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Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
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3:05p - The Descent
M'gann's head rolls limply from side to side against the steel wall of the hold. Her eyelids feel heavy, her muscles sluggish and weak. She doesn't remember being here before, but then again she doesn't remember much at all. Her mind is a soupy fog. She can't even hold her head up.
Her vision swims and doubles when she can finally open her eyes halfway. As she jostles in her seat she sees the row of others beside her. They seem more lucid than she feels. They're stirring, pulling at their bonds.
Oh... she's bound too. Steel cuffs? Who would put white martians in such a joke of a restraint? But she feels too weak to break a twig right now so maybe that's why whoever bound them didn't bother with something more effective.
They're moving - falling, she thinks - and the turbulence is intense. That's why she's swaying against the wall like a loose-hinged door. The whole place just vibrates. Some of the others are starting to rise to their feet and pull hard at the bonds. There are noises but they are distant, and ring faintly in her ears like the echo of a tiny bell.
Everything happens in a strange slow motion. She feels as though she is emerging from something deep and dark but she can't remember what it is. Feeling is starting to come back in her fingers and toes and tail and she's aware oh so vaguely of being cold.
One of the largest males in the hold rips free from his bonds and staggers like a drunk toward the bulkhead at the end of the room. It's not much of a room even, M'gann thinks. Just a tube with parallel benches and her struggling kin seated five to a side facing one another, shackled to the floors in simple chains.
That should worry her, shouldn't it? That someone is trying to take her somewhere and she can barely stay conscious while it's happening? The others seem worried. More of them are out of their chains and gathered at the bulkhead now.
Then the door slams open and a human man appears in it's frame. He's pointing something at all of them (a weapon she can only assume). There is the distant tinny sound of arguing in high-pitches...
And then there is fire.
The others cower further into the walls and M'gann's heart slams against her ribs.
Father, Fernus, the fight and the still spaces, the dividing door slamming on her mother's dying screams, and she's never been so scared in her life because all around her is fire, FIRE, FIRE!!!
Panic takes over. The adrenaline rush of absolute terror brings memory and focus crashing down around her. She has to get away, get away, get OUT, and until she does the drive to flee is all that can exist in her mind.
M'gann twists out of her bonds, breaking the steel chains like they were cotton threads as she throws all her strength into breaching the far wall of the tank. It dents under her first blow, then gives on the second hit. Her arm punches through up to the shoulder and as she rips across to broaden the hole the howl of the wind rushes in. The human drops to his knees, clutching his ears and screaming. His flame-gun is on the floor now but still spewing fire.
The others leap from their bonds, crowding in behind her, just as terrified. Each of them works to claw the hole even wider. She is pushed as much as anything through the opening, thrown without direction into the upper atmosphere.
As she tumbles down to Earth M'gann sees it for the first time. The outside shell of the Phantom Zone, suspended far above.
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