Transit

[Pyro]

[Two days later]

"Well, we're out of Italian airspace," came Python's voice across the plane's tannoy system. "About another four hours, gents. Time in England is currently eight ay-em and the weather is a delicious, tasty BEEEEEYOOOOOTIFULLY balmy - uh - twelve degrees. Please settle back and enjoy the remainder of your flight. If you want anything, anything at all, just stop your stewardess and ask. And watch out for those bags of peanuts, folks! They may contain nuts!"

The tannoy snapped off. Pyro was pleased about this. Python was a good ally, a good man to have next to you in a fight, but he had the most infernally skewed sense of humour.

They had left Genosha a day later than planned, partly because Pyro had been laid out for twenty four hours with a bad stomach that had most likely been brought on by the Chicken Supreme pizza. It had been a good thing, really, because it had forced him to stop and rest and actually get some of his energy back.

He paced.

Up.

And down.

He looked at his watch. Four hours, Python had said. That felt like an absolute age. The pressurisation unit in the plane was not working particularly well and the stifling nature of the environment had left him headachey and even more belligerent than usual. He took a long slug from the bottle of water he was carrying and waved it in the general direction of the Juggernaut.

"You want any of this?"

He threw the bottle over to Cain anyway.

He paced some more.

Up.

And down.

He checked his watch.

Three hours fifty eight minutes.

It was going to be a long, long flight.

[Juggers]

"You want any of this?"

Cain caught the bottle and gulped some of the water. Flying always dehydrated him and being dehydrated made him tired. The Juggernaut sighed; Pyro's restlessness wasn't helping either, in fact just looking at him made Cain weary.

"You've paced enough to 'av walked all the way there by now!" Juggernaut observed.

"It ain't gonna happen any quicker ya know."

Still the pacing continued.

"You'll just be knackered when we finally DO get there."

Pace, pace, pace.

"An then I'll 'av to bloody carry ya to the bank!"

Pace, pace, pace.

"Ah bollocks to it," he grumbled and began rooting through the box under his seat. There had to be SOMETHING interesting in the plane to keep him occupied. There just had to be. Didn't there?

Cain's hand closed around something in the depths of the box and with a triumphant flourish yanked it out for inspection.

It was a packet of condoms.

"What. The. Fuck."

[Pyro]

Pyro paused in his ceaseless pacing to stare at the packet of condoms that were being held aloft in the Juggernaut's meaty paw.

He mumbled something that sounded like "Magnetosaidyoushouldalwaysbeprepearedforanyeventuality," adding, "wouldyoumindputtingthemawayagainpleasethanks," to the end.

He looked at his watch.

Three hours, twenty nine minutes.

* * * *

"OK guys, we're coming up on Manchester airport in five. Get yourselves strapped in, well OK, Pyro, YOU strap yourself in. Juggernaut, you just sit tight, big fella."

Python's voice crackled across the intercom bringing some much needed relief to Pyro's shoe leather. He sat down and buckled himself in, although his left leg continued jiggling slightly.

They landed without incident and Python taxied into the holding area. He'd already made contact with his associate and the aforementioned truck was already at hangar six for them.

"I gotta go clear Customs and Immigration and all that shit," said Python, appearing from the cabin. "You fellas hang tight here until I get back and can get you into that van without anybody seeing you."

The lanky man disappeared, leaving Pyro and Juggernaut alone in a now-silent plane.

Time passed.

"Cain," said Pyro, his voice sounding somewhat strained. "I appreciate that you have a sense of humour, but would you mind not making balloon animals out of those condoms, please?"

[Juggers]

"Cain," said Pyro, his voice sounding somewhat strained. "I appreciate that you have a sense of humour, but would you mind not making balloon animals out of those condoms, please?"

Cain shrugged and dropped the half inflated contraceptive. He'd long since given up trying to make a giraffe anyway and had settled with sausage dogs. Which were boring.

The Juggernaut got up and wandered to one of the aircraft's tiny windows. Pressing his face against the glass he got his first glimpse of England in more than a decade. It was raining.

"Figures," Cain chuckled. The British weather was something that could be counted on to give the correct welcome.

"I'm bloody hungry," he added, realising that it was probably lunch time. The fact that he was, once again, in England registered for a second time.

"How about, you an' me grab us a kebab before we hit the road?"

[Pyro]

"How about, you an' me grab us a kebab before we hit the road?"

John stared at him.

Cain had happily spent a certain proportion of the journey here educating him about All Things British and by the time they were flying over Cornwall, he'd seriously reached the parachuting the hell out of here stage.

Part of Cain's Lessons in the UK for Americans had been 'Interesting Foodstuffs I Have Known'. He'd waxed positively lyrical about something he'd had in a placed called 'Middlesbrough' that he called a 'Parmo'.

"You ain't ever seen anythin' like it," he'd said happily. From what John had managed to glean, a 'Parmo' was a heart attack in a polystyrene carton: deep fried chicken breast or pork fillet filled with cheese sauce and bacon. He could hear his own arteries clanging firmly shut at the very thought.

"I'll pass up if you don't mind," he said, carefully. "I'm still not that hungry after that pizza. Maybe - ah - later."

Python had returned and got them out into the van easily enough. The axle had creaked alarmingly as the Juggernaut had got into it. According to the British GPS system that was installed, Liverpool was approximately 45 minutes drive away.

They'd stopped at a town somewhere on the way where the Juggernaut picked up his much-yearned for kebab, complete, much to John's disgust, with garlic sauce. The smell of the food filled the confined space of the van, and some ten minutes later, they had to stop again so John could throw up out the back door, much to the disgust of the little old lady driving a small box of a car behind him.

He resisted the urge to flame her when she tooted her horn at him.

Finally, the van pulled to a halt.

Liverpool. Home of the Beatles, home of Liverpool FC (and Everton). And...probably lots of other stuff. But the Beatles, anyway.

And Gerry and the Pacemakers.

Woo.

From what John could remember of the Liverpool site he'd peered at on the Internet before they'd left Genosha... Liverpool's shopping centre blends a mixture of well-known High Street names and quirky independent boutiques.

Quirky.

He HATED that word. Quirky deserved burning.

He was feeling twitchy as they exited the van in a multi storey car park.

[Jane]

"Listen," Jane said, trying to be as reasonable as possible. "I did not forge the check. I am not even sure exactly how to correctly forge a check. I am not a con artist. You can see the little watermark for yourself, just hold it up on the light. Please, please, pretty please, just cash the check."

The Halifax teller looked at her dubiously. "I'll have to run it by my superiors," she said imperiously, picking up the phone and never letting the green girl out of her beady-eyed sight, her bronzed-out perm quivering nervously as it perched on top of her head like a small mammal.

Jane sighed moodily, shoving her gloved hands into the pocket of her slightly abused long black greatcoat, about four hundred sizes too big for her and with an unfortunate collar that always stuck halfway up on the left side. This check was the first one she was going to cash this year from her little stash left over from winter, when she'd managed to get a job waiting tables at one of the thousands of little pubs littering Liverpool. They'd fired her, of course, when it became apparent that she was not just mildly seasick all the time but actually just green, but she'd managed to get about fifteen hundred pounds saved for the in-between time before she could find a mutant-friendly job - if she could find one at all. She hoped she could. She didn't want to have to become a squatter again; she actually liked her little flat this time around. There were nice people upstairs from her and there was another mutant down the hall with whom she went to the stupid underground things, but it was still nice to have someone to walk with. You didn't get mugged nearly as often that way.

The teller made a face of a sudden and put down the phone, making a huffing noise and popping open the drawer to pull out £216.78 exactly, but not without a fresh glare at Jane's impertinence, or at least that her visible greenness, the little strip of it that could actually be seen between the neck of her greyish sweater and the creased and folded black brim of her ancient and ill-used cabby's-cap. Even her hair was tucked into it, the back of her neck protected from view by a too-long scarf in an unfortunate shade of aubergine, which clashed with her skin, but was still very warm.

"Thank you," Jane said, relieved, the teller's hair only quivering the more, this time in a more disapproving sort of way, evidently lured back into a sense of security by the use of "please" and "thank you."

Jane had turned away back towards the doors and was couting the money out quickly before pocketing it when the little decorative trees outside spontaneously caught fire.

[Juggers]

It had taken a spectacular act of contortion to extract the Juggernaut from the van and he had already ripped the driver’s seat from its moorings in order to accommodate his stature. The experience hadn't left him in the best of moods, even if the kebab had eased his hunger.

Pyro was equally ill tempered having endured almost an hour’s drive looking as green as a bullfrog and unceremoniously tooted by a little old lady.

Their moods worsened upon leaving the car-park and asking for directions to the nearest bank. Eventually Cain had lifted the big-haired, moustachioed Liverpudlian into the air and roared for directions in plain English and not some sort of northern monkey speak. The man had abandoned speech altogether and resorted to wild gesticulation.

Finally, after several wrong turns, three accusations of jay-walking and a visit to a bakery the pair stood outside the high street branch of the Halifax.

Cain glared at the friendly blue sign.

"I fucking hate the Halifax," he growled.

A track-suit wearing mother with no less than six screaming children chose that moment to collide with Pyro accompanied by a torrent of barely intelligible abuse.

[Pyro]

When the track-suited woman collided with him, a succession of things happened. They happened very fast; however, for the benefit of the reader, they shall be relayed in slow motion.

First of all, John snarled "For God's sake, look where the hell you're going."

The woman replied with something that sounded like "Eh! Eh! Calm down, calm down!"

John glowered at her.

"I AM," he said, in a low, dangerous sort of voice, "fucking calm."

It was an exceptional rarity for John to swear. The Juggernaut recognised the warning signs, but by the time he'd finished pointing out to the woman in the small green cart that 'Baked Potatoe's' didn't need an apostrophe, it was too late to stop him.

The woman tossed her over-bleached hair haughtily, her big-enough-for-poodles-to-jump-through earrings glinting in the...rain, and called her children to her. They were called, apparently, in no particular order, Wayne, Darren, Chardonnay, Shiraz, Porsche and Chantelle.

With great difficulty, John understood what she was saying to him. It was a lecture, apparently, about the Evils of Swearing In Front Of My Angelic and Adorable Children, which sounded like "Eh, eh, don't feckin' cuss in front of the bairns, alright?"

The muscle under John's eye twitched again.

"Bleedin' Yank."

It was that. It was that which did it. All the pent-up anger and frustration of the past two days caught up with John in a rush. And when he was angry, he had only one channel to vent that anger down.

"I am not," he said, his voice rising an entire octave in pitch, "a Yank."

His temper flared, his lighter flared...and the pretty ornamental tree outside the bank, which had been doing nothing more threatening than simply enjoying the rain on its leaves and photosynthesising quietly was on the receiving end of it.

"Hey, Juggs," said Python in a low voice. "I reckon we need to do something about that kid and his temper."

[Juggers]

"Ah ... bollocks to it," Cain cursed loudly.

It was as good a distraction as he was likely to get.

With dangerous slowness that rapidly built into a headlong charge the Juggernaut thundered towards the bank. Mightier edifices had endured bombardment by stone in medieval times. Thick oak doors had withstood battering rams through the ages. Hadrian's Wall had held the Scots at bay for generations.

The front of the Halifax was made of glass, plastic and the barest minimum of concrete. It stood absolutely no chance.

The front of the building exploded in a shower of debris admitting the stampeding form of a rather irritable Juggernaut.

[Jane]

Something about the speed with which the damp tree caught fire gave Jane the sickening feeling that it wasn't, this time, a bunch of bored teenagers playing with lighters they'd stolen from the closest tiny drugstore in a fit of rebellion. Either it had been raining gasoline while she wasn't looking, or that flame had been controlled by something other than a kid who cussed too often and was named Neil.

This suspicion was confirmed when the front of the building exploded.

Jane backpedaled quickly from the few steps towards the entrance she'd taken, bumping into a man in a suit who didn't really notice and then into the teller's desk, terrified. There was a moment of silent shock.

The bepermed teller dropped her pen, which clicked quietly on the tile, and Jane braced herself for the screaming to start (her own screaming probably included), but apparently the buildling was too surprised to do much of anything.

"Oh God," she whispered i lieu of shrieking, "oh God oh God."

Irrationally, she suddenly hoped she hadn't left the lights on at home, because it was probably going to be a while before she could get back and turn them off.

[Juggers]

Momentum carried Cain through the lobby and right up to the desk where several clerks now cowered. Somebody had the wits to hit the panic button and the armoured screen slammed down across the counter. The Juggernaut shook his head in chagrin.

"YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKIN' JOKIN'" he roared.

His hands shattered the desk, grabbed the bottom of the shutter and he ripped the entire sheet away in one yank. It dangled in his hands for a moment and then he flung it out into the street. Somebody screamed. Cain paid them no attention. The clerks behind the desk resumed their cowering.

Juggernaut towered over the woman directly in front of him and in his most menacing tones rumbled, "Where’s the fuckin' money?"

Terrified beyond speech she pointed to a code-locked door to the side of the counter and pressed herself further into her chair.

Cain grinned, "Cheers," he said brightly and ambled towards the door.

A few seconds later, it too exploded into splinters.

[Jane]

Schtoomp schtoomp schtoomp schtoomp. The huge guy jogging through the lobby sounded like a train wreck on... feet. Bad metaphor. Whatever. He left shallows in the stone floor, at which Jane stared mostly so she could avoid staring at the big guy, wondering exactly what size shoe you'd have to have to leave dents quite that big. Jane had big feet for a girl, but if she stepped that heavily, the most you could get in was maybe a rat, and that would be the tame kind, not the monster ones that ate cats if you let them out of your flat.

A plate-metal screen fell down across the way to the vault, and Jane scooted further out of the way, back away from the desk and the large shouty scary man.

Good plan, as it turned out. There went the desk. And OH GOD the screen, right over her head.

The door to the vault exploded in splinters, and Jane decided this might be a good time to run away as fast as she could. She had only got to her feet before she heard sirens in the distance - only one, so the car must've been in the neighborhood. The force couldn't possibly get there so fast, especially not someplace on High Street in the rain.

If she ran away, they'd think she was involved and shoot her. If she stayed, they'd probably shoot her.

Catch-22. Jane settled for backing up into one of the pillars and shaking a little. While admittedly not a productive idea, it seemed like a good plan at the time.

[Pyro]

Outside the bank, totally and utterly oblivious to what the Juggernaut was doing, Pyro was having, quite frankly, a whale of a time. The tree was a pathetic, soggy little pile of ash now and despite the fact that Python was right up behind him yelling in his ear to stop, the young man was too caught up in the near-ecstasy of his mutant powers to cease what he was doing.

The scream of sirens rent the afternoon air asunder as people scattered, screaming, from the lunatic with the flamethrower and Destruct-o-Man who was wreaking havoc in the Halifax.

A couple of bored youths remained, just in case they learned anything useful.

"John, for God's sake, you gotta stop, buddy." Python hissed into John's ear. There was a brief lull in the intensity of the flames as John blinked and looked at his colleague. He heard the sirens and seemed to come down to an almost-reality.

He turned to look at the devastation the Juggernaut had bestowed upon the peaceful and quirky little shopping precinct and the flames at his fingertips dampened a little.

He looked from the smouldering remains of the tree to the destroyed shop frontage to the two armed police officers who were running down the precinct towards him. He looked at Python. He looked at the sky. He looked at his hands.

A slow, almost insane smile spread across his face.

"It's show time," he said, gleefully, loosing another fireball.

It was at this point that John Allerdyce, the mutant known as Pyro, was going to discover the ramifications of acting on impulse, without thinking a plan through. He discovered it at the end of the bullet that came from behind, glanced off the back of his collarbone and lodged between his neck and his shoulder.

His flames flared in response to the sudden moment of absolute agony; his vision exploded in a mass of red pain, and he turned around in fury, willing every ounce of concentration he had to make sure that he and Python were well-protected by a wall of fire. He could feel the urge to pass out starting to creep up on him, but he fought it back with a supreme effort, keeping the flames going for as long as was needed until the Juggernaut returned.

There was a lot to be said for adrenaline.

He was faintly aware of a worried looking young policeman holding a revolver level with him, with a shaking hand and, despite the increasing agony of his injury, John called every practise session back to mind. Every lesson back at the mansion, in Genosha - all of it.

For the first time in his entire life, he succeeded in giving one of his flame creations form. A tendril swooped out of the fiery wall, wrapped itself around the revolver and snatched it away from the policeman, reeling itself back in to drop into Python's waiting hand.

"Hey, that's handy, thanks John."

"Just don't let me...pass out," came the reply through gritted teeth. "At least 'til the Juggernaut's home and free."

He'd screwed up.

Royally.

A pause.

Again.

[Juggers]

The thick door of the vault reverberated with a thunderous concussion. It was followed by a long, silent pause. Then, ever so slowly it toppled to the ground revealing a grinning Juggernaut. The security guard on duty shuddered in fear as the man-mountain advanced towards him.

"Where's the cash?" Cain asked, eyeing the array of strong boxes that lined the walls.

The guard stood dumb-founded.

"I said," he asked again, striding forward, "WHERE'S THE BLOODY CASH?!"

The guard was paid well enough for the risks of his job, but not THAT well paid. He pointed to a bulky steel safe at the back of the vault.

"Thanks mate!" The Juggernaut exclaimed happily.

As it turned out the safe was riveted into the floor. A moment later it was not, and half a dozen chunks of concrete dangled from the base of the box. Juggernaut tucked the container firmly under one arm and smiled at the wide-eyed guard.

"Smart fella'" he said jovially and started towards what used to be a door.

From somewhere outside came the ominous crack of gunfire.

"Ah bugger!" Juggernaut muttered and broke into a run.

[Pyro]

John was barely hanging on by a thread when he heard the unmistakable sound of the Juggernaut's pounding footsteps.

"About time," he managed before he allowed the pain to become his central point of focus. He managed, somehow, not to just collapse onto the ground, allowing Python to easily support him, but the break of concentration meant that his flames began to die down rather rapidly.

"I...can...DO THIS!"

His voice came out as a snarl and he forced himself to focus. It was getting increasingly difficult. The blood was pumping out of the wound in his shoulder and he was getting weaker by the second; but as soon as the Juggernaut was in range, he trained the flames around him. "Let's get out of here," said John. "Somewhere, anywhere, find me a dark alley. Just do it fast."

You had to admire his tenacity. It was like a Jack Russell with a yard broom.

Their passage back to the van was well and truly blocked, and the only feasible route to go was towards the other two police officers. However, they now had Juggernaut.

Which could only be a good thing.

[Juggers]

Cain rushed out of the building, safe tucked firmly under one arm; it wouldn't do to lose the prize now would it?

He skidded to a halt a few feet from his brother mutants, throwing up a shower of broken tiles. Pyro sagged against Python, bright blood spilling down his shirt and already pooling on the ground. The A.R.U had got alot more efficient since his day. Cain rounded on the two officers, one with a weapon still trained on his companions.

He snarled an obscenity and hurtled towards the pair, a rampaging ball of muscle and fury.

A single shot rang out. It smacked painfully into Cain's mid-riff, burying itself a few inches before the mutant-enhanced flesh rejected it and popped the slug back out again.

Now the Juggernaut was furious.

The unarmed officer flew into the air in a tangle of limbs before crashing down behind him in an unconscious heap. The second was not so fortunate. Cain grabbed the man by the arms, gun and all and hoisted him into the air.

"You inferior piece of shit," Cain snarled and clenched his fist tighter.

Hand and wrist bones crackled agonisingly and the officer howled in pain. Cain tossed him aside without a second thought and glanced over his shoulder.

"Are you bloody comin' or what?"

[Pyro]

"Lay on, MacDuff," called Python, cheerily, supporting the sagging Pyro, whose flames were starting to lose something of their intensity.

He was one stubborn bastard, that was for sure. He should have passed out several minutes ago, but was clinging to the flotation device of pride desperately. The flames, although no longer so intense, were still enough to give them a retreating wall.

They headed away from the scene down, ironically enough, a dark passageway between two buildings. They went in any number of directions and the further they went, the less able to focus on his flames John became.

Python eventually realised that he was carrying John more than supporting him and simply picked him up in a fireman's lift, hauled him over his shoulder and ran to catch up to the Juggernaut.

"Any idea where to go?" he said. "Kid needs this bullet taking out pretty fast."

((Left open for Jane to intervene))[/i]

[Jane]

Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear.

The squeal of brakes and a massive din of high-pitched outside heralded the arrival of the city's finest, which, somehow, didn't seem like such a great thing, despite their supposed power to keep people from crushing things. Somehow Jane doubted that Mr. Enormous Footprints was going to be put off much by a couple knightsticks, and at least one of his smaller friends appeared to have a much scarier power than super-strength or whatever at his disposal.

Unless they'd managed to get guns. Did banks warrant guns? Jane couldn't remember. Stupid partial gun control. Even fire could only melt something so fast, and bullets might make it through the screen that had blasted up from the air in the bank.

This is not my problem, Jane thought as hard as possible, trying very hard to blend in with the pillar. It didn't work very well, since she was green and her clothes were black and the pillar itself was white, but it was a good effort.

She breathed deeply. A little burst of energy, a little calmness, a little less sheer terror. Okay. It's going to be fine. They know you're not involved. You're not hitting anyone with trees. That has to be a good point. Jane closed her eyes, trying to pretend that she wasn't there, but as soon as she'd managed to get herself calmed down halfway, a popping noise sounded just a few feet away, and her eyes flew back open. You could only spend so much time in the official Red Light Districts of any given town before you were able to recognize the cracks of gunfire automatically.

Oh shit. They'd shot the kid.

Quickly she tallied up his chances. Reasonably close range to the rear of the shoulder with, if the blood was anything to go by, something that was definitely not a crowd-controlling rubber bullet = bad. Without staunching and with the bullet still in (no exit marks through the front of the shirt), it would bleed him out in about...

Twenty minutes. Give or take. Probably take.

The guns cracked again, into the bigger mutant who'd emerged right after the first shot, but they bounced right back out. Jane waited to see if they'd leave the kid, too, but no such luck for him.

Jane closed her eyes again. She did not want to emerge from the safety of the pillar's overhang. She really, really did not want to get torched on her way towards Good Samaritan-style stupidity. She didn't have to get mixed up in this. She could go home with her two sixteen and grab some takeout and go to bed and watch it on the evening news with everyone else.

Or she could go with her gut, which was what she was going to do anyway, so why think about it?

Jane looked up and was about to call out to them before she realized they were already gone.

"Fuck," she hissed furiously before charging out after them (well, hopefully) by way of the huge hole in one wall through which they'd apparently made their exit.

"Hey!" she shouted as loudly as her limited lung capacity would let her. "Hey, wait - wait!"

They turned a seemingly random series of corners, apparently just trying to get away, which was an intelligent idea as far as escape went, but in Jane's head the fire kid's seconds were ticking away with every wrong turn they made. She thought she might be gaining on them, but it was hard to tell - even though the gangly guy she'd seen had to carry the kid, she couldn't run very fast, and it wasn't until she heard one of them speak that she knew she'd finally rounded the right corner, sliding to a shaky halt over the remnants of a damp cardboard box, flushed a darker green through her cheeks and bits of hair sticking inelegantly out from under her cap.

"Any idea where to go? Kid needs this bullet taking out pretty fast."

"Um," she said, briefly fighting for balance before putting one hand on a scummy, graffitied wall. "Hi," she panted, unwrapping her scarf quickly. "Listen - I - from the bank - here, put him down for a second so I can wrap him up. I know someplace we can go to get that thing out, unless you've got a knife on you."

Well, that was relatively straightforward, anyway, if completely bizarre. Yes, let's just set down out friend and let you fling your scarf at him like you know what you're doing. Maybe they'd trust her on basis of genetics.

Well, she could try, anyway.

[Pyro]

[Continues in thread 'Escape'[/i]