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Unlike most of the Mutant Liberation Front, Sinister had the means to watch events worldwide as well as the interest in doing so, something he had carefully pruned away from most of the MLF. He had known almost instantly when the war had turned against Russia earlier that day. He didn't know if they could recover, but he didn't think it likely, nor did he care. What mattered to Sinister was that the cold front had snapped, which he was quite happy about. After all, who would want to live on a world going through a second ice age?
But he also knew that, with the Russians dealt with, Potter would come for him. So he began to plan his end game. First he had his current masterpiece, the experiment who he had decided could call herself Madelyne Pryor, slowly let her telepathic assaults peter out. She had been using Sinister's version of Cerebro to create those attacks. It was similar to Xavier's version, but where that device aided a telepath in finding people he was searching for, adding to the range of their radar, as it were, Sinister's Cerebro multiplied the user's telepathic attack power. And since Madelyne was nearly as powerful as subject Grey was, that made her formidable indeed, despite her lack of experience.
Yes, Sinister thought to himself, I did quite a good job with that one. She believes me her lover and is utterly devoted to me. Such things are useful. And since she was so loyal, the clone of subject Grey was the only one of his followers he was going to have with himself in his actual lab. There was simply too much danger of damage being done to the lab, and his primary lab being opened to the battlefield. Even hard-bitten killers like the Marauders would not be pleased to know that he had decanted all of their clones at once, stationing them in groups throughout Genosha's governmental tower.
Amusingly, I was able to tell each team the same story: that the other floors were flooded with gas or other such traps, and they could not survive there. That and the fact that I have long since modified their genes such that they never question orders, of course.
But those troops were little more than roadblocks, things intended to peel off Potter's troops in turn, along with a few other factors. It was in his lab where the true trap Sinister had devised for Potter was waiting. Everything else was leading up to that one final trap, the weakness that he had discovered. Ironically, if I had gotten Morgan to help me, she would not be able to be there with me at the finish because of that trap. Or perhaps I would have had her there and simply killed her once Potter was captured. She could well become a threat eventually. Still, she did not join me, and there is no use in thinking about what ifs.
Now he stood in the top floor of the tower, staring out into the capital city. It still had power, of course, and, at least according to the Press Gang, the government still ruled the city, keeping order within its environs under the orders of Sinister in his High Genegineer guise. Of course, the Press Gang had mostly left the city by this point, pushed down into the port to combat the Wakandan prince and his forces. Where they had been just neatly mousetrapped a moment before. That glowing dome in the distance must be Potter's magical shield around the city my spotters told me of. Fascinating. He is quite powerful. I have to wonder if perhaps a merging of his DNA with subject Grey's, like their children, would be even better for my plans than the original between subject Summers and subject Grey might prove. It will be fascinating to compare the two, at any rate.
Just as that thought flashed across his mind, Potter's voice rang out over the island, and Mr. Sinister cocked his head, listening intently. Hmm… Pure propaganda, of course, but an adroit move all the same, since even if it is propaganda, it is the best kind: that based in face. If I had been counting on my Mutant Liberation Front for anything but fodder on other fronts, it might well have discommoded my plans. As it is, though, none in this tower will respond to that kind of blatant lie. Come then, Harry Potter. Beard this dragon in his lair, if you dare, and you will run into far more than you can handle.
OOOOOOO
Sputnik had been pulled back from the front lines because of the injury Dr. Doom had given him, which, even which his cybernetic parts, he had barely survived. Normally even that would not have kept a Super Trooper from the front lines, but Sputnik was easily the best electronics warfare expert that the Russians had, thanks to his power to control anything mechanical. They couldn't afford to lose him, so he was now stuck inside a bunker well away from the front lines.
As Harry was preparing for his assault on Sinister, Sputnik was dealing with what he saw as a major security threat to Russia. Someone had gotten access to Russia's internal web—interweb—and had created thousands of programming bots to posit that Dr. Volkh, who Sputnik had met and somewhat admired, had willingly joined forces with aliens in an effort to rule over the frozen wasteland of the world. Now, while Sputnik himself had some severe reservations about the use of King Winter and had long wondered why, if it was supposedly a scientific weapon he couldn't figure out how it worked, he wasn't about to let this assault continue.
He knew that this must be some kind of cyberwarfare act, and, as such, he was trying to follow the bots back to the original break into the interweb. But even with his power, Sputnik found he couldn't find that initial point of access easily. After several false starts, he ran into actual living opposition in the form of a hacker named Sage145 and knew that he had met the face of the enemy. "I will not allow this assault to continue," he said in cyber-speak, his thoughts flashing with all the speed of a computer as he ripped apart the code of the interweb around them, trying to disconnect Sage145 from the Russian Internet. "You will not destabilize my country with this blatant lie!"
"But what if it's the truth?" Sage replied, her own thoughts matching his for speed, if not for sheer ability in coding. She was losing slowly, but Sputnik could tell that this was only one aspect of her assault on his country, somehow. And indeed, this was the case.
Sage had quickly figured out a way to connect via telephone lines into the Institute for Parallel Thought and was currently helping that Institute get the word out. The two guards had convinced their surviving superiors as to what had been really been going on, and all the aliens within had been killed during or directly after the Custodes assault. She was also helping the Institute defensively by making it look as if those reports were coming from several dozen other bases rather than it. That last point wouldn't last for long, but it would last for long enough to get the word out and for it to become self-sustaining. Once that was done, the dark web and the Internet would do the rest. With that physical connection to the interweb established, Sage was also opening up more avenues of attack: covering up for several antigovernment meetings, diverting police responses to antigovernment rallies, and, generally speaking, making things hot for the Russian government and the aliens within it.
Now, even as Sputnik tried to find her original point of access, Sage sent him a soundbite of the recorded interrogation of Dr. Volkh. It was a calculated risk, but one that she hoped would garner Sputnik's support.
After a moment Sputnik replied, "This is all hearsay, and a confession such as this could be coerced." But he had stopped in his attempts to push her out, waiting for her rebuttal.
"It could," she agreed. "However, I have schematics for a device from Mr. Fantastic that would be able to discern whether or not someone is an alien." Sputnik scoffed—an interesting feat in computer code—and was about to reply as to the myriad number of ways that could be faked, but Sage went on calmly. "I also have a list of three of the generals who Dr. Volkh knew to be aliens. Would following up on that bit of the interrogation matter? The device itself is not painful or intrusive. It simply shows if someone has a high glucose content in their body and the slight differences in body heat and where that body heat is situated in comparison to a human. Surely simply checking will cost you nothing. Or do you have some other idea of where the Planetary Soul Constrictor came from?"
"…Perhaps," Sputnik said. He almost glared at her virtual avatar, then asked abruptly, "And if I agree to allow you to propagate that design through the system, will you cease your attempts to undermine our military forces?"
"I will cease my attempt to undermine your military within your own territories, but any Army group that is outside of Russia's borders is fair game," she said firmly.
Since there was scant little that Sputnik could do here in the deep of Russia for those armies, he had to concede the point. "Very well, I will look at this device."
The data passed between them as fast as a blink, and Sputnik analyzed it almost as quickly, a frown appearing on his physical body. It did indeed look as if this device could only do the things that Sage had said: it could point out places where the body it was currently scanning was hotter than it should be, where it was cooler than it should be, and also some strange readings from heart and stomach that could indicate a higher level of glucose intake than was normal in a human being.
"We shall see," he said abruptly. "Until then, get out of my web."
Sage nodded, and Sage145 and several thousand of her other personas all disappeared from the interweb.
With the foreigner dealt with, Sputnik leaned back in his chair, disconnecting from the system for a moment to knead his forehead in a human gesture he had never quite gotten rid of. Well, the aliens theory would answer quite a lot of questions. But we shall see. I am not so ready to believe the word of an enemy, after all. But if we have been been betrayed and used, then who is the primary enemy?
Sputnik could form no reply to his own question, and, with a sigh, he pushed himself away from the massive supercomputer in front of him, moving out of the door and into the next laboratory over, where he quickly began to use his powers to put together the device the woman had told him had been devised by Mr. Fantastic. Once it was built, to his regret, it still seemed on the level, and Sputnik scowled. Well, it is a real device, anyway. Now, how to test it?
OOOOOOO
The instant the hour ended, Harry and the gathered Custodes were on the move. Opening a hole in the series of shields around the port, Harry flew a large magic carpet up into the air over the city, then flew towards the capital of Genosha, which had been renamed Purity, according to the locals in the port, some years ago. It was a normal seeming city for the most part, with the regular amount of skyscrapers, office buildings, apartments, etc., but at one edge of it, rising over the smaller skyscrapers, was the government's building, which had, since this civil war began, been renamed the High Genegineer's Tower.
This building had been designed to look almost like a wave crashing against a wall. With its flat back toward the hills the locals thought were mountains, the front facing in toward the heart of the city was a shaped in a concave manner. The foot of the building and 'wave' was about a block long and four stories tall, rising in a smooth curve into the main portion of the building. This portion was thinner than the lower floors but far taller, making about seventy more floors. The information on the tower they had found varied between seventy and seventy-five floors for some reason. The top of the wave then curved back out for half a block. It was supposed to house the president's office, a meeting hall, and a restaurant. The whole thing had been painted in shade of blue and white.
But that had been before the outbreak of violence which had riven this nation in two. Now the building sported numerous areas that looked like blast damage, and there wasn't a single window intact at the foot of the wave. The top of it was covered by six anti-air cannons, and over a dozen random offices had been repurposed to house small mortars and other types of artillery. The buildings and the large parking lot on either side of the building were also dotted by further makeshift security.
The only guns that really mattered, however, were the antiair guns, which began to fire upon the flying carpets as they closed with the gigantic building. But, as they did, Thunderbird, Cyclops, Havok, and Colossus returned fire with their own weapons. The two super-strong mutants were using two heavy graviton cannons, much like the ones the Ravens housed, and they tore through the buildings around the main governmental complex. While Havok and Cyclops destroyed the guns on the complex's roof, Harry, Dr. Druid, and Kitty concentrated on evading the incoming fire.
"Sunfire, Rogue, Banshee, go," Harry ordered calmly as he and Kitty flew the carpets around the governmental building.
"You're becoming far too comfortable ordering me about, gaijin. This is something we will have to address later," Sunfire muttered even as he jumped off of the back of Harry's carpet and began to fall towards the ground, his powers activating a few seconds later. He and the other two flyers flew around the building, lashing out at each installation as they went.
This seemed to signal the defenders to step up their game, because from several different places around the building façade, energy blasts and other kinds of attacks began to fire on the three flyers. One of them was as simple as someone throwing a large girder out of the window in an attempt to nail Rogue, but she simply flew around it. The others were much more dangerous energy blasts of various types. Harpoons laced with some kind of green energy and thermal based energy blasts like plasma beams only wider, moving faster through the air, for some reason, than the plasma blasts of the rifles that Harry's company had designed, came from various places. Others were simply lasers, sunlight condensed into a beam of energy that cut through the air faster and even deadlier than the plasma because of that speed.
Banshee couldn't dodge one of those last beams enough and nearly lost his arm to one such strike. His wild evasion let him live, but his arm was still caught in the searing beam of energy. He was then caught in the leg by a flak explosion which spun him end over end, out of control until Rogue caught him and stabilized his flight. "Faith forfend, that was a close one, but I'm all right now, lassie," the ex-Interpol agent shouted, pushing her away with his one working arm, his other arm hanging useless at his side, the visible skin of his lower arm seared to black from the heat of the beam's passage. It was intensely painful, but he was still in the fight.
At the same time Kitty's magic carpet, which had just started to go lower towards the top of the building, started to slow down for some reason, and her eyes widened. "What…the…heck…" she said slowly, while several of the the defenders began to line her up with energy blasts, causing her to panic even as everything around her was slowed down like she had suddenly been stuck in molasses.
Among the defenders who had rushed out onto the roof after Harry's team had destroyed the antiair cannons, one man was thrusting out his hand towards where Kitty was directing her magic carpet as the others began to train their weapons on them. She didn't know how he was doing it, but he had somehow slowed them down.
Then Harry lashed out with a single cutting spell which caught the man before he could dodge away, slicing him in two.
The next blast that hit the roof came from Cyclops, who was sitting on Dr. Druid's magic carpet along with the rest of the X-Men. This cleared the defenders out for a brief moment, and Harry directed his magic carpet down towards the top of the building. "Assault team, go!"
Thunderbird, Colossus, and Warpath all leaped off of his carpet, as there was about twenty feet still below them, with Psylocke, Magma, and Nightcrawler following on their heels from Dr. Druid's flying carpet as Harry pulled his own carpet up and out of the way. "Let's rumble!" Nightcrawler shouted as he fell toward the roof behind the others.
Psylocke shook her head. "What the bloody heck was that supposed to be?"
"Our war cry, of course," Nightcrawler said with a huff.
"We do need to work on a team war cry," Warpath said, nodding his head sagely even as he fell through the sky towards the building below them.
"'No one gets out alive?'" Spyke asked.
"What are we, evil robots?" Cyclops joked, causing the others to gawk at him before, below them, Thunderbird slammed down onto the roof, the first of them to do so.
One of the defenders twisted around, aiming his arms towards them. He was a crystal form mutant, one that Thunderbird recognized, and he smiled grimly as he thrust out a heavy shield of juggernaut-based armor that he had on one arm, taking the laser blast that the man sent his way and plowing through it. Above him he heard the distinct 'bamf' of Nightcrawler teleporting as he crossed the last few feet down to the top of the building his own way, depositing Psylocke and himself in among some of the Press Gang that were there, lashing out at them.
Before the energy and crystal form individual could back away, Warpath was behind him, one of his hatchets twirling. And, just like in the battle in the Vault, while his crystal form gave Prism the ability to ignore energy blasts of any kind, it proved less than useless against a simple physical assault. He shattered with a scream of agony, pieces of his body flying everywhere, almost like shrapnel.
"You'll pay for that!" With that shout Blockbuster slammed into Warpath's side, taking him to the ground, his fists rising and falling like jackhammers as he pummeled the other super-strong mutant. But Warpath could take that pummeling and did, getting his hands up to protect himself.
Then his brother was beside him, grabbing Blockbuster's arm and holding it in place with one of his own as he slammed a hard fist into the bald man's face. Blockbuster staggered but wrenched out of Thunderbird's grip and returned with his own punch as more of the defenders came out onto the roof.
First came Harpoon, followed by Thermal and Arclight, then came Riptide, Scalphunter, and a man none of the Custodes or X-men had seen before. He was a lean, wiry-looking man wearing body armor underneath a long brown coat. His short brown hair was spiked up, with a bandanna around his forehead. He wielded a long metal staff in one hand and a series of playing cards in the other, the playing cards glowing with dark pink energy of some kind.
Harpoon launched harpoons filled with bio energy at the two Native American super-strong mutants. The first missed Warpath's face by inches, flashing across his face. The second slammed into Thunderbird's back before he could turn, sending him reeling forward into a blow from Blockbuster that nearly took his head off despite the best his brother could do to try to get in the other super-strong mutant's way.
At the same time Psylocke was nearly pin-cushioned midair by Riptide's stilettos as he spun in place, hurling them all around. The three fighting mutants in the center of the roof ignored them, their durability able to take them easily. At the same time, though, Nightcrawler hissed as one of them nearly took his ear off, while another embedded itself in his shoulder right below where his own chest plate began before he could bamf away. Spyke too took a stiletto which punched straight through his leg's bone armor, drawing blood but not slowing him down as he raced into the melee, slamming into Blockbuster's back like a runaway spiked mace.
The defenders' reply was a little too late to stop the heavy assault team from creating a beachhead for the others. While the three flyers continued to destroy defensive installations around the building, Harry teleported everyone else bar Kitty from the magic carpets down onto the opened area of the rooftop, then turned his attention to the defenders. "Arresto Momentum," Harry intoned, pointing at Riptide as he landed beside them, followed by the rest of the combined attack group.
Riptide instantly came to a halt, his face shocked, before Havok caught him with one of his blasts. It caught the man full bore in the face, blasting his head into offal.
Havok and Spyke were then forced to dodged back as Scalphunter created a large cannon of some kind in one hand from bits and pieces of the antiair cannons all around them. But Cyclops caught him with a blast from his eyes, sending the man hurling over the side of the building with a cry of agony.
This left the last man and Harpoon from the group that had just rushed out onto the rooftop, and the unknown man seemed to understand this. "Time to retreat, mon frere," he said, hurling his playing cards all around him. They glowed with purple energy: somewhat like Harpoon's, only with a great deal more glow to them than the Alaskan mutant's weapons. They also sped through the air very quickly, much faster than they should have.
Colossus took a blast from one of them to his head that, while it didn't hurt him, knocked him off of his feet. Another one impacted the ground right before Harry, causing him to step backwards as it exploded on impact, though it didn't actually harm him either, while the others all ducked or hid behind the nearest cover, which sometimes included their own more durable fellows. This let Harpoon get one more shot off, and he nailed Cyclops in the chest with one of his bioenergy-charged harpoons, but Cyclops was wearing his X-Men uniform which had armor in it and rolled away, blasted off his feet but otherwise unharmed.
Yet Harpoon had stayed just a little too long to get that shot off. Harry blew his head off with a well-placed Reducto.
Elsewhere on the roof, Thunderbird had gotten Blockbuster's arms behind him. This let his brother end the fight on the roof by caving in the man's chest with one of his hatchets, the other one having been mangled in the fight.
Arclight, though, had gotten Colossus onto his back thanks to the man that she had called Gambit's help and was slamming vibration assisted fists into his head again and again. The vibrations were doing what the punches alone could not do, getting through Colossus's metal to the point where his brain was being literally bounced around in its brain box, causing him to slowly lose consciousness.
But whatever durability Arclight might have against regular attacks did not equate to being any more defended from magical attacks than Harry had noticed in other super durable mutants. A cutting spell sliced into her body from the side, nearly cutting her in half. The dying woman collapsed to one side as Harry moved over to his friend, helping Colossus to his feet. "Are you all right?"
Colossus pointed at his head groggily, unwilling to shake it at the moment. "What was she hitting me with!? My head, it feels like I set it on a train track and let the train run over me a few times."
"Vibrations," Thunderbird said, nodding his head as he remembered his own run in with Arclight. "She releases these blasts of vibration when she hits you, and that makes her blows that much more devastating to your insides. Against a head, well, it's even worse."
"Right," Colossus said, slowly regaining his equilibrium. "I'm good," he said at last, nodding his head towards Harry.
Harry nodded back and gestured down into the building. "Warpath, with me. Thunderbird and Colossus will be behind us. Everyone else, hide behind us for a bit until we either run into the defenders or an open area. Havok, stay here and keep control of the roof for us."
Cyclops nodded, looking over at Riptide and Scalphunter in particular. "Those two should've been dead. I'm not so certain about the others, but I know they died."
Thunderbird nodded. "I know I've killed Riptide before this, and the Black Panther killed Scalphunter when my team and I had to rescue him. Whatever cloning technology Sinister has is frankly too incredible to believe."
"We've theorized that might be the case for a while, though the speed of the cloning might be worrisome unless he clones them in batches and lets them out one at a time," Harry said frowning.
"I'm just glad glad he can't clone all of them," Psylocke said, touching her chest gingerly, where an errant piece of shrapnel had caught her. "Imagine if he could clone all the MLF mutants too."
"True," Harry said with a nod. Once everyone was back on their feet, he nodded towards Warpath, who joined him as they descended into the building, while Harry continued to get out orders to the flyers. "Banshee, you're in charge out here. Keep your attack going until all of the defensive installations are dead, then follow us in from a random direction. Nightcrawler, get going."
Like what Neophyte had done during the attack on the research station in Russia, Nightcrawler's job was simply to cause chaos throughout the building, using his powers to hit and run, pulling defenders this way and that, taking Psylocke and Magma along. Being the lightest, he could teleport the two of them a decent distance, and the way his powers worked, he didn't have to know where he was going as intimately as Harry had to for his own teleportation powers. In fact, for short distances Kurt's teleportation worked better than even Ororo's, which Harry could also use, although not while he was fighting.
With Harry and Warpath in the lead, the rest of the team forged down into the building. But when they reached the next floor down, they instantly began to run into trouble.
Another Riptide was there, stepping out into the hallway and smiling at them. "Ah, my friends," he addressed them in a joking, almost jocular manner. "I'm afraid I can't let you pass." With that he began to spin, flinging out his daggers at super speeds.
But they all fell as Harry used the same spell he'd used before, stopping their momentum and Riptide's. From behind Harry came an energy blast that smashed into Riptide's face, turning it into so much mush. The others turned to look at Cyclops, and he shrugged. "I had the professor look up anything we could find on someone matching his description.
"Cloning," Warpath muttered, nodding his head grimly. "Right."
"Time to spread out, folks," Harry said. "Make sure they can't overwhelm us with sheer numbers. Thunderbird, take Spyke with you to the right. Psylocke, Warpath, with me right down the middle. We'll use the stairs. Cyclops, you and Husk to the left."
They fought their way down through six more floors, running into more clones, though thankfully none of the clones were working together. Riptide, Blockbuster, and Prism seemed to be the ones that were cloned the most often, and Harry idly wondered if, perhaps for some reason, their genetics were more stable or something.
Regardless, the cloned Marauders fought in teams of four to a floor and slowed Harry and his team down occasionally before they were encircled by the three teams and wiped out before the Custodes moved on. Slowing the attackers down was all they could do, even with Harry conserving his magical power, and all of them being careful not to run over any noncombatants.
The reason for this was simple: Harry wouldn't put it past Sinister to use living shields, normal governmental employees and such, to defend himself. And Harry wanted no atrocities here. If that wasn't the case, he thought to himself as they reached the tenth floor down from the roof, I'd simply have exploded the building entirely. Although, perhaps not. Even using the same spells I did against the Russian Air Force bases, I wouldn't put it past someone as sneaky as Sinister to be able to figure out a way to survive and get away. No, I want to see his body before me and then make damn sure that he hasn't been able to clone himself. That would be a nightmare.
Elsewhere, Nightcrawler had teleported from one floor to the other randomly, getting behind some of the defensive installations still shooting at the flyers outside as well as behind some of the interior defenders, but he was also running into issues. As the fight continued, he and the others started to run into more Blockbuster and Arclight clones, an issue made worse by the fact that a few of the defenders who had been trying to tag their flyers had pulled back into the building to help with the interior security. But whenever they ran into a defense that was too tough for them to plow through, Nightcrawler would simply teleport himself Magma, and Psylocke away.
The only one who didn't seem to have been cloned was Gambit, the man who had retreated from the rooftop. The telepath had also failed to make his or her presence known just yet. For whatever reason, Sinister was husbanding their power now when he had been so profligate with it before. Harry figured it was because he was waiting to unleash her on them at the right time, but through fifteen floors nothing of the sort occurred. With Harry's magic and their numbers against the scattered defenders, they were able to plow through most of the defenses, since, whatever else he could do, Sinister could not let the clones become aware of one another, which made each position too small and weak to stop the combined Custodes/X-men assault.
The only ones that continually made problems were Arclight and Blockbuster. Their durability was such that only Harry and the other super-strong members of the team could do much against them. But even there, the attackers definitely had an advantage.
This was ended abruptly when Harry and the main assault reached the fiftieth floor down from the rood, and Sinister's pet telepath made herself known at last. A blast of telepathic energy roared into the attackers throughout the building, halting most of them in place. The assault, much like the ones Emma and Charles had been fighting before this, took the form of night terrors accompanied by a wave of fear beating against their minds. But where before all the terrors had been imps and other demonic entities pulled from religious images, these were more personal.
Cyclops screamed, holding his head as he fell back, covering his eyes with his hands, not as if to shield his head, but to block them in, as if he was seeing some vision of his eyes going wild. Next to him, Spyke too halted, collapsing to the side as he saw the image of his bones all turning against him, completely burying him underneath bone and never receding. Magma was back with her father, being led to her intended marriage with his fellow senator, an obese man who was his own age, who leered at her as she was being led to his door. There was no world outside of New Rome, no Brazil, no X-Men, no powers.
Nightcrawler alone dealt with being attacked by demonic beasts straight out of the Bible, and it was no coincidence that a lot of them looked like his own body, the image torn from old nightmares about his origins and the fears of it to his staunchly Catholic mind. "Devil child!" a voice shouted in the background of that image. "Down with the devil!"
Only Harry and Psylocke were immune. Harry's mind, as always, was hidden underneath his invisibility cloak, while Psylocke bit off the assault on her mind with difficulty. But Colossus, Husk, Thunderbird, and Warpath halted as well, their bodies no longer responding to exterior stimuli as their minds were frozen in place by this assault, though in Colossus's case his nightmare was about other people dying, in particular his sister, something that set him aside from the others except for Cyclops.
Harry immediately tried to get in touch with Emma only to find both electronic and mental communications blocked somehow. Reaching inside, he even found the link to Jean severed, the permanent mental highway she had made between their minds no longer there. Oh, that's not good at all… I hope Hela's around when she wakes up, or else that could go very, very bad.
He even tried to use a magic mirror, since he knew Emma always had the one. He'd given her one so many months ago. But even that failed somehow, and he growled, looking around as he wondered how that was happening.
Dammit! That's why they were holding back on the telepath's power: they were waiting for us to enter the building and get within whatever exterior defense is blocking out our own telepaths' powers so that they could unleash them without anyone to block it.
This made two thoughts spring to Harry's mind. One, the telepath had to be found and eliminated in some fashion, and two, this building had to remain intact for the most part. The technology that could block out telepathic signals as well as the lower half of this building was doing right now was something that he and his people could use.
And probably keep to ourselves, he thought ruefully. After all, Harry had access to most of the known telepaths in the world at this point. Giving out this technology to a chosen few very worried individuals could be a good idea, but letting it propagate wouldn't be. But before that we need to win here, so I'd best get ready.
Even as he thought that, the Marauders moved in on the attackers, only to find Harry standing defensively over his team, and Psylocke standing over Nightcrawler and Magma. Thankfully for Psylocke, the trio of raiders was of a much lower priority than Harry and the assault team coming down from the roof. So only Gambit and one of the Prism clones was sent to deal with them.
The floor the trio were on was dominated by cubicle walls that barely were taller than their chests, giving only the illusion of privacy rather than the reality. Psylocke had wondered idly how anyone could work in a place like this before she felt felt the telepathic assault slamming into her mental defenses. She was barely able to beat it back, aided only by the fact that she had a bit more experience than whoever was attacking her, and the attacker had also split their attention. If not for that, Psylocke might have been overcome by the sudden mental battering, but, as it was, she was able to beat it off.
But by the time she had beaten the attack off and was once more cognizant of the world around her, Gambit was standing over her, his staff raised to plunge down towards her face with bone breaking force. "Sorry, chère," he said, his accent somewhat French, but not any of the accents she'd ever heard before. "But orders are orders, and you and yours have to die here."
But Psylocke didn't have to rely solely on her telekinetic or telepathic powers against physical assaults. She had, after all, been trained as one of the prime stars of Mojoworld and had hand-to-hand combat skills that ranked her among one of the better Custodes members. She twisted to the side, her foot lashing out towards his ankle before he'd even finished speaking.
Gambit stepped back quickly while bringing down his staff down in an arc to where her head was rather than where it would've been. But she had anticipated this in turn, and her hand flashed up covered in telekinetic energy to block the blow with a shield the size of her palm, sending the staff to one side as another telekinetic dagger appeared around her other hand, thrusting forward.
He dodged backwards again, and Prism took his shot. Yet Betsy saw him aiming at her and, with the wave of telepathic energy having dissipated, lashed out with her own mental assault at Prism. For just an instant she made him doubt his aim, and he checked fire, confused.
Then Gambit was in her face again, his staff barely missing her head only to smash into her upper arm with bone deadening force. She had felt that a bit, though she was wearing armor, and so it hadn't done all that much damage.
He blinked, shaking his head. "Those suits of yours, a man has to wonder where he could find one of his own, chère." He smirked, looking her up and down even as they traded blows. "Or get you out of it, one or the other."
"What can I say? Good sometimes does pay better than Evil," Psylocke quipped, ducking under a blow that would've taken her head off only to be forced into dodging backwards by the other end of his staff. It was apparent that Gambit realized after that one blow that the British woman's head was her only weak point.
"We're not evil, chère," Gambit said even as he moved in, his hand flashing out in a palm strike. "We're fighting the good fight! We're fighting for mutants, for mutant rights. You and Potter, you people only think you're doing the right thing, trying to work with the system rather than overthrow it. You have no idea how many hundreds of mutants have died despite your efforts, and the moment you no longer have anything new to offer the plebes, they'll turn on you all too."
"Spare me the sermon! If you think you're fighting the good fight, it's a tossup to say whether you are more delusional than you are blind!" she said with a grunt, as Gambit's next blow hit her in the stomach, driving some of the air out of her despite her armor. But she grabbed his staff and held it there, returning with a blow towards his chest with her own telekinetic energy sword, which he dodged at the last instant. He looked surprised when it cut a large gash through his armor, grimacing slightly, and she grinned at him cheekily before she moved to one side as if trying to dodge around him, causing Gambit to automatically move to block her escape.
This also placed him between Prism and Psylocke, which had been her intention, but not with the intention of protecting herself from the crystal form mutant. Now she swiftly lashed out, not with her telekinetic powers, but with her telepathic ones to impact Prism's mind, for just a second switching the image of Gambit and herself in his senses before the other telepath could sense her assault through the astral plane and lash out at her weakness.
For that brief instant it looked to Prism as if Gambit had maneuvered Psylocke so that her back was to him. And the crystal form murderer took his chance gleefully, blasting out a laser beam that slammed into Gambit, searing his back and head.
For just an instant Betsy could see his eyes widening, but he could couldn't dodge, and a bare second after the laser hit him, Gambit's head and upper body were seared away in the heat of the laser beam. As the rest of his body collapsed, Psylocke ducked underneath him, grabbing up his staff and hurling it forward with all of the telekinetic force she could, slamming it into Prism's chest. It didn't do much, but it did crack his crystal form just slightly at the point of impact.
He stumbled back, but before he could lash out towards her again, Harry appeared in the doorway and, with a single blasting spell, shattered him. "Are you all right?" he asked.
Psylocke nodded, getting to her feet slowly, shaking her head. "The others?"
"They were taken out by the telepathic assault. But I teleported them all back up to the roof. Without any of the telepaths here with us to help guard them, they can't face that kind of assault. And I can't spend the time it would take to bang up some wards to defend them from it magically. They'll help secure the perimeter and the exterior of the building, then find the energy field or whatever that is keeping Emma and the professor out of this fight."