Kitty Pryde-Barton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
throughaphase) wrote2014-09-24 02:12 pm
throughaphase) wrote2014-09-24 02:12 pm
The Chapman Building- NYC- Wednesday night
Kitty happened to be at the mansion the night Scott called the team together. There was a hostage situation at the Chapman Building in Manhattan, and so it was time for the X-Men to suit up and get on the Blackbird to head on over. Kitty would have thought she'd be nervous about going out on this kind of thing again, but she wasn't. It all felt completely normal. Which, truth be told, scared her a little.
Scott was flying, with Kitty in the back, trying not to glance next to her and glare at Emma the whole time. Eight years. Eight years Kitty had been doing this kind of thing off and on, and here she was with the woman who'd more or less started it all, in a bad way. And she had to fight with her. Maybe that was why she didn't have any problem going on a mission; all her feelings were focused on the Emma situation. And worse, Emma looked almost like she was sulking, and wasn't really talking to others, and Kitty actually found herself wondering what was wrong.
Luckily there was Cyclops asking, "What do we see?"
"Scanner's reading about thirty-five warm bodies in the penthouse, six of them carrying something a lot warmer," Beast said, reading off the Blackbird's controls.
"Bombs?" Wolverine guessed.
"Or guns. State-of-the-art-war. Wasn't SHIELD developing some kind of thermal ordnance?"
"These clowns ain't SHIELD. Deployment's amateur hour- right flank's wide open. That's your entry point."
"Maybe," said Cyclops. "Our biggest question mark is the hostages. If they're gonna play hero."
"The hostages are flat on the ground, praying or peeing," Emma said, speaking up for the first time.
"You can read them from here?" Cyclops asked.
"This is Walter Langford's annual fundraiser for the preservation of Victorian architecture. It's the first year I've missed it."
Ah. That was what had her upset. She outed herself as a mutant and suddenly she wasn't good enough to get invited to people's fancy events anymore. Kitty might have "poor baby"ed her, but coming out as mutants meant they'd be facing more outright discrimination than they had before, and it would suck every time.
"Anyway, our biggest question isn't the hostages, or the men with the bright and beautiful weaponry. The biggest question," Beast said, pointing to a big blue dot on the radar in the middle of all the yellow and red ones, "is him."
*****
Kitty's powers meant she was automatically the stealthiest, so her job came first. They landed apparently without detection and got inside the building, with her going to the floor directly below the penthouse, where she was able to phase up through the floor and poke her head out. There were several human-looking guys in masks with guns, and one green-skinned reptilian guy- alien, probably- wearing a considerable amount of armor. He'd be the blue dot on the radar.
"Bring 'em on, baby," one of the humans was saying. "We are locked and we are loaded. Heartbreakers and lifetakers, am I right?"
Kitty managed not to roll her eyes. Great, a dudebro with a giant weapon and a lot of innocent people around: that couldn't go wrong. But she had a mission, and she started it by silently reaching towards the well-dressed woman closest to her, grabbing her with a hand over her mouth, and phased her back through the floor to safety. Once down there, she put a finger to her lips because she didn't need anyone screaming and making a big deal out of being rescued, and then popped back up to do it again and again.
Meanwhile, Emma was distracting the robbers, or whatever they were, by inserting images in their heads. At one point Kitty popped up and saw that one had shot out the window for some reason, but she couldn't worry about it.
"Miss Frost is here," the alien was saying. "Turn up your scramblers and keep her out of your heads. Go hot on weapons. This will happen fast."
And then the others came in, taking out the soldiers/robbers/whatever, while Kitty was waist-deep in the floor. Beast crashed through a window feet-first, Cyclops took out a wall with his eye-beams, Wolverine was crashing through the roof, and hopefully this place had great insurance.
"Hmm," the alien said as he surveyed all his men laying unconscious on the floor. There were still a few civilians, but fewer than there had been. "X-Men. You do not disappoint."
"This doesn't have to go any further," Cyclops said.
"I wasn't aware it had begun."
"Whatever it is you want from these people-"
"He already got it," Wolverine growled. "This was a test."
"Not a difficult one, it's true," the alien said. "But you still performed admirably. And don't meddle with my mind, Miss Frost. You could not hope to decipher my thinkings. Whereas yours are acutely transparent."
He pulled some kind of circular, saw-looking weapon, and Cyclops tried blasting it out of his hand. It ricocheted off the metal of the weapon, and right as Kitty was yelling, "The hostages!" she took the beam to the chest, knocking her back before she could phase. Cyclop's eyebeams weren't lasers, they were concussive blasts. Which meant this hurt, and when she finally pulled herself up and could breathe again, the alien had managed to take everyone else out, more or less. There was a hole in the floor and Emma was nowhere to be seen now. The alien stood over Wolverine with blood dripping from his weapon, and said, "I was wrong. I'm disappointed. The mighty X-Men, and not one of them strong enough to- What?"
When he turned around, Lockheed, flying right behind him, breathed fire right into his face.
There was screaming from the alien, and a moment later he actually just threw himself out the broken window.
"Lockheed!" Kitty smiled, opening her arms. "You found me! You are the best X-dragon ever."
"Hell, I think we should make him team leader," Wolverine said, still clutching at his chest. The alien had probably cut him good, but he'd heal up fine in no time.
"Looks like our friend's gone," Cyclops said, standing at the window beside Beast while Emma pulled herself up through the hole in the floor.
"Without so much as a 'This isn't over,'" Beast tsked. "There's simply no etiquette nowadays."
*****
There were no casualties, and no injuries on the X-side worth dwelling on, so once they got the hostages out and downstairs, it was time to face their next enemy: the press.
There were a ton of reporters waiting outside for their soundbites, with people sticking microphones in their faces and camera flashes going off, and no one probably had any idea what to do with the image of Lockheed sitting calmly on Kitty's shoulder. She didn't remember ever seeing anything like this before. She did not like it.
"What happened up there?" one reporter asked.
"Is anybody hurt? Is this another mutant attack?" asked another.
"Everybody's fine, and no, it's not mutant-related," Cyclops said.
"Then why are you here?" asked yet another reporter.
"We came because people were in trouble," he said. "We X-Men have always felt it is our duty to use our superpowers to help not just our own community, but-"
"Who flew away? Was that Storm?"
"Did it look like Storm?" Kitty asked. Gorgeous white-haired black women and green-skinned alien dudes were so easily confused these days.
Cyclops soldiered on. "We don't know yet who attacked-"
"We heard shooting," said another reporter. "Did you start the shooting?"
"Why don't you ask the people we saved what happened?" Kitty asked.
"What are you called, miss?" asked another. There was an endless number of reporters.
"Um," Kitty said eloquently, caught off guard. She'd given zero thought to using a code name. She wasn't sure what it said that she didn't automatically go with her old one. "Well, I mostly... Shadowcat is what I used to-"
"Do you have a license for that bat?" asked a reporter, gesturing to Lockheed.
"What is your relationship with the bat?" asked another.
"I don't even know what that means," she frowned.
"Being hated and feared by a world that doesn't understand us beats this circus any day," Wolverine grumbled.
"Oh, you're always so grouchy when you get cut in half," Beast replied.
"Dr. McCoy!" called a reporter. "Do you have any comment on this so-called mutant cure?"
For once the reporters had all their attention. "I'm sorry," Beast said. "Cure?"
[NFB,I, OOC okay. Taken from Astonishing X-Men #2.]
Scott was flying, with Kitty in the back, trying not to glance next to her and glare at Emma the whole time. Eight years. Eight years Kitty had been doing this kind of thing off and on, and here she was with the woman who'd more or less started it all, in a bad way. And she had to fight with her. Maybe that was why she didn't have any problem going on a mission; all her feelings were focused on the Emma situation. And worse, Emma looked almost like she was sulking, and wasn't really talking to others, and Kitty actually found herself wondering what was wrong.
Luckily there was Cyclops asking, "What do we see?"
"Scanner's reading about thirty-five warm bodies in the penthouse, six of them carrying something a lot warmer," Beast said, reading off the Blackbird's controls.
"Bombs?" Wolverine guessed.
"Or guns. State-of-the-art-war. Wasn't SHIELD developing some kind of thermal ordnance?"
"These clowns ain't SHIELD. Deployment's amateur hour- right flank's wide open. That's your entry point."
"Maybe," said Cyclops. "Our biggest question mark is the hostages. If they're gonna play hero."
"The hostages are flat on the ground, praying or peeing," Emma said, speaking up for the first time.
"You can read them from here?" Cyclops asked.
"This is Walter Langford's annual fundraiser for the preservation of Victorian architecture. It's the first year I've missed it."
Ah. That was what had her upset. She outed herself as a mutant and suddenly she wasn't good enough to get invited to people's fancy events anymore. Kitty might have "poor baby"ed her, but coming out as mutants meant they'd be facing more outright discrimination than they had before, and it would suck every time.
"Anyway, our biggest question isn't the hostages, or the men with the bright and beautiful weaponry. The biggest question," Beast said, pointing to a big blue dot on the radar in the middle of all the yellow and red ones, "is him."
*****
Kitty's powers meant she was automatically the stealthiest, so her job came first. They landed apparently without detection and got inside the building, with her going to the floor directly below the penthouse, where she was able to phase up through the floor and poke her head out. There were several human-looking guys in masks with guns, and one green-skinned reptilian guy- alien, probably- wearing a considerable amount of armor. He'd be the blue dot on the radar.
"Bring 'em on, baby," one of the humans was saying. "We are locked and we are loaded. Heartbreakers and lifetakers, am I right?"
Kitty managed not to roll her eyes. Great, a dudebro with a giant weapon and a lot of innocent people around: that couldn't go wrong. But she had a mission, and she started it by silently reaching towards the well-dressed woman closest to her, grabbing her with a hand over her mouth, and phased her back through the floor to safety. Once down there, she put a finger to her lips because she didn't need anyone screaming and making a big deal out of being rescued, and then popped back up to do it again and again.
Meanwhile, Emma was distracting the robbers, or whatever they were, by inserting images in their heads. At one point Kitty popped up and saw that one had shot out the window for some reason, but she couldn't worry about it.
"Miss Frost is here," the alien was saying. "Turn up your scramblers and keep her out of your heads. Go hot on weapons. This will happen fast."
And then the others came in, taking out the soldiers/robbers/whatever, while Kitty was waist-deep in the floor. Beast crashed through a window feet-first, Cyclops took out a wall with his eye-beams, Wolverine was crashing through the roof, and hopefully this place had great insurance.
"Hmm," the alien said as he surveyed all his men laying unconscious on the floor. There were still a few civilians, but fewer than there had been. "X-Men. You do not disappoint."
"This doesn't have to go any further," Cyclops said.
"I wasn't aware it had begun."
"Whatever it is you want from these people-"
"He already got it," Wolverine growled. "This was a test."
"Not a difficult one, it's true," the alien said. "But you still performed admirably. And don't meddle with my mind, Miss Frost. You could not hope to decipher my thinkings. Whereas yours are acutely transparent."
He pulled some kind of circular, saw-looking weapon, and Cyclops tried blasting it out of his hand. It ricocheted off the metal of the weapon, and right as Kitty was yelling, "The hostages!" she took the beam to the chest, knocking her back before she could phase. Cyclop's eyebeams weren't lasers, they were concussive blasts. Which meant this hurt, and when she finally pulled herself up and could breathe again, the alien had managed to take everyone else out, more or less. There was a hole in the floor and Emma was nowhere to be seen now. The alien stood over Wolverine with blood dripping from his weapon, and said, "I was wrong. I'm disappointed. The mighty X-Men, and not one of them strong enough to- What?"
When he turned around, Lockheed, flying right behind him, breathed fire right into his face.
There was screaming from the alien, and a moment later he actually just threw himself out the broken window.
"Lockheed!" Kitty smiled, opening her arms. "You found me! You are the best X-dragon ever."
"Hell, I think we should make him team leader," Wolverine said, still clutching at his chest. The alien had probably cut him good, but he'd heal up fine in no time.
"Looks like our friend's gone," Cyclops said, standing at the window beside Beast while Emma pulled herself up through the hole in the floor.
"Without so much as a 'This isn't over,'" Beast tsked. "There's simply no etiquette nowadays."
*****
There were no casualties, and no injuries on the X-side worth dwelling on, so once they got the hostages out and downstairs, it was time to face their next enemy: the press.
There were a ton of reporters waiting outside for their soundbites, with people sticking microphones in their faces and camera flashes going off, and no one probably had any idea what to do with the image of Lockheed sitting calmly on Kitty's shoulder. She didn't remember ever seeing anything like this before. She did not like it.
"What happened up there?" one reporter asked.
"Is anybody hurt? Is this another mutant attack?" asked another.
"Everybody's fine, and no, it's not mutant-related," Cyclops said.
"Then why are you here?" asked yet another reporter.
"We came because people were in trouble," he said. "We X-Men have always felt it is our duty to use our superpowers to help not just our own community, but-"
"Who flew away? Was that Storm?"
"Did it look like Storm?" Kitty asked. Gorgeous white-haired black women and green-skinned alien dudes were so easily confused these days.
Cyclops soldiered on. "We don't know yet who attacked-"
"We heard shooting," said another reporter. "Did you start the shooting?"
"Why don't you ask the people we saved what happened?" Kitty asked.
"What are you called, miss?" asked another. There was an endless number of reporters.
"Um," Kitty said eloquently, caught off guard. She'd given zero thought to using a code name. She wasn't sure what it said that she didn't automatically go with her old one. "Well, I mostly... Shadowcat is what I used to-"
"Do you have a license for that bat?" asked a reporter, gesturing to Lockheed.
"What is your relationship with the bat?" asked another.
"I don't even know what that means," she frowned.
"Being hated and feared by a world that doesn't understand us beats this circus any day," Wolverine grumbled.
"Oh, you're always so grouchy when you get cut in half," Beast replied.
"Dr. McCoy!" called a reporter. "Do you have any comment on this so-called mutant cure?"
For once the reporters had all their attention. "I'm sorry," Beast said. "Cure?"
[NFB,I, OOC okay. Taken from Astonishing X-Men #2.]