Tank wasn't sure what Zoey was up to, and he wasn't sure it mattered to him at the moment. It couldn't be worse than what had already happened, right? So he started his way back to the jets like the others, wondering when the next salvo of missiles might come streaking in from the sky to wipe them all out.

Serena runs out of objects in the survival kit before she finds a towel. There's a small towel in the medical pack, but she can't open the pack and retrieve the towel because her hands are shaking so violently. Instead, she drops the pack and just looks at Zoey.

Quietly, "Yeah."

She buries her face in her hands and starts mumbling that they're all dead and that it was a mistake to try to do anything.

The stairwell downstairs have been buried under several tons of concrete and metal after the roof of the first floor collapsed.  There was no way Zoey, or anyone else, could go back down into the facility and erase the evidence left behind; not unless Tank was willing to spend a few hours clearing the rubble.  And there weren’t hours to be had; Magneto had evacuated his entire team, which meant that the hundreds of soldiers previously held captive by the Legion were already making their way back to the beach, under the cover of attack helicopters, drones, and a squadron of fighter jets scrambled from the nearby USS Harry Truman.

“We must surrender” Beast raised his voice as two jets passed over them, engines roaring.  Undoubtedly, they could fight their way off the island if they committed to it.   But how many more would die in the process?

In reply to Beast (msg # 373):

"I, I could run away, they won't notice a cat or a fox would they?"  Kate asks, she sounds nervous, scared, and certainly not up to being arrested and put in another place like this.  "I don't want to go to prison."

Zoey had retrieved a rag from her pocket and handed it to Serena. Zoey always keeps a rag in her pocket, though normally it's in case of one of her own breakdowns instead of someone else's.

---

On seeing the rubble Zoey moves a few pieces around before giving up. She's not getting back down there. Maybe she could sterilize the place from the surface... but no, Zoey didn't trust herself to be able to aim that precisely without a telepathic spotter. There might still be people alive down there in the rooms that they hadn't explored. She hopes they have enough air to last until rescue crews can get to them. Man, what kind of morons fire on their own facility like that?

With nothing further to do at the wreckage Zoey returns at near-blur speeds to Serena's side. She takes a few rapid lungfuls of air to re-oxygenate after such rapid exertions; her abilities might let her exceed human limits briefly, but she can't pull magic space energy out of the ether like some mutants seem able to. Friggin' Cyclops.

"H-hi, am back..." Zoey says to Serena (and presumably the others around) as soon as she is able to breathe again.

Zoey gives Beast a look like he'd just turned into a duck. "And, uh, when X-Men surrender to authorities, do things generally go better for them than most mutants?" she asks.

"New York didn't go too badly," Tank replied, referring to their being detained by SHIELD at the very end of that fiasco. The agents had simply deposited them back at the school. But these weren't SHIELD agents facing them now, so there was no way of knowing how badly things might go. "...but I'm not counting on a repeat."

He looked to Kate. She might be able to get away, but the soldiers were probably in 'shoot anything that moves' mode. He shrugged. He had no advice left to give, and no belief that anyone there was willing to take it anymore.

With a sigh, he held up his hands.

Zoey glances up to see if she can see any SHIELD logos. Somehow she doubts it.

Beast seemed to be of the opinion that the X-Jets couldn't compete in the air with the normie fighter craft, and he ought to know better than Zoey would. Swim, no. Fly, no. Hide, definitely no. Fight? That would ignite one hell of a shitstorm, if the aftermath of her actions wasn't already enough to do that. If it were just her she would totally stick it to the man, but the current climate in the world right now meant that if she did something reckless it'd make things even worse for a lot of people. There were no good options here, and it wasn't clear which option was least bad.

Zoey bites her lip, folds her hands behind her back, and shyly slides beside Frank. "Why did you stick up for me in front of Magneto?" she asks him. Better ask now, in case none of them make it out of this.

"That's what a team is for," Tank replied. It almost sounded like a question, as though he wasn't one hundred percent sure that was his reason. He continued, working out his answer as he went. "Well... partly, anyway. I guess I'm not going to stand by and let someone who wasn't here and doesn't know what was going on judge your actions. I don't like armchair quarterbacks who think that they could have done things better, after the play. Nobody knows how they're going to act until they're faced with a decision. I don't know what I would have done if it was me. And Magneto sure as hell doesn't know what he'd have done if it was him.

"It's just not his place to judge you. And if I get all judge-y on you, you can remind me that it's not my place, either."

Serena just raises her hands in surrender. The fight has clearly gone out of her.

Ana Sofía isn't trying to escape on her own. She picks a spot with less rubble so she won't get as hurt when she inevitably gets slammed down. She's seen this routine enough back home that she knows it. She kneels down, puts her hands on her head, and waits.

Kate, feeling and looking miserable asks everyone for guidance one last time before any of the soldiers reach them, a pleading feel to her mental voice.  'Should I change and sneak away... I don't want to go to jail.'

She was already half way to hiding crouched down low, on four feet and looking ready to bolt into the wilds of the island on less than a moments notice, only tentative bonds of friendship keeping her from already having abandoned the rest of the team.

Ana Sofía replies to Kate mentally, "If you can become something local that really wouldn't be noticed, especially something cold-blooded to avoid infra-red, go for it. A house cat might well draw attention. Is a snake an option?"

“No, I don’t think it would go as smoothly as New-York”   Despite believing that, he was still not willing to fight.  That would only end in a bloodshed, and deteriorate human-mutants relations even further.  If it came to that, he’d let them put him in chains, run their experiments on him.  Becoming a martyr was preferable than becoming a butcher.

But that didn’t mean he was going to let the X-Jets fall into the government’s hands.  His phone was hanging against his utility belt.  One press of a button sent the command to ‘self-destruct’, a pilum of black smoke rising from afar soon followed

“That takes care of that…” 

"Make a run for it, kitfox" if Barnell could have escaped, he would have done so.  But he had a strong suspicion he wouldn't be able to dodge a sidewinder missile.  "worst case, they'll track you down and round you up"

Zoey smiles softly at Tank. "That's very understanding of you. That means a lot to me."

Restlessly Zoey patrols through the rest of the group, watching and listening. She really wished she had some ideas as to how they could get out of this that didn't involve slaughtering a bunch of U.S. soldiers. She wished she could be so selfish as to do something like that without a second thought, but she wasn't. But more and more the thought seemed to solidify that she was going to be taken captive... and that was scaring the hell out of her. Not necessarily the captivity part, but because her usual procedure for dealing with getting overstimulated was to walk away until she could cool off and captives weren't really allowed to do that.

Zoey had a reputation for making poor decisions under stress and now everyone here knew it. It didn't seem like this was going to end very well for anyone.

Not that they had any choices after Beast blew up their transports. Zoey facepalms hard. A little consultation on that decision would have been nice! "Beast... if we survive this, I swear to all the imaginary gods of this planet that I'm going to kick your ass."

Kate almost instantly is gone, shifting and disappearing into the undergrowth once she get's what even seemed like permission to run away.  In moment's not a sound nor hair of her is left among the others, only one last flash of a tabby colored tail.

Kate hurries away from any loud noises, strange scents, and any other signs of the arriving troops, much like any other natural animal would.  Using her nose more and trusting her instincts to help her find a place to hide and wait out their invasion.

"Surrender?!?"
Sabretooth sneered at the X-Men.  To say he wouldn’t have any compunction about tearing the soldiers limb from limb would be an understatement.  He would outright enjoy it.   But if there was one thing he liked more than murdering people, it was murdering more people. And he couldn’t keep doing that if they put him behind bars.

With a snarl, he turned his back on the mutants and started sprinting toward the coast.  Martha's Vineyard was only a few miles away.  A man like him could easily brave that distance.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:14, Fri 02 Apr 2021.

Zoey glances to her peers. "Last chance to kill him," she points out. Perhaps unnecessarily. Zoey wasn't much of a swimmer; she couldn't even begin to speculate on his odds, but couldn't imagine him making it without the Coast Guard or someone else plonking him out of the water.

"I'd prefer if we could incapacitate him," Tank said, not sure if Zoey had meant it or not. There was part of him that did want to kill Sabretooth, too. But he'd opposed killing as a general rule during this escapade, and he wasn't about to switch sides on that point. Not now, anyway. "Anybody...?"

Serena looked up at Sabertooth, sprinting away.

"We-"

Pause.

"We can't let him...murder anybody else, we-"

Her vigor was coming back. Something to do, a sense that maybe one's actions had meaning, even in ways that are ultimately pointless.

She stood up, put her right foot back, wound up, and made the motion of throwing a baseball. This caused a fwump like a T-shirt cannon, and a net made of coruscating rainbows flew from her hand and the end of her throw. The net started as a ball and expanded in the air.

"Well?" she asked, looking at Frank and Beast. "Go stop him!"

Entagle or grapple Sabertooth! Something like that. Hey-you-stop-moving type of thing.

02:51, Today: Serena rolled 9 using 1d10+1d10+1d6+1d8 with rolls of 3,3,1,2.  magic net gun.

Total of 6. Effect d8.

d6 opportunity.

3 PP total.

That's what I get for trying.

Ana Sofía tries to get into his mind: You'll drown, better to surrender.


Creating a complication:

Willpower d10
Mind Control d8
Psych d8
Enthralling Mind d6

07:40, Today: Ana Sofia Garcia Mendez rolled 8,8,7,4 using d10,d8,d8,d6 with rolls of 8,8,7,4.  Slowing down Sabertooth.

That's 15 with a d10 effect die stepped up to d12.

Sabretooth’s legs carried him well out of reach of the magical net. He was a good hundred feet away by the time the net unfolded and floated down on the grasslands behind him.  Trying to influence his mind was just as futile; Ana couldn’t even make contact with his psych – it was as if a wall has been erected to protect his mind, and she was knocking on it with her fist rather than with a sledgehammer.

The mutant made it halfway to the shoreline as a company of soldiers cut him off.  Thinking he was charging right at them, they opened fire with their assault rifles, turning the man into a human-cullender.  His body spasmed as they unloaded their entire clips, his mouth frothing with rage.  But once they were all out of ammo he continued his mad dash as if there was nothing to it, tossing the soldiers aside like they were bowling pins.




Savage 1d8
Prowess 1d10
Enhanced Reflexes 1d8
Combat Master 1d10
Sabretooth rolled 2,8,7,9 using 1d8,1d10,1d8,1d10 with rolls of 2,8,7,9.  Dodge Serena's attack.
Total = 17, effect = 1d8.  Attack resisted.

This message was last edited by the GM at 13:01, Sun 04 Apr 2021.

Ana Sofía thinks to the others, 'I can't stop him.' She remains kneeling with her hands on her head, awaiting the inevitable.

The soldiers who encircled the mutants were naturally apprehensive.  Not a short hour ago the entire battalion suffered a stinging defeat by only a couple of men.  Why then have the mutants chosen to surrender, when they could have easily fought their way off the island?  Perhaps being taken captive was part of their plan?

‘wait for further orders’ was the decision.  And for a while a silent standoff ensued as the soldiers kept their distance, gun barrels pointed at the mutants, until finally someone arrived to handle the situation.

Black suits and mirror shades, the two government spooks that climbed out of their helicopter didn’t risk their own skin, but directed Lieutenant Colonel Clark to order his men to ‘escort’ the mutants (without harming them) toward a second chopper.  His question of where they were taking them was answered with a typical ‘it’s-above-your-pay-grade’.

After the long day he had, he was happy to keep it that way.