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Some Guys Have All the Luck; Regan and Marty
Topic Started: Aug 28 2013, 02:29 PM (315 Views)
Jason Wyngarde
Unregistered

Date: May 14
Time: Past the midnight hour

His time with the X-Men was destined to be short-lived. They had no jurisdiction after all…and despite all of Jean Grey’s posturing and raving, despite the fact that she genuinely was in a distraught and unpredictable state of mind over all that had happened to her lately-she hadn’t been willing to risk everything and the fury that might come down on her and her beloved students for the smug satisfaction of any type of retribution that she might want to level on Jason Wyngarde. Besides, she had peered into his mind and she knew that of the things that she was most concerned and upset about he was not the guilty culprit.

Of course he wasn’t exactly innocent either.

But in the end-as Jason predicted-he was released to SHIELD custody. And here he had been for the past four days with regimented routines and strict schedules. SHIELD was clearly more accustomed to handling people that they deemed as dangerous. There were guards on duty and the technology was vastly superior to the anything but modest dwellings of Xavier’s Institute. By his humble calculations, his chance of escaping this place by himself had just dropped in percentage by a wide margin.

Thankfully he knew that he was not alone. And this knowledge served to keep his spirits from plummeting as he patiently faced day after day. He was trusting in his value to certain people more than anything. He was also trusting in the fact that Max was a proud man and the fact that everyone in the Hellfire Club Inner Circle held on to the notion of their sovereignty and autonomy. Whether it was voiced or not, nobody wanted it getting out there that one of the elite from the Hellfire Club had been incarcerated and nobody lifted a finger to do anything about it.

Of course there were likely high-ranking officers on this cursed Helicarrier that counted on that fact. And so the game was set up, the pieces were all in play and all Jason could do was to sit and wait for the appointed hour. Thankfully he was a patient man. He had long since learned the value of keeping a clear head and not letting anxiety get the better of him. For all of his neurotic quirks and bizarre phobias, Jason Wyngarde was very much a man in control of his situation.

Crossing the room with a dignity that belied his current status he sat down at the small and bare table in his cell and continued to run scenarios through his mind. The question wasn’t as much as whether he would get out of here. The question was what he would do once he did get out.
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Martinique Jason
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Regan Wyngarde
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Illusions
Joint post Hulkling/Regan
(OOC: Incidentally, note that this thread is set a month before Insomnia.)


[Hulkling] The thing about being a trainee agent, Ted had been warned over and over at the Academy, was that you got stuck with all the scut jobs. That was by design, he figured; probably it was SHIELD's way of weeding out those who lacked the persistence to succeed in the espionage business. Though maybe not; maybe it was just SHIELD's way of getting the scut work done. Either way, it was a predictable part of the job for most agents, a way to pay their dues. On the other hand, the thing about being a nigh-invulnerable alien shapeshifter with enough raw muscle-power to bench-press a whale was that you were never the last one standing when it came time to choose up sides for office softball games, and consequently Ted had been involved in more high-profile cases in the last year than any trainee not blessed with his abilities could ever hope for. Predictably, this caused a certain amount of hard feelings among those agents who felt Ted was getting unfair treatment, and they tended to take it out on him in small ways whenever they could do so with impunity. He assumed that was why he'd been sitting in this hallway for the last seven hours, when Agent Duvain had been supposed to relieve him three hours ago.

[Regan] This entire mission had left Regan somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, she was delighted that the Black Court had finally authorized an operation to release her father from the custody he'd fallen into while harassing the X-Men at Max's behest; she'd been away when Jason had gotten himself arrested, but when she'd returned to the Pleasure Palace she'd applied what leverage she'd had to accelerating the timetable on her father's rescue. On the other hand, she was somewhat appalled that they'd taken this long to do it. Certainly there were reasons for the delay, but in Regan's experience there were always reasons both to do and not to do anything at all. What mattered more than reasons was will, and the fact that Hellfire's response had not been prompt and efficient was further evidence, if that were even needed, that the Inner Circle was not well aligned and its will fragmented, which did not bode well for Hellfire.

[Hulkling]Cell block guard duty wasn't a difficult assignment... quite the contrary, a trained monkey could have done it, which was part of why Ted was so frustrated by The Shift That Never Ends. It wasn't like he was actually monitoring the security arrangements surrounding their prisoners; that would have been interesting! No, the security measures were automated, and the agents working the control room where those measures were monitored and adjusted when needed were highly trained specialists; generalist field agents need not apply. Having an agent sitting at this desk was essentially a failsafe, an actual human being in the system just to ensure that any release orders were not being spoofed by some cyberhacker somewhere. Which was important, given the kinds of prisoners they tended to hold here, but it was hardly challenging. On the other hand, given that their latest prisoner was Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind, a known agent of the Shroud, aka the Black King, currently one of the world's most wanted criminals with ties to the mysterious Illuminati... well, maybe the fact that it wasn't challenging was a good thing after all.

[Regan] The ambivalent cherry on top of this particular ice-cream sundae of ambivalence was that when the mission had been authorized, it was Regan herself who had been tasked to lead it. She wasn't sure whether that had been done out of the desire to see her fail, or out of the hope of seeing her succeed; she imagined that finding out who had proposed it would give her some idea one way or the other, but actually planning the mission had absorbed too much of her attention to research that... yet. Regardless, she herself had every intention of succeeding, but she suspected her method would disappoint those of her superiors who preferred a more direct, not to mention violent, approach to solving their problems. That wasn't Regan's style. While she had admittedly spent much of the last couple of years training with Max to improve her combat skills, her plan for this extraction was primarily constructed out of misdirection and deception, as was her wont. Accordingly, when she entered the cell block and approached the agent standing guard, she was cloaked in illusions both psionic and technological. "Agent 22, here to interrogate prisoner Wyngarde," she announced crisply, flashing a SHIELD badge.

[Hulkling] "Yes ma'am," Ted replied affably to the serious-looking woman who approached his desk, accepting the identification and inspecting it carefully as well as running it through the scanner before returning it. "I'm afraid we're on Orange Alert with this prisoner, so I'll need a DNA sample as well." This was an awkward security provision, but an important one in a world so full of shapeshifters and the like, as Ted well knew. Of course, it wouldn't catch all shapeshifters, Ted knew... someone like Mystique, for example, could probably fool a DNA test if she had to. But as Ted also had ocassion to know, not all shapeshifters were of her caliber. He himself, for example, wouldn't even know where to begin trying to fool a device like this, and he suspected that most shapeshifters were more in his league than hers. In any case, whether it made sense or not, in the wake of the Skrull SHIELD had established mandatory DNA testing for access to Orange Alert and above.

[Regan] "Of course," she replied, her voice masked by both illusion and a voice modulator. "We can't be too careful." Regan didn't really like using technological aids, and under normal circumstances the soi-disant Agent 22 would have been nothing but a figment of the guard's imagination. However SHIELD security measures required somewhat more stringent efforts to bypass. Accordingly, her appearance was being maintained by conventional disguise as well as reinforced by psionic; that was enough to fool both remote and face-to-face inspections. The badge she'd given the guard actually was Agent 22's badge, which she'd lifted off the agent five minutes earlier and intended to return when she was done, just to muddle the trail further. She'd considered doing something similar to fool the DNA scanner, but ultimately the risk that the agent she was impersonating would notice the telltale mark from the blood sample before her mission was done seemed higher than the risks of her more typical approach. So when Agent 22 appeared to extend her arm through the entry slot for sampling, Regan in fact did no such thing, though anyone in the range of her mutant ability would see her do so and see the scanner light up green... well, anyone who wasn't immune to her power, anyway.

[Hulkling] "Well, you're you," Ted announced as he saw the scanner light up green. "In case you were wondering." He entered the control codes that unlocked the main security gate and opened Wyngarde's cell, and double-checked the prisoner's status telltales. "His null-cuff is working fine, so you shouldn't have any trouble with him." He wondered what further interrogation remained to be done; as he understood it Dr.Grey had worked him over pretty thoroughly before the X-Men handed him over to SHIELD. Not that he blamed her, given what had happened to Scott; in her position he'd have done the same thing.

[Regan] "That's reassuring," she replied drily as she entered the lobby. That's when she saw Martinique, and realized that things might not go nearly as smoothly as she'd intended. Well, there's no backing out now, she thought grimly, and moved quickly to open the door to Jason's cell. Her half-sister was immune to her power, unfortunately, but Regan's hope was that Marty hadn't been watching as she'd executed her little shell game with the scanner, and that the conventional disguise would fool her even without the psionic support. Or, failing that, that filial loyalty would keep her mouth shut.

If not, well, this could get very messy, very fast.

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Jason Wyngarde
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It’s difficult to say precisely what Jason might have thought if he knew that one of his lovely daughters was there to rescue him and the other was simply there to spy. At this point in time he had not heard the rumors about Marty’s affiliation with SHIELD. And if he had known he most likely would have been searching for the angle in it that would benefit his situation most readily. For this and for many other reasons, Jason was in no eminent danger of winning the father of the year award any time soon.

His eyes darted to the side when he heard the sound of someone approaching, scanning the shut door with a growing sense of apprehension as he heard the wooden heels clacking smartly on the unforgiving floor grow louder and more ominous in their cadence. And then they stopped.

Languidly crossing one leg over the other he leaned back against the wall and turned his attention to the door where the handle began to tremble just slightly and then with a mechanical beep and the mechanical stirrings of metal tumblers sliding back in impossibly thick casings. His eyes narrowed as the door swung inward and he focused on a face that he recognized almost immediately.

For years now he had worked around Regan and her various disguises. Just as she could see through his illusions and identify them for what they were, he could see through hers. Even with the mechanical assistance she was employing there was just enough of his daughter for him to identify and he gave absolutely no outward acknowledgement of it.

“Perfect,” he said drily as he rolled his eyes and looked away. “I suppose I should brace myself for more of your Inquisition.”

Finally. Max was springing his trap. Jason had been trying to determine whether his rescue was going to come with a dramatic and smoky entrance from the Shroud King himself or some other manner. It was perfectly fitting that this was going to come from his very flesh and blood. Jason wondered briefly what brand of cavalry she had brought to assist her and glanced over Regan’s illusory shoulder only to see Marty lurking in the background.

He almost couldn’t help his reaction that time.
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Regan Wyngarde
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Illusions
Joint post Hulkling/Regan
(OOC: Marty had to drop out of the thread for RL reasons, so we're retconning her out... she was never here, previous references notwithstanding. If any other SHIELD agents want in on the thread, contact me or Ed.)


"I suppose I should brace myself for more of your Inquisition.”

"Certainly," Regan/Agent 22 replied crisply for the benefit of Altman and the cameras, "for all the good it will do you. Or you could just lie back and cooperate with the inevitable." At the same time, she projected an illusion to him alone of her real form, saying "Sorry to disappoint you, but we'll have to skip the interrogation. I think it's time to get you out of here, don't you? Not quite as dramatic as my breakout from Sanctuary, perhaps, but it gets the job done." Turning back to the agent on duty, she thought quickly as she realized her original plan was not quite going to work. The guard who was supposed to be here was a regular human with a shuttle pilot's clearance, and Regan's intention had been to dose him with a hypnotic that would secure his eager, if bumbling, cooperation in releasing Jason from his null-cuffs and getting both of them off the Helicarrier.

Instead she was faced with this fool, whom she recognized from her studies of key agents. Ted Altman, aka Hulkling, aka Skrull. That last one was not generally known, but secrets were difficult to keep from the Hellfire Club, and she had done her research before beginning this mission. She wasn't sure if the syringe she'd prepared would even penetrate his skin, let alone whether or how the cocktail it was intended to deliver would affect him. Safer not to chance it, which meant she would have to improvise. "Agent, prepare the prisoner for transport to Level Seven. We're going to see if old-fashioned chemically enhanced interrogation will shake loose anything that telepathic interrogation left behind."

Ted was startled by that. "Um... are you certain, ma'am? This prisoner is under Orange Alert protocols." Which precluded prisoner transfer without Director-level authorization and armed escort. Of course Agent 22 knew all that perfectly well, and Ted wasn't going to challenge a senior agent without cause, but he wanted to make sure he understood what was going on before doing something that might be really, really stupid.

"I'm aware of that, Agent," Regan/22 replied frostily. Which she had been; planning this breakout had required understanding every element of the relevant SHIELD protocols. That was the organization's greatest weakness, to her mind: they did things by the book, and if you knew the book you could predict what they would do and act accordingly. Bureaucracy with advanced technology... a dangerous combination. She waved her hand airily at the terminal by Altman's desk. "If you check, you'll find the transfer has been authorized." She paused barely a moment before adding "You will serve as the requisite escort." That was annoying, but it would ultimately be faster to lose this goon once they were out of this cell than to bring in illusory agents to serve the purpose and going through the whole certification rigamarole with them as well.

"Yes ma'am," Ted nodded, and brought up the Order of the Day lists. Sure enough, a prisoner transfer was scheduled, right where it should be... funny that he hadn't noticed it before. Or had he? Now that he thought about it, he seemed to remember having seen that entry earlier... he'd just forgotten about it, he supposed. Weird. "I'll get him secured for transport, then."

What followed took a careful touch, and Regan was glad that Altman's mutant powers did not include telepathic resistance. Oh, he'd received the usual training those Xavier's brats received, but that wasn't like real defense, and he wasn't even using what he had learned... and why would he? As far as he knew he was in a completely secure installation, and the only hostile telepath within a mile was safely shackled and nulled. Still, even without defenses this was tricky; she had to present him with an experience of his control board that was partly illusory and partly actual, so he would enter only the commands she wanted him to, skip the ones she wanted skipped, and fail to see the error messages the system threw up in response. It would have been simpler to do it herself, but the biometric security failsafes on the control systems made that impossible, even with state-of-the-art infiltration technology. Regardless, the weak point in any security system was always the human brain, and SHIELD's proved no exception; when she was done Jason had been released from his cell and his null-cuffs had been deactivated.

Now came the hard part... getting them both off the Helicarrier, fast.

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Jason Wyngarde
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As ever before, Regan was impeccable in her performance. Without the assistance of his own powers he was incapable falling into their routine pattern of carrying on layered conversations-illusions within illusions. But while he could not project his own illusions, he could see his illusory daughter and hear her tell him that their time was short. Outwardly he didn’t react to the message in the slightest. Inwardly he prepped himself, sharpening his senses and doing his best to be ready for what was inevitably soon to come his way.

Jason did nothing one way or the other while Regan worked over the imbecile they’d left in charge. He did his very best to not appear amused, and considering the fact that he had been captive for the better part of a couple of weeks he didn’t find it too terribly difficult to appear put out. How long had it been since he’d had a decent meal? How long had it been since he’d slept on a bed that was up to his standards? How these militaristic barbarians managed to live like this was beyond him.

Still, it was rather remarkable just how easily her ruse worked. It would have been disappointing were it not for the fact that it was so damn amusing. Jason felt his powers return and he closed his eyes just a little. “Funny how much I missed it,” he said. With Jason and his powers the world was at his fingertips. One thing was absolutely sure; he was not going to waste any more time. He kept his eyes forward as the two of them made their way down the hallway to what he only assumed was a quick exit.

The illusion of the two of them continued down the hallway one direction while unseen by human eyes they turned in unison down an adjacent hallway. They were shielded now, working their illusions in tandem without need for any sort of verbal prompting or outward collaboration. “Max sends his best, I assume?” It was a double-edged insinuation. Regan was very well suited for this, but whether or not she was his ‘best’ and why he had not bothered to make the trip himself was still an undeniable curiosity.

“I estimate less than ten minutes before this plan implodes. SHIELD is predictably predictable. The transfer ruse will only buy us a few minutes at best.” He checked his arm where his watch would be and rolled his eyes. Of course they took that from him as well. “How did you get here, Regan dear?”
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Regan Wyngarde
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Illusions
Had Regan picked up on her father's thoughts on how easily her ruse had worked, she would have been irritated; it was in no sense easy. Admittedly her manipulations of the agent's perceptions, turning him into her tool to get through SHIELD's vaunted security protocols, might seem easy to an ignorant observer; after all, it didn't involve explosions or high-speed chases or large men hitting each other with large objects. It wasn't nearly as dramatic as when they'd busted the Black King out of SHIELD/Skrull custody, or out of Purifier custody, or... well, come to think of it, Max did seem to be getting himself kidnapped a lot lately. But a lack of drama did not entail a lack of difficulty, and she expected a fellow illusionist to recognize the difficulties involved.

Those thoughts remained buried, though, so no such reaction ensued as they ran an illusory shell game through SHIELD's corridors. That much didn't even require much in the way of attention, she'd been playing those games with her father since she first manifested her powers. Instead: “Max sends his best, I assume?” "So I am reliably assured," she replied as she lifted a security badge from a middle-aged woman with a scar on her cheek, covering the signs of her theft with the same illusory cloak that concealed their presence. She could have used the same badge she'd borrowed initially, but it was better to sow more confusion; she left that badge on a desk outside an executive office as they passed it, underneath a jar of jelly beans. "This time SHIELD is well-braced for the kind of high-caliber breakout Hellfire staged the last few times one of our own has been taken. I felt a bit of misdirection would be more effective... one doesn't play 'rock' three times in a row, after all."

The tone of her response precisely mirrorred that of her father's double-edged rhetorical question, expressing without words the reality of the situation. Regan still wasn't certain whether to be flattered or annoyed by this assignment. She didn't say any of that out loud, though; this was neither the time nor the place. After the extraction was complete she would compare notes with her father, bring him up to speed on the growing tension within the ranks of the Inner Circle and how the Wyngardes might best take advantage of it. That was one reason she'd wanted Jason freed from custody sooner rather than later, and it had occurred to her that it might also be a reason why the mission had been so delayed in the first place. They both had their enemies within Hellfire, after all, as well as allies.

"I estimate less than ten minutes before this plan implodes.” That did annoy her. Did he think he was telling her anything she didn't already know? "I was counting on five," she nodded in agreement as they approached an armored door with all manner of frightening warnings and symbols emblazoned on it. "Of which we've spent three and a half. This way," she added, sliding the stolen security badge along the door's scanner. She didn't volunteer the information that plan A had already fallen apart, and that plan B was going to be... uncomfortable. There seemed little point.

There were four guards stationed behind the secure door that seperated Airlock 37 from the main corridors, three of whom were heavily armed and armored. There always were. Regan disregarded the armor... for what she had in mind, it wouldn't make much difference. She'd admittedly spent some time devising a ruse that would cause two guards to shed it, allowing her and her father to adopt it in turn, but had ultimately disregarded it as taking too long for the protection it would buy. She did, however, take the time to inject the unarmored agent with the hypnotic syringe she'd brought with her.

"There will be alarms soon," she warned her father as she began working the airlock controls. "Do what you can to confuse matters out there?"

There was no point in trying to cover their tracks. Security cameras had been recording every inch of the corridors they'd travelled through, and were recording every moment in this room, and while Regan's image inducer and related countersurveilance equipment would fool routine inspection they would not stand up for more than a moment against serious analysis... and in any event, the illusions cloaking Jason's presence would not be fooled by illusions. And the moment Regan started cycling the airlock, alarms would start going off all over the Helicarrier, and detailed analysis of those recordings would begin immediately. In a different facility they could have simply prevented anyone from noticing the alarms, but SHIELD had far too many agents shielded from psychic manipulation for that to be reliable. No, any countersurveillance she attempted from this end would cost her more time than it bought her, so she didn't attempt it.

What she'd counted on was speed. Well, speed, and the fact that SHIELD's airlock protocol was primarily intended to defend the Helicarrier from unauthorized entry, and secondarily intended to allow safe evacuation in case of emergencies; defending against unauthorized egress was a neglected third priority. "Put this on," she told Jason as the alarms went off and the outer airlock door opened, tossing him one of the jetpacks that lined the wall and putting another one on herself. The guards, of course, remained oblivious to all of the activity around them, including the strident demands on their comms to report in. "Invaders will be coming in here soon," she instructed the drug-addled fourth guard as the outer airlock door closed. "You and your colleagues have to stop them. They will resemble your fellow agents, but don't be fooled... it's all an illusion. Mastermind has gotten free, and it's very important that he not be allowed in this airlock... lives depend on it."

That much, at least, was true.

“How did you get here, Regan dear?”

"The same way we're leaving, Jason darling," she replied as they waited for the outer airlock door to cycle and prepared for the free-fall that would follow. "With style."
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Jason Wyngarde
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Jason did pick up on his daughter’s mild irritation. There was a particularly flat expression she leveled on him, causing the corners of his lips to stretch thin just ever so subtly in a mild gesture of amusement. There was no need to make pure sport of her. She was trying to help him after all…though it was at least mildly amusing just how quickly they fell into layered patterns of banter and subtext. While Jason and Regan were in no way a traditional Norman Rockwell image of a father-daughter relationship, it was at least clear that there was something there that kept them looking out for one another. Perhaps to the sentimentalist this might seem horrific due to the fact that appearances seemed to indicate their inherent value to one another dictated their loyalty. To that Jason might argue that it isn’t much different when the value is sentimental in nature.

He caught the jetpack and looked at it with scoffing disbelief as some realities began to manifest in his mind. “Surely you must be joking,” his expression seemed to say. But hers seemed to indicate that joking was as far from her intent as it ever was from his. And with the clock ticking down in the back of his mind he knew he didn’t have time to argue so he slipped his arms through the straps and pulled it tight around his chest, taking also a pair of goggles that looked almost comical strapped around his head.

You see Jason had pictured an entirely different brand of rescue. It might have involved explosions or a portal straight to his cell where he could simply stroll through to the luxury of Hellfire on the other side. The last thing he expected was to be standing in front of Regan as she hurriedly began to open the air-lock that led to a straight fall to the ground…which was a very long distance away. He kept his eyes on her, all signs of the previously emerging smirk completely eradicated by now.

And then the door was thrown wide open.

While the winds rushed he looked at her with fatherly disapproval. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said. But he swallowed his pride and the heavy lump of fear in the back of his throat and as the alarms began to sound behind them Jason stretched out with powers driven by dark imagination and did precisely what Regan had asked. Phantom groups of soldiers began running down the corridors from both directions, encountering anyone they could along the way and steering them away from the open air-lock.

Jason glanced at the controls to his personal jet and then to Regan again. And then the two of them stepped out into thin air.
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