For your consideration...

Roland sat on the curb, idling. He was in a yellow delivery truck full of good cheer and plastique dreams bound for the Senate building. The radio was on, barely picking up some old Chuck Berry. His task at hand involved a razor blade and the false ID that the Resistance had offered him. Fortunately he had spare passport pics of himself on hand. Now was just the matter of affixing it properly before running it through the portable laminator.

The Resistance was akin to most he had seen over the years. Loosely organized, barely funded, mostly out of the resistance's own pockets. Without the monetary assistance and manpower the Order brought, their shining moment would be little more than a massacre. Nothing wrong with massacres, of course. So long as they had some sense of order. He read the name and his classification several times, so it would be information easily regurgitated if asked.

Regurgitated. Bad words considering he had eaten and was currently digesting some kind of magic rock that let him understand the native tongue. An interesting device indeed. Too bad he hadn't had one while he was in the box in Colombia. He advised his informant in the Resistance not to call or radio him, as he had keyed the detonators already and had no interest in wiping himself off the curb. They mentioned some kind of helper joining him at some point. It didn't thrill Roland to have baggage, but it was their show, after all.

He slipped his hat on, turned the truck off and stooped into the cramped back of the truck/van to arrange the delivery.

The air had a vicious bite in it as Roland made his way across the street toward the service entrance. The van remained on the curb outside as it was supposed to. Roland realized there was an entrance for deliveries, but he felt it was better to act like a first time delivery man then take his chances with a screening process or bomb sniffing dogs. There were only two detonators to carry since the explosives were already wired. Gingerly lifting his hand truck up the steps, he arrived at the entry doors, quickly met by security.

A large man carrying the heavy face of a bully approached him, demanding to know why he was trying to enter the building, clearly pointing out the delivery entrance. Roland did a fair amount of looking around quizzically before descending into a manicured story of how he had to deliver the stuff quickly, due to the Senate hearings. How his family depended on his paycheck and he couldn't spare the time to go pull the truck around. How much he appreciated the allowance once some lei passed hands between the two of them. Corruption could be a good thing, depending on which side of the fence you were on.

The interior of the building was mostly quiet, as the emergency Senate session had all eyes and ears pointed inward. Short of the security watchdogs, whose eyes followed Roland briefly before settling on exits and other non suit wearing types. Like a good infiltrator, Roland had brought some legitimate deliveries for the building, taking care to have the main hall's reception sign for a package. This settled the eyes on him as he became a part of the scene, rather than someone in it. The cash at the door had allowed Roland the room to get in past security with several kilos of plastic explosive. Half the load, anyway.

The mission was simple, being a spy, and yet very complicated but nothing that could not be achieve by his excellence. clear, for anyone else that task would have been difficult but for the future world conqueror that task was a piece of cake, delicious.
The first days in the Resistance not all were kind to the newcomer, as happens in all places. But his constant samples of ego-centrism and pride brought to the mutant race helped him much to act like someone who hates humans above all things. Of course, they did things to be hated like concentration camps for mutants, they did it with the Jews ... Why not with them that were even more different ? He use that topic as one comparison that always heated the talks but added points in his favor for the beautiful Resistance group.
The revolution could not take it for peaceful ways, and some songs with supremacist content would not help to close the camps ... even though many would like their music, some younger hummed their songs .
That was the only thing talked about, they way to close the camps, to show humans who's boss and respected them as a superior race . Corrosive Revolution could not had done any good, at the first public pro mutant mention they could go directly to the camps . The mission was not bad, he could ¨help ¨ while doing monitoring task probably necessary for if the Resistance decided to use the heavy artillery.

He was late, but the van was there waiting. Probably his companion went in without waiting for him , eh did not blame him for that . You had a mission, was the only thing they say to him when he boarded a car that had little to do with his magnificence. Near the target. As the driver skillfully dodged he told the boy all he had to know about the mission. He just wished to have a cell phone in his brain but he have not. He could not tell Slate immediately, he should not use the phone very close to the parliament as the driver informed him because the charges could detonate prematurely. .. He just made sure the car was away to try to call Circe or Slate ... Sam would help, but not before asking why Iron was there and explain the whole thing for which he had no time, if Slate did not do it in time many victims would be lamented, neither phones connected. Out of Service Area, she muttered several times while the child opened through the crowd stumbling, unable to believe his cell phone still could not communicate when he had made calls to NY often ...
It was stupid to send a text message with such an important message, ... but he could not communicate . what if the message did not arrive? What if all communications had been cut off to prevent such things? Cellular, a splendid technological advance ... Resigned he sent a text message to both, separately, with the brief but important information. Event, Place, Date and Time. Slate did not have much margin of time. Would him arrive in time to stop the slaughter?

The irony put him in the team to blow the Senate. The same Senate that tried to implement anti-mutant laws, and probably would serve to hunt and kill so many of them . Was it so bad to let it happen?
It would be very bad if someone was watching him and find he was not doing his job ... so he had to pretend that he was doing it , it would be very bad for the explosions to did not occur by interference of the X-men ... Anyway he was complicated, they would suspect of one of the two, and as his partner seemed to have more time there , Iron Mouth would be the traitor. What would be the punishment for betrayal in Romania?
Torture devices of ancient times passed through his mind leaks when recalling the plan, he would find someone who need to be assisted , were to plant the explosives at strategic positions to maximize damage with the right amount of explosive. The iron maiden capriciously stayed a few seconds in his mind while with light steps he walked toward the service door from the van. Going through security checkpoints at the main entrance was tricky perhaps in the service door would be less questions but the plan was good, disguised as employees they must enter and work in peace placing the explosives ... Iron Mouth , did not want to place any explosive, but knowing that someone else would set the bombs , he must do something to prevent the cargo exploded along with the entire building.
False ID, nothing on him to check. He passed easily through the controls on the entry of services ... but now where was his partner? Dean Adwin.Where ... ? Fausto moved quickly through the halls, looking for the main entrance, certainly his partner was signing some papers at the reception to let all legally , to make sure it did its job properly. Fausto greet him when he saw him . He recognized him by his uniform, both were wearing the same.

As reception made small talk with him, Roland scanned the service entrance for his 'backup'. He figured that the Underground would send one of their locals. Maybe someone who knew the resident culture and news? Nah, just some random mutant. It was a real shame that this Resistance was faltering as it was. He imagined that were he leading a resistance, he would have the human counterparts in full surrender inside a week. That was with a few hundred trained mutants, though. A force like that could really do some damage. Something to ponder on.

Roland's eyes swiveled and stopped on a yellow suit making its way toward the building from outside. He immediately began to charm up the middle aged secretary, mentioning he had a 'new guy' joining him in a few moments and how nice it would be for the lovely lady to go ahead and handwave his entrance through security. Apparently he was not lacking in his social skills, as unpracticed as they were. Before he could finish writing her number down, his eyes shifted from beneath the brim to the partner that was to join him. His pen lingered on the last of the digits as the face beneath yon yellow cap was none other than little boy lost, fresh from the Colombian undergrowth.

Another value of his modified face. Roland pondered what kind of fun would have occurred should Fausto see the face beneath the face. Snapping into character, he came over to the boy, greeting him and putting the large handtruck handle in his hand before seeing that his small frame couldn't hold the massive burden. Taking it back from him and rolling it down the hall and away from security, he thought he would have a bit of fun with the acidic assassin, using his native British accent when he spoke to him."So, I think we need to go to the bathroom. This one, up on the right."

As they entered the door, Roland sat the truck down and checked under and inside each stall, looking for any possible eavesdroppers. Seeing no one was there, he crossed the room and flipped the small deadbolt for the door, locking them in. Taking one of the envelopes from the stack to be delivered, Roland opened it and revealed a pair of blueprints of the building, one for each of them. He handed a copy to Fausto and placed his own on the sink counter, his fingers pointing to various access points to the roof and the various cameras to be destroyed. Opening the cases, he removed several kilos of plastic explosive, prewired to be detonated by remote. " I have the remote. Sorry, but can't afford to fail the mission on your nerves. You take half of the drop on the cart, I'll take all of mine on my person. We'll deliver the packages separately, one on the roof, one delivering legit packages. We need to be clear of the building by three o'clock, as that is when the Senate head will give his speech to the press. That's when we blow the roof. Any questions?"

They would take turns, while one was preparing the fireworks the other would have to pretend that nothing was happening so mommy would not realize that her children were being bad.
His partner would be the first to set his load, when he end it , Iron would have no way to defuse the bombs without making them explode ... probably it was planned that way in casa any of the two did not follow the plans, with half of the cargo would be sufficient. ¨I perfectly understood sir , be sure to put all your charges correctly . We don't want our boss to be mad at us . ¨ He wanted exactly the opposite.
He had no way to avoid it . Should him try to stop his partner before he place the explosives? Yes, but his companion had the remote detonator, he could exploit both of them anytime ...
The loss for the world would be so great, thousands of people would mourn his death, and would regret his untimely end ... reality itself would lose its foothold if the little singer died . Fausto could not afford to die and that the universe could collapse with the absence of its greatness but he could not look away and leave all those people die. As his egocentric mind saw it ... if he thought things were like that , so they should be.

The building gleamed at where you look, the floor was like a mirror, even when it looked like a sturdy building. These walls would explode like mirrors under the weight of the rubble.
It was so difficult to walk quietly through the halls, he wanted to warn the personal of the incoming catastrophe, but he could not. He could not fail to Underground or they will think of Circe as a betrayer.
Fausto tried to guess the safest places in the building, he analyzed some of the rooms while leaving his legit packages until he found one in his schedule which was not guarded, the flickering light of a security camera greeted him from a corner. He walked toward it with the cap covering his face, and he spat several times until the lens of the camera was melted and not likely able to spy anymore .
As always he was in serious trouble, he did what he did best, biting through the problems.
The plastic explosive was dissolved quickly in his mouth, each component was chemically destroyed by saliva, the state of matter quickly passed. From solid to an almost liquid, warm substance , containing what was before but in a different shape . The flavor lasted only a few seconds until the substance melted completely . One by one the explosives were eaten quickly . He had to make it faster to have enough time to stop his partner ... He never want it more before . to have a much larger mouth, with jaws able to dislocate or some other trick to get a bigger bite , as a child certainly could do ... tricky gecko . With the latest explosive in his stomach he advanced rapidly walking back into his steps , moving toward the ladder to the roof.

Apparently, the Mouth had been working on his general demeanor and ability to take orders. It seemed the little tyrant had whipped him into shape after all. No egocentric outbursts, no lack of decision making. Just quiet and nodding of head. Perhaps a job was going to go off without a hitch and Roland would be two for two. "I perfectly understood sir , be sure to put all your charges correctly . We don't want our boss to be mad at us .¨
Roland smiled as genuinely as he could, stifling an all out cackle at the mention of their boss. " Very good. I'm off then." An armful of plastic and a swift click of the deadbolt and he was on his way.

It would be quite a different scenario had he the Colombian face. What would the kid have done? Worst case scenario? Stammer and call Mommy Slate about the wandering knight errant. Pleasantries spewed from Roland's mouth as he passed people in the hallways and entered the elevator. No reason to appear on stairwell cameras until the last moment. Making his way toward the roof access, he mused over the threads of eloquent subterfuge that had brought them all there. How things could have been different or perhaps the same.

The cameras eye was fixed in a singular position up to the roof. For a moment. Then , it was singularly fixed on the floor below its mounting, as Roland trotted up the steps. The door was locked, of course, until the lock was neatly disassembled and door pushed open. The light of day shone over Roland's manipulated face as he surveyed the area. With his mutation, the explosives were placed in a timely fashion, each little present activated prior to its instantaneous attachment. Once his ducks were in a row, he spied an excellent hidey hole in the form of a large air conditioning unit. Glancing at his watch, he waited for the inevitable appearance of the Mouth. For the boy's sake, he hoped the lad had his packages. Probably not.

¨ ... be sure to put all your charges correctly, We do not want our boss to be mad at us. " Even though that phrase seemed to show loyalty to the mission and to Pacifica, the two had very different leaders. For Pacifica to put the explosives well would be to place them in a way to maximize the destructive effect . For a spy working for Slate it would be necessary to disable them or minimize damage to a minimum. The explosion would occur anyway , that was certain but the detonation would be less, at least some lives would be saved for the little healer that will have the heavy burden to save them all if he could arrive on time. The reduction in the amount of explosive surely would give him more time to give assistance to the dying ones.

Iron moved forward with all their explosives with him ... in his stomach. They would soon become nutrients for his body ... like everything he ate, he smiled slightly, thinking he could nourish on those destructive things ... The door was still open when he landed on the roof , sunlight blinded his eyes for a moment then he groped, with his little black abysses closed tightly a few seconds while these eyes adapted to the change of artificial illumination to natural light . the sun light dazzles with its grandeur.
He looked around but his companion was not there. Could be that the explosives were set ...? So soon ...? Yes , he zoomed in different places, noticing little red spots blinking , his greatness no longer seemed such, he was no longer certain of anything, but even when he made his job really fast and eliminated his explosives , all the charges were ready and would show their hatred anyway even if he decide to disable them , surely they had a safety device to prevent someone from remove the detonator .Yes , these really had it. Sleeping pygmies cyclops but of great destructive power upon awakening.

With the cell phone they had given him at Underground he could not call anyone, or would blow everything and if all happen at that same moment Slate would be late. All possibilities that were discussed in his mind ended in the same fatal result, a large explosion, lots of deaths, many more wounded and Slate did not arrive in time, no team would arrive in time ... and all would be a disaster, he would die ... like everyone else, but his death would be the worst, because he helped to bring this to stage . In any case it was a suicide.
His eyes filled with tears beheld the menacing red dots flickered at different points on the terrace. Was he a hero for die there or just a coward for not daring to manipulate the previously placed bombs ?

It wasn't long before the Mouth came to his surprise party. Roland watched him arrive with no explosives in hand, as expected. He guessed they were somewhere on their way down his digestive tract by now. No matter, as the placement of his own devices was more than sufficient to bring enough steel down to do the trick. The van would still make an excellent decoy as well, though his time was now wasted to position it with his waiting. It was more important that Mouth didn't tamper with what was already done.

The boy looked like a kid lost in a shopping center. No idea where he was going or what to do next. Roland knew where he was going. He was going down, with the rest of the roof. He didn't know that just yet, though. That would be the surprise. A silenced pistol became apparent in the assassin's hand, his eyes steeling with the intent. Lining up his sights on his opposite forearm, he took careful aim on the young man's ankle. It would be painful and assure he did not escape. The slight pop and Mouth spun on his axis dropping to the ground, Roland walking out into the light to greet him. As he approached him, he shot him in the good ankle, ensuring he remained for the party.

Standing near him with the pistol pointed between his tear filled eyes, Roland smiled down at Mouth. " I figured you would eat them. I'd say sorry about your ankles, but I'm not. Maybe Slate will put some heroic saying on your tombstone. Maybe not. You should have stayed in that hole in Colombia. Anyway, it's 2:56 now, so in four minutes, you won't have to hurt anymore. Hope that helps. Ta." Maybe the kid was blubbering something. It was irrelevant. A piece of piping was in his vision as he left the roof, in his hands as he blocked the door with it on the other side. A quick trot and several leaps down the stairwell and out he went into the sunlight. A beeline away from both building and van. Two for two. He couldn't wait to see what the rest of the country held in store for him.

Iron Mouth ,that in any other situation would show courage, collapsed screaming in pain when a bullet came out of nowhere to whimsically reside in his ankle, no sound announced the pain that flood his whole being, the silence did not last long as his screams of agony exploded in the air. Fausto let his whole weight fall to the injured leg , increasing the pain until after a few endless seconds the weight went from being supported by his injury leg to be hold up on the roof's floor . Roof that as the stranger who appeared after the bullet , surely the grim executor of the shot, would collapse after four minutes.
He wanted to ask who was and why he was doing that. But he could not utter any words, he could just stand there with eyes that suddenly overwhelmed with tears that slided down his cheek . Also a unmatchable anger mixed with a feeling of helplessness that suffocated him and made something so simple like ¨breath¨ so difficult as to climb the highest mountain . He just knew that this mountain was more like a volcano , almost ready to explode ...he had to get out of there quickly , there was no time to understand who he was, and where he knew him and Slate.

It was like that time when his chest was pierced by that diabolic knife that tried to be sharper than his teeth, it could not match them . Every time he breathed the pain swept over his body, he could not stop grunting in pain and do nothing more than bleed. The blood gushed from his wound, piercing pain that drilled his nerves.
The situation was repeated again , with each breath the pain ran through his body along with the air entering his lungs, while the flesh moved toward the sharp edges of the knife ... this time there was not a sharp element and fortunately was not in his chest, but the bullet pierced his ankle and let it totally useless. And each micro movement of his leg moved the hot lead in the bone, and it hurts so bad.

He tried to stand, but only managed to fall from the pain of broken bones, he was not just a hole from where his veins spat blood , the bone was also damaged, and his mobility reduced at that time of greatest need . Iron hardly could crawl to the stairs, dragging his injured leg, leaving a bloody trail.
He leaned against the wall, breathing hardly , accumulating strength for some jumps . When he tried to jump the third step down even with the shoulder against the wall he could not keep his balance on one leg, and fell down the stairs. It was a involuntary way to do it faster . His world whirled , at least he was the center of the universe because everything revolved around him until the blurry images and beating stopped abruptly ... Rolling down the stairs he received many hits on the whole body but he only felt the pain in his ankle , in his whole leg . The boy was quite confused by so many twists and pain , so he could not help but waste valuable seconds trying to recover once he achieved it he continued with his frantic crawls . His mighty deserted from his body with every move but he only stopped when he heard the explosion, the blast almost break his ear making him hear nothing, everything became blurred when the roof collapsed. Dust clouded his vision, debris restricted his body, his lungs filled with dust and smoke like his mouth. The hope abandoned him, as his forces were going to leave him soon.