's got just the right backup in mind for this bit of trouble. She's pulled Olena off to the side, 'requested' her presence, then put her favored teleporter to use in sending them on their way.
From the outside it looks like a typical prison, typical in that there doesn't appear to be anything 'extra' added in for handling metahuman inmates. It's bland and depressing, but effective. It's also, for some peculiar reason, housing just one mutant.
"Time for a little story. About five years ago we came across another of our kind who had the ability to copy powers from others around him. We had offered him a place amonst us at the time. It was not well received. This has been his home ever since. As you may have guessed, his parole is just about up. We are about to go inside and say hello. If he has changed his mind and is capable of seeing things from our perspective then he shall join us. If not, we walk and leave him for another five."
Glancing to Olena with a wicked little grin, she adds "This facility is also meant for humans alone. Do not feel bad about putting down any that get in our way. He will be found at the end of block D, cell fifty-two. Any questions before we start?"
Olena, dressed for battle in her fine leather armour, various weapons -- particularly her bow and quiver -- bristling about her person, was hardly difficult to convince. Of course, Mystique knows this. The Ukrainian has difficult recognizing human authority as legitimate, and has a real thing against prisons, thanks her her stint in the Ukrainian concentration camp at Poznyar. Thus, she gives a pair of knives a second check and nods to her mentor's information.
"What is he in for?" she asks, speaking Ukrainian, as always. It saves her sounding like she's braindead. Besides. It's possible there's a good reason for Rankin's imprisonment (the indiscriminate killing of mutants as well as humans, comes to mind)... even if it's highly unlikely.
"And... really? He is not in a prison made for mutants, instead?" Well, that was a stupid move on the humans' part.
And she's okay with that.
"Sure, he's a beast outside the three point line, but when was the last time you ever saw him block a shot? Anyway... I better feed our guest before he starts complaining about inhuman living conditions again. I swear, that guy gets so cranky when his schedule is messed with..."
"I hear ya, Joe. They don't call him Rantin' Rankin for nothing, you know."
The First Nameless Guard takes his leave of the Second Nameless Guard, and makes his way down the hallway full of empty cells. There, at the very end of the hallway, in front of Number 52, he punches a keycode into the door and bends forward to let the scanner have a look at his retina. The door slides open with a very sci-fi 'whoosh', revealing a very hot, dry, overly-lit room. "You're in luck today Rankin... the Warden decided to spring for peas /and/ carrots this time."
In a corner of the room, decked out in strait-jacket chic, Our Hero frowns through the slot on his metal helmet. "You're six minutes late. That's practically inhuman."
Mystique's grin only grows when the question is brought up about what he's in for. "Does it matter?" She knows the reason, but that doesn't mean everyone else needs to know. "As for why he is here and not with the rest of our kind, there are no powers for him to copy. Their intention had been to leave him to rot until his dying breath, forgotten about. Do not feel bad about sharing your gift when we reach him, he will benefit from our help."
As for getting inside... There's a lot of people out there, all but one without the X-Gene. Due to budget cuts only a fraction of them are armed and on the payroll. A riot is not only easy, it's inevitable.
Between the two women and their stockpile of weapons, it's also going to be brutal.
"Let's see some of your running skills. We gain entry by scaling the eastern wall. If you find a guard put them down and take their ID card, it will save us some trouble."
Blue skin and red hair shift into pale white flesh with long black hair, the metamorph's synthesized black leather clothing remaining the same. No sense in giving anyone an early warning as to what's coming their way. Their approach has already been mapped out, the most secure line to avoid detection while approaching the outer wall. Build up some speed, add some density to the muscles in her legs, and she's clearing the coiled razorwire in no time. She's confident that Strilka can keep up, and with her bow of choice she'll also land some very stealthy kills.
Mystique's work is cut out for her today.
Strilka, it's a shame to say, likes killing humans. No. That's not quite right. She likes killing humans who use mutants for sport or keep them imprisoned unjustly. She's not into killing all humans, no matter what her growing reputation may suggest. (Won't Mystique's son be glad to hear that? It means there's 'hope' for the young woman. Well. he can hope. Today? She's going to kill. It's very likely inevitable.)
She gives Mystique an oblique nod that serves very much the same function as a simple half-shrug or an easy 'okay, ready when you are'. She surveys the route chosen for them, takes note of the way the particulates in the air move (dust motes and the like), and smiles as she allows her hyperperceptive senses their full rein. Giving the other woman a small smile, she slings her bow, secures her arrows, and starts off for the wall at a dead, silent run.
It's not tough to scale. Not for a parkour enthusiast like her.
'Joe' the Guard can't help but groan. However, his bemused expression shows that he was clearly anticipating just this reaction. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm inhuman. That's why I'm the one who's got his wings and big-ass monkey hands smushed up in a strait jacket." He approaches, seemingly without any fear whatsoever. But the bulky chains and multiple restraints clearly don't give Calvin much room to move. "And that's why I'm the one who's about to eat his lunch with his feet."
The effect is predictable, and almost automatic. Prisoner #191966 lunges forward as if propelled by an invisible rocket pack. Of course, chained as he is, he doesn't get anywhere near the guard. "You're a dead man, hack!" He shouts so emphatically that little flecks of spit fly from his mouth. Then in a slightly calmer tone: "When I get out of here I'm going to pull your head right off of your neck, with my big-ass monkey hands."
The guard sets the tray down just close enough for Rankin to get to it. "Enjoy your meal, you old barrel of laughs, you."
Inside one of the guard towers the lone male occupant is paying more attention to his radio than on the perimeter. Really, what kind of trouble would find them out here, and today of all days? It's a sleepy prison in the middle of nowhere, people can spend their entire lives living in this state and never realize the facility's out here. It's all he can do not to fall asleep while on the clock, and who could fault him? It's the same story for everyone else working here. No excitement, no visitors even. Just the same old--
Snag-Wham!-SNAP!
The chair lies overturned, the guard sprawled out across his back with a broken neck with the perfectly sculpted body of an assassin standing over his body. "Break time."
The guard's keys and ID are taken, along with his very persona. Looking just like the guard that Mystique killed she climbs down from the tower and starts making her way inside. Doors are unlocked, clearance is granted. All is well.
The next guard encountered nearly does a double-take. "Hey Dave, aren't you supposed to be at the eastern point?"
"Nature calls."
He gives the other guard a peculiar look, "You alright? Your voice..."
"Dry throat, it'll pass," 'Dave' dismisses, and quite possibly distracts, depending on how kill-happy Strilka happens to be.
It's a conundrum, to be sure. After all, take out too many of the guards and the humans that deserve to be in prison (or worse) might riot and escape. Too, few, however, and getting this copycat fellow out becomes problematic.
There's also the reality of all those cameras, recording images for posterity and all that. A woman in black leathers carrying her own personal arsenal does tend to attract attention, after all. But, as the security office with all the camera monitors is set much deeper in the pen, Strilka must resort to slightly more brutal means to get the job done.
Thus Dave's friend takes a blunted tip to the side of his head, that cracks his skull against the concrete wall and leaves him slumped in a heap. Whether or not he's dead, remains to be seen by someone else, later.
Strilka pauses, now, beneath the camera overhanging her position. She looks straight up at it or, more precisely, at the wires attaching it to the wall. Reaching into a pouch, she pulls out a small bridging clip, keeps her eyes on the wires, and flicks her hand over her head smoothly. The clip flips up into the air, catching itself on the wires where it clamps and sends a little microburst of static through the electronics, all the way back to the base station.
And, somewhere, all the monitors go snowy.
"Right," she says to Mystique now. "I hate having my picture taken." Because, unlike the metamorph, she can't change her face.
Now, she's free to continue on without worrying about that.
No sooner is the guard gone than Prison #191966 begins digging into his tray of food, with his feet. The sight of a man digging into mashed potatoes with a plastic spork that he's holding in his feet... it would probably make someone laugh, if anyone was around to watch it. Despite the restraints and his method of elevating the food from floor to mouth, he manages not to spill even a single morsel. In fact, he uses his feet so easily it almost look natural.
"Stupid human piece of garbage" Chew chew chew, swallow. "... show him a thing or to, won't I?" Chew chew chew, swallow. "Yes I will, bastard won't even see it coming." Chew chew chew, swallow. "He wouldn't talk to me that way if it wasn't for all these fancy high-tech restraints, would he?" Chew chew chew, swallow. "No, he would not."
With the cameras out of commission 'Dave' is stepped out of and Mystery Woman #2 returns. "Splendid," she replies in a tone which doesn't give anyone else a lot to work with. They're inside, security's been compromised, and she has yet to even think about her own weapons. Things are progressing quite nicely. With every second that counts away the benefits of a quiet approach are further lessened, which she fails to see as an area for concern. Calvin would be interested in a spot of revenge as soon as he is freed, no doubt. Mystique won't even pretend to keep this a quiet operation by then.
With a simple 'onward' motion of two fingers she continues along, right past so many occupied cells. The sight of these two making such a casual entrance gathers quite a lot of attention from the inmates, further ruining any attempt to keep things quiet. She ignores them all, for now. Nothing more than inferior genetics, removed from society as they should be.
The commotion, and lack of camera feed, should soon gather Joe's interest. By then these mutant liberators will be right on top of him. It's a straight shot to cell fifty-two, nowhere for the infiltrators or guards alike to hide.
Strilka has unslung her bow and knocked another arrow into it, this one a wee-bit more lethal than the last. She ignores the pleas, wolf-whistles, and cat-calls from the cells. And the one man that does get close enough for his fingers to wave alongside her -- not quite close enough to touch her -- is rewarded with bloody hand (and likely a trip to surgery, later) when Strilka takes the arrow out of her bow and rips its jagged head along the back of his hand, through the tendons and between the bones between the second and third fingers, in one swift, vicious movement. Needless to say, he howls in pain and any other hands that threaten to reach out to molest the ladies are quickly withdrawn.
Apparently, Strilka isn't the friendly, come-hither type. Go figure.
She refits the arrow to her string and, as the approach the nearest checkpoint, let's it whiz safely past Mystique's ear and into the throat of the man reaching for the emergency phone.
As he mercilessly stabs at the food on his plate, Prisoner #191966 suddenly feels something different. Something familiar, yet strange after so many years. "What's this?" He says through a mouth full of the peas and carrots the Warden finally authorized to be served together. "There's no way... this is a human prison."
But of course, it is exactly what he thinks it is. After years of isolation from his kind, Mimic is feeling the energy signatures of mutants once again, and for the first time in five years he is both terrified and elated.
Joe is far less elated, and probably wishes that he had more weaponry than just a service pistol and a nightstick. However, he draws both of these as soon as he sees the intruders. Both he, and Nameless Guard Number 2, do their best to maintain their composure and do things 'by the book'. They yell things like "Freeze!" and "Stay where you are!" before they are forced to open up fire. Unfortunately, in a narrow corridor as they are, any chance they have of escaping with their lives is pretty slim.
Now the fun begins.
Two guards, two mutants. Mystique doesn't bother to acknowledge that they're both armed, spinning about once as she rushes to close the distance which starts with a knife being flicked from a hand and ends with the tread of her boot striking that very same blade so far into the man's chest that the handle disappears and the stained tip emerges from behind. Crouching with another swift strike from her leg drops the guy onto the ground where she darts right over him like a woman playing Twister on Speed, his keys coming into one of her hands and his pistol into her other.
Just in case Strilka somehow fails to come through on the last one. Which isn't about to happen.
"Only two of these pathetic creatures lording over one of our own, such an insult," she reviles while unlocking the door to cell 52. There she stands for a moment, hand upon the doorframe, slouching sidelong towards it as she looks to Mimic with an expression born of idle amusement.
Right there where he can see it she shifts out of her faux identity and back into True Blue. "Have you perhaps reconsidered our offer, Mister Rankin?"
Assuming he has, which she's counting on, it's time to see him free of his cage.
Strilka's arrow skewers another throat cleanly. The pair really never stood a chance. In fact, most of them simply don't stand a chance. At some point, one might suppose, the 'mutant police' are likely going to come looking for them, but that hasn't happened yet, so the Urkainian doesn't let it worry her now.
As Mystique resumes her true form, the hyper-perceptive woman spends a moment or two listening for the reactions and approach of guardsmen several corridors distant.
"Mystique?" Even through the red lenses of his helmet, a heavy amount of emotion is clearly visible. Calvin's nostrils flare, the veins in his neck start to bulge, and his body tenses as if he were preparing to pounce. For a second, it looks as if he's about to attempt to tear off his restraints. But just as quickly as the emotion came, it is replaced with something else:
"You beautiful blue bitch!" He relaxes, and holds out his arms as far as the strait jacket and chains will allow. "Hurry up, let me out of here! I'm pretty sure that alram goes straight to S.H.I.E.L.D. or something." He looks around warily, as if expecting Storm Troopers to show up any second.
It's only after he's spoken that he realizes that he's still holding a spork with his foot and standing like a crane over a prison tray. Awkward.
The morphic blue woman does love to make an entrance, grinning slyly as she says "In the flesh."
Rankin's eagerness to get free is almost as entertaining as the rest of the job had been, idly toying with the key to his freedom as she steps further into his cell. "Does this mean we are on the same page then, Mimic? Because I would hate to have gone through all of this trouble only to have another misunderstanding. To think that you might choose eating with your feet over having a family which cares about you."
She stops right before him, leaning in to look directly at him from a very short distance away. "You fight for us. And we..." she says while fitting the key into one of the locks, popping it open. "Fight for you."
Today, Calvin Rankin's freedom is returned to him. Mystique even offers the one guard's sidearm.
"Wait until you see our new home, it's got quite the lovely view. My companion of the evening is Strilka, try not to interrupt her aim."
This is too damned easy.
Strilka, who is watching the approach corridor with something akin to bored expectation, glances over her shoulder briefly to Mystique and the fellow called Mimic. She gives him a small, sharp smile at Mystique's instruction to him. Indeed. Don't interrupt her aim. It's unhealthy.
"Two minutes," she says, in English, this time, her accent thick, as always. "Unless they change pace."
Yes. She can hear them.
"We go now, da?"
"Heh. Always did figure you for a 'companion of the evening' type, didn't know your tasts ran so 'exotic' though, Mystique." He literally laughs at the offered pistol, dismissing it with a shake of his head.
Now free from the chains, he drops his spork and stands up straight. "Okay, I'll do your dirty work, but I need to borrow something from you first." He grunts, and suddenly his white skin turns blue. "There we go... " Using his newfound physique-changing ability, getting out of the jacket and helmet presents no problem. "All better. Now what's your evac plan?"
"'Normal' and I have not been on speaking terms for some time," Mystique easily replies, flipping the stolen pistol around into her own hand. It'll come in handy soon enough.
Once Mimic's borrowed her power she shifts back into that blank woman's form once more, nodding to Strilka once the reskinning is complete. "I wasn't under the impression that I needed a plan. If they can find some way of subduing us then they deserve their victory. Since that isn't going to happen, I plan on leaving through the front gates."
Not that there isn't some room to delegate. "Strilka, clear our exit if you would, dear. We'll handle whomever you miss." Down the hall, through the guard station, out across the yard, through the fence. Or up and over the wall again, that trick still works. Anything the humans can throw at them now will barely hinder their departure. The other inmates, they'll all be ignored.
Strilka gives Mystique a simple nod in response, before she's pelting back down the hallway. She kicks the door open just as the first of the guards come running into the next section of corridor, just before the guard station. Two arrows in quick succession take them out. "Eyes!" she snaps to Mystique. Her mentor will know that means to shield her eyes. Mimic? Well, let's hope he's a quick study. Becasuse a third arrow slams into the bullet-proof glass barrier that ostensibly protects the guards and explodes in a shower of tungsten and magnesium fire -- a pretty light-show that effectively blinds the guards even as a small explosive charge shatters the glass.
Three more arrows in quick succession and she's moving forward again, heading for the yard, knowing Mystique and Mimic will handily take care of anyone she missed.
As a reflex action, the now blue-skinned Mimic raises his arms in front of his face. If anything were to puncture one of his eyes, it would be a bad day for everyone. Thick slabs of ice form over his arms making them appear to be like oversize boat oars. Face effectively protected. "I guess this escape isn't going to be exactly 'Rated PG', eh?" But whether anyone can hear him over the various noises of alarm, gunfire, explostions, etc. is anyone's guess.
The ice continues to spread over his body, until his entire body is 'armored up' Iceman Style.
Mystique does so enjoy watching that younger Ukranian in action. Speed and precision, backed by hatred. Divine poetry surrounding an attractive wrecking ball. Weapons are more than what can be taken into one's hands, they exist within equal measures as resources one can call upon when necessary. The metamorph barely has to aim at anything, let alone pull the trigger.
Opportunities are still found for the sake of having fun, however. Between loosed arrows there's the door-slamming report of her stolen 9mm service repeater, the song of brass upon concrete following in her wake.
"This isn't going to be a problem, is it?" she asks with the hint of a challenge in her voice, glancing back to Mimic while flicking the emptied pistol off to the side. As another guard's yell gets silenced into a wet gurgle around the shaft of an arrow nearby, she offers "We can leave you here if you feel we are playing a bit too rough." The discarded gun is soon replaced with two of her own, these ones fully automatic. "Come now, dear. Five years of confinement and mistreatment and this is all you have to say? Stretch your powers, come forth and speak your piece."
Her attention barely shifts from the matter at hand when she rams the heel of her boot into the face of a dying guard, glancing down at the guy with a narrow-eyed look of disgust. "Wretched filth."
To Olena Kovalenko, the sweetest music of battle isn't the rock-and-roll percussion of the guns or the chimes of discharged casings. Rather, it's the soft jazz found in the whistles that are her arrows in flight, sung after the hum of her bowstring, punctuated with a the soft brush 'schlk' and 'thwp' of impact.
And, make no mistake, with her heightened senses, she hears it all.
Out in the yard, there are more guards. The prisoners were herded back inside the moment the monitors when to snow. So, what follows, then, is a dance macabre, the archer as its prima ballerina.
She launches herself out the door, planting for a heartbeat on the tarmack, enough for her heightened reflexes to allow her that milisecond she needs to avoid the first shots salvoed at her from the phalanx outside. She slings off two explosive arrows, in two different directions, obliterating their cover even as she's already on the move forward. She ducks under one bullet, only to spin out of the way of a second, and slide under a third. Another arrow puts the shooter down.
The only way she can avoid those bullets is by knowing just when they're going to be fired and what their trajectories will be. But, see, that's her special talent. All she needs is a minute shifting of weight or the twitch of a muscle, the shifting of a glance and she knows.
She simply knows.
"I've got a better idea, but you girls are going to want to stand back." Stepping out into the danger zone, Mimic finds the nearest wall that doesn't look like it'll be missed (or more importantly, won't cause the building to collapse if it's suddenly removed). He settles on the wall that's far enough ahead of Strilka, as their escape is kind of blocked off to the front. His eyes go red, a beam of kinetic force fires from them, and a gigantic hole gets knocked through the wall, and through all of the walls behind it. Lots of guards and prisoners turn into red mist.
"There you go, easy exit." He sprints forward and takes point, running through the succession of 'doors' he just created, and absorbing any damage from stray gunfire or the occasional falling debris. At his current rate of speed, he'll be outside the building in practically no time.
"Which direction is the escape vehicle?" He yells out over the suddenly much more quiet (aside from the screams of pain from those caught under debris) prison.
Mystique merely shields her face as the entire prison gets a new corridor blasted through it, the sudden wave of destruction only serving to renew her grin. "There. That's better." They have a direct route out of this place and Mimic's starting to get his head back into the game, two problems fixed by one action.
The guards aren't expecting them to excape through a route that didn't exist until a moment ago, and Strilka's making such short work out of them that their fighting morale has got to be in abysmally poor shape by now. They have their new path of least resistance. It's almost a shame, the archer had been conducting such a wonderful symphony.
Another time.
"Vehicle?" she asks with a mischievous grin. "Have you already forgotten the core element which the Brotherhood stands for? My dear, out here we use teleporters."
It's only a shame that it couldn't be her son helping out in the field.
Once outside the prison walls their proverbial ride awaits them as a glowing ring of energy, the portal already opened up to Bastion along the west coast of Genosha. "Let us get you properly introduced to your new family, Mimic."
The fact their new blue boy is using X-Men abilities isn't lost on the archer. Strilka's well-familiar with the show they like to put on, thanks to the prison break they staged to rescue her... and her fellow prisoners, of course.
You'd think that'd make her love them, wouldn't you?
Not so much. Not given everything that happened after they left the prisoners to their own devices. Fortunately, Mystique and Magneto don't make the same mistake with the people they free.
But, that doesn't mean the archer likes seeing all those powers bandied about so freely by the mimic.
Nevertheless, as he blasts a new corridor for them to escape through... Well, she'll concede there's some use for them.
Thus, she's adjusts course and is quick on her mentor's heels to the teleporter. Because, really? Not hanging around this god forsaken place any more.
She hates prisons.
"Whether I'm ready or not, huh?" Calvin looks behind him to survey the place that's been his home for the last five years. The people in the prison probably didn't deserve what happened to them. Most of the guards were pretty professional, and the prisoners were always kept away from Mimic. Punching a hole through the building might have been overkill. He turns toward the glowing teleport ring and begins to go through it.
Suddenly he stops, and turns around again. Another beam of optic force is unleashed, but this one isn't just a quick punch. He pours it on, carving massive chunks out of the building, and causing the vast majority of it to collapse in on itself. While the building is still collapsing behind him, he turns back to the teleport ring. "Okay, now I'm ready. Let's go meet your buddies." And with that, he disappears from what used to be a prison.
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