That's not making art, that's wasting time.

[Warren Worthington III]

(( OOC: kicking off the aerial-attack thread. have fun with it! ))

OK… let’s do this thing.

Warren misses the old days, when he and Jade could do aerial recon for as long as they needed to, masked by convenient cloud cover. These days all SHIELD installations monitor local weather phenomena for atypicality and automatically send scout probes to observe… so they only get a minute or so to scan.

Of course, it helps that we’re just the distraction, this time… and that Drake has helpfully shared the automated defensive routines. Warren has put a lot of effort over the years into maintaining his reputation as a tactical and evasive genius, and to be fair he is pretty good in both roles… but mostly, it’s intended as a cover for his periodic raids on the Camp, to keep anyone from wondering how he manages to consistently place his troops in the right place at the right time to neutralize the automated defenses, without suspecting an inside informant. Of course, letting Drake uncover a few spies every once in a while helps, too.

The whole thing is pretty distasteful, to be honest – especially having to conceal it from his own team – but it beats getting more people killed, and it’s working… most of the long-term inmates actually belong in prison; most of the mutants who don’t eventually get busted out. That’s more than anyone else can say about their local Camps, “conspiring with the enemy” notwithstanding.

Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though. He’d thought he’d come to terms with it all years ago, but his conversations with Josh have been stirring up his conscience, making him think about all the things he’s not proud of and wouldn’t want Josh to know about.

OK, that’s enough maudlin self-indulgence for one mission. He shakes his head to clear it and focuses his attention on the here and now. If we timed this right, Sam should be getting out right about -- NOW! He waits a moment for Fortress’ team to start their charge before signaling his squad to dive. Jade, you pick up Sam; the rest of us will keep the aerial defense grid busy!

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

As soon Warren gives the signal to go, Jade throws herself downwards into a sharp dive, wrapping herself in the winds. Fortunately, the base seems completely unready for their attack, and their first pass is relatively unopposed. A few lightning strikes later, the ground-based turrets are no longer a threat.

Jade, you pick up Sam; the rest of us will keep the aerial defense grid busy!

Will do, boss. Enough of Elliot comes through in those simple words that she snorts. I must be spending too much time with her…

At this point, more troops are getting ready, and a few Sentinels are seen among the mix. She swears slightly - in the past, they’d not had problems with them during raids. Sentinels were extremely expensive to maintain, so it was unusual for any of them to be operating during a quick strike. Too, she can’t find Sam’s mental signature anywhere - and he was supposed to be in transit along an outdoor pathway between the detention center and the main camp barracks.

Josh eyes Jade as he swoops through the air near her and Warren. Her resemblance to Ororo in battle was downright creepy, from her general build to the whitening of her eyes. It’s something more than that - I mean, her skin and hair are different colors. It’s the attitude, I think. Ororo always had a calm in battle that he envied. It contributed to her seeming sense of invulnerability - no one messed with Ororo. He was rather impressed that Jade had mastered that at the age of 18 or 19.

Where is he? Jade expands her search, letting it pour across the compound. Her lip twitches. There was Colonel Drake - or at least, she thought it was him. He quickly slips off her mental representation of the base. Rumor was it that he was rather paranoid about telepaths, and his mental defenses were good. She continues her search, and finds Sam exactly where she’d hoped he wasn’t: the detention center.

Warren, Josh… Sam is still in the detention center. I thought he was supposed to be in transit! Do we scrub the mission? It’s your call, boss… She bites her lip at the thought, and carefully flips around a few scattered shots. Jade sends a lightning blast skittering across the rooftop, sending the threat toppling over the edge.

Plucking Sam from his cell was going to be more complicated. It wouldn’t necessarily take longer, if they were smart about it, but it was likely to a lot more dangerous.

[Warren Worthington III]

> Warren, Josh… Sam is still in the detention center. I thought he was supposed to be in transit! Do we scrub the mission? It’s your call, boss…

Warren takes a moment in the relative privacy of his own mind to swear inventively at Drake. He was supposed to set this up! What happened? Not that he anticipates a response, really. Besides, no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy, he knows that in his bones at this point.

It takes him a moment to make up his mind and less than that to communicate a response. No scrub; we go through with this… but we need recon. Jade, Elliot – get into series and scan the detention center, I want to know who is where. Boss, they’ve still got the inhibitors up I know, I know… that’s why I want you in series, just push through it. Synch up with Josh if you can, three heads are better than two, right? I just need a snapshot to know what to expect. Meanwhile, pull up and out of range – I’ll keep the ground forces off your back!

He dives as he sends the order, concentrating on wrapping his body in a telekinetic aura as a volley of hand-weapon fire targets him. Ordinarily he’d just evade it – less exhausting than keeping the force-field up – but he doesn’t want any stray shots hitting his team.

Pretty soon he’s hit ground level and switches to evasive tactics as he swoops into level flight, instinctively weaving his way through a four-dimensional maze of weapon trajectories while his conscious mind juggles tactics. If they don’t have any special reception set up, we should be able to do this without losing much time… just in and out and – whoops! A handful of heat-seeking missiles added to the attack grid suddenly close off his evasive options, and he panics for a moment before grinning savagely. Oh, you are so going to regret that.

A quick loop-and-dive and his force-field is up again, deflecting the ground fire from a troop of armored guards in the courtyard. He doesn’t even try to dodge, just plummets straight at them; after a couple of seconds they realize their error and start running for cover.

It’s too late, of course. He leaves his peel-off to the last second, requiring telekinetic assist to avoid becoming a crater in the asphalt… sloppy, but worth it. He’s already thirty-five meters in the air when the first missile’s shockwave hits him, too weakened by distance to do much more than give him a speed boost, and he shouts in exultation at the sequence of explosions that follow it. He’s seventy-seven meters up when the dust settles, revealing a courtyard full of craters, fragments of armored suits and their former wearers.

The guilt hits only slightly harder than the last shreds of small-arms fire – but he’s learned to evade both.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

>Boss, they’ve still got the inhibitors up I know, I know… that’s why I want you in series, just push through it. Synch up with Josh if you can, three heads are better than two, right?

Josh nods slightly. This would be easier with Cerebro. He’d seen their historical files, though; the same attack that had killed his future self had also resulted in the Institute exploding. The remaining structure had collapsed in on itself, burying the sublevel. If Cerebro still was down there, the machinery probably wasn’t operable.

Interesting… either he trusts me now, or he doesn’t have any other choice. I hope it’s the first one… Josh eyes Warren as he dives forward, leaving the two of them behind. His eyes track Warren through a complex maneuver, resulting in a massive explosion, and an entire courtyard explodes, taking out a large group of enemy troops.

Josh’s eyes widen. The little maneuver had been extremely effective, but that wasn’t what had him staring. There was something savage about Warren’s fighting style. It’s 20 years. A lot happens in 20 years. He shakes his head slightly, and can’t help but think that his Warren would have tried to preserve as much life as possible.

He and Jade drop quickly to the ground, 200 meters or so from the detention center. She yanks him by the hand into the shadow of a building. “Just relax, okay? Elliot and I can guide you through this, it’s simple.” Josh shoots her a wry smile. “Warren and I kind of have mental linkage down to a science…”

Jade makes a face. “I knew you’d say that… I’ve seen the old battle footage of you and the boss, it’s eerie. Elliot always teases me about the fact that my dad is telepathic. I try not to think about the implications too much… but in any case, the technique is slightly different to connect on a tactical level with another telepath. Here we go…” Jade’s eyes sink into glowing whiteness, and she slumps against the sheet metal. Explosions sound off in the distance, and Josh relaxes into the mental connection with the two girls.

Jade’s more right than he expected. The connection almost takes his breath away. He’d thought that his mental connection with Warren was just about as fast as he could possibly work telepathically… and he was completely wrong. Even with his relative lack of link experience with the two women, they were exponentially faster than he was with Warren. When the other members of a mental connection were telepaths, he could anticipate their moves with crystal clarity, and even see the decision trees in their mind quickly queue up moves and choices and, just as quickly, discard options and carry out operations. He gapes, astonished.

Joshy, come on… Slightly abashed, Josh forces himself to begin working and scouting the area. His range was greatly expanded, and he could take advantage of Jade and Elliot’s mental coverage, as well. Everything seemed much sharper. Well, they definitely were caught off guard everyone’s disorganized…

Josh magnifies a section of the compound, and searches carefully. It was difficult to work through the psionic dampeners, but the sheer power of their combined strength had the force of a battering ram. Here’s the detention center, and… got him. Sam’s personality is mostly unchanged, even after 20 years. That’s definitely him - - - what? A ripple of surprise rips through the triple link. MOM? What the hell is she - I contacted her in London yesterday. She can’t be here Jade, we’ll check it out. She’s with… Colonel Drake? Who’s Colonel Drake - - Josh gasps as, involuntarily, images and episodic bits of Jade and Elliots memories of ‘Colonel Drake’ flow into his mind. There’s no way Bobby would believe it, Josh, he betrayed all of us when he stayed on with the murderers. We’ve gotta get Mom out of there! A few other surprises litter their survey, including Laurie, Rahne, John, and Rogue. The others were on the far side of the detention building from Storm and Sam, however, and the dampeners meant they weren't able to spend much time on the anomalous signals. Scratch Rogue, she's absolutely bonkers isn’t John supposed to be dead hey, Josh is too thanks, girls. Elliot simplifies their survey results and fires it off to Warren in a mental burst.

Boss, here you go. Found a couple interesting hits… Josh and Jade are near the front door, waiting to link up with you. Let me know if you need anything! Even the dire circumstances weren’t enough to break Elliot of her chipper mood.

[Warren Worthington III]

More than once during his career as a playboy-adventurer-turned-soldier, Warren has had occasion to appreciate the way his brain handles flight trajectories without his having to pay attention to it.

The first time, ironically, had been when Charlie’s team had launched a SAM at him and Josh, and he’d managed a safe landing while half-conscious. (He used to have nightmares about that fight all the time, after Charlie’d killed Josh. They’d turned into a different kind of nightmare after a while, where Warren had ended the fight by dropping her from a mile up, watching her body crumple when it hit the ground. He’s not sure, in retrospect, whether he’d stopped having those nightmares or simply stopped waking up from them.)

Since then that particular talent has saved his life dozens of times over. He’s never met another mutant who shares it… there’s plenty of folks who can outfly him, but nobody who feels as comfortable in the air as he does (it’s a mattress of air half a mile high and bigger than the planet, comes the phrase from a long-ago afternoon). He’s literally dodged gunfire in his sleep, instinctively found real-time paths through attack grids that take high-end computers whole seconds to solve.

It saves his life again today, as his attention is pulled irresistibly away from the array of pulse-bursts and projectile fire trying to pin him down by the growing mental fusion of Jade, Elliot, and Josh.

Not that Warren is any sort of telepath, but he’s spent more years in tighter linkage with telepaths than any non-telepath he’s ever met, and it’s left him more sensitive to the effects than normal. It’s one reason he’d instructed Elliot to keep his mind shielded from the new arrivals, just in case this new Josh turned out to be a SHIELD telepath – though, he’s finally admitting to himself, not the primary reason. The primary reason, he realizes as Josh’s mind spreads through the Brotherhood’s mental network like dye in a pitcher of water, was denial.

So much for that, he thinks wryly. There’s simply no denying the familiarity of that mental signature… not only is that really Josh, it’s Josh from back in their honeymoon period, before medical school and Nate and… everything. It’s not that Josh somehow survived the explosion, it’s that he somehow never experienced it, or the years leading up to it.

So. Time travel. He doesn’t even realize he’s thinking “out loud” as the ramifications present themselves. Because if Josh and his fellow anachronisms really did “jump” the last twenty years somehow (and it’s not the only alternative, but it’s the most plausible one left – if a physical impossibility can ever be considered plausible), then maybe Josh isn’t so crazy to think about “jumping” back. Maybe this doesn’t ever need to have happened.

Elliot’s “map” reaches him as a stream of tracer bullets cuts through the space he vacates seconds before. Good Lord – more of them?!? Storm? Drake? What in the name of... His mind goes blank for a moment as he struggles with the implications. If that’s really them, somehow, then what happens if they don’t get back? I never would have made it without Storm, after Josh died… but he’d already be dead? Or missing, anyway… he’d never have adopted Nate, and... I… they… gah!

It’s all too much to make sense of, but one thing seems clear: rescuing Cannonball has just dropped in relative priority. "Sorry, Sam…" he whispers privately… this isn’t the first time he’s had to sacrifice part of his team to more urgent goals, but it’s never easy. Well, maybe we’ll spring them all, he adds encouragingly to himself.

Meanwhile, he is in the middle of a firefight, so he lets the metaphysical implications drop and focuses his attention on more tangible strategy. OK, change of plans folks: primary mission has changed. We spring the anachronisms. Sam is a secondary priority. Airforce, we’re going in here and here, he thinks, focusing his attention on key points in Elliot’s mental map and counting on her to re-transmit those points to the team as needed, and extracting our targets. Close quarters fighting, so be careful! Fortress, your team is off distraction-duty – scatter and reconvene here, pincer formation, give us an exit strategy… like we used on that missile silo, remember? Pound ‘em hard! Elliot, you keep this thing synched and you get that week in Bermuda if I have to fly you there myself. OK, everybody clear?

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

Josh feels Warren’s thoughts momentarily brush his through the assault team’s telepathic network. The realization comes next, and Josh almost screams in relief. The last few days had been unbearable. Having a near-facsimile of his husband appear suspicious of his every move had been giving him serious concentration problems. It had been incredibly unsettling, and a distraction to anything he’d set his mind to. Warren’s understanding, then, feels like a weight lifted off his shoulders.

Too, the mental contact was like fresh breeze cutting through a hot, humid room. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to depend on mental contact with Warren over the past year. Cut off from his husband, the ‘Warren-sense’ in the back of his mind had been strangely empty for the last few days. It felt like having a hand tied behind his back. While this Warren wasn’t truly his husband, and their combat link probably wouldn’t be the same, he could already feel Warren’s distinctive senses adding information to the team’s mental link. Storm’s in trouble… Josh thinks automatically. The atmosphere around her tended to tense up during struggles. We have to get to her as soon as possible.

> So. Time travel.

Yes, time travel!!! The thoughts burst from his head, unbidden, but full of relief at Warren’s understanding. It’s impossible for us to lie to each other, you big idiot. Josh scowls slightly, but in good humor.

> Maybe this doesn’t ever need to have happened.

Maybe not. We'll have to work on that after we're done here. The thought encourages Josh, and his mind shoots off into a thousand directions at once. Time travel was theoretically impossible… but there they were. All we have to do is change what caused this - and Warren said it was the mental attack on Washington DC. That’s a start. Suddenly, Josh pulls his presence more tightly around him, and looks over at Jade, who’s crouching behind a crate and staring at the detention center doors. Gotta stop doing that. His relative inexperience with his telepathic side often resulted in losing track of his own five senses.

> Pound ‘em hard! Elliot, you keep this thing synched and you get that week in Bermuda if I have to fly you there myself. OK, everybody clear?

Got it. Jade sends her thoughts over the link, then motions for Josh. “I see a few troopers on each side of the door… and no cover between there and here. I say we run straight for the door. I’ll take the right and the sky, you take the left and the door.” Josh nods. “Gotcha… on three?”

One, two… three! The two of them burst from cover, and Josh pumps his legs forward with all his strength. He sweeps a trooper off his feet, flinging the man backwards, and high into the air. Another gets smashed through the faceplate with his own rifle, causing him to crumple to the ground. Through the assault team’s link, Josh can feel Jade blowing airborne enemies out of the sky, as if the lightning was under his own control. Too, Warren swooping down towards them is like he’s the one soaring through the sky.

When they reach the gate, Josh gathers his power into a battering ram, and hits the barricade, almost blowing the metal doors off their hinges. The two of them enter a small reception foyer, thick with guards, and take cover. Over the course of a minute, a combination of wind, lightning, and telekinesis incapacitate all of their adversaries.

Josh sends the final trooper flying through a glass partition, where he lays still, unmoving, and gets up from cover. “Okay… where to?” Jade, eyes still glowing white, lets the winds subside for the moment and looks back for Warren. We have to get to Mom - I don’t trust Drake.


Josh isn't sure at this point whether she's referring to Bobby Drake or Colonel Drake, but he nods, and does a quick survey of their victims. Everyone still seems out - good.

[Warren Worthington III]

> Yes, time travel!!! It’s impossible for us to lie to each other, you big idiot.

The thought keeps echoing through Warren’s mind as he dodges missile fire.

Of course, he knows perfectly well he’s supposed to keep his attention on the war-zone he’s in the middle of, and far more importantly a war-zone his team is in the middle of. It doesn’t take a strategic genius to figure out that having your field commander wool-gathering in the middle of a mission is a recipe for disaster. He knows this.

He just can’t seem to stop.

It’s distracting enough that a previously straightforward extraction mission has turned into some kind of crazy Twilight Zone episode full of time-travelers and historical paradoxes and who-knows-what. He could handle that, he’s pretty sure; he’s had to deal with a lot of crazy stuff in the last two or three decades.

But one of those time-travelers turns out to be Josh. Alive. Young. Healthy. Completely untouched by the insanity of the last twenty years, his mind still open and trusting and full of an uncorrupted love Warren no longer even dreams about. And that’s too much. Damn it, I’d gotten over this! It’s a lie, of course; but it’s one he’s gotten very good at telling himself over the last decade, and he can feel it crumbling around him a little more with every passing second.

Fortunately, the rest of Airforce squad remains more on-mission than its nominal leader, and it doesn’t take them long to penetrate the cell-block’s outer defenses. Meanwhile, camp security has stopped lobbing missiles at him, apparently realizing that all they’re accomplishing is damaging their own forces, and has brought out its hovertank division instead. OK, now this gets interesting.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

Three…two… one. Go!

The metal doors slide open, revealing a medium-sized storage area. Normally, Josh assumed, it would be stacked up with rows of supplies. Right now, however, the neat rows had been obliterated to build blockades, which a platoon of prison guards were crouched behind.

Josh reaches out with his powers and plucks one of the troopers up, who shouts, flapping his arms wildly. He catapults the soldier towards them, and Jade throws out a hand. A lightning bolt arcs out and nails him square in the chest, flinging him backwards into a pile of crates. They repeat this procedure several times until the room is mostly clear.

He looks sidelong at Jade. “You remind me a lot of your mother. Combat style, and everything.” He lifts another enemy and throws them upwards, smashing them through the skylight above them.

It’s difficult to hear her response over the howling wind. “I know. She’s taught me everything.” The wind picks up the last trooper and swirls him up and out.

Josh sends the telepathic-all clear to Elliot. Ready to move on. They’re right ahead, I think… You’re right, I can feel them. Jade steps through the battle wreckage, and swings the door open.

And is presented with a dead end. “Damn it… Another storeroom!” Jade looks around frantically for another door, but it’s truly a dead end. “How could we be so stupid?”

Josh shakes his head, angry with himself. The two of them had been trying to meet up with Bobby and Ororo, but the complex was heavily guarded. They’d detoured through the storage area to avoid a particularly nasty crossfire setup they’d picked up off one of the officer’s minds. He slowly approaches the wall and traces a hand over it. Cheap military construction… I bet…

“Jade - they’re right there. Can you feel them?” He could - along with the minds intent on doing them harm. “Stand back.” Josh braces himself, and focuses on a heavy metal container, which he slides with some effort across the room into position. “Here goes nothing.” Josh closes his eyes, focusing only on his impromptu battering ram. It hurtles through the air, smashing into the wall with a huge crash. Wall paneling and molding fly everywhere, kicking up a dust cloud.

*crossing over into Spitting out Frustration, Line by Line*