Any Port in a Storm: Collapse

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Molekevic runs across Vanessa and Bishop trying to get the kids to safety and throws a fit.

Bishop ran point while Vanessa guided the two kids along the tunnel and away from the melee between the X-Men and the golems. He glanced back to his partner to make sure she had everything under control before taking a corner and walking directly into Molekevic. Even without a charge, the detective was intimidatingly large and solid enough the smaller man would just bounce off him. With the charge he was carrying, Bishop was no less than a human brick wall.

"How about that?" He said, voice slightly snarky as he quickly pulled his pistol to level it at the scientist.

Vanessa's reaction was instantaneous. Lucas pulled up short and her arms went out to either side to stop the kids in their tracks. She pushed Johnny behind her as she stepped to the side, blocking the area to Lucas's right in case anyone tried to slip past him. It was then she realized just why her partner had stopped so abruptly. A moment later her own firearm was out and pointed at the scientist. "Kids, you don't move and stay behind us, yeah?" She spoke with a low, even voice that went hand in hand with just how very relaxed the former mercenary looked despite the gun in her hands.

Sue let out a strangled shriek as she looked up to see what the problem was, why they had stopped. She hadn't been looking where she was going, all the blonde wanted right now was to get as far away from this...place as possible. Dr Molekevic was standing there with a confident smile on his face and his eyes seemed to be looking straight at her. Her breath caught in her throat and her body felt like it had turned to lead, she wanted to move, to run screaming but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the doctor as her mind flashed back to his lab. Vanessa's voice broke through the memories she was caught up in as the metamorph stepped up to the side to cover Molekevic. Unable to prevent her body shaking with terror Sue sucked in a wretched breath and wrapped her arms around Johnny, quickly stepping to the side so Bishop and Vanessa were blocking their view of the doctor.

They would pay. They would ALL pay. Molekevic was too much a man of science to believe in a higher power, but even he could not deny that there were occasionally grand twists and turns in the design of what could only be called fate. Not in the dreary 'every thing you ever do is predestined' sort of way, oh dearie, no. But in the way that rewarded those who reached out and grabbed with both hands.

Fortuna favet audaci - Fortune favors the bold. And just like that, fortune had favored him by dropping that blind fool Storm's brats into his lap.

"Hello, children," he said, voice oozing with false bonhomie, the two other people an afterthought.

Sue pushed Johnny behind her, she knew that their rescuers were already standing between Dr. Molekevic and herself but she didn't want that monster anywhere near her brother. She opened her mouth to reply but fear had robbed her of her voice. The false geniality in the Doctors voice stood out in stark contrast to his actions of only a few hours ago. Unconsciously her hand moved to her hip as she desperately turned her tear-streaked face to her rescuers. "Please..."

"You want to lay down and get cuffed up or you want me to drag you out for the cops?" Bishop asked, the statement threatening but his tone even. It most certainly was not an empty threat.

"I will not be led off in chains like some kind of crim-ulp!" Molekevic cut off as Bishop took a single looming step forward. And with that, his tenuous grasp on civility, and perhaps even sanity, snapped. "No, no, NO! I have had enough! Enough, I say! Enough of interruptions, and the sneering looks, and the backhanded compliments, and the petty jealousies! I am better than all of them! All of -you-! And if none of you can see that, then you are not fit to be part of the magnificent future I have in store!" He raised his hands theatrically, and a deep rumble echoed through the complex. With the barest of warnings, the entire tunnel collapsed around them.

As dirt and rocks began to fall Vanessa grabbed both Johnny and Sue and shoved them to the side of the tunnel, using her body to shield them from the falling debris in hopes that Lucas would manage to get to the crazy scientist and maybe get the collapse of the ceiling to stop. She coughed out dirt and ducked her head in time to realize that Molekevic was gone, hidden by the cascading curtain of dirt. The entire ceiling was coming down on them and she could feel her partner come up at her side to help shield the kids.

A piece of rock slipped through Vanessa and Bishop's valiant efforts to protect the Storm siblings striking sue a glancing blow to her forehead as it continued it's path to the ground kicking up a puff of dirt which was absorbed by the could of dust already swirling around them as it landed. Coughing Sue raised her hand to her head, coming away with a small trail of blood from where the stone had clipped her. She heard the woman grunt as a large clod of earth slammed into her back, they were trapped and it was only a matter of time before they were battered to pieces by the falling ceiling. She glanced around at Johnny and these strangers who had risked their lives to come in and rescue them even when they didn't have to. Sue shook her head, No, we're not going out like this, the girl thought desperately, not when we were so close to getting out of here. I just wanna go home.

Glancing past Vanessa and Bishop Sue saw an incoming collection of clods of earth racing towards the group. Panicking the girl stuck her hands out between the adults bodies, the palms lifted into the universal stop sign. The clods exploded just a meter from her had, the only sign of their existence was a faint blue shimmering in the air. Taking a breath she watched as a stone which had been falling towards Bishop bounced away from him as if it had run into an invisible wall once again leaving the faint shimmering in the air. "I've can do this," the girl muttered trying to buoy her confidence before a collection of stones slammed into the barrier she had erected eliciting a grimace from the blonde.

Gradually the hail of collapsing earth slowly slackened and died, leaving little more than a trickle of dirt falling from the ceiling. "I think we made it," she told the others her face lighting up in a smile of relief. Sue's joy quickly turned to panic as a loud snapping noise heralded the appearance of a crack in the ceiling. She hurriedly threw out her arms again as the ceiling split and dirt and rocks dropped on the group again. The new influx of dirt put the previous shower to shame, a veritable wave of earth came crashing down. Sue's eyes flew open at the sight of the incoming flood of earth before it smashed into her forcefield. The girl screamed in pain as more faint blue energy impacts appeared, revealing a dome which was surrounding the group as the wave hit. At the moment of impact Vanessa and Bishop saw the blonde fly backwards into the wall as if punched, although nothing had made it through the forcefield to hit her. Sue slid down the wall to collapse in a pool at their feet, looking for all the world as if she had had the breath knocked out of her by the same force that had sent her flying backwards.

Sues looked up from her position lying on the ground, her face drawn and blood running down from her nose. She had never felt pain like this before, it was as if someone had dropped her in a vise and was squeezing her all over relentlessly. She couldn't stand, could barely see straight as she felt the pressure starting to slacken on her as the earth settled, but it was still too much. A few scattered clods of dirt and rocks started to slip through as her forcefields started to fail. Wavering, Sue pushed herself up long enough to reach out a trembling hand as she desperately sought to re-establish the forcefield. The pressure continued to fall off but it was too much for the girl who fell back to the floor, her vision fading as she drifted away from the pain into the sweet oblivion of nothingness. The last image she saw was of a panic-stricken Johnny calling her name as he frantically tried to claw his way out of Bishop's firm grip and chunks of earth fell around him.

As the others are wrapping up their captives Amara realizes they aren't all that safe in the tunnels.

Lorna used a bit of the scrap metal she had found earlier and tied the last of the prisoners hands behind their back before putting him with the rest of them. "Okay that should keep them from causing more trouble."

"They might not," Amara replied, her attention caught by something outside the cavern they were in, her gaze focused on one of the walls. She had powered down - for now - though she was itching to switch back to her more familiar form.

"But that's not the end of it. The tunnels - they're not stable. They're going to collapse. It's already started." Again, her voice, while confident, was oddly flat and emotionless. It should have been a moment for panic, but she seemed oddly calm. Detached.

The detached delivery of Amara's statement wasn't missed by Sam but now wasn't the time to question her state of mind. "Get clear, now! Grab the prisoners and let's go, move it!" He cursed under his breath as he grabbed one of them, trusting in Lorna and Amara to be able to get clear. "Any sign of Vanessa and Bishop?"

Lorna knew it would be too good to be true, one obstacle was done and now they had another one. Using the metal around their wrist, Lorna was able to lift the other men, "No...I haven't seen or heard from them in awhile."

"Oi!"

Marius and Kyle appeared out of a side tunnel, both filthy enough to have been dragged through the last thirty feet of it. The Australian traded a look with Kyle as they jogged up to join the group. They'd both heard Sam's order, and neither Bishop nor Vanessa were within scenting range.

Aloud Marius said, "It was just us back there. Maybe they're already clear."

"I don't hear 'em, and neither Vee or Bishop's exactly quiet, unless they gotta be." Kyle said, making a point to clear an ear with an extended claw as he pulled up to the rest. "Course, there's enough echoes in here that I might be missing something but I don't hear -screams- at least."

"No screaming's always good," Adrienne muttered through gritted teeth, following the others. "I'm sure they're out already."

Callisto, who was literally carrying a prisoner over each bony shoulder, frowned thoughtfully. "Or they're buried too deep to hear easy," she commented.

"We will be buried if you don't all move it. I can't sense anything else but the collapse." There was a note of impatience in Amara's voice now - there was nothing any of them could do if they also got buried.

When they realize that not everyone got out Sam takes Amara, Callisto and Lorna back underground to try to find Vanessa, Bishop and hopefully the kids.

Sam's mind kept flashing back to the mine back home, how easy it was for an accident to happen and would the potential result could be, which of course lead him to thinking about how his powers first manifested. As hard as it was, he pushed those thoughts away and tried to focus on the task at hand. They had to find their friends and the children, failure wasn't an option.

He touched his comm as he kept searching for any signs of life. "Anyone have any luck yet?"

Callisto shook her head, frowning. "Nothing's cutting through the ambient noise for me," she said.

"Nada." Lorna said after Callisto and stopped searching when she hit a dead end and came back.

"I have something." The labyrinth here wasn't easy for her to search through - a mixture of man made and natural tunnels and caverns, her sense of things had been shaken up with the collapse. She had to work through areas slowly, her connection to the earth slowly identifying the new terrain.

"There's a cavern that way, I think it has people in it." She could feel the weight of something on the ground, something that wasn't more rock and mud and stone.

"Over there, let's search that area pronto, but be careful." He indicated to the area where Amara had sensed the cavern, though they'd have to be careful not to make a bigger mess of the situation, or, worse yet, to bury themselves in with all of the earth around them.

Lorna walked over to the area where the cavern was pointed out. "I think I can move it." Touching the ground, "It will be a task but I think I can." Lorna stood up, "Back up please." Looking at her team-mates before focusing on the ground, this was probably a bad idea. The green magnetic energy flowed out of her hands forming extended arms, as she started to clear the earth.

As the ground emptied, she began to sway backward, and Callisto rushed forward, catching her under the arms. "I gotcha," she muttered, craning her neck to look down into the emptied area.

The moment enough of the stones moved to make a collapse unlikely, Bishop began to shove some big boulders out and down the pile. He bulldozed his way through the opening and out, taking lead to make sure they wouldn't risk hurting the children by any stones accidentally rolling back in.

"Is it clear?" Vanessa waited for an affirmative before shooing Johnny through the small tunnel that Lucas and the others had created. Then, with her arms hooked under Sue's, she slowly backed out of the caved in cavern and through the tunnel. She stopped part way as some dirt came loose and crouched over the unconscious girl to make sure she didn't get hit by any potential rocks, then she continued her slow shuffle out.

"She blacked out after she saved us from the collapse," the metamorph explained when she and the girl cleared the tunnel.

"Alright then, let's get them both out of here and back to the mansion." Sam was glad to hear she was just blacked out, and hopefully she'd be coming around again soon. Taking the kids to the mansion seemed like the best idea at this point in time, and they could notify the children's father while they were en route of their destination.

Leaning against Callisto, "Glad everyone is okay." Lorna stood up straight, but tired. "Yes, lets get back."