Breaking Out: All Over
Posted on Sun Feb 6th, 2022 @ 12:40pm by Margo Stone
3,547 words; about a 18 minute read
Mission:
Episode 1: X-Odus
Timeline: September 10th, 1990
"And now from AC/DC's latest hit, Thunderstruck!" came from the car speakers as Katy looked for something to listen to. She was about to ask Margo if she wanted to listen to it when the DJ broke in.
"Breaking news. Two men have escaped from the local prison less than two hours ago. They are considered to be armed and dangers." A description of the two followed and a warning not to approach them if spotted and a number to call.
Katy looked over at Margo and raised an eyebrow. "This could be interesting. What do you think?"
The parting gift from her parents, her bright red Porsche 911 thrummed down the residential road in Salem, New York. It had become a normal pastime of the first month of their friendship for the two girls to travel in the area. Sometimes they went for movies and food, sometimes they attended sporting events, and then sometimes they got themselves into some trouble. On this particular evening at around 8:45pm, they had just left a high school football game where they had spent the entire event people watching and discussing life rather than watching the action.
Margo looked over at Katy, quirking her own eyebrow. She wore a black halter-top and low-rider blue jeans, real clothes for a change instead of her simulated fair.
"You mean, like...us doing something about it?" she asked, turning the car onto a well lit main street with a row of businesses and establishments. "It sounds like a fun rise, but I honestly wouldn't even know where to start."
Katy wore a Santa hat and grey sweater that hung off her shoulders, a pair of black leggings and her typical running shoes. "How about I steal a police radio and we can listen in?" she suggested with a waggle of her eyebrows.
"Yeah, but those sticky fingers to good use!" Margo remarked with a bright smile, her large hazel eyes articulating all her expression. She slammed on the accelerator, gunning the car up ten miles past the speed limit on the rather-empty street and pressed heavily on the break to stop the car near the town's police station. Outside there were several police cars parked and waiting. "Here you go, hotshot. Oh...and if you get caught and they question you, remember your line: 'I have no idea who Margo Stone is, officer. She sounds hot though.' okay?"
The other young woman just blinked at her. "You...brought us...to the police station. While speeding and squealing your brakes. Do you...ah shit." She looked out the window and saw several curious officers looking to make an easy ticket coming out of the station. "Double shit. Go around the block."
"Oh, fine." Margo said, rolling her eyes with a smile. She took off again, this time at a more moderate pace, and pulled the car around the bock and into a parking lot. Looking at Katy she grinned. "You know, for a criminal, you sure are skittish."
"We're supposed to be X-Men, not criminals," Katy pointed out before she opened the car door and took off in a blur of speed as the sound of sirens came from around the corner.
As her friend disappeared, she shook her head at the girl. Katy was prickly for sure, but they just clicked sometimes. The sirens she heard gave her some pause for worry, but she had gotten herself out of the situation before. She saw the police car round the corner. Situations like this which presented themselves as stressors for others, seemed like challenges to her. She would use her special abilities to get out of it or learn a valuable lesson for next time. Either way, Margo got stronger and the rest of the world stayed the same. She leaned her seat back in order to hide her appearance, wanting first to catch a glance of who was in the police car before she interacted with them. She used her shapeshifting ability to obscure her features and to shift into shadow. Anyone seeing her up close would think her a monster, but it was designed to be make her image undecipherable.
A young white male with green eyes and red haired officer stopped the car and got out with his lights still on, but the sirens mercifully silent. He heads up to the car, his expression one of admiration for the expensive sports car, then clears his throat. "Please stick your hands out the window where I can see them," he calls out from a distance of about six feet from it.
Male, red hair, extremely fit, young. She looked at his hand in the rearview mirror and couldn't see a ring. She had her angle. Her black and shadowy form molded into a human one again and two delicate freckled arms arched out of the window. Inside she had formed into a pretty-faced thin, but shapely girl around 21. It was a shame she was clothed or else she would have changed her ensemble as well. For now, the clothes of Margo Stone would have to do. She spoke in a soft-voiced Midwest accent she'd perfected from watching television.
"Okay, but...this isn't very comfortable!" she responded with him only being able to see her arms which she had smartly decorated with an emerald bracelet.
The officer steps up to the car. "License and registration, please," he says, but softens it with a smile.
"Is there a problem, officer?" she asked, looking up at him and pulling her arms back into the car. She smiled back at him and spoke with a calm and friend-like tone. "last time I checked, a girl doing her makeup in a parking lot wasn't a crime."
"Burning rubber in front of a police station isn't a very smart thing to do, miss," the young man says, but he doesn't reach for his gun when she draws her arms back in. "And you don't look like you need makeup."
She blushed, aided by her powers more than genuine feeling. Smiling at him, she chuckled slightly, allowing a small snort to escape.
Around the corner, Katy blurred past one of the officers still standing outside of the police station and was around the corner with a radio before anyone could register more than a passing gust of wind.
"Sorry, I just didn't expect that. That was a really sweet thing to say." she said, hoping that her ploy was working. If there was anything she had learned since she'd got her powers, is how easily manipulated people were. "I just got this new car, curtesy of a rich uncle and...I guess I just got carried away. I didn't know I was going so fast. God, I'm so stupid."
"Okay, calm down," the young officer said, raising his hands in a calming motion. "Just keep it under the speed limit and if you keep burning rubber, you're going to need new tires. I'm going to let you off with a warning this time."
"Really?" she asked with brown eyes beaming. "Oh my God, you're, like, the sweetest cop I've ever met! Are you serious? You're just going to let me go? I can't believe it."
Katy came around the far corner, the radio hidden under her baggy sweatshirt and turned off as she heads that way. "Hey, I thought you were going to pick me up at my house," she said as she flashed a smile at the cop and got in the passenger seat.
"Well, hello there," the officer said to Katy, then looked back at the cute redhead and pulled a card out of his wallet to hand to her with the name Officer Stompanado on it and his work and cell phone number. "Be safe, ladies."
"Thank you, Officer!" Margo said, waving and watching as the man walked away. After he had pulled away, she looked at Katy with a devious smile on her face, still the face of the redhead girl. She waved the card around. "This face is going to need a name. I think Officer Stompanado might come in handy one day. Did you get the radio?"
"Yah," Katy said as she pulled it out and turned it on. "Did he take your license or anything?" she asked as she watched the cop leave.
“Well he asked but I just played a silly girl and he decided to let me off with a warning.” Margo said, almost beaming with pride. “And no one saw you?”
"You can't see the wind," the young brunette said before she winced at a loud squawk from the radio.
Attention all units, a pedestrian has called to say he spotted two guys that may match the description of the escapees. It was at E. Roadway and Archibald Street.
Katy smiled. "Looks like I stole it just in time, too. Punch it!"
Margo, cranked the car into gear and set a route for the stated location. She went slower this time, however, not wanting a repeat of the police stop from earlier. Since their destination was on the other side of the town, it took them much longer to get there than the cops. When they pulled onto the street, they could see flashing lights at the house. After several moments of watching, they watched the cops standing at the door of one of the condominiums walk back to their car, frustration marking their faces.
“They were told to get a warrant.” Margo said, having mastered the skill of reading lips. “Maybe that means they were at the wrong house?”
"That...is stupid," Katy said as she watched the cops leave. "These are escaped criminals and they suddenly need a warrant? Let's find a parking space and wait for the Keystone Cops to leave for donuts," she said, her inner city New York accent coming out strong.
“Small town cops in a peaceful town.” Margo said with a grin. “They could use our help. The person at the door must have been convincing.”
She watched as the police started to pull away from the house and drive down the road.
“So, what’s the plan?” She asked, her mind turning toward their tactic of choice.
"You're the best at disguises," the speedster said after a moment. "Do you have any pizza boxes in your trunk?"
Margo rolled her eyes, a smile crossing her features. Considering how many times a week they frequented Katy’s favorite pizza place, she’d better have some. She looked back and saw two boxes sitting on the back seat.
“There’s your answers.” She responded. “So I use that to get them to open the door and then we push ourselves in?”
Katy laughed. "You're the pizza delivery girl and if we pull this off, I won't get pizza for another month for us. I'll be around the corner waiting for you to give the signal if it's clear." She reached for the glove compartment and opened it, then pulled out a roll of duct tape she had stashed there.
“This is going to be classic.” Margo said, starting to pull off her top. She looked at Katy, who gave her a curious expression. “Unless you happen to have any pizza girl uniforms around here, I need to take these off. I also need to think of a look. My normal face would do, I guess, but where’s the fun in that?”
"I don't mind at all if you don't," Katy said. "Try...Dominos pizza uniform. Everyone knows them."
Margo pulled off her jeans and then her bra and panties, but didn’t linger naked for long, forming a low-cut black polo with a dominos logo on it. It revealed her ample cleavage and the top of a black bra along with her considerable tattoos on her breasts and collar bones. For a finishing touch, she turned her head as her blonde hair went suddenly silver with purple at the ends like a layered die job. It was the look she went for when she was 15, but thought it went well now. A black dominós cap topped the masterpiece.
“What do you think?”she asked, moving her hands in a ta-da motion.
"Perrrfect," Katy said a little enthusiastically as she watched Margo change without a hint of shame on her face and more than a little interest, but she pulled herself together. She was here to help get escaped criminals who might hurt someone. The radio squawked again.
Attention all units. SWAT is en route to target address in ten minutes.
"We better get moving. I'll be right behind you."
“I guess that warrant won’t be necessary after all.” Margo said, turning off the engine and opening her door. She grabbed the pizza boxes, empty though they were, and pretended they were full. As she watched Katy leave, she approached the door from down the street.
Bribing a guard, killing a fellow inmate, and hoping over a fence, these were all offenses to be added to his rape charge. But it wouldn’t matter soon for Luis May once he and his fellow escapee made it to Canada and then, from there, boarded a plane to South America. From there they might go there own way, but for now, his companion’s cousin’s condominium in Salem would have to do. He had grabbed the pistol he had lifted from one of the prison guards when the knock came at the door. After his companion’s cousin convinced these stupid small town cops to leave, he looked to his companion and frowned, cigarette smoke billowing between them.
“Damn these pigs up here are stupid.” He said, his gruff black beard recently washed and shampooed in the outside world.
Before the other man could respond, the doorbell rang again.
“I thought you said your stupid cousin got rid of the pigs.”
JD McCullen was a big, hard man that had a series of murders behind him, including one of the other prisoners on the way out just because the guy had been too close to his cell bars. He had grabbed the man by the throat and smashed his head against the bars hard enough to cave the front of his skull in. "Wan me ta geddit?" he asked in a broken toothed Bronx accent as he heaved his heavily muscled frame off a chair he had been reclining in.
The door opened to reveal Margo in her Dominos getup. She adopted a believable tired expression and let her face and cleavage do the talking to hopefully keep the giant man from slamming the door right in her face.
"Pizza Delivery for...Gangsta Mike, is that you, big guy?" she said, pretending to read from a receipt in her hand. She looked up at the brute then, a flash of adrenaline coursing through her veins. A little danger was good for her, she figured.
"Gangsta Mike ain't here, but I'll take da pizza," JD said as he lumbered forward, one meaty slab of a hand reaching out for the pizza and no intent to pay. He stared at her cleavage and gave a nasty laugh. "Hey Louie, want some pizza girl?"
Quickly, much more quickly than the man could move, Margo pulled back the empty pizza boxes. She quirked a brow at the man.
"Are you high? That'll be $15.75 plus a handsome tip. And the pizza girl? That'll be a hell of alot more expensive." she said, using her other hand to push the man's claw away. "And if you're not Gangsta Mike, then who's going to pay for these pizzas?"
JD moved forward in a sudden lunge and grabbed for her forearm instead of the pizza box. "Hey, Louie, we gots a smart mouth here, let's teach her some manners!"
Louie had already gotten up and angled his head toward the door when he heard it was a pizza girl and was halfway to the door once he'd gotten a look at her. He'd always had a thing for girls with tattoos and he hadn't been able to lay hand on one of them for years.
He winced as she let out a bloodcurdling scream, worried it would attract alot of unwanted attention, but by the time she was sandwiched between him and JD, he had forgotten. A hand was on her breast as he used the other to close the door.
Katy had been waiting for a subtle signal from around the corner from the apartment that Margo had gone to. When the scream came to her ears and didn't sound male, she was in motion. The speedster blurred around the corner and a ripping sound was heard, then JD and Louie both discovered that they were blind as two heavy circles of duct tape covered their eyes and mouths, leaving their noses free so they wouldn't suffocate. "Balls!" she shouted. "Knee up!"
Margo couldn't be as strong as a giant unless she became one, but she still possessed peak physical speed and strength for a woman her size in her normal form, which was enough for a blinded man. She kneed JD directly between the legs, causing him to double over and collapse to the floor. She threw the empty pizza boxes over his body for good measure and started searching for the man who had opened the door for the police while Katy took care of Louie.
Louie didn't fare much better with the gun. One moment he had been going to have a piece of pizza girl and the next moment he was blind and couldn't breathe through his mouth. He gasped for air through his nose and fired blindly, killing a houseplant and a painting before Katy's foot hit his hand hard enough to break several bones, causing him to give a muffled howl through the duct tape as he dropped the gun.
Not stopping, Katy circled him several more times in a blur of blue and white, the sound of duct tape being ripped off a roll a constant. When she stopped, the thug was taped from his ankles to his shoulders and she stood with one foot on him in her X-Man uniform. "Not today, boys."
Margo had transitioned from the pizza girl outfit to her X-Man uniform as well, though hers was shaped from her body. She walked toward the back hallway of the condo looking for the man who owned the place. She saw an open bathroom door with no sign of the man and a closed door at the end of the hall. She turned the nob and it didn't budge. She sighed, slightly annoyed, and then transformed her skin and muscle, turning them into smooth shining metal. With a flurish, she knocked the door off the hinges and stepped inside the room.
The blasts of gunfire caught her by surprise, bouncing off of her metal skin and directing the path of the bullets in different directions. On the other side of the room, a frightened looking man emptied his pistol with extreme stress on his face. Once the gun clicked and indicated it was out of ammo, she advanced on him and grabbed him by the collar.
"Don't do that shit. It scared me." she said, in reference to the gunfire. She pushed him out into the next room and presented him to Katy, offering a featureless metal face. "This guy doesn't seem like a criminal, but it's probably his place."
"He was harboring them, so that puts him in the same category," Katy said as she finished taping up JD and came to look at the other guy. "If he moves, hit him. Hard. I'm calling the police."
Margo watched as Katy went to call the police. She transitioned her skin back to its normal supple pale white and looked over at the third man. Completely terrified, she didn't feel she had to worry about him moving much. When Katy returned, her thoughts flowed out of her mouth.
"It could be more complicated than that, Leadfoot." she said, referring to the other girl by her codename. "This guy is pretty small compared to the other guys, and he doesn't strike me as the...violent criminal type. Maybe he didn't feel like he had a choice, you know?"
It was her sense of understanding, a byproduct of her ability set. She was good at figuring out what it might be like to be someone else. Still, the cops and prosecutors probably wouldn't like her giving him any ideas about what defense to mount.
"Yeah, that's it!" the man said, his mouth hanging open. "They made me do it. I was scared for my life!"
"Then we'll let him tell it to the police," Katy decided. "It isn't like we can let him walk away."
The radio at her hip squawked. All units prepare to close in
"I guess you're right." Margo said, and then she gestured toward the door in an ironic manner. "We should...probably get going..."
"Then let's go, Spaghetti-O", Leadfoot said and true to her name, put the pedal down and took her and Margo out of there before the police arrived, a side quest well done.
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