Haunted House, 1/2
May. 3rd, 2006 11:25 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsSomething very strange is happening at the Friends of Humanity headquarters in Manhattan. Tonight appears to be a night for irony, as the X-Men receive an official request for assistance from the city.
Ororo and Kurt were coming through the door just as Scott was calling up the blueprints for the building on the main screen. Someone in the mayor's office was facilitating and doing a damned good job of it, quite frankly, by how fast the information they needed was coming in. Still, the blueprints weren't enough. It helped with the physical layout, but just that. They needed more.
"Have either of you had a TV on in the last half-hour?" Scott asked tightly, waving a hand at the screens showing the newsfeeds. "Something's happened at FoH headquarters in New York. They're thinking mutant activity."
"All I have seen is vaguely-organized panic," Ororo replied, glancing up at one newscaster who was glancing over his shoulder in apprehension at the ominious-looking building behind him. It wasn't the structure of the building that made it so foreboding, but rather the startled people milling about it, their faces contorted in fear.
"Have they requested our assistance, officially?" she asked, tearing her gaze away from the monitor.
"That seems unlikely to me, somehow", Kurt spoke up quietly, attention firmly on the monitor. "Since it is no secret what we are."
"They didn't request our help," Scot confirmed. "The city has. Through the governor's office, actually... we've got full cooperation from all of the necessary authorities." He eyed another screen, the one that showed the hangar. "Sam's prepping the jet. We're going to take a short hop to Floyd Bennett Field, then go the rest of the way in police vans. They obviously don't want us being IDed as mutants right off. Same sort of thing as in Seattle."
Ororo nodded, coming to stand behind Scott and looking down at the blueprints he had called up. "That certainly seems like the best plan of action. Of course, we will likely encounter just as much resistance from those we are trying to rescue as we get from whoever or whatever is in that building."
"Perhaps not. Not from all of them, at least - some must be intelligent enough to see that it serves them to work with us", Kurt said, trying to believe it.
"Kurt, did you just ascribe common sense and intelligence to the Friends of Humanity?" Scott asked with a humorless, tired smile. Deep down he wasn't entirely sure he was up to this - but then, he had to be. He'd never forgive himself if he dumped the situation on Ororo and something went badly wrong. "You're a more optimistic man than I." He shook his head. "You're also going to need an image inducer on this run," he said, then inclined his head at the screen again. "Look at the crowd."
Increasing numbers of people were milling around at the edges of the police barricades, the crowds swelling as they watched, and some of them did not look nearly as afraid as they did angry. "That could turn very nasty very fast," Scott said quietly. "And there's something disrupting the psychic atmosphere - maybe whatever mutant or mutants are in the building. Charles is in Cerebro right now. He's going to try and have more details for us by the time we go."
"It is a large building... and many people have not yet emerged. We will need a large team to cover all the floors," Ororo mused. "And yet we will want to be as unobstrusive as possible."
"Whatever is going on in there, I suspect we will pass less noticed, once we are inside the building. But it is a question of getting inside unnoticed. Perhaps a few at a time?"
"Or pull the police vans up to a service entrance..." Scott stopped, shaking his head. "We're getting ahead of ourselves." His fingers were already moving on the keyboard, calling up a roster. "I think we need to tap a couple of the trainees. No getting around it - we're short people, and we can't take everyone."
Ororo nodded and slid into a seat, watching the monitor. "Us three, Sam, Lorna, Logan, Nate," she listed, "Cain... is too visible, however good it would be to have him there. As for trainees..." She glanced up. "Kurt, you have been keeping watch on their progress. Who do you think is ready and able to come along to help on the outside?"
After a moment's consideration, he answered, "I think our best choices would be Jamie, Shiro and Haller. They are all unobtrusive, and coming along very well in their training."
Scott nodded. "We're going to need the extra telepath, that's for sure. Shiro's more or less ready for leathers anyway, and Jamie's reliable and can be seven places at once." He chewed on his lower lip, looking back at the plans. "I'm not satisfied with just having blueprints. But we can't count on cooperation on-site from anyone who's actually escaped the building, can we?"
"Even on a good day that would be hoping for much," Ororo said, pursing her lips. "Wait, one moment... Tommy would know that building. Do you think he would be willing to help us? We would be going there to help, I cannot see why he would not want to contribute..."
"I am not sure it would be a good idea to take him there, in the circumstances", Kurt pointed out. "But there are other ways he could help."
Scott nodded sharply. "Ororo, mind talking to him? Grab Shiro if need be - the two get along. I'll call everyone else down here for a briefing. I want to be onsite within the hour."
---
Ororo recruits Tommy's assistance, as the person in the house most familiar with the building in question. Tommy is suspicious, but willing once Ororo makes the situation clear.
Once again, Ororo found herself making her way to the boy's dormitories, alone, as she hadn't been able to locate Shiro and time was short. Stopping before Tommy's door, she knocked, hoping the young man was in. "Tommy? It is Ms. Munroe, I would like to ask you a favor."
Looking up from his latest project (gold was damn hard, it had taken him almost a week to do a third of a soda can), Tommy stared at the door for a moment, wondering what in the world a teacher would want from him. Finally with a small sigh, he stood up and went over to open the door. He stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame as he asked, "What do you want?"
"Hello, Tommy," Ororo said, smiling at the young man in front of her. "There is a rather urgent situation occurring right now that I believe you may be able to help us with." Her smile faded just a bit as she went on to explain the situation more. "It involves the Friends of Humanity and their headquarters. It appears they are under attack from something... possibly a mutant."
Ah ha! He knew it. It had only been a matter of time. "That depends on why you want my help. If it's to help the mutant, I won't. Those people were my friends and even if they betrayed me, I'm not about to do the same to them." His voice was deadly serious, as he refused to be swayed in this matter. They would not be able to use him against his former friends and family.
"No, not at all," Ororo said, shaking her head. "Whoever has attacked that building is the interloper - we will be going to try and evacuate as many people from the building so that we can remove the mutant safely. Our personal conflicts with the Friends of Humanity are not to enter into this at all. It is purely a mission to help as many people as we are able."
Tommy stood in silence for a moment, thinking this over. He hadn't been suspicious of anyone in the mansion for a good few months, but this just threw him for a loop. He tried to think of any possible way she could be lying or any loopholes in the story. To buy time, he asked, "What is this 'interloper' doing?"
"We are not completely sure," Ororo replied honestly, knowing that it would be foolish to leave anything out now. "They seem to have infiltrated the building somehow and there was a panicked rush for people to escape. Now, however, fewer and fewer people are leaving... we suspect they may be held hostage for some purpose. There is also a strange psychic atmosphere; emotions are heightened, and there have been reports of disorientation and fear. You can see why we must get there as soon as possible."
Finally, Tommy understood what she wanted from him. He gave a mental sigh of relief he would never admit to. It was because he didn't want to leave another home, not that he liked it here...of course. "And you need my help to evacuate people because I know the ins and outs of that building," he said matter-of-factly.
Ororo nodded, smiling a bit as he grasped at the core of the situation. "Your assistance would make the process much quicker, which would then mean our chances of success are much better. You must believe me, Tommy, when I say that we do not wish for anyone in that building to be harmed. And your help will make that possible."
"All right," he agreed as he gave her a small nod. "I'll help you." Tommy was in no way resigned, but still deadly serious as he couldn't let go of his ingrained skepticism. "As long as no one is harmed."
"Thank you, Tommy," Ororo replied, her gratitude completely genuine. "We will do our very best to see that everyone is removed safely. What you could do to help us most is to look over the plans we have and tell us anything more you remember. Another possibility is for you to help work the coms – I know it is not a task you are used to, but having you on them would assure that any questions that come up will be answered swiftly and correctly."
He was hesitant but he nodded again. After all, he'd practically grew up in that building so he knew it like the back of his hand. Of course that analogy didn't make him feel any better since he was here because of his hands which were currently covered again in gloves. "Whatever you need. I know that building very well." Of course, it was the comms bit that made him hesitate. Yes, he didn't want harm to come these people but he also didn't want them to know he was helping their mutant rescuers. He wouldn't admit to being slightly afraid. "And the comms as well if you think it's needed."
"We shall see," Ororo said, nodding. "Let us start at the beginning and see where we must go from there. If you are available now, we can begin to look over the plans for the building."
Tommy nodded, going back into his room for a moment to grab some flip flops. Then he came out, closing the door behind him. "Lead on."
---
Arriving on-site, Ororo and Scott assess the situation. Things are a lot weirder than they had expected.
The sight of the lobby was like something out of a horror movie.
"What... the... fuck," Scott breathed, paling as he saw the thick coils of... it looked organic, was it part of the mutant? Charles had been clear on the fact that there was only one hostile mutant onsite. But the...tentacles? No, more like coils. Like giant pythons, and they were everywhere. He felt, rather than saw Ororo coming up beside him. They'd ventured just inside the front doors to take a look; the rest of the team was still waiting to deploy.
"What is that?" Ororo said, blinking in shock at the spiraled tendrils spread over the floor. She ran through the list in her mind -mechanical, no, it looked biological, but how could it be, and what was its purpose? A weapon, perhaps, or a monitoring system... "Scott, they're moving."
"I've never seen anything like this before," Scott said, or started to say, because of the coils suddenly twitched and gathered itself, lashing out at them like a whip. He blasted it instinctively, and then clutched at his head as the whole world seemed to shudder around him. No, not the world, just his perceptions of it, he told himself dizzily. Those psionic tremors Charles had mentioned. "Did you feel that?" he asked, reaching out to take Ororo's arm. She didn't look quite steady either.
At least partially a weapon, then. Ororo nodded, shifting her feet and looking somewhat surprised to find the ground flat beneath her. "Yes, I felt it," she replied with a grim smile. "So there are at least two additional threats besides the two we have prepared for. We will have to relay this to the others, though I don't know if anything save experiencing it will prepare them for those tremors." They had already agreed that the FoH staffmembers they were going to try and extricate should be treated with caution, for though they weren't the direct threat, they could still make things difficult for the X-Men should they prove adverse to being rescued by a team of mutants.
"I don't want to think about the effect on the crowds outside if they get worse. We need to get at this." Scott raised a hand to his com, drawing Ororo back towards the door. Backwards, so that they could keep an eye on the coils. "Everyone stay put," he ordered. "Deploying in ten, but we need to confer first."
---
Back at the mansion, Cain runs comms, with Tommy on hand to provide information about the building when necessary.
Cain checked the green lights on the communications board, assigning each individual X-Man to a key on his oversized control board. Satisfied, he flipped the large red switch, watching the bank of audio monitors come to life.
"X-Men, this is Juggernaut at home, sound off for comms check," he intoned into the microphone. Like clockwork, each team member replied as Cain watched their invididual monitors switch from red to yellow to green. When he saw a solid bank of green, he smiled. "Comms are all up, switching relay to the field. Haller, they're all yours."
Turning his head, he looked at his 'partner' in the room, sitting quietly in a chair with a set of blueprints in front of him. Cain muted his microphone, then swung around to press his finger into the building map. "You're pretty sure you know all the ins and outs of this little clubhouse, kid?"
Tommy hadn't really been paying attenion to what the oversized man had been doing as he'd been trying to connect what he knew with the blueprints in front of him. Seeing them in 2D is a lot different then actually visualizing them.
His eyes had been closed and it was lucky he'd cracked them to take another look at the blueprints when Mr. Marko (Juggernaut, pah. Tommy really didn't understand the need for silly nicknames) poked at them. He didn't turn his head, just gave him a tired look. "Of course. I practically lived there for most of my adolescent life. But if you think I don't, I can always just leave..."
He had been called into here to help and he was going to do that. But that didn't mean he was going to take crap from anyone. To be honest, he was a bit sore about this after thinking about it. Tommy had just gotten over not being FOH anymore...and here he was being used because of his past with it. But it was the right thing to do and he would do it, despite his own inner turmoil.
"You do your job and I'll do mine. Alright?"
Cain arched an eyebrow. "Listen, you little-" A sudden burst of static from the comms caught his attention and he whirled, tapping keys and holding his earpiece in. "Talk to me... it's what? What? No, I don't, I..." He glared over at Tommy. "Quickest way from the west entrance to the second floor without using the center hallways, what is it?"
Tommy didn't even have to look. "Go back out. Around the corner of the building is a fire escape. If that's not an option, take the hallway just inside all the way to the right all the way to the end. There's a corner, turn left and there will be a stairwell."
Cain repeated the instructions into the comm, waiting patiently for the call that indicated safety at the next landing. "They're in," he said as he muted his mic again. "It's looking like hell in there, according to the team. We're gonna make sure everyone gets out alive."
He tapped on the desk, nodding his head to Tommy. "Cheer up, kid. It ain't glamorous, but this is what doin' the good work feels like."
Tommy just nodded at Mr. Marko's first statement, his eyes closed again as he visualized the building from there incase they needed more directions. And he purposefully blocked out the comment on bad it looked. He really shouldn't be, but he was worried about Duncan, Josh and the rest.
But at the last he finally turned his head to look at Mr. Marko. "I wasn't expecting it to be. I can respect the work that goes into an operation like this, even if I don't fully support it." By operation, he meant it for the X-men in general.
"Hell, kid," Cain agreed, returning his attention to the comm board. "That's the first thing you said I agree with."
---
Back in Manhattan, Kurt and Nathan work on the evacuation. Image inducers are wonderful things in situations like this. So is telekinesis.
"This is not turning out to be one of those days we're going to look back on fondly," Nathan grunted, the blade of his psimitar shining as the coils enwrapping a whimpering man were forcibly unwound, one by one. One lashed out at him viciously, only to bounce off a TK shield. "Catch him?" he said to Kurt as the man slumped to the ground.
Kurt was already there, trying to support the man's weight. "Of course. To the infirmary we go." And he vanished, returning a moment or two later.
Nathan was batting the increasingly aggressive coils away grimly, forcing his way into the group of offices beyond. Another psionic tremor hit and he winced, shoring up his shields and giving Kurt a quick look. "You all right?" It had to be worse for the non-psis, even those who were trained to defend themselves.
"I am... managing", came the strained answer as Kurt followed him into the offices. "I will need some time in the quiet, after this, but... I will manage."
"Go away!" screamed someone from beneath a desk, and Nathan dodged as the someone - the rather large someone, actually, nearly his size, and how had a man that size fit under a desk? - came charging at him.
"Settle down," Nathan snapped, and refrained from freezing him in place. "We're here to get you - I said STOP that!" he barked as the man took another swing at him, one ragged enough that he dodged it easily.
Kurt 'ported to behind the man, grabbing his arm. "We have come to get you out of here, as my friend said. Stop."
The man proceeded to go absolutely berserk at the sight of Kurt teleporting, to the point of actually frothing at the mouth as he flailed at him. Nathan growled and this time, did freeze him in place. The gentle telekinetic 'tap' to the base of the skull settled him down quite nicely.
Kurt rolled his eyes, uncharacteristically irritated. "I wish they would at least show some sense."
"Extreme provocation," Nathan said, letting the man sag into Kurt's arms. "Take him out to the triage tent - I'll check the rest of these offices out."
Kurt nodded, balancing the man carefully, and was gone the next instant.
Nathan moved on to the first of the smaller offices. "Hello?" he called, poking his head in the door. There was the sound of weeping, and he came in, peering beneath the desk. There was a young man there, maybe in his early twenties and looking even younger at the moment. "Come on," he said, firmly, but calmly, extending him a hand. "We're here to get you out." He willed the kid to take a look at the POLICE surcoat he was wearing. Some of the evacuees had been fooled by it.
Kurt reappeared, standing in the doorway. He approached, carefully. "Come with us, son. You will be safe, now."
Kurt's image inducer was giving him a kinder face than Nathan's, and it was his face the kid responded to. Nathan backed away adroitly as the kid scuttled out from under the desk and bolted towards Kurt, grabbing his arm fearfully. I wonder how he's going to react when Kurt teleports him out of here...
They were about to find out, as Kurt wasted no time in evacuating the boy. Fortunately, he seemed too shocked by his experiences in the building to do much more than stare. Kurt left him in the capable hands of the rescue team, returning to help Nathan search.
---
Jamie handles his first trainee deployment swimmingly, even managing the witty banter with Jim. Then something odd happens.
The spiel was, by this time, almost rote. "Yes, I'm a mutant, yes, I know this is a Friends of Humanity building, yes, I'm here to help you anyway, now why don't you flounce your bigoted ass down to the fire escape and congregate in the shelter we've set up outside, please and thank you, and the same to your mother as well, I'm sure." Jamie nudged his latest ungrateful charge down the hall toward the safe zone, rubbing his forehead as he gave the weird-looking fleshy coil things a dubious look. "Ngh," he commented to Haller, who was standing nearby doing his telepathic switchboard thing. "Can we draw a few more of the semiconscious ones? I like the semiconscious ones. They don't make me wonder if they even want to be saved."
"Yeah, a good deed is much more uncomplicated when the receiver isn't trying to beat you with a stapler," Jim smiled as he relayed the sentiment to Charles. "We'll see what we can find. I have to agree, your powers are well-suited for carrying people bodily out of a building." Locating unfamiliar minds still wasn't his strong suit, but with the professor riding along in his head making contact was . . . easier. Charles' involvement was minimal -- a nudge here, a murmured reminder there -- but just having the telepath with him helped somehow. It had been a long time since Jim had worked in the knowledge that someone was at his back.
"It's not all their fault," Jim continued as he sensed Nathan unceremoniously pluck a maliciously-wielded wastebasket from the hands of a crazed intern. "Something about the area is making them irrational. I think it has to do with all the psychic interference."
"See, and here I get annoyed enough when I get cell-phone static. Yet another reason to be glad I'm not a telepath." He gave Haller a lopsided grin. "I don't suppose we could get away with rendering them semiconscious before we rescue them? I mean, if the staplers of war are coming out anyway . . ."
Jim spared this a soft laugh. "It'd be easier, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, the interference is making even passive contact a little dicey . . . and a few dozen people spontaneously falling over probably wouldn't help the 'mutant menace' image -- Cyclops," he broke off into his comm, "Iceman needs assistance on the second floor. The people in the far-most office from the stairwell are starting to riot among themselves, and all other X-Men are currently occupied. None of the rescuers near the area are on the switchboard."
"Got it. Heading up," was Scott's brusque reply, crackling with static.
#And there are two relatively uncontentious people in the supply closet three doors over from where you are on the the fourth floor,# Jim added to Jamie telepathically. Linking with the boy when his powers were active was . . . strange. With the constant interplay of multiple sets of stimuli and simultaneous thought processes that resulted from it, there was no linking with individual dupes --psychic contact with Jamie was more like connecting to one mind spread throughout the entire building. Initially this altered state of consciousness had given Jim some difficulty keeping enough of a grip on him to include, then hold him in the switchboard, but once he'd managed to let go of his expectation of what a mind should look like he had realized Jamie's wasn't structured so dissimilarly from his own. After that realization, Jim had found it a little unnerving how easy it had been to adapt.
#In the closet, huh?# Jamie thought back wryly. #Around here, maybe that makes them mutant sympathizers . . .#
"And I can just talk back, if that'd make the switchboard any easier," the 'local' Jamie added. "I mean, you haven't gotten weirded out by my funky mutant brain yet, but I kinda like making things easy on the teeps I work with."
"One is as good as the other right now," Jim replied. Up in the staff lounge Kurt was not experiencing a warm reception. Fortunately, the three rescuers who'd accompanied him were proving themselves more than willing to stand by their decision to accept the team's assistance. Jim reassured the nearby Ororo that everything was under control. "One of the benefits of my own funky mutant brain: high capacity to compartmentalize."
"So it turns out what I needed was to find a crazy telepath? Well, that's reassuring." Jamie laughed, then blinked. #Hey, that's wei--#
The Jamie next to Haller stumbled, throwing out a hand to brace himself against the wall. He straightened, shaking his head to clear it, and looked unerringly in the direction of the fourth-floor supply closet. "Okay," he gasped, "we have a serious problem. Gah, I haven't felt that since Isabel."
Jim felt it, too, shivering across the link. For an instant he'd sensed a swell of psychic null-zone, and when it receded it was as if a piece had been lifted from a puzzle: a hole where there should not have been. The pieces around it shuddered, but held.
Restraining his alarm even as he moved to support the shaken boy's mind with his own, Jim opened his thoughts to Charles.
Professor -- where did he go?
---
Lorna, evacuating more FoH staff, is recognized. Fortunately all concerned decide that this isn't the time.
The hallways were dark, even with the lights on, but that could have had to do with the odd tentacles curling around everything in sight. Duncan carefully tried to get past a bunch of them laying across a hallway, but just as he did, the building tremored. He looked back at his brother and a few other FOHers, shaking his head. "i don't think we can get by this way."
Jack just returned that shake of the head with one of his own. "We can't go back either! Something's going on in the middle of the building. It's this way or we're stuck!"
A light pierced the gloom and a woman's voice called from in front of them, "Keep coming, you're going the right way." Lorna looked around as the building shook, feeling the beams protest the motion. "For now." she murmured to herself, heading toward the group she'd just heard. Her heart was racing, a side of effect of the mutant's powers, she'd been told and so was trying to ignore it. It didn't help that she was having to fight with every person she met just to get them to safety.
"Next mission to save bigots, I'm wearing a wig."
Duncan and Jack exchanged glances before Jack gestured towards the voice. "I don't care who it is little brother, we need to get out of here." With a glare at Jack, Duncan turned back to the coils and climbed over.
The moment he was over, he turned to look at their rescuer. He'd heard rumors about mutants from that damn school were helping and Duncan wanted to make sure she wasn't one of them. He had to squint in the faint light to make out the female with green hair. She wasn't just a mutant...
She was worse.
The young man's face screwed up in anger as he leapt at her. "You!"
Lorna just sighed as she stepped back out of reach. These people were really starting to get on her nerves. "Save it for later, would you? This building isn't safe for anyone right now. You can picket and legislate us back to the stone age after we finish saving your lives." Ignoring the young man, she reached past him and helped a woman in a business suit over a tentacle.
Oh no, this was personal. "Oh no. Not after what you did to Josh and Karen. We'd be better off without you!"
Duncan went for her again, just as Jack came over and stopped him. "Whoa, what's wrong?"
Lorna stumbled back this time, eyes going wide. Her hand hit her comm. unit. "Polaris here, I..." She stopped, not really sure what she needed right now. Someone to protect her from what she'd done seemed like a stupid thing to ask. Another tremor put her back to the wall even as she grabbed onto another confused victim and tried to herd him in the right direction. "Please, don't do this right now. We don't have time for this."
Duncan had turned to his brother. "This is the woman, she meets the description perfectly! She's the one that made vegetables of Josh and Karen!"
Jack turned to glare at her, but then nodded. "Despite that, she's right, Duncan. Let's get out of here first." He shoved his little brother past the mutant woman and went back to help an older woman. But as he passed by the mutant he whispered, "We're not done talking about this...You'll pay for what you did to those kids."
There wasn't anything she could say to that. It would take too long to explain and it wouldn't mean anything anyway. "I'm here to help. That's all," she said finally, not denying anything. She raised her hand to her comm. again and realised she'd left it open. "Polaris here. I've got about ten people headed out here. Is the path clear?" She could hear her own voice shaking and ruthlessly shoved down the emotions.
She dropped her hand away, being sure to close the comm. channel this time. "Keep going straight out. They're holding the way open for you."
Jack nodded harshly once more, shoving Duncan forward again as the teenager had come back to harass the mutant some more. "Duncan! Go ahead and lead people out! We can settle this when the building isn't falling down around us!"
With a small growl, Duncan did as his brother ordered, yelling at people to move.
Lorna watched him go then looked up at the other man, "You have every right to hate me," she said quietly. The building shook and something made a resounding bang followed by a scream. She pushed off the wall, heading that direction. "Get out. Now," she ordered over her shoulder as she ran deeper into the building.
Not giving her a second thought, Jack herded the people in front of him to a run. "You heard her! Let's get out of here! Hurry, RUN!"
---
Scott checks in with Jim as more X-Men start vanishing. Jim tries to be helpful and scan the mind of the mutant doing this. It doesn't work very well. Jim needs to stop getting in touch with his inner Nathan.
If they were going to have to start knocking people out and carrying them out of the building, this was going to turn into even more of a clusterfuck than it already was, Scott thought, dropping the very large man who'd tried to throttle him in one of the offices on the ground and waving over one of the paramedics. The two women who'd been with him ran right into the arms of the police, screaming about the "mutants attacking us, help!" and Scott spared a wary quirk of his eyebrows for the SWAT officer who gave him a helpless look.
His com crackled with interference, but he could make out Jim's words, and his heart sank as he ran for the police van where they'd left him to operate the telepathic switchboard. One of the officers standing watch over there - Scott had been too focused to appreciate the gesture, there - opened the back of the van for him.
"We lost another one?" he demanded of the younger man sitting inside. "Who?"
"Logan," Jim said, the verbal response slightly delayed. He'd been focusing on his telepathy since retreating to the inside of the van. It had seemed like a good idea after he'd almost taken a bottle to the head from one of the more proactive FOHers. The telepath squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, refocusing, then looked up at Scott. "It's like they were swallowed by static. Jamie and Logan. They're not out of my range, just -- gone. Charles can't sense them, either."
What the hell is going on in there? Scott controlled his reactions ruthlessly, limiting himself to a sharp nod. "Any other impressions from them before they vanished? Anything at all?"
"Just . . . a sensation of being pulled, then blackness. Not the kind that comes from unconsciousness. Something external." He directed a pair of more cooperative officers to a small knot of people who had barricaded themselves in a back office, and was distantly relieved when the response was notably more positive than that of some of their coworkers'. No need to know their rescuers were operating under telepathic guidance. "It's the interference," Jim continued as Shiro forcibly restrained a panicked secretary from throwing herself out a second-floor window. "It's not just an ambiant effect on emotions and communication. Something about it is actively dangerous."
Scott looked over his shoulder, back up at the building. There had been strange blackness visible here and there through some of the windows, before the sun had gone down, or so some of the officers who'd already been on site had told him. "I'd gotten that impression," he muttered, trying to think. "We can't pull out. There are still a couple of hundred people not accounted for in that building..." Not to mention, they had to find their people and the emergency services personnel who'd gone missing, too.
On the third floor Sam had found a little girl that had run from the daycare center to hide under her father's desk. She didn't care who or what the strange man in black leather was, his arms were real and warm and he was taking her out, out . . . "If it's active then there's a mind controlling it. If that's true, maybe I can find it."
"Jim..." Scott's lips tightened. He didn't like this. He didn't like this at all. "Be careful. Whoever this is, he or she is hostile."
"It'll be okay. I'm not going to take the offense. But if I find it then Charles can follow me there . . ." Jim could sense Scott's worried disapproval even without a telepathic link. Charles was issuing similar concerns, but Jim simply shook his head. I can do it, he thought at the professor, the insistence quiet but determined. I can hold the switchboard and look at the same time. We're good at doing different things at once. And I need to learn to put myself out more. Almost unformed was the thought, We need to be able to pull our own weight.
Jim had a stubborn look on. Scott didn't trust stubborn looks, particularly when the person wearing it was talking to Charles. Charles? he thought at the Professor's presence. We need to find the others, but I'll order him not to do this if I have to...
Charles' response was not what Scott needed to hear, and he gave Jim a hard look. "Try it," he said guardedly. Charles was right there in the telepathic sense, after all; surely he could keep Jim from any real harm if things went pear-shaped. "But I swear, if you knock yourself for a loop, I'm going to let Nate mock you for following his bad example."
Jim smiled faintly. "That's fair," he said, and stretched out.
After all this time working around and through it, allowing his mind to flow in to the static was astonishingly simple. He'd half-anticipated this. Giving way was something Jim knew well.
What he hadn't anticipated was what lay at the source of the interference, which was . . . nothingness. Immaculate, unassailable, all-consuming nothingness.
There was no time to cry out, no opportunity to struggle, no chance even to register what was going on. Faced with an imminent breach of hopelessly insufficient defenses, the young man's mind didn't even wait for one to occurr; it simply switched off.
There was no sound, verbal or psychic. There wasn't even a twitch. With a slow, inexorable kind of gravity, eyes still wide open, Jim merely collapsed sideways in his seat.
Scott swore and caught him, lowering him more gently to the ground. "I need some help over here!" he yelled at one of the paramedics, ignoring Charles's quiet, if still concerned reassurance. "Keep an eye on him," he snapped at the female EMT who came running over in response.
"What-"
"It's like a shock-state," Scott grated out. "Treat it like that." No more switchboard. Wonderful. Charles, can you find Nathan?
A pause, and then the answer he'd been afraid of getting. "Shit," Scott swore under his breath and ran for the doors of the building. No switchboard, intermittent coms. This was reminding him of Budapest, but worse.
---
Back at the mansion, Cain gets the news that the telepathic switchboard is gone and something's eating X-Men.
The switchboard lit up almost randomly, signals going from green to red in an instant. The net suddenly came alive with activity. Cain leaned forward to cut through the chatter and hit the transmit button. "Juggernaut on comms, what in the hell is everyone babbling about?"
The answer shocked him, surprise evident on his face. "Gone? They're off the net, what do you mean gone? Haller's what? Shit, setting up emergency net link now..." He snapped his fingers repeatedly, gesturing to Tommy. "Kid! Start getting those link thingies going! Hold down the red button, then press the green until the light comes on! Go!" He pointed at a bank of switches, finger waving impatiently.
Since he had been staring at the blueprints, making sure there was only one exit from the basement, Tommy started, looking up at Mr. Marko first and then over a the switchs he was pointing at. He did as he was told but, "The light thingie isn't coming on! What's going on over there?"
"Telepathic switchboard's offline, means we gotta get the old-fashioned one up." Cain scooted his chair behind Tommy, reaching over his head. "Summers keeps telling me it's a network... thing. Work, dammit!" Cain slapped his hand against he bank of computers, then drew back as a series of lights and buzzers went off, then the screens started going green.
"What did you do?!" Somehow he didn't think glowing green was a very good thing. Tommy looked at the buttons in front of him, repeating the sequence Mr. Marko had given him. When that didn't work, he did it backwards.
"Percussive maintenance!" Cain shouted, "All these high-tech fucking toys with their high-tech fucking problems and their high-tech fucking glitches and--"
A split-second before Cain's hand was about to deliver another blow to the console, the screens hummed and sprang to life, voices coming over the comlink. "Holy shit, it worked!"
Tommy couldn't help a small sigh of relief. "So if this is how there high-tech fucking toys work, how the hell do you get anything done?" He glanced at Mr. Marko before leaning over to listen to the voices so he could provide any information he could.
"I'm the low-tech solution," Cain said gruffly before tapping keys. "Juggernaut here, we're online... you need me to what?"
"I think I prefer your method." Tommy mumbled as he listened, glancing down at his fingers, The tips of his gloves had turned to lead. With a sigh, he made sure to concentrate on the voices.
---
Scott gets directed over to help Shiro. The two of them meet what's eating X-Men. Scott gets away. Shiro does not.
The heads-up from Shiro had echoed over the coms in a brief break in the static, and Scott had realized, with a moment's quick reference to the blueprints in his head, that he was closest. Leaving Sam to continue evacuating the kitchen staff, he ran through the cafeteria and towards the east stairwell, letting off a few quick optic blasts as a few of the coils hanging everywhere lashed out at him as he ran. How the hell big was this mutant?
There were FoH staff members running and screaming away from the stairwell - clearly, the group Shiro had been evacuating. Scott pushed past them, hearing the sound of Shiro's powers beyond, in the stairwell.
#Kamikaze, coming up on your rear,# he sent over the switchboard. Coms were out entirely, thanks to the psionic tremors. He ran up the stairs and found Shiro on the second landing, trying to get a screaming woman free from the coils trapping her.
Shiro growled, one flaming hand gripping a coil tightly while the other shaped a fireball to be tossed at a dozen blue-black ribbons trying to wrap up and suffocate a struggling young woman. He swore at the mass as the fireball exploded, freeing the woman who then frantically kicked and crawled her way past Cyclops. With her out of the way, he blasted from the bound hand, disintegrating the coil and freeing him.
"There is no end to this," he said, taking a few steps back. "Has anyone discovered a nucleus yet?"
"Yes, and it's eating people." Scott didn't laugh at the look Shiro gave him. "We're missing X-Men, and who knows how many FoH staff and police..." Scott blasted another coil as it came at him, pushing the young woman down the stairwell. "Head for the door! Don't stop!" he told her, then turned back to Shiro. "Anyone else up on this floor?"
Shiro imagined a Sand Worm from Final Fantasy and felt a little ill. Why do gross mutants have the tendency to act as villains, he asked himself. He shook his head, both to erase the vile image from his mind and to answer Scott's question. "No, she was the last. So no. . . Kuso!" he spat as the coils reached for the door, blocking their exit. The intensity of the flames enveloping his fists increased. "I almost hope that every one of these things that we destroy pains him a little."
"Steady," Scott said a bit raggedly, squeezing the younger man's shoulder reassuringly. He wasn't feeling all that steady himself, but he needed to hold it together, too. "These psionic tremors are messing with us. Let's get down to the lobby and check back in." Make sure we haven't lost anyone else... The thought was half-formed when a coil shot down the stairs and tangled around his ankles, yanking him off his feet and upward. Scott twisted helplessly in the air, unable to get a shot off.
"Cyclops!" Shiro raised his right arm, aiming at the coil around Scott's ankle and then swearing again when another half dozen appeared from out of nowhere to wrap around the rest of his body. The coils were thrashing around, as if they knew what Shiro was planning on doing and using Scott as a human shield in response. There was no way he could free Scott without blasting him at this rate.
He might get scolded for this later, but it was all he could do so he wouldn't fry his leader. Strengthening his personal force field so the coils couldn't get through, he launched himself towards Scott. Pulling a Cannonball, he rocketed through the coils, incinerating them and releasing Scott.
Scott fell on the stairs, awkwardly and hard, and laid there gasping for air, unable to move. More of the coils snaked downwards, this time down the stairs like a tide of black snakes rather than through the air, and he managed to raise his head to fire off a blast that -didn't discourage them at all. Shit.
Shiro echoed that sentiment. He raced down, lowering his shield so he could grab hold of Scott and get the hell away. But what he didn't count on was the dozen of coils reaching for him, too. Caught unawares and dazed, his shield flickered and he couldn't manage the concentration to strengthen it again. He could feel his brain vibrating violently as the psychic tremors rocked him.
"Kami--SHIRO!" Scott saved his breath and tried to blast at the coils yanking Shiro upwards. He caught a few, but there were more, enough that the mutant wasn't dropping Shiro, and Scott stared upwards in horror at the sudden yawning darkness at the top of the stairwell.
For all the jokes Shiro made about his experiences at Xavier's, this one was just too frightening to compare to Urotsukidoji. He struggled against the coils binding his wrists and ankles, trying to tap into his powers but finding nothing to tap into.
Just before everything went black, the psionic switchboard, now being reconstructed by Charles, lit up with a brief but blinding flash of terror.
---
Ororo and Kurt were coming through the door just as Scott was calling up the blueprints for the building on the main screen. Someone in the mayor's office was facilitating and doing a damned good job of it, quite frankly, by how fast the information they needed was coming in. Still, the blueprints weren't enough. It helped with the physical layout, but just that. They needed more.
"Have either of you had a TV on in the last half-hour?" Scott asked tightly, waving a hand at the screens showing the newsfeeds. "Something's happened at FoH headquarters in New York. They're thinking mutant activity."
"All I have seen is vaguely-organized panic," Ororo replied, glancing up at one newscaster who was glancing over his shoulder in apprehension at the ominious-looking building behind him. It wasn't the structure of the building that made it so foreboding, but rather the startled people milling about it, their faces contorted in fear.
"Have they requested our assistance, officially?" she asked, tearing her gaze away from the monitor.
"That seems unlikely to me, somehow", Kurt spoke up quietly, attention firmly on the monitor. "Since it is no secret what we are."
"They didn't request our help," Scot confirmed. "The city has. Through the governor's office, actually... we've got full cooperation from all of the necessary authorities." He eyed another screen, the one that showed the hangar. "Sam's prepping the jet. We're going to take a short hop to Floyd Bennett Field, then go the rest of the way in police vans. They obviously don't want us being IDed as mutants right off. Same sort of thing as in Seattle."
Ororo nodded, coming to stand behind Scott and looking down at the blueprints he had called up. "That certainly seems like the best plan of action. Of course, we will likely encounter just as much resistance from those we are trying to rescue as we get from whoever or whatever is in that building."
"Perhaps not. Not from all of them, at least - some must be intelligent enough to see that it serves them to work with us", Kurt said, trying to believe it.
"Kurt, did you just ascribe common sense and intelligence to the Friends of Humanity?" Scott asked with a humorless, tired smile. Deep down he wasn't entirely sure he was up to this - but then, he had to be. He'd never forgive himself if he dumped the situation on Ororo and something went badly wrong. "You're a more optimistic man than I." He shook his head. "You're also going to need an image inducer on this run," he said, then inclined his head at the screen again. "Look at the crowd."
Increasing numbers of people were milling around at the edges of the police barricades, the crowds swelling as they watched, and some of them did not look nearly as afraid as they did angry. "That could turn very nasty very fast," Scott said quietly. "And there's something disrupting the psychic atmosphere - maybe whatever mutant or mutants are in the building. Charles is in Cerebro right now. He's going to try and have more details for us by the time we go."
"It is a large building... and many people have not yet emerged. We will need a large team to cover all the floors," Ororo mused. "And yet we will want to be as unobstrusive as possible."
"Whatever is going on in there, I suspect we will pass less noticed, once we are inside the building. But it is a question of getting inside unnoticed. Perhaps a few at a time?"
"Or pull the police vans up to a service entrance..." Scott stopped, shaking his head. "We're getting ahead of ourselves." His fingers were already moving on the keyboard, calling up a roster. "I think we need to tap a couple of the trainees. No getting around it - we're short people, and we can't take everyone."
Ororo nodded and slid into a seat, watching the monitor. "Us three, Sam, Lorna, Logan, Nate," she listed, "Cain... is too visible, however good it would be to have him there. As for trainees..." She glanced up. "Kurt, you have been keeping watch on their progress. Who do you think is ready and able to come along to help on the outside?"
After a moment's consideration, he answered, "I think our best choices would be Jamie, Shiro and Haller. They are all unobtrusive, and coming along very well in their training."
Scott nodded. "We're going to need the extra telepath, that's for sure. Shiro's more or less ready for leathers anyway, and Jamie's reliable and can be seven places at once." He chewed on his lower lip, looking back at the plans. "I'm not satisfied with just having blueprints. But we can't count on cooperation on-site from anyone who's actually escaped the building, can we?"
"Even on a good day that would be hoping for much," Ororo said, pursing her lips. "Wait, one moment... Tommy would know that building. Do you think he would be willing to help us? We would be going there to help, I cannot see why he would not want to contribute..."
"I am not sure it would be a good idea to take him there, in the circumstances", Kurt pointed out. "But there are other ways he could help."
Scott nodded sharply. "Ororo, mind talking to him? Grab Shiro if need be - the two get along. I'll call everyone else down here for a briefing. I want to be onsite within the hour."
---
Ororo recruits Tommy's assistance, as the person in the house most familiar with the building in question. Tommy is suspicious, but willing once Ororo makes the situation clear.
Once again, Ororo found herself making her way to the boy's dormitories, alone, as she hadn't been able to locate Shiro and time was short. Stopping before Tommy's door, she knocked, hoping the young man was in. "Tommy? It is Ms. Munroe, I would like to ask you a favor."
Looking up from his latest project (gold was damn hard, it had taken him almost a week to do a third of a soda can), Tommy stared at the door for a moment, wondering what in the world a teacher would want from him. Finally with a small sigh, he stood up and went over to open the door. He stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame as he asked, "What do you want?"
"Hello, Tommy," Ororo said, smiling at the young man in front of her. "There is a rather urgent situation occurring right now that I believe you may be able to help us with." Her smile faded just a bit as she went on to explain the situation more. "It involves the Friends of Humanity and their headquarters. It appears they are under attack from something... possibly a mutant."
Ah ha! He knew it. It had only been a matter of time. "That depends on why you want my help. If it's to help the mutant, I won't. Those people were my friends and even if they betrayed me, I'm not about to do the same to them." His voice was deadly serious, as he refused to be swayed in this matter. They would not be able to use him against his former friends and family.
"No, not at all," Ororo said, shaking her head. "Whoever has attacked that building is the interloper - we will be going to try and evacuate as many people from the building so that we can remove the mutant safely. Our personal conflicts with the Friends of Humanity are not to enter into this at all. It is purely a mission to help as many people as we are able."
Tommy stood in silence for a moment, thinking this over. He hadn't been suspicious of anyone in the mansion for a good few months, but this just threw him for a loop. He tried to think of any possible way she could be lying or any loopholes in the story. To buy time, he asked, "What is this 'interloper' doing?"
"We are not completely sure," Ororo replied honestly, knowing that it would be foolish to leave anything out now. "They seem to have infiltrated the building somehow and there was a panicked rush for people to escape. Now, however, fewer and fewer people are leaving... we suspect they may be held hostage for some purpose. There is also a strange psychic atmosphere; emotions are heightened, and there have been reports of disorientation and fear. You can see why we must get there as soon as possible."
Finally, Tommy understood what she wanted from him. He gave a mental sigh of relief he would never admit to. It was because he didn't want to leave another home, not that he liked it here...of course. "And you need my help to evacuate people because I know the ins and outs of that building," he said matter-of-factly.
Ororo nodded, smiling a bit as he grasped at the core of the situation. "Your assistance would make the process much quicker, which would then mean our chances of success are much better. You must believe me, Tommy, when I say that we do not wish for anyone in that building to be harmed. And your help will make that possible."
"All right," he agreed as he gave her a small nod. "I'll help you." Tommy was in no way resigned, but still deadly serious as he couldn't let go of his ingrained skepticism. "As long as no one is harmed."
"Thank you, Tommy," Ororo replied, her gratitude completely genuine. "We will do our very best to see that everyone is removed safely. What you could do to help us most is to look over the plans we have and tell us anything more you remember. Another possibility is for you to help work the coms – I know it is not a task you are used to, but having you on them would assure that any questions that come up will be answered swiftly and correctly."
He was hesitant but he nodded again. After all, he'd practically grew up in that building so he knew it like the back of his hand. Of course that analogy didn't make him feel any better since he was here because of his hands which were currently covered again in gloves. "Whatever you need. I know that building very well." Of course, it was the comms bit that made him hesitate. Yes, he didn't want harm to come these people but he also didn't want them to know he was helping their mutant rescuers. He wouldn't admit to being slightly afraid. "And the comms as well if you think it's needed."
"We shall see," Ororo said, nodding. "Let us start at the beginning and see where we must go from there. If you are available now, we can begin to look over the plans for the building."
Tommy nodded, going back into his room for a moment to grab some flip flops. Then he came out, closing the door behind him. "Lead on."
---
Arriving on-site, Ororo and Scott assess the situation. Things are a lot weirder than they had expected.
The sight of the lobby was like something out of a horror movie.
"What... the... fuck," Scott breathed, paling as he saw the thick coils of... it looked organic, was it part of the mutant? Charles had been clear on the fact that there was only one hostile mutant onsite. But the...tentacles? No, more like coils. Like giant pythons, and they were everywhere. He felt, rather than saw Ororo coming up beside him. They'd ventured just inside the front doors to take a look; the rest of the team was still waiting to deploy.
"What is that?" Ororo said, blinking in shock at the spiraled tendrils spread over the floor. She ran through the list in her mind -mechanical, no, it looked biological, but how could it be, and what was its purpose? A weapon, perhaps, or a monitoring system... "Scott, they're moving."
"I've never seen anything like this before," Scott said, or started to say, because of the coils suddenly twitched and gathered itself, lashing out at them like a whip. He blasted it instinctively, and then clutched at his head as the whole world seemed to shudder around him. No, not the world, just his perceptions of it, he told himself dizzily. Those psionic tremors Charles had mentioned. "Did you feel that?" he asked, reaching out to take Ororo's arm. She didn't look quite steady either.
At least partially a weapon, then. Ororo nodded, shifting her feet and looking somewhat surprised to find the ground flat beneath her. "Yes, I felt it," she replied with a grim smile. "So there are at least two additional threats besides the two we have prepared for. We will have to relay this to the others, though I don't know if anything save experiencing it will prepare them for those tremors." They had already agreed that the FoH staffmembers they were going to try and extricate should be treated with caution, for though they weren't the direct threat, they could still make things difficult for the X-Men should they prove adverse to being rescued by a team of mutants.
"I don't want to think about the effect on the crowds outside if they get worse. We need to get at this." Scott raised a hand to his com, drawing Ororo back towards the door. Backwards, so that they could keep an eye on the coils. "Everyone stay put," he ordered. "Deploying in ten, but we need to confer first."
---
Back at the mansion, Cain runs comms, with Tommy on hand to provide information about the building when necessary.
Cain checked the green lights on the communications board, assigning each individual X-Man to a key on his oversized control board. Satisfied, he flipped the large red switch, watching the bank of audio monitors come to life.
"X-Men, this is Juggernaut at home, sound off for comms check," he intoned into the microphone. Like clockwork, each team member replied as Cain watched their invididual monitors switch from red to yellow to green. When he saw a solid bank of green, he smiled. "Comms are all up, switching relay to the field. Haller, they're all yours."
Turning his head, he looked at his 'partner' in the room, sitting quietly in a chair with a set of blueprints in front of him. Cain muted his microphone, then swung around to press his finger into the building map. "You're pretty sure you know all the ins and outs of this little clubhouse, kid?"
Tommy hadn't really been paying attenion to what the oversized man had been doing as he'd been trying to connect what he knew with the blueprints in front of him. Seeing them in 2D is a lot different then actually visualizing them.
His eyes had been closed and it was lucky he'd cracked them to take another look at the blueprints when Mr. Marko (Juggernaut, pah. Tommy really didn't understand the need for silly nicknames) poked at them. He didn't turn his head, just gave him a tired look. "Of course. I practically lived there for most of my adolescent life. But if you think I don't, I can always just leave..."
He had been called into here to help and he was going to do that. But that didn't mean he was going to take crap from anyone. To be honest, he was a bit sore about this after thinking about it. Tommy had just gotten over not being FOH anymore...and here he was being used because of his past with it. But it was the right thing to do and he would do it, despite his own inner turmoil.
"You do your job and I'll do mine. Alright?"
Cain arched an eyebrow. "Listen, you little-" A sudden burst of static from the comms caught his attention and he whirled, tapping keys and holding his earpiece in. "Talk to me... it's what? What? No, I don't, I..." He glared over at Tommy. "Quickest way from the west entrance to the second floor without using the center hallways, what is it?"
Tommy didn't even have to look. "Go back out. Around the corner of the building is a fire escape. If that's not an option, take the hallway just inside all the way to the right all the way to the end. There's a corner, turn left and there will be a stairwell."
Cain repeated the instructions into the comm, waiting patiently for the call that indicated safety at the next landing. "They're in," he said as he muted his mic again. "It's looking like hell in there, according to the team. We're gonna make sure everyone gets out alive."
He tapped on the desk, nodding his head to Tommy. "Cheer up, kid. It ain't glamorous, but this is what doin' the good work feels like."
Tommy just nodded at Mr. Marko's first statement, his eyes closed again as he visualized the building from there incase they needed more directions. And he purposefully blocked out the comment on bad it looked. He really shouldn't be, but he was worried about Duncan, Josh and the rest.
But at the last he finally turned his head to look at Mr. Marko. "I wasn't expecting it to be. I can respect the work that goes into an operation like this, even if I don't fully support it." By operation, he meant it for the X-men in general.
"Hell, kid," Cain agreed, returning his attention to the comm board. "That's the first thing you said I agree with."
---
Back in Manhattan, Kurt and Nathan work on the evacuation. Image inducers are wonderful things in situations like this. So is telekinesis.
"This is not turning out to be one of those days we're going to look back on fondly," Nathan grunted, the blade of his psimitar shining as the coils enwrapping a whimpering man were forcibly unwound, one by one. One lashed out at him viciously, only to bounce off a TK shield. "Catch him?" he said to Kurt as the man slumped to the ground.
Kurt was already there, trying to support the man's weight. "Of course. To the infirmary we go." And he vanished, returning a moment or two later.
Nathan was batting the increasingly aggressive coils away grimly, forcing his way into the group of offices beyond. Another psionic tremor hit and he winced, shoring up his shields and giving Kurt a quick look. "You all right?" It had to be worse for the non-psis, even those who were trained to defend themselves.
"I am... managing", came the strained answer as Kurt followed him into the offices. "I will need some time in the quiet, after this, but... I will manage."
"Go away!" screamed someone from beneath a desk, and Nathan dodged as the someone - the rather large someone, actually, nearly his size, and how had a man that size fit under a desk? - came charging at him.
"Settle down," Nathan snapped, and refrained from freezing him in place. "We're here to get you - I said STOP that!" he barked as the man took another swing at him, one ragged enough that he dodged it easily.
Kurt 'ported to behind the man, grabbing his arm. "We have come to get you out of here, as my friend said. Stop."
The man proceeded to go absolutely berserk at the sight of Kurt teleporting, to the point of actually frothing at the mouth as he flailed at him. Nathan growled and this time, did freeze him in place. The gentle telekinetic 'tap' to the base of the skull settled him down quite nicely.
Kurt rolled his eyes, uncharacteristically irritated. "I wish they would at least show some sense."
"Extreme provocation," Nathan said, letting the man sag into Kurt's arms. "Take him out to the triage tent - I'll check the rest of these offices out."
Kurt nodded, balancing the man carefully, and was gone the next instant.
Nathan moved on to the first of the smaller offices. "Hello?" he called, poking his head in the door. There was the sound of weeping, and he came in, peering beneath the desk. There was a young man there, maybe in his early twenties and looking even younger at the moment. "Come on," he said, firmly, but calmly, extending him a hand. "We're here to get you out." He willed the kid to take a look at the POLICE surcoat he was wearing. Some of the evacuees had been fooled by it.
Kurt reappeared, standing in the doorway. He approached, carefully. "Come with us, son. You will be safe, now."
Kurt's image inducer was giving him a kinder face than Nathan's, and it was his face the kid responded to. Nathan backed away adroitly as the kid scuttled out from under the desk and bolted towards Kurt, grabbing his arm fearfully. I wonder how he's going to react when Kurt teleports him out of here...
They were about to find out, as Kurt wasted no time in evacuating the boy. Fortunately, he seemed too shocked by his experiences in the building to do much more than stare. Kurt left him in the capable hands of the rescue team, returning to help Nathan search.
---
Jamie handles his first trainee deployment swimmingly, even managing the witty banter with Jim. Then something odd happens.
The spiel was, by this time, almost rote. "Yes, I'm a mutant, yes, I know this is a Friends of Humanity building, yes, I'm here to help you anyway, now why don't you flounce your bigoted ass down to the fire escape and congregate in the shelter we've set up outside, please and thank you, and the same to your mother as well, I'm sure." Jamie nudged his latest ungrateful charge down the hall toward the safe zone, rubbing his forehead as he gave the weird-looking fleshy coil things a dubious look. "Ngh," he commented to Haller, who was standing nearby doing his telepathic switchboard thing. "Can we draw a few more of the semiconscious ones? I like the semiconscious ones. They don't make me wonder if they even want to be saved."
"Yeah, a good deed is much more uncomplicated when the receiver isn't trying to beat you with a stapler," Jim smiled as he relayed the sentiment to Charles. "We'll see what we can find. I have to agree, your powers are well-suited for carrying people bodily out of a building." Locating unfamiliar minds still wasn't his strong suit, but with the professor riding along in his head making contact was . . . easier. Charles' involvement was minimal -- a nudge here, a murmured reminder there -- but just having the telepath with him helped somehow. It had been a long time since Jim had worked in the knowledge that someone was at his back.
"It's not all their fault," Jim continued as he sensed Nathan unceremoniously pluck a maliciously-wielded wastebasket from the hands of a crazed intern. "Something about the area is making them irrational. I think it has to do with all the psychic interference."
"See, and here I get annoyed enough when I get cell-phone static. Yet another reason to be glad I'm not a telepath." He gave Haller a lopsided grin. "I don't suppose we could get away with rendering them semiconscious before we rescue them? I mean, if the staplers of war are coming out anyway . . ."
Jim spared this a soft laugh. "It'd be easier, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, the interference is making even passive contact a little dicey . . . and a few dozen people spontaneously falling over probably wouldn't help the 'mutant menace' image -- Cyclops," he broke off into his comm, "Iceman needs assistance on the second floor. The people in the far-most office from the stairwell are starting to riot among themselves, and all other X-Men are currently occupied. None of the rescuers near the area are on the switchboard."
"Got it. Heading up," was Scott's brusque reply, crackling with static.
#And there are two relatively uncontentious people in the supply closet three doors over from where you are on the the fourth floor,# Jim added to Jamie telepathically. Linking with the boy when his powers were active was . . . strange. With the constant interplay of multiple sets of stimuli and simultaneous thought processes that resulted from it, there was no linking with individual dupes --psychic contact with Jamie was more like connecting to one mind spread throughout the entire building. Initially this altered state of consciousness had given Jim some difficulty keeping enough of a grip on him to include, then hold him in the switchboard, but once he'd managed to let go of his expectation of what a mind should look like he had realized Jamie's wasn't structured so dissimilarly from his own. After that realization, Jim had found it a little unnerving how easy it had been to adapt.
#In the closet, huh?# Jamie thought back wryly. #Around here, maybe that makes them mutant sympathizers . . .#
"And I can just talk back, if that'd make the switchboard any easier," the 'local' Jamie added. "I mean, you haven't gotten weirded out by my funky mutant brain yet, but I kinda like making things easy on the teeps I work with."
"One is as good as the other right now," Jim replied. Up in the staff lounge Kurt was not experiencing a warm reception. Fortunately, the three rescuers who'd accompanied him were proving themselves more than willing to stand by their decision to accept the team's assistance. Jim reassured the nearby Ororo that everything was under control. "One of the benefits of my own funky mutant brain: high capacity to compartmentalize."
"So it turns out what I needed was to find a crazy telepath? Well, that's reassuring." Jamie laughed, then blinked. #Hey, that's wei--#
The Jamie next to Haller stumbled, throwing out a hand to brace himself against the wall. He straightened, shaking his head to clear it, and looked unerringly in the direction of the fourth-floor supply closet. "Okay," he gasped, "we have a serious problem. Gah, I haven't felt that since Isabel."
Jim felt it, too, shivering across the link. For an instant he'd sensed a swell of psychic null-zone, and when it receded it was as if a piece had been lifted from a puzzle: a hole where there should not have been. The pieces around it shuddered, but held.
Restraining his alarm even as he moved to support the shaken boy's mind with his own, Jim opened his thoughts to Charles.
Professor -- where did he go?
---
Lorna, evacuating more FoH staff, is recognized. Fortunately all concerned decide that this isn't the time.
The hallways were dark, even with the lights on, but that could have had to do with the odd tentacles curling around everything in sight. Duncan carefully tried to get past a bunch of them laying across a hallway, but just as he did, the building tremored. He looked back at his brother and a few other FOHers, shaking his head. "i don't think we can get by this way."
Jack just returned that shake of the head with one of his own. "We can't go back either! Something's going on in the middle of the building. It's this way or we're stuck!"
A light pierced the gloom and a woman's voice called from in front of them, "Keep coming, you're going the right way." Lorna looked around as the building shook, feeling the beams protest the motion. "For now." she murmured to herself, heading toward the group she'd just heard. Her heart was racing, a side of effect of the mutant's powers, she'd been told and so was trying to ignore it. It didn't help that she was having to fight with every person she met just to get them to safety.
"Next mission to save bigots, I'm wearing a wig."
Duncan and Jack exchanged glances before Jack gestured towards the voice. "I don't care who it is little brother, we need to get out of here." With a glare at Jack, Duncan turned back to the coils and climbed over.
The moment he was over, he turned to look at their rescuer. He'd heard rumors about mutants from that damn school were helping and Duncan wanted to make sure she wasn't one of them. He had to squint in the faint light to make out the female with green hair. She wasn't just a mutant...
She was worse.
The young man's face screwed up in anger as he leapt at her. "You!"
Lorna just sighed as she stepped back out of reach. These people were really starting to get on her nerves. "Save it for later, would you? This building isn't safe for anyone right now. You can picket and legislate us back to the stone age after we finish saving your lives." Ignoring the young man, she reached past him and helped a woman in a business suit over a tentacle.
Oh no, this was personal. "Oh no. Not after what you did to Josh and Karen. We'd be better off without you!"
Duncan went for her again, just as Jack came over and stopped him. "Whoa, what's wrong?"
Lorna stumbled back this time, eyes going wide. Her hand hit her comm. unit. "Polaris here, I..." She stopped, not really sure what she needed right now. Someone to protect her from what she'd done seemed like a stupid thing to ask. Another tremor put her back to the wall even as she grabbed onto another confused victim and tried to herd him in the right direction. "Please, don't do this right now. We don't have time for this."
Duncan had turned to his brother. "This is the woman, she meets the description perfectly! She's the one that made vegetables of Josh and Karen!"
Jack turned to glare at her, but then nodded. "Despite that, she's right, Duncan. Let's get out of here first." He shoved his little brother past the mutant woman and went back to help an older woman. But as he passed by the mutant he whispered, "We're not done talking about this...You'll pay for what you did to those kids."
There wasn't anything she could say to that. It would take too long to explain and it wouldn't mean anything anyway. "I'm here to help. That's all," she said finally, not denying anything. She raised her hand to her comm. again and realised she'd left it open. "Polaris here. I've got about ten people headed out here. Is the path clear?" She could hear her own voice shaking and ruthlessly shoved down the emotions.
She dropped her hand away, being sure to close the comm. channel this time. "Keep going straight out. They're holding the way open for you."
Jack nodded harshly once more, shoving Duncan forward again as the teenager had come back to harass the mutant some more. "Duncan! Go ahead and lead people out! We can settle this when the building isn't falling down around us!"
With a small growl, Duncan did as his brother ordered, yelling at people to move.
Lorna watched him go then looked up at the other man, "You have every right to hate me," she said quietly. The building shook and something made a resounding bang followed by a scream. She pushed off the wall, heading that direction. "Get out. Now," she ordered over her shoulder as she ran deeper into the building.
Not giving her a second thought, Jack herded the people in front of him to a run. "You heard her! Let's get out of here! Hurry, RUN!"
---
Scott checks in with Jim as more X-Men start vanishing. Jim tries to be helpful and scan the mind of the mutant doing this. It doesn't work very well. Jim needs to stop getting in touch with his inner Nathan.
If they were going to have to start knocking people out and carrying them out of the building, this was going to turn into even more of a clusterfuck than it already was, Scott thought, dropping the very large man who'd tried to throttle him in one of the offices on the ground and waving over one of the paramedics. The two women who'd been with him ran right into the arms of the police, screaming about the "mutants attacking us, help!" and Scott spared a wary quirk of his eyebrows for the SWAT officer who gave him a helpless look.
His com crackled with interference, but he could make out Jim's words, and his heart sank as he ran for the police van where they'd left him to operate the telepathic switchboard. One of the officers standing watch over there - Scott had been too focused to appreciate the gesture, there - opened the back of the van for him.
"We lost another one?" he demanded of the younger man sitting inside. "Who?"
"Logan," Jim said, the verbal response slightly delayed. He'd been focusing on his telepathy since retreating to the inside of the van. It had seemed like a good idea after he'd almost taken a bottle to the head from one of the more proactive FOHers. The telepath squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, refocusing, then looked up at Scott. "It's like they were swallowed by static. Jamie and Logan. They're not out of my range, just -- gone. Charles can't sense them, either."
What the hell is going on in there? Scott controlled his reactions ruthlessly, limiting himself to a sharp nod. "Any other impressions from them before they vanished? Anything at all?"
"Just . . . a sensation of being pulled, then blackness. Not the kind that comes from unconsciousness. Something external." He directed a pair of more cooperative officers to a small knot of people who had barricaded themselves in a back office, and was distantly relieved when the response was notably more positive than that of some of their coworkers'. No need to know their rescuers were operating under telepathic guidance. "It's the interference," Jim continued as Shiro forcibly restrained a panicked secretary from throwing herself out a second-floor window. "It's not just an ambiant effect on emotions and communication. Something about it is actively dangerous."
Scott looked over his shoulder, back up at the building. There had been strange blackness visible here and there through some of the windows, before the sun had gone down, or so some of the officers who'd already been on site had told him. "I'd gotten that impression," he muttered, trying to think. "We can't pull out. There are still a couple of hundred people not accounted for in that building..." Not to mention, they had to find their people and the emergency services personnel who'd gone missing, too.
On the third floor Sam had found a little girl that had run from the daycare center to hide under her father's desk. She didn't care who or what the strange man in black leather was, his arms were real and warm and he was taking her out, out . . . "If it's active then there's a mind controlling it. If that's true, maybe I can find it."
"Jim..." Scott's lips tightened. He didn't like this. He didn't like this at all. "Be careful. Whoever this is, he or she is hostile."
"It'll be okay. I'm not going to take the offense. But if I find it then Charles can follow me there . . ." Jim could sense Scott's worried disapproval even without a telepathic link. Charles was issuing similar concerns, but Jim simply shook his head. I can do it, he thought at the professor, the insistence quiet but determined. I can hold the switchboard and look at the same time. We're good at doing different things at once. And I need to learn to put myself out more. Almost unformed was the thought, We need to be able to pull our own weight.
Jim had a stubborn look on. Scott didn't trust stubborn looks, particularly when the person wearing it was talking to Charles. Charles? he thought at the Professor's presence. We need to find the others, but I'll order him not to do this if I have to...
Charles' response was not what Scott needed to hear, and he gave Jim a hard look. "Try it," he said guardedly. Charles was right there in the telepathic sense, after all; surely he could keep Jim from any real harm if things went pear-shaped. "But I swear, if you knock yourself for a loop, I'm going to let Nate mock you for following his bad example."
Jim smiled faintly. "That's fair," he said, and stretched out.
After all this time working around and through it, allowing his mind to flow in to the static was astonishingly simple. He'd half-anticipated this. Giving way was something Jim knew well.
What he hadn't anticipated was what lay at the source of the interference, which was . . . nothingness. Immaculate, unassailable, all-consuming nothingness.
There was no time to cry out, no opportunity to struggle, no chance even to register what was going on. Faced with an imminent breach of hopelessly insufficient defenses, the young man's mind didn't even wait for one to occurr; it simply switched off.
There was no sound, verbal or psychic. There wasn't even a twitch. With a slow, inexorable kind of gravity, eyes still wide open, Jim merely collapsed sideways in his seat.
Scott swore and caught him, lowering him more gently to the ground. "I need some help over here!" he yelled at one of the paramedics, ignoring Charles's quiet, if still concerned reassurance. "Keep an eye on him," he snapped at the female EMT who came running over in response.
"What-"
"It's like a shock-state," Scott grated out. "Treat it like that." No more switchboard. Wonderful. Charles, can you find Nathan?
A pause, and then the answer he'd been afraid of getting. "Shit," Scott swore under his breath and ran for the doors of the building. No switchboard, intermittent coms. This was reminding him of Budapest, but worse.
---
Back at the mansion, Cain gets the news that the telepathic switchboard is gone and something's eating X-Men.
The switchboard lit up almost randomly, signals going from green to red in an instant. The net suddenly came alive with activity. Cain leaned forward to cut through the chatter and hit the transmit button. "Juggernaut on comms, what in the hell is everyone babbling about?"
The answer shocked him, surprise evident on his face. "Gone? They're off the net, what do you mean gone? Haller's what? Shit, setting up emergency net link now..." He snapped his fingers repeatedly, gesturing to Tommy. "Kid! Start getting those link thingies going! Hold down the red button, then press the green until the light comes on! Go!" He pointed at a bank of switches, finger waving impatiently.
Since he had been staring at the blueprints, making sure there was only one exit from the basement, Tommy started, looking up at Mr. Marko first and then over a the switchs he was pointing at. He did as he was told but, "The light thingie isn't coming on! What's going on over there?"
"Telepathic switchboard's offline, means we gotta get the old-fashioned one up." Cain scooted his chair behind Tommy, reaching over his head. "Summers keeps telling me it's a network... thing. Work, dammit!" Cain slapped his hand against he bank of computers, then drew back as a series of lights and buzzers went off, then the screens started going green.
"What did you do?!" Somehow he didn't think glowing green was a very good thing. Tommy looked at the buttons in front of him, repeating the sequence Mr. Marko had given him. When that didn't work, he did it backwards.
"Percussive maintenance!" Cain shouted, "All these high-tech fucking toys with their high-tech fucking problems and their high-tech fucking glitches and--"
A split-second before Cain's hand was about to deliver another blow to the console, the screens hummed and sprang to life, voices coming over the comlink. "Holy shit, it worked!"
Tommy couldn't help a small sigh of relief. "So if this is how there high-tech fucking toys work, how the hell do you get anything done?" He glanced at Mr. Marko before leaning over to listen to the voices so he could provide any information he could.
"I'm the low-tech solution," Cain said gruffly before tapping keys. "Juggernaut here, we're online... you need me to what?"
"I think I prefer your method." Tommy mumbled as he listened, glancing down at his fingers, The tips of his gloves had turned to lead. With a sigh, he made sure to concentrate on the voices.
---
Scott gets directed over to help Shiro. The two of them meet what's eating X-Men. Scott gets away. Shiro does not.
The heads-up from Shiro had echoed over the coms in a brief break in the static, and Scott had realized, with a moment's quick reference to the blueprints in his head, that he was closest. Leaving Sam to continue evacuating the kitchen staff, he ran through the cafeteria and towards the east stairwell, letting off a few quick optic blasts as a few of the coils hanging everywhere lashed out at him as he ran. How the hell big was this mutant?
There were FoH staff members running and screaming away from the stairwell - clearly, the group Shiro had been evacuating. Scott pushed past them, hearing the sound of Shiro's powers beyond, in the stairwell.
#Kamikaze, coming up on your rear,# he sent over the switchboard. Coms were out entirely, thanks to the psionic tremors. He ran up the stairs and found Shiro on the second landing, trying to get a screaming woman free from the coils trapping her.
Shiro growled, one flaming hand gripping a coil tightly while the other shaped a fireball to be tossed at a dozen blue-black ribbons trying to wrap up and suffocate a struggling young woman. He swore at the mass as the fireball exploded, freeing the woman who then frantically kicked and crawled her way past Cyclops. With her out of the way, he blasted from the bound hand, disintegrating the coil and freeing him.
"There is no end to this," he said, taking a few steps back. "Has anyone discovered a nucleus yet?"
"Yes, and it's eating people." Scott didn't laugh at the look Shiro gave him. "We're missing X-Men, and who knows how many FoH staff and police..." Scott blasted another coil as it came at him, pushing the young woman down the stairwell. "Head for the door! Don't stop!" he told her, then turned back to Shiro. "Anyone else up on this floor?"
Shiro imagined a Sand Worm from Final Fantasy and felt a little ill. Why do gross mutants have the tendency to act as villains, he asked himself. He shook his head, both to erase the vile image from his mind and to answer Scott's question. "No, she was the last. So no. . . Kuso!" he spat as the coils reached for the door, blocking their exit. The intensity of the flames enveloping his fists increased. "I almost hope that every one of these things that we destroy pains him a little."
"Steady," Scott said a bit raggedly, squeezing the younger man's shoulder reassuringly. He wasn't feeling all that steady himself, but he needed to hold it together, too. "These psionic tremors are messing with us. Let's get down to the lobby and check back in." Make sure we haven't lost anyone else... The thought was half-formed when a coil shot down the stairs and tangled around his ankles, yanking him off his feet and upward. Scott twisted helplessly in the air, unable to get a shot off.
"Cyclops!" Shiro raised his right arm, aiming at the coil around Scott's ankle and then swearing again when another half dozen appeared from out of nowhere to wrap around the rest of his body. The coils were thrashing around, as if they knew what Shiro was planning on doing and using Scott as a human shield in response. There was no way he could free Scott without blasting him at this rate.
He might get scolded for this later, but it was all he could do so he wouldn't fry his leader. Strengthening his personal force field so the coils couldn't get through, he launched himself towards Scott. Pulling a Cannonball, he rocketed through the coils, incinerating them and releasing Scott.
Scott fell on the stairs, awkwardly and hard, and laid there gasping for air, unable to move. More of the coils snaked downwards, this time down the stairs like a tide of black snakes rather than through the air, and he managed to raise his head to fire off a blast that -didn't discourage them at all. Shit.
Shiro echoed that sentiment. He raced down, lowering his shield so he could grab hold of Scott and get the hell away. But what he didn't count on was the dozen of coils reaching for him, too. Caught unawares and dazed, his shield flickered and he couldn't manage the concentration to strengthen it again. He could feel his brain vibrating violently as the psychic tremors rocked him.
"Kami--SHIRO!" Scott saved his breath and tried to blast at the coils yanking Shiro upwards. He caught a few, but there were more, enough that the mutant wasn't dropping Shiro, and Scott stared upwards in horror at the sudden yawning darkness at the top of the stairwell.
For all the jokes Shiro made about his experiences at Xavier's, this one was just too frightening to compare to Urotsukidoji. He struggled against the coils binding his wrists and ankles, trying to tap into his powers but finding nothing to tap into.
Just before everything went black, the psionic switchboard, now being reconstructed by Charles, lit up with a brief but blinding flash of terror.
---
Tags:
- c: david haller,
- c: kurt sefton,
- c: logan,
- c: scott summers,
- z p1: c: .npc,
- z p1: c: .retired: cain marko,
- z p1: c: .retired: jamie madrox,
- z p1: c: .retired: lorna dane,
- z p1: c: .retired: nathan dayspring,
- z p1: c: .retired: ororo munroe,
- z p1: c: .retired: sam guthrie,
- z p1: c: shiro yoshida,
- z p1: c: tommy jones,
- z p1: t: x-men: haunted house
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