Like Clockwork (Part Five)

I was an accessory to two crimes. The same crime, just different executions of it actually – stealing a car. Granted, I wasn't awake and had no role in it the first time, but I still benefited from it. The second time, I absolutely stood by and watched Laura use her claw like a slim jim tool on an old van to open the lock in a matter of seconds.

"Huh," I said as I watched her scoot over to the driver's seat to pop off the cover to the steering column to get to the wires, "For some reason I thought you'd do something more subtle than that to get in."

"Subtlety is not a substitute for speed when it comes to stealing a vehicle," Laura said as she engine flared to life, "Get in. We must go."

Not wanting to be caught out in the open stealing a motor vehicle, I hopped inside and kept my eyes peeled for anyone who might have seen us as Laura pulled off, "You think this thing is big enough for everyone?"

Laura nodded, keeping her eyes on the road like a diligent driver, "Whichever two sit in the rows with Santo and Saberwolf will be tight, but it should be fine."

Maybe so, but that didn't mean jack if we didn't have a real plan. We'd just be driving around in a hot car until something came up, "Sure, but we don't even know where we're going next-," Before I could express that point, my phone went off, "Yo."

"Marcher!" Brian shouted in my ear. In the background I could hear a mishmash of noise, including screaming and gunfire. My blood curdled, "People are here and shooting!"

I should have known. Saberwolf was really recognizable. If anyone was looking for us and spotted him, there was no question that he was the thing that had been with us, "Alright! Alright! Where is here?"

"I don't know! We didn't get that far from the house, maybe a mile or two? Hold on!" Brian stopped talking for a moment. I heard footsteps, yelling, and more sounds of deadly fighting, "Hellion says Parklabrea! He'd know better than I do!" He said, using his leader's codename.

I was already punching in the general location in Google Maps before he finished his sentence, "You got a more exact location than that?" I asked before leaning over to Laura, "Head west."

With a hard look in her eyes, Laura turned the car around in the middle of traffic and took off in the direction of certain danger.

"No. We were gonna knock around for a bit, and Wither wanted to see a museum nearby, so we were heading there," Brian said, "Trust me. When you get close, you'll know."

I didn't like the sound of that, but he hadn't said anything about anyone being hurt or dead, so we had that to go off of.

As we got closer, I realized what Brian had been talking about when he told me I'd know when we were close.

I saw a large, silver aircraft hovering in the air above the city street. Something told me it wasn't exactly cleared to be in Los Angeles airspace, "Is that a gunship? They have a gunship?"

Laura sped straight ahead down the street where everything seemed to be going haywire the most, "They have everything," Without warning, she turned off of the street onto a sidewalk underneath where the aircraft was.

Every second that went on, I hated the situation more. Whatever had happened, the Hellions had fallen back to a park for more cover and space for a fight. The problem with that? The park was surrounded on all sides by tall buildings with sidewalks leading in and out serving as choke points.

Remember when I said tactical brilliance wasn't ever their strong suit? And that was setting aside the fact they were a bunch of teenagers like me, panicking that they were getting shot at.

Laura was merciless, though. The moment we started riding along one of the sidewalks to get into the park, she drove straight through a group of guys with expensive-looking high-tech suits covering them from head-to-toe. Some of them had heavy armor with weapons that were parts of their suits; automatic weaponry in their arms and cannons on their backs. It was some serious sci-fi stuff.

It didn't help them from getting turned into roadkill.

I must say, in my two recent encounters with graphic violence, I was saved from actually seeing the worst of it. The night before at the border, it had been really dark for most of the fight, so I didn't get the best view of Laura slicing and dicing soldiers up, nor of me putting holes in them and blowing up faces. And here, these guys were covered in futuristic armor, so while the impact of a van hitting them might have been messy inside, I didn't have to look at it from the outside.

Laura pulled over the second we saw the first Hellion in peril and we both jumped out. My hands were glowing, and her claws were out. Anyone in a shitty spaceman suit caught an adamantium blade or more light than they ever wanted to have touch them. That was only enough to clear the way to help one person though.

Kevin had been running away to try and get somewhere out of the way. His powers weren't a lot of help here since he had to touch things to make it work, and he wasn't exactly going to get skin-on-skin contact with a bunch of hermetically sealed jerks with guns very easily.

I yanked him down behind the cover of a large concrete planter containing a full-grown tree and immediately started bitching, "Why the fuck did you corral yourselves into a kill box?"

I might have had the urge to slap him if I knew I wouldn't lose my hand in the process.

Kevin looked up at me, but tucked his head the second more shots started coming out way, "It just started happening! We tried to fight 'em on the street, but we couldn't move, and there were too many people to keep out of the way! Brian and Cess tried, but the rest of us couldn't keep all of their attention!"

Well, we could try to muster a counterattack. Laura and I were supposed to be the cavalry, so it was time we finished riding in to get everybody out, "Laura, we gotta-," I started to say before realizing that she wasn't there with us, "Laura? Where did she go? She was just with us."

Kevin shrugged and popped his head up to peek around while I covered him with light blasts. Why did she just up and go lone wolf again? We had been over this before. That wasn't the way to do this.

I fired some shots that bought us a few moments and dragged Kevin up to go find the others. He ducked and flinched with every shot that sounded out, even though none were coming at us. I didn't have time for that.

We found Julian dealing with a good number of guys in bodysuits, using his telekinesis to sweep them aside while Santo was battering them with his bare hands in close. Julian saw me and set the telekinesis aside, "This is fucking mess! I didn't know you were into all this!"

I was mad, so I took out that anger on the nearest jabroni in armor trying to get the drop on us. I shot him dead-center and blew the chest of his suit up, "I told you people were trying to kill me! What did you think that meant when I went and asked for help?"

Julian put up a force field to stop himself from getting shot, "I didn't know you meant the U-Men!" He barked back, "How do you keep doing this to yourself?"

U-Men. So that's what they were called. It sounded familiar, "What are they all about?"

Julian angrily grabbed two U-Men with his telekinesis and threw them away over the treetops, "Ripping off mutant parts and putting them on themselves for the powers!"

I stopped looking for targets to shoot in order to give him a curious look, "Ew. What kind of Frankenstein's Monster shit is that?"

This time Julian stopped to look at me like I was stupid, "You fought them already and didn't know?"

"No! I never fought these guys! They weren't the ones after us before!"

"Fantastic! So we have an all new pack of douchebags here to kill you! Any plans, Marcher?"

Finally, we could get past the bickering and get down to business. My eyes went straight up at the stupidly imposing vessel in the sky, "First, take out the air superiority."

Julian agreed with me, but winced when I brought it up, "I tried. I can't bring that thing down. It's too big."

"Let me try," I put my hands together and slowly pulled them apart, feeling the resistance as a tiny little ball of light started to form. Julian saw what I was doing and quickly moved away, remembering the Danger Room. I stopped making the Lux Bomb immediately, "No-no-no, get back here, asshole! I need you to cover me!"

He was afraid. As he should have been. The Lux Bomb was the most dangerous and powerful thing I had in my arsenal. But it wasn't like I was aiming it at him. Julian didn't care though, "No chance! I'm not letting you shoot that thing around me again!"

"Don't be a pussy!" I needed some kind of cover. My hands were occupied while I was making a Lux Bomb, so I couldn't fight until it was done, "Put up a forcefield around us and give me a hand!"

Julian was not running away. He was flying away, "I've got U-Men to fight! Rockslide, cover Solaris! He's gonna shoot down the ship!"

Santo seemed to like the idea. At least someone did, "Awesome! How you gonna do that, Marcher?"

"A giant light bomb," I told him. But I couldn't find another opening to start up on the Lux Bomb. Damn Julian Keller, "Your leader's a bitch sometimes!"

"Yeah, sometimes. Whoa!" Santo moved in the way of gunfire intended for me and intercepted the bullets. He was a solid dude, both literally and figuratively, "You want to get to him, you gotta go through me!"

The fear of being run down by a living golem was something that I could relate to. Punk-ass U-Men though? They probably never imagined it happening to them until right then. But even with Santo running around like the most imposing bodyguard anyone could dream up, I still couldn't get a clean opening to charge my attack.

Fed up and annoyed, I put my glorious plan to shoot down the aircraft on the backburner. It wouldn't work until I could find a place quiet enough to prepare a proper Lux Bomb. On my way to relocate, I caught sight of Sooraya and Cessily.

As I watched them, a question arose. If you were a regular joe, even if you had fancy-ass weapons, what would make you think you could fight a living sandstorm? Because some of the U-Men were armored up, Sooraya didn't hold back.

A strong enough sandstorm can strip the skin off of a human being. Did you know that? I didn't. It had never come up until that moment. When Sooraya realized that she was doing that much damage to the U-Men who didn't have armor, she damn near stopped her attack outright, partially turning back from her dust form.

Anyone looking to take advantage of the opening presented by her remorse was quickly put down by Cessily, who had morphed her arms into mallets to clobber them with. Okay, so they sure didn't need my help. Good to know.

"You guys alright?" I shouted out, just to make sure. Clearly, they could handle themselves, if I'd had any doubts before.

Cessily nodded, keeping her eyes peeled for more enemies, "Yeah. Glad to see you made it. Welcome to the party."

I scoffed and tried to look offended, "My parties are way better than this. I don't see a drop of alcohol anywhere," I turned and pointed at the thing in the sky, "Maybe that thing has some? I'm gonna go see."

"You're going for the airship?" Cessily asked before grinning at the thought of turning the tables, "Want some help?"

"Of course! It's why I came to L.A. in the first place."

And so, we took off to try and get me a better spot to take a shot from. But as we moved, something was weird.

"Wait. It's getting lower," Cessily pointed out, "Why is it getting lower?"

"No idea. I'm thinking it might be important though," Cessily had my back, so we ran off to the part of the park that the aircraft had lowered itself down over. The U-Men seemed to be falling back as we approached, "Are they pulling out of here?"

"Good riddance!" Cessily said. Bullets just passed through her body as she contorted herself and stretched close enough to lash out at enemy combatants and attack them with long finger claws.

Seriously, the Hellions were dangerous as fuck. I mean, they were really good. In a head-to-head battle royal situation, I didn't think the Paladins could beat them straight-up. Actually, with the numbers advantage they would have, I'd say more than likely not.

When we got close enough, we could see that they were indeed retreating. It made sense. Even with the ambush, they were getting their asses handed to them. But that wasn't the point. From where we were when we got close enough, they'd gotten something that they could objectively leave with and call it a victory.

Kimura had Laura, beaten to an absolute pulp, tucked underneath one arm like a sack. She was covered in blood. Her own from the looks of the wounds that I could see healing on her, including a fucking bullet hole in her head.

"Laura! Goddamn it!" I yelled in vain. Cessily gasped with her hands to her mouth. Just screaming Laura's name wasn't going to do anything. She wasn't going to magically wake up and fight her way back to me, "Give her back, you sadistic skank!"

Kimura seemed overjoyed to see me, if only because she got to lord Laura's half-dead body over me, "Well if it ain't lover boy! Don't worry, she's not dead. Not yet, at least!" She punctuated, disrespectfully slapping Laura's head roughly, "I might let you have the only part of her that she's any good for to you once we're done."

Evil bitch. I wanted her head on a stick. But here, we were reminded that this particular aircraft was a gunship. It turned around and pointed its guns right at us before opening fire. Cessily tried to protect me, but she couldn't stop an accurate 30mm cannon, so I turned tail and ran. It wasn't like I could help anyone riddled with holes.

While I ducked for cover, the gunship took off, leaving us and any U-Men unfortunate enough to miss the departure on the ground. They stood out in the open, waving at the gunship to come back, as if it would land and open its doors all over again to let them on.

I was livid. I was so angry I ran out and blindsided those morons. With the noise of the takeoff, none of them realized they were being attacked until they were already down. The last one, I didn't even shoot. I sprinted up and punched him in the side of the head as hard as I could. He wasn't heavily armored and dropped like a rock.

I don't remember ever hitting any living thing that couldn't defend itself as hard as I beat on that guy. This was his fault. This was the U-Men's fault. This was the Facility's fault.

And it was my fault. I fucked up again, and someone else I knew was going to suffer because of it. I heard muffled words from different people in my ear, but I just kept punching.

Eventually, I was pulled off of my victim by Santo. I was stronger physically than the rest of the Hellions, all except for him. I could struggle as much as I wanted, I wasn't getting out of his grip, especially with my arms bound, "Get off me, Rockslide!"

I'd gotten through the U-Man's stupid boy in the bubble helmet and had been doing a very good job of turning his face to hamburger with my fists. I wasn't finished.

"Don't let him go, Rockslide!" Julian ordered, "Solaris, this shit isn't helping anybody! Calm down!"

I kicked and spat, but Santo didn't budge. I couldn't even hit him from how he had me, "Fuck you! You didn't lose anybody!" I bellowed at Julian, "And I don't know how to find these guys, so Laura's screwed! I don't know what to do now, so I'm gonna beat the fuck out of these cowards until I feel better! And that might take a while!"

"Yeah, you just do that while they get farther away," Julian said, "Do you want to throw a hissy fit, or do you want to help Laura out?"

I wasn't going anywhere, so I stopped fighting. Instead, I just glared at Julian. I had to be careful or I would have given him the laser pointer treatment and blinded him, "Do you even care? She's just a clone to you anyway, isn't she?"

Julian let out frustrated grunt and grabbed one of the goons that tried crawling away with his telekinesis. He threw him across the ground like a ragdoll, "This happened on my watch too. The U-Men, and that bitch with them... they came right in here, wrecked shit, reached into my refrigerator and took off! I'm pissed too. So let's go do something about it that actually means something."

That sounded good. Really good. But a pep talk was one thing. Facts were facts, "We can't catch them, genius. We can't find them! How are we gonna do something that people whose actual job it is to find them couldn't do it?"

Once again, I found myself out of my depth. Even when I tried to enlist help, they were just as lost as I was. But they were fresher than I was, so they weren't done quite yet.

"We're gonna try. Or are you just a quitter?" Julian said, trying to bait me. I felt my anger rise again, so it worked, "I could say a lot of things about you, Marcher, but I never thought 'quitter' was one of them."

What did he know? He'd spent most of the semester screwing around, playing big man on campus. Sure, there'd been a few things I'd heard of the Hellions getting mixed up in, but it was more delinquent crap than matters of life or death.

Me on the other hand? I was starting to feel fatigued with it all. It was so much, and it just kept piling up. I was so sick of taking lumps. It seemed like every creep on the planet and beyond lined up to take a chunk out of us. It wasn't just me. It was Laura, it was the entire student body, it was Saberwolf.

It was Miss Pryde.

I was frustrated. I had been for some time. And I tried to keep a level head, tried to be the brave leader guy, because that was what my job was, right? But I was tired of my people taking this kind of heat. I needed someone, something to take all of this shit out on.

At that moment, my phone went off. I looked back at Santo, who finally set me down so I could check it, not that I wanted to have any conversations with anyone at the moment. That was, until I saw who was calling. I couldn't hit the green accept button quickly enough, "Wolf? Oh man, are you alright?"

In my fear and unbridled rage that Laura had been taken, I had forgotten that Saberwolf had been with the Hellions when this whole thing started. I hadn't seen him the entire time we'd been fighting. Now I had another reason to feel bad. But Wolf had just what I needed.

"I cannot speak for long. I have infiltrated the enemy aircraft. How do you wish for me to proceed?"

My phone was still on speaker from the last time I'd used it the night before at the border, so everyone around me heard him. Santo pointed off in the direction Kimura took Laura in, "Your robot thingy is on the gunship? How?"

"I possess stealth camouflage."

All eyes turned to me. I had no response for any of the Hellions, "...He usually doesn't fight for me. I really didn't know he could do that," I said meekly. Seriously, it had never come up.

Now all of a sudden we had a real chance to make a difference. Everyone could see it and everyone had an opinion.

Brian muscled his way close to the phone to get his two cents in, "Dude, can he take it down from the inside?"

Cessily pulled him back admonishing him at how reckless that idea was, "And bring it down where? On top of a city somewhere? Besides, what about Laura?"

True, Laura could take a lot. But I wasn't sure she could take a gunship crash and survive.

Kevin chimed in, a safe distance from possibly touching anyone else, "He's tough, right? Can he get her out by himself somehow?"

I didn't like that idea. They would be hundreds if not thousands of feet in the air by now. Wolf was way over the weight limit to safely use a parachute, and Laura had taken a slug to the temple. She wouldn't be well for quite a while, "He's on his own up there, and he's not a hundred percent. I don't want him tangling with those guys all alone."

"It is just as well. I cannot fit through the halls to begin with."

Good old Wolf. He didn't mean to, but he got a chuckle out of me. I was starting to calm down. Starting to think. We had an option to take now, "A lot of this won't matter if we don't crush them where they're coming from. They'll just come at Laura later," It was a long summer. There would be plenty of opportunities to get at her again. We had to make sure they weren't coming back anytime soon, if ever, "Wolf, stay out of sight for as long as possible. We'll track you, and then we'll have an inside man too."

"I believe can stay hidden until it lands," He said, agreeing with my directions, "On the off-chance I am discovered though, I will be forced to, 'go loud' as they say."

"Of course," It went without saying. There wasn't really anything else he could do, "If it goes that far, you won't really have a choice but to bring the whole thing down if you can."

"Can? No, I will find a way. You can be certain of that"

Yes I could, "Be safe, buddy. We'll see you soon," With that, I hung the phone up and ran a hand through my hair. Now we just had to move fast enough to make Wolf's little infiltration count, "Okay, things have changed. We need to move fast and follow Wolf now. Any ideas?"

No more hissy fits. There wasn't any time for that. My teammate's life hung in the balance, and my A.I. friend was risking his to keep tabs on her.

Julian didn't look pleased at what he was about to say, "...I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this, but yes. Time to bust out the black card. You'd better be grateful for this, Marcher."

Oh, I definitely was. From what he'd told me, he was going to get chewed out by his parents. But we'd already crossed that bridge and burnt it to a crisp. All I could do was my part to try and make it right, "First day back at school, I'll tell everyone how the Hellions saved my sorry ass. X-Men included."

Brian noticed that I'd pulled up an app that had a dot all over the map of the region, "Whoa. You have a GPS tracker on Saberwolf?"

I looked up and shrugged, "Not just him. I have a GPS tracker on all my teammates' phones, except Laura's," Everyone seemed to think this was strange, making me feel self-conscious yet again that day, "...We've had to deal with being captured by bad guys before."

I did. I had to deal with being captured before. This was a thing instituted in the Paladins because of me. Because sometimes, I suck. Just like that day, I sucked. My calls were shitty. My leadership was shitty. And Laura got caught because I either didn't put my foot down hard enough, or because she didn't believe in me enough to rely on me anymore than she did.

Maybe she was right? Maybe she was better off trying to hold court on her own, before I muscled my way in, trying to be a good friend? None of that mattered at the moment. She needed help, and there weren't a lot of people around willing or in position to give it.

Just seven high school kids and a surly-ass A.I. against the Facility and whatever other groups they had watching their backs for their own interests.

It was a good thing the odds were so bad. I don't think I would have known how to act if I was actually the favorite in something.