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xp_logsAlmost inevitably, things begin to go south.
Molly got out of the outside bathroom stall thing as quick as she could. It smelled bad but she realllly had to go. But that meant she didn't know where everybody else went.
Glancing around, she tried to look for the guys but saw some other guy stumbling around like he was dizzy or something.
"Hey...um...sir? Are you okay?" she said as she got closer toward him.
The day had not started well for Nick Chapman. Before they'd arrived at the event they had been urged to keep things peaceful. If the Friends of Humanity were to be respected as a voice of reason in the world of human/mutant relations, they needed to act like it. It was easy for some. None of them were still paying off medical bills for a wife paralyzed in Day Zero.
Now he was feeling sick. What had begun as simple nausea and chills was rapidly escalating into body aches, as if he'd been struck by the world's fastest-acting flu. He'd felt fine this morning, physically if not mentally, and he hadn't left the line since arriving.
Belatedly, Nick realized that someone was talking to him. His doubling vision told him only that it was someone small. A girl.
His knees gave out before he could reply.
Molly's eyes widened. Her slow walk turned into a run as she reached out to try to put her hand on his shoulder but kind of stopped about a half a foot away. Sometimes people didn't like you touching them.
"Um....um...are you gonna throw up? Or...pass out? Do you need a doctor? I don't....know any doctors here but I could find some..." she bit her lip, glancing around.
And it was in that split-second of distraction that it happened.
The ache in Nick's body went from a throb to a shriek. The man screamed, the rip of cloth almost lost in the sound. Spasms gripped every muscle in his body, and as his back arched in agony his arms flew outwards, their clenched fists doubling and tripling in size with every convulsion.
Molly didn't even have time to dodge.
_____
Jim whipped around at the unmistakable sound of shattering stone. He couldn't see where it had come from, but it sounded like a wrecking ball had just hit the back of the church.
"What the hell--" he began.
The northern end of the lot exploded.
It was nearly soundless, with only the fwoof of rapidly expanding air. Flame streaked across the parking lot, striking booths, asphalt, nearby lawns and buildings. Some of it even caught in nearby trees. It burned even where there appeared to be no obvious fuel, as if it were an ignited accelerant. People began to scream, some because they were burning themselves.
Wade fell into a defensive crouch, a throwing knife dropping into his hand though he kept it hidden from the telepath. Smoke started billowing upward, white-grey to begin with but darkening quickly, and he was pretty sure this was that 'alternative' he'd been discussing with Haller and Summers earlier. "Some of the kids went that way," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the noises of the panicking crowds. He'd indicated the southern part of the church.
Jim took a quick headcount. Who had been where? Who could he see? Maddie and Sarah. Korvus' height made him easy to spot, which probably meant Meggan was nearby. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a flash of Megan's pink hair.
That left two of the girls missing. He couldn't see Artie and Matt, either, but a moment ago they'd been near the north side of the lot. The side that was on fire.
"Artie and Matt were up there," Jim said tightly, clearly torn. "I think Layla and Molly went ba--"
Another burst of flame screamed towards them. The X-Man's arm shot upwards, and fire splashed against a telekinetic shield.
"I'll check on the girls, you make sure the guys at the north end are alright," Wade called, waving his thanks at the telekinetic for the shield that kept them both from getting crisped up like bacon.
With a curt nod, the X-Man lowered his arm and ran for the main entrance.
There was commotion from the south entrance, where many people had instinctively fled to escape the sudden fire. A screaming man covered in spikey growths tore around the corner of the building. A woman shrieked as he banged into her side, leaving her jacket shredded and arm bloody. Either indifferent or simply blinded by panic, the man didn't stop.
The man, covered in spikes that were either bloody from ripping through his skin or from the numerous people he's hit while running around the event, was heading for another group of people. Wade growled, stepping his pace up a little bit so he could slide into the man's path. A quick evaluation showed that there was really no place the spikes weren't evident and that decking the guy would leave Wade himself with lacerations it would take a few valuable minutes to heal. So he did the next best thing - he stuck out his leg, figuring there'd be less damage done to his shin than anything else, and tripped the man.
Who fell hard. Hard enough not to move again, in fact, but at least there was no spastic twitching that would indicate severe neurological damage. And though people were panicking, it seemed even the fear-crazed thought twice about stepping on a human caltrap.
Wade made sure the guy was down and intended to stay down, then checked his leg to see what the damage was. It could've been worse. He'd only been able to see bone for a few seconds before his healing factor kicked in, which meant he was only limping a little as he continued on his way to the south side of the church. The limping got progressively less noticeable the further he went, but his jeans were a lost cause entirely.
The moment he rounded the corner it became obvious why some of the evacuating crowd had gotten that far and abruptly changed their minds. Instead of Layla or Molly, Wade found himself faced with singularly huge man.
Easily nine feet tall, the behemoth looked as if he'd been built by a bricklayer: slabs of muscle upon muscle, with his neck alone nearing the size of a tree trunk. What remained of his clothing was either stretched to the breaking point or hanging in shreds.
And he appeared to be in pain. He blindly staggered from side to side, face clutched in his hands. Before Wade could take another step the man bellowed, twisted sharply to the right -- and rammed the already damaged building at full force.
_____
A weird sort of cracking sound preceded the entire church shifting when Layla was washing her hands. It was like an earthquake had cropped up and stopped just as suddenly, complete with dust falling from the ceiling. Only they didn't get earthquakes in New York. Creeping out of the bathroom at first, what felt like another blow that shook the building had her high tailing it out of there in time to notice there was a hole in the brick wall. What the fuck?
Getting outside didn't make things any better. It was fucking chaos. "What...the...fuck?" People were running all over the place, there was screaming and a damn near literal sea of people between Layla and where Sarah and Maddie still were. She tried to get down the steps to the girls but people were pushing past her to get into the church now and somehow it was harder to keep her own feet under her. With everyone pushing in different directions Layla just sort of got dragged into the undertow.
She wasn't the only one who looked lost, though. A kid who was probably only a few years off from Molly's age was standing near a booth, eyes darting everywhere. "Hey, kid! Where are your parents?" Layla called out and shoved her own way over to the kid.
His eyes darted around looking for the voice. His gaze bypassed Layla three times before he realized she was the only one headed his way. "I dunno."
Layla realized now that she was up next to the kid that he was hanging out around the daycare tent. "Aren't you a little fucking old for daycare?"
"My little sister was here and..." he shrugged, looking around. "What's happening?"
"Dunno kid, but we totally can't stay here."
"What if my parents can't find me, though?"
Layla yanked the kid out of the way of someone running and looked down at him. "Dude, seriously? First we get you safe, then you can find your parents after. Like after the crazy is done and gone and buried, 'kay?"
He looked unsure about her proposal, right up until half the church fell in on itself. It looked half rockslide and half implosion. Layla couldn't even describe the noise if she tried but it felt oddly deafening. The next thing she knew the nameless boy wonder's hand was in hers and he was looking at her like he was waiting for her plan to go into action. Fuck, I need a plan! Unsure where to go exactly, Layla just started to pull the kid through the crowd, shielding her eyes from the dust and dirt floating around them post-collapse. She wove a path between and around people, veering away from the fiery parking lot and trying to keep clear of whatever the fuck was happening over near that collapsed wall of the church. But she had no idea where to take the kid.
_____
The police channel suddenly sprang to garbled, confused life as a half dozen voices tried to speak at once. Garrison put his finger to his ear, trying to make sense of it. He held up a hand for Terry to stop.
"Something just happened." The voices were on the edge of panick, and he could barely make out words, much less what was happening. He looked up, scanning the around around him to see if he could make sense of things, and caught the sudden, disrupted movements of the crowd. Most certainly something was happening.
"No shite," Terry said, flinching reflexively from a sudden onslaught of noise. She took cover and clapped her hands to her ears, focusing just long enough to dampen down the incoming sensory load. "So much for too peaceful," she muttered, glancing at the others, then back at the scene unfolding before them.
"I knew Wade had jinxed it" Scott muttered. He glanced around the churchyard before looking over at Terry and Garrison, "We need to get these people out of here" he said, gesturing to the panicking crowd. "Can you two get them clear? I'll find the others and see if we can contain whatever's going on."
"Make sure everyone watches their step, boss. NYPD and our agents are going to have a hard time distinguishing someone helping from someone ready to tear the place up." Because wouldn't Brand just love it if the cops hauled in an X-Man under arrest in the midst of chaos like this. He was about to say something more when the sound of an impact made them all flinch, and it was followed by the grinding of stone and metal, as if a monstrous creature had just taken a large bite out of the park. Behind them, the top of the church swayed drunkenly, and came down. The nave on the south end caved in completely, and in the haze of dust, they could see the reddening brushes of fire. "Or maybe that's not going to be the biggest worry right now." He muttered, as shouts of fire started up on the communications line.
Scott nodded, "Thanks for the warning, Garrison, hopefully we'll be able to wrap this up quickly." He glanced at the fallen church as he echoed Garrison, "Or maybe not." He turned and started to shoulder his way through the crowd towards the southern nave, raising his hand to is communicator as he tried to communicate with the other X-Men and establish some idea of what was happening at the event.
"Brilliant," Terry muttered in response to the warning from Kane. The church's collapse earned another flinch and wide-eyed look that quickly turned grim. "I'll head in," she said, gesturing toward the south and digging into a pocket to pull a band out to tie her hair up and out of her face with. "Not going to be able to see much in there right now, and there's bound to be hurt."
"Just get people moving in the other direction. Emergency vehicles are going to need a quick right of way to the building." Kane headed for the opposite direction, towards the side where he'd noticed all the school buses parked. They needed to get this park cleared now. Otherwise, the panic alone would claim a death toll.
_____
"This is why we cannot have the nice things," Yvette muttered to herself, watching the chaos unfold. She could see the glow of flames rising from one side and from the other, somewhere around the church, there had been a loud bang and a cloud of dust was rising. Around them people were panicking running largely for the gates to get away but things were so chaotic they were running into each other, tripping over and falling, breaking into fights and shoving each other aside in an attempt to get clear.
'I have to help here. I am an X-Man,' Yvette thought immediately. But she wasn't the only one there.
The dust was thick and heavy as it rolled around out there. Tangerine's eyes were still wide from everything that had just happened. Seeing the dust cloud and the flickering flames in the distance reminded her that it was all real, it wasn't just an innocent, loud noise she'd mistaken for something worse or whatnot. Bad Things were happening and she did not like it one bit.
"Yvette, what's going on?" Her friend probably didn't know much more than she did, since they'd been here together the whole time, still she couldn't help but ask.
"I am not sure, but it is not something good." Yvette cast a worried glance at her friend. "It is getting too dangerous here. You need to get to the safe place."
"I can't just leave the shop!" She had to look after the place, after all. Another explosion or something loud went off in the not too distant area, causing Tangerine to reflexively start to duck, putting her hands over her head. She was not used to this kind of situation at all.
"The shop is insured!" Yvette retorted. "And you could be hurt here! Please, Tangerine, I promise I will take care of things as much as I can, but you have to go!"
"But I..." Another loud sound went off, this one much closer, and she knew that her friend was right. "Be careful, Yvette!" Tangerine frowned and turned to run away, seeking out shelter somewhere more protected than where they currently were.
Somewhere nearby a woman began to shriek. Something was desperately wrong with the man she was crouching over. Masses of flesh bulged through splitting clothing, but it was moving in a way that lacked the firmness of tumorous growths. As Yvette watched, the woman tried to put her hands on the man's back and found to her horror that she could not draw them away. The semi-solid flesh not only clung, but began to expand. Within seconds the woman's arms were engulfed to her elbows -- and the mass was still growing.
"RUN!" Yvette shouted at Tangerine, before dropping to all fours to race as fast as she could towards the growing mass of tissue. Grotesquely, it still resembled a human being, the features stretched over the expanding flesh, a ludicrous crop of hair perched atop. Yvette gulped - she had never seen a mutation like this - and focused on the woman, who was still struggling to pull away even as the mass oozed over her shoulders and began to creep up her head.
"Please to be holding still!" she shouted at the woman, her grasp of English slipping as it always did under pressure. She hesitated just a second before ripping off her gloves and plunging her talons into the mass, trying to slice away tissue from the woman's face before she suffocated.
It bought the woman time, but not much. The flesh reacted like putty, oozing between the X-Man's talons like play-doh pushed through a press. The former protestor turned her head from the space created by Yvette's claws, trying to keep herself turned towards open air, but the mass was creeping around the collar of her jacket. And worse, now the mass was beginning to cling to Yvette. The X-Man's hands came away dragging shreds of viscous flesh, the microscopic edges of her skin managing to cut even whatever the Friends of Humanity member had become, but her clothing had no such advantage. The swelling flesh adhered to her sleeves, dragging at her movements and inching its way up her arms.
She could hear muffled bellowing beneath them. The man was trying to scream.
'~Oh God, he can feel it, please forgive me...~' Yvette's panicked thoughts dropped into her own language, even as she struggled to get the woman and herself free. She managed to cut off the arms of her jacket and shirt, abandoning them to the ooze, but her body suit was designed to resist her skin and kept re-knitting every time she slashed at it. There was a muffled noise from the woman as the flesh crept up over her chin and mouth and Yvette cursed in Albanian, trying to clear the woman's airways without actually cutting her.
The immobilized woman could only stare at her, tears of panic in her eyes. Her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. It was clear she was trying to keep calm, but a sob finally choked its way through her lips.
In that same moment, the bulk of flesh around them roiled.
The woman's sharp indrawn breath was abruptly silenced as a glob of flesh filled her airway. She began to gag, her struggles increasing as her face began to turn red.
_____
Standing there frozen, Matt barely knew which way was up right now. His feet were planted to the ground, unmoving and his arms covered his head, trying to protect himself. The fire around him was getting closer, he realized dimly, locked in the cacophony of the screams, the crackling of fire and the sirens of police and fire. His nose was assaulted by the burning of everything, acrid and stinging. Coughing, he tried to breathe, gasping. He was going to die. He didn't want to die though, but he was so overwhelmed that his brain wasn't processing anything beyond the surface. It was as if his head was going to explode. Maybe death would be a relief? He wasn't sure. Was this hell?
Scott's eyes shot wide open and he urgently activated his radio, "One of the kids is trapped by the fire. I need someone nearby to reach him and get him clear."
Jim, already pelting in that direction, saw the boy silhouetted in the flames. His adrenaline spiked.
"On it!" he cried into his comm as Jack overtook him. The telekinetic seized control of their legs, threw on one last burst of speed, and leapt into the air.
With everything going on, Matt didn't hear Haller approach and screamed as he was suddenly grabbed and in the air. Being airborne was not a fun thing as he desperately tried to find the ground without actually falling. That was one of the problems with being , it messed up your orientation, it was part of why blind people liked to always touch something as a spacial reference and with their canes, it allowed them a longer reach. With nothing to touch but air, Matt was lost, though he hadn't been much better having sensory overload on the ground.
Jack clung to the boy, thinking rapidly. He flew fast, not well, and his landings weren't good at the best of times. The odds of performing one now without hurting himself, Matt, or both ranged from vanishingly slim to a guarantee for a broken spine -- and the longer he stayed aloft, the more his control was going to erode.
He spotted Garrison below. The Canadian had just finished righting a fallen woman. He, like most of the agents and police, was trying to direct the panicked crowd while preventing unintentional manslaughter. Jack made a decision.
"Kane, behind you!" he bellowed into his comm. He banked sharply to cut as much momentum as he could and let the boy drop, trusting in his teammate's reflexes to catch him. All he needed to do was make sure Matt was safe.
He would worry about his own landing later.
"Wha-" the Canadian moved faster that any normal human, and snagged Matt by the leg and torso as he hurtled past. The impact was enough to jar the young man for a moment, but he wouldn't suffer anything worse than a few bruises. Garrison set him down, looking him over.
"You okay, kid?"
'What the hell' was what Matt tried to say. What came out was more of a mumbled gurgle as he groped for understanding of what just happened, a hand half pawing at Garrison's face as he clutched the other man tightly for fear of falling over. Then, with a heave, he puked.
Garrison lightly tilted him away from his suit, making sure the flow of sick splattered harmlessly into the bushes. He directed him to a bench and sat him down.
"Matt, it's Garrison. Stay here. We'll be back to get you in a second." With everything that was going on, the best thing they could do was to keep him here and out of it while Kane plunged back in.
_____
As soon as she heard the first explosion, Maddie had grabbed Sarah by the hand and dragged the older girl behind her as she headed away from the blast and the fire. Layla had gone to the church, she remembered, but this was not the time to think about it. She couldn't think about her roommate being caught in the blast, and what damage would follow were that the case. Right now, Maddie needed to focus on getting herself and Sarah out to safety.
The explosion caused Sarah to immediately turn in that direction, eyes wide in surprise at the loud sound. "Where was that... was that by..." That couldn't have been by the church, no, that's where Layla went. She started to head in that direction but then Maddie was pulling her by the hand in the other direction. "Stop, Layla's over there, we have to go see!" It didn't look like the entire church was damaged, only part of it, so hopefully that meant she was ok. She had to be ok.
"Are you insane," Maddie tried to bellow over the sounds of explosions and panicking people. "You don't run toward a blast. That's suicide! And if Layla was hit..." her voice trailed off, the unspoken words dangling in the air.
You never leave a man behind. And if Layla had been caught in an explosion or by the falling rubble, what could the two of them do? They would be risking both of their lives to save someone who may or may not still be alive. It was like that cat in that box. Right now, Layla was both dead and alive at the same time. But she was alive, and Maddie knew that the guilt of abandoning her friend would never leave her alone if she didn't go to Layla.
"Fine. But if you hear anything explode you hit the ground as fast as you can. Capice?"
"She'll need our help!" That was what Maddie was going to say, right? Sarah wasn't really thinking straight because, well, her girlfriend could've been in danger or worse. No, it couldn't be worse, it wouldn't me. "Yes, yes, ok!" She took off in the direction of the church, careful to avoid any nearby rubble or debris even though she was in full on panic mode and had adrenaline coursing through her veins.
_____
"Mom, we have to get out of here", Angelo urged, to Juanita's plain stubborn reluctance to abandon her booth. "Seriously, things are on fire an' you want to stay?"
She was in the middle of arguing, yet again, when what looked like a blast from a flamethrower narrowly missed her head and Angelo unceremoniously grabbed her to physical carry her out.
The screaming sounded like maybe it could've been a "No! Help me!" if you took out all the noises that sounded like retching. The... thing that lurched into the side of the booth was human-shaped, but covered in melting, dripping... something waxy and red that pooled on the ground around its feet and burned the grass. Licks of flame crept up its legs and capped its head, and each footprint left behind a streak of burning ooze that spread out to meet the next, leaving a burning trail.
Artie stared at the man, open mouthed and horrified. He, like all other bystanders, was completely unable to move to assist him. This was a person and he was... and he was... The air smelled kind of like steak.
Dear God. Angelo was staring at the newcomer in equal horror, as he automatically set Juanita down and pushed her behind him. But he'd asked for help, that meant... that meant he didn't want to hurt anyone.
Angelo stepped forward, speaking calmly. "Sir, none of us know what to do to help you. I need you to sit down and stay right where you are, okay? I'll find someone who can help."
If the man... could understand Angelo, he gave no indication. He stumbled, and a ripple of fire spread out over the ground, and another that seemed to come from the man's body, wet and heavy like burning pitch but all aflame. It hit the booth and ignited it, the flames seeming to almost creep back towards the man as he got closer.
There were people. People were flammable. You didn't live around John, Angel and Leyu without learning that people were flammable. "hes not listening!" Artie said, projecting the words in Angelo's field of vision. "what do we do?"
"We've gotta get him away", Angelo said with a glance at Artie. "You didn't see a fountain or a pond or somethin' anywhere near here, did you?"
"no! i can't c one," Artie said and then paused. "i can make one. wld that work?
"I don't know, but it's got to be worth a try", Angelo said quickly, pointing to an empty spot. "Try there."
"ok" Artie replied, already looking in that direction and constructing an image of a fountain in his mind. It was windy and the spray would be going that way, while the shadows fell across there... He began to build it, rough shapes of light, shadow and colour before snapping it into sharp, clear focus. The amount of detail at the size he needed gave him the warning throb of an impending headache.
The man-fire-thing was on the move before the fountain was even fully detailed, the draw of even the idea of water too strong to overcome any disbelief he might have that there was a fountain where there hadn't been one before. He lurched away from the people and the flammable booths and towards the hope of relief, and left burning gobs of melted goo behind him in a trail.
"Okay", Angelo said in relief. "Now I've just gotta find a lot of real wat-" And then something flew into the back of his legs, knocking him to the ground.
Artie whirled as he heard Angelo get knocked down and then something came flying at him. He ducked, losing the projection as he did.
Angelo was staying down, if not sprawled as he had been for a moment. He looked around frantically, trying to pin down the source of the flying objects, then at Artie. "Get out of here, take my mom with you. And any other people you find."
_____
Yvette cursed again, lifting her hand to try and carefully scoop away the flesh from the woman's mouth and nose, but she realised that the mass was clinging to her sleeve, trapping it. She was buried to the waist in ooze - it helped if she didn't think about it as living tissue, it was just too much - and even as she struggled, a wave crept up her back and over her shoulders, trapping her other arm now and rising inexorably towards her face. "Help!" she managed to call out, but her voice was drowned out by the chaos around them.
Merde, thought Jean-Phillipe as the chaos unfolded. It was like something from a particularly grotesque horror movie, one of the ones Layla tended to favor when she and Sarah watched movies in the rec room together. He looked in horror as the mass of flesh crept up around Yvette. He wouldn't have thought anything could contain the small red Albanian if she put her mind to cutting through it, but the flesh was growing faster than she could cut it away.
He dashed up, static already crackling around his hands. "Look away, petite rouge," he instructed her. He knew that her hardened skin would shake off the worst of his power, but her eyes were still vulnerable. He took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself and concentrate, and cut loose with a large bolt of electricity.
The flesh boiled away from the point of impact, a ripple seizing the entire mass like a sheet snapping in the wind. The effect was only temporary. The organic sludge resettled, as if it lacked the solidity even to maintain a convulsion.
Luckily Yvette's face was bare, which meant the flesh was having trouble gaining a hold on the sharp skin. She managed to croak out to him: "Again, Sparky! You must hold it longer! Do not worry about me!"
"Fils de putain!" Jean-Phillipe ground out as his hands clenched. Maintaining a steady flow of electricity was much harder for him than any kind of short-duration bolt or surge. But the flesh was already flowing up around Yvette and the other woman again. He brought his hands together and yelled wordlessly as a much larger arc of electricity began somewhere around his elbows and jumped from his clasped hands to the fleshy blob in front of him.
The mass flinched from the current. Organic matter rolled into itself like kneaded dough, pulling away from the smaller girl. The power output fluctuated slightly, and the flesh began to fall back.
Sweat began to bead on Jean-Phillipe's brow as he maintained the arc. Once Yvette was free, she could likely finish cutting the other victim loose. The less time he had to hold this, the better. When it was down around her ankles, he grunted. "Knuckles, get the woman free," he said, finally remembering Yvette's codename, or at least -a- codename.
"Penance" she replied through gritted teeth; the electricity arcing through her was definitely more than a tickle. But she was free and she took advantage of that to cut away chunks of flesh from around the woman, the process aided by the current conducted through her rock-hard skin. "Help me drag her clear!" she gasped, grabbing the woman's coat sleeve and yanking. Her talons sliced through the heavy cloth; hopefully it would hold together long enough.
"Desolee, I was a bit busy to be remembering," Jean-Phillipe said, weakly, but with a touch of goodnatured joking in it. Even when Yvette was correcting him and in the middle of a crisis, she still had that air about her that inspired joking and a smile from him. He grabbed the woman by the nape of the neck and hauled away with Yvette's help, using his free hand to direct a few extra bolts at the flesh masses to keep them at bay. Finally, the trio collapsed a safe distance away. "That...was disgusting."
Not far away Scott's eyes darted around the churchyard, trying to keep a track of everything and everyone around him. He frowned as he glanced towards the south, a mass of lightning appeared to be arcing from the south, running away from the rally and right into a residential area. He couldn't see the target to neutralize him so he raised his hand to his communicator instead.
"Sparky, this is Cyclops. I've got some kind of electricity manipulator running to the south. He's headed into a residential area, so I need you to get to him an contain the situation before someone gets hurt."
"Tabernac." Jean-Phillipe was absolutely going to blame Jean-Paul for his having adopted the Quebecois tendency to swear by invoking various parts of Catholic ritual. He was an even worse lapsed Catholic than his cousin, so Catholic trappings held little importance to him. And yet, there it was. "I am on my way, Cyclops," he responded, levering himself up and working himself up to a ground-eating lope to the south.
_____
Scott glanced around, trying to make sense out of the situation as he worked his way through the crowds of terrified, screaming convention visitors. He twisted to one side to avoid being swept up in the crowd as it stampeded to safety. He bent over to help up a fallen women, pointing her towards safety before turning back to try to make sense of the chaos which had arisen out of the event.
Patches of fire still burned to the east. Some quick-minded individual had taken the fire extinguisher intended for the grill and was attempting to put out some of the smaller ones, but it was clearly insufficient to the task. Not far away a woman stripped her heavy winter coat and used it to smother the flames that had caught the back of an old man's jacket, while a police officer lifted a fallen teen to his feet before he could be trampled. The sky to the south and west, where Terry had gone, was still hazy with dust from the church's partial collapse.
And something else was happening. To Scott's left a man began to retch, while a few yards away a woman stumbled and fell without any apparent cause. Beyond her a man sporting an FBI vest lay crumpled, motionless. A still-standing colleague took a few stumbling steps towards him, then collapsed himself.
Scott glanced around in confusion, trying to determine the cause of the random collapses. His eye quickly scanned the area, but his brow wrinkling in confusion. "No visible attacker" he mused before quickly turning to the individuals still standing near him. "Get back," he shouted, "I think we've got a gas leak here." He turned towards the still burning flames as he cautiously backed up, scanning the ground for a sign of a broken gas line.
The remaining bystanders looked up at Scott's urgent warning and started to move, looking around in a panic, as if they could see the gas creeping up on them. As they ran Scott continued to scan the ground, but try as he might he couldn't locate the gas leak, gesturing to some of the emergency personnel to go in to recover the collapsed personnel using their rebreather equipment.
Scott barely saw the paving slab flying at his head, he threw himself to the floor and felt a brush of wind as the stone passed over him. He raised his head to track the projectile as he heard it slam into a tree, and saw more projectiles being thrown through the air.
_____
As Jean-Phillipe ran off to help with the energy manipulator, Yvette pulled herself up from the exhausted heap she'd fallen into to check on the woman. Strands of gooey flesh clung to her face and clothes and hair and Yvette carefully scraped away what she could from her mouth and nose. She was older, kind of motherly-looking, just an ordinary woman.
And she wasn't breathing.
Adrenaline pumped through Yvette's system, accentuating the spikes of her hair. She yanked one glove back on so she could touch the woman without cutting her up, her first aid training jumping in. Check the airway... there was the problem, a mass of flesh jammed in the woman's windpipe. Too much for her to scoop out, not with the way it clung to the woman's throat.
Heavy footsteps thumped behind her, and an instant the young man from Tangerine's booth was beside her. He'd lost his coat, and scorch marks on his right sleeve indicated it had probably been shed in panic after being caught by an errant blast. Dark stone glittered where fabric had burned away.
"Yve- Yvette," Ty managed, stumbling over her name. "I thought it was -- are you okay? What's happening?"
She looked up, her face frozen in expressionless but her eyes blazing in relief. "She cannot breath," she managed. "There is something caught in her throat. I must..." She paused, the enormity of what was required looming before her. "I must cut a hole in her throat, make an airway." Time was running out. "Help me, please?"
Ty's eyes widened on the woman beneath her, then the mass of flesh that lay nearby. Wild-eyed, he turned to Yvette to ask, again, what was happening, but stopped. Not at her expression, blank and inflexible as stress had made it, but at some flicker in the flat blue of her eyes.
Gulping, the young man forced a nod. "I-I'll try," he said, fists clenched at his sides. "What do I do?"
"I need something to hold the hole open, the straw or the pen. I can make the cut, but my hands..." Yvette looked down at her long fingers, always so awkward for delicate work. "Do you think you can do that?" The woman's face was beginning to turn blue. No time for delay. She raised the woman's chin with her gloved hand, exposing her throat.
Ty frantically cast around. The concessions stand was too far, he saw no straws -- but a PFOM souvenir bag was lying nearby. He'd helped stuff them with his brother, and he knew what they contained: pamphlets, bumperstickers, a calendar . . . and customized pens.
The young man dumped the bag onto the asphalt, flinching at a loud series of impacts happening somewhere nearby. He scrabbled through the pile until he found what he was looking for. "Got one," he gasped, struggling to twist the pen open and eject the ink cartridge. His gloved hands slipped against it; he grasped one end between his teeth and used his hands to twist it open.
Yvette nodded. "Good," was all she said, before she used her bare forefinger to punch a hole into the soft part of her throat. Blood spurted, but more importantly, air whistled into the hole, the woman's chest hitching up as that first breath was sucked in. "Now, quickly. When I take my finger out, put in the pen!"
Blood welled as Yvette pulled her talon clear. Ty pushed for the wound, but the skin was slick and his hands were shaking. The pen went in a centimeter or so, then stopped. A wet whistling sound was coming from the wound. Air, but not enough to sustain life.
"It's not going in!" he cried, his arms beginning to shake harder.
Without thinking, she grabbed his arm with the closest hand to guide him, slicing through what remained of his sleeve. "Relax," she told him softly. "Straighten your hand, so you are going in at the ninety degree angle." She positioned his hand until the pen was in the right position, then gently moved it downwards. "Hold the wound open with your other hand, but carefully, yes?" Despite the urgency of the situation, her tone had become gentle, almost like she was helping one of the students with their homework rather than asking an almost total stranger to help her save a life.
The feel of the hand on his and the quiet, sure tone of her voice anchored him against the panic. With a shuddering breath, Ty nodded mutely and let her guide his hand as he reached the other around to the wound. His gloved finger slipped again, nearly causing another panic, but the girl's hand was still on his, steady and calm. Ty reached up and pulled the glove off with his teeth, spat it out, and pressed one crystalline finger to the edge of the wound.
"Got it," he said, voice barely shaking. "Do it fast."
She nodded and nudged the hand that was holding the pen downwards, until it slipped easily into the wound. "There," she said, her eyes glowing brighter. "You can let go now, so there is the seal."
The sound of air flowed through the pen, and for an instant he couldn't believe the woman was still alive -- the entire process had felt like an eternity. Ty exhaled shakily and drew back his hand. It was cramping from the stress.
Ty turned his head to give Yvette a stiff smile. Her face was still only a few inches from his, and her luminous eyes threw strange shadows across the cracks spread across on his right side.
"I should've taken your advice on the gloves," he said.
She smiled back, her expression just as stiff and slow as her skin softened ever so slightly, before realising she still had hold of his arm. Her fingers had work through his clothing, but had only scraped against the stone-like substance of his skin. Still, she pulled away, disturbed by her slip. "Thank you," she said, a little awkwardly. "You helped me to save her life." She glanced over at the man the woman had been trying to help. "He must be her husband," she added. "We should call the ambulance for her and see if we cannot help him to be calm, also. If only so he does not hurt anyone else."
Though his mutation obviously lacked the psychosomatic reaction to ebbing stress Yvette's did, the young man's reply was equally awkward. Ty grabbed his fallen glove to cover some of his embarrassment. "It's -- I'm glad you were here. That freaked out, I could've stuck the pen in her arm." At least they wouldn't need to wait long for an ambulance: he could already hear any number of sirens heading their way. His gaze fell on the quivering pile of flesh that had once been an FOHer, and suddenly the implications of Yvette's words registered.
"That's -- was that a person?" he blurted. He turned to her, the whites showing all around his eyes. "What the hell is going on?"
Her tone, when she replied, echoed some of his confusion and fear. "I do not know, Ty. Something very, very bad."
Molly got out of the outside bathroom stall thing as quick as she could. It smelled bad but she realllly had to go. But that meant she didn't know where everybody else went.
Glancing around, she tried to look for the guys but saw some other guy stumbling around like he was dizzy or something.
"Hey...um...sir? Are you okay?" she said as she got closer toward him.
The day had not started well for Nick Chapman. Before they'd arrived at the event they had been urged to keep things peaceful. If the Friends of Humanity were to be respected as a voice of reason in the world of human/mutant relations, they needed to act like it. It was easy for some. None of them were still paying off medical bills for a wife paralyzed in Day Zero.
Now he was feeling sick. What had begun as simple nausea and chills was rapidly escalating into body aches, as if he'd been struck by the world's fastest-acting flu. He'd felt fine this morning, physically if not mentally, and he hadn't left the line since arriving.
Belatedly, Nick realized that someone was talking to him. His doubling vision told him only that it was someone small. A girl.
His knees gave out before he could reply.
Molly's eyes widened. Her slow walk turned into a run as she reached out to try to put her hand on his shoulder but kind of stopped about a half a foot away. Sometimes people didn't like you touching them.
"Um....um...are you gonna throw up? Or...pass out? Do you need a doctor? I don't....know any doctors here but I could find some..." she bit her lip, glancing around.
And it was in that split-second of distraction that it happened.
The ache in Nick's body went from a throb to a shriek. The man screamed, the rip of cloth almost lost in the sound. Spasms gripped every muscle in his body, and as his back arched in agony his arms flew outwards, their clenched fists doubling and tripling in size with every convulsion.
Molly didn't even have time to dodge.
Jim whipped around at the unmistakable sound of shattering stone. He couldn't see where it had come from, but it sounded like a wrecking ball had just hit the back of the church.
"What the hell--" he began.
The northern end of the lot exploded.
It was nearly soundless, with only the fwoof of rapidly expanding air. Flame streaked across the parking lot, striking booths, asphalt, nearby lawns and buildings. Some of it even caught in nearby trees. It burned even where there appeared to be no obvious fuel, as if it were an ignited accelerant. People began to scream, some because they were burning themselves.
Wade fell into a defensive crouch, a throwing knife dropping into his hand though he kept it hidden from the telepath. Smoke started billowing upward, white-grey to begin with but darkening quickly, and he was pretty sure this was that 'alternative' he'd been discussing with Haller and Summers earlier. "Some of the kids went that way," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the noises of the panicking crowds. He'd indicated the southern part of the church.
Jim took a quick headcount. Who had been where? Who could he see? Maddie and Sarah. Korvus' height made him easy to spot, which probably meant Meggan was nearby. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a flash of Megan's pink hair.
That left two of the girls missing. He couldn't see Artie and Matt, either, but a moment ago they'd been near the north side of the lot. The side that was on fire.
"Artie and Matt were up there," Jim said tightly, clearly torn. "I think Layla and Molly went ba--"
Another burst of flame screamed towards them. The X-Man's arm shot upwards, and fire splashed against a telekinetic shield.
"I'll check on the girls, you make sure the guys at the north end are alright," Wade called, waving his thanks at the telekinetic for the shield that kept them both from getting crisped up like bacon.
With a curt nod, the X-Man lowered his arm and ran for the main entrance.
There was commotion from the south entrance, where many people had instinctively fled to escape the sudden fire. A screaming man covered in spikey growths tore around the corner of the building. A woman shrieked as he banged into her side, leaving her jacket shredded and arm bloody. Either indifferent or simply blinded by panic, the man didn't stop.
The man, covered in spikes that were either bloody from ripping through his skin or from the numerous people he's hit while running around the event, was heading for another group of people. Wade growled, stepping his pace up a little bit so he could slide into the man's path. A quick evaluation showed that there was really no place the spikes weren't evident and that decking the guy would leave Wade himself with lacerations it would take a few valuable minutes to heal. So he did the next best thing - he stuck out his leg, figuring there'd be less damage done to his shin than anything else, and tripped the man.
Who fell hard. Hard enough not to move again, in fact, but at least there was no spastic twitching that would indicate severe neurological damage. And though people were panicking, it seemed even the fear-crazed thought twice about stepping on a human caltrap.
Wade made sure the guy was down and intended to stay down, then checked his leg to see what the damage was. It could've been worse. He'd only been able to see bone for a few seconds before his healing factor kicked in, which meant he was only limping a little as he continued on his way to the south side of the church. The limping got progressively less noticeable the further he went, but his jeans were a lost cause entirely.
The moment he rounded the corner it became obvious why some of the evacuating crowd had gotten that far and abruptly changed their minds. Instead of Layla or Molly, Wade found himself faced with singularly huge man.
Easily nine feet tall, the behemoth looked as if he'd been built by a bricklayer: slabs of muscle upon muscle, with his neck alone nearing the size of a tree trunk. What remained of his clothing was either stretched to the breaking point or hanging in shreds.
And he appeared to be in pain. He blindly staggered from side to side, face clutched in his hands. Before Wade could take another step the man bellowed, twisted sharply to the right -- and rammed the already damaged building at full force.
A weird sort of cracking sound preceded the entire church shifting when Layla was washing her hands. It was like an earthquake had cropped up and stopped just as suddenly, complete with dust falling from the ceiling. Only they didn't get earthquakes in New York. Creeping out of the bathroom at first, what felt like another blow that shook the building had her high tailing it out of there in time to notice there was a hole in the brick wall. What the fuck?
Getting outside didn't make things any better. It was fucking chaos. "What...the...fuck?" People were running all over the place, there was screaming and a damn near literal sea of people between Layla and where Sarah and Maddie still were. She tried to get down the steps to the girls but people were pushing past her to get into the church now and somehow it was harder to keep her own feet under her. With everyone pushing in different directions Layla just sort of got dragged into the undertow.
She wasn't the only one who looked lost, though. A kid who was probably only a few years off from Molly's age was standing near a booth, eyes darting everywhere. "Hey, kid! Where are your parents?" Layla called out and shoved her own way over to the kid.
His eyes darted around looking for the voice. His gaze bypassed Layla three times before he realized she was the only one headed his way. "I dunno."
Layla realized now that she was up next to the kid that he was hanging out around the daycare tent. "Aren't you a little fucking old for daycare?"
"My little sister was here and..." he shrugged, looking around. "What's happening?"
"Dunno kid, but we totally can't stay here."
"What if my parents can't find me, though?"
Layla yanked the kid out of the way of someone running and looked down at him. "Dude, seriously? First we get you safe, then you can find your parents after. Like after the crazy is done and gone and buried, 'kay?"
He looked unsure about her proposal, right up until half the church fell in on itself. It looked half rockslide and half implosion. Layla couldn't even describe the noise if she tried but it felt oddly deafening. The next thing she knew the nameless boy wonder's hand was in hers and he was looking at her like he was waiting for her plan to go into action. Fuck, I need a plan! Unsure where to go exactly, Layla just started to pull the kid through the crowd, shielding her eyes from the dust and dirt floating around them post-collapse. She wove a path between and around people, veering away from the fiery parking lot and trying to keep clear of whatever the fuck was happening over near that collapsed wall of the church. But she had no idea where to take the kid.
The police channel suddenly sprang to garbled, confused life as a half dozen voices tried to speak at once. Garrison put his finger to his ear, trying to make sense of it. He held up a hand for Terry to stop.
"Something just happened." The voices were on the edge of panick, and he could barely make out words, much less what was happening. He looked up, scanning the around around him to see if he could make sense of things, and caught the sudden, disrupted movements of the crowd. Most certainly something was happening.
"No shite," Terry said, flinching reflexively from a sudden onslaught of noise. She took cover and clapped her hands to her ears, focusing just long enough to dampen down the incoming sensory load. "So much for too peaceful," she muttered, glancing at the others, then back at the scene unfolding before them.
"I knew Wade had jinxed it" Scott muttered. He glanced around the churchyard before looking over at Terry and Garrison, "We need to get these people out of here" he said, gesturing to the panicking crowd. "Can you two get them clear? I'll find the others and see if we can contain whatever's going on."
"Make sure everyone watches their step, boss. NYPD and our agents are going to have a hard time distinguishing someone helping from someone ready to tear the place up." Because wouldn't Brand just love it if the cops hauled in an X-Man under arrest in the midst of chaos like this. He was about to say something more when the sound of an impact made them all flinch, and it was followed by the grinding of stone and metal, as if a monstrous creature had just taken a large bite out of the park. Behind them, the top of the church swayed drunkenly, and came down. The nave on the south end caved in completely, and in the haze of dust, they could see the reddening brushes of fire. "Or maybe that's not going to be the biggest worry right now." He muttered, as shouts of fire started up on the communications line.
Scott nodded, "Thanks for the warning, Garrison, hopefully we'll be able to wrap this up quickly." He glanced at the fallen church as he echoed Garrison, "Or maybe not." He turned and started to shoulder his way through the crowd towards the southern nave, raising his hand to is communicator as he tried to communicate with the other X-Men and establish some idea of what was happening at the event.
"Brilliant," Terry muttered in response to the warning from Kane. The church's collapse earned another flinch and wide-eyed look that quickly turned grim. "I'll head in," she said, gesturing toward the south and digging into a pocket to pull a band out to tie her hair up and out of her face with. "Not going to be able to see much in there right now, and there's bound to be hurt."
"Just get people moving in the other direction. Emergency vehicles are going to need a quick right of way to the building." Kane headed for the opposite direction, towards the side where he'd noticed all the school buses parked. They needed to get this park cleared now. Otherwise, the panic alone would claim a death toll.
"This is why we cannot have the nice things," Yvette muttered to herself, watching the chaos unfold. She could see the glow of flames rising from one side and from the other, somewhere around the church, there had been a loud bang and a cloud of dust was rising. Around them people were panicking running largely for the gates to get away but things were so chaotic they were running into each other, tripping over and falling, breaking into fights and shoving each other aside in an attempt to get clear.
'I have to help here. I am an X-Man,' Yvette thought immediately. But she wasn't the only one there.
The dust was thick and heavy as it rolled around out there. Tangerine's eyes were still wide from everything that had just happened. Seeing the dust cloud and the flickering flames in the distance reminded her that it was all real, it wasn't just an innocent, loud noise she'd mistaken for something worse or whatnot. Bad Things were happening and she did not like it one bit.
"Yvette, what's going on?" Her friend probably didn't know much more than she did, since they'd been here together the whole time, still she couldn't help but ask.
"I am not sure, but it is not something good." Yvette cast a worried glance at her friend. "It is getting too dangerous here. You need to get to the safe place."
"I can't just leave the shop!" She had to look after the place, after all. Another explosion or something loud went off in the not too distant area, causing Tangerine to reflexively start to duck, putting her hands over her head. She was not used to this kind of situation at all.
"The shop is insured!" Yvette retorted. "And you could be hurt here! Please, Tangerine, I promise I will take care of things as much as I can, but you have to go!"
"But I..." Another loud sound went off, this one much closer, and she knew that her friend was right. "Be careful, Yvette!" Tangerine frowned and turned to run away, seeking out shelter somewhere more protected than where they currently were.
Somewhere nearby a woman began to shriek. Something was desperately wrong with the man she was crouching over. Masses of flesh bulged through splitting clothing, but it was moving in a way that lacked the firmness of tumorous growths. As Yvette watched, the woman tried to put her hands on the man's back and found to her horror that she could not draw them away. The semi-solid flesh not only clung, but began to expand. Within seconds the woman's arms were engulfed to her elbows -- and the mass was still growing.
"RUN!" Yvette shouted at Tangerine, before dropping to all fours to race as fast as she could towards the growing mass of tissue. Grotesquely, it still resembled a human being, the features stretched over the expanding flesh, a ludicrous crop of hair perched atop. Yvette gulped - she had never seen a mutation like this - and focused on the woman, who was still struggling to pull away even as the mass oozed over her shoulders and began to creep up her head.
"Please to be holding still!" she shouted at the woman, her grasp of English slipping as it always did under pressure. She hesitated just a second before ripping off her gloves and plunging her talons into the mass, trying to slice away tissue from the woman's face before she suffocated.
It bought the woman time, but not much. The flesh reacted like putty, oozing between the X-Man's talons like play-doh pushed through a press. The former protestor turned her head from the space created by Yvette's claws, trying to keep herself turned towards open air, but the mass was creeping around the collar of her jacket. And worse, now the mass was beginning to cling to Yvette. The X-Man's hands came away dragging shreds of viscous flesh, the microscopic edges of her skin managing to cut even whatever the Friends of Humanity member had become, but her clothing had no such advantage. The swelling flesh adhered to her sleeves, dragging at her movements and inching its way up her arms.
She could hear muffled bellowing beneath them. The man was trying to scream.
'~Oh God, he can feel it, please forgive me...~' Yvette's panicked thoughts dropped into her own language, even as she struggled to get the woman and herself free. She managed to cut off the arms of her jacket and shirt, abandoning them to the ooze, but her body suit was designed to resist her skin and kept re-knitting every time she slashed at it. There was a muffled noise from the woman as the flesh crept up over her chin and mouth and Yvette cursed in Albanian, trying to clear the woman's airways without actually cutting her.
The immobilized woman could only stare at her, tears of panic in her eyes. Her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. It was clear she was trying to keep calm, but a sob finally choked its way through her lips.
In that same moment, the bulk of flesh around them roiled.
The woman's sharp indrawn breath was abruptly silenced as a glob of flesh filled her airway. She began to gag, her struggles increasing as her face began to turn red.
Standing there frozen, Matt barely knew which way was up right now. His feet were planted to the ground, unmoving and his arms covered his head, trying to protect himself. The fire around him was getting closer, he realized dimly, locked in the cacophony of the screams, the crackling of fire and the sirens of police and fire. His nose was assaulted by the burning of everything, acrid and stinging. Coughing, he tried to breathe, gasping. He was going to die. He didn't want to die though, but he was so overwhelmed that his brain wasn't processing anything beyond the surface. It was as if his head was going to explode. Maybe death would be a relief? He wasn't sure. Was this hell?
Scott's eyes shot wide open and he urgently activated his radio, "One of the kids is trapped by the fire. I need someone nearby to reach him and get him clear."
Jim, already pelting in that direction, saw the boy silhouetted in the flames. His adrenaline spiked.
"On it!" he cried into his comm as Jack overtook him. The telekinetic seized control of their legs, threw on one last burst of speed, and leapt into the air.
With everything going on, Matt didn't hear Haller approach and screamed as he was suddenly grabbed and in the air. Being airborne was not a fun thing as he desperately tried to find the ground without actually falling. That was one of the problems with being , it messed up your orientation, it was part of why blind people liked to always touch something as a spacial reference and with their canes, it allowed them a longer reach. With nothing to touch but air, Matt was lost, though he hadn't been much better having sensory overload on the ground.
Jack clung to the boy, thinking rapidly. He flew fast, not well, and his landings weren't good at the best of times. The odds of performing one now without hurting himself, Matt, or both ranged from vanishingly slim to a guarantee for a broken spine -- and the longer he stayed aloft, the more his control was going to erode.
He spotted Garrison below. The Canadian had just finished righting a fallen woman. He, like most of the agents and police, was trying to direct the panicked crowd while preventing unintentional manslaughter. Jack made a decision.
"Kane, behind you!" he bellowed into his comm. He banked sharply to cut as much momentum as he could and let the boy drop, trusting in his teammate's reflexes to catch him. All he needed to do was make sure Matt was safe.
He would worry about his own landing later.
"Wha-" the Canadian moved faster that any normal human, and snagged Matt by the leg and torso as he hurtled past. The impact was enough to jar the young man for a moment, but he wouldn't suffer anything worse than a few bruises. Garrison set him down, looking him over.
"You okay, kid?"
'What the hell' was what Matt tried to say. What came out was more of a mumbled gurgle as he groped for understanding of what just happened, a hand half pawing at Garrison's face as he clutched the other man tightly for fear of falling over. Then, with a heave, he puked.
Garrison lightly tilted him away from his suit, making sure the flow of sick splattered harmlessly into the bushes. He directed him to a bench and sat him down.
"Matt, it's Garrison. Stay here. We'll be back to get you in a second." With everything that was going on, the best thing they could do was to keep him here and out of it while Kane plunged back in.
As soon as she heard the first explosion, Maddie had grabbed Sarah by the hand and dragged the older girl behind her as she headed away from the blast and the fire. Layla had gone to the church, she remembered, but this was not the time to think about it. She couldn't think about her roommate being caught in the blast, and what damage would follow were that the case. Right now, Maddie needed to focus on getting herself and Sarah out to safety.
The explosion caused Sarah to immediately turn in that direction, eyes wide in surprise at the loud sound. "Where was that... was that by..." That couldn't have been by the church, no, that's where Layla went. She started to head in that direction but then Maddie was pulling her by the hand in the other direction. "Stop, Layla's over there, we have to go see!" It didn't look like the entire church was damaged, only part of it, so hopefully that meant she was ok. She had to be ok.
"Are you insane," Maddie tried to bellow over the sounds of explosions and panicking people. "You don't run toward a blast. That's suicide! And if Layla was hit..." her voice trailed off, the unspoken words dangling in the air.
You never leave a man behind. And if Layla had been caught in an explosion or by the falling rubble, what could the two of them do? They would be risking both of their lives to save someone who may or may not still be alive. It was like that cat in that box. Right now, Layla was both dead and alive at the same time. But she was alive, and Maddie knew that the guilt of abandoning her friend would never leave her alone if she didn't go to Layla.
"Fine. But if you hear anything explode you hit the ground as fast as you can. Capice?"
"She'll need our help!" That was what Maddie was going to say, right? Sarah wasn't really thinking straight because, well, her girlfriend could've been in danger or worse. No, it couldn't be worse, it wouldn't me. "Yes, yes, ok!" She took off in the direction of the church, careful to avoid any nearby rubble or debris even though she was in full on panic mode and had adrenaline coursing through her veins.
"Mom, we have to get out of here", Angelo urged, to Juanita's plain stubborn reluctance to abandon her booth. "Seriously, things are on fire an' you want to stay?"
She was in the middle of arguing, yet again, when what looked like a blast from a flamethrower narrowly missed her head and Angelo unceremoniously grabbed her to physical carry her out.
The screaming sounded like maybe it could've been a "No! Help me!" if you took out all the noises that sounded like retching. The... thing that lurched into the side of the booth was human-shaped, but covered in melting, dripping... something waxy and red that pooled on the ground around its feet and burned the grass. Licks of flame crept up its legs and capped its head, and each footprint left behind a streak of burning ooze that spread out to meet the next, leaving a burning trail.
Artie stared at the man, open mouthed and horrified. He, like all other bystanders, was completely unable to move to assist him. This was a person and he was... and he was... The air smelled kind of like steak.
Dear God. Angelo was staring at the newcomer in equal horror, as he automatically set Juanita down and pushed her behind him. But he'd asked for help, that meant... that meant he didn't want to hurt anyone.
Angelo stepped forward, speaking calmly. "Sir, none of us know what to do to help you. I need you to sit down and stay right where you are, okay? I'll find someone who can help."
If the man... could understand Angelo, he gave no indication. He stumbled, and a ripple of fire spread out over the ground, and another that seemed to come from the man's body, wet and heavy like burning pitch but all aflame. It hit the booth and ignited it, the flames seeming to almost creep back towards the man as he got closer.
There were people. People were flammable. You didn't live around John, Angel and Leyu without learning that people were flammable. "hes not listening!" Artie said, projecting the words in Angelo's field of vision. "what do we do?"
"We've gotta get him away", Angelo said with a glance at Artie. "You didn't see a fountain or a pond or somethin' anywhere near here, did you?"
"no! i can't c one," Artie said and then paused. "i can make one. wld that work?
"I don't know, but it's got to be worth a try", Angelo said quickly, pointing to an empty spot. "Try there."
"ok" Artie replied, already looking in that direction and constructing an image of a fountain in his mind. It was windy and the spray would be going that way, while the shadows fell across there... He began to build it, rough shapes of light, shadow and colour before snapping it into sharp, clear focus. The amount of detail at the size he needed gave him the warning throb of an impending headache.
The man-fire-thing was on the move before the fountain was even fully detailed, the draw of even the idea of water too strong to overcome any disbelief he might have that there was a fountain where there hadn't been one before. He lurched away from the people and the flammable booths and towards the hope of relief, and left burning gobs of melted goo behind him in a trail.
"Okay", Angelo said in relief. "Now I've just gotta find a lot of real wat-" And then something flew into the back of his legs, knocking him to the ground.
Artie whirled as he heard Angelo get knocked down and then something came flying at him. He ducked, losing the projection as he did.
Angelo was staying down, if not sprawled as he had been for a moment. He looked around frantically, trying to pin down the source of the flying objects, then at Artie. "Get out of here, take my mom with you. And any other people you find."
Yvette cursed again, lifting her hand to try and carefully scoop away the flesh from the woman's mouth and nose, but she realised that the mass was clinging to her sleeve, trapping it. She was buried to the waist in ooze - it helped if she didn't think about it as living tissue, it was just too much - and even as she struggled, a wave crept up her back and over her shoulders, trapping her other arm now and rising inexorably towards her face. "Help!" she managed to call out, but her voice was drowned out by the chaos around them.
Merde, thought Jean-Phillipe as the chaos unfolded. It was like something from a particularly grotesque horror movie, one of the ones Layla tended to favor when she and Sarah watched movies in the rec room together. He looked in horror as the mass of flesh crept up around Yvette. He wouldn't have thought anything could contain the small red Albanian if she put her mind to cutting through it, but the flesh was growing faster than she could cut it away.
He dashed up, static already crackling around his hands. "Look away, petite rouge," he instructed her. He knew that her hardened skin would shake off the worst of his power, but her eyes were still vulnerable. He took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself and concentrate, and cut loose with a large bolt of electricity.
The flesh boiled away from the point of impact, a ripple seizing the entire mass like a sheet snapping in the wind. The effect was only temporary. The organic sludge resettled, as if it lacked the solidity even to maintain a convulsion.
Luckily Yvette's face was bare, which meant the flesh was having trouble gaining a hold on the sharp skin. She managed to croak out to him: "Again, Sparky! You must hold it longer! Do not worry about me!"
"Fils de putain!" Jean-Phillipe ground out as his hands clenched. Maintaining a steady flow of electricity was much harder for him than any kind of short-duration bolt or surge. But the flesh was already flowing up around Yvette and the other woman again. He brought his hands together and yelled wordlessly as a much larger arc of electricity began somewhere around his elbows and jumped from his clasped hands to the fleshy blob in front of him.
The mass flinched from the current. Organic matter rolled into itself like kneaded dough, pulling away from the smaller girl. The power output fluctuated slightly, and the flesh began to fall back.
Sweat began to bead on Jean-Phillipe's brow as he maintained the arc. Once Yvette was free, she could likely finish cutting the other victim loose. The less time he had to hold this, the better. When it was down around her ankles, he grunted. "Knuckles, get the woman free," he said, finally remembering Yvette's codename, or at least -a- codename.
"Penance" she replied through gritted teeth; the electricity arcing through her was definitely more than a tickle. But she was free and she took advantage of that to cut away chunks of flesh from around the woman, the process aided by the current conducted through her rock-hard skin. "Help me drag her clear!" she gasped, grabbing the woman's coat sleeve and yanking. Her talons sliced through the heavy cloth; hopefully it would hold together long enough.
"Desolee, I was a bit busy to be remembering," Jean-Phillipe said, weakly, but with a touch of goodnatured joking in it. Even when Yvette was correcting him and in the middle of a crisis, she still had that air about her that inspired joking and a smile from him. He grabbed the woman by the nape of the neck and hauled away with Yvette's help, using his free hand to direct a few extra bolts at the flesh masses to keep them at bay. Finally, the trio collapsed a safe distance away. "That...was disgusting."
Not far away Scott's eyes darted around the churchyard, trying to keep a track of everything and everyone around him. He frowned as he glanced towards the south, a mass of lightning appeared to be arcing from the south, running away from the rally and right into a residential area. He couldn't see the target to neutralize him so he raised his hand to his communicator instead.
"Sparky, this is Cyclops. I've got some kind of electricity manipulator running to the south. He's headed into a residential area, so I need you to get to him an contain the situation before someone gets hurt."
"Tabernac." Jean-Phillipe was absolutely going to blame Jean-Paul for his having adopted the Quebecois tendency to swear by invoking various parts of Catholic ritual. He was an even worse lapsed Catholic than his cousin, so Catholic trappings held little importance to him. And yet, there it was. "I am on my way, Cyclops," he responded, levering himself up and working himself up to a ground-eating lope to the south.
Scott glanced around, trying to make sense out of the situation as he worked his way through the crowds of terrified, screaming convention visitors. He twisted to one side to avoid being swept up in the crowd as it stampeded to safety. He bent over to help up a fallen women, pointing her towards safety before turning back to try to make sense of the chaos which had arisen out of the event.
Patches of fire still burned to the east. Some quick-minded individual had taken the fire extinguisher intended for the grill and was attempting to put out some of the smaller ones, but it was clearly insufficient to the task. Not far away a woman stripped her heavy winter coat and used it to smother the flames that had caught the back of an old man's jacket, while a police officer lifted a fallen teen to his feet before he could be trampled. The sky to the south and west, where Terry had gone, was still hazy with dust from the church's partial collapse.
And something else was happening. To Scott's left a man began to retch, while a few yards away a woman stumbled and fell without any apparent cause. Beyond her a man sporting an FBI vest lay crumpled, motionless. A still-standing colleague took a few stumbling steps towards him, then collapsed himself.
Scott glanced around in confusion, trying to determine the cause of the random collapses. His eye quickly scanned the area, but his brow wrinkling in confusion. "No visible attacker" he mused before quickly turning to the individuals still standing near him. "Get back," he shouted, "I think we've got a gas leak here." He turned towards the still burning flames as he cautiously backed up, scanning the ground for a sign of a broken gas line.
The remaining bystanders looked up at Scott's urgent warning and started to move, looking around in a panic, as if they could see the gas creeping up on them. As they ran Scott continued to scan the ground, but try as he might he couldn't locate the gas leak, gesturing to some of the emergency personnel to go in to recover the collapsed personnel using their rebreather equipment.
Scott barely saw the paving slab flying at his head, he threw himself to the floor and felt a brush of wind as the stone passed over him. He raised his head to track the projectile as he heard it slam into a tree, and saw more projectiles being thrown through the air.
As Jean-Phillipe ran off to help with the energy manipulator, Yvette pulled herself up from the exhausted heap she'd fallen into to check on the woman. Strands of gooey flesh clung to her face and clothes and hair and Yvette carefully scraped away what she could from her mouth and nose. She was older, kind of motherly-looking, just an ordinary woman.
And she wasn't breathing.
Adrenaline pumped through Yvette's system, accentuating the spikes of her hair. She yanked one glove back on so she could touch the woman without cutting her up, her first aid training jumping in. Check the airway... there was the problem, a mass of flesh jammed in the woman's windpipe. Too much for her to scoop out, not with the way it clung to the woman's throat.
Heavy footsteps thumped behind her, and an instant the young man from Tangerine's booth was beside her. He'd lost his coat, and scorch marks on his right sleeve indicated it had probably been shed in panic after being caught by an errant blast. Dark stone glittered where fabric had burned away.
"Yve- Yvette," Ty managed, stumbling over her name. "I thought it was -- are you okay? What's happening?"
She looked up, her face frozen in expressionless but her eyes blazing in relief. "She cannot breath," she managed. "There is something caught in her throat. I must..." She paused, the enormity of what was required looming before her. "I must cut a hole in her throat, make an airway." Time was running out. "Help me, please?"
Ty's eyes widened on the woman beneath her, then the mass of flesh that lay nearby. Wild-eyed, he turned to Yvette to ask, again, what was happening, but stopped. Not at her expression, blank and inflexible as stress had made it, but at some flicker in the flat blue of her eyes.
Gulping, the young man forced a nod. "I-I'll try," he said, fists clenched at his sides. "What do I do?"
"I need something to hold the hole open, the straw or the pen. I can make the cut, but my hands..." Yvette looked down at her long fingers, always so awkward for delicate work. "Do you think you can do that?" The woman's face was beginning to turn blue. No time for delay. She raised the woman's chin with her gloved hand, exposing her throat.
Ty frantically cast around. The concessions stand was too far, he saw no straws -- but a PFOM souvenir bag was lying nearby. He'd helped stuff them with his brother, and he knew what they contained: pamphlets, bumperstickers, a calendar . . . and customized pens.
The young man dumped the bag onto the asphalt, flinching at a loud series of impacts happening somewhere nearby. He scrabbled through the pile until he found what he was looking for. "Got one," he gasped, struggling to twist the pen open and eject the ink cartridge. His gloved hands slipped against it; he grasped one end between his teeth and used his hands to twist it open.
Yvette nodded. "Good," was all she said, before she used her bare forefinger to punch a hole into the soft part of her throat. Blood spurted, but more importantly, air whistled into the hole, the woman's chest hitching up as that first breath was sucked in. "Now, quickly. When I take my finger out, put in the pen!"
Blood welled as Yvette pulled her talon clear. Ty pushed for the wound, but the skin was slick and his hands were shaking. The pen went in a centimeter or so, then stopped. A wet whistling sound was coming from the wound. Air, but not enough to sustain life.
"It's not going in!" he cried, his arms beginning to shake harder.
Without thinking, she grabbed his arm with the closest hand to guide him, slicing through what remained of his sleeve. "Relax," she told him softly. "Straighten your hand, so you are going in at the ninety degree angle." She positioned his hand until the pen was in the right position, then gently moved it downwards. "Hold the wound open with your other hand, but carefully, yes?" Despite the urgency of the situation, her tone had become gentle, almost like she was helping one of the students with their homework rather than asking an almost total stranger to help her save a life.
The feel of the hand on his and the quiet, sure tone of her voice anchored him against the panic. With a shuddering breath, Ty nodded mutely and let her guide his hand as he reached the other around to the wound. His gloved finger slipped again, nearly causing another panic, but the girl's hand was still on his, steady and calm. Ty reached up and pulled the glove off with his teeth, spat it out, and pressed one crystalline finger to the edge of the wound.
"Got it," he said, voice barely shaking. "Do it fast."
She nodded and nudged the hand that was holding the pen downwards, until it slipped easily into the wound. "There," she said, her eyes glowing brighter. "You can let go now, so there is the seal."
The sound of air flowed through the pen, and for an instant he couldn't believe the woman was still alive -- the entire process had felt like an eternity. Ty exhaled shakily and drew back his hand. It was cramping from the stress.
Ty turned his head to give Yvette a stiff smile. Her face was still only a few inches from his, and her luminous eyes threw strange shadows across the cracks spread across on his right side.
"I should've taken your advice on the gloves," he said.
She smiled back, her expression just as stiff and slow as her skin softened ever so slightly, before realising she still had hold of his arm. Her fingers had work through his clothing, but had only scraped against the stone-like substance of his skin. Still, she pulled away, disturbed by her slip. "Thank you," she said, a little awkwardly. "You helped me to save her life." She glanced over at the man the woman had been trying to help. "He must be her husband," she added. "We should call the ambulance for her and see if we cannot help him to be calm, also. If only so he does not hurt anyone else."
Though his mutation obviously lacked the psychosomatic reaction to ebbing stress Yvette's did, the young man's reply was equally awkward. Ty grabbed his fallen glove to cover some of his embarrassment. "It's -- I'm glad you were here. That freaked out, I could've stuck the pen in her arm." At least they wouldn't need to wait long for an ambulance: he could already hear any number of sirens heading their way. His gaze fell on the quivering pile of flesh that had once been an FOHer, and suddenly the implications of Yvette's words registered.
"That's -- was that a person?" he blurted. He turned to her, the whites showing all around his eyes. "What the hell is going on?"
Her tone, when she replied, echoed some of his confusion and fear. "I do not know, Ty. Something very, very bad."
Tags:
- c: .modsock: wade wilson,
- c: angelo espinosa,
- c: artie maddicks,
- c: david haller,
- c: garrison kane,
- c: jean-phillipe colbert,
- c: molly hayes,
- c: scott summers,
- z p1: c: .retired: matt murdock,
- z p1: c: .retired: sarah vale,
- z p1: c: .retired: terry cassidy,
- z p1: c: .retired: yvette petrovic,
- z p1: c: layla miller,
- z p1: c: maddie pryor,
- z p1: p: times they are a-changin
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