Dazzler, music pouring into one ear, moved swiftly after the others, hands glowing and ready to be deployed – to either fight or use as a shield to defend her father and Sage. Magneto and Polaris led the group, having ripped metal doors off hinges to use as their own shields. Cyclops strode after them, hand raised to his visor, ready to fire an optic blast, and Rachel followed, eyes whitened and head slightly lowered as she channeled her mind to the thoughts around her, while Dazzler led Sage and her father in the rear.
“Ahead, to the right!” Rachel suddenly looked up.
At an intersection of the corridor, Magneto leaned around the corner to the right to face a barrage of laser fire pinging off his door shield. He sent the door flying at the Reds, and Dazzler heard a commotion that she took as the soldiers being knocked down. Then Magneto stepped out into the corridor, raising and waving his hands like he was conducting a chaotic orchestra. Dazzler heard yells of pain and saw weapons fly past the intersection.
“Polaris! Behind you!” Rachel yelled, as laser fire passed the intersection coming from the other direction. Dazzler heard Magneto grunt in pain, as Polaris swung her door shield around to face the second wave. Gripping the door in one hand, she waved her other around viciously, muscles flexing as she inflicted pain on the attacking Reds. More weapons went flying, more groans were heard, and then footsteps as several soldiers rammed into her shield, knocking her over.
Cyclops broke file and raced to her defense, a concussive blast streaming from his visor that hit several of the Reds.
“Get behind me!” Dazzler told Rachel, who didn’t argue as Dazzler amassed her energy into another protective shield. They approached the intersection carefully as the mayhem continued. Magneto battled the soldiers on one side, while Polaris faced the other side, and Cyclops was in between fighting with two Reds on his back.
“Sage!” Dazzler called. “Which way?”
“Turn right! Then left, then right again!” she called back over the din.
Dazzler poured into the corridor intersection as Reds rammed and bounced off her shield. They moved in a tight pack, pushing toward Magneto. She maintained the shield with one hand, while aiming the other down the hallway.
“Eyes!” she warned the others, then pulsed a beam of light at a second wave of Reds approaching. The light energy rolled fast and hard down the corridor, knocking them off their feet like a big wave down the beach, stunning each and every one of them and leaving them dazed on the floor.
“Nice work!” Cyclops said, joining them and turning his laser eyes on a new pack of Reds blocking their path and cutting them down. “Magneto! You and Polaris take the rear!”
Magneto fell back, and both he and Polaris sucked their door shields back into their hands and crouched ready, as Dazzler focused back on her light shield with two hands now and pushed forward with Cyclops by her side and Rachel, Sage, and her father close behind.
“You know, your powers are not unlike mine,” Cyclops said, glancing at her. “Mine are just more concentrated.”
“And deadly,” she said.
Cyclops nodded. “You have degrees of capability, you have versatility. That’s useful to have. I only have on and off. Not as helpful sometimes. But if you concentrate yours, you can be deadly too.”
More laser fire scuttled across her shield as they turned left into a branching corridor, making their way down to another intersection where they would turn right again.
“We must destroy this place as we leave,” she heard Magneto say. “Polaris, every room you pass, shred it. Understand?”
“That’s going to use a lot of our energy,” Polaris said.
“Do it!” he barked.
With the music in her left ear, the commotion ahead, and the sounds of violent destruction behind her, Dazzler was awash in stimulation. More Reds approached, and Cyclops stepped out from behind her shield and blasted the weapons out of their hands.
“The dock’s just ahead!” Sage said, tapping her glasses and focusing on the wall between them and it. “And so are a lot of soldiers.”
“Magneto!” Cyclops called. “We need you up here.”
“Wait!” Polaris called, having ripped a door off its hinge. “I found the lab!”
Dazzler paused, glancing around at her. “Destroy it! Destroy everything inside. Leave no MGH. Destroy it all!”
Polaris gave a nod and set to work. Magneto joined her in a duo of frenzied mayhem and total destruction; metallic objects crashed, glass smashed, electricity sparked, chemicals ignited, and smoke began to waft through the doors. Dazzler noticed Polaris’s powers were working just fine now, and she also noticed the mutant occasionally glanced at her father, perhaps for his approval, perhaps to ensure she was keeping up. A little healthy family competition.
“Noooooooo!” Shaw’s enraged voice sounded over speakers somewhere, at their demolition.
A group of Reds sprang around the left corner of the intersection, firing at them, and then swarmed in from the right. Cyclops grunted as he caught skimming laser fire across the side of his neck.
“Magneto!” Cyclops called again, as they now faced heavy fire from both sides.
“Coming,” he replied, swooping toward them.
As Dazzler edged closer with her shield, she could see the dock beyond to the left. They were close to freedom, to their ship. She just needed to clear the path.
She quickly pooled her light energy into her core. “Eyes!” she yelled, quickly withdrawing her shield, then sending out a pulse with both hands at the doorway. The Reds fell away like autumn leaves on a breeze. Instantly pulling her shield back up, the team shuffled at a quicker pace and spilled out onto the dock, with Magneto and Polaris on either side with their door shields.
Dazzler noticed the dock had been cleared while they’d been in their cells, the injured bodies removed, the blood mopped up, the weapons stacked and stowed – including the CAP-89s.
“Where’s Lenny and the others?” she wondered aloud.
Sage shrugged. “We have to go.”
“We can’t leave them,” Dazzler said.
“We might have to,” Sage said, in all seriousness.
The dock suddenly lit up like the Fourth of July as a line of Reds poured through a doorway in the opposite wall and fired upon them. Laser fire sparked everywhere as Polaris and Magneto spread out with their door shields and Dazzler held her light shield firm. Polaris and Magneto waved their arms, doing their best to rip weapons from the arms of Reds, discarding them. But more and more poured out the doorway, amplified on MGH and jetting fast across the dock.
Dazzler scanned the chaos but couldn’t see Shaw anywhere. The coward was hiding. But she didn’t have time to worry about him right now. She needed to clear the dock so they could get back to the ship.
“Get back!” Dazzler yelled at Polaris and Magneto. “Let me handle this. Protect them!” She stepped forward as Magneto and Polaris fell back using their door shields to cover the others.
Dazzler took a deep breath, then pooled a mass of light energy into her core again, quickly sucking in her shield and instantly pulsing it back out in a massive burst of light that rolled over the dock like a thick wave of lightning. She yelled with the effort it took, tensing every muscle as she surged it outward, ensuring she got them all. When the wave receded, she glanced around to see every single Red on the dock was out cold.
Panting, her shoulders relaxed as Magneto and Polaris lowered their shields beside her.
“Nice work,” Cyclops said, surveying the aftermath.
She smiled at him, but then something caught her eye.
Movement.
She turned back to the Reds and saw something shimmering and glowing beneath a pile of unconscious bodies.
Then she heard Sebastian Shaw’s laughter.
It was him. The light was coming from him.
Dressed as a soldier and hidden among them, he’d just absorbed all the light energy Dazzler had drenched them with.
“Oh, no…” she breathed.
Shaw’s body rose with a bright nuclear glow from the unconscious bodies of the soldiers, beaming a huge smile. “I was hoping you’d do that.”
Magneto and Cyclops instantly stepped forward. Magneto extended his arm to an overturned cargo carrier, while Cyclops raised his hand to his visor, but Shaw was too swift. He flicked his hands at them with speed – MGH speed – sending a burst of Dazzler’s light energy in each of their directions. The pulse hit them both ferociously, thrusting them backward into the dock wall and rendering both instantly unconscious. As their limp bodies fell to the floor, Shaw aimed his hands at the rest of them.
But Dazzler saw it coming.
She surged her energy into a shield big enough to cover Rachel, Polaris, Sage, and her father. Shaw’s burst hit the shield and pushed her backward, but she held strong, tightening every single muscle in her body so that it felt like concrete.
“No!” Dazzler growled at him.
Shaw gave her a glowing smile. “I have your MGH in my blood and your light in every fiber of my being. You’re fighting yourself, Dazzler!”
“How do we stop him?” Rachel panicked.
“We need a Cap-89!” Sage said, a worried look on her normally controlled face as she looked around, then spotted one stacked against the opposite wall. “There!”
Shaw walked toward them slowly, confidently, his entire body sparkling and glimmering with Dazzler’s light energy. She’d never seen her own power from this angle before. It was both beautiful and terrifying. Mesmerizing and intoxicating. Caught for a moment in the dazzling sight, her mind was soon pulled back to reality as Shaw sent more pulses their way.
Each hit battered Dazzler’s shield, as light energy hit light energy, crackling explosively and sending her back. Her muscles strained, and her arms were tiring as she bore the blows and her feet kept skidding backward.
Polaris tried to find things to throw at Shaw, but he swatted them away with his new-found powers and MGH enhancement.
“Rachel,” Dazzler said through gritted teeth as more pulses hit her shield, “can you distract him? Can you mess with his mind?”
“Won’t he absorb it and use it back on me?”
“We have to try something,” Dazzler said, taking another blow that pushed her hands right back, knocking her earbud out, cutting off the music. “He’s using the energy in measures, and he’ll run out eventually, but I’m not sure we want to test how long my arms can hold him off.”
More vicious blasts hit her shield, and she grunted in the effort to hold firm.
“You distract him, Rachel,” she said. “Polaris, you get that CAP-89 to us. Sage, when I say the word, I’m going to use all my stored energy and light this place up like I’ve never done before. Between Rachel’s mind messing and my light distraction, you should get a clear shot. Got it?”
“Affirmative!” Sage said, engaging the dark tint setting on her cybernetic glasses.
Rachel’s eyes whitened, and she lowered her head in concentration. Shaw brought down his arms, scowling at them. “You think that’s going to work on me?”
Rachel’s head moved back violently as though receiving an invisible punch. She groaned, clenched her teeth, bore down, and pushed her mind back at his, an internal struggle taking place between her mind and Shaw’s.
“Polaris! Go!” Dazzler said.
Polaris quickly stepped out of the shield, reached out and sucked the CAP-89 in their direction. Rachel’s head jerked sideways with another invisible punch, and Shaw raised his hand and fired an energy blast at the CAP-89, destroying it. As the pieces fell to the ground, he quickly turned his hand to Polaris, but she ducked back behind Dazzler’s shield in time.
“Rachel! Try harder!” Dazzler said.
Rachel clenched her fists and roared, and this time Shaw’s head moved as though he’d been punched. He rubbed his temples, narrowed his eyes, and then snarled at her. Which soon turned to laughter.
“Oh my… I’m being tormented by a murderer,” he said, looking at Rachel. “You sent an innocent man into the path of that bus. It’s your fault he died.”
Rachel gasped, and her eyes turned green as she stared at him.
“Don’t listen to him!” Dazzler yelled. “Fight him! Fight it!”
Rachel’s head jerked back with another invisible mental punch, then Shaw sent more light pulses their way, sparking off Dazzler’s shield, pushing her back and straining her muscles.
“He’s the murderer!” Sage told Rachel. “Not you!”
Rachel lowered her head again, fists clenched, as her eyes turned white and shone with hatred. Her head bounced back with another invisible punch and blood dripped down from her nose.
Seeing an opportunity, Polaris stepped out from Dazzler’s shield again, raised her hand, and tried for another CAP-89. The weapon flew across the room, straight into her hand. Shaw saw at the last minute and fired at her. Polaris yelped in pain as she was struck in the right forearm and dropped the CAP-89.
Rachel yelled now, looking up at Shaw, her white eyes watering, saliva strung between her teeth as her whole body shook with rage.
Shaw’s head took a mental punch, and he roared back, firing angry misguided shots at Dazzler’s shield as he struggled to concentrate against Rachel’s burning fury.
Polaris cradled her blistering arm but, determined, reached out again and sucked the fallen CAP-89 into her other hand then swiftly threw it at Sage, who caught it and pulled the weapon’s sight to her eyeline.
“Ready!” Sage yelled.
“Whatever you’re planning, I’ll absorb it, you fools!” he yelled at her. “You can’t win!”
“I’m not aiming for you this time!” Dazzler seethed.
Rachel roared now, staring at Shaw like she was possessed.
Moving as fast as she ever had, Dazzler sucked in her shield light, bore down, and purged every ounce of light energy stored in her body. Scraping every cell clean of whatever she had absorbed when they’d crossed into the new dimension, she sent it out through the palms of her hands, which she aimed at the dock ceiling, turning the entire dock white with light – certainly as bright as the dimension crossing had been. She heard an ear-piercing scream and realized it was coming from her as she purged her body of every piece of energy, standing in a room of nuclear light, while smoke began to waft off her skin from the intensity of it all.
Suddenly her father fell unconscious at her feet.
Then Rachel.
She saw Shaw swaying, blinded from the light in the room, and quickly sucked her nuclear energy back.
“Now!” she yelled at Sage.
Sage fired the CAP-89 in Shaw’s direction. The glimmering blue bubble of otherworldly origins locked on to its target perfectly, expanding and swallowing Shaw whole, catching him as the mutant fell unconscious.
And there Shaw floated in the air, out cold and contained.
Dazzler, breathless with exhaustion and shock, saw Sage collapse to her knees.
“Are you all right?” Dazzler asked her.
Sage nodded, as tears made their way down her face beneath her glasses, trailing along her tattoos. “I need to upgrade the tint on these glasses,” she said, pulling them off to expose her red eyes.
Dazzler managed an apologetic smile as Polaris emerged, cradling her injured arm, from where she’d taken shelter behind the metal door shields she and her father had used. Polaris saw Shaw floating unconscious in his bubble, exchanged a look of relief with them both, then bent down to an unconscious Rachel. Dazzler looked at her father, then fell to her knees at his side.
“Dad?” She shook him, worried by his motionless form. Had she killed him? “Dad?!”
“He’s human,” Sage said reassuringly, moving to Cyclops. “I think he’ll be out for a while.”
Dazzler looked back at the dock, at all the unconscious bodies. Her own body rattled with the enormity of it all. It made her feel a little sick inside, to know that if she’d wanted to, if she’d tried a little harder, she probably could’ve killed them all.
Was that what it meant to be an Omega-level mutant? To have the power for great destruction? If it was, she never wanted to go there. Today was as close as she ever wanted to get to that.
She glanced back at the unconscious Shaw floating in his CAP-89 bubble. She wondered how long it would hold him, wondered what he would do when freed. Would he keep trying until his competition was wiped out? Should Dazzler have killed him? Shown him no mercy for the sake of mutantkind?
Maybe she should have, but that wasn’t her. That was a line she did not want to cross.
Cyclops groaned, and Sage pulled him to his feet, as Magneto began to stir.
“What happened?” Cyclops asked, looking at Shaw. “You did it?”
“We did it,” Dazzler said.
Sage smiled at her as she collected the CAP-89 again and wiped her eyes. “I guess we better bubble wrap the rest of this vermin, huh?” She checked a setting on the weapon and began shooting at the unconscious Reds, scooping them up, three to a bubble.
Cyclops knelt at Rachel’s side as she opened her eyes. “Rachel? Are you OK?” he asked, concerned.
She groaned. “I have a headache the size of Texas.”
“Come on,” he said, scooping her up. “Let’s get you onto the ship and off this place.”
Rachel fought against him. “I can walk!”
He sighed and released her, and she walked unsteadily toward the ship, as Polaris stepped in to guide the way.
“I’m not taking my eyes off this one,” Magneto said, stepping up to Shaw’s bubble. “Not until he’s in a cell.”
Cyclops bent down and scooped up Dazzler’s father. “I’ll put him on the ship.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You look pretty spent,” Cyclops smiled. “Thank you, for getting us out of those cells.”
Dazzler nodded, and Cyclops walked away with her unconscious father.
Brushing her hair back from her sweating face, she noticed her body still rattling from what had just happened. Feeling utterly spent, she dropped to the floor again, and took in the carnage left on the dock and all that she’d just done.