Kitty was at the firing range.

The physical damage from the kidnapping had long been taken care of by Andrew. However, it was the mental and emotional damage that was harder to heal.

The nightmares were the worst and she had taken to doing her best to stay up all night so as not to fall asleep. When she couldn't do that, she found other places to nap that wasn't around people. She didn't want to bother Tamsin or Andrew with the nightmares and the reactions she had upon awakening. Add to it that she knew that Tamsin would be picking up on her emotions each time, and you had a cat that was acting like a kitten.

She was sure that the other victims had probably had worse done to them. She didn't know for sure because it wasn't like any of them had decided to all get together and talk about what had happened. Someone else would probably have to broach that subject because she sure wasn't.

The biggest change that could be noticed in Kitty was that since the rescue, she hadn't so much as left the grounds of the institute. She hadn't been doing her usual things like riding her bike or going skydiving.

But she was spending an awfully lot of extra time at the firing range.

Waking up was not something that Kitty knew if she wanted to do or not. Being awake meant she would feel the pain again. Being awake would mean that she would have to face the truth that she was in no condition to protect Jubilee or fight back against their captors without getting herself hurt worse. Having to wake up meant that she would have to deal with way too many things that she would rather not have to face -- including the fact that she was worried she was going to die before she'd see Andrew and the rest of her loved ones again.

Being awake meant dealing with the fear that it was getting harder and harder to pretend didn't exist.

The first thing that Kitty realized when she allowed herself to come closer to waking up was that she was warm. It was a nice warm, a good change from the coldness in the cell. The second thing she realized was that whatever she was laying on was a lot more comfortable than the cot or floor. When she opened her eyes, she found herself looking up into a ceiling that she vaguely recognized. It wasn't the same exact ceiling that she was used to growing up, but it was definitely similar.

She closed her eyes again for a moment, this time in relief. She hadn't been dreaming, then. They really had found them and brought them home.

She turned her head to the side and was surprised to see a head of brown hair laying on the bed next to her. Her arms felt heavy, but she still moved her hand to stroke his hair. She had been so scared she'd never see him again and even now, tears filled her eyes as she thought about it.

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.))

Logan was roaring mad. Literally. He'd gotten into the Danger Room before Ororo and if the walls hadn't been reinforced he'd have destroyed the damn room. He'd have to remember to thank Tony for that and the zombie program when he remembered how to think straight.

Once done killing a metric fuck-ton of undead he'd changed into looser clothes more suited to martial art training.

On a muted growl he sank down onto the hardwood floor of the gymnasium and began a meditation which he hoped would calm him down some before Kitty arrived.

Kitty was sitting on a small stool and doing some tuning up of her bike. Tamsin's bike was on the other side of hers and there were cloths and tools spread out within easy reach for both girls. Kitty had just happened to get down here first this morning. The competition was in the next few days and she wanted to make sure that the bikes were in prime condition for it.

She had just changed the oil in her bike, so she probably had a few dirty smudges on her cheeks somewhere. She wasn't really focused on that, though. She just wanted to make sure that there was nothing that could go wrong with her bike and get her in trouble during the battle.

And it was a battle. There were still a lot of men that didn't think girls had what it took to be bike racers, and Kitty took great pleasure in proving them wrong time and time again.

She did have some concern, though, because of the mutants being kidnapped and Brenna getting jumped. She didn't like any of that at all. However, she and Tam would be together, so they should be safe.

It didn't stop her from wondering if they should also get someone else to go with them, too.

It hadn't taken Kitty too long to decide on two movies to take with her to spend some time with Andrew. She grabbed "National Treasure" and "DaVinci Code" as she wasn't sure what kind of movie mood either one of them were in. Truth be told, she just wanted to spend some time with him, and she could care less what they watched.

She ran a brush through her hair and pulled it back in a quick twist that she knew would probably fall out before the night was over. As long as it was out of her face for awhile, she was happy. She took a minute to leave a quick note for Tamsin:

Tam --

I went to spend some time with Andrew.

If you need me, that's where I'll be. Also,
I left the registration forms for the derby
on your laptop. Mine's filled out, so get
yours done and we'll drop them off over
the weekend.

&hearts ,
Kitty

She left the note on Tamsin's bed, then she grabbed the movies and a few menus and headed out.

When she arrived at Andrew's door, she smiled slightly before knocking gently on the door.

For the second evening in a row, Kitty was out at the shooting range. It was where she had spent a great deal of time since dismissing her computer science class yesterday. No one had come near her since she had been out here and that was a surprise.

To be honest, she was no longer angry about yesterday's pranks -- especially since Rachel had said she'd try to find out who was responsible and Doug had volunteered to help put the keyboards back to their original condition. No, it wasn't the pranks that had her out here again. She wasn't exactly sure why she was so wound up. The news was probably a part of it. The seeing kids come here for a few days and then deciding to head to Genosha didn't help her mood much.

What could Genosha offer them that was so much better than staying here? It upset her to see so many people decide to head out to Genosha and Magneto. So far, none of the kids she kept a clse eye on had decided to leave. For that she was grateful.

She squeezed the trigger again and watched in satisfaction as her bullet hit the desired part of the target. This was helping her tension, but it wasn't making it go completely away. It was about time for another of her and Tamsin's "special" events. The advertisement for the bike derby was probably the perfect thing for them. It would let her kill off tension again, while enjoying that rush that comes from the excitement of the stunt.

She frowned a little bit, wondering if she should talk to Andrew ahead of time about it? What was the likelihood that he'd just come across the event on TV and recognize them?

Thinking of Andrew caused her to smile. She had to admit it was more than a crush that she had for Andrew and wondered if it would be possible one day for him to feel the same way? Their date had been really nice and she had enjoyed spending time with him. In fact, she'd like to spend more time with him.

((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.

Andrew was nervous. He'd faced a lot of horrifying things in the Middle East, seen and heard a lot of violence towards his kind, and here he was quietly freaking out over dinner with a woman.

Oh, he wasn't outwardly nervous. His time in the service had taught him to play things close to the chest, keep his emotions and thoughts under control because otherwise, you might end up dead. He still had healthy emotions, as evidenced by his strong familial relationships, but he knew how to keep a calm exterior.

He really, really liked Kitty, though, so he was nervous.

He'd dressed nicely but simply, in black slacks and a gray button-down, collared shirt. Nice enough for a date but casual enough for the atmosphere. He'd already gotten a table so they wouldn't have to wait, and sat there patiently.

Kitty was once again in the garage, only this time she was putting some gear away. She and Tamsin had gone hang gliding earlier that afternoon, and after taking a shower, she had come to put everything back in its place. There was music playing quietly on a portable stereo as she moved around the garage. She was still in a pretty good mood and it was evident from the way she moved and smiled as she was cleaning up.

Tamsin was right when she said that Andrew was a good guy -- Kitty had known that from the very first moment she saw him. There was something in his eyes that drew her in. When she saw him working with the kids, it just made her heart melt that much more.

She bent down to grab some rope and stood on her tiptoes to reach the top shelf where it was supposed to go. When she still couldn't reach it, she sighed and did some air climbing to get where she needed to go.

Kitty was in a very cheerful mood. No, scratch that. She was in an ecstatic mood.

Andrew had asked her out.

Okay, so, he hadn't said anything about when, much less about where, but the fact of the matter was that he had indeed asked her out. This fact was something that had her walking on air without even having to use her powers.

After she was done with her Computer Science students for the day, Kitty changed and went to one of her favorite places in the institute. No, it wasn't the garage. It was the dance studio.

Dancing was one of the things that had been with her since she was a little girl. No amount of mutant changes or wars or explosions had ever been able to take that away from her. Nothing that had happened had robbed her of this one thing and she would never allow it to. Music and dancing was a part of her and it had been since she was born. Her father told her that his mother had always been a serious dancer, too.

Kitty put in one of her favorite classical CDs -- Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet -- and she took up position at one end of the studio. When the music began, so did Kitty's dance.


[[The door to the studio is open and music can be heard]]

The news stations were replaying the interview with Magneto on Genosha and finally, Kitty had had more than enough of it.

Rolling her motorcycle out of the garage, she pulled on her helmet and started it up. She just had to get out for a little while -- away from the news and the memories of everything that had happened over the last year. Away from the whole discussion on the news about humans versus mutants.

When she was on her bike, taking the curves and hills at ever-increasing speed, there was no war, no fighting. There wasn't any such things as humans or mutants. There was just her and the road.

After about an hour, maybe a little more, Kitty pulled back into the garage. She turned off her bike and sat there in silence for a long moment, relishing in the adrenaline racing through her.