New Renaissance Man: The Temple of the Moon

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Early in the morning, Haverford and Lyman head for the Temple. Unluckily for them, Scott and Jean went very early in the morning.



They had taken the longer route to the Temple of the Moon; the gate on the regular trail hadn't been open when they'd gotten up here, pre-dawn, to get situated. So they'd started on the Huayna Picchu trail itself, descending down the peak of the mountain that overlooked the ancient city. It had led them to a recessed doorway, carved into the rock, and from there into the Temple itself.

It was a cave, a natural one 'improved' by the hard work of ancient stonemasons. The throne at the center of the case was the most striking feature, and Scott half-wished they could be here when the moon was high, to see what the place looked like in the moonlight. Your mind can wander later, Summers, Scott told himself, shining his flashlight back into the depths of the cave.

"I think we can get set up out of view," he murmured to Jean. "In the lower cave, maybe..." The stone steps looked remarkably smooth for being hand-done.

Jean nodded, casting another look about. "I wish I knew what the hell they were after here. Or in general." It was an amazing site, and she quietly damned Haverford and Lyman for getting them out here with not enough time to appreciate it. "Lead on," she added, glancing at her watch. "They'll be here soon."

Scott led her down the stairs into the lower cave, flipping off the flashlight as soon as they were safely down. There was just enough illumination coming from above that they could probably make their way up easily, once their eyes adjusting. He supposed that in the worst-case scenario, Jean could just fly up, and he could follow, and hope you don't trip over your own two feet.

He hadn't exactly been projecting, but with the link he didn't have to. #Oh, I'd carry you, don't worry. Would rather bruise your pride than your head.# Light banter, the ultimate solution to tense waiting situations. Which suddenly became tenser as the sound of footsteps reached them. They'd been just in time.

Lyman reached up to adjust his mining hat, switching the torch to a broad focus beam and looked around, letting the light play into the deeper shadows - there was light enough to move around but not enough to see which of these damned statues was the one Haverford was after. "So... which one is it? The one next to the pottery shards, the broken one over there or the one in the corner?" He didn't ask how they were supposed to know, as they all looked the same, chipped or broken, some covered in moss or cobwebs and others half buried, one an arm's length away with 'Tim woz here' written on it in black marker.

"It's an Inca sculpture," Haverford said, too patiently not to be hiding serious impatience. "Given it's value, one would hope you'd be able to differentiate it from the broken one." You idiot, he implied, rather strongly. He moved further into the space and pulled a high-intensity flashlight out of a pocket, shining it into a dark corner. "Keep your eyes open."

Lyman nodded. "If it's so valuable, why isn't it in a museum? They found this place when that was in vogue." He pushed one aside and frowned. There was a small fissure at the back of the cave, where almost no natural light reached. Three small statues framed a larger one, with a noticeably finer style of carving. "Hey, over here." He reached into the crack and pulled it out, taking care not to chip it on the way out. "Is this it?" This was just too easy.

"And that," Scott said from the top of the stairs, where he and Jean had just emerged, "would be theft of a historical artifact." He smiled very tightly as the two men looked towards them, clearly startled - although Haverford covered much faster. "Honey, did you just see our fellow tourists commit a felony?"

"You know, I think I did." Jean actually tsked. "We can't have that. I wonder if they have citizen's arrest in Peru..."

Lyman smiled, plastering the friendly, polite, harmless businessman look onto his face. Oh, there was just no way in which this didn't look bad. He shifted the statue, holding it by its head as he pulled his gun out. "I wouldn't try that." He looked over at Haverford, nodded once, "Catch!" before throwing the statue to him.

"Yeah, no, I don't think so." Snatching the statue out of the air telekinetically was the easy bit. Refraining from hitting Lyman over the head with it? That took control.

"I think you might want to consider returning that to us, Dr. Grey," Haverford said in a voice bearing nearly no resemblance to the charming one he'd applied so liberally the month before. He refrained from adding, Because when I get my due share of superpowers, you will be my test subject. No need to get melodramatic.

"Jean, you want to take the crackpot?" Scott asked casually - entirely too casually - as he advanced on Lyman. "I think the major and I have some - well, actually," he amended, "I was going to say 'unfinished business', but screw it. I just want to slam his head into the nice rock wall over there. A few dozen times."

Lyman pointed the gun at Scott, quietly writing Haverford off. "Are you sure this is a good idea, Mr. Summers?" He counted to three, silently, backing toward the exit.

It wasn't a trick he used often, or one that he had ever particularly practiced. It was sort of a ridiculous, theatrical thing, something that you'd see in Hollywood movies if the action hero wielded a optic blast. The smart thing to do would have been to blast Lyman in the chest, incapacitate him safely and non-lethally.

But Scott gave in to the impulse - and blasted the gun out of his hand. It was a perfect shot, sending the weapon flying away into the shadows. "Pointing a gun at me," he said, his voice shaking, just a little, in contrast to the stony expression he was wearing. "Really smart."

"And how about you, Haverford? Planning on trying anything less-than-clever or will you come with us peacefully?" Jean had t admit, she was kind of hoping for option number one.

"Well," Haverford said, "on the whole I think I'll -- " and he swung, hoping to knock her out before she could use her undeserved witch powers on him.

It was very hard to take a telepath by surprise, particularly i they've been given enough cause to abandon what ethics they have and simply read your intent. By the time Haverford was committed to the punch Jean was no longer standing where his fist would end up, and instead she grabbed his wrist, using his own momentum and a little bi of TK help to toss him into the wall.

Haverford bit back a curse as he hit the wall, ears ringing. It took a concerted effort - driven by no little amount of fear - to clear his mind, reaching deep for some kind of mental clarity. The monks may not have given him something really worthwhile for his time, but that didn't mean he hadn't brought anything out of the experience. He'd come this far - giving up now was too humiliating to consider - and running would be cowardly. He was Robert Haverford.

Lyman winced as Haverford hit the wall before lunging at Scott. He had very few options right now and really, this was the best of a bad lot, right now.

Scott wasn't expecting the tackle; he'd been watching Jean, now that Lyman was disarmed, and he was, after all, somewhat lacking in the field of vision department. The larger man slammed into him, knocking them both down the rough stone steps and into the lower cave.

It was something of a miracle that neither of them wound up out cold, really. I'm fine! Scott projected furiously at Jean, disentangling himself and rolling away from Lyman, back to his feet. Lyman was slower. He'd clearly gotten the worse of it in the fall.

It only took a moment before Haverford felt that he had a better shot. Meditation worked; just not in the way the crystal-toting hippies thought it did. With that, he launched himself at the redhead, steeling himself for whatever came next.

Between the distraction of Scott going tumbling down the stone stairs and the conviction that, from the way his mind had closed in on itself, the wall had gotten the better of Haverford, Jean was caught somewhat off guard by Haverford's punch - after all, it took a special sort of idiot to take on a telekinetic in a physical fight - and he actually got a second swing in. Which cracked straight into a telekinetic wall.

"Now," she said, trapping Haverford's fist, "you're really starting to annoy me."

Well. This was an unfortunate situation. Haverford looked sickly for a moment. Then, weighing his options (Do you really want her to telekinetically stop your heart? No? All right, then --) he gave a sort of shrug. Surrender.

Jean nodded, accepting the wordless message, even as her eyes flickered distractedly towards the stairs. "I can't say I trust you in the slightest, but even you can't get into trouble if you're unconsciouss, I'm sure. Sleep well." Now that she had time to concentrate it was a simple matter to knock him out and he slumped to the ground as she released her telekinetic hold.

Below, Lyman climbed to his feet slowly, back and hips and head a solid wall of pain from the fall, from landing underneath Summers. The room spun slightly. Why isn't he hitting me with the blasts? He lurched forward, staggering slightly, swinging out with a wild punch.

Scott dodged it easily. A punch to the midsection doubled Lyman over; another to the face sent him staggering backwards. "Not so easy when you don't have me shackled to a chair, is it?" he snarled, punctuating the words with a solid kick to the gut. "When you don't have a hostage. I should've done this on the street that day and taken my chances!"

The last strike had winded Lyman. He gasped shallowly, trying to breathe, wondering how you self-diagnosed a concussion. "Different situation, Summers." He gasped again, rolled slightly to one side and chopped at the back of Summers' knees.

Scott sidestepped it easily. "No, at least then you were actually after something real, not running around with a crackpot!" He rushed the other man as Lyman struggled to his feet, slamming him into the wall of the cave, hard. Another blow to the other man's face, then another, and Scott could have kept on indefinitely. There didn't seem to be any end to the rage that kept bubbling inside him.

Each punch to Lyman's face sent his head cracking back against the cave wall. He tried to explain, to point out the parts of the plan, and Haverford that had seemed so reasonable at first (before Haverford showed how crazy he was...) but the next hit sent his head back against the wall again. Everything went dark.

Lyman went limp in his grasp - and Scott froze. His fist, already drawn back to deliver another punch, shook for a moment as he wrestled with the still very-much-present fury, but common sense and all the lectures he'd given X-Men about appropriate force levels won out, and he let Lyman slide down the wall, bending to check the man's pulse for a moment. Steady.

He stood, breathing hard and staring down at the man. Jean? he sent.

"Here," Jean said quietly from the top of the stairs. #You ok?#

Scott didn't answer until he had started up the stairs. "I'm fine," he said, but as the adrenaline rush faded, he was growingly aware of the fact that yes, he was probably going to be black and blue in the morning - or sooner. He wiped at what he thought was sweat on the side of his face, but turned out to be blood from a scape. "Lyman's having a nap, though." He stopped a few steps short of the top to catch his breath, staring up at Jean's face, backlit from behind. "Haverford?"

"Dealt with," she said, "although now I'm wishing I'd asked if he actually thought his little plan was possible - if he had any information for Wanda. Guess we can leave that for the police." Jean moved back from the top of the stairs to let Scott up, glancing about and then collecting the fallen gun and forgotten statue, telekinetically.

"So," Scott said, forcing himself up the last couple of steps, "shall we go sit out by the door and call the police?" He summoned up a crooked smile. "If either of them wakes up and tries to make a break for it, we get to knock them out again."

"Oooh, maybe I could make them wake up and try something..." Jean said, not quite as lightly as she meant to. "Yeah, no, calling the police sounds like a good idea."

"If you wanted to go kick him in the head before we make the call, I won't tell anyone," Scott said, his attention flickering briefly to the unconscious Haverford. His tone was only half-facetious, but as he reached into his pocket, he groaned. "Crap. Fell on my cell phone," he said as he pulled out the broken phone. "Tell me yours is intact?" He paused a beat. "Wait. no. Mountaintop in Peru. No cell phone service. I may have fallen on my head."

"I think we've spoken before about no more head injuries," Jean said, frowning slightly. "There's the emergency phone on the path up here. Connects to the guard/admissions house. They'll have a real phone."

"Well, I guess to get down, they've got to come past us. Unless the lunatic over there wakes up thinking he can fly."

"It's a tall mountain; I almost hope he tries." She headed towards the entrance to the temple, pausing to let her eyes adjust - the sun had gotten considerably higher since they'd come. "I can keep a monitoring 'eye' on them - we'll at least get some warning if they do wake up."

Scott caught up to her, rubbing at the knuckles of his right hand. "We're going to have to do some fast talking," he said, still a little out of breath. "Terrible start to our vacation, catching two ne'er-do-wells in the act of artifact theft and having a gun drawn on us..."

"It's a very good thing we both keep up with our gym membership, or do we actually mention the mutant thing?"

"Possibly. I don't know. Can you cry on cue?" Scott started to laugh, still wheezing a bit, at the look she gave him. "Oh, fuck - sorry, don't smother me for that tonight..."

"I can," she finally allowed, letting up, "but I've no idea if I'm any good. It's not exactly a skill I practiced after I was, oh, fourteen. And it never worked on Charles, anyways."

"Then just look affronted. Oh!" Scott said, still laughing. "Haverford got too familiar and being a thoroughly modern woman who can defend herself, thank you very much, you kicked his ass while your loyal husband was wrestling with his thug."

Jean snorted slightly. "And given the lack of significant bruises, clearly he was too much of an oaf to hit a girl. At least, not until I'd proved I'd hit back," she amended, wincing slightly as she rotated her shoulder.

Scott was still shaking his head as they started down the steep path. "Insane. All of this, absolutely insane... why can't we have normal types of weirdness?"

"And what, really, would that be? I mean, I don't think I can even picture it."