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The base of operations for the combined group efforts of SHIELD, OMEN, and various other personnel from across the globe that had arrive to help take care of "the problem" that was Magneto and what he had done to the city and all of those still in it. Truthfully, despite the constant clashing with Magneto that occurred, there was no real proof that there were any heroes still left in the city who might have been alive when all hell broke loose. So all of the heroes in the city had been written off entirely as deceased, including those who were mutants and likely survived the initial incident.

There were a few mobile buildings and tents used to essentially act as small bases, and currently, there was the plan to have a small group enter the city, do some recon to try and figure out where Magneto's base was, and report back with their findings. There wasn't much in the initial part for them to try and actually engage Magneto. A smaller group would likely be able to move around unnoticed more easily in the warzone that was the city. There was the added bonus that if there were any heroes left in the city, this would help to serve as a way to tell, though no one was getting their hopes up on anyone still being around.

Thalia was somewhat unsure of everything. She had only joined this effort a few days ago, so she wasn't even a hundred percent sure what the new plan was. Or who exactly she would be joining up with. Eventually, she entered the main hub of activity, and she recognized a few faces that she would have preferred not to have ever needed to run into again. That being she saw Jade Cornish and Alex Jakobsen, people she hadn't seen since she was in Coventry with the circus and she had more or less changed her identity and hid from everyone. Here she was, working with a few people she had spent the past three years hiding from. Yeah, her life sucked horribly.

There was a third person who she didn't recognize, so at least there was one person who had to deal with being in the same room as Alex and Jade aside from. So that was definitely a nice thing. "Hey there," she commented with a slight wave towards Ed. She was wearing a silver colored shirt, but aside from that, she was wearing all black, black jeans, a leather jacket, and black combat boots (she made sure that her outfit was as metal free as possible, so there was hardly any on her aside from a zipper or two). Her hair used to be naturally black, but she had dyed it before she joined the circus (took a long time for it, but it had been worth it at the time), but now it was obvious that her hair had naturally turned that color for some reason. Clearly she wasn't too thrilled to see Alex and Jade, and Alex rolled his eyes slightly at her, before he looked at the group of them.

"Good to see you again too Thalia," he commented, holding a few files and there was a large case of sorts on the table in front of them. "You all know the basics of the situation I'm assuming? But I'll go over it really quick anyway, everything has gone to hell. The city has become a war zone and no matter what we seem to throw at Magneto, he manages to either completely kill our forces or he manages to turn them back and they leave the city. Now, the situation is starting to get even worse, and we lose more and more people every day from his retaliation attacks. Likely it'll only be a matter of time before he decides to launch another form of the virus at other cities across the country and potentially around the world..."

"Most of us knew that part, even me and I just got here not too long ago," Thalia commented, "What is our mission exactly?"

"I'm getting to that. We've decided to try a different tactic... A small group is going to sneak into the city, and do more of a recon mission. A small group will have an easier time slipping in and out undetected, and what exactly will the recon be? Your primary objective is to locate Magneto's base of operations, as well as give rough estimates of how many people are in his own forces, and potentially note what seem to be the most common abilities each person has. There is one to not get your hopes up for, but the secondary object is to see and potentially make contact with any of the various heroes who were trapped in the city. Many were likely killed by the virus, but some likely survived the initial attack. Only keep an eye out, and potentially make contact with them if need be."

"Well, let's hope we don't end up dead, how exactly are we supposed to relay this info to you and all?"

"Simple," he replied, before setting the files in his hands onto the table and opening the crate to reveal inside were a few different types of weaponry if needed, as well as what looked like communications devices and what looked like one gas mask and a few wrist watches. "None of these have any traces of metal within them, so they can't be used by Magneto against you. Jade, as you are the only human going, the mask is for you. The watches all have act as a bit of a GPS system, and will allow you to keep track of where you all are in the case you end up getting separated. Will help you navigate throughout the city. The comm devices have a wide range, so if you learn anything useful, feel free to relay the information along."

"Okay, next question. How are we supposed to easily slip into the city. I mean yeah, there aren't that many of us and a small group can move about easier, but we still can't just go waltzing in."

"SHIELD's part of this plan to get you in is that they are hopefully going to be able to cause a large enough distraction in order for you all to more easily get in. There is still the chance that you'll get surprised, so be on your guard." Thalia reached into the crate and pulled out a few knives that were inside of it. Sure, she had claws, but personally she preferred to not have to rely on them, and she pocketed a few of them, stashing them away in various hiding spots. Perks of living your life away from everyone or constantly on guard, you learned how to hide things. She had two hooked to her belt, one slipped into an inside pocket on her jacket, and one she instantly hooked around her right ankle.

"I don't know about you guys, but this sounds like it'll be fun. Thoughts?" she asked Ed and Jade as she grabbed one of the comm devices, putting it in her ear, and hooking one of the watches onto her wrist.


With all of the chaos going on, it was hard to actually pay too much attention to what all was going on and happening potentially outside of the city. The group had taken refuge underneath the city, as the sewer system allowed them to more easily travel without being seen by Magneto and his goons, and they all led to one place; the old Morlock Tunnels. The Morlocks had abandoned the tunnels when all humans had ended up dead from the virus, and many of them had gone on to join Magneto, which resulted in many of them dying in the ensuing fighting.

Of course, a lot of people had ended up dead in the city, even those who survived the initial attack, and bodies littered the streets. Most were still there from the initial virus attack, others just from the sheer fighting and war that had been raging, no one did anything, just leaving the bodies there. The streets were mostly destroyed, buildings were smashed up and some had been leveled completely, Stark Tower included. A few other buildings were still around, but most of them were abandoned and more or less just served as hiding places if needed.

Street level, currently Magneto and his forces were just causing mayhem, trying to draw out the remaining people who might oppose him. Since he knew that there were people still there in the city that were actively fighting back against him, the city was just so big, that it was near impossible for him to easily find them. He was just causing destruction, which is what the remaining heroes in the city were more or less having to deal with daily.

Including right now.

There were talks about a few mutant civilians who weren't with Magneto's cause who were under attack, and there was a rather large explosion coming from a very specific building, nearby where the small group clearly was hiding out according to rumors. Mary knew that they needed to deal with this now, and at the least get the Brotherhood away from them in order to give them a chance at not ending up dead. Personally, she didn't very much care if the others followed along after her. She was going to go deal with the situation no matter what happened whether the others wanted to go along with her or not.

"Alright, anyone who actually wants to go help me deal with this situation, feel free to follow me. Magneto's goons are striking out again against a few civilians who want nothing to do with them. They blew up the building next door, but it's only a matter of time before they try full on engaging with the group, and probably killing a lot more people in the process. Not to mention another rather large building would be grounded into dust," she said rather quickly, before heading for the tunnel that was in that direction somewhat, at least it would get them close to the area before they had to go above ground for it. Mary had more or less used her powers to create in a way a sort of surveillance system throughout the entire city. Electricity was scarce for them, and since she didn't want to have them waste what sort of power that they had on a camera system, she had more or less created her own sort of cameras using her powers. She had set up plant life on several rooftops across the city, and using her powers she could "see" through them to see what was going on in that part of the city.

"Sounds like fun," Pietro commented with a bit of a shrug. It gave him something to do, and honestly he didn't care much for the tunnels. There were only so many places that you could run around in them after all, and sometimes he'd just get bored. Problem was, he really didn't want to risk running into his father in the city. Actually he wouldn't be surprised if he would have ended up dead because of it.

Lance wasn't very much of a combatant, actually for the most part, he used his powers more defensively, and typically played the doctor and patching up any sort of injuries that the group ended up with. Using both his powers for it, and just his random skill set that he had already that lent to this sort of thing. He was sort of just off to the side or something right now, but he was willing to go with them, and since he wasn't much of a fighter, he would probably just help to get the small group or whatever out of there in general. "Well, okay then..."

"Whoever is coming let's go already," Mary commented then, and already started heading off fully down the tunnel, not really caring if anyone followed after her or not.

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Ed nodded at Thalia. He didn't know her very well as she was new, but she seemed fine. He wasn't here to make friends though. He almost rolled his eyes at Alex saying they had lost people. No shit they had. The only reason he was even working with Alex's group was because he wasn't a complete idiot, without his sister he had no hope of doing anything to stop Magneto.

"Sure why not." He picked up a watch and earpiece. He thought it was stupid to send a human into New York, if anything happened to knock off her mask she'd be dead. But she thought she was hot shit because she killed the devil, so it was her prerogative to go into the death zone if she wanted. Whatever that meant. "Anything resembling an extraction plan?" He asked, partially responding to Thalia, and finding out how much of this was a suicide mission. In a way, he didn't care. If he died then he died. Returning home would have the same effect. He put the earbud into his left ear.

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Jade's eyes swept over her companions on the mission, studying them for a brief second. She was gifted - or perhaps cursed - with the ability to see things that others couldn't. In her opinion though, she wasn't talented - everyone else was just a supreme idiot who couldn't see Godzilla if the monster stepped on their home. The well dressed gentleman, Edus, clearly cared a great deal about appearances. He had a healthy addiction to nicotine as well, a habitual smoker. And he obviously wasn't from the United States. In fact, if Jade was pressed to guess, she'd say he was Welsh. Of course, she never guessed. Thalia was even easier to read. Her discomfort with OMEN was practically a neon sign and there was something odd with her hand - maybe scales, maybe nothing. At the very least, she seemed more mature.

Jade took the gas mask that was just for her. She figured there were decent odds the mask would come off of her at some point, but she had faith in herself - not so much the others - to see this mission through. She took one of the watches and slid it onto her wrist, and took one of the comm devices. "This'll be about as much fun as nicotine patches," Jade replied to Thalia. "Which, by the way, may add several years to your life. Assuming we don't die," she then said, looking at Edus. She guessed that there wasn't an extraction plan. This mission very much had a you're on your own vibe to it.

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Unlike the others, Guin didn't have any sort of combative power. The pistol she had been equipped with as an agent of SHIELD was useless in a city run by a man who controlled metal - which also made the idea of scavenging one of her father's suits almost pointless. Her mutant power allowed her to switch bodies with others, but didn't prevent them from doing as they pleased with hers. More or less, the only contribution she could really make was in outwitting people and setting up makeshift traps like in Home Alone. Or she supposed she could drag people out of the wreckage of the building while the others fought.

Guin put her hands in her pockets, trying to ground herself in what she could do, rather than what she couldn't. Each day she wanted nothing more than to fly on up to Magneto and rip his head off of his shoulders, but she couldn't do that. If she was being honest with herself, unless somehow his powers were turned off, she couldn't even fight him. Guin clenched her hands into fists, feeling her nails cut into her skin, before walking with the others, walking in line with Lance. He also tended to run support. He also knew what it was like to feel powerless and useless.

Guin's hair fell in her eyes and she didn't bother to move it. She liked the way her hair could hide her from the world, even if it was just briefly.

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Carolina followed behind the others, she didn't really have a combat oriented power other than simply possessing people and then using their own body to attack, which always did end up leaving her body vulnerable to anyone wanting to attack her. But she was willing to do whatever it takes to help the others. She wasn't going to stay here and do nothing at all she turned to look at Mary as she told them what was going on and nodded towards her.

"Lead the way i'm ready to get going." Carolina said as she started to climb up the ladder shortly behind Mary, she would look back over towards her sister. She hadn't been a mutant for long, but she knew that her sister had a lot of combat training which would be really helpful against Magneto.

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Cassandra hadn't been a mutant for long, she was glad that she didn't end up dying when the virus was released, which she still felt really responsible for. She looked towards Guin for a moment feeling sorry for her friend who had lost her family when the virus was released or were killed by Magneto and his men. She wasn't sure how her sister would have reacted if she ended up dying and wasn't saved by her x-gene Cass knew that they weren't getting any kind of help from SHIELD. They pretty much marked her off as dead by now anyway at this point since she was human at the time.

"Are you alright?" Cass asked looking over towards Guin for a moment, she wanted to make sure that her friend was doing alright as she followed Mary and the others towards the surface. "I'll help out with the distraction then." Cass said towards Mary, hopefully they would target her instead of the others who would be trying to save the civilians.

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It was clear that he had expected the question of a potential extraction plan and how to get them out with regards to that. Alex let out a bit of a sigh, leaning up against a table, "...Currently there isn't really a plan in place to get you all out. But from what I've heard, some people are trying to get authorized a few supposedly "fool proof" plans which... Well... Aren't exactly going to end well let's just say..."

"So... Basically we're on our own and hope for the best then? Sounds like fun. Though why do I get the feeling that those fool proof plans that people are wanting to do involve something that probably isn't going to work based on what you were just now saying."

"Yup, it won't work no matter what they might think. People are scared of what could happen if Magneto decides to leave New York, what might happen to the world if he decides to attack with that virus again. So of course they are going to try just about every measure that they can to prevent that. Problem is most of people like that are the ones far away from the situation off in Congress or the White House and think well... That anything that would work on a normal person would work against him."

Thalia got a slight glint in her eye, as if she was seeing something else, "They do realize that if they try nuking the city odds are that he'll just send the bombs flying straight back at the people who launched them and a hell of a lot more people are going to die."

"Which is why this mission is so important. Because we have one shot at this before they decide to launch an attack that likely will be the end of the world. We are working on a time limit, and need that info so we can launch one more strike before that, and from what I've gathered, we have two days tops before they launch that strike. Which means that we need to hurry, luckily we already have the entire force that we'll be using in the last potential attack already, we just need to know where to attack or where we're aiming for."

"Oh a time limit, this sounds like the best thing ever in the wooooooorld," she commented with a bit of an eye roll. Though to her time was a bit up for debate. Her powers sometimes were a bit wonky with how they worked, she could manipulate time on a small scale, not fully travel through it, but she could freeze it at times and knew vaguely how to rewind it, but it wasn't exactly easy. She tried to avoid that whenever possible, preferring to use her wings or something of her powers, though if she had her way, Thalia wouldn't even use her powers at all. "Well, since we are so pressed for time, we might want to get a move on then right?"

"Most likely, one more thing," he said, before handing each of them a small list of people with a few pictures included, "That's a list of known associates of Magneto who are likely in the city and to keep an eye out for while there. Since this is just recon, do not engage unless you absolutely have to since that will just take up the time that we do not have. The much smaller list is for the heroes who likely might be stuck still in the city to keep an eye out for, and both lists include what their abilities are."

"Fun."

"Do any of you have any other questions? Now is your time to really ask anything."


Mary was still relatively silent as she lead the way through the sewers, before eventually, she'd stop and climbed up a ladder, popping the manhole cover slightly to make sure no one else was around, before climbing up and out, they ended up popping out in an alleyway just a block away. As the others would eventually climb out of the underground tunnels, the ground would shake and there would be the sound of another explosion not too far away. Anyone looking at the street would instantly be able to see bits of rubble flying down the street and bouncing around. "Well that isn't great now is it?" Mary commented with a shrug, walking forward now, peering around the corner down the street.

There was a building that looked like it got reduced to rubble very recently. There were a group of 7 standing in the street, staring at a building next door to the new pile of rubble. One was a man in a long red cloak that covered most of his face, as he was standing off to the back of the group, another was a woman with a bit of a grin who looked part cat. The others included one who seemed to be part of the muscle in the group, one with strange claws for hands that had some weird electric field around them, and then two much more familiar faces; Avalanche (who likely caused the building to crumble), and Boom Boom (who likely was the one causing the explosions).

"Come on out and play, we don't bite, it'll be fun!" Boom Boom called out in a bit of a sing song voice, laughing a little bit as Avalanche made the ground shake once again.

"Soooooooo... What's the plan exactly?" Pietro asked, glancing around the corner.

"We need to at the least distract them until those stuck in the building can escape... And one or two people might want to be there to guide the group out a back way and defend them if the fighting ends up going inside..."

"...I tend to use my powers more defensively... So someone else can join me in getting them out or trying to protect them or something..." Lance suggested somewhat softly, he didn't really care who tagged along with him, but he wasn't too much of a fighter unless he had to be, preferring to use his powers to heal or potentially to create shields, that's about as far as he tends to go, since blasting things isn't exactly something he wanted to do.

"Well, they don't seem to notice that we're here yet... Which means we probably should get out of this alleyway and just address them head on..." Mary muttered, Pietro rolled his eyes slightly at that comment. Before in a gust of wind the speedster was no longer next to the rest of them, clearly more than a bit bored.

"Yo Avalanche, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Pietro called out, kind of taunting him a bit with a bit of a smirk.

"Well look who it is, Quicksilver has decided to join in the fun huh?" Avalanche said with a laugh. Pietro rolled his eyes, before zipping forward and slamming into Avalanche, throwing him backwards away from the others.

"Well that's no fun!" Boom Boom complained, before sending some bombs flying directly at Pietro, but he zipped away slightly to avoid them.

"Alright, whoever is going to go with Lance to try and get the group trapped out, go now. The rest of us should help out the speedster who decided to go racing in before he gets himself seriously hurt or killed," Mary said to the group, before taking off out of the alleyway herself. Vines started to pop up along the broken and cracked city streets and charged directly at the man in the robes. She recognized him as a former Morlock by the name of Masque whose powers were mainly useful if you kept him at a long range. The vines slammed into him, managing to cause him to stumble backwards.

"Alright, who wants to tag along with me?" Lance asked.

Boom Boom was clearly getting annoyed with the interruptions, and figured there might be others nearby, "Alright, who else wants to join the party?" she yelled out, more of her explosives appearing in her hands.

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Ed was tempted to point out that most recon missions weren't also suicide missions, but decided against it. "Thank you." he said looking over the list and the faces. He didn't know any of them personally, which wasn't a surprise, though he had heard of one or two of them. He paused when he saw the name Stark, which was a big name, was it a common one? Was this Stark related to Tony? Did it matter?

He didn't seem bothered by the fact there was no extraction plan. "Shall we get going then?" This question was directed at Jade and Thalia. The only thing Ed could hope for would be they survived and stopped the apocalypse from spreading. He had lost his sister to this. He didn't want the rest of the world to suffer from it.

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Carolina continued to climb up the ladder with the others, until she was on the surface again and looked around they were in and alleyway of sorts as she looked at the entrance to the alley seeing bits of rubble flying. "Well this looks like fun." Carolina said to herself mostly as the others started to climb up, suggesting some should go and distract while the others would go in and try and save the others. Her powers weren't really used for combat purposes really sadly so she wouldn't be really useful in the fight, as Carolina faced Lance to look at him.

"I'll join you, lead the way?" Carolina said turning to face Cass and walked over towards her and gave her a hug before letting go and smiled towards her. [color=cyan["See you soon."[/color] Carolina said as she looked at Lance and stood next to him as she watched Pietro speeding off into the distance to go and fight. "Anyone else coming?" She asked.

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Cassandra climbed up to the surface and stretched out slightly as she helped her sister up to the surface and they were in an alleyway now as Mary suggested splitting up the group. Cassandra returned the hug as Carolina went to go towards Lance joining in the group that was going to be doing the saving. "I'll help out with the distraction." Cass said as Pietro quickly sped off towards the street and quickly started to make her way out into the street, seeing Avalanche again.

The others she didn't really recongize as she stared at the woman with bombs in her hands. "Well I wouldn't really call fighting in the street a party really honestly." Cassandra said picking up a rock off of the ground and held it in her hand while facing Boom Boom seeing Pietro attacking Avalanche and Mary went in and attacked the other guy.

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Jade snorted, hearing what Congress' plan was to handle Magneto. She was surprised they had even managed to come to an agreement on a course of action in just over a year. Of course, she wasn't really surprised that their great idea was nuking New York City to rid themselves of Magneto. Either they were stupid or just blinded by their own sense of immortality and the notion that nothing bad could ever happen to them. This was exactly why Jade was going into the city to try to stop Magneto, even if it killed her. There were innocents in New York - kids - who could be caught in the crossfire. But now, it wasn't just the damage to one city that they had to consider.

Jade took the list, her eyes briefly flashing over the faces, before she folded the list up and pocketed it. "Yeah, let's go. Alex, if I die, don't bother recovering my body," she then added, looking at Jakobsen. She didn't care what happened to her body when she was gone. She had died once before anyways, so the idea of death wasn't as frightening as it might have been to someone else. Yes, she had done to hell, but that didn't bother her much either. She probably deserved it.

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"Oh, me? I'm fantastic," Guin told Cass, forcing a smile. She knew that she likely needed serious therapy - that and medication. If it hadn't been for the X-Men, she probably would've been using drugs to cope with everything that was going on in her life - or rather, the loss of what had been in her life. She hadn't had the best relationship with her father, but they had been getting closer - and now he was dead and Guin could only blame herself for it. She should've asked for the Avengers to help. She shouldn't have blindly gone along with the plan to have a new team handle a threat of that scale.

Ironically, she was still doing that - she was still counting that they could stop Magneto. The only difference was, Guin didn't have anyone to lose anymore that wouldn't be doing the same exact thing. She didn't even care if she died, as long as Magneto bled. The ground shook and an explosion pierced the air. "They have to run out of buildings to blow up at some point, right?" Guin muttered. "It's not like Magnet Brain's got a construction crew going around building new ones for him to destroy."

There were seven assholes apparently responsible for this explosion. Guin wondered why Mary even asked who was going to go where - they pretty much regularly knew who was going in which group. Case in point, Guin was going to be with Carolina and Lance, the others who struggled with actually being able to effectively fight. "I'm with you too, Lando."

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"The thought never even crossed my mind Jade," Alex said with a bit of a laugh, looking at the group. "Try to check in once every hour or two, just so we know you aren't dead or something and that the world isn't screwed or anything."

"Let's get going then... No point in sticking around right?"

"Keep out of sight as much as possible, and be careful. One last chance at this, and there are no do overs."

"I mean maybe really minor do overs..." she muttered under her breath, heading off now. There were a few different ways that they could get into the city, and all of the paths required them to break off from the sort of frontline that has been sort of declared, and sneak around the side and past it. So they did have a little bit of a walk to get there. Thalia currently had her hands sort of shoved in her pockets, walking along now. However she wasn't exactly alone with her thoughts, nope, since ever since Coventry, she had a little friend that no one else could see, that followed her along everywhere.

"You know, you could just fly in right? Or maybe freeze time and just slip in? You can do that right? Wonder what the other two can do, think they can do anything fun? You've met Jade, but what about this other guy? Maybe he'll stab you in the back or something. Can you even get stabbed in the back? How does the whole dragon thing work? Since after all this time I am still confused." the Merc with the Mouth commented, popping up next to her, but only she was able to see him of course, that's how hallucinations worked.

She ignored him entirely, but his question about what the others did was an interesting thought. Turning, she looked at Ed, since he was the person she knew the least about, "Alright, since I'm new to this whole group thing, what exactly is your specialty or something? Since you don't seem to carry a weapon, and based on what Jakobsen said, you obviously have powers... So what exactly are they?" she asked him.


"Oh, you haven't seen anything yet," Boom Boom said with a smirk, before she went to work, living up to her name as her small explosives started getting tossed everywhere, not necessarily just towards them. The explosions started going off, and the first one was big. A crater appeared in the street from it and everyone ended up getting thrown backwards from the blast. Luckily it wasn't too close to people, so people only got a few bruises from it, and she was just cackling with glee at that. "Well this is fun."

Mary instantly jumped back onto her feet, and sent a wave of vines directly towards Boom Boom, but more explosions started burning them rather easily. Her attention was yanked away from the demolitions expert and back to Masque, who used the explosion as a distraction and was now getting a little too close for comfort. "And how about you get away from me?" she commented, before vines wrapped around him and threw him a bit of a ways down the street.

The ground began to shake again, causing just about everyone to be a bit unsteady on their feet thanks to Avalanche, the one with the electrified claws instantly went after Cass, sending a blast of energy right at her. It would hurt a bit, but wouldn't do much of anything physical damage wise.

The cat looking woman instantly jumped up and looked at Boom Boom as an explosive narrowly missed her, "Watch what you're aiming! You're trying to hit them not us!" she snapped, sounding a bit annoyed.

"How about you watch where you're going and get out of the way of my bombs!" came Boom Boom's gleeful response.

Meanwhile, the group would be able to find an entrance into the building along the side, away from the chaos that was occurring. When they entered the building, it would be obvious that the building was very unstable, as in it could collapse in on them at any moment, the vibrations from the earthquakes and explosions definitely weren't helping, debris was starting to come from the ceiling every so often from the chaos outside. The building was clearly abandoned, not too many people lived in it, and there was the smell of decaying bodies everywhere, then again, a lot of buildings still had that sort of smell.

"..Ok, let's see if we can find anyone..." he commented to the other two, as he went to the nearest door, opening it up and looking around inside of it. The main floor of the place was fairly large, so it might take a little while to go around to all of the rooms. "We can either stick together to search the place, or split up, not sure which we should do, so what do you two think?" he asked them. Splitting up would allow them to search much more quickly, but each of them would have problems if they just so happened to run into any trouble or anyone else in the building.

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Carolina followed shortly behind Lance and Guin, she looked around the room she winced slightly as she could smell the decay as she looked over at Guin and Lance. She could feel the ground shaking and looked up at the ceiling seeing bits of debris falling onto the floor turning to look at Lance and Guin. She wasn't sure how long the building would be standing for but, they needed to find and rescue anyone who is inside of the building.

Hearing Lance asking what they should do, she thought for a moment, she thought that splitting up wasn't the smartest idea at the moment, if they ended up getting seperatred from each other. Or if the building ended up collapsing on them then that would make things harder for them all. "I say we stick together strength in numbers and all that stuff." Carolina said while looking over towards Guin to see what she thought.

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Cassandra felt the wind getting knocked out of her as Boom Boom caused an explosion, she slowly started to get back up to her feet looking at the crater that was now in the middle of the street. Then she felt the ground shaking as Avalanche started to cause the ground to shake as well. None of it was really good, as Cass took a moment to look over at the building that Carolina and the others had gone into and hoped that they would make it.

When the clawed guy with electricty coming out of them he ended up zapping her causing Cass to groan in pain and stumbled back looking down at her body for a moment. It hurt quiet a bit as Cassandra quickly charged forward managing to punch him in the face, but didn't seem to phase him, and tried to hit him again only to miss.

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"Good luck on this side Alex." Ed gave him a nod, checking he had everything he needed real quick before heading out of the tent. There was a lot of weight on their little trio's shoulders, but he wouldn't want to change places with Alex. Ed was decent with people, or he had been once upon a time when he had cared to be.

"I'm a mutant, I have magic." Ed said. He considered giving a twirl of magic for Thalia but decided against it. The levity didn't feel right. Not these days. He didn't have it in him. "I can manipulate magical force, heal, track, and a few other sundry things. On that note. For the sake of making my life easier if either of you gets hurt mind if I have a couple of strands of hair to use as a focus for my healing?" It sounded crazy and if they wanted to know why he could get into more detail.

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It was slightly anticlimatic how they had to walk for a while before they could even enter the city. Jade had put on her gas mask already as a precaution. She knew that it prevented Thalia and Edus from seeing her award winning smile, but fortunately the mask didn't cover her eyes, so they could see her world famous eye rolls instead. Case in point, her ever so slight smirk at Thalia's question was completely obscured. She already knew what Edus' profile was, largely because she had been involved in planning this mission from the start. "He's a witch with extra backstory," Jade then summarized once Edus had finished speaking.

She had met plenty of witches in her lifetime, ever since the strange events in Altsoba. For instance, she knew that one use of a victim's hair could afflict them with a rhyming curse. She couldn't recall other uses off the top of her head, at least nothing nefarious, and she didn't want to seem outwardly untrusting of Edus. "Sure, but I'd like for you to swear a blood oath or something that that'll be its only use," Jade requested. "I'm being serious, in case that wasn't obvious." Thinking on it more, she actually didn't care if Edus and Thalia knew that she didn't have complete trust in them. She didn't have complete trust in anyone but herself. It made life simpler.

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Guin raised an eyebrow, looking around the building as its foundations were shaken by the earthquakes. If nothing too serious happened, the building would stand for an hour, maybe two she guessed, eyeing some cracks already appearing in the support structures. But with their luck, the battle outside would topple the building in minutes. She was going to disagree with Carolina and advise that they split up to cover more ground quickly, but arguing about it was only going to take up more time than they'd save. "Let's hurry, then. I want to die but not like this," Guin said - it wasn't clear if she was joking or not.

Lance had opened up one door and poked his head inside, clearly not seeing anything interesting, so Guin went ahead and opened up the next door. She quickly plugged her nose and covered her mouth with one hand, fighting the urge to gag. She had found what looked like an office, but that wasn't what had given her such a wild aversion. No, there was a rotting corpse in the corner. It wasn't at all fresh and the entire room smelled like death. Guin physically staggered backwards. "Someone needs to use some fucking deodorant," she quipped. The room was clear otherwise, void of a living soul.

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"Magic is always fun," Thalia said with a shrug. "Honestly most things are a bit overrated when it comes to powers or magic or whatever, that's just my opinion. Then again bit ironic that I say that, I used to work in a traveling circus as a magician's assistant, though my boss was a bit on the unhinged side," she added, before giving him a bit of a weird look when he requested a strand of hair. She didn't pay too much attention to what spells could be done with it, so she pulled out a strand of her silver hair and handed it over. "Actually a bit unhinged is an understatement."

They would manage to enter the city itself, without too much difficulty, just a bit of a walk in order to get there. The streets seemed to be a bit of a ghost town, no one really seemed to be in the area that they were currently in. "So... We probably should try to get a better view some how... There is hardly anything or anyone around... So odds are an area that clearly has more activity surrounding it would be the best place to really start..."

There really didn't seem to be anyone, at least, at first. There was a sound nearby, even though there wasn't anyone there. That is, until a woman uncloaked herself and appeared out of nowhere, looking at the group. "Well, who is it that's decided to join in on the fun in the city?" she said with a bit of a smirk, though she was vaguely recognizable from the list of people who they might encounter, powers not really too well known, but her name was Fatale. "Boys, looks like we've go company. And awwww, look, one of them seems to be a human." she called out.

There was a sound nearby as two others appeared, one had a bit of a scythe in his hand while the other seemed to be for the best part made of some sort of bandages or something. The one with the scythe was named Reaper, while the other one was called Abyss.

"Well isn't this going to be fun?" Thalia muttered, the three weren't attacking yet, but who knew how long that would last.


"Alright then, let's see if we can find anything, or anyone," Lance commented, following along after Guin as she opened a door, looking around. It was fairly quiet at the moment, which wasn't too surprising when he thought about it. If anyone was actually in the building itself, based on what was going on outside, he probably would have stayed hidden too. Of course, they weren't seemingly having any luck in the building so far, which made him start to think that they might want to head upstairs to try and find others.

Before he could say something about heading upstairs though, they'd be able to hear the sound of a loud crash, followed by what sounded like footsteps running around up there or something, before it went eerily quiet. "...Ok, so sounds like that likely is where we want to go then..." he commented to Guin and Carolina. The walls still shook every so often from explosions, and eventually they'd be able to find the stairs up fairly easily.

Meanwhile outside, chaos was continuing to occur. Though it was mainly because of Boom Boom really, since she clearly had decided to not care who got in the way of her explosions, as long as she was causing as much mayhem and destruction as possible. "Come on now, we need to have a bit more fun than that don't you think? Maybe something a bit bigger?" She instantly formed a rather larger explosive bomb in her hands, tossing it around a bit, before it slipped from her hand, her eyes going wide before she instantly jumped out of the way covering her hands with her head as a massive explosion fired off sending a shockwave that shattered windows farther down the street.

As for where they were, there was now a massive crater, and everyone for the most part got thrown backwards and injured from the blast, from both sides.

Pietro had a quick enough reaction time to avoid getting too injured, however he wasn't quite fast enough to yank anyone else away from the blast since it had happened too quickly even for him. Everyone else, not so much. Boom Boom's explosion had knocked her out entirely, and she was covered in burns, rubble and dust. Cass would end up getting thrown backwards 30 feet down the street, and despite her dermal armor, she does sustain several bruises and burns, though the injuries likely would have been a lot worse had she not had that power. Mary got thrown sideways into the building across the way, getting thrown through the wall entirely as she hit the ground inside of it. She was fairly badly injured from that fall, but she still managed to get up, despite being pretty sure that she had a few broken bones.

As for the Brotherhood group? Aside from just Boom Boom's injuries and all, she had managed to take out most of her own team too. Masque (the guy in the cloak and all), and Avalanche were both knocked out entirely from the explosion. The cat like woman (named Feral) and the guy with the claws (Shocker) were both still standing, though like the others, they also had some injuries from the blast.

Now, inside of the building, the explosion seemed to have caused some structural damage, the walls were shaking and rather large cracks seemed to be rather noticeable in the walls of the structure. It wouldn't take much for them to all realize that they now had a lot less time before that building came crashing down on them.

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The inside of the city was more or less what she had expected - and the very opposite of what New York City had once been. Jade had gone to NYC a few times back in the day, when it was still a functioning environment. The lack of life on the once bustling streets gave it an apocalyptic aura. She could have sworn she felt a slight magnetic tingle in the air, as if even the metal most buildings were constructed from had decided to side with Magneto. Suddenly, three people - a woman and two men - appeared out of nowhere. Jade's mind instantly went into overdrive, pulling every possible bit of information from them.

The woman - a teleporter, she'd appeared out of nowhere. The first man - the scythe was connected to his arms, he had some tech augmentations, and a sort of energy surrounded his weapon. The second man - there was something ominous under the coils on his body, he had the face of a demon, and a familial resemblance to the teleporting X-Man Nightcrawler. Jade gripped her angel blade firmly, but she didn't make a move to attack. There were teleporters in this group. It would be pointless for her to charge - easier for her to respond with a quick strike to their movements. "Amazing, you can see with your eyes and make coherent statements, I'm half proud of you," Jade mouthed off, speaking to Fatale. "And who are your friends supposed to be - value brand Nightcrawler and Colossus?"

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Guin was a little bit relieved to hear the loud crash, largely because she didn't want to be smelling eau de corpse much longer - it was such a nauseating smell, one that she hoped to never again experience. "Amazing," Guin said, stepping out of the noxious room and back into the main area. The stairs thankfully weren't too hard to locate and she walked on up, doing her best not to be too noisy, as they had no idea who was upstairs exactly. There was then the sound of a large blast and the building began to shake, cracks forming in the walls and the supports. Guin clutched the railing of the stairs to avoid falling, her heart pounding a bit from the sense of fear and danger. They had to move fast. They didn't have much time.

When she reached the top of the stairs, Guin froze. She could see a bunch of people huddled in a corner, shaking in fear. And right in front of them, thankfully with his back turned to her, was Sabretooth. She remembered him from the day at the Power Plant - her heart clenched. It had been one of the last days she had seen her father. It wasn't too long after that... that he had died. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to hold back her tears - sometimes, it was so raw as if it had just happened minutes ago. She opened her eyes again, waiting for Lance and Carolina to catch up before doing anything, figuring that her or Carolina could more or less possess Sabretooth if Lance could run interference.

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Carolina looked into the room where Guin had looked and cringed slightly as she could smell the death coming from the room before pulling away slightly and shook and cringed slightly. "Thats a really bad smell.." Carolina said as she looked at Guin and Lance before heading up the stairs shortly behind Guin to catch up to her. When she felt the ground suddenly shaking, bits of rubble and dust came down and noticed several larger cracks suddenly appearing as well to. "Hopefully everyone else is doing alright out there." Carolina said as she managed to catch up to Guin.

Carolina saw the mutants that were cowering in a corner of the room, and then Sabertooth standing before them with their back turned towards them. Hopefully he hadn't seen the three of them either, she knew that her sister and him had fought against each other and she got a nasty scratch from him. "I'm going to try and possess him, just cover me." Carolina whispered to both Guin and Lance hopefully he wuldn't hear her.

[hider=roll request]Roll for Carolina to use Astral Projection, and possession to possess Sabertooth[/hide]

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"Oh yeah i'm sure being caught in some explosions would be a lot of fun." Cassandra said towards Boom Boom, rolling her eyes slightly as she watched the mutant producing a rather large bomb, that Boom Boom had dropped. Her eyes going wide as the bomb suddenly went off, quickly using her arms she tried to shield herself from it. Cass was suddenly knocked back several feet, causing her to go flying and hitting the ground rather hard as the wind was knocked out of her.

"Owww." Cass said as she slowly started to stand up looking at her clothes, they were torn and covered in dust and burned a little bit as well, and getting a few scrapes and bruises as well to made her body a little more than sore. "Is everyone alright?" Cassandra yelled out hopefully everyone else was alright, as she looked towards the building where Guin, Lance and Carolina were and hoped that they were okay.

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Skill: Stealth

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Ed had been thinking about how to get them to the top of a building without potentially being noticed, but that didn't matter anymore as three enemies appeared. He frowned, well frowned deeper. Taking them in. It was unlikely he could keep the woman in a shield, but if he was quick enough he could summon one inside of her and expand it. Since giving up on his family laws he had come up with a few ways to use the powers aggressively. Something, that if he hadn't already done, he wouldn't have considered even in such a dire situation.

Ed reached into his pocket slowly, trying to not draw attention. He needed his focus to be able to cast his spells. No one seemed to notice, which was a relief. From there he started to pull at the magic he would need for the spell. He wasn't going to cast it, not yet. He'd let the fight start properly, and he realized he didn't know what Thalia could do. Would she need to fight up close? Well, he supposed it was time to find out.

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"Well aren't you an interesting one? Would be a shame if something were to happen," Fatale commented with a bit of an eye roll. Of course, one of the group decided to just charge in with his scythe, of course that being Reaper. Ed will be able to throw up the shield in time to prevent the attack from reaching them, so that was a good thing. At least it seemed to be holding for now. However that wasn't seemingly going to last for long, as Reaper kept slashing at the shield, trying to get it to break.

Abyss decided to try a slightly different approach, as a few of his tendrils unraveled and instantly charged directly at the shield, going to a fine point. There was the sound of something cracking, before the shield broke entirely. One of the tendrils instantly went towards Ed, but they got blocked by the sudden appearance of a silver dragon wing. Thalia had stepped over in a flash and now a pair of silver wings were sprouting from her back, and her skin shimmered and had the appearance of being covered in silver scales. She used her wing to knock the tendril out of the way, and it shot back to Abyss. Her mouth started to smoke, and she sent a stream of fire shooting from her mouth, and it went straight for Fatale, who just barely managed to dodge out of the way, but her arm clearly ended up getting somewhat scorched from the encounter.

"Well looks like they are wanting a bit of a fight," Thalia commented, her wings more of folding up slightly so they weren't so much in the way. Of course, she wasn't a mutant or a normal human (at least not anymore), so she kind of was waiting at this point for one of them (likely Fatale) to question it.

And of course, she was right, as Fatale raised a bit of an eyebrow, "Well aren't you an interesting one, and more than a bit annoying." Of course now with the shield down, they more readily had access to being able to attack them. Fatale instantly moved over to Jade, and whirled around, the gauntlets that she was wearing had blades poking out of the end, and she slammed her foot into Jade, knocking her over.

Reaper was preparing to swing his scythe again, and Abyss was starting to have the tendrils move around again, more then ready to attack them again. Fatale also smirked slightly after knocking Jade over, and she backed away slightly, clearly more than a bit prepared to fight the group, though they might want to think about keeping it down a bit, they didn't want to draw too many people into the area anymore.


Mary managed to get out of the rubble that surrounded her, and she knocked a large piece off of her leg before she got up, managing to stand shakily on her feet. However all that mattered at the moment was that she was conscious and able to move, though she did feel like she likely had a few broken bones from the explosion and all, combined with the burns from the explosion itself. Somehow she managed to make her way over to where the other two were still standing, as they made it out of that explosion in way better shape than she had.

"Yeah, just a bit battered, but I'll be fine, probably..." Mary responded with a bit of a shrug as she glanced over to see what was fully going on with the Brotherhood members, and they all seemed to have gotten knocked out. "Well thank you Boom Boom for knocking a lot of the people on your own side out." she added, before glancing over at Feral and Shocker who were both still standing somehow. Though they both looked to be in horrible shape in general, kind of like her at the moment.

"I'm not stupid, I know when I'm beat," Feral said, before bolting away from them and ducking down a side street and disappearing. Shocker had electricity charged up, and looked like at the moment he was preparing to continue fighting.

Lance followed along after Carolina and Guin to the upper landing, and was not too thrilled about Sabretooth deciding to show his ugly mug and all. The problem was that the three of them were not very combat minded with their power set. His could be useful in a combat scenario, but he also had never really done that and usually used his powers more defensively or for healing, not for anything else unless he absolutely had to. Out of the three of them the fact that with his powers he kind of was considered the "heavy hitter" was kind of sad.

"This is not good..." he muttered under his breath, as he watched as Carolina decided to see about possessing Sabretooth. The problem was that if she failed, odds were that Sabretooth would then know that they were there. Which then would result in him probably trying to kill them. Oh this was definitely a gamble in his mind, but both instances were a bit of a gamble.

Carolina would luck out, partially anyway. She'd be able to possess Sabretooth, however it was clear that his mind was very strongly fighting to get rid of her and yank control back, which meant that odds were that it wouldn't last too long, so whatever she was planning with that time, she probably should do it quickly.

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Carolina was able to gain control of Sabertooth luckily, but she was doing her best to maintain control, looking over at the mutants who were cowering in the corner. "Get out of here now!" Carolina yelled through Sabertooth, hopefully they would get the hint and they'd get out of the room and to safety. Carolina started to get a bit of an idea, she'd hope that she'd be able to make Sabertooth kill himself or at least really injure him.

"I'm not sure how much longer I can control him for, try and get the others out of here if you can i'll do what I can to keep him distracted." Carolina told Lance and Guin, as she took Sabertooth's clawed hand and started to try and claw himself in the throat, causing a slight scratch instead as Sabertooth fought against her control.

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Cassandra looked over towards Mary as she came out seeing the injuries that she managed to get, she wasn't sure how bad they actually were, but hoped that they'd be able to find some kind of medical treatment for their injuries. Cassandra stared at the bodies of the others, and shook her head slightly, at least they were better off than the others actually were right now. Cass watched as Feral gave up and started to flee the scene at least that left them with only one of them to deal with.

Cassandra stared at Shocker who was getting into a defensive stance again looking for another fight by the looks of it, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. "It's three against one of you, do you really want to continue fighting? At least your friend there had the smarts to leave." Cassandra said to Shocker.

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It was nice having a mage on hand - mostly because of the convenient shield. Of course, the shield was only so convenient until it wasn't there anymore. It had protected them from initial attacks, until breaking with a crack. Jade didn't feel fear coursing through her veins. She hadn't really felt true fear since she had died. Ever since coming back, knowing what was waiting for her on the other side, the fear of dying just didn't do much for her anymore. She wasn't afraid of hell either, as long as she could drag some assholes down with her. Fatale slammed her foot into her stomach, knocking Jade down to the ground.

Jade had been fighting for ages. She had plenty of experience and knew how to take a hit. Within seconds, she was back up on her feet and she slashed at Fatale with her knife, an angel blade Jade had used to kill Lucifer himself with. Fatale's arm was bleeding from the gash. Jade didn't pause for a second, this time stabbing Fatale in the shoulder, missing her heart. She slashed Fatale's arm again, the mutant woman bleeding heavily from all of these wounds. "Any last words, bitch?" Jade asked, her angel blade covered in Fatale's blood.

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"How?!" Guin mouthed as Carolina dashed off to try to possess Sabretooth, not actually making a sound as she wasn't stupid. She didn't know how she was supposed to cover Carolina that didn't involve being shredded to pieces by Wolverine's somehow uglier twin (seriously, what was it with the hairy men with claws???) Carolina seemed to have (maybe?) gotten lucky, largely as Sabretooth screamed at the cowering mutants to get out of here. It was evident that she had been successful when Sabretooth started talking about control and clawing at his own throat.

Guin winced slightly. "You know, furbag, suicide is never the answer," she quipped, before going over to the mutants cowering in the corner. "Come on, people, we got to get moving or this will be our grave," she said, doing her best to encourage them - but she wasn't nearly as positive as she once had been. She had more or less already accepted New York would be her grave. It was a question of when, not if at this point. Three of them started to move and head down the stairs, whereas the others were too traumatized. "Hey, you can get up, I know this is super scary but it's much safer downstairs, I promise." If they didn't start moving, Guin supposed she could always switch with them one by one and force them to evacuate.

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Skill: Magic

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The aptly named Reaper attacked and Ed was able to get a shield up in time so no one was hurt. Ed raised an eyebrow at Thalia, he had no idea what she was. He had some questions for her. The shield was working rather nicely until Abyss destroyed the shield.

Jade had Fatale on the ropes. Ed flicked his hand, a bit of orange left his hand, and hit Fatale. It hit, but she was still standing. He flicked his hand again, this time the force didn't hit Fatale. He sighed and flicked his hand a third. Fatale was down. That was good enough. Even if she wasn't dead. "Well she has a second chance if she lives long enough."

That put them ahead of the others. There were only two of them left.