Chapter 56 The Warehouse Assault Begins

  USA – small mountain valley in western Virginia - Oct 26, 2008 (01:10)

  Ororo Munroe- (Storm)

  After only a short pause, until the Professor sighed in his wheelchair. The whole team watched as the bald man held a hand to his head as he scanned their target.

  “Well, what’s the verdict?” Havoc asked from his spot beside the side exit of the Bckbird.

  "Give him a moment to gather himself," Ororo asked the teen, as his brother punched him in the arm.

  Charles took a deep breath before saying. “The men inside are not the ones responsible for the attacks.”

  Crimson Witch stood up before asking him. “So we wasted a trip?”

  Ororo frowned when she saw the professor shake his head before he expined. "Unfortunately no, we didn't. The warehouse is a training camp, and inside are the instructors of the killers. I read in their thoughts, scenes of them receiving the reports from the other trained teams… There is also a fresh batch of hate-filled cadets inside as well."

  "Meaning Logan's pn for Beast to hack their systems is all the more important to us now." She then pointed it out. Many of the other X-men, and Cyclops of the New Mutants, all nodded at their leader's observation.

  However, it was her own nephew who asked. “I don’t get it, are these guys only accomplices to the real criminals, why would their computer files help us?”

  "Because those files will most likely have names, addresses, or any number of other details that the FBI could use to track down the real criminals," Beast expined to the boy.

  "Exactly, just as we keep records of everyone's training in the Danger Room, these murders would have some sort of record of what did or didn't work when training the earlier groups." The Professor added.

  Surprising to Ororo, it was Cyclops who then suggested. “Then to further increase their odds of going unnoticed, perhaps we should use some shock and awe tactics against these people?”

  “What did you have in mind?” Logan asked the teen.

  The young leader id out his pn. "My brother and I make new doors in the sides of the building, supported by Thunderbird and Colossus. While we distract them, all of the other attackers follow you in via the main truck doors. Your cws should make that aluminum door a little more than paper. Meanwhile, the infiltration team is quiet and enters from the loading bay doors near the office entrance."

  Ororo pyed out the teen's tactics in her head, with the most durable members taking the pce of the new openings. While the more fragile members of the team like Dazzler would be with Wolverine, and they would be able to hit them from an unexpected fnk, while using their own training course against them. All while her team would hopefully go unnoticed.

  "That could work." She muttered but was drowned out by the Logan saying.

  "Not bad kid, only a little off of what I was going to go with." He crossed his arms in thought for a moment before adding. "You know what, fuck it. We can do your pn instead of mine. But Havoc, I need you to dey your attack a couple of seconds instead of unching it simultaneously with your brother's. That way I can use both of your attacks to cover my cutting into the bay door." To which the younger Summers’ boy nodded in agreement.

  Then Wolverine looked at her for confirmation, if she was honest she didn’t like sending these young teens into a battle such as this, but then Ororo remembered when she was their age and that she was doing something simir. So she too nodded at him.

  “All right then, let’s do this," Logan muttered as he moved to the Bckbird's side hatch. He opened it, but before exiting he asked. "Give me ten minutes to take care of the patrols."

  Then he pulled his mask up over his face, before heading out into the night.

  Taking that as their cue, many of the mutants made some final adjustments to their costumes, putting on masks, or adjusting straps or belts, while they waited. The ten minutes stretched and stressed the waiting mutants, both the seasoned and the new batch alike.

  Then the pale Lilith stood up and started calling names. "Then with Cyclops' pn, Spike and Armor, you're with me and Dazzler. Let's go meet up with the old man." The Japanese teen surprised Ororo as she bowed at her, before the teen followed out the other two older women. Meanwhile, her nephew gave her a 'thumbs-up' before doing the same.

  Then after a shorter wait, the two protectors and two energy producers moved to leave as well. However, at the door, they were stopped by the Professor's words. "Cyclops, Havoc…" when the two teens turned and looked at the man in the wheelchair, he added. "While the two of you will need to exercise the most restraint given your powers, also remember that one mission should not cost the lives of your teammates… Do what you think you must to keep your people alive, and I will back you two as needed."

  Scott stood a little straighter, while his brother showed them a fist that was radiating extreme heat from it. Then the four of them too left the craft leaving her team and the professor alone. Then as she stood up from her seat Beast spoke up.

  "You surprise me, Charles, in all our years together I never would think you would waver in your…”

  "I am not wavering in my dream of peaceful co-existence, but I am also tired of putting good kids into cold boxes," Charles said to cut off the coming rant.

  "After all it was the Buddhists that said 'everything in moderation'," Morph added as he left the cockpit.

  "I am not sure it was the Buddhists who came up with that statement, Morph," Ororo told the st member of her team. Then she led the two men out through the same door the rest of their team had used to get outside.

  Instead of climbing down the steps though, she used her powers to propel herself up and into the air. Before she stabilized her flight into a hover, Cyclops started his attack. Even from a moderate distance from the site, she could still see his eyes bsting a massive opening into the building's south side below them.

  “I sensed observers recording the training from offices on the second floor.” The Professor telepathically told them.

  “Sounds like we might want to make an aerial approach then, to minimize our chance of discovering.” Beast suggested.

  “You want a lift Beast?” Morph asked before triggering his powers and taking the form of Angel a retired member of the first css of X-men.

  "I do not think Warren is…" the blue-furred man began to compin. Yet as he spoke Morph changed his face and arms to be those that belonged to his and Ororo’s former teammate Strong Guy. “Ah yes, Guido is more than strong enough to carry my weight.”

  Then Morph took hold of Beast, before fpping his wings. Ororo created another draft of air to push her toward the warehouse's roof. They only got a third of the way to the building before Havoc also opened up on the structure.

  The bst ignited several crates and portions of the building proper, illuminating the roof for Ororo. She spotted what looked like a maintenance pte on the northwestern corner of the roof, so she touched the communicator on her left breast, before reporting. “I spotted a possible entrance on the northwest corner.”

  The sound of return gunfire at their allies almost drowned out Beast’s reply. “Copy, northwest.”

  Ororo took only a couple of gnces at Colossus as she continued her flight. The teen seemed almost bored by the bullets hitting him, but still, the metal-covered mutant protected the visor-wearing teen behind him. Seeing that the boy's pn seemed to be working she returned to her own role in this mission. Only to see something that truly worried her.

  Ororo felt despair as the hatch that she was aiming for suddenly opened. And a trio of people in fatigues climbed up onto the roof. They looked down and pulled up what looked like a shoulder-mounted weapon from someone still inside the building.

  Knowing that Thunderbird and Colossus could only withstand so much punishment, Storm aimed one of her hands and reached out with her powers, calling energy from the already dark and muggy clouds. As her body reached the edge of the warehouse’s roof, a bolt of lightning fell out of the sky and stuck first the weapon, but then the current surged into the woman holding it, and then into the roof proper.

  The gliding mutant saw the other two people twitch for a moment, before the initial woman hit depressed the trigger on her weapon. Storm didn’t even get to see the projectile before it suddenly detonated. The explosion cleared the space around the hatch. One of the men was thrown over the edge of the roof, while the other could be seen burnt and lying in a dent he made in the side of a heater or air conditioner on the roof.

  She then slowed to a hover, looking for the missing third member of the combat team.

  "Well, they probably know where are here now," Morph said in their former teammate's voice.

  Storm watched the hatch for more movement or any other signs, as the shape-shifter let go of Beast. The big blue-furred man tucked into a ball, and rolled to a stop not far from the now scorched hatch.

  The sound of Morph changing made her look towards him. He had shifted back into a perfect copy of Angel, before he tried to lift up her spirits saying. “You couldn’t have known they would have pulled the trigger in response to the voltage you put through them.”

  “He is right.” the Professor added telepathically.

  ‘I know, but I should have seen it as a possibility.’ She thought before nding.

  Beast jumped straight over the opening, only for a bullet to bark out up at him. “It appears that you are correct. They do know we are up here.” The nominally peaceful furry said. Before backflipping into the opening.

  Storm and Morph shared a look, he had shifted back into his own form and shape, before running to the hatch themselves. They were both surprised to see the nearly seventy-year-old mutant had not only disarmed the man at the bottom of the dder but was standing over the man. Early signs of a bck eye forming on the downed man’s face.

  Beast smiled up at them and said. “Even after a few decades I still got it.”

  Morph then turned into a bck cat, before jumping down. After the two of them got out of the way, Storm conjured a high-pressure cloud to cushion her own jump down. They could hear more fight coming from within the building. But all she saw was the pair of still smoking shoes standing where the woman she had hit with lightning had been standing.

  “You three must move quickly, I have read from some of the leaders they pn to trigger a cleaning program.” The Professor telepathically warned the three of them. Then they felt a general pull and desire to move towards one of the doors on their left.

  Hearing that Morph then transformed into someone who still sent shivers down her spine, a six-foot-six-inch blonde-haired killer stared down at her with his solid white eyes. His yellow and brown spandex suit hugged the rge muscur man's body in such a way it left very little to a person's imagination.

  “Really? You picked Sabertooth out of everyone?” Beast asked while she shook her head.

  Instead of answering the shape-shifter kicked the door off its hinges, before changing into the room with a growl. Shots from inside the room made her and the furry hurry through the door.

  Two of the three men inside had stopped whatever they had been doing at their terminals to draw and shoot at the shape-shifter. Like the killer he was copying, Morph just ughed as bullets hit or cut through his body, but unlike the real killer, when Morph got close enough to fight back he didn’t use his cws. He just punched and elbowed the gunmen, instead of mauling them with his cws and fangs.

  Worried about how far they were along in their efforts to wipe the data, storm pulled an electrical bolt into her hands from her body's own reserves of energy, before throwing it at the st man in the room. Her target was stunned for a moment, but fought through the minimum voltage that she could put out, and went back to the system in front of him.

  Not wanting to cause yet another death, Strom raised both of her hands and willed the winds to blow. What started as a strong wind, quickly turned into a gale. That picked up not only the two downed men at Morph's feet, but also several chairs and finally her target. All of them were smmed into the far wall, with an end table eventually hitting the st opponent out when it smacked him in the face.

  With their enemies defeated, she lowered both her arms and her powers. But the wind does not just stop. It dwindles, and unfortunately for them, her wind knocked down another door before subsiding.

  In the now vast opening left by the now broken door, Storm saw three men on the other side in the adjacent room. Two were dressed in full tactical body armor and held assault weapons, while the third was a middle-aged man in a business suit.

  “Go full auto! Protect the Reverend!” One of the guards shouted while pulling the door of them.

  The other quickly raised his rifle. Storm didn't hold back this time, she unleashed a steady bolt from her hand at the other guard before he could fire. Like with all metal, the bolt surged first for the man's weapon before jumping to him. The rifle was red hot from the temperatures and the heat of the lightning bolt left it, and while the man was twitching and pulsating from the extra energy surging through him, he was still standing and screaming.

  Then the other guard knelt had aimed his rifle at her.

  A rge yellow thing tackled her before the bullets started flying at though. As he pressed Storm to the floor, Morph shifted back into his normal form. “Stay down. Stay Down!” The shape-shifter ordered her.

  Then they heard gss break, and a moment before the two of them heard an infamous sound. Snikt. A roar stopped the rifle from firing, as she and Morph risked looking up and towards the adjacent room. They saw Wolverine punch, knee, and kick the guard with everything, but his right hand with its cws out.

  Once the man was down on the ground the berserker gave him a chance to surrender, saying. “Go ahead, try and get up. But if we go round two, I will be using these.” Snikt, the short X-man let out his left-hand cws too.

  “You think we are afraid?” the man in the suit, the ‘Reverend’ asked. As he rose and dusted himself off of debris and gss. When he shook his hand, Storm could see that it wasn't just gss, but also blood that went flying from it.

  “I don’t care what you are. This fight is over.” Wolverine said in his rough angry way.

  "No freak, it's over when all of your kind is gone." The Reverend spit back. Then he pulled out his other hand that he had been hiding behind his back. In the well-dressed man's hand, was a live grenade, and the stranger pulled the pin of it and tossed it towards the ground. "Until the world is Pure!" the man roared before the grenade went off.

  Her sub-captain didn't hesitate. Wolverine drove his cws into the broken door and raised it up like a shield. The wave of fire and shrapnel still bit into the stalwart short man, but like all grenades the damage was swift and brutal.

  Storm pushed Morph off of her and moved to check on the berserker. She stopped at the door, however. She noticed that the guard she had hit with a lightning bolt was, while burned and charred by the explosion, but was still breathing and was aiming a pistol at her.

  Then she heard someone else cocked a second pistol. When Storm looked to her right, she saw the guard who Wolverine had beaten up, he was aiming his own weapon at the man aiming at her. “This fight is over Nate, and we lost.”

  The charred man grimaced, but rexed his grip on his weapon, before raising his hands in surrender.