TJ, Teddy, Nick, Bobby - Admin Takedown
Aug. 27th, 2018 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainAn X-force team hits another Right location, but there's no one to rescue here.
TJ settled into the new body as she joined the rest of the team. The woman was a bit shorter than her, and her center of gravity was different, but she'd spent long enough training in different bodies back home that it only took her a few seconds to adapt to this one. She put her fingers to her temple in a small salute so they would know it was her as she approached.
"Let's go," she told the others with a smirk that looked very much like Nocturne on the woman's round features. She straightened up the collar of her guard uniform, then grabbed Bobby's arm, and gave him a cheerful, "C'mon, prisoner!"
"But I'm not the droid you're looking for," Bobby countered with a grin before putting on a mournful expression and trudging along beside her. Right, looking wrecked. Not hard when he thought about the fact that they'd caught Tommy, again, that his best friend was in one of these places, again, and that it was entirely possible they were going to end up locked up in one too. Or dead.
Yeah. Not thinking too hard about that part.
"C'mon Chewie," Teddy joked, wearing almost the same face that had gotten him in the last Right facility they'd tackled. It would be enough to get them through the front door. At least it had last time, and he just had to hope that their luck would hold. Thank goodness for TJ and her insistence that X-Men didn't kill, or he'd have been a lot more stressed out than he was. He gave Nick an encouraging pat on the shoulder. and nodded to the other guys. "Those Death Star plans are waiting for us."
"Rrr," Nick responded in his best Chewbacca grunt. Part of him had considered wearing a muzzle. It would probably look a hell of a lot more convincing. On the other hand, he really didn't want to wear a muzzle. He got out, following Teddy's lead. It came down to trust, and he trusted this group. Even if Bobby seemed a touch unreliable, he thought to himself.
It was a little weird that there were no guards on duty outside the building, but TJ figured there would just be more inside. Unlike the facility they'd raided last time, this one was not in the middle of nowhere, so it made sense not to attract extra attention. She pushed Bobby inside ahead of her, still keeping a tight hold on him. There, finally, two security guards by the elevator, and TJ nodded at the receptionist. "Hey. We got two more for lock-up."
The receptionist, a redhead in his late twenties, stood uncertainly. "What do you mean? What are you doing, bringing them here?"
The two guards by the lift exchanged a look, and stepped closer to the four of them.
Aaaaaand something was very obviously not right. Bobby glanced at TJ for direction, then took a guess and reached out and encased the phone system in a block of ice. At least he wouldn't be able to use that to call for help.
So much for subterfuge. Teddy shrugged internally and dropped Nick's arm and his disguise, shifting into Hulkling, wings spreading, height shooting up until he hit that harder stretchy-part around eight feet and stopped. "Boo," he said, grinning wide. The receptionist dove for the floor behind the desk and the guards shouldered their firearms, aiming them at the four kids.
Which made Nick lunge forward, giving his best Chewbacca roar as he dove at the guards, since their attention had been momentarily trained on Teddy. He knocked one's weapon aside, making it tumble from his hands, and turned and lashed out at the other with his claws, catching him across the cheek, making him cry out in pain. He'd live, of course, but he'd probably have a nasty scar to show for it. He kept the pressure up on that one; he trusted Teddy to take out the other, and he took a few practiced quick steps toward the guard with the bloodied cheek, giving him a right cross followed by a left hook. He wasn't punching a guard, when he was going through this. He was sparring with Lil, in his mind; harmless practice, except the force of impact was much different when the guard fell, out cold.
He turned, making sure the other was handled.
TJ would have preferred getting out of her borrowed body, but for now, she remained in it, trusting the others to handle the guards (there was only two of them, after all). She jumped up on the counter (overevaluating that a bit, and hurting her butt in the process), then swung her legs around to drop on the other side of it, with the quivering receptionist. She batted his hand away from the button under the desk he'd been reaching out to press, and unholstered the weapon at her side to level it at him. "Don't move."
Firearms. She wasn't a big fan, but they did the job, in terms of intimidation. The receptionist raised his hands in surrender. "Somebody come and zip-tie our friend here!" she called out to her team.
Bobby'd acted as the guards had raised their weapons, blasting the rifle of the one Nick wasn't fighting and encasing it in ice, but turned as TJ spoke. "On it," he said, leaving the guards to Teddy and Nick. He thawed the ice over his pocket, pulled out a zip tie, and came over to wrap it around the shivering guy's hands. "So, that didn't work quite as well as it did in Star Wars," he pointed out to TJ. "What now?"
"To be fair," Teddy replied, lunging for the guard currently stuck to his iced-over rifle, "it only worked slightly better in Star Wars anyway." The guard got his gun up and tried to fire through the ice, but the whole thing jammed up. One bullet made it through, bouncing off of Teddy's shoulder armor before Teddy grabbed it away and bent the barrel with his hands. "Stop that. Play nice, and we'll consider it points for good behaviour."
Nick fished one set of his zip-ties from his pocket and zip-tied the guard he'd KO'ed, figuring Teddy had his guard well in hand. He felt a bit sympathetic for this guard, but at the same time, they were abducting fucking children and experimenting on them. Okay, maybe he felt slightly less-than-sympathetic. Nick man-handled the guy onto his stomach and secured his hands behind his back, tight but not so tight it would cut off the circulation. The cheek bleeding was, well, it just was. It wasn't going to kill the guy.
"Gotta love it when things go according to plan," TJ concurred with a sharp grin that seemed to say that she didn't mind having to improvise at all. "Drag your guards behind the desk here, so no one can see them from outside?" She holstered her weapon and grabbed some nearby duct tape to put over all their mouths. She patted down the receptionist while she was at it, and found a set of keys she threw to Bobby. "Iceman! Can you try and close up out front?"
"Temporarily or permanently?" Bobby asked as he caught the keys and headed for the door. "I can freeze the door to the frame if you want add-on lack of opening."
"Go for it!" TJ confirmed. "Then let's figure out what this place is, and why they were guarding that elevator."
His guy zip-tied, duct-taped and hauled behind the desk, and ignoring the murderous glare, Teddy took a second to strip the three of them of anything sharp or pointy. One guy with his hands zip-tied was disarmed, but three working together with a set of keys could probably work something out too quickly for his tastes. He dropped the little pile of coins and junk on the desk and kept the guard's keys for himself. "The computer down here probably won't be connected to anything useful, but these should get us somewhere more interesting."
Movement by his feet caught Teddy's eye, and he planted a foot on the receptionist's chest to stop him from wriggling his way closer to the panic button on the underside. "Look, loyalty's a good thing, but you need to put some serious thought into which side you've chosen. Nocturne," he glanced back over his shoulder. "We're probably better off sticking these guys in the bathroom or something. Somewhere without an alarm."
Still in the body of that female guard, TJ sighed. It would've been so easy to hex-bolt that alarm into next century, if she didn't want to hold on to the disguise. "Good thinking." She strode over to the nearest door and... yes, bathroom. Door opened, she indicated the inside with a flourish. "If you guys don't mind doing some more dragging." This body was weaker than hers, she'd just as soon let the people with more muscle mass do the heavy lifting.
"Can do," Nick confirmed, starting with the one he'd taken care of, considering the deadweight. He figured Bobby could handle his, and, well, there was no question about Teddy. But he'd help Bobby if he needed it.
Bobby nodded as he fit the key in the lock and turned it, then took a step backwards. Hands outstretched, he sent a blast of ice towards the door, slowly but surely adding a layer several inches thick to the door frame. Then, as an extra precaution, he filled the door's lock with ice. Easy enough to remove it if they needed to, but in the meantime, it'd be impossible to so much as put a key in the lock.
Nodding with satisfaction, he headed back to where Nick was hauling one of the guards into the bathroom. "What, do I have to do everything around here?" he demanded with feigned exasperation as he went to grab a guard of his own.
"Whining isn't very super-heroic, Iceman," Teddy grinned, because yeah, this was serious, and yeah, people were in trouble, but codenames and uniforms and actually getting to use his powers for something real and important. He was going to enjoy some of it, before it all went to hell. He picked up the angruly receptionist and the remaining guard, one under each arm, and followed Nick toward the bathroom.
TJ, in the meantime, walked over to the elevator, and flashed her ride's badge before calling it. Definitely not standard elevator procedure. "Freeze the bathroom door once they're in, Iceman?"
"Your wish, my command." Bobby grinned back at Teddy. "Gotta show I'm as big a man as the Paladin," he joked as he waited for the other two to finish up.
Nick ducked out of the way for Teddy to be able to put his guards into the bathroom. "Can we expect any painfully bad ice puns?" Nick asked, trying to relieve some anxiety by making a little quip at Bobby. Depositing unconscious guards into a bathroom wasn't what he pictured doing on his first outing with X-Force. But whatever. This was ultimately a good thing they were doing.
"If he doesn't I will," Teddy replied cheerfully, setting his burdens down and backing out of the bathroom before the receptionist, still conscious, could get any bright ideas. "But I'm sure we can count on Iceman to do his thing." He closed the door firmly and -- right on cue -- Bobby iced it over the same way he'd done the main doors.
"Please. This is just the tip of the iceburg," Bobby supplied, also right oncue. He blew on his fingers and grinned, then turned to TJ. "What's next, oh Fearless Leader?"
TJ grinned as the elevator door opened, revealing an empty cabin. She turned back to the others, still grinning. "Now we explore. Please join us on a ride to floors unknown!" As they filed into the elevator, she grew more serious. "I'm probably gonna dump this body as soon as we encounter more serious resistance. Let's figure out what this place is. Neutralize every hostile, and figure out whether they're holding anyone. Easy peasy."
Nick gave the air a bit of a sniff, focusing on the smells he could isolate as he went toward the elevator. "I think we got everyone down here," he said, cautiously, before stepping into the lift. "I guess good news is that nobody got a call out. I wasn't really looking out for cameras or anything, though," he conceded.
"We have to assume there were some, considering what we saw at the last place," Teddy nodded to Nick's comment, shrinking back down to normal guy-size to fit in the elevator, though he kept the wings and the green. The Right already knew Teddy could change shape and size, but there was no reason to give them any footage of what he really looked like. "The facility we went to had a central command area with screens for a dozen cameras or more. We should probably also assume audio." He waved at the corner of the elevator where a camera was probably hidden. "First floor, going up? Or start from the top and work our way down?"
Bobby paused just outside the elevator. "Just a thought - want me to hit the stairs and freeze the doors so people can't make a break for it that way?" he asked. "Because every floor's gotta have an emergency exit, right?"
"You are a genius, Iceman," TJ said with a bright grin at him. She only wished they had a speedster to take him up double quick. But she would do with what she had.
Which meant, "New plan ! You all take the stairs, you freeze as you go, then we ride the elevator down one floor at a time." It wouldn't do for them to start hitting people before he was done freezing. "I'm taking the elevator up to the... fourth floor," since that was the upper floor, by the looks of it, "and blocking it there until you all join me. I'll make something up and make it work, but hurry up anyway. Teddy, you're in charge of Team Stairs'n'Freeze."
"Aye, Captain," Teddy replied, saluting as he headed out of the elevator. "Wolf cub, take point?" he suggested, grabbing the door to the stairwell and waiting for Nick and Bobby to join him. "You'll smell and hear anyone coming before we do." Was that voices he heard in the distance, or just his paranoia?
Nick hustled out to go take point. Which he wasn't particularly eager to do. Normally, in a video game, he'd be comfortable with it, hell, even insist on it, but that usually meant he had a shotgun in hand, or heavy plate armor and a shield or something. But he had neither, in this case, and frankly, didn't know how to use either, so it was probably for the best. The stairs were an angular spiral, if Nick had to describe it, but it was the kind where you couldn't really look up or down between floors. Whatever that was called. He didn't know the technical term for those kinds of stairs. At least they'd only have to stop if someone got in their way.
"Well, at least we get to take the elevator down?" Bobby offered as he trudged up the stairs behind Nick, who, if he had to guess, should be getting some kind of prize for being even more nervous about being here than he was. He paused at the first landing to freeze the entire doorway over, then looked over at Teddy and nodded. One done.
Teddy gestured for them both to keep moving. If there were people on the floors they passed who hadn't realized they were there yet, better not to alert them by talking loud enough to echo. They made it up to the next floor, Bobby freezing the door behind them as they went, the air temperature in the stairwell dropping another couple of degrees. That was when Teddy heard the voices again, not his paranoia after all! He was only a couple of steps up the next stairwell when someone started rattling the door handle, angry shouting bursting from behind the solid steel door.
"Okay, gotta go, go now-" Teddy urged, waving Bobby to get in front of him and go up the stairs.
Nick rushed up ahead, and he was startled, just as he imagined they were, to see a man and a woman, both in business casual, standing in their way in the stairway. They weren't armed, and they looked more frightened than anything. And then Nick remembered his own appearance. And he'd be damned if he was giving up any advantage.
He gave his best 'Big Bad Wolf' snarl and advanced on them. "Hands where I can see them! Get on the ground!" he barked, inadvertently doing his best impersonation of a character from Payday 2 barking at civilian hostages. Sometimes, he guessed, it paid to play the bad guys. The office workers seemed to comply, stepping back onto the landing and getting down with their hands up as Nick advanced on them. He fished some zip-ties from his pocket and got to work on one of them. He trusted either Teddy or Bobby to get the other.
Shit. Shit, shit...Bobby stared a few moments longer, then pulled himself together and pulled a zip-tie out of his pocket. "You didn't huff and puff and blow their house down," he mock-complained to Nick as he tied the woman's hands. "You really should work on that, y'know. It could be an awesome trademark."
"Don't give him any ideas," Teddy said, distracted. He hiked quickly up the last couple of stairs, grabbing the door before it swung fully closed again. Something was definitely wrong. The hallway beyond the door looked like a regular office, and were those... cubicles? What kind of science lab had people in suits, working in cubicles? There had definitely been guards and a panic button downstairs... "Hey Nocturne," he said into his comm, backing out into the stairwell again. "We've got the correct address, right?"
"We do," Nick assured him. "And Nocturne's comms are out while she's possessing someone," Nick reminded him, securing the two prisoners they had in the stairwell. "I mean, at least, we're at the address where our intel said we were supposed to go," he clarified. "If our intel was bad, well... I dunno what then."
Uggh. Bobby frowned - then looked over at Teddy and grinned. "Hey. Can you make yourself look like a cop or something? Order everyone into the conference room? We can freeze the door shut, and if it turns out it's the wrong address, no big deal, right?"
Teddy shifted in a blink. The piercings had come out for the guard disguise in the first place, so becoming an older cop -- one of the uniformed beat cops he'd seen on the street in midtown -- didn't need any prep at all. The uniform settled down around him in its new shape as well, and he nodded to Bobby. "I can do that," he confirmed, his voice the rough hasp of a habitual smoker. Setting his shoulders, Teddy pulled open the door and strode in, barking orders. "Alright everyone, get moving. We have a situation. Step away from the computers, clear the floor, into the conference room. Now!" ... and hoped there actually was a conference room on the floor for them to move into. That would suck if there wasn't.
Things had been getting increasingly more tense for TJ, since Anderson, whose body she inhabited, had nothing to do on the last floor, and she had no idea what was holding her team back as she talked as fast as she could to justify her continued presence there, without giving herself away. Two other guards, in the same uniform she wore, were eyeing her suspiciously as she rambled on about errors in timetables, and wasn't admin a thankless job, am I right? Some office workers were regularly glancing their way, trying to figure out what was going on there.
So when this old cop burst onto the floor, shouting orders, her startled reaction was not fake. She did figure, a second later, that he had to be Teddy. Whatever reason he had to do this, she just went with it. "You heard him, everybody!" she shouted in her most authoritative voice.
"That's not protocol," one of the guards snapped, a hand going to his weapon. "What's going on, officer?"
In the background, some office workers were complying with Teddy's orders, while others seemed to be telling them to stay put.
Well, shit. 'Not protocol' wasn't the immediate snap-to-authority Teddy'd been hoping for, and there was every chance that, if they did have the right place, there were more panic buttons around and people available to press them. (And if this was the wrong place, why were there more guards?) There were still too many of them in different sections of the floor to pull the same surprise move he'd used downstairs, so... okay. How about doubling-down on the promised 'situation'?
"Security breach," Teddy improvised, just in case someone up here had had eyes on the cameras downstairs they'd know that part, at least, was true. "They're right behind me -- everyone needs to take cover, and stay together! They're crazy, and there's no telling what they'll do!"
Hopefully Nick and Bobby were listening.
Nick was listening, and, well, he was okay with this plan working. Except this guard seemed to not be okay with it. Or rather, one of them didn't. And if one didn't, there would be others who didn't. Except hopefully that one was the only one.
While Teddy had everyone's attention, Nick went through the door, causing a woman at her cubicle to shriek. Nick reached over the small barrier between himself and the shrieking woman, grabbed her phone off the desk and winged it at the nearest guard (who wasn't Teddy or TJ-in-a-guard), striking him in the side of the head. He went down but not quite out, and Nick tensed as the other guard started to move. Hopefully, Iceman had his back. He'd kind of done this... without really saying much. Which was stupid of him, but it was hard for Nick to remember that not everyone had enhanced hearing.
And apparently that plan had fallen apart, too. Bobby shook his head, covered himself with a layer of ice, and charged through the door after Nick. Just in time to see a guard aiming a gun at his teammate, and he set his jaw and blasted a flood of ice at him, freezing the gun and much of its wielder. "Everybody down on the ground!" he demanded, and was amazed to see some of the officeworkers actually follow his instructions. Great, he did a good scary asshole. He'd have to try out for the school play. If, y'know, they ever decided to have one.
The guard who had been less than cooperative from the start raised a weapon and aimed it towards Bobby. TJ didn't think; wearing someone else's body was great for taking hits without getting hurt herself. And since this chick was working for the Right...
But while she expected a bullet, or an energy beam, what she got was thrown out of the body, which crumpled to the floor. TJ caught herself in a crouch, and immediately tried to hex-bolt the guy, but nothing happened. "My bolts are gone!" she warned the others.
TJ's sudden reappearance didn't seem to faze the guard, at least not enough to stop him from aiming again, wheeling to point the weapon at Nick. Teddy had less than a second to decide what to do, and found himself diving and shifting to get between Nick and the gun. The Skrulls in his apartment had gone full-alien during the fight -- what could he pull off? Teddy went for it, getting big and sprouting tentacles and eyes and teeth in places where none of those should have been.
The guard fired, jumping back and not nearly as shaken up as Teddy'd hoped, though the shrieking stampede behind the guard meant at least someone properly appreciated the look. The invisible energy wave passed through him, doing absolutely nothing. Teddy grinned with both his mouths. "Ooh. Technology fail, dude."
Jesus Christ Teddy could get his total alien freak engine revving quick, Nick thought. He seemed to have absorbed the energy hit (whatever the hell it was; he couldn't see it but he'd 'seen' TJ get knocked out of her host body) and that meant he'd either try again (if he was dumb) or he wouldn't get the chance. Which meant that they needed to get boxing things up quick, because people were running.
"Iceman! Time to play goalie!" he called, hoping he'd get the drift of what he was trying to say. If anyone made a run for the door they'd come through, that was a problem. If anyone ran for the elevator... Well, Nick was going to keep that from happening. He jumped up onto one of the edges of the cubicles and jumped off, hopping around where Teddy hopefully had the remaining guard taken care of. And Nick needed to look out for more of them. He saw someone frantically banging the button for the elevator, and made a dash over to them, clocking them cold as quick as he could. He whirled and planted himself in front of it. If anyone wanted out, they'd need to go through him.
"Y'know, despite the ice? Really not into hockey," Bobby pointed out as he encased the guard's weird ass weapon in ice, causing him to drop it. "Nocturne, you ok?"
"I'm impressed!" she retorted with a sharp grin, nodding at Teddy. That form was... wow. And if she focused on that to ignore how fucking vulnerable she felt, without her powers... They had to be coming back soon, right? Those things never lasted. Besides, she didn't need her powers to kick ass, and she took out the remaining guard in a few moves, laying him out cold. "Very freaky," she complimented Teddy, then pushed her voice to address the office. "Everyone, this is the mutant beatdown you've been deserving for a while! Don't make us have to hurt you! Just get on the floor, we'll be over to tie you up in a jiffy."
It wasn't long before they'd subdued and tied up everyone on the floor, including the head honchos who had been cowering in their offices in the back. "It doesn't seem like there's that much security here, I think we stumbled onto the admin section of the Right." Which meant, of course, a high potential for intelligence. "Hulkling, Iceman, you think you can handle the other two floors on your own? Call if you need help, and watch out for their weird ass weapons." She pulled a USB stick out of a small pocket in the side of her red and black uniform and plugged it into the bossman's computer. "I'll coordinate with Shadowcat. Wolfcub, keep a lookout for me?"
Teddy hauled all his new extra appendages back in and reformed himself, shaking off the weirdness of looking at life through eighteen different eye... stalk... things. "On it. And I am definitely going to need to work out more of those. Monster Manual, here I come," he added cheerfully, turning to look around one last time and make sure they had everyone. Everyone visible, anyway. "They definitely figured out something was up when we went past the third floor, so that's probably where we should start." Bobby had already frozen the doors shut, so Teddy headed for the elevator.
"Was that even in the Monster Manual?" Bobby asked as he followed Teddy to the elevator, got in, and pressed 3. "I'm pretty sure that was from some B-rated sci-fi movie I saw on the late show once. Maybe one of your relatives?"
"Hah." The doors slid closed and the elevator started to drop, and Teddy positioned himself mostly between Bobby and the door. "I was going for a Lovecraft 'Elder God' sort of thing. I don't think there's ever been a good movie version of any of his stuff, come to think of it." He'd have to look it up later. "Hang back for a second when the doors open?" he asked Bobby, glancing over at him. "Whatever that weapon was didn't seem to do anything to me, so let me soak it. Then you've got the element of surprise to nail them once they're trying to figure that one out."
"That's me, Surprise Ice Delivery Guy," Bobby confirmed, taking up position behind Teddy before the doors could open. "Watch out for the floor, I'm gonna see if they'll take themselves out trying to walk."
It sure didn't take long to drop one floor, and when the doors slid open Teddy wasn't at all surprised to find more gun barrels pointed right at him. Funky ones, like the one the guard had used on TJ upstairs, and a guy in the back with a bigger one that looked a lot more like a bazooka. The first rank fired even before the doors had finished sliding open, the energy passing through (or bouncing off, or.... something) Teddy without effect. He spread his wings as he charged out of the elevator, hopefully giving Bobby enough cover in the process. "Everyone down!" Teddy bellowed, just in case that would work this time.
He really, really hated this, Bobby decided as he aimed at the floor, letting the ice spread outward beneath everyone's feet while they used Teddy for target practice. Watching people he considered friends get shot at with sci-fi weapons wasn't much of a step up from being shot at by sci fi weapons, and it didn't make it much better to know that there'd be more shooting if they weren't skidding around as they tried to step forward. It was, moreover, kind of hard to do anything about it with Teddy blocking him like that, and he slid to the side (in a far more controlled manner, thank you!) and took a shot at one of the weapons, freezing it and the hand of the guy holding it. "Just put 'em on ice," he said aloud, then let out a cry that was half protest, half pain as a weird ass energy net appeared from nowhere, wrapping around him and administering a shock that was only partially mitigated by the ice encasing his body as he fell to the ground. "Okay, really not fair," he muttered as he set to work trying to freeze the netting.
Man down! Teddy grabbed one of the guns from the guard nearest him and bent the barrel around before throwing it at one of the others on Bobby's slip-and-slide. "Don't play with those; you could hurt somebody."
It only bought him a second, enough time to steel himself, grab hold of the net where there wasn't too much ice, and try to fling it off of his teammate and -- hopefully -- over one of the guards. Even with his resistance the energy zapped through him, stinging his hands and making his muscles spasm.
Bobby let out a sigh of relief and peered up at Teddy with gratitude. "Thanks man. You ok - oh, fuck," he said, changing tracks as he caught sight of one of the other guards aiming a weapon at Teddy's back. Wincing, because he still felt like passing out was a seriously viable life choice at this point, he aimed a column of ice at the floor, and erected a temporary barrier between them and the guards. "For the record? I really hate this shit," he pointed out as he tried to push himself up to his feet.
“Those guns have got to be calibrated for mutants-only, maybe the thing that knocked Nocturne’s powers out.” Teddy stopped flexing his hands, shook out his arms and reached out to grab Bobby’s arm and help him to his feet.
“We’ve almost got this in the bag,” Teddy said, trying to be encouraging. “I have an idea. Remember the glue-trap thing Billy pulled in the game a few sessions ago? Can you freeze everyone’s feet to the floor long enough for me to disarm them?”
"And people say you don't learn anything useful from playing D&D," Bobby joked. He nodded, though, and concentrated on the ice he'd already spread out on the floor, forced it up into the soles of shoes, over the tops. It was harder, in a way, not really seeing what he was doing - in another, it was easier, with everyone reduced to varying degrees of temperature rather than angry faces. "Done," he said tiredly, nodding again to Teddy as he tried to blink away the odd not-quite-vision.
"Great. You chill here and rest for a second and I'll be right back," Teddy promised. He vaulted up and over the ice wall, running footsteps now replaced with just angry shouting. Only two guards were still armed and Teddy gave up trying to fly in the space between the desks, running and sliding across the ice instead with a few boosts from his wings until he'd grabbed the last couple of guns and tossed them aside.
***
TJ finished chatting with Shadowcat and Herald, and leaned back in the chair, watching the computer screen as they operated it and did their thing from all the way at Xavier's. It was pretty impressive, this hacking stuff. And she loved that this Kitty was just as crazy amazing as Aunt Kate and the younger Kitty who'd replaced her had been.
She pushed away from the desk and came to join Nick, who was looking over the restrained staff. "All good out here?"
Nick had busied himself collecting cell phones. He'd given most people a pat-down or taken purses away. "Everyone stays down and stays put, and nobody gets hurt," he promised them, keeping watch. "Everything's fine so far," he said. The cellphones were in a pile in front of him on the desk, the purses in a pile near him. "I'm kinda worried someone's gonna get away. I mean, I don't know what'll happen if someone calls the cops." What they were doing was very, very illegal. But same thing with the Right and what they were doing... except this was just an office. And that didn't justify vigilantism. Someone might very well take the risk and call the cops, and Nick didn't want to risk it.
"Well, they've got their hands in zip ties, and you're keeping an eye out," TJ pointed out. "And you patted them down. I think we're pretty safe. Shadowcat and Herald are doing their thing and getting all the stuff from their computer system. Apparently, it's good stuff. And Glory's gonna tell us everything we need to know about the weapons we're bringing back. We might not have anybody to rescue here after all, but we're still doing good work." She patted his arm comfortingly, then brought a hand to her earpiece to turn it on. "Hulkling, Iceman, how are things on your end?"
"Third floor secure, and we're on our way down," Bobby replied. "Did you wait for us, or start the next stage of the party?" It hadn't taken too terribly long to finish up the third floor, and just in case someone managed to get our of their zip ties, he'd build up a nice wall between the rest of the floor and the elevator.
"The party's mostly been happening back home," TJ replied with a smile. The hack was in place and the whiz kids were doing their thing, no real reason to stay here. "We'll come down and meet you." She patted Nick on the shoulder and gestured towards the elevator, for them to get moving. As she walked across the room, she tried firing a small hex-bolt, and grinned when it worked, this time. "Oh, and good news, gentlemen - my bolts are back."
"Awesome," Teddy cheered over the comm. "That means the guns - whatever they are - aren't even all that powerful. And they're definitely mutant-only, for the record. I got shot three times and it didn't even blip my powers." He held the elevator door for Bobby and let it go when his teammate joined him. "How's your head, by the way?"
"Still attached, so I'm thinking it's a win." Bobby leaned against the wall of the elevator. "You figure we're done here? Because I'm in favor of being done here."
Teddy nodded. "You wait here and guard our exit path and I'll clear the second floor." Bobby was looking really run-down. Teddy'd been able to resist some of the shock from the net and it had still given him grief; it must have been a whole lot worse for someone without healing. Teddy braced himself for another phalanx of guns to be facing him when the door slid open on the second floor, spreading his wings as far as they could go in the cramped elevator to give Bobby some cover-
The door slid open onto an empty floor. There were cubicles and desks, sure, but no people, and the printer was still spitting out paper onto a growing stack. Whoever had been there had left in a hurry, hadn't even bothered to take their... whatever it was they'd been printing. "Hunh."
"Well, this is kinda anticlimactic," Bobby pointed out as he peered around Teddy's wings. "Unless they've mastered invisibility now. Because if they have, we're potentially in deep shit." Which, okay, maybe he shouldn't have thought of, because now he wasn't going to be able to get rid of the feeling they were being watched, but hell. He was pretty sure he'd have had that, anyway.
Teddy pulled his wings in and stepped out into the empty office. No lasers shot out at him from secret defenses or anything -- "send the thief in first," he cracked, the tension beginning to gnaw at him. (And not only that, but thoughts about how Billy was doing, if the other teams had only found empty offices as well - not helpful right now.) "Where do you think they-"
A banging noise from somewhere down the dark corridor seemed to answer his question, and Teddy started running to follow it. "This way!"
Bobby started an ice slide, pulled up along side Teddy, and reached out his hand. "Jump on."
"Even better." Teddy grabbed Bobby's hand and jumped up onto the slide behind him. "Any trick to staying balanced on these things?"
"Hang on, and lean into the turns?" Bobby suggested. He upped the slide's speed and took the next corner, following what sounded like the rattling wheels of a cart.
Teddy yelped as the slide went faster, wrapping his arms around Bobby's waist and hanging on for dear life. They zipped along the dark corridor, turning a corner, and Teddy spotted what looked like the open steel doors of a loading elevator at the end just beginning to close. "There! Stop them!" Could he manage to get there in time? Teddy flung himself forward and tried stretching out his arms as he ran, but he wasn't going to be able to close the distance in time.
Abandoning forward motion, Bobby sent a spray of ice at the closing door, wedging it open - then grit his teeth and kept pouring on the ice, trying to keep it from crumbling under the pressure of the closing doors. "Not sure how long I can hold it."
Teddy hit the dirt -- or the ice sheet, more like it -- that was forming underneath him, pulled his arms back in and tried a thing he'd played with before in the Danger Room, increasing his density without changing size too much. He careened down the ice like the world's coldest slip'n'slide, and wedged himself in between the closing doors. "Hi," he greeted the couple of guards inside, then kicked out with his free foot to catch one in the gut.
"Hey, don't-" Bobby'd began as Teddy inserted himself into the gap between the doors, and broke off, shaking his head. Nevermind- unsurprisingly, his teammate had known exactly what he was doing. They all seemed to, really, except him, he mused as he slid his way down to join him. "Need a hand?" he asked Teddy with a grin, seeing as he didn't seem to have any free. "Maybe you should go with the tentacle look again."
The guard didn't seem super guard-like right now, taking cover behind whatever the cart was that the two of them had been trying to get out of the building. The guy Teddy had kicked was on his way back up, wheezing from having the wind knocked out of him, but at least neither of them looked armed. "Little help?" Teddy asked, the doors still trying to compress him. So much for safety features.
"Hey, it looked like you had it covered," Bobby teased. Literally - with Teddy blocking the opening, there wasn't a lot - oh. He pressed the up button on the elevator, re-opening the doors. "Your wish, my command," he quipped, keeping it depressed.
The doors slid back, taking the pressure off. The guard in the corner used the opportunity to push the cart hard, sending it careening toward Teddy, and she made a break for the door. Which way - stop her, fight the other guard, or try and avoid the cart? Teddy tried to grab the cart, the big black metal boxes strapped to it looking a lot more interesting than the papers that had been in the printer. he ducked as guard number one swung at him, distracting him.
The doors slid back, taking the pressure off. The guard in the corner used the opportunity to push the cart hard, sending it careening toward Teddy, and she made a break for the door. Which way - stop her, fight the other guard, or try and avoid the cart? Teddy tried to grab the cart, the big black metal boxes strapped to it looking a lot more interesting than the papers that had been in the printer. he ducked as guard number one swung at him, distracting him.
---
"Glad you're okay," Nick said to TJ, before hopping off the desk where he'd been sitting and heading toward the elevator with her. He glanced behind them momentarily at the crowd. All scents accounted for. This whole scenario just felt... so freaking weird to him. But at least nobody'd gotten hurt beyond a smack to the head or a cut to the face. He didn't want any killing on his conscience.
"Thanks," TJ told him with a quick smile, and pressed the elevator button. "How're you doing?"
"Hard to shake the feeling that we're not entirely in the right, here," Nick said. "I mean, don't get me wrong. These people are awful and they do awful shit to kids. But... how many of them know?" he asked. "How many of these people just think they're doing finances for... I dunno, a research company or something?" It was hard to tell, simply because he wasn't a telepath. "Or am I being too easy on people who we should, y'know, hate?"
"I don't think hate is ever a 'should'," TJ replied with a skeptical pout. "But we're only hurting people who would hurt us, anyway. The intel we're getting is priceless, so we're definitely in the right. Let the authorities figure out who should be in jail later. We're doing good work."
She would've preferred getting Tommy out of their hands, but the team who'd gone after him was more than capable, especially given who led it. She had to trust that. And even if they had gone in expecting to do a rescue, this was equally important in a different way. People would end up in jail thanks to them.
"I guess," Nick replied, frowning just a bit. "Any idea what they were up to here anyway?" he asked. "This place looks... so freaking normal. Way more normal than I expected," he said. Though... Something, something smelled, quite literally, off to him. "I can't put my finger on it, but I smell something weird, now that I think real hard about it. I don't really know what it is." Which was slightly unnerving, considering that he knew dogs could sniff out bombs. He didn't know what bombs smelled like.
"Every evil organization needs some admin headquarters," TJ replied, almost singsong in her pronouncement. The elevator doors finally opened, and she stepped in immediately, pushing the button for the second floor. "Weird like what?"
"It's really faint," Nick said, giving another sniff. "But it's... kind of... like a chemical? I haven't smelled it before, whatever it is. It's really, really faint. But..." As the elevator descended with the two of them, it got... just a touch stronger. "We're heading towards it, whatever it is."
TJ brought her hand to her pointy ear, clicking her comms on. "Guys, Wolf Cub's smelled something. We're gonna follow his nose, unless you need reinforcement. How are you doing?"
"A little bit busy right now," Bobby replied as he iced a patch of the floor just outside the elevator, just in time for the guard to rush out the door. Her feet hit the ice, shot out from under her, and she landed on her butt just like a cartoon character. Bobby grinned as he raced over, pulling a wire tie from his pocket. "Okay, I hope there was a security camera going? Because that was - owww!!" He froze, literally, as the guard he'd been mocking plunged something resembling a cattle prod into his side, and held it there until his eyes rolled back and he toppled over.
"Iceman!" Teddy shouted, taking a second to punch his guard out before vaulting the cart, using his wings to help him get some lift. He was getting better at that, part of him noted in the back of his mind. "You guys just don't learn." He grabbed the prod and tried bending it around the way he'd done the gun barrel, only to get himself a solid shock in the process. His healing factor kicked in a split-second later but he was still flat on his ass as the guard scrambled and started to run down the hallway back the way he and Bobby had come. "Nocturne, bogey coming your way!"
"Got it!" TJ answered all the way down the hallway, and had been about to ask Nick if he wanted dibs on this when the runner turned the bend in the hallway. She fired off a couple of hex bolts at her legs, aiming to make her trip.
"On her!" Nick shouted, launching into a run, finding himself running over a desk and jumping off of it to land on the stumbling runner, who he flattened to the floor with the force of the impact. Her weapon, whatever she'd used to hurt Iceman, skittered across the floor, and Nick wrestled her arms behind her back as he got to work zip-tying her. "Thanks for the assist, Nocturne," he added, because he thought he might've missed the tackle if the hex-bolts hadn't messed up the lady's legs.
TJ flashed him a quick smile. "Any time." She clicked the comms back on. "Are you guys okay?"
Scrambling to his feet, Teddy ran for Bobby. "I'm okay but Iceman got hit with something. Checking on him now."
The ice covering Bobby's body had begun melting even before Teddy reached him, and he groaned as he fought his way back to consciousness. "Get nmbr o' truk?" he slurred, his head pounding.
Teddy breathed out a sigh of relief and gently helped Bobby to sit up. "1-800-CRUSHEDICE. Can you stand?"
TJ skidded to a halt around the corner, and breathed a sigh of relief. "What happened?"
"Cavalry's here," Teddy told Bobby, not letting go until Bobby seemed to be secure and on his feet. "We got here just in time to find a couple of these bozos-" he nodded toward the guard lying unconscious in the elevator, "trying to take that cart out of the building. I think this thing's a loading elevator, so there's probably a truck downstairs somewhere."
"Whatever they're loading up, I think that's the smell," he said, moving to the cart and looking at it. Yeah, that was definitely the smell. "Yeah, it's coming from that. And there's more, already, going down... yeah, that cargo elevator."
TJ turned to Bobby. "Iceman, how are you doing?" If she needed to bench him, she was absolutely benching him.
How was he doing? He felt like he'd been hit by a car. Or electrocuted. Or possibly electrocuted while being hit by a car. "Peachy keen," he assured TJ instead, and forced a grin as he let go of Teddy. Because he could do that, and stay standing. He hoped. "What's on the cart?" he asked in an attempt to redirect attention.
"If they want to take it away, it's something we don't want them to," TJ replied. "This floor is secure, right?" Then they could temporarily leave the cart alone, to go chase the smell that went down the elevator. "Let's go stop them." She touched a ziptied, but conscious guard's hand, hoping she would already be possession-ready, and suddenly she was that guy. "Untie me?" she requested, from her new position on the floor.
"I'll never get over how weird that is, I don't think," Nick murmured, kneeling and using a claw to cut the zipties, and helped her up from the floor. "What's the plan?" he asked, since TJ was, after all, their leader.
"We go down, I make first approach, then we neutralize them," TJ replied, and yeah, it included a bunch of improvisation. Not only was it the best way she knew to work, but they didn't know what they'd find down there. "Iceman, you hang back, only chip in if things look really bad." He looked about ready to keel over or puke or something, but leaving him behind wasn't much safer. In her borrowed body, TJ stepped over to the elevator. "Questions?"
Teddy shook his head. "I'm good. Let's get this wrapped up -- I'm getting itchy to know what the other teams have found."
TJ looked at the other two, who nodded assent. "Alrighty then." She grinned at them sharply - although on this face, it looked more like an All American Smile. "Let's go wrap this up, guys."
TJ settled into the new body as she joined the rest of the team. The woman was a bit shorter than her, and her center of gravity was different, but she'd spent long enough training in different bodies back home that it only took her a few seconds to adapt to this one. She put her fingers to her temple in a small salute so they would know it was her as she approached.
"Let's go," she told the others with a smirk that looked very much like Nocturne on the woman's round features. She straightened up the collar of her guard uniform, then grabbed Bobby's arm, and gave him a cheerful, "C'mon, prisoner!"
"But I'm not the droid you're looking for," Bobby countered with a grin before putting on a mournful expression and trudging along beside her. Right, looking wrecked. Not hard when he thought about the fact that they'd caught Tommy, again, that his best friend was in one of these places, again, and that it was entirely possible they were going to end up locked up in one too. Or dead.
Yeah. Not thinking too hard about that part.
"C'mon Chewie," Teddy joked, wearing almost the same face that had gotten him in the last Right facility they'd tackled. It would be enough to get them through the front door. At least it had last time, and he just had to hope that their luck would hold. Thank goodness for TJ and her insistence that X-Men didn't kill, or he'd have been a lot more stressed out than he was. He gave Nick an encouraging pat on the shoulder. and nodded to the other guys. "Those Death Star plans are waiting for us."
"Rrr," Nick responded in his best Chewbacca grunt. Part of him had considered wearing a muzzle. It would probably look a hell of a lot more convincing. On the other hand, he really didn't want to wear a muzzle. He got out, following Teddy's lead. It came down to trust, and he trusted this group. Even if Bobby seemed a touch unreliable, he thought to himself.
It was a little weird that there were no guards on duty outside the building, but TJ figured there would just be more inside. Unlike the facility they'd raided last time, this one was not in the middle of nowhere, so it made sense not to attract extra attention. She pushed Bobby inside ahead of her, still keeping a tight hold on him. There, finally, two security guards by the elevator, and TJ nodded at the receptionist. "Hey. We got two more for lock-up."
The receptionist, a redhead in his late twenties, stood uncertainly. "What do you mean? What are you doing, bringing them here?"
The two guards by the lift exchanged a look, and stepped closer to the four of them.
Aaaaaand something was very obviously not right. Bobby glanced at TJ for direction, then took a guess and reached out and encased the phone system in a block of ice. At least he wouldn't be able to use that to call for help.
So much for subterfuge. Teddy shrugged internally and dropped Nick's arm and his disguise, shifting into Hulkling, wings spreading, height shooting up until he hit that harder stretchy-part around eight feet and stopped. "Boo," he said, grinning wide. The receptionist dove for the floor behind the desk and the guards shouldered their firearms, aiming them at the four kids.
Which made Nick lunge forward, giving his best Chewbacca roar as he dove at the guards, since their attention had been momentarily trained on Teddy. He knocked one's weapon aside, making it tumble from his hands, and turned and lashed out at the other with his claws, catching him across the cheek, making him cry out in pain. He'd live, of course, but he'd probably have a nasty scar to show for it. He kept the pressure up on that one; he trusted Teddy to take out the other, and he took a few practiced quick steps toward the guard with the bloodied cheek, giving him a right cross followed by a left hook. He wasn't punching a guard, when he was going through this. He was sparring with Lil, in his mind; harmless practice, except the force of impact was much different when the guard fell, out cold.
He turned, making sure the other was handled.
TJ would have preferred getting out of her borrowed body, but for now, she remained in it, trusting the others to handle the guards (there was only two of them, after all). She jumped up on the counter (overevaluating that a bit, and hurting her butt in the process), then swung her legs around to drop on the other side of it, with the quivering receptionist. She batted his hand away from the button under the desk he'd been reaching out to press, and unholstered the weapon at her side to level it at him. "Don't move."
Firearms. She wasn't a big fan, but they did the job, in terms of intimidation. The receptionist raised his hands in surrender. "Somebody come and zip-tie our friend here!" she called out to her team.
Bobby'd acted as the guards had raised their weapons, blasting the rifle of the one Nick wasn't fighting and encasing it in ice, but turned as TJ spoke. "On it," he said, leaving the guards to Teddy and Nick. He thawed the ice over his pocket, pulled out a zip tie, and came over to wrap it around the shivering guy's hands. "So, that didn't work quite as well as it did in Star Wars," he pointed out to TJ. "What now?"
"To be fair," Teddy replied, lunging for the guard currently stuck to his iced-over rifle, "it only worked slightly better in Star Wars anyway." The guard got his gun up and tried to fire through the ice, but the whole thing jammed up. One bullet made it through, bouncing off of Teddy's shoulder armor before Teddy grabbed it away and bent the barrel with his hands. "Stop that. Play nice, and we'll consider it points for good behaviour."
Nick fished one set of his zip-ties from his pocket and zip-tied the guard he'd KO'ed, figuring Teddy had his guard well in hand. He felt a bit sympathetic for this guard, but at the same time, they were abducting fucking children and experimenting on them. Okay, maybe he felt slightly less-than-sympathetic. Nick man-handled the guy onto his stomach and secured his hands behind his back, tight but not so tight it would cut off the circulation. The cheek bleeding was, well, it just was. It wasn't going to kill the guy.
"Gotta love it when things go according to plan," TJ concurred with a sharp grin that seemed to say that she didn't mind having to improvise at all. "Drag your guards behind the desk here, so no one can see them from outside?" She holstered her weapon and grabbed some nearby duct tape to put over all their mouths. She patted down the receptionist while she was at it, and found a set of keys she threw to Bobby. "Iceman! Can you try and close up out front?"
"Temporarily or permanently?" Bobby asked as he caught the keys and headed for the door. "I can freeze the door to the frame if you want add-on lack of opening."
"Go for it!" TJ confirmed. "Then let's figure out what this place is, and why they were guarding that elevator."
His guy zip-tied, duct-taped and hauled behind the desk, and ignoring the murderous glare, Teddy took a second to strip the three of them of anything sharp or pointy. One guy with his hands zip-tied was disarmed, but three working together with a set of keys could probably work something out too quickly for his tastes. He dropped the little pile of coins and junk on the desk and kept the guard's keys for himself. "The computer down here probably won't be connected to anything useful, but these should get us somewhere more interesting."
Movement by his feet caught Teddy's eye, and he planted a foot on the receptionist's chest to stop him from wriggling his way closer to the panic button on the underside. "Look, loyalty's a good thing, but you need to put some serious thought into which side you've chosen. Nocturne," he glanced back over his shoulder. "We're probably better off sticking these guys in the bathroom or something. Somewhere without an alarm."
Still in the body of that female guard, TJ sighed. It would've been so easy to hex-bolt that alarm into next century, if she didn't want to hold on to the disguise. "Good thinking." She strode over to the nearest door and... yes, bathroom. Door opened, she indicated the inside with a flourish. "If you guys don't mind doing some more dragging." This body was weaker than hers, she'd just as soon let the people with more muscle mass do the heavy lifting.
"Can do," Nick confirmed, starting with the one he'd taken care of, considering the deadweight. He figured Bobby could handle his, and, well, there was no question about Teddy. But he'd help Bobby if he needed it.
Bobby nodded as he fit the key in the lock and turned it, then took a step backwards. Hands outstretched, he sent a blast of ice towards the door, slowly but surely adding a layer several inches thick to the door frame. Then, as an extra precaution, he filled the door's lock with ice. Easy enough to remove it if they needed to, but in the meantime, it'd be impossible to so much as put a key in the lock.
Nodding with satisfaction, he headed back to where Nick was hauling one of the guards into the bathroom. "What, do I have to do everything around here?" he demanded with feigned exasperation as he went to grab a guard of his own.
"Whining isn't very super-heroic, Iceman," Teddy grinned, because yeah, this was serious, and yeah, people were in trouble, but codenames and uniforms and actually getting to use his powers for something real and important. He was going to enjoy some of it, before it all went to hell. He picked up the angruly receptionist and the remaining guard, one under each arm, and followed Nick toward the bathroom.
TJ, in the meantime, walked over to the elevator, and flashed her ride's badge before calling it. Definitely not standard elevator procedure. "Freeze the bathroom door once they're in, Iceman?"
"Your wish, my command." Bobby grinned back at Teddy. "Gotta show I'm as big a man as the Paladin," he joked as he waited for the other two to finish up.
Nick ducked out of the way for Teddy to be able to put his guards into the bathroom. "Can we expect any painfully bad ice puns?" Nick asked, trying to relieve some anxiety by making a little quip at Bobby. Depositing unconscious guards into a bathroom wasn't what he pictured doing on his first outing with X-Force. But whatever. This was ultimately a good thing they were doing.
"If he doesn't I will," Teddy replied cheerfully, setting his burdens down and backing out of the bathroom before the receptionist, still conscious, could get any bright ideas. "But I'm sure we can count on Iceman to do his thing." He closed the door firmly and -- right on cue -- Bobby iced it over the same way he'd done the main doors.
"Please. This is just the tip of the iceburg," Bobby supplied, also right oncue. He blew on his fingers and grinned, then turned to TJ. "What's next, oh Fearless Leader?"
TJ grinned as the elevator door opened, revealing an empty cabin. She turned back to the others, still grinning. "Now we explore. Please join us on a ride to floors unknown!" As they filed into the elevator, she grew more serious. "I'm probably gonna dump this body as soon as we encounter more serious resistance. Let's figure out what this place is. Neutralize every hostile, and figure out whether they're holding anyone. Easy peasy."
Nick gave the air a bit of a sniff, focusing on the smells he could isolate as he went toward the elevator. "I think we got everyone down here," he said, cautiously, before stepping into the lift. "I guess good news is that nobody got a call out. I wasn't really looking out for cameras or anything, though," he conceded.
"We have to assume there were some, considering what we saw at the last place," Teddy nodded to Nick's comment, shrinking back down to normal guy-size to fit in the elevator, though he kept the wings and the green. The Right already knew Teddy could change shape and size, but there was no reason to give them any footage of what he really looked like. "The facility we went to had a central command area with screens for a dozen cameras or more. We should probably also assume audio." He waved at the corner of the elevator where a camera was probably hidden. "First floor, going up? Or start from the top and work our way down?"
Bobby paused just outside the elevator. "Just a thought - want me to hit the stairs and freeze the doors so people can't make a break for it that way?" he asked. "Because every floor's gotta have an emergency exit, right?"
"You are a genius, Iceman," TJ said with a bright grin at him. She only wished they had a speedster to take him up double quick. But she would do with what she had.
Which meant, "New plan ! You all take the stairs, you freeze as you go, then we ride the elevator down one floor at a time." It wouldn't do for them to start hitting people before he was done freezing. "I'm taking the elevator up to the... fourth floor," since that was the upper floor, by the looks of it, "and blocking it there until you all join me. I'll make something up and make it work, but hurry up anyway. Teddy, you're in charge of Team Stairs'n'Freeze."
"Aye, Captain," Teddy replied, saluting as he headed out of the elevator. "Wolf cub, take point?" he suggested, grabbing the door to the stairwell and waiting for Nick and Bobby to join him. "You'll smell and hear anyone coming before we do." Was that voices he heard in the distance, or just his paranoia?
Nick hustled out to go take point. Which he wasn't particularly eager to do. Normally, in a video game, he'd be comfortable with it, hell, even insist on it, but that usually meant he had a shotgun in hand, or heavy plate armor and a shield or something. But he had neither, in this case, and frankly, didn't know how to use either, so it was probably for the best. The stairs were an angular spiral, if Nick had to describe it, but it was the kind where you couldn't really look up or down between floors. Whatever that was called. He didn't know the technical term for those kinds of stairs. At least they'd only have to stop if someone got in their way.
"Well, at least we get to take the elevator down?" Bobby offered as he trudged up the stairs behind Nick, who, if he had to guess, should be getting some kind of prize for being even more nervous about being here than he was. He paused at the first landing to freeze the entire doorway over, then looked over at Teddy and nodded. One done.
Teddy gestured for them both to keep moving. If there were people on the floors they passed who hadn't realized they were there yet, better not to alert them by talking loud enough to echo. They made it up to the next floor, Bobby freezing the door behind them as they went, the air temperature in the stairwell dropping another couple of degrees. That was when Teddy heard the voices again, not his paranoia after all! He was only a couple of steps up the next stairwell when someone started rattling the door handle, angry shouting bursting from behind the solid steel door.
"Okay, gotta go, go now-" Teddy urged, waving Bobby to get in front of him and go up the stairs.
Nick rushed up ahead, and he was startled, just as he imagined they were, to see a man and a woman, both in business casual, standing in their way in the stairway. They weren't armed, and they looked more frightened than anything. And then Nick remembered his own appearance. And he'd be damned if he was giving up any advantage.
He gave his best 'Big Bad Wolf' snarl and advanced on them. "Hands where I can see them! Get on the ground!" he barked, inadvertently doing his best impersonation of a character from Payday 2 barking at civilian hostages. Sometimes, he guessed, it paid to play the bad guys. The office workers seemed to comply, stepping back onto the landing and getting down with their hands up as Nick advanced on them. He fished some zip-ties from his pocket and got to work on one of them. He trusted either Teddy or Bobby to get the other.
Shit. Shit, shit...Bobby stared a few moments longer, then pulled himself together and pulled a zip-tie out of his pocket. "You didn't huff and puff and blow their house down," he mock-complained to Nick as he tied the woman's hands. "You really should work on that, y'know. It could be an awesome trademark."
"Don't give him any ideas," Teddy said, distracted. He hiked quickly up the last couple of stairs, grabbing the door before it swung fully closed again. Something was definitely wrong. The hallway beyond the door looked like a regular office, and were those... cubicles? What kind of science lab had people in suits, working in cubicles? There had definitely been guards and a panic button downstairs... "Hey Nocturne," he said into his comm, backing out into the stairwell again. "We've got the correct address, right?"
"We do," Nick assured him. "And Nocturne's comms are out while she's possessing someone," Nick reminded him, securing the two prisoners they had in the stairwell. "I mean, at least, we're at the address where our intel said we were supposed to go," he clarified. "If our intel was bad, well... I dunno what then."
Uggh. Bobby frowned - then looked over at Teddy and grinned. "Hey. Can you make yourself look like a cop or something? Order everyone into the conference room? We can freeze the door shut, and if it turns out it's the wrong address, no big deal, right?"
Teddy shifted in a blink. The piercings had come out for the guard disguise in the first place, so becoming an older cop -- one of the uniformed beat cops he'd seen on the street in midtown -- didn't need any prep at all. The uniform settled down around him in its new shape as well, and he nodded to Bobby. "I can do that," he confirmed, his voice the rough hasp of a habitual smoker. Setting his shoulders, Teddy pulled open the door and strode in, barking orders. "Alright everyone, get moving. We have a situation. Step away from the computers, clear the floor, into the conference room. Now!" ... and hoped there actually was a conference room on the floor for them to move into. That would suck if there wasn't.
Things had been getting increasingly more tense for TJ, since Anderson, whose body she inhabited, had nothing to do on the last floor, and she had no idea what was holding her team back as she talked as fast as she could to justify her continued presence there, without giving herself away. Two other guards, in the same uniform she wore, were eyeing her suspiciously as she rambled on about errors in timetables, and wasn't admin a thankless job, am I right? Some office workers were regularly glancing their way, trying to figure out what was going on there.
So when this old cop burst onto the floor, shouting orders, her startled reaction was not fake. She did figure, a second later, that he had to be Teddy. Whatever reason he had to do this, she just went with it. "You heard him, everybody!" she shouted in her most authoritative voice.
"That's not protocol," one of the guards snapped, a hand going to his weapon. "What's going on, officer?"
In the background, some office workers were complying with Teddy's orders, while others seemed to be telling them to stay put.
Well, shit. 'Not protocol' wasn't the immediate snap-to-authority Teddy'd been hoping for, and there was every chance that, if they did have the right place, there were more panic buttons around and people available to press them. (And if this was the wrong place, why were there more guards?) There were still too many of them in different sections of the floor to pull the same surprise move he'd used downstairs, so... okay. How about doubling-down on the promised 'situation'?
"Security breach," Teddy improvised, just in case someone up here had had eyes on the cameras downstairs they'd know that part, at least, was true. "They're right behind me -- everyone needs to take cover, and stay together! They're crazy, and there's no telling what they'll do!"
Hopefully Nick and Bobby were listening.
Nick was listening, and, well, he was okay with this plan working. Except this guard seemed to not be okay with it. Or rather, one of them didn't. And if one didn't, there would be others who didn't. Except hopefully that one was the only one.
While Teddy had everyone's attention, Nick went through the door, causing a woman at her cubicle to shriek. Nick reached over the small barrier between himself and the shrieking woman, grabbed her phone off the desk and winged it at the nearest guard (who wasn't Teddy or TJ-in-a-guard), striking him in the side of the head. He went down but not quite out, and Nick tensed as the other guard started to move. Hopefully, Iceman had his back. He'd kind of done this... without really saying much. Which was stupid of him, but it was hard for Nick to remember that not everyone had enhanced hearing.
And apparently that plan had fallen apart, too. Bobby shook his head, covered himself with a layer of ice, and charged through the door after Nick. Just in time to see a guard aiming a gun at his teammate, and he set his jaw and blasted a flood of ice at him, freezing the gun and much of its wielder. "Everybody down on the ground!" he demanded, and was amazed to see some of the officeworkers actually follow his instructions. Great, he did a good scary asshole. He'd have to try out for the school play. If, y'know, they ever decided to have one.
The guard who had been less than cooperative from the start raised a weapon and aimed it towards Bobby. TJ didn't think; wearing someone else's body was great for taking hits without getting hurt herself. And since this chick was working for the Right...
But while she expected a bullet, or an energy beam, what she got was thrown out of the body, which crumpled to the floor. TJ caught herself in a crouch, and immediately tried to hex-bolt the guy, but nothing happened. "My bolts are gone!" she warned the others.
TJ's sudden reappearance didn't seem to faze the guard, at least not enough to stop him from aiming again, wheeling to point the weapon at Nick. Teddy had less than a second to decide what to do, and found himself diving and shifting to get between Nick and the gun. The Skrulls in his apartment had gone full-alien during the fight -- what could he pull off? Teddy went for it, getting big and sprouting tentacles and eyes and teeth in places where none of those should have been.
The guard fired, jumping back and not nearly as shaken up as Teddy'd hoped, though the shrieking stampede behind the guard meant at least someone properly appreciated the look. The invisible energy wave passed through him, doing absolutely nothing. Teddy grinned with both his mouths. "Ooh. Technology fail, dude."
Jesus Christ Teddy could get his total alien freak engine revving quick, Nick thought. He seemed to have absorbed the energy hit (whatever the hell it was; he couldn't see it but he'd 'seen' TJ get knocked out of her host body) and that meant he'd either try again (if he was dumb) or he wouldn't get the chance. Which meant that they needed to get boxing things up quick, because people were running.
"Iceman! Time to play goalie!" he called, hoping he'd get the drift of what he was trying to say. If anyone made a run for the door they'd come through, that was a problem. If anyone ran for the elevator... Well, Nick was going to keep that from happening. He jumped up onto one of the edges of the cubicles and jumped off, hopping around where Teddy hopefully had the remaining guard taken care of. And Nick needed to look out for more of them. He saw someone frantically banging the button for the elevator, and made a dash over to them, clocking them cold as quick as he could. He whirled and planted himself in front of it. If anyone wanted out, they'd need to go through him.
"Y'know, despite the ice? Really not into hockey," Bobby pointed out as he encased the guard's weird ass weapon in ice, causing him to drop it. "Nocturne, you ok?"
"I'm impressed!" she retorted with a sharp grin, nodding at Teddy. That form was... wow. And if she focused on that to ignore how fucking vulnerable she felt, without her powers... They had to be coming back soon, right? Those things never lasted. Besides, she didn't need her powers to kick ass, and she took out the remaining guard in a few moves, laying him out cold. "Very freaky," she complimented Teddy, then pushed her voice to address the office. "Everyone, this is the mutant beatdown you've been deserving for a while! Don't make us have to hurt you! Just get on the floor, we'll be over to tie you up in a jiffy."
It wasn't long before they'd subdued and tied up everyone on the floor, including the head honchos who had been cowering in their offices in the back. "It doesn't seem like there's that much security here, I think we stumbled onto the admin section of the Right." Which meant, of course, a high potential for intelligence. "Hulkling, Iceman, you think you can handle the other two floors on your own? Call if you need help, and watch out for their weird ass weapons." She pulled a USB stick out of a small pocket in the side of her red and black uniform and plugged it into the bossman's computer. "I'll coordinate with Shadowcat. Wolfcub, keep a lookout for me?"
Teddy hauled all his new extra appendages back in and reformed himself, shaking off the weirdness of looking at life through eighteen different eye... stalk... things. "On it. And I am definitely going to need to work out more of those. Monster Manual, here I come," he added cheerfully, turning to look around one last time and make sure they had everyone. Everyone visible, anyway. "They definitely figured out something was up when we went past the third floor, so that's probably where we should start." Bobby had already frozen the doors shut, so Teddy headed for the elevator.
"Was that even in the Monster Manual?" Bobby asked as he followed Teddy to the elevator, got in, and pressed 3. "I'm pretty sure that was from some B-rated sci-fi movie I saw on the late show once. Maybe one of your relatives?"
"Hah." The doors slid closed and the elevator started to drop, and Teddy positioned himself mostly between Bobby and the door. "I was going for a Lovecraft 'Elder God' sort of thing. I don't think there's ever been a good movie version of any of his stuff, come to think of it." He'd have to look it up later. "Hang back for a second when the doors open?" he asked Bobby, glancing over at him. "Whatever that weapon was didn't seem to do anything to me, so let me soak it. Then you've got the element of surprise to nail them once they're trying to figure that one out."
"That's me, Surprise Ice Delivery Guy," Bobby confirmed, taking up position behind Teddy before the doors could open. "Watch out for the floor, I'm gonna see if they'll take themselves out trying to walk."
It sure didn't take long to drop one floor, and when the doors slid open Teddy wasn't at all surprised to find more gun barrels pointed right at him. Funky ones, like the one the guard had used on TJ upstairs, and a guy in the back with a bigger one that looked a lot more like a bazooka. The first rank fired even before the doors had finished sliding open, the energy passing through (or bouncing off, or.... something) Teddy without effect. He spread his wings as he charged out of the elevator, hopefully giving Bobby enough cover in the process. "Everyone down!" Teddy bellowed, just in case that would work this time.
He really, really hated this, Bobby decided as he aimed at the floor, letting the ice spread outward beneath everyone's feet while they used Teddy for target practice. Watching people he considered friends get shot at with sci-fi weapons wasn't much of a step up from being shot at by sci fi weapons, and it didn't make it much better to know that there'd be more shooting if they weren't skidding around as they tried to step forward. It was, moreover, kind of hard to do anything about it with Teddy blocking him like that, and he slid to the side (in a far more controlled manner, thank you!) and took a shot at one of the weapons, freezing it and the hand of the guy holding it. "Just put 'em on ice," he said aloud, then let out a cry that was half protest, half pain as a weird ass energy net appeared from nowhere, wrapping around him and administering a shock that was only partially mitigated by the ice encasing his body as he fell to the ground. "Okay, really not fair," he muttered as he set to work trying to freeze the netting.
Man down! Teddy grabbed one of the guns from the guard nearest him and bent the barrel around before throwing it at one of the others on Bobby's slip-and-slide. "Don't play with those; you could hurt somebody."
It only bought him a second, enough time to steel himself, grab hold of the net where there wasn't too much ice, and try to fling it off of his teammate and -- hopefully -- over one of the guards. Even with his resistance the energy zapped through him, stinging his hands and making his muscles spasm.
Bobby let out a sigh of relief and peered up at Teddy with gratitude. "Thanks man. You ok - oh, fuck," he said, changing tracks as he caught sight of one of the other guards aiming a weapon at Teddy's back. Wincing, because he still felt like passing out was a seriously viable life choice at this point, he aimed a column of ice at the floor, and erected a temporary barrier between them and the guards. "For the record? I really hate this shit," he pointed out as he tried to push himself up to his feet.
“Those guns have got to be calibrated for mutants-only, maybe the thing that knocked Nocturne’s powers out.” Teddy stopped flexing his hands, shook out his arms and reached out to grab Bobby’s arm and help him to his feet.
“We’ve almost got this in the bag,” Teddy said, trying to be encouraging. “I have an idea. Remember the glue-trap thing Billy pulled in the game a few sessions ago? Can you freeze everyone’s feet to the floor long enough for me to disarm them?”
"And people say you don't learn anything useful from playing D&D," Bobby joked. He nodded, though, and concentrated on the ice he'd already spread out on the floor, forced it up into the soles of shoes, over the tops. It was harder, in a way, not really seeing what he was doing - in another, it was easier, with everyone reduced to varying degrees of temperature rather than angry faces. "Done," he said tiredly, nodding again to Teddy as he tried to blink away the odd not-quite-vision.
"Great. You chill here and rest for a second and I'll be right back," Teddy promised. He vaulted up and over the ice wall, running footsteps now replaced with just angry shouting. Only two guards were still armed and Teddy gave up trying to fly in the space between the desks, running and sliding across the ice instead with a few boosts from his wings until he'd grabbed the last couple of guns and tossed them aside.
TJ finished chatting with Shadowcat and Herald, and leaned back in the chair, watching the computer screen as they operated it and did their thing from all the way at Xavier's. It was pretty impressive, this hacking stuff. And she loved that this Kitty was just as crazy amazing as Aunt Kate and the younger Kitty who'd replaced her had been.
She pushed away from the desk and came to join Nick, who was looking over the restrained staff. "All good out here?"
Nick had busied himself collecting cell phones. He'd given most people a pat-down or taken purses away. "Everyone stays down and stays put, and nobody gets hurt," he promised them, keeping watch. "Everything's fine so far," he said. The cellphones were in a pile in front of him on the desk, the purses in a pile near him. "I'm kinda worried someone's gonna get away. I mean, I don't know what'll happen if someone calls the cops." What they were doing was very, very illegal. But same thing with the Right and what they were doing... except this was just an office. And that didn't justify vigilantism. Someone might very well take the risk and call the cops, and Nick didn't want to risk it.
"Well, they've got their hands in zip ties, and you're keeping an eye out," TJ pointed out. "And you patted them down. I think we're pretty safe. Shadowcat and Herald are doing their thing and getting all the stuff from their computer system. Apparently, it's good stuff. And Glory's gonna tell us everything we need to know about the weapons we're bringing back. We might not have anybody to rescue here after all, but we're still doing good work." She patted his arm comfortingly, then brought a hand to her earpiece to turn it on. "Hulkling, Iceman, how are things on your end?"
"Third floor secure, and we're on our way down," Bobby replied. "Did you wait for us, or start the next stage of the party?" It hadn't taken too terribly long to finish up the third floor, and just in case someone managed to get our of their zip ties, he'd build up a nice wall between the rest of the floor and the elevator.
"The party's mostly been happening back home," TJ replied with a smile. The hack was in place and the whiz kids were doing their thing, no real reason to stay here. "We'll come down and meet you." She patted Nick on the shoulder and gestured towards the elevator, for them to get moving. As she walked across the room, she tried firing a small hex-bolt, and grinned when it worked, this time. "Oh, and good news, gentlemen - my bolts are back."
"Awesome," Teddy cheered over the comm. "That means the guns - whatever they are - aren't even all that powerful. And they're definitely mutant-only, for the record. I got shot three times and it didn't even blip my powers." He held the elevator door for Bobby and let it go when his teammate joined him. "How's your head, by the way?"
"Still attached, so I'm thinking it's a win." Bobby leaned against the wall of the elevator. "You figure we're done here? Because I'm in favor of being done here."
Teddy nodded. "You wait here and guard our exit path and I'll clear the second floor." Bobby was looking really run-down. Teddy'd been able to resist some of the shock from the net and it had still given him grief; it must have been a whole lot worse for someone without healing. Teddy braced himself for another phalanx of guns to be facing him when the door slid open on the second floor, spreading his wings as far as they could go in the cramped elevator to give Bobby some cover-
The door slid open onto an empty floor. There were cubicles and desks, sure, but no people, and the printer was still spitting out paper onto a growing stack. Whoever had been there had left in a hurry, hadn't even bothered to take their... whatever it was they'd been printing. "Hunh."
"Well, this is kinda anticlimactic," Bobby pointed out as he peered around Teddy's wings. "Unless they've mastered invisibility now. Because if they have, we're potentially in deep shit." Which, okay, maybe he shouldn't have thought of, because now he wasn't going to be able to get rid of the feeling they were being watched, but hell. He was pretty sure he'd have had that, anyway.
Teddy pulled his wings in and stepped out into the empty office. No lasers shot out at him from secret defenses or anything -- "send the thief in first," he cracked, the tension beginning to gnaw at him. (And not only that, but thoughts about how Billy was doing, if the other teams had only found empty offices as well - not helpful right now.) "Where do you think they-"
A banging noise from somewhere down the dark corridor seemed to answer his question, and Teddy started running to follow it. "This way!"
Bobby started an ice slide, pulled up along side Teddy, and reached out his hand. "Jump on."
"Even better." Teddy grabbed Bobby's hand and jumped up onto the slide behind him. "Any trick to staying balanced on these things?"
"Hang on, and lean into the turns?" Bobby suggested. He upped the slide's speed and took the next corner, following what sounded like the rattling wheels of a cart.
Teddy yelped as the slide went faster, wrapping his arms around Bobby's waist and hanging on for dear life. They zipped along the dark corridor, turning a corner, and Teddy spotted what looked like the open steel doors of a loading elevator at the end just beginning to close. "There! Stop them!" Could he manage to get there in time? Teddy flung himself forward and tried stretching out his arms as he ran, but he wasn't going to be able to close the distance in time.
Abandoning forward motion, Bobby sent a spray of ice at the closing door, wedging it open - then grit his teeth and kept pouring on the ice, trying to keep it from crumbling under the pressure of the closing doors. "Not sure how long I can hold it."
Teddy hit the dirt -- or the ice sheet, more like it -- that was forming underneath him, pulled his arms back in and tried a thing he'd played with before in the Danger Room, increasing his density without changing size too much. He careened down the ice like the world's coldest slip'n'slide, and wedged himself in between the closing doors. "Hi," he greeted the couple of guards inside, then kicked out with his free foot to catch one in the gut.
"Hey, don't-" Bobby'd began as Teddy inserted himself into the gap between the doors, and broke off, shaking his head. Nevermind- unsurprisingly, his teammate had known exactly what he was doing. They all seemed to, really, except him, he mused as he slid his way down to join him. "Need a hand?" he asked Teddy with a grin, seeing as he didn't seem to have any free. "Maybe you should go with the tentacle look again."
The guard didn't seem super guard-like right now, taking cover behind whatever the cart was that the two of them had been trying to get out of the building. The guy Teddy had kicked was on his way back up, wheezing from having the wind knocked out of him, but at least neither of them looked armed. "Little help?" Teddy asked, the doors still trying to compress him. So much for safety features.
"Hey, it looked like you had it covered," Bobby teased. Literally - with Teddy blocking the opening, there wasn't a lot - oh. He pressed the up button on the elevator, re-opening the doors. "Your wish, my command," he quipped, keeping it depressed.
The doors slid back, taking the pressure off. The guard in the corner used the opportunity to push the cart hard, sending it careening toward Teddy, and she made a break for the door. Which way - stop her, fight the other guard, or try and avoid the cart? Teddy tried to grab the cart, the big black metal boxes strapped to it looking a lot more interesting than the papers that had been in the printer. he ducked as guard number one swung at him, distracting him.
The doors slid back, taking the pressure off. The guard in the corner used the opportunity to push the cart hard, sending it careening toward Teddy, and she made a break for the door. Which way - stop her, fight the other guard, or try and avoid the cart? Teddy tried to grab the cart, the big black metal boxes strapped to it looking a lot more interesting than the papers that had been in the printer. he ducked as guard number one swung at him, distracting him.
---
"Glad you're okay," Nick said to TJ, before hopping off the desk where he'd been sitting and heading toward the elevator with her. He glanced behind them momentarily at the crowd. All scents accounted for. This whole scenario just felt... so freaking weird to him. But at least nobody'd gotten hurt beyond a smack to the head or a cut to the face. He didn't want any killing on his conscience.
"Thanks," TJ told him with a quick smile, and pressed the elevator button. "How're you doing?"
"Hard to shake the feeling that we're not entirely in the right, here," Nick said. "I mean, don't get me wrong. These people are awful and they do awful shit to kids. But... how many of them know?" he asked. "How many of these people just think they're doing finances for... I dunno, a research company or something?" It was hard to tell, simply because he wasn't a telepath. "Or am I being too easy on people who we should, y'know, hate?"
"I don't think hate is ever a 'should'," TJ replied with a skeptical pout. "But we're only hurting people who would hurt us, anyway. The intel we're getting is priceless, so we're definitely in the right. Let the authorities figure out who should be in jail later. We're doing good work."
She would've preferred getting Tommy out of their hands, but the team who'd gone after him was more than capable, especially given who led it. She had to trust that. And even if they had gone in expecting to do a rescue, this was equally important in a different way. People would end up in jail thanks to them.
"I guess," Nick replied, frowning just a bit. "Any idea what they were up to here anyway?" he asked. "This place looks... so freaking normal. Way more normal than I expected," he said. Though... Something, something smelled, quite literally, off to him. "I can't put my finger on it, but I smell something weird, now that I think real hard about it. I don't really know what it is." Which was slightly unnerving, considering that he knew dogs could sniff out bombs. He didn't know what bombs smelled like.
"Every evil organization needs some admin headquarters," TJ replied, almost singsong in her pronouncement. The elevator doors finally opened, and she stepped in immediately, pushing the button for the second floor. "Weird like what?"
"It's really faint," Nick said, giving another sniff. "But it's... kind of... like a chemical? I haven't smelled it before, whatever it is. It's really, really faint. But..." As the elevator descended with the two of them, it got... just a touch stronger. "We're heading towards it, whatever it is."
TJ brought her hand to her pointy ear, clicking her comms on. "Guys, Wolf Cub's smelled something. We're gonna follow his nose, unless you need reinforcement. How are you doing?"
"A little bit busy right now," Bobby replied as he iced a patch of the floor just outside the elevator, just in time for the guard to rush out the door. Her feet hit the ice, shot out from under her, and she landed on her butt just like a cartoon character. Bobby grinned as he raced over, pulling a wire tie from his pocket. "Okay, I hope there was a security camera going? Because that was - owww!!" He froze, literally, as the guard he'd been mocking plunged something resembling a cattle prod into his side, and held it there until his eyes rolled back and he toppled over.
"Iceman!" Teddy shouted, taking a second to punch his guard out before vaulting the cart, using his wings to help him get some lift. He was getting better at that, part of him noted in the back of his mind. "You guys just don't learn." He grabbed the prod and tried bending it around the way he'd done the gun barrel, only to get himself a solid shock in the process. His healing factor kicked in a split-second later but he was still flat on his ass as the guard scrambled and started to run down the hallway back the way he and Bobby had come. "Nocturne, bogey coming your way!"
"Got it!" TJ answered all the way down the hallway, and had been about to ask Nick if he wanted dibs on this when the runner turned the bend in the hallway. She fired off a couple of hex bolts at her legs, aiming to make her trip.
"On her!" Nick shouted, launching into a run, finding himself running over a desk and jumping off of it to land on the stumbling runner, who he flattened to the floor with the force of the impact. Her weapon, whatever she'd used to hurt Iceman, skittered across the floor, and Nick wrestled her arms behind her back as he got to work zip-tying her. "Thanks for the assist, Nocturne," he added, because he thought he might've missed the tackle if the hex-bolts hadn't messed up the lady's legs.
TJ flashed him a quick smile. "Any time." She clicked the comms back on. "Are you guys okay?"
Scrambling to his feet, Teddy ran for Bobby. "I'm okay but Iceman got hit with something. Checking on him now."
The ice covering Bobby's body had begun melting even before Teddy reached him, and he groaned as he fought his way back to consciousness. "Get nmbr o' truk?" he slurred, his head pounding.
Teddy breathed out a sigh of relief and gently helped Bobby to sit up. "1-800-CRUSHEDICE. Can you stand?"
TJ skidded to a halt around the corner, and breathed a sigh of relief. "What happened?"
"Cavalry's here," Teddy told Bobby, not letting go until Bobby seemed to be secure and on his feet. "We got here just in time to find a couple of these bozos-" he nodded toward the guard lying unconscious in the elevator, "trying to take that cart out of the building. I think this thing's a loading elevator, so there's probably a truck downstairs somewhere."
"Whatever they're loading up, I think that's the smell," he said, moving to the cart and looking at it. Yeah, that was definitely the smell. "Yeah, it's coming from that. And there's more, already, going down... yeah, that cargo elevator."
TJ turned to Bobby. "Iceman, how are you doing?" If she needed to bench him, she was absolutely benching him.
How was he doing? He felt like he'd been hit by a car. Or electrocuted. Or possibly electrocuted while being hit by a car. "Peachy keen," he assured TJ instead, and forced a grin as he let go of Teddy. Because he could do that, and stay standing. He hoped. "What's on the cart?" he asked in an attempt to redirect attention.
"If they want to take it away, it's something we don't want them to," TJ replied. "This floor is secure, right?" Then they could temporarily leave the cart alone, to go chase the smell that went down the elevator. "Let's go stop them." She touched a ziptied, but conscious guard's hand, hoping she would already be possession-ready, and suddenly she was that guy. "Untie me?" she requested, from her new position on the floor.
"I'll never get over how weird that is, I don't think," Nick murmured, kneeling and using a claw to cut the zipties, and helped her up from the floor. "What's the plan?" he asked, since TJ was, after all, their leader.
"We go down, I make first approach, then we neutralize them," TJ replied, and yeah, it included a bunch of improvisation. Not only was it the best way she knew to work, but they didn't know what they'd find down there. "Iceman, you hang back, only chip in if things look really bad." He looked about ready to keel over or puke or something, but leaving him behind wasn't much safer. In her borrowed body, TJ stepped over to the elevator. "Questions?"
Teddy shook his head. "I'm good. Let's get this wrapped up -- I'm getting itchy to know what the other teams have found."
TJ looked at the other two, who nodded assent. "Alrighty then." She grinned at them sharply - although on this face, it looked more like an All American Smile. "Let's go wrap this up, guys."
