Disclaimer: Furor Paxx and VulgateOfEarth do not own the X-Men or any affiliates. All are the property of Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc and its various affiliates and partners. Phoenix Malcolm, Haiden Malcolm and all irregular characters are the sole property of Furor Paxx and are being used with permission.
~~ Lance, Scott, Evan and the Professor ~~
Lance couldn't think straight, his mind was trying desperately to figure out why one of Scott's arms was shorter than the other, much shorter. His eyes saw the torn flesh, slightly burned and the startling white of bone, but his logic told him that Summer's could never be less than perfect, and that the mangled limb was anything but that. He wanted to say something, but all he could think was that the bone was so white and the inside of a human's arm didn't look anything like he'd imagined… not that he'd ever tried to imagine such a thing.
Lance closed his eyes, but could get the sight of Scott, his most hated rival, moving the stump as though wondering how the other end had disappeared. It was… pathetic. "Hey, cut it out, Summers." He managed to say, barely noting that he sounded more like the guy than he would usually care to. "We gotta bandage it. You're bleeding like crazy."
"My watch is gone." Scott said faintly. It was all like some awful nightmare, or a horror movie. Lance vowed never to watch another scary movie, or anything with blood and gore. Hollywood really played down serious wounds. Lance opened and closed drawers, focusing on finding a first aid kit. It's gonna take a lot of band-aids to fix that cut, he thought. Finally he found the white box with the red cross on the front.
"Sit down, you might as well, too." He said to Evan and Scott. Professor Charles Xavier took a deep breath and rolled his chair to check on Evan while Lance wrapped Scott's arm in bandages. Evan's wounds were serious, but not as bad as Scott's. Some debris from the grenade had sliced his right arm nearly to the bone and he had a short piece of steel cord imbedded in his leg. Both Scott and Evan had lost a lot of blood.
"What's the point?" pronounced Lance, out-of-the-blue. "People get blood transfusions for shit like this, and who's gonna do that for mutants? Is it even possible?" Scott's eyes had glazed over and he was panting and leaning heavily on Lance.
"The point is that we have to try, Lance. You never know what may happen."
"I know what's gonna happen. I've seen it a million times on Starz. We go through all this shit only for them to die of blood poisoning, or to get eaten, or hey, maybe they get the transfusion and then get hit by a truck. Why bother?" Lance seemed to be on the verge of tears.
"What you want us to do if it was you?"
"I'd want you to leave, get the Hell out and let me die alone, so I finally get away from all the damned humans and the lies we have to tell to keep them off our backs. It's all their fault."
There was a series of loud noises from above them and they all looked up at the stairs. "Yeah, they just can't leave well enough alone. All I wanted was to get away from them, but they follow me for some reason."
"Lance?" a voice called. "Yo? You down here?"
"I smell blood." A deeper voice stated matter-of-factly.
"Perhaps it has to do with all the blood you collected in our wild escape." This voice was softer, tinged with amusement.
"Mutant blood, smart ass."
"Tro says he doesn't have this passageway on the map, hey wait! Let the blue freak get here first. He can see in the dark, remember?"
"That sounds like Todd." Lance said. "What would he be doing here?"
"Y'know, I'm wonderin' what happened to all those people who were here not long ago… I mean, where could they have gone?"
"Hi, vha'd I miss?" An undeniable accent wafted down the stairs, and for the first time, Lance felt a glimmer of hope.
"Your brain, pothead. Get down there and tell us what ya' see." Definitely Todd, Lance thought, and he mentioned Pietro… they came back?
"Stairs, zere's cleaning stuff on zee vall. Does somezing smell dead to you?"
"What's at the foot of the stairs?"
"Don't rush me, it's vet." The voices were closer.
"Todd? That you?" Lance finally muster the energy to say.
"Ah, I zink somevon's down here."
"Lance? Talk to me, the damn monkey here isn't helping at all." Something fell and the sound of metal on stone echoed in the room.
"I vould appreciate it if you didn't call me names."
"Shut up."
"Scott and Evan are injured badly. Who else is with you?" Professor Xavier scanned the stairwell for the minds of the other mutants.
"Jean, Logan, Haiden, Me, Kurt and Pietro is keeping an eye out for us." By then, Toad and Kurt had reached the bottom and were giving the four battered mutants a once-over. "You think he wants his arm back? Stick it in a jar and call it a science fair project? Or sell it on E-Bay. I'm sure someone would want the arm of a mutant."
"You are not funny." Logan stated blandly, a second later, the smell hit him and his nose wrinkled. "Smells bad, might be infected."
"I never thought the day would come when I would be glad to see an X-Man." Lance said reverently as Haiden lifted Scott and Logan picked Evan up.
"First time for everyzing." Kurt said energetically. Todd was writing furiously on his gadget and everyone turned to stare at the green lit display.
"This isn't good, they've been doing a sweep of the area, sector by sector and Pietro had to split. He left a present for the Feds on their computer, and is headed to a different console. It'll take him about three seconds to get there, three minutes to get the computer started and… twenty minutes to hack the system from a regular PC."
"No…" breathed Lance. After all that waiting…
"So he's gonna try to hack the Xavier's computer and from there hack the government. It'll take about five minutes to reopen the path to Xavier's."
"Reopen?" The Professor repeated.
"And five more to get us on screen. That means we have ten minutes to be ready to move. The downside is that the sweep has less than eight minutes to get to us and we left a very clear trail. And I have to reconfigure my handheld as soon as Tro hacks the computer."
"So we need eleven minutes and we only have seven."
"Six."
"Any bright ideas?"
"Sorry, I've reached my limit for the year."
"Scott? Damn, I forgot. Professor?" Logan was thinking furiously.
"I'm afraid that I'm out of my league."
"Lance?"
"We could organize a kamikaze to distract them…"
"You're not escaping that easily, bub."
"Magneto?"
"I'm still trying t figure out how we got out of our cells."
"Does anyone have an idea?"
"We could pray." Kurt offered, only to be stared down.
"What's further down there?" Todd asked, peering into the darkness that was beneath them.
"More stairs." Kurt answered."
"We can buy a little time if we go further down and cave the entrance in."
"What if we can't get out?" Haiden questioned the sandy haired teen.
"Between Avalanche and NightCrawler, I doubt that will happen. Besides, Pietro's out there, with Mystique and Storm and Blob. And Kitty, but she's not much use that I can see. She could get down here but not back up."
"So it's settled. We go down. Lance, pull yourself together and grab the Professor, leave the chair."
"No, position the chair so that the cave-in covers it. There still the off chance that they'll see it and think we were buried." Todd improvised. Within 30 seconds, the path behind them was closed, and they were, for all intents and purposes, buried alive.
~~ Lance, Scott, Evan and the Professor ~~
Lance couldn't think straight, his mind was trying desperately to figure out why one of Scott's arms was shorter than the other, much shorter. His eyes saw the torn flesh, slightly burned and the startling white of bone, but his logic told him that Summer's could never be less than perfect, and that the mangled limb was anything but that. He wanted to say something, but all he could think was that the bone was so white and the inside of a human's arm didn't look anything like he'd imagined… not that he'd ever tried to imagine such a thing.
Lance closed his eyes, but could get the sight of Scott, his most hated rival, moving the stump as though wondering how the other end had disappeared. It was… pathetic. "Hey, cut it out, Summers." He managed to say, barely noting that he sounded more like the guy than he would usually care to. "We gotta bandage it. You're bleeding like crazy."
"My watch is gone." Scott said faintly. It was all like some awful nightmare, or a horror movie. Lance vowed never to watch another scary movie, or anything with blood and gore. Hollywood really played down serious wounds. Lance opened and closed drawers, focusing on finding a first aid kit. It's gonna take a lot of band-aids to fix that cut, he thought. Finally he found the white box with the red cross on the front.
"Sit down, you might as well, too." He said to Evan and Scott. Professor Charles Xavier took a deep breath and rolled his chair to check on Evan while Lance wrapped Scott's arm in bandages. Evan's wounds were serious, but not as bad as Scott's. Some debris from the grenade had sliced his right arm nearly to the bone and he had a short piece of steel cord imbedded in his leg. Both Scott and Evan had lost a lot of blood.
"What's the point?" pronounced Lance, out-of-the-blue. "People get blood transfusions for shit like this, and who's gonna do that for mutants? Is it even possible?" Scott's eyes had glazed over and he was panting and leaning heavily on Lance.
"The point is that we have to try, Lance. You never know what may happen."
"I know what's gonna happen. I've seen it a million times on Starz. We go through all this shit only for them to die of blood poisoning, or to get eaten, or hey, maybe they get the transfusion and then get hit by a truck. Why bother?" Lance seemed to be on the verge of tears.
"What you want us to do if it was you?"
"I'd want you to leave, get the Hell out and let me die alone, so I finally get away from all the damned humans and the lies we have to tell to keep them off our backs. It's all their fault."
There was a series of loud noises from above them and they all looked up at the stairs. "Yeah, they just can't leave well enough alone. All I wanted was to get away from them, but they follow me for some reason."
"Lance?" a voice called. "Yo? You down here?"
"I smell blood." A deeper voice stated matter-of-factly.
"Perhaps it has to do with all the blood you collected in our wild escape." This voice was softer, tinged with amusement.
"Mutant blood, smart ass."
"Tro says he doesn't have this passageway on the map, hey wait! Let the blue freak get here first. He can see in the dark, remember?"
"That sounds like Todd." Lance said. "What would he be doing here?"
"Y'know, I'm wonderin' what happened to all those people who were here not long ago… I mean, where could they have gone?"
"Hi, vha'd I miss?" An undeniable accent wafted down the stairs, and for the first time, Lance felt a glimmer of hope.
"Your brain, pothead. Get down there and tell us what ya' see." Definitely Todd, Lance thought, and he mentioned Pietro… they came back?
"Stairs, zere's cleaning stuff on zee vall. Does somezing smell dead to you?"
"What's at the foot of the stairs?"
"Don't rush me, it's vet." The voices were closer.
"Todd? That you?" Lance finally muster the energy to say.
"Ah, I zink somevon's down here."
"Lance? Talk to me, the damn monkey here isn't helping at all." Something fell and the sound of metal on stone echoed in the room.
"I vould appreciate it if you didn't call me names."
"Shut up."
"Scott and Evan are injured badly. Who else is with you?" Professor Xavier scanned the stairwell for the minds of the other mutants.
"Jean, Logan, Haiden, Me, Kurt and Pietro is keeping an eye out for us." By then, Toad and Kurt had reached the bottom and were giving the four battered mutants a once-over. "You think he wants his arm back? Stick it in a jar and call it a science fair project? Or sell it on E-Bay. I'm sure someone would want the arm of a mutant."
"You are not funny." Logan stated blandly, a second later, the smell hit him and his nose wrinkled. "Smells bad, might be infected."
"I never thought the day would come when I would be glad to see an X-Man." Lance said reverently as Haiden lifted Scott and Logan picked Evan up.
"First time for everyzing." Kurt said energetically. Todd was writing furiously on his gadget and everyone turned to stare at the green lit display.
"This isn't good, they've been doing a sweep of the area, sector by sector and Pietro had to split. He left a present for the Feds on their computer, and is headed to a different console. It'll take him about three seconds to get there, three minutes to get the computer started and… twenty minutes to hack the system from a regular PC."
"No…" breathed Lance. After all that waiting…
"So he's gonna try to hack the Xavier's computer and from there hack the government. It'll take about five minutes to reopen the path to Xavier's."
"Reopen?" The Professor repeated.
"And five more to get us on screen. That means we have ten minutes to be ready to move. The downside is that the sweep has less than eight minutes to get to us and we left a very clear trail. And I have to reconfigure my handheld as soon as Tro hacks the computer."
"So we need eleven minutes and we only have seven."
"Six."
"Any bright ideas?"
"Sorry, I've reached my limit for the year."
"Scott? Damn, I forgot. Professor?" Logan was thinking furiously.
"I'm afraid that I'm out of my league."
"Lance?"
"We could organize a kamikaze to distract them…"
"You're not escaping that easily, bub."
"Magneto?"
"I'm still trying t figure out how we got out of our cells."
"Does anyone have an idea?"
"We could pray." Kurt offered, only to be stared down.
"What's further down there?" Todd asked, peering into the darkness that was beneath them.
"More stairs." Kurt answered."
"We can buy a little time if we go further down and cave the entrance in."
"What if we can't get out?" Haiden questioned the sandy haired teen.
"Between Avalanche and NightCrawler, I doubt that will happen. Besides, Pietro's out there, with Mystique and Storm and Blob. And Kitty, but she's not much use that I can see. She could get down here but not back up."
"So it's settled. We go down. Lance, pull yourself together and grab the Professor, leave the chair."
"No, position the chair so that the cave-in covers it. There still the off chance that they'll see it and think we were buried." Todd improvised. Within 30 seconds, the path behind them was closed, and they were, for all intents and purposes, buried alive.