rogue. (absorptions) wrote in age_of_miracles, @ 2008-02-04 14:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | friends of humanity, iceman, max whitaker, pyro, rogue, ronnie drake |
Log: Iceman, Pyro, Rogue, Ronnie, and Max
Who: John Allerdyce, Marie Allerdyce, Bobby Drake, Ronnie Drake, and Max Whitaker
When: January 26 [backdated]
Where: Who knows. Some dusty room… somewhere… where the FOH keeps their toys.
What: You lock John, Bobby and Rogue in a room together and someone gets shot. Obviously.
Rogue woke up with what she thought was a hangover. That made perfect sense. She must have gone out, gotten so drunk that she didn’t remember getting drunk, and was now paying the price for it in the form of feeling like someone had whacked her over the back of the head.
Of course, if that was the case, someone had left her on a hard, dusty floor to sleep it off, in which case, she was going to have to smack her husband when she found him.
With a groan, Rogue pushed herself up off the ground, rubbing at her forehead and squinting as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. She didn’t have a clue what time of day it was ---- thanks to a lack of windows ---- but that didn’t immediately throw her, considering she was used to that from the Lair. Still, this wasn’t the Lair. It wasn’t all metal for one thing. And, for another, she didn’t think someone would unceremoniously dump her somewhere random in the Lair. Maybe. Hopefully.
Another groan and she gave the room she was in a slow look around… and blinked when she saw she wasn’t alone. Was that Bobby? And… shit. Crawling across the floor, she gave John a hard shake. “John. Get up.”
John gave a dull groan in response and slumped over onto his back. He was bundled up in his winter gear but still freezing, and he felt like someone had smacked him in the head with a fucking two-by-four. "Babe, I..." He must have been on the floor in their room, having fallen out of bed. His meeting with Bobby had been a dream and it was ten in the morning. Right? Of course.
Shifting, he looked down at himself and realized .. huh. he was fully dressed. Uncool. He looked around at the walls... not his walls. The lighting wasn't their room. Looked at Rogue, she looked freaked out. And then he saw Bobby. So that wasn't a dream. He just wished he could remember exactly what happened.
"What the fuck..."
He wasn't sure what hurt more. The time when Stryker tried to kill them all with a duplicate Cerebro or this. He remembered very little. Just that he saw John hit the ground and then Rogue and then it was all dark.
And now it was cold. Pretty damn cold at that, which was odd. He never truly got cold. It was impossible given his mutant abilities and where he sat on the ability scale. But whatever he was laying on was hard and cold. Maybe this was a test and he was back at school in the Danger Room. That was it. That had to be it.
With a muffled groan, he pushed himself up to rest against one elbow. Blinking a few times, he rubbed a cold hand against his face and let the scene register. He was there...with Rogue...and John. No. This was no Danger Room scenario. Not at all.
With a sigh, he shook his head and laid back down on his side. Maybe he'd wake up from whatever twisted dream he was having.
“I don’t know…” Rogue said with a frown, answering John’s question first. She really didn’t know. She’d thought, when she saw John hit with a dart, that this was some sort of set up by the X-Men, as much as it pained her to think that. And that had been reinforced a second later when she was hit and Bobby was left standing. But having already seen Bobby in this strange room with them sort of put a wrench in that idea. That and the X-Men weren’t really into cold, dark rooms to keep their hostages locked up… as far as she knew anyway.
“Are you okay? You hit the ground pretty har---“ She paused, in the middle of brushing his hair back, hearing a sigh and twisted slightly to look back at Bobby. “Bobby?”
"Oh, fuck." John rubbed at his face, gave himself a few little smacks as he tried to wake himself up from this ridiculous dream. "What the fuck is going on?" It wasn't the X-Men, because Bobby was here... and it obviously wasn't the Brotherhood because they were there. So in terms of likely possibilities, it had to be the Friends of Humanity.
"Bobby, I swear to God, I'm gonna kill you for this." Because, obviously, it was Bobby's fault that they were in this situation, not John's. John had only been the one to start the fight, after all.
"Yeah, because that makes all the sense in the world," he muttered, his face buried against his arm. Friends of Humanity. Not good. Not good at all. He brought a hand up and felt against the inside of his collar for the panic button, but wasn't surprised to not find it. He was sure the Friends of Humanity had taken it so they wouldn't be found so easily.
He finally sat up, drawing in a long breath and shook his head, rubbing against his forehead. His head still hurt and his ears were ringing a bit, but he was sure that would go away soon. "Just...shut up, John. If we don't try and fight, we may get out of here alive." Which...was really questionable, but it was the best Bobby could come up with.
Rogue sighed, shutting her eyes and rocking back on her heels. “Stop.” Before they went for each other’s jugulars and made a really fucked up situation even more fucked up. This was like some scene from Hostel or Saw or something and if she hadn’t gotten used to living underground at the Lair, she’d probably be seriously freaked out… more so than she already was. “Bitching at each other isn’t going to help anything.
She got back to her feet, scanning over the room for … something. There was a door, but somehow she doubted it was unlocked. No windows. One vent, but it was the size of a shoebox and none of them were fitting through that. And there didn’t seem to be anything around they could fashion a weapon out of. Still, she went to try the door, jiggling the handle, not surprised when it didn’t turn.
"Great. So we have no fucking idea where we are, we're stuck together, and we don't know if anyone's going to let us out. We don't even know if there's a source of air..." John reached into his pocket for his lighter.. only to find it was missing. He fumbled for it, then patted his arms to see if he'd somehow missed the ignitors that he wore. No, those were most obviously gone, too. "Bobby, can't you try to... fuck. Come on. Bring the door to sub-zero temperatures and break it down or something."
Bobby motioned to the vent on the ceiling and then back to John. "Air." At least for the time being anyway. Then again, it could be noxious air that was slowly eating away at their lungs and insides and would cause them a rather slow and soon-to-be painful death.
Bobby didn't want to think about that and immediately rubbed a hand against his throat. He couldn't get himself worked up or panicked now. He was the X-Man here. Not Rogue and John. He had to take control of the situation and...that other stuff Scott had taught them when they were junior X-Men.
But he moved to the door, held out his hands and...nothing. Not even a flake or two of ice from his fingers. "...What the?" Maybe it was just the stress. He had to focus.
Shaking everything else off, he tried again, hands pressed against the door and...still nothing. Not even skin turning a slight shade of blue.
"...I can't do it."
Rogue started worrying her lip as soon as she realized that Bobby’s powers didn’t seem to be working. Crap. Was it possible that someone had actually deactivated his powers? If so, they were even more screwed than they already were, what with John sans lighter and Bobby sans powers. “Are you sure? Are you positive? This is important, Bobby.” She was acting like he didn’t already know that. But, if they were stuck in here, it meant that she wasn’t sure if it’d be better or worse if whoever had put them in here came back for them.
She glanced to John, wincing. “Maybe we start trying to kick the door down?” She didn’t know what else they could do.
John was just bullheaded enough and just freaked enough to actually do it. Well, he didn't kick. He stepped back, sniffing and shoving up his sleeves... and then he was racing at the door at full force with his right shoulder.
Bad idea.
"Fuck!" John crumpled to the floor a few moments later, holding his arm and almost crying with pain. The jolt had shot down to his broken hand and wasn't that lovely... and on top of that, he felt like he'd just dislocated his shoulder. Really smart idea, Pyro. Really fucking smart. "That really----oh God! That door is motherfucking solid..." He rolled over onto his side and curled up, whining.
"Jesus Christ!!" He kicked out, slamming his feet into the door. Once, twice, three times. "Why does this always happen?! Why does this always fucking happen? God! I can't be locked up anymore, I can't be motherfucking locked up and depowered again!" Maybe he was a bit traumatized from prison. Just a bit. He started laughing----or, well. It was hard to tell if he was laughing or sobbing. "I am going to kill someone, I swear to god..."
"If you keep doing stupid stuff like that, you'll just end up in worse shape." Which was fairly true. But Bobby did frown. He'd never really seen John like this before and it wasn't settling well with him. What made it worse was that he really couldn't do anything to help him. He hated being in such a position, but he went quiet.
After all, if John was in the killing mood, he didn't want to be the person John went after.
"I'm sure the professor and the X-Men are already looking for us. And I'm sure Magneto has people out looking for you. If we behave and don't do anything stupid, maybe we'll just be left alone."
Sure. Like that was going to happen.
Rogue winced and opened her mouth to snap that John needed to remember that he had a broken hand and stop doing idiotic things to aggravate it when he started ranting and raving about all this happening again. “Calm down,” she said softly, touching his shoulder. “You’re already in bad enough sh---”
Pausing, she glanced up at Bobby, frowning. “If Magneto realizes we’re missing.” He was a little busy, after all. And she and John had been living out of the Lair. And they had a tendency to pick up and doing their own thing anyway. So it might be awhile before anyone realized they were missing. But at least Bobby was right about Xavier ---- the Professor would definitely notice Bobby was gone and do something about it.
Her frown deepened and she shook her head. “I really doubt we were kidnapped so that whoever took us could just let us hang out here as long as we behave.”
John wasn't listening and that so wasn't making the situation any better. He wasn't calm, his heart was racing, and he was kicking at the door while cradling his injured arm to his chest. He was raving, screaming like he must have screamed in prison, with that insane sobbing laughter that suggested he was so incredulous about the situation that he just snapped.
---Which, of course, made the whole thing worse and didn't contribute at all to the escape plan.
"Yeah. I know. I just..." Bobby paused and sighed, leaning back against the solid wall. "I was just trying to..." He really didn't know what he was trying to do. Help John out? Calm John down? Maybe.
No. That's definitely what he was trying to do. Pushing himself off the wall, he made his way over to Rogue and John and kneeled down next to them, shaking his head. "Did he dislocate it? His shoulder?" Bobby wasn't going to touch John or anything, but if they could put his shoulder back, that might help whatever was wrong. If that was what was wrong to begin with.
What a time to not bring precautionary supplies like a splint and gauze.
Bobby glanced over at Rogue and nodded. "I'm sure the professor would look for you and John, too whether Magneto was or not."
Rogue shook her head a little, hand hovering over John’s shoulder ---- he was seriously freaking her out with the way he was cracking. And still, between his comment about being locked up again and all the things he hadn’t said about his time in prison, she seemed to be acutely aware that it was somehow related. “I don’t know. Maybe,” she said to Bobby about John’s shoulder.
She wanted to shake him and get him to snap out of it, but didn’t want to jar his shoulder if it was truly dislocated. Instead, she gave him a hard slap against his cheek, grabbing his chin to make him look at her. “Stop it.” The last thing they needed was someone coming in here pissed off because he was screaming and kicking at the door.
The slap seemed to jar John out of something and he gasped, his eyes snapping up to Rogue. "What the fuck did you do that for?! Uncool! Seriously. What the fuck. Ow."
Bobby couldn't help but smirk when Rogue slapped John. If things were different, he would have applauded her. But, as it stood, now was not the time to be taking jabs at John.
Especially when the lock clicked on the door opened up. It was a moment before a rather familiar face walked inside and Bobby, had he been standing, would have fallen backwards.
"...R-Ronnie?!" Bobby's little brother nodded, though he couldn't quite make eye contact with his brother or the two on the floor. "What's wrong with him?" Ronnie asked, nodding down to John, his hand resting heavily on a gun sitting on his hip. He was ready to fire at John and Rogue if they tried anything. Bobby...he still wasn't sure about.
“Because you’re being a---” Rogue broke off mid-sentence when the door opened. It took her a second or trying to place Ronnie --- she definitely had seen this kid before --- before it clicked. Oh, crap. Bobby’s little brother. “What the f---”
She’d figured by now that, if it wasn’t the X-Men who had taken them that the next most likely culprit were some renegade members of the Friends of Humanity, but she didn’t know where Ronnie fit into that theory or if his presence just shot that theory all to hell. Glaring at him, and the gun on his hip, she addressed Bobby instead of Ronnie. “Why’s your kid brother holding us hostage in---” Yeah, that was a problem: she didn’t actually know where the hell they were.
John's eyes narrowed. He was in a murderous mood and a lot of pain and this was motherfucking ridiculous. "Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? You're the one who ratted us out to the cops. You're the one who ratted out your own big brother----why? Because you were scared? Because you were jealous that your brother was special and you weren't---? Do you feel like a real badass now?" He'd brought himself up to his feet his arm hanging limply at his side... but, honestly, that really didn't keep him from sucker-punching Ronnie in the nose with his left hand.
"John!" Bobby moved to take a step forward and stop when John hit his younger brother. Sure, he had ratted Bobby out and called the cops on them and was now a member of the very organization they were again. But he was still his brother and he didn't want John to kill him or anything.
He would probably do that later when he straightened his all out.
Ronnie wasn't expecting a punch and immediately stumbled backwards, holding his now bleeding nose. "...Damn...freak!" Ronnie stood up, pulling his hands away from his face, covered in blood. "You'll be so sorry for that! You won't leave here alive!"
"Ronnie! Knock it off! What the hell are you talking about?" Bobby moved forward, took hold of his brother's shoulders and gave him a good, hard shake. "You don't want to run with these people!" Ronnie spit a bit of blood against Bobby's uniform and pushed him away, wiping at his still bleeding nose. "Shut the hell up, Bobby! You wouldn't understand!"
Rogue's first instinct, once she saw John take a swing at Ronnie, was to grab him arm ---- injured or not ---- and yank him back. "Are you crazy," she hissed. "He has a gun." Ronnie's first instinct apparently wasn't to pull the gun, but John hadn't know that and the last thing they needed was anyone getting shot right now. But Ronnie seemed distracted enough, and this might be as good a time as any to make a break for it.
But her attention shifted to Ronnie and Bobby's conversation and she frowned. Ronnie being a part of the Friends of Humanity would explain a lot. Like how he'd managed to knock all three of them out and get them here. But, still, she started, "Running with what peop---" Only to be cut off by the sound of a safety clicking off on a gun.
"What the fuck are you doing, Ronnie?" Max already had his doubts about Ronnie's ability to follow through on all this and finding him having some kind of fucked-up heart-to-heart, or whatever they were doing, with his brother wasn't helping. Max was determined to kill someone, and if this group got away because of Ronnie, he was going to declare Ronnie a mutant-loving sonofabitch and kill him.
John was busy whining softy, his arm in incredible pain-----but there was Max Whitaker, and suddenly... oh, suddenly it all made sense. The son of a bitch who broke his had, who'd made Rogue crazy with all the shit up in his brain. It didn't occur to him that after the way Max had been held this was completely fair play. Instead of going after him, John snickered, puffing up his bravado.
"Is this your new apprentice, Max? Some pussy-boy baby brother who doesn't know what he's doing? You're so badass I don't think I can stand it." He laughed through his pain and fear, holding his arm protectively. "You're not all pissed off about what we did to you, are you? You are... and you're dampening our powers. Cute. Isn't that kind of cowardly considering you managed to kick my ass when I had my powers? Don't tell me you lost your balls between then and now."
He scuffed his feet along the floor, turned his head, and spat. He had a nasty taste in his mouth. "I think it's pretty stupid that someone so full of neohumanist pride would think it's necessary to bring a few mutants down to human level in order to beat them... that's just admitting your fear and our superiority, jackass."
"You shut up!" Ronnie piped in, refusing to look at Bobby, who looked slightly worried, but moreso dumbfounded and shocked. It didn't help that John and Rogue apparently had a history with this Max guy and he definitely didn't seem like the type of guy who was going to fool around.
Ronnie pulled his own gun out and pointed it towards John, his hands shaking and the safety still held tight on the weapon. "You ruined our lives! You ruined everything! All of you did!" The younger Drake brother was shaking and finally managed to click the safety off of his gun, ignoring the blood dripping out of his nose.
"Ronnie...don't be stupid." Ronnie kept his focus on John and Rogue, still refusing to look his brotherin the face. "You ruined Mom, Bobby. You broke her heart when you came home with these freaks. She didn't even come to my last hockey game of the season because she didn't know what to do with herself. Your broke ou---no. You broke my family, you damn freak!"
And without another moment of hesitation, Ronnie turned the gun on his older brother and pulled the trigger. The bullet whizzed past Bobby's shoulder, skiming the heavy leather material and lodged itself in to the back wall.
"John --- don't." Rogue had gone completely white when she saw Max. With Ronnie, she figured he looked hesitant to do anything to Bobby and maybe they could talk their way out of this. With Max... not so much. Or at all. And John pissing him off wasn't going to make anything better... it was going to get them all tied down with splinters being shoved under their fingernails. She was literally gripping John's arm, forgetting that it was injured. And that grip got tighter and tighter up until the moment that Ronnie's gun went off.
"Jesus Chr----" Her eyes swung back to where the bullet hit the wall, then back to Bobby.
"Shut up." Max gestured at Ronnie with his gun. "Let's go, Ronnie, unless you want me to leave you locked in here." Then he raised the gun and pointed it at John. "You, shut the fuck up, unless you want a bullet in your head. Or ---" The gun moved a little lower, pointed in Rogue's direction. "Your choice, if you want to keep mouthing off, asshole."
John held up his good hand, taking a step in front of Rogue. "I'm quiet. Not sayin' a damn word," he mumbled. His own safety be damned, but he wasn't going to let Rogue get shot because he was being an asshole. That just wasn't right.
John may have gone quiet with Rogue, but Bobby was still in shock over his brother. Especially considering he had just fired a gun at him, but he had missed and whether or not it was intentional, he still missed. Maybe he wasn't all lost with whatever the FoH was feeding him.
"Ronnie. Come on. Just...don't do this. It's not worth it. Think about Mom, all right? She wouldn't want her son in jail for this. Or worse..." Since Bobby knew, once they were found, things would get much worse for Ronnie.
Ronnie shook his head, finally turning to face his brother, gun still drawn and aimed pointedly at Bobby. "Shut up! She's not your Mom, so don't call her that! And it won't get worse because no one's going to find you!" And he fired his gun again, the bullet not missing it's target this time.
Bobby immediately fell hard on his back from the sudden shock of the shot with a cry of pain as he grabbed hold of his right shoulder.
Ronnie stared down at his brother, breathing hard and gripping the gun so tightly that his knuckles were white. He turned his attention to Rogue and John, aiming his own gun at them. "What now Max?"
"Jesus Christ!" John jumped back against Rogue, jerking his hands up to cover his ears. "Bobby----? Bobby?!"
Fuck. Fuck, he was down. He was down and he was dead, Bobby was dead----or.. no. John peered over but didn't dare move. Shoulder wound. Okay. Okay. He wasn't dead. John felt his heart start to beat again. For all his talk about wanting to kill Bobby, the last thing he wanted was for Bobby to up and get shot by his little brother.
John was torn between jumping on Ronnie and beating the snot out of him----and doing what he did, which was stand there, staring. "You're serious. Okay. We get it."
Rogue literally screamed when she saw Bobby drop. It was completely out of raw instinct, and was more of a sharp, quick, shocked noise.
“Ronnie, get out of here,” Max practically growled. Dead people weren’t any fun to torture, and Ronnie seemed to be getting trigger happy. If their three hostages dropped dead from blood loss there wasn’t going to be any torturing. He grabbed Ronnie by the arm and all but shoved him out the door. “Out.”
He listened, Ronnie, as he let Max push him out the door. He had snapped. He had swore to himself he wouldn't be able to hurt Bobby when he saw him, but after everything that had happened and all that had been said, he needed to get rid of his brother.
Bobby carefully rolled to his left side and managed to push himself up and to his feet. He was squeezing his shoulder hard, trying to get pressure on the wound. He, at least, knew that much, but as to how to get the bullet out, well, that was another story. He'd never been shot before as his ice form usually proved that to be difficult.
He had a right mind to just shove Max in to the wall and let John and Rogue try and escape, but that would have been careless and would have just caused them more problems.
John watched Bobby closely and didn't even have the time to notice the irony in that the span of fifteen minutes, both he and Bobby had taken out their right shoulders. "So... what. You're going to just keep us here as your little pets and torture us?" he asked, glancing back at Rogue. Turnabout was fair play. Well, shit. "You'd better get Bobby some medical attention, Max, or else he won't be any fun. And while you're at it, popping my shoulder back in place would be nice, too."
God, he had to learn how to shut the hell up. He knew that.
Rogue hadn’t moved at all --- she was too sick to her stomach and, frankly, scared to death to do more than blink. And even that was something she had to force herself to remember to do. Still, she forced herself to whisper, “John, shut up.” White as a ghost and her lips pressed together, she knew John had a tendency to mouth off. And she knew that Max didn’t need a reason to fuck them up.
“You can live through a shitload more than this, Pyro,” Max said with a quick smile, using the name mockingly, snorting in derision at Bobby’s wound. “Isn’t that right?” The last was directed at Rogue and he fired a shot at her feet, purposely missing, but startling her enough that she stumbled back and landed hard on her ass.
Max snorted again, leaving the same way Ronnie had, kicking the door shut behind him with a bang.
John watched the door close and then glanced down at Bobby. "...Well, this sucks."