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: Kitty, NPC!Guards (Tall One and Short One), Lab Coat
What: Playing Russian Roulette With Kitty
When: Afternoon/Evening
Notes: Thanks to Mands and Jen for helping me with this

( Kitty wasn't asleep when they came to get her. )

[Open to whomever wants to say they were thrown in the cell with Kitty]


Kitty was slow to return to consciousness. As she started doing so, she realized that her head hurt and she felt sick to her stomach. She also felt cold from the floor she was laying face down on. Now, unfortunately, this waking up with a headache so severe that she wanted to dig out her brain was not an entirely unfamiliar feeling. God knows that she had gotten drunk enough times with Tamsin that she woke up wanting to die the next morning,

"Tam?" She couldn't make her voice work and her tongue felt entirely too thick in her mouth. Holy hell, what had the two of them done the night before? "Tam?" She tried again.

There was nothing but silence to meet her call for her best friend. She lifted her head up and that was when two things became abundantly clear.

One, there was a freight train that had taken up residence in her skull. Two, this was not her room back at the institute. As she forced her eyes to open more, she could see that she seemed to be in some kind of cell somewhere.

A cell?

As she tried to lift herself up, she could feel the muscles in her body trembling. Everything felt so heavy. Trying not to whimper from pain, she managed to roll slowly onto her back so that she could at least see more of her surroundings. Reaching up to rub her throat, her hand came in contact with something cold and heavy. Her other hand flew up in shock to invstigate as well.

A collar? There was some kind of metal collar around her neck. As she examined it, memories of the attack at the museum came flooding back.

"Oh you assholes," she growled as she realized that she had been kidnapped from the field trip. She remembered feeling the stings from darts or needles or something, and deduced that the drugs were why she was feeling so sick and weak.

Well, that wouldn't do. She'd phase herself out of here and get away. Then she'd bring the cavalry in to take care of whomever had done this to her.

The problem with this was that when she sat up,her head swam as she fought the dizziness. The other problem was that when ashe tried to phase... she couldn't.

"No," she whispered. "Oh no." She tried to phase again, and again nothing happened.

She was in serious trouble if she couldn't phase.

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.))

Mikhail had become somewhat of a nocturnal creature the past few years. He figured it was something to do with there being fewer people out and about and as a result, it was the best time for him to do all the thinking he didn't want to do during the day. And most of the emo.

He was characteristically quiet as he walked down the hall, making his way from the rec room back to his room. He'd spent most of the day either doing typical teenager things -- though there'd also been an hour-long stretch where Kitty had unleashed him on her motorcycle just to keep him busy and out of her hair. And then he'd done some work with his powers in the Danger Room.

He preferred working in a natural, actual environment, but his power didn't always allow for that. He had to take what he could get, sadly. so while he wasn't terribly thoughtful as he made his way down the hallway, he was restless.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse after a couple weeks of warm temperatures, so Jubilee was bundled up in her dayglo yellow trenchcoat.

She definitely didn't need any caffeine, but Rogue was her best friend and they hadn't gone out in a while.

((So, we shall pretend Jubes did this all for April Fools Day; PLEASE feel free to have Institute residents react))

If Jubilee ever applied herself to her studies the way she applied herself to general mayhem, she'd be a straight A student. She was quite content with a B average.

Armed with a head full of mischief and a few choice props she set to work.

She'd dug out an old cellphone that was useless without a calling plan, but that didn't mean it didn't work, especially since she still had the charging unit. She popped up a ceiling tile in the hallway where most of the classrooms were, set the alarm on the phone and plugged it in; without anyone to turn it off, it would keep ringing its annoying little guts out for an hour every day. At some point, if it wasn't found, she planned on changing the alarm time just to keep people on their toes.

The computer lab was next. With Kitty off plotting dangerous things, Jubilee methodically worked on each keyboard, all 20 of them, prying up the 1 2 3 7 8 and 9 keys off the keypad on the right, putting the lower numbers up top and the higher numbers below. Since that was the order they'd be in on a telephone's keypad, most people wouldn't give it a second look until they tried to use it and got the wrong numbers.

A few people got beef boullion cubes in their shower heads. Several more got marbles in their medicine cabinets.

Every TV she could get her hands on was locked to the Spanish channel.

Logan's laptop, left on the desk in his office, had its word processor's Auto Correct function messed with. Instead of replacing "teh" with "the," it would now replace "the" with "teh." Any time "Institute" was typed it would be replaced with "Brothel."

Her personal favorite was creating a macro on the computer so that anytime Logan would try to use the "back" button on his browser, it would take him to ILovePonies.com.

Then she sat back and waited for the lulz.