14174/Aerial Ambush

Aerial Ambush
Date of Scene:	18 February 2023
Location:	Atlantic Ocean Coastline
Synopsis:	Invincible helps a stricken Blackbird belonging to the X-men to a safe landing.
Cast of Characters:	Kitty Pryde, Mark Grayson

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Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde was playing pilot tonight for the rest of the team. Cerebro had tracked some supervillain activity to a small island off the Atlantic coast. The fact that island appeared on no navigation charts had made it all the more interesting.

The Blackbird had come in skimming the wavetops. With no place to safely set down unnoticed, the stealth plane had slowed and let the other X-men bail out of the plane onto the island's rocky shore.

Everyone away safely, Shadowcat retracted the hatch's door and rotated the plane in the air to point back out over the water towards the Atlantic coastline in the distance. The plane was just starting to accelerate when it shuddered violently, knocking Lockheed to the plane's cockpit floor from where he was perched on the back of Kitty's seat.

"Hang on boy, we got hostiles!" she says, pushing the throttle forward. A worrisome shudder results even as Kitty is checking monitors with views of the back of the plane.

A winged being drops down from above, savaging the plane's rudder with clawed hands. Griffin lets out a growl as he swoops past the Blackbird, then wheels over to dive towards the plane again.

Kitty punches the throttle. Normally the Blackbird would leave Griffin in its dust. But the first attack has damaged an engine. Between that and the damage to the rudder, it's all Kitty can do to keep the plane from spinning out and crashing. She does her best to gain altitude as she struggles with the controls as the plane starts eating up the distance between the faux island and rural New York shoreline ahead.

Griffin comes in again, clawing at the second engine. He fails to disable it, but a spray of fuel erupts from it and ignites, creating a fireball that is visible for miles. Kitty closes down the fuel line to prevent more damage. "I'm not sure we're going to make it to shore," she warns Lockheed.

Mark Grayson has posed:
The wind in Mark's hair was the best feeling in the world.

Doves break away to make room for Invincible to join in flight. His eyes looking forward through round glass that keeps the wind out of his eyes and the occasional bug tghat threatens to get trapped there. He's slowly mastering his flight, his father giving him a few good pointers about it. Viltrumites need no such thing as leverage. /Everywhere/ is levergae when they can stop and go on a dime.

He might not have the eyes (or ears) of a Kryptonian, but /man/ does he have good enough senses to know when something's wrong. He feels something in his gut, that feeling that something is about to go terribly wrong. It's around that time when he sees the Blackbird skimming over the waves.

"Holy shit, is that a /jet/? So cool." He was perhaps thinking about doing a flyby, enough to fly up alongside of it and give a salute to whoever the pilot was, but suddenly the plane was in danger. A winged creature. Some kind of Griffin man? "Every day somethin' new."

With a sudden movement, he's flying forward, speed in his flight, when in a quickened movement?

The Blackbird stops falling, a pressure coming from underneath it that Kitty can feel where she sits.

With the Blackbird in his hands, he now has to make sure Griffin can't catch up. He's a secondary problem.

Remember what Omni-Man said...save lives first.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
"Ah if I lose the plane the Professor is going to be cross," Kitty says to Lockheed as she's struggling with avoiding Griffin's attacks, while trying to gain enough altitude that if it comes to gliding they can make the coast, and all while the plane wants to go into a left roll deathspin that she's only able to avoid with creative use of the flaps and what remains of the tail rudder.

The plane shudders again as Griffin clips a wing. Kitty grits her teeth, lips pressed into a line. There's another judder of the plane after which Kitty has a moment of panic as the plane isn't responding to her frantic manipulations of the stick and the pedals.

But then she notices that the plane has leveled out and is flying straight for the coast. "What the heck," she says, punching commands to cycle the monitor through the exterior cameras. "Is that... someone's carrying us?" she says. "Rogue didn't come with us, so who the hell? I can't make out their face from this angle. A guy though."

She taps a button, the view switching to show Griffin. He is starting to fall behind, he's not the swiftest of flyers. Realizing it, he wheels over and turns back towards the island. "Team this is Shadowcat. Griffin disabled the Blackbird but I think I'm ok. We may need to arrange some alternate transportation for you, I'll try to get ahold of Magik. Griffin is on his way back, watch your heads."

She looks over to Lockheed. "I'm guessing they are helping and not looking for somewhere to throw us into the ground. But stay on my shoulder just in case we need to phase." The dragon flies up to her shoulder, while Kitty keeps an eye out. A nice smooth beach of the Atlantic shoreline can be seen ahead as Invincible's flight closes the distance to it.

Mark Grayson has posed:
Thankfully, the Professor won't be /too/ cross.

....well, maybe a little cross because of the damage to the Blackbird, but at least someone like Hank, Scott, or any number of those X-Men who are most familiar with the Blackbird's workings to be able to fix it. Yet, Mark's intentions are clear. The distance between the Blackbird's leveled glide and and the shore ahead, and quickly enough, the Blackbird is brought to the sands...

And set gently upon it's glades.

"Uh...sorry, I don't really know how you're landing gear works from down here!"

Calls a voice, youthful and strong, as a man in a blue, yellow, and black suit flies upwards and closer to the windshield, giving a two-fingered wave with a winning smile on his face. "Hey there! Invincible." A little optimistic. "Sorry about your plane, but I notice there's a big jerk with a lion head and big wings coming. But! That's okay. Give me like, five minutes?"

Oh! He forgot the most important part of being a hero: assess the scene and ask if their okay.

"You're not hurt or anything like that, are you?"

He leeeeaaaans in closer to the glass. "Is that a /dragon?!/." He almost groans, not because of osmething horrible and negative that Kitty or even Lockheed had done, but clearly because of a supreme amount of envy flowing through Mark's body right now.

"I wish I had a dragon..."

He's getting distracted from the problem again...

Kitty Pryde has posed:
The Blackbird's landing gear lower as Kitty sees the plane is being brought in for a gentle landing. Behind the stealth plane's canopy Invincible can see the young woman in a grey and black superhero costume. Indeed that does seem to be a baby dragon or something riding on her shoulder.

She unstraps herself from her site, rising from it and moving over to open up the plane's exit hatch. Kitty strides down to the sand. She looks to be somewhere in her late teens to early twenties, definitely young coed age. Her brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her form-fitting costume has an X across the belt. Though the X-men aren't well known thanks to their efforts to keep it that way. At most an urban legend that is frequently discredited, though some like the Avengers and SHIELD know of them.

"Thank you for the help," the girl says, flashing a smile up at Mark. "I was going to get a scolding if came back without the plane," she says. She looks back across the water, but the island, and Griffin, are well out of sight especially in the dark.

Lockheed takes flight, flapping upwards a couple of feet, before darting nearer to Mark only to hover again as he gets a good lock at him. Kitty says, "I'm Shadowcat. This is Lockheed. Who do I owe my thanks to today?"

Mark Grayson has posed:
Floating around to the exit-ramp of the Blackbird, Mark's feet gently touch the ground, digging into the sand as he forces himself to finally /stop/. "Gotta work on my landings." He huffs with no small amount of indignation. He seems to blink as he notices Kitty, either not expecting a costumed hero or expecting someone so young. Well, thatl ast bit is ironic. Mark is nearly 20 himself! He doesn't seem to recognize the X on her belt as a identifying symbol.

"Shadowcat? That's awesome. Should've taken my naming convention from you. So much better than what I have." He chuckles a little bit.

"Me? Well, I'm-"

INVINCIBLE.

"I know, it's kinda arrogant, but it's all me." He chuckles. "Nice to meet you." He extends a hand towards Shadowgirl. Is she a handshake person? "And please, no thanks are necessary. Just doing the job, right?"

#Hero.

"Where you coming from, anyway? Don't see too many jets lately. At least, none like /that/." He gestures to the Blackbird.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde's lips turn into a grin at hearing Invincible's name, though it's just a warm grin. Nothing negative about it, and it grows a bit as he adds the extra bit of explanation.

She shakes his hand. "Oh, well it took me a few tries to settle on it too, so don't beat yourself up," she tells Invincible, still grinning. "And I'm friends with 'Mighty Woman' who I think has you beat there," the coed adds with a warm chuckle. Mighty Woman being a flying woman with a white streak in her hair that has emerged on the New York scene lately, and gotten corporate sponsorships. Though most of her friends just know her as Rogue.

"Well, was investigating what seems to be a bad guy's base. Which, Griffin's presence would seem to confirm. I was dropping my team off as there wasn't a good spot to land unseen," she says. She looks back to the plane. "Speaking of 'Mighty Woman' I'd probably better her to come gather the plane up. This is the Blackbird," she says, patting the stealth plane's fuselage. "And, we kind of keep a low profile, so appreciate not menitoning us."

Mark Grayson has posed:
A hand shaken!

Smiling ear to ear, Mark seems happy that this woman is so friendly with him. Though he seems to tilt his head to one side when he hears of her friend. "Mighty Woman?" He chuckles. "Well, there's a Wonder Woman and an Invisible Woman, no reason why there can't be one that's Mightier than the rest, right?" Also optimistic, but that was just part of Mark's flair at this point.

"She's the one with the white streak in her hair right? She's awesome."

Might as well clarify! "Makes sense. Though....if you were dropping your team off, do you need help getting them back, considering that your plane is uh...missing some stuff that's probably important for an engine." He smirks a little cheekily at her.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
"To be fair, the press stuck her with that nickname. One of the perils of staying under the radar is you get dubbed if you do get publicly recognized," Shadowcat says with a shrug and a small grin. "Am pretty familiar with Sue and her family, actually," Kitty says of the Invisible Woman. "Wonder Woman, only worked with once. Well, twice but she didn't know I was there helping the first time. I was staying incognito."

She turns to glance back out to sea. "I already called in some help to handle getting them out when they need it. But I really appreciate your help with the Blackbird. If we'd gone into the water it would have been a total loss instead of something we can fix. Not to mention a cold swim back for me."

Shadowcat reaches over and, if Mark allows her, gives his biceps and upper arm a squeeze. "You got some muscles there, Invincible," she says. "Flying is nice too. I'm jealous."

Mark Grayson has posed:
"I guess so. I mean, the news always find a way to mess everything up, right? I mean...a slip and suddenly, you're the villain of the millenia." Mark smiles faintly at Shadowcat, though she admits to being familiar with the Invisible Woman personally and his eyes widen. "YOU KNOW THE INVISIBLE WOMAN?!" He said that /way/ too loud, but that's okay. No sonic screams here folks!

Everything is good in this neck of the woods.

".../and/ you know WONDER WOMAN?!" Run it back twice in a row, why dontcha. But he nods softly. "Geez, I should ask you to set up some meetings. I'm still kinda new to the whole hero scene, you know?" He looks back out to the sea.

"Not a worry. Promise!" He smiles, though she squeezes his biceps and it feels like carbon fiber. His cheeks flush in a blush, turning red at the contact. "W-w-w-w-w-w-well, I mean...uh..."

He clears his throat. You got this, Mark.

"Good genetics, I guess?"

*facepalm.*

Kitty Pryde has posed:
"Well, I just worked with her to recover some escapees, Wonder Woman. Not... meaning to name drop and all," Shadowcat says with a soft blush. She doesn't bring up having gone to school with Franklin Richards, the connection to Xavier's School something that she is careful to avoid. "But yeah, the Richards are really great," she tells him.

Lockheed flits about the area, before coming back to land on Kitty's shoulder and give her an affectionate rub of his head. "Yeah, lot of that going around," the girl says though not having identified herself as a mutant. Maybe she thinks that was what Mark meant by it though.

"Well, maybe we can team up sometime, Invincible. Really appreciate your help there with the plane," she tells him.

Mark Grayson has posed:
"I mean....that's still a pretty big deal! Don't see me helping Superman with escapees, you know? I'd say that makes you pretty freakin' awesome." Mark gets a bit /too/ friendly, maybe, with one Katherine Pryde, but even still, hearing that the Richards are just as cool as he's always heard about makes him happier than he thought possible. "Man, sometimes your heroes really are as cool as you hope they are."

He smiles softly towards her, though he nods. "Time and place. If you need help with the plane, well...I don't exactly have the hearing of Big Blue, but I can try and help out?" He smiles softly, though he turns around, and starts to take off into the air.

"I'm sure we'll meet again soon, but I gotta go hunt down Griffin, make sue he's not causing more trouble. I'll see you soon, okay? And I'll be sure to loop around, so in case you're stuck, you won't be for long."

He smirks. "Pinkie promise."

And suddenly, bolts off into the heavens.