The Games of Papa Ghede - Escapes
Jun. 2nd, 2007 10:21 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsArcade stormed down the hallway off his hotel, walking towards his office and fuming with an almost incandescent rage. That Nazi bastard had twisted his deal, so that he could get a sick thrill in killing children. Arcade had no illusions about the kind of man that he was. Life was cheap to him. To anyone worth more than three billion before assets, it was easy to consider human beings in the abstract sense.
Both unlike most, Arcade wasn’t obsessed with power, or position. His goal was amusement, personal mental interest. And he had a code of conduct. He didn’t go out to trap innocent people into Murderworld. The victims were brought to him, and most of them even more corrupt or evil than the people who brought them. He’d watched drugs barons and warlords die painfully under his tools. Professional soldiers who knew the risks. Corrupt politicians who had decided to steal just a little bit too much. Murderworld wasn’t some pretend at justice, but it wasn’t a killing ground for the innocent or for children. He was an evil man, in many ways, but he wasn’t a psychopath.
And now Klar and his sick bastards had trapped him into a deal to do exactly that, and gloated at him doing it. They didn’t understand what they had just done.
“Ms Locke, I want you to enable my remote connection to the complex, and get all of our people clear of it. If Klar and his insane cult wants to run things, let them run it completely.” Arcade opened the doors to his office, and sat down behind his desk. There he booted up his laptop. Klar didn’t know it, but he had just called the game on. And there was nothing that Arcade liked more than games.
He logged into his Murderworld mainframe and began to call up his feeds. If he tried to overtly sabotage the systems, even Klar’s halfwits would be able to tell. But to subtly influence them; give the kids a fighting chance?
Well, that would be a challenge, won’t it? Arcade grinned and started tapping the keys as he mumbled to himself.
“Insert coin.”
***
There didn't seem to be any sort of off switch for the slowly descending ceiling, although the rate was almost glacial. It was as if the danger it presented was secondary to something. John's suspicions were confirmed as the stone lid of the sarcophagus crashed to one side, and a bandaged wrapped hand grabbed on the edge.
"You have violated my eternal rest."
The robotic quality of that voice managed to break his paralysis. John would've stood his ground if he'd been equipped with his lighter. Incapacitated however, he backed away; staying put and sending out shafts of sarcasm wasn't going to get him out of this alive. His foot depressed a switch on the ground and he stilled.
Fuck.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a flashing blue light; a display case of some sort with foot holds on the wall leading up to it.
The mummy levered itself up and out of the coffin, bandages hanging from the emaciated form. It had to be a robot, but the figure seemed real enough in the lurid lighting of the fake tomb. It was pure Hollywood camp, but it didn't make it any less dangerous, as John saw the stone crack under its grip.
Pure adrenaline kicked in at this point and he broke into a run. John climbed up the foot holds, using his arms for balance and his legs to hold his body weight. He grunted. ...less dependency on pyrokinesis and a hell of a lot more hours needed at the gym, Allerdyce.
The limestone foot holds were a lot smaller at the top and were spaced even further apart. He could see that the transparent case contained his Zippo. It wasn't however, within easy reach of him. John looked down. A fall from this height wouldn't snuff him out. The only thing that worried him was Tutankhamun below.
No time for wasting, he thought. Drawing in a deep breath, John released his grip on one of the foot holds, whirled around and smashed his fist into the glass. It might not have been the smartest of moves but he'd never been commended for his decisions...
John dangled from the metal rung that had once held the case up. He couldn't spot the metallic device but it was down there, somewhere.
Meanwhile, the mummy hadn't bothered to try and climb the wall. Instead, he turned and shattered the stone lid of the sarcophagus with a mighty blow. To John's mounting horror, the creature picked up one of the chunks of a stone and hurled it at the pyrokinetic. It shattered only a foot away, spraying the young man with fragments of rock.
"Holy shi-----ungh!"
...son of a bitch. John rolled over and spat a mouthful of sand out. His eyes caught the glint of his lighter and he reached for it, fingers clenching around the silver piece of metal as he stood up. The faint click of the Zippo brought to light a single flame.
"...should've stayed in your coffin," John said as he hurled a flaming ball of fire forward.
The fireball ignited the wrappings, turning the mummy into a walking flaming figure. Still, like the mythical version, the robot felt no pain as it attempted to lurch after John and finish the job of killing him before the fire destroyed its circuitry.
John staggered backwards, increasing the charge to an almost blinding intensity.
...within the sarcophagus, an airlock cycled open.
----
~Somewhere, over the rainbow...~
The music warbled through unseen speakers, the sound slightly crackly for being the original movie soundtrack. It had started the minute John had entered this particular hallway, barely loud enough to register. Obviously someone was a fan; when he reached another pair of doors and one of them flashed yellow for a second.
Upon observation, John recognized the flashes for what they were -- a SOS distress signal. There was the possibility of it being a trap but he wasn't about to risk leaving the door unchecked. He pushed a hand against the metallic surface and it opened inwards.
Another hallway, but this time ending in one door, no more than four feet high. From behind it music could be heard, the rollicking carnival-type music that involved pipe organs, or at least cheesy synthesizers.
The automatic door slid open as he neared it. Sharp metallic clangs and dull splats greeted the newcomer as he entered the room. The rat-tat-tat of guns from up above caught his attention but he was safely out of the target shooting range. John scanned his surroundings, taking note of the open floors, the metal ducks, the black gooey substance...
A blob sailed passed him, hitting the wall with a loud splat as a new line of guns appeared out of the wall panels on the opposite side of the room. The loud whirring of machinery kicked off Round Two of the game as the floor flipped open beneath John's feet, causing him to stumble back.
Back was a good direction to stumble - the movement brought him to the wall, where his foot touched something solid. Nearly obscured by black goo, Yvette lay in a small huddle, hand stuck across her face. At the contact, her eyes opened, their glow showing between the cracks formed by her fingers.
"..." It was barely a noise.
John's eyes darted down and then back up again as the guns started firing. Directing a massive fireball toward the series of wall panels, the flames punched out, destroying the guns in scorching heat. John swept the fiery blaze downwards toward the tracks next, igniting the machinery, engulfing it in a fire storm before he pulled the flames back into himself.
"Petrovic?" Crouching next to the huddled form on the ground, John eyed the black tar-like substance. He noticed that her sharp talons were potruding out of the sticky matter, providing her with the means to breathe. It was a sure sign that she wasn't incapacitated by fear alone.
Another noise, a little stronger and sounding assenting. Yvette could barely breathe, the goo slowly spreading and beginning to close the gaps between her fingers, and she'd been lying there for what had felt like hours. Falling into something close to the coma state she'd been found in had probably saved her life - she didn't breathe as much like that. But John's entrance had brought her back, and hope flared that here was someone to help her. She made another attempt to speak, but only managed a kind of interrogative squeak.
"Uh...just--" John scanned the room. "--give me a minute." He started to fiddle with his lighter, snapping the lid open and close as he thought of a way to free the kid. There was attempting to scrape the goo off of her but hey, diamond hard skin and there was... "...your skin." He looked at Yvette. "...think it can withstand fire?"
There was another flare of blue from Yvette's initial reaction. Then she made herself stop and think. She wasn't the same girl she had been, and Angel's fire didn't hurt her, just made her warm. It might get uncomfortable, but she'd survived the inside of a dinosaur... Taking as deep a breath as she could, she forced a word out: "yes." It was barely audible, but steady. "trust. you."
John raised his eyebrows slightly. Well, that's a first. Taking a step back, he flicked his lighter aflame. If he was going to do this, he was going to have to do it right. Right in the sense that he wasn't about to end up with another addition to his rap sheet. John burned one of the blobs on the wall, giving it a good test fry -- it liquidified before bursting out as a cloud of black smoke.
"Just shut your eyes and count to ten, Petrovic." It was enough of a warning before he enveloped her in a cocoon of fire. John stoked the flames to a higher intensity, not wanting to prolong the burning for any longer than necessary.
Yvette had time to suck in a breath and hold it before squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Fire swirled around her, hot but not burning - it was like being out in the sun a little too long. Around her, the black tarry goo liquified and then went to dust, revealing dark red skin - John's flames also burned Yvette's clothing away.
The possible nakedness hadn't been accounted for but it was an easy fix. John slipped his jacket off and draped it over Yvette's shoulders.
"You alright?"
Yvette slowly sat up, clutched the jacket around her. Her skin rasped at the material, but it would be a while before she wore through. For a moment she just breathed - it seemed like forever since she'd been able to take a deep breath. "Yes," she said after a moment, and looked up at John. "Thank you, for to be helping me." She glanced at the metal ducks and shuddered. "Are you to be seeing someone else?"
"Nope," he responded with a smirk. "Guess that'll happen in due time." John started forward for the door. "What's a kid like you doing in Vegas anyways?"
Yvette climbed somewhat shakily to her feet, and fumbled to zip up the jacket. "I was to be having the fun," she replied, a little wryly as she hastened to follow John out of the room. "This... is not so much."
----
The hallway was deceptively bare, and Yvette kept close to John, careful not to brush him. They'd followed a series of these halls, looking for a way out, or some of the others, but so far, nothing. Then a kind of high-pitched buzzing caught their ears, and Yvette looking at John. "Are you to be hearing the... how you say? Insect killing light?"
John stubbed his cigarette out before glancing back up. He frowned as the noise grew louder. "Bug zapper," he informed her.
Ahead of them to the right was a door covered by a grounded metal mesh. A giant flourescent lamp hung behind the charged wire grids. John's frown deepened. "...always gotta be something," he muttered, snapping his lighter open. "Here's the deal, Petrovic. I fry. You cut." He glanced her way. "Any questions?"
Yvette shook her head. "No, there are not being questions." She looked at the wire mesh speculatively and flexed her fingers. "I am ready when you are being ready, John."
With a quick whir of the thumb wheel, John directed a flaming fire ball forward; it blew up the transformer and the voltage multiplier circuits, effectively cutting off the run of electricity. John pulled the flames back from the charred remains of the housing and gave Yvette a nod.
Stepping forward, the small girl raised her right hand and slashed downwards at the mesh, the heated metal strands parting easily under her talons. It was the work of seconds to hack a rectangular section out of the mesh - she gave John an apologetic look as he was going to have to duck through it, as she hadn't been tall enough to reach very high up. "We are to be finding one of our friends in this place, yes?" she asked, peering through the gap into the room behind. It was hard to see much.
John would've answered her if he hadn't been slapped in the face by a fly swatter. He ducked the next hit before lighting his Zippo, illuminating the room in an orange glow. Sticky traps hung low on the ground and high up on the ceiling. Fly swatters of various sizes; both electric and plastic, zipped back and forth across the room. Aside from the occasional smack to the face however, none of it seemed to pose much of a threat to them.
Yvette batted at the fly swatters that flailed at her as she followed John, unwilling to stay alone in the hallway where anything might get her. Her talons sliced them easily in half and they dropped to the floor, twitching slightly. "This is being... the room for the killing bugs," she observed, stepping around a number of Venus fly trap and pitcher plants. "But who is to be..." She blinked. "Jan, she can be making herself very small, like the insect, yes?"
He nodded. "Keep your eyes peeled for the two inch easter bug, Pet. I don't think she'll be throwing any peeps at us this time." John brightened the flame in his hand, careful not to set any of the sticky traps on fire.
Yvette nodded, peering carefully around her and slicing through the flypapers only after making sure Jan wasn't attached to any of them. "Jan?" she called a bit uncertainly, not knowing if they'd be able to hear any response.
A voice was calling to her. Jan opened her eyes slowly, not sure what was going on. She was small again, and... her wings buzzed... she was stuck. In vain, she tried to free herself from the sticky paper. Her renewed activity attracted the attention of two flyswatters and Jan was in danger of being smashed into a little mess.
The low ceiling made it possible to intercept the hit with his arm; the buzzing noise having caught John's attention. He cupped a hand over her form, protecting her from the rest of the hits as he worked at pulling the sticky trap off of the surface. "...I swear I've never been slapped around this much in my entire life."
A small nervous giggle broke from Yvette as she peered forward at the trapped Jan. "I think I can be cutting her free," she suggested, a little hesitantly. "If I am being very careful."
"Yvette? Is that you?" Jan tried to turn around to see the owners of the voices she was hearing. "What's going on here? Anybody have any kind of clue?"
"Yes, it is being me. And John," Yvette replied, keeping her voice quiet. "We are being... how you say? Kidnapped? And there are rooms that are being trapped. If you are being very still, I can be cutting you out." She looked up at John. "Can you be making sure there are no things to be bumping me? I am not wanting to be hurting Jan."
"Yeah -- sure, I'll just...stand back here and.." John swiped an arm out against one of the fly swatters before catching hold of another with his free hand.
"Kidnapped? Just us or everyone and what is it with the kidnapping? This is not how I planned on spending this weekend! We never even made it to my party!" Jan said sadly.
"Everyone, we are thinking. And there will be a party when we are getting home. Now, please to be staying still, yes?" Yvette raised her hand in preparation to cut Jan out of the flypaper, thankful for the woodcarving lessons from Logan that let her do fine detail work.
"Yes, stay still, absolutely, just watch the wings, ok?" Jan folded her wings carefully against her back, the tips of her wings extending past and resting over her legs. "Skin can grow back, I think, but I don't know about the wings."
Tongue poking just a little out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated, Yvette carefully drew one fingertip around Jan, tearing through the flypaper with ease. Once or twice she had to stop in order to shake out a hand cramp, but at last the job was done, and she held out a sleeve-enclosed arm for Jan to climb to. "There. You are to be making to peel the paper off where it is sticking, yes?" she said, eyes brightening happily.
"Bleh! Sticky paper!" Jan pulled at a piece stuck to her foot. "Ouch! Damn it! Uh... sorry." Muttering to herself, she proceeded to pull at the other pieces of sticky pieces still attached to her skin, her already low voice dropping to seeming nothingness as she continued to curse the entire time.
John let loose a burst of fire, clearing them a straight path to the door. Once they were safely out, he set the room ablaze.
---
Wandering the confusing series of halls, Yvette tilted her head at the sound of a distant howl. "John?" she said, uncertainly. "I think I am hearing something." She pointed to the hallway on their left. "Down there."
The pungent smell in the air was overwhelming, sickening but turning back was not an option. John frowned, intensifying the flame in his hand with a quick flick of his wrist.
"Let's go run right to the sound of the howling, then!" Jan said, peering down the hall.
---
Kyle couldn't ignore the pain, his thumb was throbbing and already starting to swell at the joint. But the pain wasn't going to stop him from getting out of this. He had gotten away from -Sabretooth- with half his guts coming out, he was damn well not letting one self-inflicted dislocation stop him from getting out of handcuffs.
Biting his lip hard enough to make it bleed, he tucked the thumb into the palm of his hand, pulling it further then the joint would normally go, and closed his fingers around it. The handcuffs couldn't be slipped off easily, but without the thumb joint in the way, Kyle managed to wiggle the cuff off his hand, taking some of the skin in the process.
He let the cuffs dangle from his right hand, and once again gripped his left thumb, pulling it away from his palm and pushing the back into place. Where the dislocation had taken a few seconds, fixing it felt like it took ten times as long, and when his thumb finally popped back into the joint, Kyle was growling and whimpering.
--
As they drew closer, they could hear the noise - or rather, a cacophony of noises, all of them discordant. Yvette winced and then pointed to a grate in the floor ahead of them. "There!" she managed to say above the racket. The smell was more powerful here too, and she swallowed heavily to keep from being sick.
Jan landed on John's head, her wings ceasing their rapid movement, and she made a face at the awful smell.
The periodic burst of blinding white light made it impossible to see through the rusted iron grating. "Anyone down there?" John yelled as he slipped his fingers through the bars. Attempting to lift it up was a futile effort as the covering had been screwed down into the flooring.
The throbbing in his hand combined with the noises and lights to drive Kyle to the point of rage. He'd gotten the handcuffs off, but he was still sitting on top of a pile of dead pigs in a room that he couldn't find any way to leave. It felt futile to even try, and he'd already inflicted a world of pain on himself to no real effect.
He got up, and stalked over to the pig's head he'd kicked away before, and gave it a good hard kick with his bare foot, letting out a loud snarl as it hit the wall across from him and splatted against it.
Yvette had drawn away from the grate itself, the light especially overpowering her - her eyes seemed to prefer the dark. There was a tiny metallic noise, a 'plink!' as her foot caught on the corner of a panel on the floor, and she tensed, looking around for the inevitable trap. When nothing happened, she bent to examine the panel, which had come a little bit loose. When she pried it carefully up with her claw tips, it revealed a number of switches.
"John, Jan, I think I am finding something," she called, as loudly as she could over the noise.
Pushing himself up to a stand, John headed over to where Yvette was crouched at. He kneeled next to the younger mutant and provided them with sustained light through his flame. The control box contained ten switches and a big red button with the word BOOM on it. John smirked.
"I'm thinking that means speakers," John yelled through the din of the industrial "music". "But hey--" he said, lifting a hand to the controls. "Feel free to stand back."
Yvette did so obediently, as Jan flew to her shoulder from her perch on John's head.
There was a discernible pop in the air as the noise was cut off from the speakers. John let go a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and stood up with a grin.
A second later, the control panel exploded.
The explosion didn't catch Kyle's notice. He was too busy screaming out his rage at his anonymous kidnappers. What he lost in simply repeating the same handful of expletives over and over he made up in volume and expressed emotion.
The silence following it, however, did. He stopped his pacing and occasional goal-kicks of the pig head around the room to look up towards the ceiling. The lights still kept him from seeing anything, and he let out a frustrated growl, and continued to pace.
Jan dropped down to the grating, peering down into the room below. The room stank and what was that in there and hey! Kyle! Kyle was in the yucky, smelly room filled with bright light. Quickly, Jan slipped down into the room and headed for Kyle.
"Kyle! It's me, Jan! We're going to get you out of here, ok?"
Kyle didn't recognize the voice at first. His ears were still ringing and he was too focused on being angry. But when Jan flitted around his face, he finally stopped in his frantic pacing and looked at her. "... You're not real." He muttered. "This is too fucking bizarre for you to be -real-."
"Oh yeah? How's this for not real?" Jan reached out with both hands and zapped his nose. "Tell me I'm not real now!"
"OW!" Kyle clapped both hands over his nose, and hopped around. "Okay, okay, you're real! Ow!" He removed his hands from his face and gingerly prodded his nose with one finger. "Where'd you come from? Please tell me you weren't like, in the head of the pig?"
"Ew, no!" Jan made a face. "Why the hell would I be inside such a nasty, horrible smelling thing? Yuck! I came from there!" She pointed at the grate. "Yvette and that John guy are up there. I don't know where everyone else is."
He knew it was pretty incredulous that Jan had been inside the pig's head. But this whole situation was incredulous. Kyle squinted up at the ceiling where he could barely make out the grate. "Yvette? John?" He yelled. "I don't have any doors down here! Any ideas?"
Up above, Yvette and John were peering down through the grating, despite the stench. She was trying to hold her nose, a tricky operation given her talons. Experimentally she drew one across the grate, wincing a little at the screech of metal "I can be cutting these," she said, apologetically. "But it will be taking many hours. They are too thick."
John shook his head. "We need to keep moving." They couldn't afford to waste hours here when they could be looking for the rest or an escape route out of the building. "Hey, Simba!" John called out to the feral kid below. "You sure you don't see another way out?"
"Don't you think I'd have gotten my own ass out of this mess already if I had?" Kyle yelled back. "I have big steel walls and pig intestines around my feet." He swallowed heavily and tried not to think about it. "So unless you have any better ideas, I'm stuck in here." Not that he had any idea how he'd gotten in there in the first place. Which made him stop and look around the room. "You guys don't see any big doors up there do you? Just the grate?" Yelling was getting annoying. Every time he opened his mouth to yell, the smell seemed to get worse.
"No, Kyle. I am sorry, but there is not, and I cannot cut through," came Yvette's sad reply.
"Well, fuck." Kyle muttered. "So if there's nothing up there, then how'd I get in here with the party of pork in the first place?" He paced around the room, although at a much less frantic and angered pace then before, paused, and raised his arms above his head in a gesture of abject frustration. "God hates me. That's what this is. For all the bacon I've been eating. If there's nothing in the walls and nothing in the ceiling, what you guys wanna bet there's something below me under the pigs?"
"Below? Oh, gross...." Jan stared down at the solid "floor" of pigs. "Dude. That is gross. How'd all the pigs get in here, though?"
"Not a clue." Kyle said. "But they had to get in here somehow, and I bet it's underneath them. If there's nothing up there but a grate, there's no way the pigs came in from the top." He grumbled aloud, and bent to tug at one of the pig carcasses. He didn't get far before he turned to dry heave. Nothing was left in his stomach to throw up. Stopping wouldn't get him out of here though. So he bent again, tugging on the body of the pig until it pulled free, and he heaved it to the side of the room. "One pig down, lots of pigs to go..."
"Um... do you want..." Jan continued staring at the disgusting pile of dead pigs. "I know I can't help like this... crap, I should be big and helping you. I hate being all useless like this!"
The second pig proved just as frustrating, as Kyle's stomach once again rebelled at the stench, and he wasted time trying not to throw up. "Can your zap thing turn my nose off..." Kyle said. "It''ll still be bad, because I can kinda taste the stink in the air, but it'd help. I'd want to puke less." He continued to pull another pig away from the pile and try not to get sick. "I'll try anything to make this go faster."
"Little zaps are a lot less than toe and finger removal," Jan said. "You'll be ok, I think... I don't want to really hurt you, but I don't think I could ruin your nose forever or anything." She thought about trying to get big, but wasn't sure she really wanted to touch the dead pigs. Dead pigs cooked for food was ok, but this was just ew. Jan wasn't sure she'd ever want to eat anything that came from a pig ever again. Maybe even no meat at all. "I'll try if that's what you want." Jan placed her hands on Kyle's nose and let out a sharp sting. Another zap followed, and another, then another...
"I think I cad't smell adythig adymore." Kyle said, crossing his eyes to look at his nose, which was just a little swollen and red, and most importantly completly stuffed up. "Id'll heal sood, but this id good for dow." With his sense of smell muted, he bent to the task of pulling the pig carcasses away. It went much faster now, and he only had to stop twice to regain control over his stomach.
Long minutes passed, and the pile of pigs that had been thrown against the walls grew, until Kyle stood waist-deep in a hole, stomping his foot against metal. "We have floor!" he announced. And not a minute too soon, the stings to his nose were already wearing off. He pulled another of the pigs up out of the hole and dragged it to the wall. "I think we have a door too. Or... a something anyway." He'd managed to uncover enough of the floor to reveal a line where metal touched metal.
Another several pigs revealed more of the floor, and more of the line that was one side of what appeared to be a set of large double doors, with a metal ring set into it. "Thank God." Kyle said, and went to wipe his forehead with his hand, only to pause when he saw the mess covering both arms up to the elbows. "Jesus fucking Christ this is gross..." he muttered quietly.
He climbed up out of his hole and looked up towards the grate. "I have a way out! But I don't know where it goes! I kinda gotta try it though!" He yelled up to John and Yvette. He bent and pulled the metal ring, forcing the door open with a loud creak. It was dark, but there was a ladder going down, and he could see very dim lights below.
"Well, that settles it then." John looked to Yvette. "You ready to move on, kiddo?"
Yvette bit her lip, reluctant to leave Jan and Kyle, but knowing there was no other way - it wasn't like they could get down there. She could be brave, she reminded herself, and John would make sure nothing would happen to her. "Yes," she said at last, before calling down into the room. "You are to be very careful, yes?"
"Careful, yes, that's us!" Jan called out. "Not even a really big pile of really gross dead pig bodies can stand in our way!"
"If I never see another pig again, it'll be -way- too soon." Kyle answered. He dropped down onto the first rung of the ladder, took a few careful steps down and then scrambled back up to the top, giving Jan a sheepishly apologetic look. "If I don't do this, I'm just gonna throw up again once my nose heals all the way. So, uh.. yeah." He pulled his t-shirt over his head, and threw it down the hole with a mournful look. His stained and ruined jeans followed, leaving him in a pair of mostly clean boxer briefs. "And I liked that shirt too. Dammit..." Then, finally, he returned to the ladder and climbed down, with Jan close behind.
****
Then, as the gunfire passed through the lead car and the man in it, he wavered and flickered like a bad TV picture. Sam's eyes widened in realization. A hologram. A fake, designed to keep him sitting in his seat long enough to be gassed or shot. A heartbeat before the gunfire passed through his own car, he blasted, shattering the car around him and warping the track with the force of a larger than normal explosion caused by all the gasoline in the air. The planes and roller coaster rattled and shook, and Sam paused in midair, searching for an exit. Finding it, he flew down quickly, breaking his way through a reinforced metal door and into a hallway where fresher air was. Powering down, he grimaced. Someone was playing tricks out there, and he had a hankering to find out who.
***
It took five songs before Tabitha started listening to the words. The first lyrics she heard were "she put the bottle to her head and pulled the trigger."
She clapped her hands over her ears after that one. As angry as the blatant attempt made her, she found herself drooping and struggling not to look into the mirror. Every time she turned her head, she saw a newer, fatter version.
She kicked the mirror again, tried another bomb.
Nothing.
Tabitha threw bomb after bomb at the opposite wall. The temperature in the room rose steadily. She ignored that alongside the increased smoke and decreased ability to breathe.
--
Sam's narrow escape from the demented carnival ride led him into a room with a dome-shaped construction in the middle. His eyes narrowed. Someone had clearly watched the Saw movies a few too many times, and he wasn't in the mood for demented torture games. The room was filled with the worst sort of stereotypical country music, the sort that even made Sam occasionally cringe, and the lyrics were morbid and Dante-esque in their imagery. He shook his head, guessing that he wasn't the only one in the area. And from the muffled "crump" of explosions, he had a guess who was trapped inside the dome. He jogged quickly over to the dome, placing his hand against it and feeling for a crease. Not finding one, he rapped against the steel, calling "Hello?" loudly.
Tabitha froze mid-throw. The metal mirror behind her echoed with a knock and distorted voice. She re-absorbed the bomb and shot to her feet. She pounded on the mirror and shouted. "Hello? Anybody out there? Get me out of here!" She knocked and kicked against the steel. If she wasn't mistaken, that metal-twisted hello had a distinct Southern drawl.
"Tabs? That you?" Sam yelled back. It sure sounded like her, just as he thought. If he wasn't the only one from the group that had gotten shanghai-ed to this crazy place, he had a very bad feeling that the Xavier's people were being targeted. Which meant there might be more people out there in need of some manner of rescuing. "Ah'm gonna try ta find a hole or somethin' so Ah can get ya out!"
Tabitha coughed against the smoke that filled the mirror room. "There's a trap-door on the top!" She yelled, then coughed some more.
Tabitha actually looked around, noticing the smoke for the first time. "Geez, I'm an idiot sometimes." She pounded on the mirror again. "Sam! Hurry!"
"Trap door? If there's a trap door, what in the sam hill are ya still doin'...forget it," Sam muttered as he cut his blast field on just long enough to launch himself to the top of the structure. There he saw the problem. Not only was the structure likely too tall for Tabitha to reach the exit, it was also padlocked tight. A blast field assisted punch took quick care of the lock, and Sam jerked it open, lying down on his chest to reach his arm down into the chamber. "Take my hand!" he called urgently.
Tabs jumped to her feet and reached toward Sam’s hand. Her fingertips brushed against his, it was just a bit too far. Tabitha gritted her teeth in frustration. She bent her knees and jumped vertically to grab her friend’s wrist. “Don’t you dare herniated on me!”
Back muscles that had evolved to support Sam's ability to fly were easily up to the task, and his arm came up smoothly, depositing Tabitha next to him on top of the dome. "Ya okay?" he asked quietly, looking down inside the smallish space she had been in. "What was in there?"
***
He let them be, focused on the patterns. Traced the path from the meditative patterns to the patterns of his thoughts, frayed and cracked... to the pattern of the static. All parts of the whole. All connected. Everything was connected.
He would never know how long it took. But he stayed the course, ignored the pain of the static searing his mind. There was a way out. There was always a way out. The road went ever on, and Nathan pushed through the weak spots, the openings that shouldn't have been there.
Found the pattern of the world beyond the static.
The explosion was not soundless. The door shattered, taking most of that wall with it. Beyond was a simple hallway, nondescript and well-lit. Shaking, Nathan crawled out over the debris, collapsing against the wall of the corridor. There was a haze in the air, the sweet rancid smell less strong, but still present, and Nathan doubled over, retching helplessly.
When the wall beside him started to ripple, push outwards into silvery hands reaching out for him, Nathan decided that it was time to go looking for the others. Especially as he had almost remembered who they were.
***
He'd been keeping out of the way of the blades for what seemed like hours, and Kurt was aware that the margin between him and them was starting to get less and less each time. Added to that, the sheer exertion of doing acrobatics with one arm had broken open the not yet healed wounds on his shoulder and his side, and he could feel them bleeding freely. He couldn't keep this up for very much longer before exhaustion and blood loss caught up with him, but there was no... way out... until suddenly, something caught his eye.
He wasn't sure if it was a hallucination, at first, but down in the pit where there had been nothing but darkness, there was now a thin line of light. And where there was light...
The planes turned for another assault, and there was nothing else he could think of to do. Praying under his breath, he took a leap of faith and let go of the trapeze he was clinging to, teleporting just as he started to fall, aiming for the tiny hope. Whatever it was, it almost had to be better than nothing, or the death coming at the top of the room.
His faith proved well-placed. When he reached the light, squinting at it and feeling with his hand, it proved to be the edge of a trap door, and one that could be prised up from his side. Yanking it open with a glance over his shoulder, Kurt dived through just in time to avoid the final approach of the planes.
***
Arcade grinned. The blue one had taken the hint. It was a small thing, popping the trap a couple of millimeters, just enough to let the light bleed through. It had been enough. These X-Men were well trained, and they’d need to be. A few millimeters here, a few seconds there, that was all Arcade could give them. Hopefully it would be enough.
***
Monet had almost gotten into the swing of after a while. Grab the shoe or handbag or whatever it was this time, always in tacky plastic and garish colours, drop it in the slot before it hit the floor and yell "Help!" once or twice before grabbing the next one the room shot at her. And always trying to avoid touching the walls or floor or ceiling. She even started to get slightly bored. This was just ... not mentally challenging. Tiring yes, challenging, no. Which may have explained why she was singing the Playschool theme, loudly and off key, after finding herself completely unable to remember the lyrics to anything else.
"There's a bear in there, and a chair as well..."
The room, as it turned out, was not soundproofed, and Kurt and Nathan could hear her perfectly well from the other side of the door - which she couldn't see, but no effort had been made to disguise it from the outside. It was padlocked, but that was no real problem with a telekinetic to hand. "Nathan?"
"Hello? Can you hear me? Is someone out there?" Monet sent the question as well as calling it, shouting at the limits of her range. Because sixty yards worth of telepathy is just soo much help right now...
Nathan, breathing hard, laid a hand against the wall, clearly trying to calm down and gather his thoughts. He was more than a little wild-eyed, and was deliberately not looking at Kurt. Several minutes of fresh air had not helped much. He was still seeing... more than he should be. Far more. All wrong. There was nothing right about a purple multi-eyed Kurt with tusks.
"Monet," he called hoarsely. "Stand... stand back from the door. Just in case." Just in case of... something. Snakes. Ladders. Flinching, he took the padlock, which had developed tentacles and a mouth since the last time he'd glanced at it, in one hand. Thankfully, it broke, just like a normal padlock.
"Okay!" Monet moved as far away from the door as she could and curled into a little ball. Just in case. "'s about time, you came and got me. I was getting bored."
"She's usually that surreal, right?" Nathan asked Kurt a bit dazedly, and pulled open the door, half-expecting... explosions, or something. It seemed to be a perfectly ordinary door, though.
"...it depends what you mean", Kurt said guardedly, aware as he was of his friend's hallucinations, limping towards the doorway. "Monet? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Don't step on the floor, but. I just have to get this." A little bottle of perfume shot from a canon on one wall. She grabbed it and dropped it in the slot before floating out the door. "I'm so glad to see you both because this has been a completely shithouse trip to the circus so far. I'm going to have to complain." Monet hugged Kurt, who swayed under the impact, and reached out to hug Nathan before backing away.
"You have snakes in your hair," Nathan said faintly. "You might want to do something about that."
"I have what? You've gone completely crazy. The shock of the kidnapping has turned your mind into jelly or something." Monet circled Nathan, watching to see if the crazy was visible on the outside. "Just so you know, telling people they have snakes in their hair isn't going to make you any more friends."
"I think there was poison in his room", Kurt confided wearily. "It is making him see things. Ignore anything he says about things that are not there." He paused. "Unless there is any chance he is talking about something he senses telepathically."
Monet nodded. "Right. Are you okay, Kurt? You're all," and she waved a hand back and forth.
He blinked at her, following the motion of her hand for a moment before he focused. "Oh. Yes. I am just... tired. When we get out of here, I will be fine."
***
“~Whoever you are, you will pay for this indignity,~” the royal said as coldly as she could manage, still fighting against her bonds. “~It is a pity you did not study the other use of my power,~” she continued, eyes flashing as she willed her hair to grow.
She’d never had to grow it from such a low point and it was a new sensation as scarlet tendrils began extending from her scalp. Whatever she’d been drugged with also slowed her progress, as she had to fight the cloudy-headness. Unfortunately, the monkeys weren’t prepared to patiently wait for her to regain the use of her powers and one threw the razor it was holding at her. Twisting her head to the left, she felt the wind whistle by her cheek as the razor embedded itself in the headrest next to her neck.
Realizing she needed to change her focus, Medusa begin to focus on just a few strands of hair, lengthening and strengthening them just in time to smack away another thrown blade. One after the other, the monkeys continued throwing blade and Medusa continued smacking them out of the way, barely managing to avoid getting hit by the second to last blade. Glancing at the distance between her lock of hair stretched as far as it could, she realized she needed to change tactics. As the last monkey threw his blade at her, she moved her hair directly into its path, grimacing at the lock was sliced off and fell to the floor.
The monkeys began moving again, going to retrieve their fallen blades and Medusa stared forlornly at the red tendril of hair curled on the floor. Slowly it began to twitch, rising up and sliding along her leg and over her lap, reaching the lock that secured her to the chair. It didn’t take long until her one arm was free, but by then the monkeys had armed themselves and encircled the royal Attilani. Urging the strand to move faster, she heard the satisfying click just as the monkeys released their blades. Glade for her ballet training, Medusa leapt into the chair and then out over the monkeys and their blades.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the monkeys begin to pick their blades up yet again. Movement had gotten her blood flowing again, the drug finally seeming to circulate out of her system and it wasn’t long before her hair had resumed it’s normal length. A few more seconds and it had extended out, wrapping around each of the monkeys and squeezing until they crunched. It was then that another mirror slid away and more mechanical monkeys holding blades began to appear. As they slowly filed in, Medusa ran through them, kicking aside any that came close to her and exiting the room through the open mirror.
***
Medusa has been running through hallways for what felt like hours. She needed a facial, massage, manicure and pedicure at the least. She was going to make whoever had set this whole thing up pay if she could help it - she had her hair back now, but the indignity of having been without it was still making her angry. As she reached yet another dead end in what seemed like the maze of hallways, she saw a crack of light to her left. Investigating it, she realized she'd found a door. Hoping she'd finally found a way out, she pushed the wall, hoping it would open. When it didn't budge, she shifted her hair through the crack, pulling until it finally gave, slowly creaking open.
Mondo looked over at the door that had just opened. "Oh, hey Medusa." he said languidly, then took a nice deep swallow of his drink. Mmm, delicious. He wiggled his toes and giggled just a little bit as they broke through the top layer of sand. He shuffled his feet deeper into the wet sand, appreciating the coolness against his skin. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the "sun", soaking up the rays.
Medusa blinked in disbelief. She'd had razors and maniacal robot monkeys and the Samoan was on a beach? Muttering a few choice words in Portuguese, she looked around the room concernedly. "Does this not strike you as a little strange?" she asked, takes a few cautious steps into the room.
"Naw." he said with a big sleepy smile. "I like it down here. It's warm, it's comfy, and the drinks are very, very good." he said, finishing his off. As soon as he put his empty glass down onto the sand, a penguin waddled out of a small hatch in the wall with a fresh, ice-cold pina colada on a little tray.
"I love these little guys!" he said, clapping his hands with glee as the robotic penguin waiter waddled up to Mondo and presented him with the drink. Mondo took the glass up off the tray which was the penguin-bot's cue to waddle back through the hatch in the wall.
Medusa's hair had flared automatically at the swoosh of the hatch and the appearance of a mechanical animal. After her own experience with the monkeys, she was suspicious of the little creepy robot and her hair flicked out to grab the glass from Mondo's hand. Pulling it to her she sniffed it and then paled slightly. "How many of these have you had?" she asked.
"HEY!" Mondo said. "That's my drink!" He thought about her question for a moment, then shrugged. "I dunno. Half-dozen, maybe more." he said beatifically. Then he yawned mightily. "I'm sleepy. Think I should go take a nap." he said, shifting in his chair again in an attempt to find the Perfect Sleeping Position.
The drink had a faint, musty odor, which meant one thing - hemlock. Hurling the glass at the wall, Medusa watched the liquid pool on the ground in disgust, soaking quickly into the sand. "Mondo, listen to me. You cannot go to sleep. You have been poisoned. Fight it."
Mondo blinked owlishly. "You dropped my drink." he said with a frown. "Why'd you go and do a thing like that?" The robo-penguin re-emerged from its hatch, bearing another frosty cold one for Mondo's consumptive pleasure. "Why are you being so mean? Haven't we had enough of people being mean lately?" he asked petulantly.
"Mondo, do you know what the word poison means? Who knows how much is in each of these and what else they contain. Poison kills you. Your are being slowly murdered. You may want to thank me for this," Medusa replied, her frustration evident as her hair whipped out to smack the penguin, drink and all, into the water.
"HEY!" Mondo said, gripping the arms of his beach chair as Medusa whipped the penguin into the surf, where it sank with a very real-sounding indignant squawk of outrage. "Why do you gotta come in here and mess with my happiness, huh?" he said, standing up. And as soon as he got vertical and got the blood pumping a bit the nausea and dizziness hit. "All I wanted was to sit and rest." he said around locked jaws as he turned an interesting combination of sickly green and deathly pale.
"~I should just let Darwin take over,~" Medusa muttered as she glanced around the room, an idea coming to mind. "Mondo, you need to concentrate. What happens when you sync to items? Would that clear your system?"
"I dunno." he said, wavering where he stood. "I don't feel so good." he confessed.
"Considering you have been drinking poison all afternoon, I am not suprised," Medusa said gravely. "Perhaps try syncing? It cannot hurt." I hope.
Mondo looked around. Synching to sand didn't hold a whole lot of appeal, so the chair it was. He moved aside part of the seat itself to reveal the metal frame and then synched to that. A few moments later Mondo vomited copiously onto the sand - but instead of the normal vomit, his was a clear greenish fluid. "Ewwww." he said, sounding much, much closer to his normal self. "That was gross."
Medusa's nose wrinkled distastefully as she hurriedly backpedaled away from Mondo. "Yes it was. Now come quickly, we must find the others." Hopefully they are not all slowly killing themselves with huge grins on their faces. Spinning on her heel, she walked back out the door.
Mondo frowned at Medusa's retreating aspect and trudged after her. He still just wanted to sit outside here and enjoy the sun and the water on his toes. Was that too much to ask?
Both unlike most, Arcade wasn’t obsessed with power, or position. His goal was amusement, personal mental interest. And he had a code of conduct. He didn’t go out to trap innocent people into Murderworld. The victims were brought to him, and most of them even more corrupt or evil than the people who brought them. He’d watched drugs barons and warlords die painfully under his tools. Professional soldiers who knew the risks. Corrupt politicians who had decided to steal just a little bit too much. Murderworld wasn’t some pretend at justice, but it wasn’t a killing ground for the innocent or for children. He was an evil man, in many ways, but he wasn’t a psychopath.
And now Klar and his sick bastards had trapped him into a deal to do exactly that, and gloated at him doing it. They didn’t understand what they had just done.
“Ms Locke, I want you to enable my remote connection to the complex, and get all of our people clear of it. If Klar and his insane cult wants to run things, let them run it completely.” Arcade opened the doors to his office, and sat down behind his desk. There he booted up his laptop. Klar didn’t know it, but he had just called the game on. And there was nothing that Arcade liked more than games.
He logged into his Murderworld mainframe and began to call up his feeds. If he tried to overtly sabotage the systems, even Klar’s halfwits would be able to tell. But to subtly influence them; give the kids a fighting chance?
Well, that would be a challenge, won’t it? Arcade grinned and started tapping the keys as he mumbled to himself.
“Insert coin.”
***
There didn't seem to be any sort of off switch for the slowly descending ceiling, although the rate was almost glacial. It was as if the danger it presented was secondary to something. John's suspicions were confirmed as the stone lid of the sarcophagus crashed to one side, and a bandaged wrapped hand grabbed on the edge.
"You have violated my eternal rest."
The robotic quality of that voice managed to break his paralysis. John would've stood his ground if he'd been equipped with his lighter. Incapacitated however, he backed away; staying put and sending out shafts of sarcasm wasn't going to get him out of this alive. His foot depressed a switch on the ground and he stilled.
Fuck.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a flashing blue light; a display case of some sort with foot holds on the wall leading up to it.
The mummy levered itself up and out of the coffin, bandages hanging from the emaciated form. It had to be a robot, but the figure seemed real enough in the lurid lighting of the fake tomb. It was pure Hollywood camp, but it didn't make it any less dangerous, as John saw the stone crack under its grip.
Pure adrenaline kicked in at this point and he broke into a run. John climbed up the foot holds, using his arms for balance and his legs to hold his body weight. He grunted. ...less dependency on pyrokinesis and a hell of a lot more hours needed at the gym, Allerdyce.
The limestone foot holds were a lot smaller at the top and were spaced even further apart. He could see that the transparent case contained his Zippo. It wasn't however, within easy reach of him. John looked down. A fall from this height wouldn't snuff him out. The only thing that worried him was Tutankhamun below.
No time for wasting, he thought. Drawing in a deep breath, John released his grip on one of the foot holds, whirled around and smashed his fist into the glass. It might not have been the smartest of moves but he'd never been commended for his decisions...
John dangled from the metal rung that had once held the case up. He couldn't spot the metallic device but it was down there, somewhere.
Meanwhile, the mummy hadn't bothered to try and climb the wall. Instead, he turned and shattered the stone lid of the sarcophagus with a mighty blow. To John's mounting horror, the creature picked up one of the chunks of a stone and hurled it at the pyrokinetic. It shattered only a foot away, spraying the young man with fragments of rock.
"Holy shi-----ungh!"
...son of a bitch. John rolled over and spat a mouthful of sand out. His eyes caught the glint of his lighter and he reached for it, fingers clenching around the silver piece of metal as he stood up. The faint click of the Zippo brought to light a single flame.
"...should've stayed in your coffin," John said as he hurled a flaming ball of fire forward.
The fireball ignited the wrappings, turning the mummy into a walking flaming figure. Still, like the mythical version, the robot felt no pain as it attempted to lurch after John and finish the job of killing him before the fire destroyed its circuitry.
John staggered backwards, increasing the charge to an almost blinding intensity.
...within the sarcophagus, an airlock cycled open.
----
~Somewhere, over the rainbow...~
The music warbled through unseen speakers, the sound slightly crackly for being the original movie soundtrack. It had started the minute John had entered this particular hallway, barely loud enough to register. Obviously someone was a fan; when he reached another pair of doors and one of them flashed yellow for a second.
Upon observation, John recognized the flashes for what they were -- a SOS distress signal. There was the possibility of it being a trap but he wasn't about to risk leaving the door unchecked. He pushed a hand against the metallic surface and it opened inwards.
Another hallway, but this time ending in one door, no more than four feet high. From behind it music could be heard, the rollicking carnival-type music that involved pipe organs, or at least cheesy synthesizers.
The automatic door slid open as he neared it. Sharp metallic clangs and dull splats greeted the newcomer as he entered the room. The rat-tat-tat of guns from up above caught his attention but he was safely out of the target shooting range. John scanned his surroundings, taking note of the open floors, the metal ducks, the black gooey substance...
A blob sailed passed him, hitting the wall with a loud splat as a new line of guns appeared out of the wall panels on the opposite side of the room. The loud whirring of machinery kicked off Round Two of the game as the floor flipped open beneath John's feet, causing him to stumble back.
Back was a good direction to stumble - the movement brought him to the wall, where his foot touched something solid. Nearly obscured by black goo, Yvette lay in a small huddle, hand stuck across her face. At the contact, her eyes opened, their glow showing between the cracks formed by her fingers.
"..." It was barely a noise.
John's eyes darted down and then back up again as the guns started firing. Directing a massive fireball toward the series of wall panels, the flames punched out, destroying the guns in scorching heat. John swept the fiery blaze downwards toward the tracks next, igniting the machinery, engulfing it in a fire storm before he pulled the flames back into himself.
"Petrovic?" Crouching next to the huddled form on the ground, John eyed the black tar-like substance. He noticed that her sharp talons were potruding out of the sticky matter, providing her with the means to breathe. It was a sure sign that she wasn't incapacitated by fear alone.
Another noise, a little stronger and sounding assenting. Yvette could barely breathe, the goo slowly spreading and beginning to close the gaps between her fingers, and she'd been lying there for what had felt like hours. Falling into something close to the coma state she'd been found in had probably saved her life - she didn't breathe as much like that. But John's entrance had brought her back, and hope flared that here was someone to help her. She made another attempt to speak, but only managed a kind of interrogative squeak.
"Uh...just--" John scanned the room. "--give me a minute." He started to fiddle with his lighter, snapping the lid open and close as he thought of a way to free the kid. There was attempting to scrape the goo off of her but hey, diamond hard skin and there was... "...your skin." He looked at Yvette. "...think it can withstand fire?"
There was another flare of blue from Yvette's initial reaction. Then she made herself stop and think. She wasn't the same girl she had been, and Angel's fire didn't hurt her, just made her warm. It might get uncomfortable, but she'd survived the inside of a dinosaur... Taking as deep a breath as she could, she forced a word out: "yes." It was barely audible, but steady. "trust. you."
John raised his eyebrows slightly. Well, that's a first. Taking a step back, he flicked his lighter aflame. If he was going to do this, he was going to have to do it right. Right in the sense that he wasn't about to end up with another addition to his rap sheet. John burned one of the blobs on the wall, giving it a good test fry -- it liquidified before bursting out as a cloud of black smoke.
"Just shut your eyes and count to ten, Petrovic." It was enough of a warning before he enveloped her in a cocoon of fire. John stoked the flames to a higher intensity, not wanting to prolong the burning for any longer than necessary.
Yvette had time to suck in a breath and hold it before squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Fire swirled around her, hot but not burning - it was like being out in the sun a little too long. Around her, the black tarry goo liquified and then went to dust, revealing dark red skin - John's flames also burned Yvette's clothing away.
The possible nakedness hadn't been accounted for but it was an easy fix. John slipped his jacket off and draped it over Yvette's shoulders.
"You alright?"
Yvette slowly sat up, clutched the jacket around her. Her skin rasped at the material, but it would be a while before she wore through. For a moment she just breathed - it seemed like forever since she'd been able to take a deep breath. "Yes," she said after a moment, and looked up at John. "Thank you, for to be helping me." She glanced at the metal ducks and shuddered. "Are you to be seeing someone else?"
"Nope," he responded with a smirk. "Guess that'll happen in due time." John started forward for the door. "What's a kid like you doing in Vegas anyways?"
Yvette climbed somewhat shakily to her feet, and fumbled to zip up the jacket. "I was to be having the fun," she replied, a little wryly as she hastened to follow John out of the room. "This... is not so much."
----
The hallway was deceptively bare, and Yvette kept close to John, careful not to brush him. They'd followed a series of these halls, looking for a way out, or some of the others, but so far, nothing. Then a kind of high-pitched buzzing caught their ears, and Yvette looking at John. "Are you to be hearing the... how you say? Insect killing light?"
John stubbed his cigarette out before glancing back up. He frowned as the noise grew louder. "Bug zapper," he informed her.
Ahead of them to the right was a door covered by a grounded metal mesh. A giant flourescent lamp hung behind the charged wire grids. John's frown deepened. "...always gotta be something," he muttered, snapping his lighter open. "Here's the deal, Petrovic. I fry. You cut." He glanced her way. "Any questions?"
Yvette shook her head. "No, there are not being questions." She looked at the wire mesh speculatively and flexed her fingers. "I am ready when you are being ready, John."
With a quick whir of the thumb wheel, John directed a flaming fire ball forward; it blew up the transformer and the voltage multiplier circuits, effectively cutting off the run of electricity. John pulled the flames back from the charred remains of the housing and gave Yvette a nod.
Stepping forward, the small girl raised her right hand and slashed downwards at the mesh, the heated metal strands parting easily under her talons. It was the work of seconds to hack a rectangular section out of the mesh - she gave John an apologetic look as he was going to have to duck through it, as she hadn't been tall enough to reach very high up. "We are to be finding one of our friends in this place, yes?" she asked, peering through the gap into the room behind. It was hard to see much.
John would've answered her if he hadn't been slapped in the face by a fly swatter. He ducked the next hit before lighting his Zippo, illuminating the room in an orange glow. Sticky traps hung low on the ground and high up on the ceiling. Fly swatters of various sizes; both electric and plastic, zipped back and forth across the room. Aside from the occasional smack to the face however, none of it seemed to pose much of a threat to them.
Yvette batted at the fly swatters that flailed at her as she followed John, unwilling to stay alone in the hallway where anything might get her. Her talons sliced them easily in half and they dropped to the floor, twitching slightly. "This is being... the room for the killing bugs," she observed, stepping around a number of Venus fly trap and pitcher plants. "But who is to be..." She blinked. "Jan, she can be making herself very small, like the insect, yes?"
He nodded. "Keep your eyes peeled for the two inch easter bug, Pet. I don't think she'll be throwing any peeps at us this time." John brightened the flame in his hand, careful not to set any of the sticky traps on fire.
Yvette nodded, peering carefully around her and slicing through the flypapers only after making sure Jan wasn't attached to any of them. "Jan?" she called a bit uncertainly, not knowing if they'd be able to hear any response.
A voice was calling to her. Jan opened her eyes slowly, not sure what was going on. She was small again, and... her wings buzzed... she was stuck. In vain, she tried to free herself from the sticky paper. Her renewed activity attracted the attention of two flyswatters and Jan was in danger of being smashed into a little mess.
The low ceiling made it possible to intercept the hit with his arm; the buzzing noise having caught John's attention. He cupped a hand over her form, protecting her from the rest of the hits as he worked at pulling the sticky trap off of the surface. "...I swear I've never been slapped around this much in my entire life."
A small nervous giggle broke from Yvette as she peered forward at the trapped Jan. "I think I can be cutting her free," she suggested, a little hesitantly. "If I am being very careful."
"Yvette? Is that you?" Jan tried to turn around to see the owners of the voices she was hearing. "What's going on here? Anybody have any kind of clue?"
"Yes, it is being me. And John," Yvette replied, keeping her voice quiet. "We are being... how you say? Kidnapped? And there are rooms that are being trapped. If you are being very still, I can be cutting you out." She looked up at John. "Can you be making sure there are no things to be bumping me? I am not wanting to be hurting Jan."
"Yeah -- sure, I'll just...stand back here and.." John swiped an arm out against one of the fly swatters before catching hold of another with his free hand.
"Kidnapped? Just us or everyone and what is it with the kidnapping? This is not how I planned on spending this weekend! We never even made it to my party!" Jan said sadly.
"Everyone, we are thinking. And there will be a party when we are getting home. Now, please to be staying still, yes?" Yvette raised her hand in preparation to cut Jan out of the flypaper, thankful for the woodcarving lessons from Logan that let her do fine detail work.
"Yes, stay still, absolutely, just watch the wings, ok?" Jan folded her wings carefully against her back, the tips of her wings extending past and resting over her legs. "Skin can grow back, I think, but I don't know about the wings."
Tongue poking just a little out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated, Yvette carefully drew one fingertip around Jan, tearing through the flypaper with ease. Once or twice she had to stop in order to shake out a hand cramp, but at last the job was done, and she held out a sleeve-enclosed arm for Jan to climb to. "There. You are to be making to peel the paper off where it is sticking, yes?" she said, eyes brightening happily.
"Bleh! Sticky paper!" Jan pulled at a piece stuck to her foot. "Ouch! Damn it! Uh... sorry." Muttering to herself, she proceeded to pull at the other pieces of sticky pieces still attached to her skin, her already low voice dropping to seeming nothingness as she continued to curse the entire time.
John let loose a burst of fire, clearing them a straight path to the door. Once they were safely out, he set the room ablaze.
---
Wandering the confusing series of halls, Yvette tilted her head at the sound of a distant howl. "John?" she said, uncertainly. "I think I am hearing something." She pointed to the hallway on their left. "Down there."
The pungent smell in the air was overwhelming, sickening but turning back was not an option. John frowned, intensifying the flame in his hand with a quick flick of his wrist.
"Let's go run right to the sound of the howling, then!" Jan said, peering down the hall.
---
Kyle couldn't ignore the pain, his thumb was throbbing and already starting to swell at the joint. But the pain wasn't going to stop him from getting out of this. He had gotten away from -Sabretooth- with half his guts coming out, he was damn well not letting one self-inflicted dislocation stop him from getting out of handcuffs.
Biting his lip hard enough to make it bleed, he tucked the thumb into the palm of his hand, pulling it further then the joint would normally go, and closed his fingers around it. The handcuffs couldn't be slipped off easily, but without the thumb joint in the way, Kyle managed to wiggle the cuff off his hand, taking some of the skin in the process.
He let the cuffs dangle from his right hand, and once again gripped his left thumb, pulling it away from his palm and pushing the back into place. Where the dislocation had taken a few seconds, fixing it felt like it took ten times as long, and when his thumb finally popped back into the joint, Kyle was growling and whimpering.
--
As they drew closer, they could hear the noise - or rather, a cacophony of noises, all of them discordant. Yvette winced and then pointed to a grate in the floor ahead of them. "There!" she managed to say above the racket. The smell was more powerful here too, and she swallowed heavily to keep from being sick.
Jan landed on John's head, her wings ceasing their rapid movement, and she made a face at the awful smell.
The periodic burst of blinding white light made it impossible to see through the rusted iron grating. "Anyone down there?" John yelled as he slipped his fingers through the bars. Attempting to lift it up was a futile effort as the covering had been screwed down into the flooring.
The throbbing in his hand combined with the noises and lights to drive Kyle to the point of rage. He'd gotten the handcuffs off, but he was still sitting on top of a pile of dead pigs in a room that he couldn't find any way to leave. It felt futile to even try, and he'd already inflicted a world of pain on himself to no real effect.
He got up, and stalked over to the pig's head he'd kicked away before, and gave it a good hard kick with his bare foot, letting out a loud snarl as it hit the wall across from him and splatted against it.
Yvette had drawn away from the grate itself, the light especially overpowering her - her eyes seemed to prefer the dark. There was a tiny metallic noise, a 'plink!' as her foot caught on the corner of a panel on the floor, and she tensed, looking around for the inevitable trap. When nothing happened, she bent to examine the panel, which had come a little bit loose. When she pried it carefully up with her claw tips, it revealed a number of switches.
"John, Jan, I think I am finding something," she called, as loudly as she could over the noise.
Pushing himself up to a stand, John headed over to where Yvette was crouched at. He kneeled next to the younger mutant and provided them with sustained light through his flame. The control box contained ten switches and a big red button with the word BOOM on it. John smirked.
"I'm thinking that means speakers," John yelled through the din of the industrial "music". "But hey--" he said, lifting a hand to the controls. "Feel free to stand back."
Yvette did so obediently, as Jan flew to her shoulder from her perch on John's head.
There was a discernible pop in the air as the noise was cut off from the speakers. John let go a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and stood up with a grin.
A second later, the control panel exploded.
The explosion didn't catch Kyle's notice. He was too busy screaming out his rage at his anonymous kidnappers. What he lost in simply repeating the same handful of expletives over and over he made up in volume and expressed emotion.
The silence following it, however, did. He stopped his pacing and occasional goal-kicks of the pig head around the room to look up towards the ceiling. The lights still kept him from seeing anything, and he let out a frustrated growl, and continued to pace.
Jan dropped down to the grating, peering down into the room below. The room stank and what was that in there and hey! Kyle! Kyle was in the yucky, smelly room filled with bright light. Quickly, Jan slipped down into the room and headed for Kyle.
"Kyle! It's me, Jan! We're going to get you out of here, ok?"
Kyle didn't recognize the voice at first. His ears were still ringing and he was too focused on being angry. But when Jan flitted around his face, he finally stopped in his frantic pacing and looked at her. "... You're not real." He muttered. "This is too fucking bizarre for you to be -real-."
"Oh yeah? How's this for not real?" Jan reached out with both hands and zapped his nose. "Tell me I'm not real now!"
"OW!" Kyle clapped both hands over his nose, and hopped around. "Okay, okay, you're real! Ow!" He removed his hands from his face and gingerly prodded his nose with one finger. "Where'd you come from? Please tell me you weren't like, in the head of the pig?"
"Ew, no!" Jan made a face. "Why the hell would I be inside such a nasty, horrible smelling thing? Yuck! I came from there!" She pointed at the grate. "Yvette and that John guy are up there. I don't know where everyone else is."
He knew it was pretty incredulous that Jan had been inside the pig's head. But this whole situation was incredulous. Kyle squinted up at the ceiling where he could barely make out the grate. "Yvette? John?" He yelled. "I don't have any doors down here! Any ideas?"
Up above, Yvette and John were peering down through the grating, despite the stench. She was trying to hold her nose, a tricky operation given her talons. Experimentally she drew one across the grate, wincing a little at the screech of metal "I can be cutting these," she said, apologetically. "But it will be taking many hours. They are too thick."
John shook his head. "We need to keep moving." They couldn't afford to waste hours here when they could be looking for the rest or an escape route out of the building. "Hey, Simba!" John called out to the feral kid below. "You sure you don't see another way out?"
"Don't you think I'd have gotten my own ass out of this mess already if I had?" Kyle yelled back. "I have big steel walls and pig intestines around my feet." He swallowed heavily and tried not to think about it. "So unless you have any better ideas, I'm stuck in here." Not that he had any idea how he'd gotten in there in the first place. Which made him stop and look around the room. "You guys don't see any big doors up there do you? Just the grate?" Yelling was getting annoying. Every time he opened his mouth to yell, the smell seemed to get worse.
"No, Kyle. I am sorry, but there is not, and I cannot cut through," came Yvette's sad reply.
"Well, fuck." Kyle muttered. "So if there's nothing up there, then how'd I get in here with the party of pork in the first place?" He paced around the room, although at a much less frantic and angered pace then before, paused, and raised his arms above his head in a gesture of abject frustration. "God hates me. That's what this is. For all the bacon I've been eating. If there's nothing in the walls and nothing in the ceiling, what you guys wanna bet there's something below me under the pigs?"
"Below? Oh, gross...." Jan stared down at the solid "floor" of pigs. "Dude. That is gross. How'd all the pigs get in here, though?"
"Not a clue." Kyle said. "But they had to get in here somehow, and I bet it's underneath them. If there's nothing up there but a grate, there's no way the pigs came in from the top." He grumbled aloud, and bent to tug at one of the pig carcasses. He didn't get far before he turned to dry heave. Nothing was left in his stomach to throw up. Stopping wouldn't get him out of here though. So he bent again, tugging on the body of the pig until it pulled free, and he heaved it to the side of the room. "One pig down, lots of pigs to go..."
"Um... do you want..." Jan continued staring at the disgusting pile of dead pigs. "I know I can't help like this... crap, I should be big and helping you. I hate being all useless like this!"
The second pig proved just as frustrating, as Kyle's stomach once again rebelled at the stench, and he wasted time trying not to throw up. "Can your zap thing turn my nose off..." Kyle said. "It''ll still be bad, because I can kinda taste the stink in the air, but it'd help. I'd want to puke less." He continued to pull another pig away from the pile and try not to get sick. "I'll try anything to make this go faster."
"Little zaps are a lot less than toe and finger removal," Jan said. "You'll be ok, I think... I don't want to really hurt you, but I don't think I could ruin your nose forever or anything." She thought about trying to get big, but wasn't sure she really wanted to touch the dead pigs. Dead pigs cooked for food was ok, but this was just ew. Jan wasn't sure she'd ever want to eat anything that came from a pig ever again. Maybe even no meat at all. "I'll try if that's what you want." Jan placed her hands on Kyle's nose and let out a sharp sting. Another zap followed, and another, then another...
"I think I cad't smell adythig adymore." Kyle said, crossing his eyes to look at his nose, which was just a little swollen and red, and most importantly completly stuffed up. "Id'll heal sood, but this id good for dow." With his sense of smell muted, he bent to the task of pulling the pig carcasses away. It went much faster now, and he only had to stop twice to regain control over his stomach.
Long minutes passed, and the pile of pigs that had been thrown against the walls grew, until Kyle stood waist-deep in a hole, stomping his foot against metal. "We have floor!" he announced. And not a minute too soon, the stings to his nose were already wearing off. He pulled another of the pigs up out of the hole and dragged it to the wall. "I think we have a door too. Or... a something anyway." He'd managed to uncover enough of the floor to reveal a line where metal touched metal.
Another several pigs revealed more of the floor, and more of the line that was one side of what appeared to be a set of large double doors, with a metal ring set into it. "Thank God." Kyle said, and went to wipe his forehead with his hand, only to pause when he saw the mess covering both arms up to the elbows. "Jesus fucking Christ this is gross..." he muttered quietly.
He climbed up out of his hole and looked up towards the grate. "I have a way out! But I don't know where it goes! I kinda gotta try it though!" He yelled up to John and Yvette. He bent and pulled the metal ring, forcing the door open with a loud creak. It was dark, but there was a ladder going down, and he could see very dim lights below.
"Well, that settles it then." John looked to Yvette. "You ready to move on, kiddo?"
Yvette bit her lip, reluctant to leave Jan and Kyle, but knowing there was no other way - it wasn't like they could get down there. She could be brave, she reminded herself, and John would make sure nothing would happen to her. "Yes," she said at last, before calling down into the room. "You are to be very careful, yes?"
"Careful, yes, that's us!" Jan called out. "Not even a really big pile of really gross dead pig bodies can stand in our way!"
"If I never see another pig again, it'll be -way- too soon." Kyle answered. He dropped down onto the first rung of the ladder, took a few careful steps down and then scrambled back up to the top, giving Jan a sheepishly apologetic look. "If I don't do this, I'm just gonna throw up again once my nose heals all the way. So, uh.. yeah." He pulled his t-shirt over his head, and threw it down the hole with a mournful look. His stained and ruined jeans followed, leaving him in a pair of mostly clean boxer briefs. "And I liked that shirt too. Dammit..." Then, finally, he returned to the ladder and climbed down, with Jan close behind.
****
Then, as the gunfire passed through the lead car and the man in it, he wavered and flickered like a bad TV picture. Sam's eyes widened in realization. A hologram. A fake, designed to keep him sitting in his seat long enough to be gassed or shot. A heartbeat before the gunfire passed through his own car, he blasted, shattering the car around him and warping the track with the force of a larger than normal explosion caused by all the gasoline in the air. The planes and roller coaster rattled and shook, and Sam paused in midair, searching for an exit. Finding it, he flew down quickly, breaking his way through a reinforced metal door and into a hallway where fresher air was. Powering down, he grimaced. Someone was playing tricks out there, and he had a hankering to find out who.
***
It took five songs before Tabitha started listening to the words. The first lyrics she heard were "she put the bottle to her head and pulled the trigger."
She clapped her hands over her ears after that one. As angry as the blatant attempt made her, she found herself drooping and struggling not to look into the mirror. Every time she turned her head, she saw a newer, fatter version.
She kicked the mirror again, tried another bomb.
Nothing.
Tabitha threw bomb after bomb at the opposite wall. The temperature in the room rose steadily. She ignored that alongside the increased smoke and decreased ability to breathe.
--
Sam's narrow escape from the demented carnival ride led him into a room with a dome-shaped construction in the middle. His eyes narrowed. Someone had clearly watched the Saw movies a few too many times, and he wasn't in the mood for demented torture games. The room was filled with the worst sort of stereotypical country music, the sort that even made Sam occasionally cringe, and the lyrics were morbid and Dante-esque in their imagery. He shook his head, guessing that he wasn't the only one in the area. And from the muffled "crump" of explosions, he had a guess who was trapped inside the dome. He jogged quickly over to the dome, placing his hand against it and feeling for a crease. Not finding one, he rapped against the steel, calling "Hello?" loudly.
Tabitha froze mid-throw. The metal mirror behind her echoed with a knock and distorted voice. She re-absorbed the bomb and shot to her feet. She pounded on the mirror and shouted. "Hello? Anybody out there? Get me out of here!" She knocked and kicked against the steel. If she wasn't mistaken, that metal-twisted hello had a distinct Southern drawl.
"Tabs? That you?" Sam yelled back. It sure sounded like her, just as he thought. If he wasn't the only one from the group that had gotten shanghai-ed to this crazy place, he had a very bad feeling that the Xavier's people were being targeted. Which meant there might be more people out there in need of some manner of rescuing. "Ah'm gonna try ta find a hole or somethin' so Ah can get ya out!"
Tabitha coughed against the smoke that filled the mirror room. "There's a trap-door on the top!" She yelled, then coughed some more.
Tabitha actually looked around, noticing the smoke for the first time. "Geez, I'm an idiot sometimes." She pounded on the mirror again. "Sam! Hurry!"
"Trap door? If there's a trap door, what in the sam hill are ya still doin'...forget it," Sam muttered as he cut his blast field on just long enough to launch himself to the top of the structure. There he saw the problem. Not only was the structure likely too tall for Tabitha to reach the exit, it was also padlocked tight. A blast field assisted punch took quick care of the lock, and Sam jerked it open, lying down on his chest to reach his arm down into the chamber. "Take my hand!" he called urgently.
Tabs jumped to her feet and reached toward Sam’s hand. Her fingertips brushed against his, it was just a bit too far. Tabitha gritted her teeth in frustration. She bent her knees and jumped vertically to grab her friend’s wrist. “Don’t you dare herniated on me!”
Back muscles that had evolved to support Sam's ability to fly were easily up to the task, and his arm came up smoothly, depositing Tabitha next to him on top of the dome. "Ya okay?" he asked quietly, looking down inside the smallish space she had been in. "What was in there?"
***
He let them be, focused on the patterns. Traced the path from the meditative patterns to the patterns of his thoughts, frayed and cracked... to the pattern of the static. All parts of the whole. All connected. Everything was connected.
He would never know how long it took. But he stayed the course, ignored the pain of the static searing his mind. There was a way out. There was always a way out. The road went ever on, and Nathan pushed through the weak spots, the openings that shouldn't have been there.
Found the pattern of the world beyond the static.
The explosion was not soundless. The door shattered, taking most of that wall with it. Beyond was a simple hallway, nondescript and well-lit. Shaking, Nathan crawled out over the debris, collapsing against the wall of the corridor. There was a haze in the air, the sweet rancid smell less strong, but still present, and Nathan doubled over, retching helplessly.
When the wall beside him started to ripple, push outwards into silvery hands reaching out for him, Nathan decided that it was time to go looking for the others. Especially as he had almost remembered who they were.
***
He'd been keeping out of the way of the blades for what seemed like hours, and Kurt was aware that the margin between him and them was starting to get less and less each time. Added to that, the sheer exertion of doing acrobatics with one arm had broken open the not yet healed wounds on his shoulder and his side, and he could feel them bleeding freely. He couldn't keep this up for very much longer before exhaustion and blood loss caught up with him, but there was no... way out... until suddenly, something caught his eye.
He wasn't sure if it was a hallucination, at first, but down in the pit where there had been nothing but darkness, there was now a thin line of light. And where there was light...
The planes turned for another assault, and there was nothing else he could think of to do. Praying under his breath, he took a leap of faith and let go of the trapeze he was clinging to, teleporting just as he started to fall, aiming for the tiny hope. Whatever it was, it almost had to be better than nothing, or the death coming at the top of the room.
His faith proved well-placed. When he reached the light, squinting at it and feeling with his hand, it proved to be the edge of a trap door, and one that could be prised up from his side. Yanking it open with a glance over his shoulder, Kurt dived through just in time to avoid the final approach of the planes.
***
Arcade grinned. The blue one had taken the hint. It was a small thing, popping the trap a couple of millimeters, just enough to let the light bleed through. It had been enough. These X-Men were well trained, and they’d need to be. A few millimeters here, a few seconds there, that was all Arcade could give them. Hopefully it would be enough.
***
Monet had almost gotten into the swing of after a while. Grab the shoe or handbag or whatever it was this time, always in tacky plastic and garish colours, drop it in the slot before it hit the floor and yell "Help!" once or twice before grabbing the next one the room shot at her. And always trying to avoid touching the walls or floor or ceiling. She even started to get slightly bored. This was just ... not mentally challenging. Tiring yes, challenging, no. Which may have explained why she was singing the Playschool theme, loudly and off key, after finding herself completely unable to remember the lyrics to anything else.
"There's a bear in there, and a chair as well..."
The room, as it turned out, was not soundproofed, and Kurt and Nathan could hear her perfectly well from the other side of the door - which she couldn't see, but no effort had been made to disguise it from the outside. It was padlocked, but that was no real problem with a telekinetic to hand. "Nathan?"
"Hello? Can you hear me? Is someone out there?" Monet sent the question as well as calling it, shouting at the limits of her range. Because sixty yards worth of telepathy is just soo much help right now...
Nathan, breathing hard, laid a hand against the wall, clearly trying to calm down and gather his thoughts. He was more than a little wild-eyed, and was deliberately not looking at Kurt. Several minutes of fresh air had not helped much. He was still seeing... more than he should be. Far more. All wrong. There was nothing right about a purple multi-eyed Kurt with tusks.
"Monet," he called hoarsely. "Stand... stand back from the door. Just in case." Just in case of... something. Snakes. Ladders. Flinching, he took the padlock, which had developed tentacles and a mouth since the last time he'd glanced at it, in one hand. Thankfully, it broke, just like a normal padlock.
"Okay!" Monet moved as far away from the door as she could and curled into a little ball. Just in case. "'s about time, you came and got me. I was getting bored."
"She's usually that surreal, right?" Nathan asked Kurt a bit dazedly, and pulled open the door, half-expecting... explosions, or something. It seemed to be a perfectly ordinary door, though.
"...it depends what you mean", Kurt said guardedly, aware as he was of his friend's hallucinations, limping towards the doorway. "Monet? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Don't step on the floor, but. I just have to get this." A little bottle of perfume shot from a canon on one wall. She grabbed it and dropped it in the slot before floating out the door. "I'm so glad to see you both because this has been a completely shithouse trip to the circus so far. I'm going to have to complain." Monet hugged Kurt, who swayed under the impact, and reached out to hug Nathan before backing away.
"You have snakes in your hair," Nathan said faintly. "You might want to do something about that."
"I have what? You've gone completely crazy. The shock of the kidnapping has turned your mind into jelly or something." Monet circled Nathan, watching to see if the crazy was visible on the outside. "Just so you know, telling people they have snakes in their hair isn't going to make you any more friends."
"I think there was poison in his room", Kurt confided wearily. "It is making him see things. Ignore anything he says about things that are not there." He paused. "Unless there is any chance he is talking about something he senses telepathically."
Monet nodded. "Right. Are you okay, Kurt? You're all," and she waved a hand back and forth.
He blinked at her, following the motion of her hand for a moment before he focused. "Oh. Yes. I am just... tired. When we get out of here, I will be fine."
***
“~Whoever you are, you will pay for this indignity,~” the royal said as coldly as she could manage, still fighting against her bonds. “~It is a pity you did not study the other use of my power,~” she continued, eyes flashing as she willed her hair to grow.
She’d never had to grow it from such a low point and it was a new sensation as scarlet tendrils began extending from her scalp. Whatever she’d been drugged with also slowed her progress, as she had to fight the cloudy-headness. Unfortunately, the monkeys weren’t prepared to patiently wait for her to regain the use of her powers and one threw the razor it was holding at her. Twisting her head to the left, she felt the wind whistle by her cheek as the razor embedded itself in the headrest next to her neck.
Realizing she needed to change her focus, Medusa begin to focus on just a few strands of hair, lengthening and strengthening them just in time to smack away another thrown blade. One after the other, the monkeys continued throwing blade and Medusa continued smacking them out of the way, barely managing to avoid getting hit by the second to last blade. Glancing at the distance between her lock of hair stretched as far as it could, she realized she needed to change tactics. As the last monkey threw his blade at her, she moved her hair directly into its path, grimacing at the lock was sliced off and fell to the floor.
The monkeys began moving again, going to retrieve their fallen blades and Medusa stared forlornly at the red tendril of hair curled on the floor. Slowly it began to twitch, rising up and sliding along her leg and over her lap, reaching the lock that secured her to the chair. It didn’t take long until her one arm was free, but by then the monkeys had armed themselves and encircled the royal Attilani. Urging the strand to move faster, she heard the satisfying click just as the monkeys released their blades. Glade for her ballet training, Medusa leapt into the chair and then out over the monkeys and their blades.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the monkeys begin to pick their blades up yet again. Movement had gotten her blood flowing again, the drug finally seeming to circulate out of her system and it wasn’t long before her hair had resumed it’s normal length. A few more seconds and it had extended out, wrapping around each of the monkeys and squeezing until they crunched. It was then that another mirror slid away and more mechanical monkeys holding blades began to appear. As they slowly filed in, Medusa ran through them, kicking aside any that came close to her and exiting the room through the open mirror.
***
Medusa has been running through hallways for what felt like hours. She needed a facial, massage, manicure and pedicure at the least. She was going to make whoever had set this whole thing up pay if she could help it - she had her hair back now, but the indignity of having been without it was still making her angry. As she reached yet another dead end in what seemed like the maze of hallways, she saw a crack of light to her left. Investigating it, she realized she'd found a door. Hoping she'd finally found a way out, she pushed the wall, hoping it would open. When it didn't budge, she shifted her hair through the crack, pulling until it finally gave, slowly creaking open.
Mondo looked over at the door that had just opened. "Oh, hey Medusa." he said languidly, then took a nice deep swallow of his drink. Mmm, delicious. He wiggled his toes and giggled just a little bit as they broke through the top layer of sand. He shuffled his feet deeper into the wet sand, appreciating the coolness against his skin. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the "sun", soaking up the rays.
Medusa blinked in disbelief. She'd had razors and maniacal robot monkeys and the Samoan was on a beach? Muttering a few choice words in Portuguese, she looked around the room concernedly. "Does this not strike you as a little strange?" she asked, takes a few cautious steps into the room.
"Naw." he said with a big sleepy smile. "I like it down here. It's warm, it's comfy, and the drinks are very, very good." he said, finishing his off. As soon as he put his empty glass down onto the sand, a penguin waddled out of a small hatch in the wall with a fresh, ice-cold pina colada on a little tray.
"I love these little guys!" he said, clapping his hands with glee as the robotic penguin waiter waddled up to Mondo and presented him with the drink. Mondo took the glass up off the tray which was the penguin-bot's cue to waddle back through the hatch in the wall.
Medusa's hair had flared automatically at the swoosh of the hatch and the appearance of a mechanical animal. After her own experience with the monkeys, she was suspicious of the little creepy robot and her hair flicked out to grab the glass from Mondo's hand. Pulling it to her she sniffed it and then paled slightly. "How many of these have you had?" she asked.
"HEY!" Mondo said. "That's my drink!" He thought about her question for a moment, then shrugged. "I dunno. Half-dozen, maybe more." he said beatifically. Then he yawned mightily. "I'm sleepy. Think I should go take a nap." he said, shifting in his chair again in an attempt to find the Perfect Sleeping Position.
The drink had a faint, musty odor, which meant one thing - hemlock. Hurling the glass at the wall, Medusa watched the liquid pool on the ground in disgust, soaking quickly into the sand. "Mondo, listen to me. You cannot go to sleep. You have been poisoned. Fight it."
Mondo blinked owlishly. "You dropped my drink." he said with a frown. "Why'd you go and do a thing like that?" The robo-penguin re-emerged from its hatch, bearing another frosty cold one for Mondo's consumptive pleasure. "Why are you being so mean? Haven't we had enough of people being mean lately?" he asked petulantly.
"Mondo, do you know what the word poison means? Who knows how much is in each of these and what else they contain. Poison kills you. Your are being slowly murdered. You may want to thank me for this," Medusa replied, her frustration evident as her hair whipped out to smack the penguin, drink and all, into the water.
"HEY!" Mondo said, gripping the arms of his beach chair as Medusa whipped the penguin into the surf, where it sank with a very real-sounding indignant squawk of outrage. "Why do you gotta come in here and mess with my happiness, huh?" he said, standing up. And as soon as he got vertical and got the blood pumping a bit the nausea and dizziness hit. "All I wanted was to sit and rest." he said around locked jaws as he turned an interesting combination of sickly green and deathly pale.
"~I should just let Darwin take over,~" Medusa muttered as she glanced around the room, an idea coming to mind. "Mondo, you need to concentrate. What happens when you sync to items? Would that clear your system?"
"I dunno." he said, wavering where he stood. "I don't feel so good." he confessed.
"Considering you have been drinking poison all afternoon, I am not suprised," Medusa said gravely. "Perhaps try syncing? It cannot hurt." I hope.
Mondo looked around. Synching to sand didn't hold a whole lot of appeal, so the chair it was. He moved aside part of the seat itself to reveal the metal frame and then synched to that. A few moments later Mondo vomited copiously onto the sand - but instead of the normal vomit, his was a clear greenish fluid. "Ewwww." he said, sounding much, much closer to his normal self. "That was gross."
Medusa's nose wrinkled distastefully as she hurriedly backpedaled away from Mondo. "Yes it was. Now come quickly, we must find the others." Hopefully they are not all slowly killing themselves with huge grins on their faces. Spinning on her heel, she walked back out the door.
Mondo frowned at Medusa's retreating aspect and trudged after her. He still just wanted to sit outside here and enjoy the sun and the water on his toes. Was that too much to ask?
Tags:
- c: kurt sefton,
- c: kyle gibney,
- c: z available: john allerdyce,
- z p1: c: .npc,
- z p1: c: .retired: medusa amaquelin,
- z p1: c: .retired: monet st croix,
- z p1: c: .retired: nathan dayspring,
- z p1: c: .retired: sam guthrie,
- z p1: c: .retired: tabitha smith,
- z p1: c: .retired: yvette petrovic,
- z p1: c: janet van dyne,
- z p1: c: mondo,
- z p1: p: prince of thieves: voodoo child
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