Consciousness was one of those things that seemed pretty shaky to one Bobby Drake by the time it finally decided to return to him. His arms felt heavy, as did his legs, and there was a throbbing somewhere... he couldn't quite pin down where and a very maddening itch that some part of his brain just knew he couldn't get to, so it was going to make the itching even worse just to spite him. Of course.

He shifted a little, coughing as his eyes still refused to open. He wasn't sure he wanted them to, though. What if they were still in that place?

( A little bit of confusion )

Who: The X-Men, abductees, NPC!Guards, NPC!Labcoats, Sentinels
What: rescue mission
When: Friday night
Rating: Gonna make this a strong R
Status: Open
Warnings: Rating is for violence, you know that'll happen in spades. It's going up now but don't feel like you need to tag in right away, while the action will only take place in the space of hours this'll be open all week to make sure everyone can get in and get their shit done.

Any questions? Shoot 'em our way.

((this post is extra-long because I tacked Brenna's torture scene on)

~~~~~

There had been no missions since the school had been rebuilt. It was almost unspoken that the X-Men needed to focus solely on their own after a time when so many of them had been lost inexplicably, and Logan had been loathe to break the status quo. Not really his usual state of being but his actions no longer affected just him.

( Read more... )



( Oh, was he begging? )

Who: NPC!Guards & Doctor, Bobby
What: Bobby and the new 'toy'
When: Mid-morning
Rating: PG-13
Status: Closed
Warnings: Long-ish, 2,300 words. Also, Bobby is very not well.

Bobby had barely had a chance to get himself together. His collar hadn't been removed since he arrived and he was steadily getting worse, more and more sick. He could barely keep his eyes open for a lot of the time, his head spinning constantly and his stomach twisting. He was coughing his lungs up when he was awake, flushed and near delirious with a fever that coursed through his veins, making him feel like he was burning up from the inside out. It was not a lot of fun.

( Doctors and Robots )

Who: John, NPC!Guards, NPC!Scientist & Bobby
What: John getting tested and causing problems
When: Morning
Rating: PG-13
Status: Closed
Warnings: Long, 7,555 words.


John had been hauled out of the cell by the scruff of his neck, quite literally.

He'd not gone easy, landing a couple good punches and managing to draw blood. Bobby slept like the dead, barely rousing as his friend created the most noise he could, John tried not to let that worry him as he fought against restraining hands and brutal pulls.

It took the two guards twice the time to get John to the lab than they'd had scheduled, grunting as the slight teenager continue to struggle. They were beginning to think they should have sedated him for this, the punch to his gut had barely slowed him down. The mutant had a scarily high pain threshold, apparently.

John murmured a few curse words as he continued to strain, jerking upwards the moment he was offloaded onto a bed, managing to take a nasty bite out of the nearby guard's ear, smiling a second later through a sheen of red as the man in question hollered in agony.

"Fuckin' mutie!" He snapped, forcing John back down with a hand around his throat. He closed his fingers, wanting to crush every smartass comment into the back of the mutant's throat, suffocate him with his own abusive sentiments.

John clawed at the guard's wrist, gasping and blinking his eyes hurriedly as his head began to spin. It was only when his struggles eased that the guard's grip loosened and a soft chortle could be heard. "Too bad that you gotta breathe just like the rest of us."

"Go... fuck yourself," John managed in a hoarse whisper.

( Mad Scientist )

[Thread OPEN to: Bobby]

After his rapid descent into unconsciousness it was a slow rise for John to regain the clarity that consciousness had to offer, although he could have done without the thudding in both his temples and the back of his skull. It had taken him longer than he felt was necessary to drag his limbs out from the awkward angles they must have fallen into when he'd gotten picked up and dragged to God only knew where. He licked his lower lip and grunted as he placed one palm, square to the ground, and lifted his weight.

Everything felt heavy, slow and uncoordinated.

It was through a swimming gaze that John registered the dank somewhat cramped conditions he found himself in. It didn't take him long to recognise what the bars meant, it was some sort of cell. He hissed in a slow breath as he finally pushed himself to his knees, panting slightly as that entire movement had taken way too much effort.

John turned his head and briefly looked around the cell, frowning as his eyes settled on a familiar figure still unconscious on the ground. "Bobby?" He said before crawling over, turning the other boy over, reassured that he seemed to be breathing, only to stop dead in his tracks when he noticed what was around Bobby's neck.

Huh?

It was then that John noticed an unfamiliar weight around his neck and he lifted callused fingertips to it, brow instantly furrowing as his skin met with cold metal, wrapped around his entire neck and pressed a little too tightly. "What the fuck..." he muttered before an onset of panic distracted him from wondering what the collar was for; something was missing. His hands sought his pockets for his lighter. It had to be here somewhere, he'd had it with him when he'd passed out, it had to be somewhere.

It took several minutes for the realisation that he didn't have his lighter to sink in and for a moment he was almost defeated, not that it lasted long as John's emotions boiled over quicker than a pan of water stuck on highest flame possible and a familiar surge of anger had the boy on his feet. He crossed the distance to where the door was and slammed his palm against it hard enough for the entire door to shake on its hinges.

"Hey!" He hollered. "Let us out of here, you assholes!" John kept hitting the door and even going so far as to slam his foot into it, not even flinching when he struck hard enough for bruises to form. "Hey! You can't keep us in here!" He growled deep in the back of his throat, continuing the assault on the door until he got some sort of attention whether it be bad or good.

Brenna had always had a thing for history, she was a bit of a nerd in that respect, so a trip to the history museum actually sounded like it might be fun. Granted, she'd have to keep an eye on some of the kids, but that was okay. And she actually enjoyed it when they asked questions and she found she could answer them; maybe there was something to this teaching thing after all? She'd never really been interested in that or kids before but a lot of things had changed since she'd come to Xavier's Institute.

The place was almost echoingly empty on a Friday afternoon, there weren't any other school groups exploring but theirs. It was rather nice to basically have the place to themselves.

She ended up taking a group of kids that weren't in Ororo's classes off to view the Egyptian exhibit. “Why did they wrap the bodies up like that?” Sarah asked, all but pressing her nose up against the glass to stare in at the sarcophagus. “And what's with all the weird pictures?”

“They wrapped the bodies to preserve them, the Egyptians believed in an afterlife where they'd need their bodies just like they did in life.” Brenna stepped up alongside the girl. “The pictures are their written language, they're called hieroglyphics. Each picture represents a word or a concept, usually related to the gods in some way; the Egyptians were deeply religious and included that in their every day lives.”

“I heard they stuck hooks up the dead guys' noses to squish up the brain so they could get it out,” Luke said, making a scary face.

Sarah wrinkled up her nose at him. “You're gross, Luke.”

“He's right, though,” Brenna told her. “Either that or they cut a hole in the back of the skull but they much preferred to leave the body otherwise intact. They also removed the internal organs and put them in canopic jars,” she said, pointing to a row of ceramic jars with various tops depicting gods like jackal-headed Anubis.

She looked around to do another swift head-count and immediately noticed two of the children, one being Jubilee, missing. “You guys seen Jubes or Frankie?” The other kids looked at each other and then at her, shrugging. “Go se,” she cursed in Mandarin. “Alright, let's go see if we can't find them.”

It wasn't until she turned as Sarah's hand was forcefully jerked out of hers that she realized something was terribly wrong. Her TK blossomed in her hands, crackling blue energy that was always there below the surface, but she didn't get a chance to use it. A cold metal collar clicked into place around her neck and the TK died along with the whisper of voices that was always shimmering just out of reach.

She felt the sharp prick of a needle and the last thing she saw before she went under was Sarah's pink hair, the little girl draped over the shoulder of a man dressed in black.

~~~~~~~~~

Jubilee had sneaked away with Brenna's group rather than pay attention to the Westward Expansion exhibit. American history had always bored her to tears, especially because she didn't consider it her history; even though thousands of Chinese immigrants had worked on the rail system out west, none of them had been her ancestors and she was much more interested in cool dead bodies.

After exploring the room with the Egyptian exhibit she'd hung around by the door, arms crossed over her chest while she blew bubbles with her gum. A hand tapped on her shoulder and she turned to find no one there. When she looked out into the hallway her eyes went wide but before she had time to shout or make another move she was already slumping down under the influence of some kind of sedative.

((You can either tack your posts onto this or make your own, it doesn't really matter.))

The kids had been waiting long enough, he'd been waiting long enough. Now that things were settled between him and Ororo and Scott, the equilibrium was balanced again and he wasn't ready to kill someone with little-to-no provocation, it was time to get things started.

The halls of the Institute were deathly quiet this early in the morning, everything dark and shadowed in the pre-dawn light just beginning to peek in through the windows. Logan had left Matty curled up in his bed (well, their bed now), grabbed a shower and a quick bite to eat in the kitchen on his way to issue an early-morning wakeup of epic proportions.

The door to the bedroom shared by John and Bobby flew open hard enough that it bounced back off the wall and was caught by Logan's hand before it could peg him in the face. "Rise and shine, ladies," he announced in a voice that was entirely too gleeful for the time of day.

[Thread OPEN to: Bobby & Gambit]

God only knew how many days had past since their "stunt" as the teachers liked to call it and still no punishment in sight. Not that John was worried, let them throw whatever they wanted at him, he wasn't going to apologise for a) having a mind of his own and b) standing up against a bunch of idiots. Not many people did that anymore.

He was currently stood outside of the school with Bobby after their last class of the day, cigarette clasped in one hand and lighter in the other. "Still can't believe Rogue ditched," John muttered around a mouthful of smoke, shaking his head. "Funny time to be sorting out her problems."

John flicked ash to one side and fell silent as he took another long exceedingly damaging drag of the cigarette, filter barely stopping any of the life threatening substances from getting into his lungs.

He was restless, more so than usual, feeling the school getting under his skin more than ever at the moment. It had something to do with being cooped up and another with feeling completely ill at ease, an outsider in what was supposed to be a place for likeminded people.

John exhaled smoke and watched as the tendrils first curled before slipping away into nothingness, swept away by the light breeze.

Shinji might not be thankful to his family for a lot of things, but the one thing he was thankful to them for was his ability to hold the attention of a crowd, that talent had so far put a roof over his head and put food on his table.

Currently he had a huddled mass of people watching the way in which he flung himself across concrete twisting and turning through the air with absolute no regard for his own personal safety. Most of it was natural talent, but the higher jumps were a direct result of gentle manipulations of the natural gravitational fields that surrounded every living and non-living thing.

It wasn't cheating, not if it brought more money in.

Besides it was all natural flexibility that had Shinji's back bending in the way it did and bruise after bruise in hours of training sessions that had his hands planting in the right spots to catch his weight and turn his body so he could perfectly execute one movement after another.

His body eventually twisted into a ball midflight, head lifting to flash a grin and wink at a couple young girls who simply flushed with colour and ducked their heads, giggling. Shinji's lips gave way to a smirk before he stretched his arms out and spread his fingers, breathing as he all but grabbed a hold of the force around himself and pulled inwards, drawing it close enough so it slowed his momentum and he landed in a perfect upright position.

The crowd cheered and Shinji merely broke away from his stationary position, grinning before giving a bow.

It started with a whimper. It always did. A whimper and a shiver and tossing and turning. Usually that was the extent of the night and the rest of the night was smooth sailing unless John had a dream that woke Bobby up. Not tonight though.

( No, tonight the temperature dropped. )

Sneaking down to the kitchen to get ice-cream was probably the last thing he should be doing, considering the trouble he was in, but he couldn't really make himself relax enough to sleep. He was fretting about Rogue, worrying about the punishment they were going to get - especially since the walk back had taken them ages too, trying to get that guy out of Rogue's system unsuccessfully - and most of all he was worried about John.

He stuck the spoon into the tub as he sat down at the table and scooped a rather large spoonful out, eyeing it for a moment before he figured 'screw it'. It wasn't like he could get brain freeze.

He had seen his room-mate briefly when he came back, smelling of bar. He had a bruise underneath his eye that Bobby knew about from the fight before, but anything more he hadn't seen. He supposed he should make sure that John was okay, but it was going to end up with some kind of argument, inevitably, because they always fought whenever Bobby expressed some kind of concern for John. And Rogue had spent the entire walk home snapping at him through the personality of the guy that she had absorbed, alternating between snarling at him in a New York accent and apologising in her own Southern one.

He stabbed the spoon into the ice-cream again and pursed his lips in thought. Suddenly he didn't want ice-cream anymore, and, besides, he thought he heard footsteps in the hallway outside.

As quickly as he got it out, the ice-cream was back in the freezer, spoon in the sink to be washed up in the morning and he high-tailed it out of the kitchen and back upstairs towards his room like his ass was on fire before he was caught. He wasn't much up for being yelled at for sneaking out, convincing Rogue to ditch classes and inadvertently being the cause of her problems. She wouldn't have snuck out if it wasn't for his inviting her.

Logan was going to kill him.

[Thread OPEN to: Bobby & Rogue]

It was a lazy afternoon, a few precious hours of freedom inbetween classes. Both John and Bobby were in the lounge, Bobby on the couch and John sprawled out on the floor as the other chairs were littered with bodies as apparently everybody else had, had the same idea. Not that John minded, the floor was comfortable.

As always John had his trusty lighter and was continually playing with it - flicking it open to display the flame for an all of five seconds before snapping it shut again, only to repeat the process all over again. "So," he drawled, tipping his head back to look at Bobby from beneath a strand of hair. "Can I actually convince your sorry ass to skip class and go to town with me?" It wasn't like they needed to go to their last class of the day, it wasn't that important.

John shifted, curling one of his legs up towards his chest and as a result he opened a tear of denim across his knee. "It's not going to kill you to miss one lesson, Bobby boy. You gotta live a little." His fingers drummed out a beat on his knee whilst his other hand played with that lighter again. "You might even have fun you never know."

"Just one lesson."

It shouldn't be as hard as it was. Ice was his gift (or curse if he was going to nick some emo lines from some emo superhero about how having superpowers sucked - which sometimes it kind of did, other times it didn't so much) and it frustrated the hell out of him that he couldn't control it.

The temperature in the room had dipped slightly, Bobby's concentration entirely focused on trying to recreate a twinkie out of ice that was the right size to go back inside the wrapper. It was an utterly pointless endeavour, just something that was meant to entertain him for a while whilst he waited for John to finish his assignment, but it was something.

An exercise in fine motor control or some other statement that meant him making an ice-twinkie was absolutely a valid use of his time.

It frustrated him that he could see what he wanted to make in his head, but he couldn't actually form it. He wished he could, but he couldn't. Not yet anyway.

The only decent things he could make were flowers and they were kind of boring. It was all well and good being able to make a rose or a daffodil out of ice, but Bobby was stumped when it came to replicating Matchbox cars or goddamned stupid twinkies.

They weren't even that oddly shaped!

Instead, the wrapper that Bobby had been trying to use ended up being launched in John's direction, and Bobby's attention went to trying to read.