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

[aile_noire]

"I asked you first!"

Okay, that accomplished exactly nothing. It was neither mature, nor witty, nor particularly relevant to the impending danger. Remilia mentally wrote it off to the borderline panic.

Given her history, she was more concerned with the armed one. In comparison, even with her wings and growls, she must have looked ridiculous barefoot and brandishing a chair.

[jolie_aile]

"Remi now really isn't the time!"

Her sister did provide a good distraction, if nothing else; a black shape plunging out of the sky usually merited much more immediate attention than not. Flandre eeled out from around her sister's wings, shoulders low and claws raised, springing for the gunman first. That one seemed closer, and the one that had Remilia's attention the most.

Mid-pounce, a gust of air caught and lifted Flandre away from the ground and dramatically off target; she came back down some ten feet away, staggering and nearly falling from the landing.

...she wasn't doing a good job in proving she had this under control and that her sister shouldn't worry, was she.

[aile_noire]

Her sister absolutely did not have this under control, and she was the trained one.

That was only a little worrying.

The one with the weapon was lining up his sights as Flandre lurched around off-balance. Something had knocked her off course—that other man?—and Remilia was going to need something heavier than a desk chair.

The large, unconscious U-man at her feet did nicely. A two-handed, full body throw got him the distance that Remilia needed. The one with the weapon wisely danced out of the way; the unarmed one at least had the common decency to hesitate about using his powers on his comrade.

"Look at me, I'm an X-man, I'm going to run around out in the open and aggravate everything," Remilia shot back childishly, as if her sister wasn't half a battlefield away.

[jolie_aile]

She bristled in response--but didn't immediately respond with words. Now that the U-men were focused on Remilia, the lights weren't pointing at her and Flandre could move in much closer before they noticed her presence again. Light-sensitive eyes were unimaginably helpful without flashlights shining into them endlessly.

She kept her posture low and hunched over, distorting the human silhouette to give her more time to close the distance, however short it was.

One of the U-men shouted, the one she was angling for began to turn--the armed one. One of the younger Scarlet's claws swept around, caught and snagged on the barrel and foregrip--and tore the gun out of his hands, flinging it away into the dark where she lost track of it. She didn't stop, but plowed right into his face shoulder-first, cracking the material of the mask as she carried through.

Her shoulder was getting very sore by now.

[aile_noire]

Cognitively, Remilia knew Flandre wasn't ignoring her; she also knew her words had no importance. Emotionally, she rambling near-panic argued otherwise. No matter how many times attacks like these happened, Remilia doubted she'd ever get used to it. Grasping the deskchair again, she hurled it at the smaller, distracted U-man.

In retrospect, Remilia shouldn't have been surprised when he lifted his other hand and a potent gust blasted the airborne chair back at her. Also, in retrospect, she should have kept her wings folded against her back.

The chair earned a lower priority once her feet left the ground. Remilia twisted, angling and flapping her wings to find her balance and preferably not careen into the bricks. She hissed into the gust when the chair rebounded off her leg with a crack! In managing to avoid grating against the building wall, the blast had sent Remilia floating up passed the roof.

There were several ways that Remilia could get back down there, mutant wind powers or not; unfortunately, most of them required a heavy impact of sorts.

[jolie_aile]

Flandre's other arm whipped around as the U-man's feet left the ground, setting her claws in the suit's shoulder and pulling until she heard the suit hiss and the seams pull out. The assailant's squirming ceased, replaced by a shocked stillness that Flandre still didn't understand for the life of her, but expected by now. Breaching the suits didn't seem to kill them or otherwise bring harm to them, so why were they so twitchy about it?

A blast of air caught her back again before she could drop the U-man and turn for the last one, throwing her off balance and away from the formerly armed attacker. She landed on her side this time, but scrambled to her feet more quickly.

Both sisters being present seemed enough to fragment the remaining U-man's attention; he hesitated, as if deciding whether to keep the one on the ground pinned down or deal with the one in the air.

[aile_noire]

Hanging aloft in the air, several stories up, shouldn't have calmed Remilia by any means. Still, as she corrected her flight and gained control of her course, she felt a small delight, circling overhead. She might not be the finest or bravest combatant, but her confidence in aerial matters bordered on arrogance. That granted no small boost to her morale.

The small, dark figure on the grass seemed to be fidgeting, glancing skywards and towards Flandre's advance. Remilia angled her circling downward, half-folding her wings into a spiral dive, only stretching them when needed for correction. Make a kite of her, will he?

[jolie_aile]

The younger Scarlet caught movement at the edges of her vision, stealing a bare glance up towards it. A winged shape--her sister's wings, at that.

She roared, a noise that started with a crackling snarl in her chest, then grew outwards, then burst into full sound loud enough for the assailant to flinch, focusing immediately on Flandre--not the airborne shadow closing in on him.

[aile_noire]

Remilia registered, briefly, that this was still going to hurt quite a bit, braced for it or not.

Oh, the things she did to school intruders to illustrate that she was done with this bullshit.

With a stretch of her wings, Remilia banked sharply, leveling out to collide with the last U-man. He reflexively blasted out a gust in a random direction, sending them bouncing off to the side instead of sliding to a stop as Remilia had planned. Still, her grip proved good enough; the U-man failed to throw her off, and the moment they ceased rolling, Remilia lifted his shoulders to crack his head back down on the ground.

Her right arm, shoulder, and wing buzzed with a painful numbness. She would probably still feel the collision impact in her joints until tomorrow. Remilia staggered to her feet after the U-man went slack, wheeling around towards her sister.

"Are you done yet? Can we go back inside before you rattle another hive?" she hissed quietly in French. Remilia could hear more conflict in the distance; it was making her paranoid again.

[jolie_aile]

Flandre bristled again as she rose up to stand, shaking her shoulders in an ineffectual attempt to get rid of the mud. It neither got rid of the dirt stains, nor the scorch marks on her clothes.

"I was going to ask if you were okay, Remi," she replied in kind.

[aile_noire]

Right. Concern. That was as important as not panicking.

"I'm," she took a breath, and the urgent note mostly left her voice. "I'm fine. Had worse," Remilia finished with a murmur, reaching down to feel where the chair hit her leg. Bruised, healing, a little dried blood, but no more indication of whatever surface injury it left. Her clothes were probably ruined, weren't they? No; priorities, Scarlet.

Remilia brought her gaze back up to her sister, noting the damages to her coat and "—your wings...?"

That was concerning. And they should also be moving out of the open, cover of darkness or not.

[jolie_aile]

"I didn't have time to put them on," Flandre said, shoulders twitching as she was reminded of it--even though the answer was relieving. Remilia seemed fine. But she had been conveniently ignoring the unpleasantly tense feeling in her back, like a buildup of static, until her sister had pointed it out.

"Did you tear the suit? They don't seem to like that." It was very, very difficult to not rush over and hug her sister. Flandre still had mud in her claws; what kind of greeting would that be?

[aile_noire]

"I don't know. I guess? My priorities were more along the lines of 'make them stop attacking you.'" Remilia glanced back at the one nearby, before startling as something flashed once in the distance. Her wings nervously unfurled and furled.

"And as long as it doesn't move, my priorities are elsewhere. Come along." She hurried passed her sister, gently grabbing Flandre's wrist and pretending that she wasn't trekking barefoot through cold mud.

[jolie_aile]

Flandre started from her spot to do just that, or make sure that the U-man's suit was ruptured to begin with when her sister grabbed her arm. She started to grumble and responded stiffly; she wasn't a child-

-but this was her sister.

Her knees relaxed enough for her to walk, and Flandre stepped a bit closer to her sister when she heard the rumbling of further conflicts, as if she could keep them away by standing next to her. Flandre wasn't terribly worried; the attackers this time didn't seem terribly...skilled. Whoever--or whatever--had kept Xavier from speaking to them hadn't materialized again.

[aile_noire]

Remilia made a beeline straight for the building—but for the girls' dorm wing instead of the main building; particularly Flandre's room. She only released her sister's arm to nudge her at the wall.

It didn't escape Remilia's notice that it was already pocked with claw-built handholds. They both had an aversion to using doors, it seemed.

[jolie_aile]

Flandre keyed in to where they were going quickly enough, though she never strayed far from her sister's side until Remilia let go of her.

"The window is open, Remi," she said, already moving to set her claws into the marks she'd already made in the wall, to save it from further damage. She started to climb, pausing to look over her shoulder at her sister only once.

[aile_noire]

When Flandre glanced over, her sister was peering into the night behind them. Remilia was more mobile, vertically; she'd make sure nothing more happened before starting up.

"I see it offended you," Remilia muttered as she slipped through the window, folding her wings. Though, she didn't have much room to speak, given how she smashed hers.

[jolie_aile]

The taller mutant kept climbing, trusting that her sister would see anything amiss before she did. The bricks in front of her nose kind of got in the way of that.

Flandre clambered in through the window after her sister. The creaking reminded her of how warped the frame was; she had almost forgotten.

"Can you help me put my wings on, Remi?" Of course she could manage it herself--but it would be faster with help.

[aile_noire]

"That's why I'm here," she admitted. Remilia didn't know where Flandre was keeping them, and simply stood nearby. "...because you're going back out there, aren't you?"

Remilia did her damnedest to keep apprehension from creeping into her voice, but she didn't entirely succeed.

[jolie_aile]

Flandre reached into the cabinet, where two sets of inactive wings were hanging next to her coats and shirts (totally normal closet contents). A spare set of wing caps was on the top shelf; Flandre was wearing the other set. She handed the wings to her sister, and started to take off her scorched coat. It was likely beyond saving now.

"I have to." Flandre wavered; too harsh? "I'm supposed to."

"I'll be okay, Remi. I wanted to make sure you were, too."

[aile_noire]

Remilia rolled her eyes as she waited for her sister to shrug off the tattered coat. "Give me more credit than that."

Carefully, she set about docking the wings. It was delicate technology, and Remilia knew the drill.

"If the universe couldn't get it right on the third charm with raining sentinels, I doubt it ever will," she muttered dryly. "Just... don't be so reckless." Remilia wanted to believe that she would be there every time; that train of thought was engraved in her as an elder sister. She knew—especially now that Flandre had signed on as an X-man—it quickly was proving false.

[jolie_aile]

Flandre made a little grumbling sound of protest when Remilia brought up the Sentinels--and obliquely all the other times she'd been shot. But:

"I will, Remi." At least she would do her best to try.

Putting her wings on was always a bit of an odd experience. It felt like there was something stabbing into her spine without any pain, before the sensation disappeared--even when Flandre thought about it. When the wing secured into place, the crystals hummed slightly as they lit up, channeling excess energy away from Flandre. She stretched the wing a little, though not too much; it wouldn't do to hit her sister in the face.