Haunted House, 2/2
May. 3rd, 2006 11:25 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsOne moment, you're evacuating bigots. The next, you're Somewhere Else and one of your teammates is trying to shiskebob you. Nate's not having a great night.
Smacking the people one was trying to rescue was a bad idea, Nathan told himself. Even if they were idiotic bigots and could probably use the smacking, he was here to help them. Even if they were currently acting like terrified sheep.
"Keep moving towards the exit!" he bellowed at the half-dozen he'd just freed from a room full of those disturbing coil-things. He wasn't sure he dared reinforce it with a telepathic suggestion, not when this mutant was doing something to the psychic atmosphere that had left its victims in a terrible state already.
So he focused on herding them instead. "Out! Down to the stairwell at the end of the hall, and-"
Something looped around his ankle and yanked, sending him crashing to the floor and knocking the breath out of his lungs before he could finish. It dragged him backwards, into a room to his left, and Nathan had a momentary flash of an inky blackness before the coil threw him up into the air and into it.
Nothing. It was cold and empty, and there was quite distinctly nothing there. Except for some sort of floor. Or ground. Because he hit it hard, even if he couldn't see anything. Wheezing, Nathan pushed himself up to his hands and knees, unable to figure out just how he'd held onto his psimitar.
From inside the darkness came a low rough chuckle before an eddy in whatever passed for an atmosphere in this revealed Logan, sprawled out on the "ground" with his ear to it. Around his head on the "ground" lay the remnants of the pre-op meal he'd eaten along with sour stomach contents. "I hear ya, darlin'." he said to no one in particular, apparently talking to the darkness around him. "Been a long time." he commented, lifting up his head and rolling onto his back.
Well, crap. Nathan hauled himself back to his feet, shifting his grip on his psimitar and heading over to where Logan was lying. "Come on, Wolverine, on your feet," he said, trying to ignore his own increasing unease. Something was wrong with his telepathy here, wherever here was. Had he been teleported? He could still sense Logan, and other minds, somewhere in the distance, but only faintly. Everything was scrambled, and the disturbances that had been in the astral atmosphere outside were infinitely worse here.
Logan ignored Nate like he didn't even hear him. "You bet, darlin'. Once this op's done we can head back to the rez, catch a little just-us time before we get called up again. Sounds real nice." he said, focusing somewhere over Nate's left shoulder. "Real nice."
Nathan grimaced and crouched down beside him. "Logan," he said, less harshly. "Logan, look at me. We've got a job to do here."
Logan blinked and shook his head. "Nate? What the fuck?" he said, very clearly confused and the whites of his eyes very, very large indeed. "It's flamin' hard to think in here. Nothin' makes any sense."
"I'm not sure where we are," Nathan said, reaching down to take his arm, "but we need to pull ourselves together and find whoever else is in here. I can feel them."
Logan let Nate pull him up and wobbled a bit before stabilizing. He shook his head and then shielded his eyes like a sudden nonexistant glare was bothering him immensely. "Turn it down!" he yelled suddenly. "You don't have to shout, I'm right here."
"Hey," Nathan said, not loudly but forcefully, giving Logan's arm a little shake. "Focus." Was the... wherever the hell this was messing with Logan's senses, too? Ferals were sensitive to strange things, sometimes.
Logan pulled his arm back and popped all six claws with a SNIKT. "They're comin' for us! I won't let 'em have you, darlin'!" he shouted, and then attacked - two feet off to Nate's right, where there was nothing to see.
"Logan!" Oh, swell. Nathan gritted his teeth and tried to focus his telepathy, just to give Logan the mental equivalent of a slap upside the head.
Logan's mind was seemingly nonexistant - his lips curled in a rictus grin, the cords of his neck popping out, and the whites of his eyes almost drowning out his pupils. But Nate made enough contact for Logan to adjust his aiming point and come after Nate with his claws - one slash aimed for Nate's eyes, and a secondary stab for the belly.
Instinctively, Nathan tried to shield. But whatever was messing with his telepathy was messing with his TK as well. The strike aimed at his stomach glanced off a momentary flicker of a shield that was gone again in the next instant, but Nathan had to dodge rapidly to get out of the way of the next.
"Son of a bitch-" He brought his butt of his psimitar up and slammed it into Logan's gut. Forge would kill him if he saw him doing this.
Logan rode out the psimitar hit like it was nothing and wildly slashed out again. "Fuckin' can't see" he grumbled as he closed his eyes. "I won't let 'em take you!"
"Logan!" Nathan lashed out with an unfocused telekinetic strike, one that didn't have nearly what it should have behind it. Even the psimitar wasn't helping much. It didn't seem to be working right here, either. "Snap out of it, Wolverine," he growled, taking a few adroit steps backwards as the TK hit sent Logan reeling just briefly. Distance would be good.
When Logan steadied himself after the teek hit, he opened his eyes and looked right at Nate. "Place is fuckin' with me, Cable." he said intensely, as if fighting to get the words out. "Messes with my senses." He resheathed his claws and stood as still as he could, concentrating fiercely. "And who's the broad with ya? She's cute."
"There's no one with me." Nathan didn't relax. Not one bit. "It's you and me, and some of the people we're here to rescue... maybe some of our team, somewhere in here. And I swear to God if you don't stay with me, I'll knock you out and come back for you on my way out."
Logan grinned at that, then looked just to the right of Nate. "Pleased ta meet ya, darlin'. I'm .... Logan." he said with a significant pause. "Flamin' head's killin' me." he said, then tried to shake it off. "What say we take the fragile sack of shit here and get out of this place?"
He's hallucinating. Nathan gritted his teeth and told himself to concentrate. Could he snap Logan out of it? He couldn't actually just knock him out and leave him behind, and if he knocked him out and had to carry him, the likelihood of being able to help anyone else was more or less nil.
Logan dropped to his knees and cradled his head in his hands. He didn't cry out, but it was fairly obvious he was in a great deal of pain. Nate lost his telepathic grip when reason and thought fled Logan entirely, and out came the claws again. Logan pounced at full speed, headed straight for Nathan, stabbing repeatedly at the larger man's torso.
Nathan had fought bare-handed against someone with knives before. Usually, he'd had his TK at full strength to help. And Logan's claws weren't precisely knives. He blocked what he could, but one strike crept through, slicing through the reinforced kevlar of his jacket at his shoulder, barely missing flesh.
"Sonofabitch! She was no threat to you, to any of us! She didn't know anything!" he screamed and dropped for a low vicious slash for Nate's hamstrings - a blow designed to cripple before the kill. Tears rolled down his face as he spoke.
Nathan dodged, but not far enough, and the rest of his uniform wasn't as heavily armored as it was at his torso. He managed to limit his reaction to a grunt of pain as adamantium claws sliced his leg open, and the flash of anger that came along with the pain at least gave him a little focus.
He blasted Logan several feet backwards. Had they been somewhere where the normal rules applied, it would have been several times that distance and probably through a couple of walls.
Logan was back on his feet as if he'd teleported there and charging in the blink of an eye. But before he could launch his next set of attacks against Nathan, he threw himself onto the ground, sending his claws into the 'floor" of the place. He stayed there, panting, fighting for control, for several very long minutes.
Nathan winced, tottering on the injured leg. "Son of a bitch," he muttered. And he couldn't even manage a TK bandage.
Logan retracted his claws and then stood up. "We need to get out of here. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it together. Place makes no sense." he said quickly to Nate.
Nathan stared hard at him. "You go first," he said, breathing a bit heavily. "To our... left. I can sense people over there."
Logan looked at Nate and then quirked an eyebrow. "Did I get you or did she get you? Told you, she's a real handful." he said with a smirk, then trotted ... off to the right.
"Left, Logan!" Nathan growled, not making a move towards him.
"This IS left!" he said, turning right again so he was almost doubling back to where Nate still stood.
Nathan limped towards him, using the psimitar as a crutch. "Look at me - LOOK at me," he snapped. I can't believe I'm doing this. "Follow me," he said tightly, and wouldn't have been surprised if all the hair on the back of his neck was standing up straight just at the idea. "You don't know what end is up at the moment."
Logan blinked, surprised to see Nate suddenly in front of him. "Fine." he said, gritting his teeth.
Nathan turned, still leaning on the psimitar, and started limping in the direction of the minds he'd sensed. "Keep talking," he said, so tense that there really wasn't a suitable description for how tense he was, with a hallucinating feral at his back.
"Fine." Logan said. "Ummm ... don't got much to say, really. Ever notice how Scott's aftershave really, really stinks? It's like he slathered his face in dead skunk and whale vomit every morning." he chuckled. "The main steps squeak when you step on them, and there's mice in the barn who can't chew with their mouths closed."
"That's really enlightening. Keep talking." The leg wasn't as bad as it felt. It was still working, at least. Logan had clipped the upper leg, not the hamstring. Bleeding pretty freely, though.
"Ororo is ticklish, but only along her ribs." he said. "You don't wash your hands well enough after changing Ray. I started whittling again the other day." he monologued, his voice growing more and more strained. He then ducked violently and swatted at the air with one hand. "Did you see that?"
Nathan stopped short, tottering again as he turned towards Logan. The tip of his psimitar started to glow just slightly as it picked up a charge. "There's nothing there," he grated.
Logan swatted at the air again! "Goddamned bugs." he said, apparently hitting the delusion as he straightened up and wiped his hands on the legs of his leathers. "Got it. Let's go."
"How about you start looking for a way out?" Nathan asked tensely. "I'll look for the others." Bringing a hallucinating Logan into the midst of terrorized FoH members was maybe not such a great idea. The psychic atmosphere shook around them, and Nathan gritted his teeth, shoring up his shields.
Logan nodded, turned on one heel, and promptly faceplanted. "Found a door!" he said, somewhat muffled from his face against the floor.
Nathan's eyes narrowed and he wondered how long Logan would take to heal from a concussion. The butt of the psimitar to the base of his skull, maybe...
Logan knocked on the floor. "Damn. It's stuck and won't move."
Oh, for fuck's sake! "Logan!" Nathan barked at him in his best battlefield voice. "On your feet! I can't carry you, and we need to get out of here."
"I am on my feet." he said in as lazy a drawl as he could manage. "You bring breaching charges? We'll just blow the door!" he said gleefully.
Nathan gritted his teeth and limped over, bending down and hauling Logan up off the 'ground' with his free hand. "Snap. Out. Of it."
"Snap ... out of it?" he asked, confused. "Which set of REMs brought YOU? Ottawa or Washington? Either way, someone fucked up." he said nastily.
The implicit threat was obvious. Nathan didn't stop to think it through, just channeled all the telepathic force he could muster through the psimitar - not nearly enough, even with what amplification was possible under these conditions - and sending a psi-blast right at Logan.
Logan - severely off-balance and confused from the properties of the Limbo they were stuck in, finally succumbed to the blast. Already laying on the floor, he sprawled out and passed out. For how long, it was almost impossible to say.
---
Scott contemplates a tactical retreat. Then he gets an idea.
Chaos. Any semblance of their initial deployment plan had gone out the window as soon as the mutant in question had started eating people, Scott admitted to himself grimly, firing off an optic blast as a coil lashed out at him from the tangle draped over the counter of the coffee shop in the lobby. They were coming through the ventilation system, he'd realized a while ago. It explained why they seemed to be everywhere when they needed to be, but knowing that didn't really help.
He saw Sam coming back through the front doors of the building, looking grim. "I'm beginning to think we need to pull whoever's left out and regroup," Scott gritted as his XO came over to join him.
"Tactical retreat? Ugh," Sam replied with feeling, staring at the coils. "Ah suppose if we gotta, we gotta, though."
"Get out, get Moira on the coms and see if she's got any suggestions..." And leave his people behind? There was a part of him that just simply couldn't stomach that, not even on a temporary basis. Not even when he knew that might be their only way to get some space to figure out how to get them back...
The wave of disorientation that signaled the psionic tremors swept over him again, and Scott squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Think. There had to be something he could do. The missing people had been displaced, somehow. Not killed. Just... elsewhere.
Even the suggestion of pulling out had shocked Sam, to be honest. If there was one thing Scott Summers didn't seem to know how to do, it was retreat from a situation. That he was considering it showed how overwhelmed he must be feeling. Staggering through the disorientation himself, Sam saw the frustrated look pass over Scott's face. "Talk through it," he suggested. "There's gotta be -somethin'- we can do."
"I don't know what." The frustration was a seething thing in the pit of his stomach, and he lashed out with an optic blast as the tangle of coils reached for him. Son of a bitch, he thought angrily at the unknown mutant, why don't you just SHOW yourself. Talk, or something...
There was the sound of a door crashing open, and Scott took a step back as blackness oozed around the corner from the stairwell. He stared into the emptiness, eyes narrowing.
Sam, for his part, was mesmerized by the sheer emptiness of the oozing darkness. After a long moment, he shook himself violently. "...the abyss stares back also..." he quoted to himself.
"We need a ball of string," Scott muttered, staring into the opening into Somewhere Else. "One very large ball of..." He stopped, his expression taking on a slightly glazed look that had nothing whatsoever to do with the increase in the psionic tremors as the darkness approached.
Sam took an instinctive step back as the darkness came closer. He wasn't afraid of much, but being consumed by utter darkness was on the short list. "Ah don't pack a ball of string in my uniform," he tried to joke, "and even if Ah did, Ah don't think it'd be big enough for whatever you got in mind..."
Scott didn't quite hear him. "They'll be trying to get out, on the other side," he muttered. Ororo, Logan, Nathan, Shiro, all of them... none of them would be doing anything but trying to find each other and get out with anyone else who'd been sucked in.
Sam continued Scott's train of thought. "And they'll need some way to help them find their way out," he said. He looked around the lobby, trying to find something that could be used to help.
"But we don't know what's on the other side," Scott went on as the blackness approached. He, unlike Sam, didn't take a step back. He was utterly distracted and yet utterly focused at the same time, his mind racing through options, possibilities, variables... "A ball of string's not going to do it. But..." He knew what would. "The pumper truck outside," he said. "Get them in here with the hose. Fast," he said, as the blackness edged forward, as if the mutant wasn't sure why they were just standing there.
Even without kicking in his power, Sam practically seemed to fly out the doors. In practically no time at all, he returned, lugging the tip of the hose over his shoulder as it unspooled behind him. He looked into the blackness, then shivered. "Now what?"
There were three or four firemen helping, Scott saw as he glanced back over his shoulder. Automatic on their part, he supposed. "Now we turn the water on," he said. "If they're able, if they're just somewhere else... they can maybe backtrack the water when it crosses the... threshold-" Dear God, was he ever flying by the seat of his pants here. "It's worth a try," he said.
One of the firemen gave a ragged laugh. "It's an idea, at least," he said, and called back over his shoulder for someone outside to turn the water on.
It came on with a lot of force, not unexpectedly. Scott winced and tried not to clutch at his skull as the psionic tremors suddenly increased sharply and the darkness rippled - but didn't move away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the coils had gone limp.
"Nightcrawler," he grated over the coms, "keep going with that evac..."
---
Inside the void, Shiro and Ororo find each other. Shiro's not entirely sure that Ororo is who she says she is. There is precedent, after all. But two is better than one, and sticking together, they find a way out. Even Scott's crazy ideas can be good ones.
It was a slight relief to Shiro that he could at least still use his powers. Despite the apparent not-being-on-Earth part, not to mention the pounding headaches and sudden lack of psychic white noise from the switchboard. But desperation let him see past that, at least enough to release enough plasma to create a new sun in this dark, cold, silent void. Not like that did any good, though.
To say Ororo was disoriented would be putting it lightly. More than the topsy-turvy feeling she had outside, now she felt lost; cut off. They were no longer anywhere she could name - the lack of any sort of identifiable input made that certainty. She could still sense faint tremors of atmosphere, electricity occurring in unpredictable patterns. Traces of what might have been people, or may have been nothing at all. It was very nearly maddening.
"What is this place?" Shiro muttered, repeating a question he'd already asked a half-dozen times. There didn't seem to be anything there. Just blue-black darkness. He'd been "eaten" by the coily mutant, he gathered, but the vastness of this space was a blatant violation of physics.
There was always the temptation to try her powers... but then, in an unknown location with a potentially unstable atmosphere, that didn't seem like a good idea. Ororo heard a noise, barely a whisper, and she started towards it.
"Shiro?" she said a minute later as the young man materialized out of the darkness. "Thank the Goddess... are you all right?"
Shiro, on the other hand, hadn't thought through that much. Volatile atmosphere or not, if his solar flame could get him out, then he'd exhaust himself until freedom. But Ororo's sudden appearance and her exclamation of relief jolted him out of his desperation.
"Storm?" he said hoarsely, taking a hesitant step forward. For all he knew, he was in Limbo and this was just a demon in disguise.
"Yes, it is me," Ororo replied, nodding. "Are you hurt? Have you seen anyone else?" And what is going on here? Except that she didn't want to seem too confused... she was supposed to be in charge, after all.
Looked like her. Sounded like her. "You were eaten too?" he asked, his normally light accent more pronounced through his fear and confusion. "I have not seen or heard of anyone or anything else."
"Do not worry," Ororo said soothingly, giving him an encouraging smile. "We appear to be safe for the moment. And if we have found each other, it is likely we will find any others who have been 'eaten'. I am sure those on the outside are figuring out a way to extract us as we speak."
He eyed her warily. Maybe it was the psychic damage he'd taken by the tremors, but what she said sounded too much like the bad guy luring the good guy into a false sense of security in just about every horror movie. "Of course," he replied, eyes narrowing. "How did you find yourself here?"
"I was helping Cyclops lift an injured man when a... tentacle whipped itself around and dragged me towards its source. I believe he tried to blast it, but it was moving too quickly..." Ororo frowned, then shook her head. "I do not remember exactly what happened next, only that when I was fully aware again I was here."
"I wonder if we can fly out," he mused, though reluctant to actually try because he didn't know if the air was stable enough to heat up and push him upwards.
"No," Ororo said, lifting one hand and shaking her head. "Right now, we do not know where 'out' is. I do not want to risk anything right now. Be patient, Shiro, and help me search for the others."
Shiro nodded. A glove of solar flame provided light as he walked alongside Ororo, headed in no direction in particular. "Do you know how many others are here?" he asked, trying to peer through the darkness.
Ororo was very grateful for the illumination Shiro provided, as the inky blackness around them was quite pervasive. "No. I would imagine there are some building staffers who must be here, and it is quite possible some of the team is here as well," she murmured in reply.
"I do not see or hear anything," Shiro said, brightening the light. And as if on cue, there was a bloodcurdling scream, and with only a brief glance at Ororo, Shiro dashed ahead to find the source.
Close on his heels, Ororo could soon see a crazed-looking man flailing about randomly, the veins in his neck and arms standing out from his efforts. "Get off! Get away from me!" he yelled hoarsely, swinging again at the air around him as if he was trying to fend off an attacker. "Get away!"
"Oi!" Shiro shouted as he approached the man and dimmed the light. As he was most likely FoH, displays of mutation to a psycho would hinder their rescue efforts more than help. "Calm down, sir."
It seemed the man had no intention of calming down, whirling around to face the two mutants as they approached. A look of terror came over his face, and he raised his hands. "N-no, please, don't hurt me..." He cowered away, though a split second later the fear had been replied by rage. "You monsters!" Dropping his hands, he charged at Shiro, who was the closest of the two.
Shiro was half expecting that, and easily grappled him. He raised an eyebrow at Ororo. "I have no intention of hurting you," he said, "But you need to relax." He applied some pressure to the man's back, taking a grim satisfaction at his meek struggling. "Understood?"
Whimpering, the man stopped struggling, hanging limply in Shiro's arms. "What... what happened? Where am I? Who are you?"
"We are here to help you," Ororo replied, nodding to Shiro that he could release the man now. "Technically I cannot say if we are still within the building, or somewhere else. But we are working to find a way out, so you will not be trapped here long. Have you seen anyone else?"
"N-no," the man said, his voice nearly a whisper as he stared at the ground. "No one. I am... alone."
"That is after we even arrived," Shiro muttered to Ororo. At least prolonged exposure to this place wasn't fatal. "Should we continue searching for others?" It was really the only option.
Ororo nodded, glancing at the bewildered man now teetering beside Shiro. "And we must take him with us. It may be nearly impossible to find him again should we discover a way out."
And what a shame that would be. Arm around the man's waist to steady him, Shiro followed Ororo. Minutes of wandering led them nowhere; everywhere looked the same. "Now would be a good time for a cross-dimensional teleporter." Because being rescued by Illyana would make the day so much better.
Even in the apparent direness of the situation, this comment made Ororo smile, and she nodded her agreement to Shiro while glancing around them. Something had changed, it seemed, though she couldn't quite figure out what. There was no more light than before, and she certainly couldn't tell which direction was which, but...
"Can you feel that?" she murmured, stopping in her tracks. "Something is different. There is... water here."
"Water?" Shiro took another step forward, eyebrows disappearing into his hairline when he heard the splash instead of the expected silence. "Where is it coming from?"
"This way." Her steps surer now, Ororo began to stride towards the noise, her skin tingling a bit at the moisture wafting through the air. It could be fake, it could be a trick or illusion, but her senses hadn't shown her anything more real or believable in all the time she had spent wandering the void. It was worth a try.
Shiro was more hesitant, almost sure it was a trick, but their new friend was too excited and all but dragged him forward. As they progressed, their splashes grew louder, the water level rising. "~We better not encounter kappa~," he muttered in Japanese.
Finally they came upon it, a darkness in front of them which was inexplicably broken by a strong, steady stream of water. Ororo blinked, reaching out carefully with one hand to feel the spray. "Shiro, I think this is real. As real as anything is in this place…" She glanced at him. "This may be coming from the other side, where the rest of the team is. What do you think?"
"From where is it coming?" asked Shiro warily, not fighting back as the man struggled to be released from his grip and all but jumped into the inexplicable waterfall. "Oh." Looking up a little, Shiro spotted it: a dimly glowing white spot was pouring water down on them, like a funnel between dimensions. "Ingenious."
"I believe this must be the way out. I would like you to take this man and lead him to the other side. Once you are there, find Cyclops or Cannonball or Nightcrawler and report to them what you have seen," Ororo instructed.
"What about you?" Now Shiro's paranoia was back, and he eyed Ororo slightly distrustfully. "It is not safe to stay in here too long. What if the portal closes?" I will not be led to my death by some trickster doppelganger.
With a sigh, Ororo offered Shiro a small smile. "I am a CO, Shiro. I cannot leave this area without knowing the rest of my team is safe. I will follow as soon as I can, I assure you." She glanced at the gushing water once more. "I will be able to find my way back to this spot. But you must go now, take this man to safety."
He was acting dumb, he knew it. He'd been watching too many cartoons and the psychic tremors were messing with his perceptions. Some thing are as they seem, he reminded himself. "Sorry." He wrapped his arm around the man's waist again. "Hold on tightly," he warned, slowly moving forward through the water. He glanced back at Ororo, nodded, and sped up. The man clung to him desperately, and Shiro could hear the muttered curses about mutants, but he ignored them. On towards safety, and a box of recuperative Pocky.
---
Some indeterminate amount of time later, Ororo finds Nathan marching grimly in her direction, dragging an unconscious Logan and occasionally stopping to psi-blast him. It really is one of those nights.
Ororo stood in the dark, her senses jumbled and confused. She knew she had sent Shiro off in one direction with one of the Friends of Humanity draped over his shoulders, but for the life of her she couldn't remember which direction it had been. There had been water, and the faint shout of voices, but she had moved away in her search for anybody else left in the void. Dear Goddess, just let me get everyone out alive, she thought ferverently, casting her eyes about.
The coms were useless in here, she had quickly discovered, and there was no more than the faintest of whispers of telepathic activity from anyone. Ororo had no idea how many had been sucked it, nor how many had managed to make it out, but she swore she would't leave until she was satisfied everyone, team and FoH alike, was safe. The only problem is how to find them. I cannot see them, cannot even tell which way is which, and I doubt they could hear me... Nevertheless, she put her hands to her mouth and shouted. "Is anyone there? There is a way out! If you can hear me, say something! I will come find you and take you there!"
The darkness shifted abruptly to reveal a limping and highly aggravated-looking Nathan. The leathers at his upper leg shone wet with blood in the light from his psimitar, which was leaning on very heavily. With his free hand, he was dragging an unconsciou Logan by the collar, not exhibiting a lot of care for his teammate's comfort.
"I hear water, Storm," he gritted out. "What's going on?"
"Someone on the outside has sent a stream of water in so that we could find our way out," Ororo replied, looking a bit confused at the sight of Logan unconscious and Nate bleeding. "I will help you find it -have you seen anyone else on your way here?"
"Just the two of us." Logan muttered and stirred, claws popping, and Nathan half-whirled, staggering, another psi-blast shimmering into existence around the tip of his psimitar and then slamming into Logan.
"Cable!" Ororo's eyes widened and she stepped forward, though what she was planning to do was questionable at best. She hadn't had much chance to experiment, but she knew it was unlikely her powers would function well, if at all here. The atmosphere was not normal, and quite unstable. "What are you doing?"
"Look at my leg and then ask me that again." He was actually starting to feel more than slightly dizzy from the blood loss. "I can't even manage a fucking telekinetic bandage. And that's just the hit that connected. He was hallucinating. It was knock him out and leave him there or knock him out and drag him along to make sure he stayed out. If there were any FoH in here, what do you think he would have done to them if he'd woken up in that state?"
Her gaze flickered to the wet stain on his leg, and she closed her eyes for a second. Not again. "All right," she said, opening them once again and looking at Nate steadily. "Point made. Let's get you both out of here." Resolutely she turned towards the direction she thought was where she had seen the water, saying a silent prayer that she was right.
"I don't know if there was anyone else in here," Nathan said, tottering a little as he turned to follow her. He stopped for a minute, gritting his teeth, and bent down, slinging Logan over his shoulder. Rising meant putting weight on his leg, and it made him blanch, but he followed Ororo doggedly. "Thought I sensed a few psi-impressions, but then they moved off..."
"I will stay to look for them," Ororo replied, now following the unmistakeable feeling of running water. At least she could feel that much, and she was secretly relieved that her claustrophobia had not hit her again. As they neared the water she glanced over her shoulder, taking in Nate's pale face and the struggle of each step. And not a moment too soon, she thought as they reached the gushing spray. "We're here."
Nathan eyed the water gushing from the blankness in front of them. Then, with a very small, very tight smile, he leaned all his weight on his good leg and heaved Logan's unconscious body through. Logan vanished as soon as he came into contact with the spot where the water was coming through, although there was no discernible hole.
"Looks like the way out to me," Nathan said, then looked back over his shoulder into the emptiness, his jaw clenching and pain twisting his features as he pushed his thoughts outward, seeking something, anything. "I don't feel anyone," he repeated. "But I can't make any guarantees."
"Go on," Ororo said, putting a hand on his elbow. "I will follow as soon as I have looked again."
"If you're not out in five minutes I'm coming back in after you," Nathan muttered in as close to open insubordination as any of the X-Men COs had ever heard from the older man. Not waiting for Ororo to respond, he limped forward, vanishing just as suddenly as Logan had vanished.
Watching him go, Ororo tried to shake off the feeling that she was a misbehaving child and she had just been rebuked, moving off once again into the darkness. I do not envy Rachel when she gets to be a teenager.
---
Outside, the last of the victims are evacuating, and just in time, as the whole building is coming down despite Lorna's best efforts.
The mutant, whoever he or she was - Scott had tried to get a look from the outside of the building, with the dark... spot still pinned in the lobby, but all he'd seen were more of the coils, thrashing wildly - didn't seem to like getting the firehose in the mouth. Chest. Whatever the hell the inky blackness was. For some reason, it wasn't moving away, either. It was as if the force of the water was holding it there somehow. The psionic tremors were getting worse, incalculably worse - Scott could hear screaming from outside, too, from the crowd - and a few of the firemen who'd initially come in with the hose had collapsed and had to be carried out.
But they'd kept it up, pinning the mutant down while the evac continued and the missing FoH staffers, plus a few X-Men, had stumbled out of the void, disoriented badly by whatever they'd experienced. Scott had been forced to bully some of the paramedics rather ruthlessly into coming into the building to carry the injured or dazed out to the triage area. Ororo had been the last out of the void, and he'd pushed her at one of the EMTs who hadn't needed bullying, who'd removed her swiftly from the lobby.
"Do we have a count yet?" Scott shouted over the noise of the hose to one of the officers in charge of the scene. The man was suffering badly, shaking and wild-eyed, but he was still yelling over his radio, trying to tally numbers with the officers outside. Another three civilians suddenly appeared out of the closest stairwell, running screaming for the doors.
Coils thrashed outwards and at them, and Scott whirled around and let off an optic blast, driving them back long enough for the three men to get outside. The whole building shook, and Scott clutched at his skull with a groan as he heard, for the first time, what sounded very distinctly like a scream of frustration, but hollow and distance, as if it were coming out of the void.
Then he heard an ominous cracking noise from above. Ceiling panels fell, nearly hitting one of the firemen on the hose, and Scott swore, looking up. "Polaris!" he said over his com. "What's your read on the stability of the building?" Lorna had dropped out of the evac efforts about twenty minutes back, saying something about structural problems in the building. Not a surprise, with these damned coils snaking through the ventilation system like they were.
Lorna leaned against a wall, hands sunk into a steel girder that had twisted through the wall. It had been easiest to sacrifice the upper floors. Concrete--horrible, heavy, non-ferrous concrete was heavy and holding everything had been too much. There was no good reason to use gestures with a purely mentally directed power. But for large scale use it was a help.
The world around her swam with shifting magnetic fields as she fought the concrete and stone with the bracing metal. Bringing down a building was much easier than keeping it up.
She used her chin to turn on her com once she realized that someone was calling her. "Polaris here. What?"
"The ceiling is coming down in the lobby!" was Scott's reply. "How much longer can you hold?" The officer was still yelling into his radio. No count yet.
She didn't answer for a moment as the building groaned in its death throes and when she spoke again her voice was strained and breathless. "Not long. Five minutes? More if I can sacrifice some of the structure. Is anything clear?" How she was going to get out of here was not worth thinking about yet.
Scott dashed back over to the officer, just as the man looked up. "The count matches!" the cop said, still wild-eyed. Not at all reassured-looking. "Everyone who was supposed to be in the building is accounted for!"
Charles? Scott thought, somewhat wildly himself, at the Professor's presence. Everyone who was supposed to be in the building didn't necessarily mean everyone who had been in the building... but he received, after what seemed like an impossible stretch of time, an answer in the affirmative.
Finally.
"Lorna, we're clear!" he called over his coms, forgetting codenames. "I'm getting everyone out of the lobby, we're all that's left!" He pushed the officer ahead of him, thumbing his com off briefly as he shouted at the firemen to drop the hose and run. He thumbed it back on almost immediately. "What's your exit!"
Exit? She didn't even know where she was. Carefully she let bits of the building go, flinching as it crumbled down. Her little room…maybe it was a closet…was solid. The lobby would hold for a bit. She didn't care about the rest of it. "I'm not sure," she informed him after a moment. She pulled her hands from the steel, shoring it up as she did so. She climbed to her feet slowly. It was an effort to see something other than the magnetic fields around her.
"Pick one, make one - whatever you need to do, just get the hell out of there!" He couldn't help her, Scott thought, half anguished. Literally couldn't. He'd just be one more person she'd need to rescue if he went back for her. More of the ceiling came down, and Scott gritted his teeth as he dodged the debris, running for the door.
"Just tell me when everyone's clear." She was a little amazed by how calm her voice was. Of course, she might have just been too exhausted to care. "I can take care of myself." The building shook suddenly and Lorna realized something, and she found that she still had enough energy to panic. "He's still inside? Scott…I can't hold it long enough to get out the bad guy too!"
Scott stumbled as he went through the doors, but stayed on his feet and shouted at the police to move the crowds back to a safe distance. Lorna's last words made bile rise at the back of his throat as he realized what that meant.
He raised a hand to his com as he turned, seeing the building's upper floors starting to come down. "Get out of there, Polaris," he said, swallowing. "Right now. That's an order."
Lorna was silent for a long moment. Her voice was utterly flat the next time she spoke. "Understood."
---
At the mansion, Cain counts heads over the comms and calls it a night. Tommy's left with some food for thought.
"All right, X-Men, sound off." Cain leaned back in the chair, watching the monitors and silently counting along as he heard his teammate's voices. "And we're up. With the exception of Wolverine, who apparently thinks it's naptime now that we've saved all the good little girls and the bad little boys. Juggernaut going off the net, folks, call me from the bus, drinks are on the Canuck unless anyone else has an objection? No? No. See you at home."
Watching the monitors slowly click off, Cain turned his head to Tommy. "You did good, kid."
Tommy looked up from where he was peeling off his gloves. The lead had crept further down when he'd found out about what Lorna had done to Josh and he wanted them off before they consummed his whole hand. Of course, he hadn't had the chance until then as he'd been relaying information before the building crashed down.
"Thanks. It was...interesting. And with the building gone, it looks like you won't need my help anymore anyway."
"Right," Cain muttered, signing off the comm station and turning on all the lights. "hey, lemme ask you something. Your friends, the folks who beat you half to death and left you on the doorstep? You think they'd be doing the same in your place?"
After glaring at Mr. Marko for even bringing it up, he thought about it for a long moment, then he said, "Most of them? Hell no. But not all of them. Someone of them are good people, better then me even now. They may not like mutants...but they wouldn't leave them to die either." He didn't looked at the other man as he spoke, as he really didn't want to see the reaction. Many people here didn't want to hear anything good about the FOH, so he worked on getting his right glove off.
"And you? If it was this place, these folks here?" Cain ofhandedly noticed that he stood directly between Tommy and the door. Almost as if he'd planned it. "You think you'd do the same? Nah, don't bother answering." He stepped aside, jerking a thumb at the door. "You did good today. That's what matters. Get on out of here."
Tommy hadn't even noticed as he'd been lost in thought. He realized Cain was talking to him and stood up, shoving his gloves into the back pocket of his jeans. As he walked past Cain, he nodded to him. "You said not to answer, but I'll give you an honest answer. I don't know." And he walked out of the comm center.
Smacking the people one was trying to rescue was a bad idea, Nathan told himself. Even if they were idiotic bigots and could probably use the smacking, he was here to help them. Even if they were currently acting like terrified sheep.
"Keep moving towards the exit!" he bellowed at the half-dozen he'd just freed from a room full of those disturbing coil-things. He wasn't sure he dared reinforce it with a telepathic suggestion, not when this mutant was doing something to the psychic atmosphere that had left its victims in a terrible state already.
So he focused on herding them instead. "Out! Down to the stairwell at the end of the hall, and-"
Something looped around his ankle and yanked, sending him crashing to the floor and knocking the breath out of his lungs before he could finish. It dragged him backwards, into a room to his left, and Nathan had a momentary flash of an inky blackness before the coil threw him up into the air and into it.
Nothing. It was cold and empty, and there was quite distinctly nothing there. Except for some sort of floor. Or ground. Because he hit it hard, even if he couldn't see anything. Wheezing, Nathan pushed himself up to his hands and knees, unable to figure out just how he'd held onto his psimitar.
From inside the darkness came a low rough chuckle before an eddy in whatever passed for an atmosphere in this revealed Logan, sprawled out on the "ground" with his ear to it. Around his head on the "ground" lay the remnants of the pre-op meal he'd eaten along with sour stomach contents. "I hear ya, darlin'." he said to no one in particular, apparently talking to the darkness around him. "Been a long time." he commented, lifting up his head and rolling onto his back.
Well, crap. Nathan hauled himself back to his feet, shifting his grip on his psimitar and heading over to where Logan was lying. "Come on, Wolverine, on your feet," he said, trying to ignore his own increasing unease. Something was wrong with his telepathy here, wherever here was. Had he been teleported? He could still sense Logan, and other minds, somewhere in the distance, but only faintly. Everything was scrambled, and the disturbances that had been in the astral atmosphere outside were infinitely worse here.
Logan ignored Nate like he didn't even hear him. "You bet, darlin'. Once this op's done we can head back to the rez, catch a little just-us time before we get called up again. Sounds real nice." he said, focusing somewhere over Nate's left shoulder. "Real nice."
Nathan grimaced and crouched down beside him. "Logan," he said, less harshly. "Logan, look at me. We've got a job to do here."
Logan blinked and shook his head. "Nate? What the fuck?" he said, very clearly confused and the whites of his eyes very, very large indeed. "It's flamin' hard to think in here. Nothin' makes any sense."
"I'm not sure where we are," Nathan said, reaching down to take his arm, "but we need to pull ourselves together and find whoever else is in here. I can feel them."
Logan let Nate pull him up and wobbled a bit before stabilizing. He shook his head and then shielded his eyes like a sudden nonexistant glare was bothering him immensely. "Turn it down!" he yelled suddenly. "You don't have to shout, I'm right here."
"Hey," Nathan said, not loudly but forcefully, giving Logan's arm a little shake. "Focus." Was the... wherever the hell this was messing with Logan's senses, too? Ferals were sensitive to strange things, sometimes.
Logan pulled his arm back and popped all six claws with a SNIKT. "They're comin' for us! I won't let 'em have you, darlin'!" he shouted, and then attacked - two feet off to Nate's right, where there was nothing to see.
"Logan!" Oh, swell. Nathan gritted his teeth and tried to focus his telepathy, just to give Logan the mental equivalent of a slap upside the head.
Logan's mind was seemingly nonexistant - his lips curled in a rictus grin, the cords of his neck popping out, and the whites of his eyes almost drowning out his pupils. But Nate made enough contact for Logan to adjust his aiming point and come after Nate with his claws - one slash aimed for Nate's eyes, and a secondary stab for the belly.
Instinctively, Nathan tried to shield. But whatever was messing with his telepathy was messing with his TK as well. The strike aimed at his stomach glanced off a momentary flicker of a shield that was gone again in the next instant, but Nathan had to dodge rapidly to get out of the way of the next.
"Son of a bitch-" He brought his butt of his psimitar up and slammed it into Logan's gut. Forge would kill him if he saw him doing this.
Logan rode out the psimitar hit like it was nothing and wildly slashed out again. "Fuckin' can't see" he grumbled as he closed his eyes. "I won't let 'em take you!"
"Logan!" Nathan lashed out with an unfocused telekinetic strike, one that didn't have nearly what it should have behind it. Even the psimitar wasn't helping much. It didn't seem to be working right here, either. "Snap out of it, Wolverine," he growled, taking a few adroit steps backwards as the TK hit sent Logan reeling just briefly. Distance would be good.
When Logan steadied himself after the teek hit, he opened his eyes and looked right at Nate. "Place is fuckin' with me, Cable." he said intensely, as if fighting to get the words out. "Messes with my senses." He resheathed his claws and stood as still as he could, concentrating fiercely. "And who's the broad with ya? She's cute."
"There's no one with me." Nathan didn't relax. Not one bit. "It's you and me, and some of the people we're here to rescue... maybe some of our team, somewhere in here. And I swear to God if you don't stay with me, I'll knock you out and come back for you on my way out."
Logan grinned at that, then looked just to the right of Nate. "Pleased ta meet ya, darlin'. I'm .... Logan." he said with a significant pause. "Flamin' head's killin' me." he said, then tried to shake it off. "What say we take the fragile sack of shit here and get out of this place?"
He's hallucinating. Nathan gritted his teeth and told himself to concentrate. Could he snap Logan out of it? He couldn't actually just knock him out and leave him behind, and if he knocked him out and had to carry him, the likelihood of being able to help anyone else was more or less nil.
Logan dropped to his knees and cradled his head in his hands. He didn't cry out, but it was fairly obvious he was in a great deal of pain. Nate lost his telepathic grip when reason and thought fled Logan entirely, and out came the claws again. Logan pounced at full speed, headed straight for Nathan, stabbing repeatedly at the larger man's torso.
Nathan had fought bare-handed against someone with knives before. Usually, he'd had his TK at full strength to help. And Logan's claws weren't precisely knives. He blocked what he could, but one strike crept through, slicing through the reinforced kevlar of his jacket at his shoulder, barely missing flesh.
"Sonofabitch! She was no threat to you, to any of us! She didn't know anything!" he screamed and dropped for a low vicious slash for Nate's hamstrings - a blow designed to cripple before the kill. Tears rolled down his face as he spoke.
Nathan dodged, but not far enough, and the rest of his uniform wasn't as heavily armored as it was at his torso. He managed to limit his reaction to a grunt of pain as adamantium claws sliced his leg open, and the flash of anger that came along with the pain at least gave him a little focus.
He blasted Logan several feet backwards. Had they been somewhere where the normal rules applied, it would have been several times that distance and probably through a couple of walls.
Logan was back on his feet as if he'd teleported there and charging in the blink of an eye. But before he could launch his next set of attacks against Nathan, he threw himself onto the ground, sending his claws into the 'floor" of the place. He stayed there, panting, fighting for control, for several very long minutes.
Nathan winced, tottering on the injured leg. "Son of a bitch," he muttered. And he couldn't even manage a TK bandage.
Logan retracted his claws and then stood up. "We need to get out of here. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it together. Place makes no sense." he said quickly to Nate.
Nathan stared hard at him. "You go first," he said, breathing a bit heavily. "To our... left. I can sense people over there."
Logan looked at Nate and then quirked an eyebrow. "Did I get you or did she get you? Told you, she's a real handful." he said with a smirk, then trotted ... off to the right.
"Left, Logan!" Nathan growled, not making a move towards him.
"This IS left!" he said, turning right again so he was almost doubling back to where Nate still stood.
Nathan limped towards him, using the psimitar as a crutch. "Look at me - LOOK at me," he snapped. I can't believe I'm doing this. "Follow me," he said tightly, and wouldn't have been surprised if all the hair on the back of his neck was standing up straight just at the idea. "You don't know what end is up at the moment."
Logan blinked, surprised to see Nate suddenly in front of him. "Fine." he said, gritting his teeth.
Nathan turned, still leaning on the psimitar, and started limping in the direction of the minds he'd sensed. "Keep talking," he said, so tense that there really wasn't a suitable description for how tense he was, with a hallucinating feral at his back.
"Fine." Logan said. "Ummm ... don't got much to say, really. Ever notice how Scott's aftershave really, really stinks? It's like he slathered his face in dead skunk and whale vomit every morning." he chuckled. "The main steps squeak when you step on them, and there's mice in the barn who can't chew with their mouths closed."
"That's really enlightening. Keep talking." The leg wasn't as bad as it felt. It was still working, at least. Logan had clipped the upper leg, not the hamstring. Bleeding pretty freely, though.
"Ororo is ticklish, but only along her ribs." he said. "You don't wash your hands well enough after changing Ray. I started whittling again the other day." he monologued, his voice growing more and more strained. He then ducked violently and swatted at the air with one hand. "Did you see that?"
Nathan stopped short, tottering again as he turned towards Logan. The tip of his psimitar started to glow just slightly as it picked up a charge. "There's nothing there," he grated.
Logan swatted at the air again! "Goddamned bugs." he said, apparently hitting the delusion as he straightened up and wiped his hands on the legs of his leathers. "Got it. Let's go."
"How about you start looking for a way out?" Nathan asked tensely. "I'll look for the others." Bringing a hallucinating Logan into the midst of terrorized FoH members was maybe not such a great idea. The psychic atmosphere shook around them, and Nathan gritted his teeth, shoring up his shields.
Logan nodded, turned on one heel, and promptly faceplanted. "Found a door!" he said, somewhat muffled from his face against the floor.
Nathan's eyes narrowed and he wondered how long Logan would take to heal from a concussion. The butt of the psimitar to the base of his skull, maybe...
Logan knocked on the floor. "Damn. It's stuck and won't move."
Oh, for fuck's sake! "Logan!" Nathan barked at him in his best battlefield voice. "On your feet! I can't carry you, and we need to get out of here."
"I am on my feet." he said in as lazy a drawl as he could manage. "You bring breaching charges? We'll just blow the door!" he said gleefully.
Nathan gritted his teeth and limped over, bending down and hauling Logan up off the 'ground' with his free hand. "Snap. Out. Of it."
"Snap ... out of it?" he asked, confused. "Which set of REMs brought YOU? Ottawa or Washington? Either way, someone fucked up." he said nastily.
The implicit threat was obvious. Nathan didn't stop to think it through, just channeled all the telepathic force he could muster through the psimitar - not nearly enough, even with what amplification was possible under these conditions - and sending a psi-blast right at Logan.
Logan - severely off-balance and confused from the properties of the Limbo they were stuck in, finally succumbed to the blast. Already laying on the floor, he sprawled out and passed out. For how long, it was almost impossible to say.
---
Scott contemplates a tactical retreat. Then he gets an idea.
Chaos. Any semblance of their initial deployment plan had gone out the window as soon as the mutant in question had started eating people, Scott admitted to himself grimly, firing off an optic blast as a coil lashed out at him from the tangle draped over the counter of the coffee shop in the lobby. They were coming through the ventilation system, he'd realized a while ago. It explained why they seemed to be everywhere when they needed to be, but knowing that didn't really help.
He saw Sam coming back through the front doors of the building, looking grim. "I'm beginning to think we need to pull whoever's left out and regroup," Scott gritted as his XO came over to join him.
"Tactical retreat? Ugh," Sam replied with feeling, staring at the coils. "Ah suppose if we gotta, we gotta, though."
"Get out, get Moira on the coms and see if she's got any suggestions..." And leave his people behind? There was a part of him that just simply couldn't stomach that, not even on a temporary basis. Not even when he knew that might be their only way to get some space to figure out how to get them back...
The wave of disorientation that signaled the psionic tremors swept over him again, and Scott squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Think. There had to be something he could do. The missing people had been displaced, somehow. Not killed. Just... elsewhere.
Even the suggestion of pulling out had shocked Sam, to be honest. If there was one thing Scott Summers didn't seem to know how to do, it was retreat from a situation. That he was considering it showed how overwhelmed he must be feeling. Staggering through the disorientation himself, Sam saw the frustrated look pass over Scott's face. "Talk through it," he suggested. "There's gotta be -somethin'- we can do."
"I don't know what." The frustration was a seething thing in the pit of his stomach, and he lashed out with an optic blast as the tangle of coils reached for him. Son of a bitch, he thought angrily at the unknown mutant, why don't you just SHOW yourself. Talk, or something...
There was the sound of a door crashing open, and Scott took a step back as blackness oozed around the corner from the stairwell. He stared into the emptiness, eyes narrowing.
Sam, for his part, was mesmerized by the sheer emptiness of the oozing darkness. After a long moment, he shook himself violently. "...the abyss stares back also..." he quoted to himself.
"We need a ball of string," Scott muttered, staring into the opening into Somewhere Else. "One very large ball of..." He stopped, his expression taking on a slightly glazed look that had nothing whatsoever to do with the increase in the psionic tremors as the darkness approached.
Sam took an instinctive step back as the darkness came closer. He wasn't afraid of much, but being consumed by utter darkness was on the short list. "Ah don't pack a ball of string in my uniform," he tried to joke, "and even if Ah did, Ah don't think it'd be big enough for whatever you got in mind..."
Scott didn't quite hear him. "They'll be trying to get out, on the other side," he muttered. Ororo, Logan, Nathan, Shiro, all of them... none of them would be doing anything but trying to find each other and get out with anyone else who'd been sucked in.
Sam continued Scott's train of thought. "And they'll need some way to help them find their way out," he said. He looked around the lobby, trying to find something that could be used to help.
"But we don't know what's on the other side," Scott went on as the blackness approached. He, unlike Sam, didn't take a step back. He was utterly distracted and yet utterly focused at the same time, his mind racing through options, possibilities, variables... "A ball of string's not going to do it. But..." He knew what would. "The pumper truck outside," he said. "Get them in here with the hose. Fast," he said, as the blackness edged forward, as if the mutant wasn't sure why they were just standing there.
Even without kicking in his power, Sam practically seemed to fly out the doors. In practically no time at all, he returned, lugging the tip of the hose over his shoulder as it unspooled behind him. He looked into the blackness, then shivered. "Now what?"
There were three or four firemen helping, Scott saw as he glanced back over his shoulder. Automatic on their part, he supposed. "Now we turn the water on," he said. "If they're able, if they're just somewhere else... they can maybe backtrack the water when it crosses the... threshold-" Dear God, was he ever flying by the seat of his pants here. "It's worth a try," he said.
One of the firemen gave a ragged laugh. "It's an idea, at least," he said, and called back over his shoulder for someone outside to turn the water on.
It came on with a lot of force, not unexpectedly. Scott winced and tried not to clutch at his skull as the psionic tremors suddenly increased sharply and the darkness rippled - but didn't move away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the coils had gone limp.
"Nightcrawler," he grated over the coms, "keep going with that evac..."
---
Inside the void, Shiro and Ororo find each other. Shiro's not entirely sure that Ororo is who she says she is. There is precedent, after all. But two is better than one, and sticking together, they find a way out. Even Scott's crazy ideas can be good ones.
It was a slight relief to Shiro that he could at least still use his powers. Despite the apparent not-being-on-Earth part, not to mention the pounding headaches and sudden lack of psychic white noise from the switchboard. But desperation let him see past that, at least enough to release enough plasma to create a new sun in this dark, cold, silent void. Not like that did any good, though.
To say Ororo was disoriented would be putting it lightly. More than the topsy-turvy feeling she had outside, now she felt lost; cut off. They were no longer anywhere she could name - the lack of any sort of identifiable input made that certainty. She could still sense faint tremors of atmosphere, electricity occurring in unpredictable patterns. Traces of what might have been people, or may have been nothing at all. It was very nearly maddening.
"What is this place?" Shiro muttered, repeating a question he'd already asked a half-dozen times. There didn't seem to be anything there. Just blue-black darkness. He'd been "eaten" by the coily mutant, he gathered, but the vastness of this space was a blatant violation of physics.
There was always the temptation to try her powers... but then, in an unknown location with a potentially unstable atmosphere, that didn't seem like a good idea. Ororo heard a noise, barely a whisper, and she started towards it.
"Shiro?" she said a minute later as the young man materialized out of the darkness. "Thank the Goddess... are you all right?"
Shiro, on the other hand, hadn't thought through that much. Volatile atmosphere or not, if his solar flame could get him out, then he'd exhaust himself until freedom. But Ororo's sudden appearance and her exclamation of relief jolted him out of his desperation.
"Storm?" he said hoarsely, taking a hesitant step forward. For all he knew, he was in Limbo and this was just a demon in disguise.
"Yes, it is me," Ororo replied, nodding. "Are you hurt? Have you seen anyone else?" And what is going on here? Except that she didn't want to seem too confused... she was supposed to be in charge, after all.
Looked like her. Sounded like her. "You were eaten too?" he asked, his normally light accent more pronounced through his fear and confusion. "I have not seen or heard of anyone or anything else."
"Do not worry," Ororo said soothingly, giving him an encouraging smile. "We appear to be safe for the moment. And if we have found each other, it is likely we will find any others who have been 'eaten'. I am sure those on the outside are figuring out a way to extract us as we speak."
He eyed her warily. Maybe it was the psychic damage he'd taken by the tremors, but what she said sounded too much like the bad guy luring the good guy into a false sense of security in just about every horror movie. "Of course," he replied, eyes narrowing. "How did you find yourself here?"
"I was helping Cyclops lift an injured man when a... tentacle whipped itself around and dragged me towards its source. I believe he tried to blast it, but it was moving too quickly..." Ororo frowned, then shook her head. "I do not remember exactly what happened next, only that when I was fully aware again I was here."
"I wonder if we can fly out," he mused, though reluctant to actually try because he didn't know if the air was stable enough to heat up and push him upwards.
"No," Ororo said, lifting one hand and shaking her head. "Right now, we do not know where 'out' is. I do not want to risk anything right now. Be patient, Shiro, and help me search for the others."
Shiro nodded. A glove of solar flame provided light as he walked alongside Ororo, headed in no direction in particular. "Do you know how many others are here?" he asked, trying to peer through the darkness.
Ororo was very grateful for the illumination Shiro provided, as the inky blackness around them was quite pervasive. "No. I would imagine there are some building staffers who must be here, and it is quite possible some of the team is here as well," she murmured in reply.
"I do not see or hear anything," Shiro said, brightening the light. And as if on cue, there was a bloodcurdling scream, and with only a brief glance at Ororo, Shiro dashed ahead to find the source.
Close on his heels, Ororo could soon see a crazed-looking man flailing about randomly, the veins in his neck and arms standing out from his efforts. "Get off! Get away from me!" he yelled hoarsely, swinging again at the air around him as if he was trying to fend off an attacker. "Get away!"
"Oi!" Shiro shouted as he approached the man and dimmed the light. As he was most likely FoH, displays of mutation to a psycho would hinder their rescue efforts more than help. "Calm down, sir."
It seemed the man had no intention of calming down, whirling around to face the two mutants as they approached. A look of terror came over his face, and he raised his hands. "N-no, please, don't hurt me..." He cowered away, though a split second later the fear had been replied by rage. "You monsters!" Dropping his hands, he charged at Shiro, who was the closest of the two.
Shiro was half expecting that, and easily grappled him. He raised an eyebrow at Ororo. "I have no intention of hurting you," he said, "But you need to relax." He applied some pressure to the man's back, taking a grim satisfaction at his meek struggling. "Understood?"
Whimpering, the man stopped struggling, hanging limply in Shiro's arms. "What... what happened? Where am I? Who are you?"
"We are here to help you," Ororo replied, nodding to Shiro that he could release the man now. "Technically I cannot say if we are still within the building, or somewhere else. But we are working to find a way out, so you will not be trapped here long. Have you seen anyone else?"
"N-no," the man said, his voice nearly a whisper as he stared at the ground. "No one. I am... alone."
"That is after we even arrived," Shiro muttered to Ororo. At least prolonged exposure to this place wasn't fatal. "Should we continue searching for others?" It was really the only option.
Ororo nodded, glancing at the bewildered man now teetering beside Shiro. "And we must take him with us. It may be nearly impossible to find him again should we discover a way out."
And what a shame that would be. Arm around the man's waist to steady him, Shiro followed Ororo. Minutes of wandering led them nowhere; everywhere looked the same. "Now would be a good time for a cross-dimensional teleporter." Because being rescued by Illyana would make the day so much better.
Even in the apparent direness of the situation, this comment made Ororo smile, and she nodded her agreement to Shiro while glancing around them. Something had changed, it seemed, though she couldn't quite figure out what. There was no more light than before, and she certainly couldn't tell which direction was which, but...
"Can you feel that?" she murmured, stopping in her tracks. "Something is different. There is... water here."
"Water?" Shiro took another step forward, eyebrows disappearing into his hairline when he heard the splash instead of the expected silence. "Where is it coming from?"
"This way." Her steps surer now, Ororo began to stride towards the noise, her skin tingling a bit at the moisture wafting through the air. It could be fake, it could be a trick or illusion, but her senses hadn't shown her anything more real or believable in all the time she had spent wandering the void. It was worth a try.
Shiro was more hesitant, almost sure it was a trick, but their new friend was too excited and all but dragged him forward. As they progressed, their splashes grew louder, the water level rising. "~We better not encounter kappa~," he muttered in Japanese.
Finally they came upon it, a darkness in front of them which was inexplicably broken by a strong, steady stream of water. Ororo blinked, reaching out carefully with one hand to feel the spray. "Shiro, I think this is real. As real as anything is in this place…" She glanced at him. "This may be coming from the other side, where the rest of the team is. What do you think?"
"From where is it coming?" asked Shiro warily, not fighting back as the man struggled to be released from his grip and all but jumped into the inexplicable waterfall. "Oh." Looking up a little, Shiro spotted it: a dimly glowing white spot was pouring water down on them, like a funnel between dimensions. "Ingenious."
"I believe this must be the way out. I would like you to take this man and lead him to the other side. Once you are there, find Cyclops or Cannonball or Nightcrawler and report to them what you have seen," Ororo instructed.
"What about you?" Now Shiro's paranoia was back, and he eyed Ororo slightly distrustfully. "It is not safe to stay in here too long. What if the portal closes?" I will not be led to my death by some trickster doppelganger.
With a sigh, Ororo offered Shiro a small smile. "I am a CO, Shiro. I cannot leave this area without knowing the rest of my team is safe. I will follow as soon as I can, I assure you." She glanced at the gushing water once more. "I will be able to find my way back to this spot. But you must go now, take this man to safety."
He was acting dumb, he knew it. He'd been watching too many cartoons and the psychic tremors were messing with his perceptions. Some thing are as they seem, he reminded himself. "Sorry." He wrapped his arm around the man's waist again. "Hold on tightly," he warned, slowly moving forward through the water. He glanced back at Ororo, nodded, and sped up. The man clung to him desperately, and Shiro could hear the muttered curses about mutants, but he ignored them. On towards safety, and a box of recuperative Pocky.
---
Some indeterminate amount of time later, Ororo finds Nathan marching grimly in her direction, dragging an unconscious Logan and occasionally stopping to psi-blast him. It really is one of those nights.
Ororo stood in the dark, her senses jumbled and confused. She knew she had sent Shiro off in one direction with one of the Friends of Humanity draped over his shoulders, but for the life of her she couldn't remember which direction it had been. There had been water, and the faint shout of voices, but she had moved away in her search for anybody else left in the void. Dear Goddess, just let me get everyone out alive, she thought ferverently, casting her eyes about.
The coms were useless in here, she had quickly discovered, and there was no more than the faintest of whispers of telepathic activity from anyone. Ororo had no idea how many had been sucked it, nor how many had managed to make it out, but she swore she would't leave until she was satisfied everyone, team and FoH alike, was safe. The only problem is how to find them. I cannot see them, cannot even tell which way is which, and I doubt they could hear me... Nevertheless, she put her hands to her mouth and shouted. "Is anyone there? There is a way out! If you can hear me, say something! I will come find you and take you there!"
The darkness shifted abruptly to reveal a limping and highly aggravated-looking Nathan. The leathers at his upper leg shone wet with blood in the light from his psimitar, which was leaning on very heavily. With his free hand, he was dragging an unconsciou Logan by the collar, not exhibiting a lot of care for his teammate's comfort.
"I hear water, Storm," he gritted out. "What's going on?"
"Someone on the outside has sent a stream of water in so that we could find our way out," Ororo replied, looking a bit confused at the sight of Logan unconscious and Nate bleeding. "I will help you find it -have you seen anyone else on your way here?"
"Just the two of us." Logan muttered and stirred, claws popping, and Nathan half-whirled, staggering, another psi-blast shimmering into existence around the tip of his psimitar and then slamming into Logan.
"Cable!" Ororo's eyes widened and she stepped forward, though what she was planning to do was questionable at best. She hadn't had much chance to experiment, but she knew it was unlikely her powers would function well, if at all here. The atmosphere was not normal, and quite unstable. "What are you doing?"
"Look at my leg and then ask me that again." He was actually starting to feel more than slightly dizzy from the blood loss. "I can't even manage a fucking telekinetic bandage. And that's just the hit that connected. He was hallucinating. It was knock him out and leave him there or knock him out and drag him along to make sure he stayed out. If there were any FoH in here, what do you think he would have done to them if he'd woken up in that state?"
Her gaze flickered to the wet stain on his leg, and she closed her eyes for a second. Not again. "All right," she said, opening them once again and looking at Nate steadily. "Point made. Let's get you both out of here." Resolutely she turned towards the direction she thought was where she had seen the water, saying a silent prayer that she was right.
"I don't know if there was anyone else in here," Nathan said, tottering a little as he turned to follow her. He stopped for a minute, gritting his teeth, and bent down, slinging Logan over his shoulder. Rising meant putting weight on his leg, and it made him blanch, but he followed Ororo doggedly. "Thought I sensed a few psi-impressions, but then they moved off..."
"I will stay to look for them," Ororo replied, now following the unmistakeable feeling of running water. At least she could feel that much, and she was secretly relieved that her claustrophobia had not hit her again. As they neared the water she glanced over her shoulder, taking in Nate's pale face and the struggle of each step. And not a moment too soon, she thought as they reached the gushing spray. "We're here."
Nathan eyed the water gushing from the blankness in front of them. Then, with a very small, very tight smile, he leaned all his weight on his good leg and heaved Logan's unconscious body through. Logan vanished as soon as he came into contact with the spot where the water was coming through, although there was no discernible hole.
"Looks like the way out to me," Nathan said, then looked back over his shoulder into the emptiness, his jaw clenching and pain twisting his features as he pushed his thoughts outward, seeking something, anything. "I don't feel anyone," he repeated. "But I can't make any guarantees."
"Go on," Ororo said, putting a hand on his elbow. "I will follow as soon as I have looked again."
"If you're not out in five minutes I'm coming back in after you," Nathan muttered in as close to open insubordination as any of the X-Men COs had ever heard from the older man. Not waiting for Ororo to respond, he limped forward, vanishing just as suddenly as Logan had vanished.
Watching him go, Ororo tried to shake off the feeling that she was a misbehaving child and she had just been rebuked, moving off once again into the darkness. I do not envy Rachel when she gets to be a teenager.
---
Outside, the last of the victims are evacuating, and just in time, as the whole building is coming down despite Lorna's best efforts.
The mutant, whoever he or she was - Scott had tried to get a look from the outside of the building, with the dark... spot still pinned in the lobby, but all he'd seen were more of the coils, thrashing wildly - didn't seem to like getting the firehose in the mouth. Chest. Whatever the hell the inky blackness was. For some reason, it wasn't moving away, either. It was as if the force of the water was holding it there somehow. The psionic tremors were getting worse, incalculably worse - Scott could hear screaming from outside, too, from the crowd - and a few of the firemen who'd initially come in with the hose had collapsed and had to be carried out.
But they'd kept it up, pinning the mutant down while the evac continued and the missing FoH staffers, plus a few X-Men, had stumbled out of the void, disoriented badly by whatever they'd experienced. Scott had been forced to bully some of the paramedics rather ruthlessly into coming into the building to carry the injured or dazed out to the triage area. Ororo had been the last out of the void, and he'd pushed her at one of the EMTs who hadn't needed bullying, who'd removed her swiftly from the lobby.
"Do we have a count yet?" Scott shouted over the noise of the hose to one of the officers in charge of the scene. The man was suffering badly, shaking and wild-eyed, but he was still yelling over his radio, trying to tally numbers with the officers outside. Another three civilians suddenly appeared out of the closest stairwell, running screaming for the doors.
Coils thrashed outwards and at them, and Scott whirled around and let off an optic blast, driving them back long enough for the three men to get outside. The whole building shook, and Scott clutched at his skull with a groan as he heard, for the first time, what sounded very distinctly like a scream of frustration, but hollow and distance, as if it were coming out of the void.
Then he heard an ominous cracking noise from above. Ceiling panels fell, nearly hitting one of the firemen on the hose, and Scott swore, looking up. "Polaris!" he said over his com. "What's your read on the stability of the building?" Lorna had dropped out of the evac efforts about twenty minutes back, saying something about structural problems in the building. Not a surprise, with these damned coils snaking through the ventilation system like they were.
Lorna leaned against a wall, hands sunk into a steel girder that had twisted through the wall. It had been easiest to sacrifice the upper floors. Concrete--horrible, heavy, non-ferrous concrete was heavy and holding everything had been too much. There was no good reason to use gestures with a purely mentally directed power. But for large scale use it was a help.
The world around her swam with shifting magnetic fields as she fought the concrete and stone with the bracing metal. Bringing down a building was much easier than keeping it up.
She used her chin to turn on her com once she realized that someone was calling her. "Polaris here. What?"
"The ceiling is coming down in the lobby!" was Scott's reply. "How much longer can you hold?" The officer was still yelling into his radio. No count yet.
She didn't answer for a moment as the building groaned in its death throes and when she spoke again her voice was strained and breathless. "Not long. Five minutes? More if I can sacrifice some of the structure. Is anything clear?" How she was going to get out of here was not worth thinking about yet.
Scott dashed back over to the officer, just as the man looked up. "The count matches!" the cop said, still wild-eyed. Not at all reassured-looking. "Everyone who was supposed to be in the building is accounted for!"
Charles? Scott thought, somewhat wildly himself, at the Professor's presence. Everyone who was supposed to be in the building didn't necessarily mean everyone who had been in the building... but he received, after what seemed like an impossible stretch of time, an answer in the affirmative.
Finally.
"Lorna, we're clear!" he called over his coms, forgetting codenames. "I'm getting everyone out of the lobby, we're all that's left!" He pushed the officer ahead of him, thumbing his com off briefly as he shouted at the firemen to drop the hose and run. He thumbed it back on almost immediately. "What's your exit!"
Exit? She didn't even know where she was. Carefully she let bits of the building go, flinching as it crumbled down. Her little room…maybe it was a closet…was solid. The lobby would hold for a bit. She didn't care about the rest of it. "I'm not sure," she informed him after a moment. She pulled her hands from the steel, shoring it up as she did so. She climbed to her feet slowly. It was an effort to see something other than the magnetic fields around her.
"Pick one, make one - whatever you need to do, just get the hell out of there!" He couldn't help her, Scott thought, half anguished. Literally couldn't. He'd just be one more person she'd need to rescue if he went back for her. More of the ceiling came down, and Scott gritted his teeth as he dodged the debris, running for the door.
"Just tell me when everyone's clear." She was a little amazed by how calm her voice was. Of course, she might have just been too exhausted to care. "I can take care of myself." The building shook suddenly and Lorna realized something, and she found that she still had enough energy to panic. "He's still inside? Scott…I can't hold it long enough to get out the bad guy too!"
Scott stumbled as he went through the doors, but stayed on his feet and shouted at the police to move the crowds back to a safe distance. Lorna's last words made bile rise at the back of his throat as he realized what that meant.
He raised a hand to his com as he turned, seeing the building's upper floors starting to come down. "Get out of there, Polaris," he said, swallowing. "Right now. That's an order."
Lorna was silent for a long moment. Her voice was utterly flat the next time she spoke. "Understood."
---
At the mansion, Cain counts heads over the comms and calls it a night. Tommy's left with some food for thought.
"All right, X-Men, sound off." Cain leaned back in the chair, watching the monitors and silently counting along as he heard his teammate's voices. "And we're up. With the exception of Wolverine, who apparently thinks it's naptime now that we've saved all the good little girls and the bad little boys. Juggernaut going off the net, folks, call me from the bus, drinks are on the Canuck unless anyone else has an objection? No? No. See you at home."
Watching the monitors slowly click off, Cain turned his head to Tommy. "You did good, kid."
Tommy looked up from where he was peeling off his gloves. The lead had crept further down when he'd found out about what Lorna had done to Josh and he wanted them off before they consummed his whole hand. Of course, he hadn't had the chance until then as he'd been relaying information before the building crashed down.
"Thanks. It was...interesting. And with the building gone, it looks like you won't need my help anymore anyway."
"Right," Cain muttered, signing off the comm station and turning on all the lights. "hey, lemme ask you something. Your friends, the folks who beat you half to death and left you on the doorstep? You think they'd be doing the same in your place?"
After glaring at Mr. Marko for even bringing it up, he thought about it for a long moment, then he said, "Most of them? Hell no. But not all of them. Someone of them are good people, better then me even now. They may not like mutants...but they wouldn't leave them to die either." He didn't looked at the other man as he spoke, as he really didn't want to see the reaction. Many people here didn't want to hear anything good about the FOH, so he worked on getting his right glove off.
"And you? If it was this place, these folks here?" Cain ofhandedly noticed that he stood directly between Tommy and the door. Almost as if he'd planned it. "You think you'd do the same? Nah, don't bother answering." He stepped aside, jerking a thumb at the door. "You did good today. That's what matters. Get on out of here."
Tommy hadn't even noticed as he'd been lost in thought. He realized Cain was talking to him and stood up, shoving his gloves into the back pocket of his jeans. As he walked past Cain, he nodded to him. "You said not to answer, but I'll give you an honest answer. I don't know." And he walked out of the comm center.
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