InsaneJournal

BOOM! at the Smithsonian (Saturday, May 21)
Though most of the week had been rainy, Saturday was shaping up to be a nice, sunny day. The change in weather had brought tourists and locals alike out of hiding, and the mall was buzzing with activity. The students and chaperons of the Xavier Academy were spread throughout the mall and museum buildings, having agreed upon times to meet up and check in before being sent off to see as much as possible in the time they had. By about an hour after lunchtime, a lot of them had breezed through at least one of the museums and were headed on to their scheduled tours or to their next destination.

Few, if any, really noticed the young man crossing the grass in front of the castle, wearing nothing that identified him as a member of any of the numerous school groups on the grounds that day. He was obviously disoriented, sweating profusely and staggering as he made his way out of the castle and across the mall. He stumbled once and nearly fell to his knees before he recovered, which prompted a girl nearby to stop and take notice of him. She asked him if he needed help, laid a hand on his shoulder as he turned wide, pain-filled eyes on her...and then they both disappeared in a blast of heat and light that ripped across the mall like a tiny nuclear explosion.

The people nearest the blast were incinerated almost instantly, though the heat dissipated away quickly as a concussive blast rolled across the lawn, tossing people in front of it like rag dolls thrown by a giant's hand. The west wing of the castle simply buckled at the impact, stone toppling down to crush the dozens of unsuspecting tourists in and around it before they even had time to register the explosion. The east wing buckled and groaned dangerously as well, its collapse simply slower and less complete as the shock wave continued on, buckling walls and foundations, blowing out windows and bringing down sections of roof in the buildings beyond.

But even as the initial explosion finally reached its limit, a domino effect magnified the chaos as hundreds of powered tourists, adults and children alike, reflexively powered up in response to the catastrophe, some of them losing control entirely. There were smaller explosions and tongues of flame here and there among the ruins as dust swirled in the air, and it was only a matter of moments before the first sirens began to wail in the distance. At the scene of the disaster, though, the sound of them was lost almost completely in the sound of panicked voices crying out in fear and pain.


(OOC: Please create sub-threads below for the events and immediate aftermath. Feel free to actually play out the actual explosion and how your character responds or to simply do a narrative of what happened to them and move to the aftermath if you're more comfortable with that. Remember, there's about a ten minute window of opportunity for heroism before local emergency responders and SHIELD will be on site and beginning to take over, though the cadets will definitely be co-opted into the rescue effort. The worst injured will, initially, be taken to area hospitals once rescued, but the Academy students will, once stable, be transported back to the school's med center for continuing treatment there. Parents are, of course, welcome to take their children home for treatment if they desire, but between the school and the SHIELD facility attached to it, they have access to pretty much the best healers in the country. This does, however, still mean a relatively slow recovery for anyone with severe injuries given the general caliber of even exceptionally talented healers does not begin to compare to the very very few omega healers scattered across the globe.)

ETA: GUYS, WE KINDA SUCK AND FORGOT TO TELL YOU THAT THEY GOT BUSED UP TO DC FRIDAY AFTER SCHOOL so they could have all of Saturday at the Smithsonian, and thus why they already got to see cool stuff Saturday before boom rather than spending it all on a bus. Also, for sleeping arrangements, if your roomie went you got matched up with them plus the 2 others you share a suite with (so 4 to a room, and if you have no PC/NPC roomies then NPCs will have taken the spots), other than the chaperons who got spread around in singles for supervisory purposes. Sorry!