Chapter 18- Venting a Loss

St. Justus Island- Jungle on the northern side of the Island, 21- March- 2008 (Late Morning)

Raven Darkhomle- (Mystique)

They had waited two hours for the sun to fully come up, so that Exodus could fully lift the monster that was Cain. She had spent that time with the kids, eating and talking about anything, but Irene’s death. Then they flew towards their target.

So here she was, watching a sunny heavily guarded three-story house. There were three barns, west of the main house, and a boat house part way to the shore south of it. Exodus had dropped off ‘Juggernaut’, as he had named himself, a mile or so east of the house. Meanwhile, Toad and Selene’s other man were in the water, waiting for the commotion to start.

“Think the plane is in one of those barns?” Exodus asked, softly next to her.

"No, the first two are for the drugs, while the third is a staging place for the people they have kidnapped and plan to sell," Mystique told him, as she watched the patrolling men with assault rifles and submachine guns.

“They need two to store their filth?” The knight asked confused.

“One is for storage, the other is for processing.” The shape-shifter corrected. “They fly the raw stuff in, process it here, and then smuggle it into the states. Then they smuggle out kidnapped people and force them to work their fields where they grow it, or sell them to traffickers.”

She finally saw an opening, when one of the patrolling men was moving closer to the tree line. So she shifted her appearance and made herself look closer to one of these flannel-wearing thugs.

"You know that once that mountain gets here, we will have to act," Exodus muttered, pointing out that they were on the clock.

“Si (yes), that's why I am getting some answers." The shape-shifter said in a male voice that she used a decade ago with a strong Mexican accent, before she moved closer to the guard now unzipping his fly. It took her some time, moving slowly to minimize the amount of noise she generated.

Still, her eyes never left her prey, not while he struggled with getting his white underwear down enough to pee, while still holding his gun, not while he sighed and emptied his urine onto a tree, or while the man groaned in satisfaction. He was locked in her sights, even when she picked up a rock and threw it at a bush off to the man's left.

The man had a hard time, holding his pants up with one hand, while he moved and aimed the Ak rifle with the other towards the noise. Yet Mystique didn’t, when she changed her left hand into a mold for his mouth just before holding his mouth shut, and her right pulled and plunged a serrated blade into the guard's liver, twice more she stab into both his kidneys.

Then she shifted some of her leg muscle mass up into her arms, so that she could quickly drag the dead man deeper into the brush. Once she felt safe that he was out of view, she altered her face and build to match his, and by the time she pulled his gun from his hands, the guard’s face on hers was again a perfect match. But before leaving she quickly checked the man, for any signs of habits.

She checked his wallet, and ID, for his name, before grabbing his cheap brand cigarettes, but left the equally cheap lighter. She stored the tobacco in the same pocket the guard used. Then she took a moment to shift around the hollow spaces she had to create to become his height and shape. This pleased her as it meant that she had enough space to keep her costume, knife, and gun inside her.

At least she looked perfect on the outside, her gunshot wound from New York, flared in pain again from the full body shift, but Mystique was experienced enough to police her face as she exited the jungle and headed back along the man’s projected route.

“Tomas.” She stopped partway towards the third and heavily guarded barn. As that had been the name on the dead man's ID. She looked and saw a middle-aged man waving at her, unlike the other guards around the place, he seemed unarmed when he asked. “¿A dónde fuiste? (Where did you go?)”

Mystique shrugged and guessed the man’s voice before answering. “Para orinar. (To take a piss).”

The man then pointed at her and ordered. “Atención, hoy es un gran trabajo para nosotros. (Pay Attention, today is a big job for us.)” Then the man turned around and walked back inside the house.

‘You have no idea.’ Mystique thought, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a cigarette. As she neared the guards on the barn furthest from the house, she was already pressing her free hand over the ‘pockets’ of her clothes.

“¿Perdiste tu encendedor, Tomas? (Misplace your lighter, Tomas?” One of the guards watching the barn asked her.

Then the other one added. “Siempre estás perdiendo cosas. (You’re always losing things.)” While digging out a lighter of his own and offering it to her to use.

Mystique smiled and muttered. “Si (Yes).” Then she used the lit flame to start the smoke, but she shifted where the tobacco smoke went, as she sent it into a hollow space in her legs instead of her lungs.

As she stood on ‘watch’ smoking, she felt the distant tremors caused by the titan of a man coming towards them. As the other guard dug out a smoke of his own, she frowned as he too started to notice them. Instead of lighting the stick in his mouth, he asked. “¿Terremoto? (Earthquake?”

However, before either she or the other guard could answer, they perked up at the sound of a distant propeller. And sure enough, a handful of seconds later, they saw the large cargo plane circle the property.

The shape-shifter smiled, before taking in all of the remaining matter of her cigarette. As she spit out the filter, she muttered in her own voice. "Sometimes the plan just makes itself." The female voice coming out of their friend's mouth confused them enough for her to retrieve her knife, and cut through both the man's cigarette and throat, before burying it into the temple of the other guard.

However, no one noticed her, not the other dozen men guarding the estate, as they were too busy pointing or shooting at the over eight-foot-tall man jogging, then running at them while he laughed. “Ha ha ha. That tickles.” She didn’t see it, but she heard the screams start and just suddenly stop as the man's force field made meat paste of the four men too stupid to get out of Juggernaut's way.

Instead, Mystique was retrieving the disc-shaped radio from her costume, and once triggered said. "Exodus, make sure to secure the plane. I'll clear the barns first, and then I'll move on to the main house."

She waited to hear him say. "Confirmed." Before she returned the communications device to the stored belt within her. She felt him say something else, but by then her radio was smothered by her flesh and body.

More importantly, there were people that no one would care that she killed, and she really needed to kill someone. The shape-shifter would much prefer that, that someone was Cable, but the blue woman would take what she could get.

Then the sound of stone breaking made her look back at the battle. Juggernaut had pulled up a part of the house’s sidewalk, and was using it to swat away men that got close enough to him. Their guns not only seemed to do nothing to him, but also nothing seemed to be able to damage the leather armor he wore either.

Feeling that she could leave the tasks assigned to them, Mystique reached down and pulled the knife out of the dead man’s head. By the time she stood up straight, the side door to the barn opened and another guard with an assault rifle poked his head out.

“¿Qué estás esperando, estamos bajo ataque? (What are you waiting for, we are under attack?)” Mystique shouted at the man.

The confused guard shook his head for a moment, before waving at someone else behind him, and sure enough as the shape-shifter, turned around to shoot at the giant mutant, that guard and another one ran passed her. So she smiled when she opened fire into the two men's backs.

They jerked and tried to continue to move forward and join the battle, but they quickly lost their strength, and then they fell forward dead. She didn’t waste another glance at them, before turning and entering the barn.

She quickly made her face panicked and scared, despite the joy she was feeling, as she ran into the now open and unguarded barn, as the fighting continued behind her. She quickly looked around and tried to locate any and all threats inside. And sure enough despite the two men already leaving to join the battle there were still two more guarding the half a dozen cages. One on the ground floor his weapon aimed at the unwashed women and children inside, and another looking down and aiming his at her from a loft.

Additionally, she could hear a woman crying for 'help' and a man grunting from a side chamber on the other side of the cages. The two guards didn't have rifles only handguns, and they opened their mouths to ask her a question, but she didn't let them. Mystique thumbed the toggle on the rifle to signal fire, before unleashing a round into each, first the man above, then the other as he turned and tried to bring his weapon to bear.

That made the prisoners move towards her and start asking her for help, instead of replying, she relaxed her powers, in such a way that her costume was put on as she transformed, and her knife and gun were holstered to her belt. The sight of this made all of them back away from her in fear, except one.

It was a young black boy, who only understood that she had killed the men who captured and caged him. So she kneeled to get closer to him in height, and she reached beside him, for the lock. She recognized its model, and knew that while she could pick it, it took time to do so.

"Who has the keys?" She asked the boy, who was still reaching out to her.

He stopped reaching and turned towards the room, and while the grunting had stopped, the woman still cried wordlessly.

Mystique reached into the cage to rub the brave boy’s shaved head, before telling him. “Be right back.” Then she moved towards the room. Seeing that the door was closed but slid, and not swung, the shape-shift formed a plan and shifted her from, into that of a small child, even younger than the boy in the cage.

So this confused the bearded man, who had one hand on his zipper, and another aiming a gun at her, but only for a moment before he grinned and fired at the small white child holding a gun as large as her whole body.

The bullet hit her protected chest as she grew in size to her normal shape, and then before he could fire again, she lashed out at the man. Not with the gun, but with her knife. He tried to protect his chest and face, but those were not Mystique’s target, the fingers of his hand were.

The bearded man cried out, as four of the five fingers holding his gun were severed from his hand. The shape-shifter then held up the rifle one-handed, barrel inches from his face, as she took the two steps needed to reach and cut the bindings of the woman, half naked and soiled laying in the bed.

"The gun is by your feet," Mystique told the woman.

With shaky hands, the brunette tried her best to recover herself, but much of her shirt was no longer attached to it, so it would easily fall open, despite the woman's efforts. Then after a painfully slow couple of minutes, the woman crawled down, picked out the index finger still stuck in the trigger guard, and picked up the gun. The way she held it was wrong, with the barrel down by her pinky.

"Turn it around." The shape-shift told the woman. It took her another handful of seconds to figure out how she was supposed to hold it. While she did, Mystique sheathed her knife and inched closer to the bearded man, and took the key ring from his belt. Then the blue-skinned woman told the woman. "He raped you, you decided his punishment."

Then she moved to leave and unlock the cages.

However, Mystique heard something she didn’t expect, but had heard before when the gun went off. “Mutant freak.”

The bullet hit her equally protected back, knocking only a cough out of her. Before she took a deep breath and flipped the assault rifle back to full auto. After turning to the angry woman and confused man, she emptied the remaining ammo of her stolen weapon into the two of them.

"I hate being shot," Mystique muttered, before throwing the now empty weapon at the soiled and bloody bed.

Then the shape-shifter left the room and paused at all of the scared and hopeful faces in the cages. She walked first to the body of the dead guard, picked up his blood-stained handgun. She shook off what blood she could as she took the steps toward the little black boy's cage.

She checked the ammo status of the weapon, before showing the boy the keys. While the boy looked like a regular human, he could be a mutant too, and just hadn’t awakened his powers yet. As the boy reached out towards her, the other occupant in his cage moved to join him. She was also a child but a little older than the brave boy, but clearly as normal as he was.

“Please, I don’t care that you are a mutant, please help us?” One of the adult captives asked.

Mystique stood up and looked at the woman who had found enough courage to ask. "You sure you don't care?" the shape-shifter asked, before triggering her powers and taking the shape of the other woman. Minus that she did copy the woman's clothes and still wore her costume.

The woman could no longer look at her, but continued pleading. “I didn’t ask to be here.”

"And you think I asked to be born different than the rest of the world?" Mystique asked her with her own voice. Then she reverted back to her usual form and then tried to find the key that went to the boy's cage. It took her a bit, and on the third try something made her pause before turning the key.

The sound of guns and screams outside were getting closer.

She stopped and looked, just before the side door she used to get in here, was kicked open and a man wielding an Uzi jogged inside. The shape-shifter had enough time to pull and aim her stolen gun, before the whole front wall exploded.

The sound of the wood splintering was drowned out by the voice of a giant. "You can escape from the Juggernaut!" his massive hand knocked the debris away from his helmet before lashing out and grabbing the guard by one of his legs. The titan then swung the man like a raggedy doll.

The guard flew about in the giant's hand before his head hit the roof of one of the cages, separating from the rest of his body, and soon after the rest of the body too separated from the held leg, and the dead body flew across the barn and hit the far side of the barn.

Cain looked at the severed leg still held in his hand and made a joke. "And that's why you don't skip leg day."

The prisoners were either crying or curling in on themselves, even the brave black boy, as the large man laughed at his own joke, for a moment. Then another bullet from outside dinged off of his shoulder pads, causing the massive man to turn around and hurl the leg like a javelin at the offending person.

Mystique heard a scream shortly after the toss, meaning the large man had hit someone with the limb.

Then she sighed, and unlocked the boy's cage, before tossing the keys towards the one with the woman, whose form she copied, was in. Before doing what she should have done in the first place, and ignored the prisoners and moved on to her next objective.