The Ashes of the Phoenix [OPEN]

[thethirdspecies]

WHO: John Sublime, "No Girl", the U-Men, and their unfortunate target... The Insitute
WHAT: Sublime's U-Men attack the school. They're aiming for the sublevels. Stop them at all costs!
WHERE: Throughout campus
WHEN: Past midnight, Wednesday-Thursday
WARNING(S): Gonna get violent.


The time was now. The media attention over his followers actions was too much. And after all, Xavier's little henchmen in London had figured it out. He was sure of it. There was no more time to bide. No more room for hesitation. It was act now, or the revolution would end in a prison cell, festering away in the disgusting care of this unclean world. Sublime couldn't stomach it. Couldn't fathom it. And whatever god help those who stood in the way of him and his dream of Homo Perfectus.

"All units are in place," Sublime whispered, peering out over the immaculate green, covered in moonlight, staring a drilling, piercing hole into the mansion. "Martha... it's your turn now," another whisper, as the floating apparatus before him, holding a strange glowing orb, began to shine even more brightly.

Just like that, the security systems failed. And just like that, Charles Xavier gasped and sent out a short, psychic burst to all X-Men, perhaps to everyone in the school, before he was overwhelmed and silenced, collapsing from his bed to the floor, stunned into sleep by a psychic force even he was not prepared for.

"This is it, Martha... our dream... U-Men! Bring me the Ashes of the Phoenix!" And like that, dozens of the men from the blurred video that Glamour and Spy had managed to obtain swarmed the ground, organic and mechanical, using a plethora of stolen mutant powers, attacked.


[[ This is it! Our first major action post, and in X-Men tradition, it's a direct attack on campus. Feel free to start your own threads. The U-Men will be NPC'd by the mods. Their ultimate goal is the filed away genetic samples of Jean Grey in the sublevels. They must be stopped, before someone uses them to integrate Jean's powers into a U-Man. ]]

Comments

[tofudog]

Human body language doesn't translate well on a horse, but his embarrassed laugh comes out as a whinny. The blush is thankfully hidden. Most jokes come easily to Beast Boy, but he spent his entire life before Xavier's interacting almost exclusively with family. It'll take him a while to catch up on that front.

At the little kick-he'll so get you back for that, Luvander!-he takes off at a walk, and works his way up to canter slowly. He can tell by the way his friend rides that he isn't experienced, and he doesn't want to lose him, after all. Beast Boy carries the two of them in a quick loop around to the back of the horde, keeping to the grass to avoid causing much noise.

It doesn't work out perfectly. Someone spots the green horse and shouts out, so he charges straight into the body of the force before the U-Men can react to their presence, knocking armoured bodies over easily. Then, when they're surrounded, he begins to change.

There's a scary moment when the green mane is sucked into his spine, leaving nothing to grab on to, but it's only a second later that the gap between his shoulder blades is wide enough to act as a saddle on its own. Luvander shoots upward as Beast Boy grows in every direction, achieving 80 tonnes in the space of about four seconds. Argentinosaurus is one of the biggest forms in his arsenal, and the transformation alone was enough to knock several U-Men over. Not the scariest dino he could have chosen, teeth and claw-wise, but 115 feet of dinosaur is impressive enough on its own, he figures. Beast Boy turns as quickly as this body allows, sending his tail sweeping through the crowd, then fills his massive lungs with air and roars.

If anyone was still asleep out there, they aren't any more.

[theveilisin]

There is definitely a moment there when not falling off is a bit of an issue, but considering the way Luvander laughs like a madman, one can only assume that he finds it exciting more than terrifying. And then he is carried upwards by the transformation, adjusting his seat hurriedly to avoid popping his hips out of joint, whooping appreciatively as Beast Boy twirls around, scattering U-men left and right.

"This is what I call traveling in style," he calls, although he's not sure his companion can hear him on the other end of that long neck. "I should-"

And that's when Luvander is hit in the back by the full force of an attacking U-man. He manages to twist around so he can see his foe, but is not fast enough to prevent a set of nine-inch claws from stabbing through his abdomen on the left side. He can feel that they continued through to the other side, but isn't sure if they actually managed to pierce Beast Boy's scales as well - they seemed pretty tough.

He kicks out at his attacker's crotch, but low feminine laughter above him informs him that this won't be very effective. Instead, he grabs the hand still keeping him nailed to the spot and pushes himself upwards, letting the claws and then her fingers slide into the wound. He hears a surprised gasp right before he's close enough to take a swipe at her face with one of the cleavers. She quickly recoils, and the motion results in her subsequent fall off the dinosaur's back.

Luvander lays back, gasping and trying to focus solely on healing quickly, trusting in Beast Boy to fend off any assailants in the meantime.

[tofudog]

Argentinosaurus wasn't quite the living fortress Beast Boy envisioned, nor were the U-Men weren't quite as susceptible to intimidation as he'd hoped. He'd enjoyed a few moments of exultation, watching awed enemies scrambling away from him, and feeling his tail smashing through the crowd, but now they're starting to react. For the most part, it's like someone trying to chop off your hands and feet with papercuts: annoying and stinging, but harmless. The puncture to his back is the same: it's more of a tickle than a real injury. It helps that their heaviest hitters were at the head of the formation, and aren't halting their march on the school.

Then some jerk with super strength takes a swing at him with an oversized broadsword. Beast Boy flinches visibly and stumbles back, his foreleg dripping blood. A few flying mutants are rising up to attack his head and neck, as well. He butts one out of the air with his five-foot skull, but another rises to take its place.

It's almost like charging into the middle of the action was a terrible idea?

[theveilisin]

He should have known that it was a really bad idea. As it stands, the two of them just don't have the firepower on their side that Luvander is used to having, and they're fighting other mutants. But battle makes you a little bit crazy, and after three months of not fighting, Luvander had gotten completely swept up by it. Regina help him, the boys and girls back home would have laughed.

It's not the time to beat himself up over something like that, however. The wound in his side has healed reasonably, and now they need to get out of there. Beast Boy can probably think of some shape for a quick escape, but Luvander isn't sure that goes for them both unless a path can be cleared.

"When I signal, try to get the piekol out!" Hopefully the other boy can hear him. No time to think. Weapon, weapon, who's got a weapon? Someone always does, and Luvander soon finds someone among the other side trying to figure out where it's best to aim an assault rifle while fighting a dinosaur. It gets somewhat harder when the small figure on the dinosaur's back lunges down at him, hitting him in the chest and bowling him over. Luvander feels his wrist snap as it takes most of the weight of the fall, but that was planned; he can still support the rifle reasonably, and that's all that matters.

Darting in between Beast Boy's front legs for some cover and hoping he won't get squashed, he tries to take out as many of the mutants ahead as possible before he runs out of bullets. But more importantly, they draw back a bit, as people are wont to do when faced with a dinosaur and a madman with a gun. Running forward and using the last shots to get the flying mutants to scatter, Luvander waves the rifle up at Beast Boy and then tosses it aside. "Time to run, maybe?"

[tofudog]

Well, if nothing else, they distracted a lot of potential attackers for a few minutes. And maybe did send a message, as well: here there be dinosaurs. At least a few U-Men now have the honour of being among the first people in history to be felled by cretaceous fauna, and that's pretty cool.

Air rushes in to fill the void left when he shrinks down to a wolf. He snarls and snaps his teeth at a U-Man who rushed forward, then darts around and runs under Luvander from behind. As he moves, he starts transforming into a relatively small triceratops. The neck frill that bursts out of the back of his skull might not be ideal, but it offers his passenger some shelter and something to hold on to. Beast Boy charges away, bowling over everyone in his path.

His gait is uneven thanks to the gouge in his foreleg, but it doesn't slow him down too much. What does slow him down are the potshots someone is taking at them on their way out, leaving him with several bullets in his haunches.

[theveilisin]

It's Luvander's good luck, at least, that Beast Boy makes for a much bigger and more attractive target, meaning he can actually focus on staying mounted. One bullet graces his shoulder, but that heals relatively quickly, allowing him to focus on the other boy instead. At least skin-on-skin contact isn't a problem when the other party is a dinosaur; holding on for dear life practically leaves him no choice at all.

He swears quietly when he registers the bullet wounds, knowing full well that healing them while in flight would be a terminal mistake. He focuses instead on the bleeding gash. A pained hiss behind Beast Boy and Luvander momentarily losing grip with one hand coincides neatly with the sudden disappearance of that wound. It's deeper than Luvander thought, but a clean cut; he can deal with it, and the blood loss isn't too severe, thankfully.

"I can't heal your legs until we get somewhere safe - not unless you want the bullets to stay in there." Thankfully the sounds of battle behind them are not quite as loud, meaning he doesn't have to shout himself hoarse to be heard. "Head into the forest. The mansion is their target, they have no reason to go there, and you have a tactical advantage if wer're followed."