xp_logs | Keep The Faith: Making Contact

Alone for a moment, the X-Men manage to communicate.

The cranky usually blue woman had apparently given up for now, which Terry appreciated; she was giving her a headache and that made Terry snappish. Even more than usual. The redhead flopped on the bed, leaning back against the wall, letting her eyes close. It was quiet here, the sort of quiet that Terry hated because it felt too much like silence. With her eyes closed it was easier to concentrate on the hum of the air conditioning, the rattle of the pipes in the walls, the rhythmic tapping coming from...

Her eyes flew back open then closed again so she could concentrate. "I'm a bloody idiot," she muttered as she strained to hear what was--and she'd buy grocery store ice cream if she was wrong--Kyle. Tapping on something and humming "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen". Badly.

Terry twisted around to face the wall, humming in a tone only she could have heard, sounding out where behind the wall were some pipes that could carry the sound for her. Finding one, she pitched her voice a higher and focused, aware that stray vibrations could prove unfortunate. "Kyle, if you hear me, pick a new song."

It took a minute for Kyle to clear his head. Which would've been a lot easier if he hadn't been collared and muzzled. He was more angry about the collar - the muzzle, if he thought about it enough, was insulting but sensible. He'd have muzzled someone like him too. Which wasn't a thought he was enjoying having.

There was a very long pause between the voice that he heard, coming up through the same place in the wall that -that assclown- who had been 'questioning' him had gotten a hose from a few hours before. Hose meant water, water meant pipes. Terry was in the pipes? ~No, her voice is. Pipes carry sound. Water carries sound. You know that.~

It was unfortunate that the first song he could think of that he could hum -and- thrash his foot against the board he was strapped to was Jailhouse Rock.

Terry sighed in relief and asked the ghost of Elvis to forgive him his trespasses against music. "Good. Hold tight, we're going to get out of here."

Next up, Forge and Jan. They weren't being nearly so obliging as Kyle in the noise department. "Come on, cough or something," she muttered, eyes closed, ear close to the wall.

It was faint, very but when she strained she could almost hear someone chanting. It took her a minute to decipher what it was, then she nearly laughed with relief. Okay, definitely Forge. No one else would be using the table of elements as their calm down device. She hummed a bit, getting a feel for where he was in relation to her and Kyle then spoke again into the system of pipes. "Forge, try that backward if you hear this."

Blinking in surprise, Forge stopped. He'd definitely heard something -Terry?. Craning his neck around, he stopped when he saw the pipes and something clicked in his brain. Metal conducts sound better than air, of course!

"Indium, cadmium, silver, palladium..." he intoned, looking down at the manacles that encased his hands.

Terry did a little dance. "Good. Hold tight," she told him as she'd told Kyle, "I've got to find Jan. When I check back, I'll need your status."

Now that she had an idea of what she was looking for, Jan was simple to find if hard to hear. The buzz of her wings was a quiet sound at the best of times and it was nearly masked down by a strange clockwork ticking. Luckily, she sounded close. The exterior wall conducted nicely though not quite as cleanly as the pipes did. "Jan, can you hear me? What's that ticking?"

"It's this stupid cage thing that's trying to kill me and squish me into little buggy bits!" This was, of course, a prospect Jan was not at all fond of. "This seriously ugly guy sprayed me with bug spray and wants to kill me! Um, you are going to do something about this, right?"

"All right. We'll fix that." Now that she was doing something, Terry's earlier tiredness had fled. Quickly she checked back in on Forge and Kyle, then got down to business. "Charming as our hosts have been, I've a husband missing me. What do you say we get out of here? Here's the plan...."