Tarot and Cypher. Backdated to this afternoon.

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

Backdated to this evening (mid-afternoon, San Diego time). In midst of rescuing summer band camp students from an auditorium, Tarot needs information fast. Who else to call but the Cypher?



Doug had brought his X-Men communicator with him. He wasn't in San Diego as an X-Man. He knew that the Snow Valley Centre couldn't be connected to the X-Men. He understood all the reasons why. On top of which, he was a reservist now. And Lord knew he had plenty to do wearing the Red X. But if there was an emergency, he wanted to be ready. He knew new comms had been sent out after Lorna had done her best EMP impression.

Still, he nearly jumped out of his skin when the pager vibrated in his pocket.

Pulling out a small Bluetooth earpiece and fitting it in his ear to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear his conversation. Thankfully, the page had come during actual downtime, which had been almost nonexistent since the C-130 had touched down in southern California.

"Cypher," he murmured quietly. A long pause answered him. "...hello?"

"Do you have internet access, on your PDA?" The voice one the other end finally answered, tightly and tiredly. And with an unmistakable light Lyons accent. In the background, sounds of shouting could be heard, and the communications line was staticy, and unclear.

Doug's first instinct was to say "You dated me -how- long, and you can't remember that?" But, like Marie-Ange on the other end, he was exhausted. He was well past exhausted, in fact, he just was too tired to think of a word that encompassed how tired he was. He didn't think they'd created one yet. He was certainly too tired to snark. If Marie-Ange could be civil, then he supposed he could too. Maybe she'd finally gotten over yelling and lecturing him.

"Yes," he responded simply. "What do you need?"

Marie-Ange let out a ragged sigh of relief. "Electrical... plans, I cannot remember the word, for.. merde. Cypher, I do not even know what street I am on. It was a school, there are students trapped, and live wires." Another sigh, and a small grunt. "I am.. perhaps six, seven blocks from the highway?"

"Schematic," Doug supplied the word Marie-Ange was looking for almost without thinking. He knew the directions she thought in. It was easy to figure out where she was headed with things. "I need a little more information, though, Tarot," he continued. "A lot of stuff is six or seven blocks from the highway. To start out with, which highway? Interstate 5?" he asked. When she was this exhausted, you needed to lead her with questions.

"Oui. Yes. I think the Interstate 5, yes." She very vaguely remembered a sign. "I really do not remember as well as I should.." And then the comm crackled loudly in Doug's ear, and there was a growl, of shifting concrete, and a rapidfire series of french expletives.

"Angie?" Doug asked nervously at the noise. "Angie!" he barked, not even realizing he was using the nickname that he'd practically purged from his vocabulary. Muttering a few expletives of his own (though he didn't limit himself to French), he quickly brought up the GPS tracker program he'd installed on his PDA. All the X-comms had built-in trackers, he just needed to...there. "Challenger Middle School," he read off the small map on his screen. The continued expletives meant that at least she was still alive. Forcing himself to pull back, he took a breath. "Tarot, do you need backup? Are you all right?"

"I am fine. We had a small cave-in." Marie-Ange explained, once the crackling cleared enough to hear her by. "The school is coming down around us, the foundation was almost totally destroyed." Another few crackles, and the comm line cleared. "I have a rough map, one of the students drew it." In pen on the back of a torn flyer for summer band classes. "There were students in the auditorium, and the stairs have all collapsed. But we have wires down everywhere."

Pulling up a map of the campus' main building, with the electrical grid overlaid on it, Doug stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth unconsciously in concentration, narrowing one eye. "Okay, have you tried the staircase that leads out toward the woodshop? That looks to have the least wires running through it," Doug replied, very carefully trying to not think about Marie-Ange possibly getting caught in a collapsing school building. He would be just as scared if it were any other friend of his from Xavier's in there, he tried to tell himself.

"I have no idea where the woodshop is, Cypher." Marie-Ange answered tightly. "We are near the.. " Another voice, lower, and male answered. "North hallway. Near the seventh grade homerooms when I was here. That was about ten years ago though, before they built the auditorium."

Marie-Ange didn't bother repeating. She could tell from the "Uh-huh"'s in her ear that Doug could hear every word. That he was listening. "We need to keep moving, Cypher. If I lose you, keep trying me?"

"Oh, I'll keep trying," Doug promised. "I don't plan on losing you, though," he continued, running a script that allowed him to piggyback on the strongest radio or cell phone signal in the area to boost the comms' signal strength. He was so intent on his work that he didn't even realize how his last remark could have been taken. Having superimposed the blip of Marie-Ange's tracker location on the blueprints, he nodded, even though she couldn't see him. "Keep heading in that direction, then take a left at the end of the hall," he directed.

"You are going to have to tell me when I get there." Marie-Ange said. "Half the halls have collapsed in on each other, and are being held up by the lockers, of all things, before we get to them." And then held up by her images, of smooth stone walls, dissolving into wispy fog behind and ahead of them. She cracked her neck, and moved on, relaying information to the EMT's with her.

"Twenty feet," Doug read off the distance. "Ten feet, five..." he counted down. "Turn there," he instructed her briskly. He could picture the situation all too well, in his mind's eye. The darkness, the claustrophobia...he shivered and tried not to chew at his fingernails.

"Damn." Marie-Ange swore, and thumped a gloved fist against her stone walls. "These stairs are collapsed too." She muttered under her breath, and dug through the numerous pockets in her uniform pants and jacket until she found the palm-sized sketchpad and charcoal. "I have to bring down these walls. I cannot keep more than one image up with this much weight. It hurts, and I would not bring the walls down on top of us."

In the background, over the comm, there was another slow grind of concrete and metal, and then several thumps and grunts. "We are down. I imaged the stairs back. How far is the auditorium from my, oh, hell." Marie-Ange's question cut off, leaving the sounds of the rescue workers she was with, and two new voices, higher pitched, and obviously terrified.

"Cypher, call back to the EMT's outside. Mine have lost their radio signal, and we have.. injured children."

Fishing a handheld radio out of his back pocket, Doug relayed the situation succinctly to EMTs in the area, then went back to his PDA and comm. He could see Marie-Ange's blip clearly outside the floorplan of the middle school, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Are...are you okay?" he asked hesitantly.

"I will be okay when we get all of these children out and I can never see another locker or concrete wall again." Marie-Ange said grumpily. "But I am not hurt... much." Bruises and scrapes and a headache the size of Magneto's psychosis did not count. "I need to you relay... " She paused, taking in some information from 'her' EMT's. "Two with possible broken ribs, three concussions, and one that we are bringing up on a backboard." Her voice was ragged, suddenly sounding more tired than it had only a few moments ago. "The rest are just dehydrated and bruised and very hungry."

Doug scrubbed at his eyes. The blip hadn't moved outside the floorplan after all, just off the page that he'd been on. Refreshing the view, he blushed slightly, even though he knew nobody was around to see the honest mistake his exhaustion had brought on. The 'much' filled him with a bit of dread, but if she was ambulatory and coherent, that counted for something. Her voice didn't hiss with the pain of a broken limb or anything like that, as far as he could tell. He relayed the tally to the EMTs on his radio, and received the response that they were en route. "They're not the only ones," he murmured in response to Marie-Ange's final comment. "Promise me you'll get some food and Gatorade yourself," he told her somewhat sternly.

"I have food waiting for me, and we brought water." Marie-Ange answered tiredly. "I will eat as soon as we get out, I promise." The portable backboard was assembled, and the severely injured boy strapped to it. "I may be quiet. We have to get the children up the stairs I made." Then her voice lowered, obviously speaking to one of the children. "I know your ankle hurts very much. Can you get up those stairs for me as fast as you can?"

The girl whimpered something, and Marie-Ange let out a breath. "A tuba fell on it? All right. I can carry you." she swallowed at the lump in her throat. Going down those stairs herself had been bad enough. "Hold on -very- tightly. We are going last. Your friend has to go up first."

The EMT's carried the boy on the backboard up the imaged stairs, accompanied by Marie-Ange's grunts and hisses as she felt -every- booted footstep, and the weight of two grown men, and their smaller patient. "Now the rest of you. Go up quickly." She directed, following immediately behind them, stairs dissolving only a few steps below her as she climbed.

Doug let out an explosive breath he hadn't quite realized he had been holding when the blip that represented Marie-Ange on his map really -did- exit the premises of the middle school on his PDA. If he'd been more the religious sort, he might have thanked God. Except that would imply he cared about Marie-Ange as more than a friend. They were broken up, and merely friends now. Well, if they could get past the part where they yelled and screamed at each other, but it appeared they had. There was no telling if that was simply the exhaustion and stress of the situation, however. "Everyone make it out?" he asked.

"Un, deux... six, sept.." Marie-Ange counted under her breath. "Oui. Nous sommes dehors. No casualties, just injuries." She leaned against one of the ambulances, after transfering the girl she'd been helping to one of the waiting EMT's and sat down, her legs almost giving out under her. "Merci. I am not sure we would have found them so fast if you had not picked up. Every path seemed to have live wires down everywhere."

Doug knew how exhausted Marie-Ange must be if she was losing her English. But he'd lost all right to take care of her when they'd broken up. Besides, he'd asked Em on a date, and she'd said yes. "Oh what a tangled web we weave," he murmured, too low for the microphone of his comm to pick up. Maybe he'd try and sell the tattered wreckage he called his love life as the plot for a soap opera. "All My Mutant Children", indeed. "Food and Gatorade," he reminded her. "And some rest too?" he asked hopefully. Not that he expected her to agree. They were all pushing themselves to the limit. Leathers or no, they were X-Men, and that was what X-Men did.

"Food and the gatorade, yes." Marie-Ange agreed. "A Power Bar now, until I get to the truck and then I will eat real food." She did not agree to the resting. She could rest when the sun went down and she could no longer see to make images. "Je dormirai ce soir. When it is too dark to work."

He knew it was the most of a compromise he'd get from her. She was just as stubborn as Em. But he'd be checking on them both. He'd meet Em in person for dinner, and find some way to make sure Marie-Ange was resting. "Take care..." he said, pausing and not at all sure how to call her. Tarot seemed too formal, Angie a nickname he didn't really have a right to, even though he'd unconsciously used it earlier. "...just take care," he ended lamely.

"I will." Marie-Ange answered. "Please do not overwork yourself either?" She said, after a very long pause. "No losing your words, no running yourself until you cannot go anymore."

Doug did not make any snide comments, merely said "I promise," and cut the connection before running his fingers through his hair exhaustedly and sighing. At least they were being civil to each other now, even if he still had no idea what to say, think, or do in the context of anything but a crisis. But civil was a start. Striding off purposefully, he keyed his radio to find the next thing of the millions that still needed doing.