Doug's hands should've been hurting, but honestly? Painkillers were so his best friend in the entire world at the moment. He'd popped one before tucking the bottle carefully into his pocket and heading for the rec room.

This was where his determination to not let things ruin his life had kind of keeled over and died.

He'd come down with every intention of watching TV, or at least sitting and reading whatever book someone had left laying around. He'd picked up the TV remote from the coffee table only to drop it. Repeat five or six times before tears of frustration welled in his eyes and he slumped down on the nearest couch.

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: Doug and a crazy woman
What: Torture
When: Backdated to Wednesday evening
Where: Where they're being held
Rating: PG-13ish

Doug had lost track of what day it was. He'd lost track of the concept of a day. Easy to do, really, when your life had so quickly become a fight for survival.

He was one of the luckier ones, if by "luckier" you meant "least bothered." That worried him, actually. He was a mutant, so why hadn't they inflicted their creativity on him? But another part of him, a very guilty part, was grateful that he had such a comparatively uninteresting ability.

He should've known his luck would run out.

( Cut for mild torture )

Doug didn't want to get up, he really didn't. He was quite happy being sound asleep. Being sound asleep meant he didn't have to deal with... with...

Aw, hell.

Even just half distractedly thinking about it had woken him up.

He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He could barely remember what had happened, which was frustrating beyond belief. He knew he'd been at the museum, showing a couple of the kids an exhibit that was one of his favorites, but that was where clarity and his memory parted ways.

He bolted upright. The kids! Darren. Was Darren all right? Were the others all right? He had to get to them. Somehow. Not that he knew how, but he was resourceful...

Only not nearly resourceful enough, as the collar around his neck reminded him.

[Open to whoever wants to have gotten tossed in with him.]

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.))

Marie-Ange hadn't been out and about very much. When she had heard about all of the fighting, she had stayed in her room and tried to be low key. She wasn't one who handled confrontation well and she was almost painfully shy sometimes.

However, she had heard that there were several new arrivals and she decided that she should leave her room and get to know more people. After all, when she first arrived, she had been treated nicely and welcomed like she belonged here.

It was really the least she could do.

It turned out that her way of welcoming new people was to bake things and that would be why she was in the kitchen baking a large batch of brownies.

A very large batch.

Doug wasn't quite sure how he felt about the little conversation he'd had with Marie-Ange in her journal. Happy, yes. Optimistic, even. But also a little confused. This wasn't terribly unusual for Doug, though; he was often confused, especially if it involved girls.

At the moment, though, he wasn't thinking about much of anything except the documentary he was watching on TV. In keeping with his giant dorkitude, he'd found a documentary on the history of computers. Wasn't learning anything he didn't already know, of course, but it was still fascinating.

And, Doug being Doug, he was so caught up in the documentary that he didn't hear when someone else finally walked into the room. Though really, he should've been expecting it. There wasn't an empty rec room for very long.

Rachel didn't allow herself to feel boredom much of the time because she feared it would cause a lapse in her control.

Having lost both her mom (again) and the Professor when things went horribly wrong, she found herself constantly on edge -- waiting for a sign that someone else was going to attack them.

She had spent some time visiting old places that she remembered while the Institute was being rebuilt. When she knew it was opening again, it was the most natural thing for her to come back and settle in. She would be taking classes here -- as well as watching out for the place. She thought of herself as a bit of secret security system for the place.

After all, she knew what the future she had come from was like with the Institute gone and most of its denizens dead. She didn't want to see that happen. It was a surprise to her that Logan was the headmaster of the school now, but she decided that it was fitting. Sometimes the leaders of peace were those that knew war the best.

Shaking her head free of those thoughts, Rachel made her way outside. The sun was shining nicely for a change and she wanted to enjoy it as long as she was able to.

Marie-Ange hadn't done much exploring of the institute since she had arrived. She had spent most of her time focusing on her classes and then working with her powers in her room. However, she knew that she would have to learn the layout of the place sooner or later. Her cards said she would sooner -- and Kitty wanted her to start sessions in the Danger Room so they could measure the extent of her abilities and what she would need help training on.

This would be why she was slowly exploring halls and the rec room late this afternoon. She figured most people were still in classes or busy elsewhere so she wouldn't be bothering anyone as she took her own personal tour of her new home.

Doug being Doug, he'd been in the library for the better part of the day. Hey, what was an unemployed twenty-something to do when he didn't have classes? Well, an unemployed twenty-something like Doug, that is. Normal guys would probably be out having something resembling a social life.

Ah, well.

Doug's token nod towards being social was that he didn't have his earbuds in and his iPod going. For Doug, this was the equivalent of an open door. It was known pretty much Institute-wide that a Doug without earbuds in meant a Doug you wouldn't be interrupting at something important.

Not that he was paying attention to anything outside of the books he was paging through as he translated a document from Latin into English. He could read it, of course, but sometimes it was much more fun to do it the so-called normal way.