(Untitled)

[ofthatantet]

Because White Plains is the County Seat of Westchester County, the Westchester County Police share their facilities with the city police. Therefore--given the bombs--New York State Police from the barracks in Hawthorne are the first on the scene at White Plains Prep. According to Dispatch, the FBI agents sent up from the city are currently locked

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[cutting_edgex23]

There's barely a click as the radio shuts off, but the absence of static across the line means X is moving, claws slicing through his throat neat and clean as anything.

She can afford that, at least for the moment.

Later --

Later will be messy. That is okay.

She and Rose are good at what they do.

[ofthatantet]

She waits crouched in the van as they pass the first sentry; she has one of the Bluetooth earpieces in, and waits until she hears them confirmed by the next sentry.

(She doesn't hear him hit the ground, naturally, but she trusts X-23.)

She slips out of the van, darting fleetly between the open side-door and the ruined front windows, and does what she does. Covering the school's multiple exits would have been easy with the force originally brought to bear, but now they're stretched thin. Vulnerable. She takes off the dead man's boots.

It is not a good night to be on sentry duty.

(Slitting throats is not pretty, and it doesn't feel very clean, but it sure works well.)

[cutting_edgex23]

X stays a half-step behind and to the side of Dolores as they approach the next sentry, keeping her head down and her eyes half-closed.

She seems tired. Defeated.

At least until she buries her claws in his face, twisting as he falls so as to keep fresh blood from getting on her clothes.

That would not be efficient.

[wplainsdrifters]

Dolores flinches.

She knows these people; knows these faces.

(remembers that they kept her locked in an attic, that they let her out twice a day like a dog, that they despised her; remembers her home and her work and her ordinary life, now gone to feed the roses--)

Swallows, and moves on.

[cutting_edgex23]

It's two steps before they're in sight of the doors when X shifts closer to Dolores, head down and turns slightly to the side.

She lets her hair hand in front of her face, half-obscuring her expression. There's no time for talking, no time for anything but sticking to the plan.

Following the mission parameters.

Making them all pay.

X bites her lip as they pass by the final sentry, heading back inside.

The taste of blood on her lips is a comfort. She can wait.

She can.

[no_choices]

The lone sentry on the door waves them in, they are passed by another mercenary going out to join him in watching the door. The Captain is rattled.

There's only a handful of hostages left, according to plan; just enough to get them away. There's only a handful of the mercenaries left, but that's not according to plan. Captain Stuyvesant expected high casualties, but this is beyond high; this is officially FUBAR.

"What the fuck is going on?" she demands, her color high. Dolores flinches.

"They sent us back," she says, sticking to her plan. Rose's plan. "They didn't want her friend."

"Where is everyone else?"

"They... got loose."

"I can see that." By unspoken agreement, everyone in the room is pointing their rifle at X-23; Lieutenant Malenfant, being the closest, puts his rifle actually in her ear.

The Captain shakes her head. "This is wrong. This is all wrong. How did you capture her?"

"Sergeant Keller--"

"And where is Sergeant Keller?!"

Dolores flinches again. It's not hard to pretend to be scared. "They kept her

[cutting_edgex23]

X doesn't pull away from the rifle barrel.

It is not relevant.

Even if he fires --

They will not see it coming.

[ofthatantet]

The only sentries alive to hear her are the two on the auditorium door. Rose hears her, though, and observes the two on the door checking in; she's looking around a corner with a compact she grabbed from her locker. She doesn't have the garter anymore, so she cut a hole in the side of her dress and clipped Helen's knife there.

With two on the door, she can't get any closer than this yet. So it goes. She drops the compact and draws a gun with her right hand.

In her left is a remote control.

Beep.

[no_choices]

The van parked in front of the school detonates; those handy little mines.

(Since it's full of weapons lockers, many of them holding things that, themselves, explode, which are now on fire, it's less one explosion that the world's biggest Chinese firecracker, now. The SWAT team member monitoring the parabolic mikes curses savagely and rips off his headphones.)

It's distracting; Rose pivots around the corner and pegs the two sentries while they're still gaping, and sprints barefooted towards the auditorium doors.

In the auditorium, everyone jerks their head towards the noise, except two people; Dolores instead sinks back against the wall and begins sending to all the hostages. Get down, stay down, get down, stay down, get down, stay down--

The other---the other no longer has a gun barrel in her ear.

That was a mistake, Lieutenant Malenfant.

[cutting_edgex23]

The scrap metal has barely begun to settle when X makes her move.

She goes for Malenfant first, the first blow slicing across his face while the second takes him solidly in the chest. X uses that grip as a pivot point, whirling on the men standing behind him. She tosses Malenfant's body away and into a second group of soldiers, then springs into the air, twisting sideways as she does.

It lets her take out two more men with the claws in her feet, heads lolling back against the wounds in their throats. She's only on the ground for a moment before she springs back up, launching herself off the back of one dying man and into another.

She hasn't even stopped to take a breath.

[no_choices]

The hostages are following orders, and so only the soldiers are witness to the massacre; to professional killers, it has a certain beauty, but it's hard for them to appreciate.

They are professionals, and they recover from the distraction and retrain their weapons quickly.

Just...

Perhaps not quickly enough.

(And they completely fail to see Rose stepping through the doorway.)

[cutting_edgex23]

It's the work of a moment to slice through the bodies of two more mercenaries, and X darts toward the wall, jumping and pushing off toward another crowd of opponents. She severs one's head from his neck as the rest get their weapons under control and open up.

The sudden roar of gunfire is loud and overwhelming, bullets tearing through X like she's made of paper. She staggers forward, taking one last swipe (a hit to the midsection that someone's going to have a great deal of trouble surviving) at what's in her field of vision before she goes down.

[ofthatantet]

And Rose shoots everyone left standing.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

She looks at X-23, and winces.

That was a really nice dress.

(Everything is so fucked.)

She has to hold it together. One of the bodies is stirring; Captain Stuyvesant puts up her hands. Well, one hand; the other is trying to hold her stomach together.

[wplainsdrifters]

Everyone is dead. Everyone but her.

Everything she's built--everything in her life--is gone. The men and women who trusted her to lead them; her business and her intention to keep herself. To do it her way and be beholden to no one.

It's all over.

"I surrender," she says hoarsely. "Okay? I give up."

It's only the truth.

[ofthatantet]

Rose shakes her head, once.

[wplainsdrifters]

She had a feeling.

"I am a prisoner," she says raggedly, her voice breaking, "of war."

There are supposed to be rules.