The Mummies' Return: Later, in a market in Cairo...

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OOC: Posted slightly late due to the day of immense fail at work and then a busy night.

At a market later in their tour…



An increasingly irritated Dr Gaskill had driven the group back to Cairo. After taking them out for light snack, they'd gone to a market and he'd told them that they were free to wander around for an hour before regathering for supper and an evening show at a theatre.

Monet had waved an airy goodbye to Kurt, Crystal and Laurie and wandered off slightly in search of jewellery for Nichole and Claudette and her cousins. Arguing cheerfully in somewhat broken Arabic with one stall holder, she bought a matched set of delicate probably-gold necklaces and tucked them into her handbag. Taking a moment to survey the market - an absolute tourist trap, where all the stall-holders carefully spoke English - she spied another stall and sauntered over to it, browsing its jewellery before moving on to the next.

Several stalls ahead of her, Dr. Gaskill stared flatly at Monet as she shopped, the expression of taut loathing not at all hidden at this point. "So casual," he muttered under his breath. "Not a care in the world. Take what you want, break what you want, and move on? I don't think so. Not this time."

He watched her carefully, noting what she seemed to pay the most attention to. Jewellery, was it? Gaudy, just like she was. Like they all were, really, when you came right down to it. No appreciation whatsoever of subtlety, of taste, of discretion, of - Gaskill swallowed and his eyes narrowed as he estimated her likely path through the market.

Jewellery, then. Moving quickly, he picked the nearest jewellery stall that sold tacky goods, clearly aimed at the tourist market. "~These are quite lovely,~" he said with a brittle smile, running his hand over the necklaces laid out on display. "~Tell me,~" he said, leaning closer to the stall owner, his hand brushing the man's arm. Gaskill's tone immediately changed. "~You truly want to make a sale to a tourist today, don't you? That young woman with the hair. She would look just lovely in one of your necklaces.~"

That should do. He dropped his hand back to his side and walked away, finding a safe spot from which to observe.

Monet waved to Gaskill and headed across to the stall he'd just left - he'd been good at finding bargains and little interesting knickknacks all day and there was no reason to assume that this would be any different. She began sorting through some bangles for her younger cousins when the stall holder touched her arm.

"That stuff is all junk, miss. Here, take a look at these. Much better than that." He guided her to some nicer bangles and hair clips and said, "See?"

Monet nodded. "It is... but look at that. There's a chip in the enamel..." She smiled at stall holder and began a serious bargaining session. They really were nice. Once the bracelets had been settled on, the stall holder picked up one of his necklaces. "Here, a beautiful necklace, for a beautiful lady. A gift, for my best customer all day." Monet winced slightly, unaware that she'd overpaid that much and said, "Oh, no, I couldn't... Thank you," before accepting the necklace. She paid, admiring the delicate probably-gold filigree work and put it on.

Her eyes rolled and her head tilted back while she lifted her arms out to the sides. Lowering them, she floated slightly in the air above the ground, walking on thin air. She caught hold of the side of his stall and turned it over, scattering jewellery across the ground. "I am Sekhmet and you are forsaken," she screamed. Gaskill felt his lips twisting in something that was almost, if not quite a smile. "And they say I don't have a sense of humor," he muttered, eyes roving the market again as people started to react to the crazy floating tourist. The mummy statues caught his attention. "Kitsch," he muttered, walking over and drawing a hand across each of them. Disgusting, worthless tourist junk. Well, I'll give them a memory of their visit to Cairo that they won't ever forget!"

Monet walked across to them, still floating, eyes tracking Gaskill's movements and taking no care for the pedestrians and shoppers. Trailing a hand down one statue's cheek she whispered, "Oh, my babies. What have they done to you?" Stepping back, she landed and said, rather more loudly, "Come! We will wreak retribution upon this place." Picking up a small statue of a cat, she cradled it in her arms for a moment, patting its head before shifting her grip and using it to club down a blond Russian man. "Come, my babies!"

The mummy statues followed her through the market, lurching clumsily through the screaming crowds, overturning stalls and striking tourists and locals as they went.

Kurt hadn't gone far, wandering idly through the market and picking up the odd trinket. He almost dropped the one in his hand when the fracas stopped... and then he saw who was at the heart of it.

The next moment, he'd teleported to the head of Sekhmet's procession, trying to clear people out of the path ahead of her.

A gesture with one hand sent half the mummies lurching toward him, swinging stiff, unjointed arms at Kurt. Two or three surrounded him while the other four continued their original path of destruction through the marketplace toward its' far exit.

The stiff, fragile bodies proved conveniently easy to break as Kurt kicked out at the mummies. "Sekhmet!" he yelled after her. "Come back and face me!"

"I am Sekhmet and I will never face vermin such as you!" Monet screamed, before hurling an abandoned market stall at Kurt.

Laurie had been watching the attack from a short distance away, trying to see where best to use her skills. People were panicked and trying desperately to get away from the attacking Mummies. 'Mummies?' Laurie thought with something akin to disbelief, but yet here they were in front of her, she had thought being away from the mansion would mean these things didn't happen to her anymore. Maybe it was simply being around mansion residents that was the problem, or more then one of them at a time. She and Crystal had managed quite well by themselves, as had she and Morgan when Morgan had been with her.

Laurie shook herself from her thoughts and stepped forward, grabbing one of the tourists by her upper arm as she ran past, bringing the woman up short. "Please, don't panic. You just need to move quietly and calmly out of the market and everything will be fine."

Laurie put the force of her mutant power before it, skin turning slightly violet around her fingernails and knuckles as she pushed it out onto the surface of her skin.

She could see it starting to work, the woman's shoulders relaxing, and her face easing from the frightened tightness of a moment before. She seemed to pause for a time, as if she'd been about to scream, or maybe simply tell Laurie to go to hell. Finally, with a small nod, she turned and walked toward the exit of the market.

Laurie knew she was going to have to do more, push her power out into the air around her and get in amongst these people, calm them and send them away so these creatures couldn't hurt them. She had hoped that after the work she'd helped Doug with at the conference, she wouldn't have to use her power again until she returned to the mansion. It would appear that the best laid plans never were completely concrete.

The marketplace was a fairly busy place, and Crystal's attention had been on the merchandise in another stall enough of a distance away from the others to not see Monet "change" into Sekhmet . It wasn't the sight of the animated statues that drew her attention but it was hard to miss the altered atmosphere in the marketplace. People murmured nearby, shifted their attention in the same direction, and there were screams both from people who had been attacked and people who thought they might be next.

Carefully, Crystal moved amidst the crowd of people, heading directly to where the source of the problem seemed to be. She seemed to be one of the few people purposely headed in that direction, a few of the tourists appearing to be rather curious, while the rest of the shoppers and the owners of the stalls seemed quite eager to head away from that area. While Crystal was not the type to go out actively seeking trouble, she didn't have the tendency to run and hide when it found her. And found her it had indeed, Crystal realized, as she caught sight of Monet/Sekhmet and her entourage. Well. That was new. Different. Interesting. The sort of situation where it would appear that with Crystal's powers, less was more. This was not the type of situation which called for a hurricane or harsh blasts of air and inanimate objects (even if they did appear to be animated at this particular moment in time) weren't very likely to take notice of a sudden lack of oxygen. There were innocent people close by, and Crystal didn't wish to harm them, something that would surely happen were she to strike out harshly at the mummies with her powers.

Instead, Crystal opted for a more subtle approach, manipulating the air around the mummies and the possessed Monet in order to "encourage" them to move closer together, and away from the panicked people rushing to get away.

One of the mummies lurched closer to Monet, driven by a gust of Crystal's wind. She stroked her hand down its face before rubbing her arms. The breeze was cold and it was almost dark in the market. "Come, my children. We shall leave this foul cold place." Physically turning one mummy and guiding a second, Monet and her entourage left the market. Once outside, she stood in the sun, staring dazedly at the sky for a moment. "Come, my children," she called, before smashing her hands down into the boot of an old car.

Laurie had been working her way through the crowds, sending them away from where Kurt and Crystal were trying to subdue the Mummies. After a moment, she noticed the breeze pick up, and nodded as she caught Crystal's eye. It would seem her friend had realised what she was trying to do, and had stepped in to help. Which meant that it gave Laurie time to look around, her eyes scanning the crowd for any advantage they might be able to use.


It was chaos, stalls overturned and people trying to flee, running into each other, and then running away from the steadily attacking Mummies. In amongst it all though, Laurie noticed the good doctor, who appeared almost unnaturally calm with so much terror and fleeing going on around him. Laurie headed toward him, pumping out more calming pheromones as she went.

"Doctor Gaskill?" she called, modulating her tones to her best 'talking to the patient' voice. If the man was in shock, she didn't want to send him into a panic.

She got a tight smile, and a look of glittering, malicious amusement. "Ah, Ms. Collins. Isn't this marvellous?" He waved at the chaos. "Like something out of a B-movie, isn't it? A clichéd, stereotypical B-movie... which is so very appropriate for all of you!" His voice had risen, become a snarl. "You walk through the history all around you, treating it like a playground - this is only what you people deserve! Maybe I should be encouraging the evil mummies to rip you all limb from limb!" He was all but frothing at the mouth at this point.

"Doctor, I think perhaps you've become a bit overwrought, maybe you'd like to come sit down somewhere quiet?" Laurie said, reaching out to grip Dr Gaskill's arm, her voice still calm, but a terrible suspicion beginning to surface at his words.

He shook off her arm with a derisive laugh. "No, no. I'm going to watch every blessed moment of it. I'm giving them all their image of Egypt, you see? And it's nothing more than they deserve!"

"You are, are you?" Laurie replied, allowing a certain amount of scorn to enter her voice, a barest hint of disbelief. Keep him talking; keep him concentrating on her as she thought, as she tried to make the connections that were teasing at the edges of her mind. That was what she needed to do, and hopefully he wouldn't notice the tiredness creeping up on him, the need to lay down and sleep.

She'd seen him fiddling with something earlier, a...a necklace of some sort. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, too busy looking at the stalls, and haggling with the merchants to take much notice of their somewhat crazy guide. But now, it seemed much more sinister, now, she put one and one together and came away with two. Why would a man of such obvious distaste for gaudy trinkets have brought a necklace from these stalls? You couldn't be Forge's friend for long without realising that electronics, and machines could do almost anything. Why not bring the dead to life, or better yet, homunculi, merely the semblance of life? She'd seen Forge do things of a much more fantastical nature. It made sense, it fit, and it didn't involve thousand year old dead people who were unstoppable short of magic words she had no idea how to find.

"Where did you put it, Doctor?" she asked, lunging forward and placing her hand against his neck, a surge of her power, tightly controlled, and then she slowly lowered him to the ground, a directed fall rather then trying to keep the much larger man from collapsing completely. She laid him out, searching through his pockets, and then inside his coat till she found what she was looking for.

She needed to get it to Kurt, she just hoped he could figure out what to do with it.


Kurt had given chase, and now teleported directly into Sekhmet's path down the street. "This is going to stop", he told her in steely tones, keeping a close eye on the mummies.

"Or what, little demon? You'll try to break me?" She smiled sweetly at him before turning away. Somewhere, deep inside, she winced at the thought of calling Kurt a demon. But mostly, she just knew that she was invulnerable and that she wanted to break things. Monet moved down the road, hitting out at cars, chairs, motorbikes as she went.

Monet and her new friends needed to be stopped, Crystal knew, but even though the odd group was no longer in sight, people in the marketplace were still in panic mode. Here and there were people who did not appear to be panicked at all; in fact, they seemed to be rather calm and collected. A quick look tracked where these apparently random people were coming from, a path which led to a purple-tinged Laurie. Crystal nodded to herself and focused her attention on the air around the younger girl, concentrating on the pheromones emitted by Laurie and creating swift yet gentle breezes to aid their path. After confirming that her attempt was successful, Crystal headed out after Monet/Sekhmet and company.

"Breaking you would be beyond my powers", Kurt admitted, "even if I wished to. But you have taken one I love, and I will have her back one way or another." And he popped into view in front of her again, snapping a kick at her face. He knew it wouldn't hurt her, but maybe it might stun her for a moment...

Monet stumbled slightly at the kick, started more by the sudden appearance of Kurt than by the impact.


It didn't take any effort for Crystal to catch sight of Monet this time; less people were around, and the path of destruction she had left in her wake was impossible to miss. The mummies, too, were quite visible; both the larger ones smashing large objects and the smaller ones breaking anything within their reach. The odd group certainly wasn't trying to hide from anyone, but while they were causing quite a lot of damage, they didn't seem to have any desire to stop moving and continue destroying objects. Whether they had a specific destination in mind or were simply moving to move, Crystal didn't know.

Crystal no longer had to hold back due to the worry of harming innocent bystanders, but as she began to lift the formerly unmoving statues using vortices of air, she wondered just what it was that was giving the mummies the ability to move. True, they seemed set on causing harm and destruction, but how were they able to move? Were they simply feel? She could smash them all to the ground, but how could she do that without knowing what it was she might be doing?


And then, of course, there was Monet. Whatever it was that was happening with her, Crystal did not wish to harm her unless absolutely necessary. As Monet/Sekhmet possessed the ability to lift herself up into the air by herself, there didn't seem to be much point in attempting to trap her in a vortex as Crystal was doing with the mummies. Crystal moved the vortices together, merging them into one larger vortex, spinning the mummies around in various parts of the air currently under her control. She wanted to trap Monet in walls of air, but Kurt was too close to Monet to be able to do that safely without the possibility of harming Kurt. If she tried to place a wall between them, Kurt would probably kick it instead of Monet.

"What are you doing to them?" Monet screamed, "what are you doing to my children?" Ignoring Kurt, she turned to beat helplessly against the walls of air trapping the mummies.

Laurie took that moment of distraction as her chance. "Kurt! Catch!" she yelled, throwing the remote control to him from where she stood amongst the turned over stalls.

He caught the flying object automatically, then studied it with narrowed eyes. It was easy enough to guess what it was for, and the next moment, Kurt had flung himself onto Sekhmet's back, the remote control pressed to her neck as he hit the stop button. Monet struggled as Kurt landed on her before falling to the ground. The mummies stood for a moment longer before falling, no longer animated.

Now that the Mummies were down, and Monet appeared to be in good hands, Laurie went immediately to the few injured bystanders she could see collapsed amongst the rubble of the stalls. She needed to do triage, and find out if anyone would need an ambulance.

After a glance around to see that Laurie was taking care of the other victims, all Kurt's attention went back to the unconscious Monet, gathering her in his arms before standing up. "I think it would be best to get her away from here", he said quietly. "Before the police arrive."