Launch Day Logs:
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Monday, August 18, 2008, 2:10 PM
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This is a conference room.
The fact that it is in the Cape Canaveral space center does not change the fact of its quintessential conference room-ness. It has a table, a few chairs. There is a box of donuts open on the table, only half of which have been consumed. Some of the maple bars are looking very sad and lonely. Ororo considers them, as she sits down in one of the chairs and folds her sandaled feet together at the ankles beneath the seat, but determines that she is far from hungry, and steeples her fingers as she rests her hands against the glossy surface of the table, looking up at the blank screen with an odd contemplative air. Privacy is at a premium this morning, but she has stolen some anyhow.
Jean is not yet dressed in a space suit. This is good, because it means she is free to rove what levels of the space center she has access to, and to arrive at last in the conference room that holds an Ororo and donuts, clad in simple sweats and with a last few sticky-pads for monitor leads still stuck to her bared arms. A sigh announces her arrival, followed swiftly by shutting the door and claiming a chair with an audible thump.
Ororo looks up at Jean with a slight smile of welcome. Stress and weariness have taken their toll on her mindscape, combined with sleeplessness that has resulted in fresh coats of nail polish rather than rest. But there is warmth here, as always. "Hey," she says, looking over her friend as the chair turns under her weight. "Escaped, did you?"
"Minus several vials of blood, and a stool sample, I have made my escape," Jean agrees, with just a hint of colour to her cheeks. It is much easier to discuss -other people's- stool samples. She pounces on one of the maple bars with unseemly haste, and proceeds to pull it apart into nibbly bites, however, so apparently her mortification isn't -that- bad. "Hiding?"
"A little bit." Ororo's smile is hued a little rueful, as her glance rolls to the donut box and then back to Jean again. She lifts a hand to scratch at the side of her head with one fingertip, tone musing as she says, "I don't envy you the lab rat's role, at least."
"Squeak," says Jean, with a rueful look and the offer of the donut box, sent skidding down the table like a sugary curling rock. She sighs again as she settles back in her chair, one hand idly picking loose a contact pad and sticking it to the tabletop. "I don't feel ready for this," she admits quietly.
Craning her neck to examine the contents of the donut box again, Ororo still finds little appetite, but she does sit up a little, renewing the impression of alertness and attention as she lifts her gaze back to Jean. Her mouth turns up slightly at one corner. "I still am not sure how real it feels, my knowledge of it, that it is happening," she says. The chair rolls a little as she scoots it, reaching out to take Jean's hand in one of hers. "Is that it? Is there more?"
"There are many levels of not feeling ready for this?" Jean offers, with a sigh and a laugh mingled, and her hand squeezing firmly at Ororo's. Little flickers of tension and worry, adrenaline and shreds of tattered calm bleed across the link forged by skin against skin, prickles and pins of the mind. "I'm worried about what I might do up there," she admits, lowly and with a look around for eavesdropping NASAians. "I spoke with Charles about it, he's come up with some sort of contingency plan that, naturally, I can't know about. I trust him, but--"
The shadow of surprise and restlessness stir through the faint link between them, gossamer shreds against the grounded strength of certainty that comes with the lift of Ororo's eyes. "You will triumph," she says to Jean, "or not. If you do not triumph, the world ends after a long, slow mount of panic to its destruction in winter." She wets her lips, and forges on, tightening her grip on Jean's hand. It is possible that she has considered this, but a sense that she has not put into words before shapes itself in her mind, in the certainty of love which is more important than concerns like morality to a woman whose center is her duty and her family, and, here, her sister. "You fear worse than that? What is worse? Destruction, chaos, fire and death? It is almost mercy, Phoenix," Storm says. "Mercy, if it comes sooner than the long, dark winter."
"I fear that, yes," Jean answers, looking away but not dropping Storm's hand. "I am not, by any outside standards, a sane woman. I have a voice that whispers to me in moments of weakness, always there, always telling me just how easy it would be to stop dancing to others' tunes, and just... simplify everything. It might decide that chaos and fire is the answer. And it will, if it does, decide that with CNN watching." Unhappily, her shoulders bunch, and the pile of crumbled maple bar is forgotten for a time. "It would be a swift death for those with me. And then the world would come and tear the rest of you apart. And with the levels of my powers I'll have to tap, that whisper will become a shout. I've..." But Jean quiets here, hand drawing away to wrap at herself. "Charles' contingency plan is for that. But if it fails, I've asked that Magneto kill me."
"Jean." Ororo's voice comes as barely more than a whisper, a quiet intensity in the single syllable. She rises from her seat, coming around behind Jean's chair, looping her arms around her despite the seat that blocks the closeness of contact. Her temple brushed against Jean's head, loose silver-white hair mingling with auburn, the strength she offers is not only in the lean muscle of her arms, but in the grounded faith of her spirit. "To save us all, you would ask that," she says in her low voice, an odd harshness there born of the struggle for vocal control. "I wish I could be with you up there. I wish I had that strength to offer. But I will see you again, Jean. You will walk this earth again. You will."
Jean is trembling despite the quiet finality of her voice, eyes closing against betraying tears as she nods, and allows herself to sink against Ororo in body and in mind. "I would," she confirms. "But... only you and Erik Lensherr know that now." She rises at that, pulling the other woman into a proper hug and simply staying leaned for a time. In the end, she draws back, offers a weak and wobbly smile, and notes that "If anything -does- happen, I've left Curie to you. Considering her fondness for your flowerpots, I'll make a special effort to return and spare you that."
"See that you do," Ororo says. Despite a play at firmness of tone, a tremor shakes her voice. Her smile bittersweet, she tips her head to rest her forehead against her friend's, squeezes her upper arms under the press of fingers, and then withdraws a little, drawing breath and drawing composure about her like a cloak over her shoulders. "I think that you will do the job needs done, you and the team, and you'll come home," she says. "I must think that. I will know it, each day, until you are home safe."
"I'll do my best to bring us all back again," Jean promises, squeezing Ororo's shoulders before she steps back to gather her own composure about her with a smoothing of her hair and a smoothing of her expression back into composed and competant Dr. Jean Grey. "Stark's repulsors should help with that," she offers, in a switch to business. "I'm not sure how much use Rogue will be on anything but the smaller fragments, but she could work in concert and spare the larger hitters some of their reserves. I hope that Dr. Lensherr took the time to go see his pet healer while he was away."
"Rogue is there as backup essentially, to fill out the team." Storm's words are spoken in a tone of quiet agreement, as she brushes her knuckles along the side of her face, brow wrinkled in thought. "So long as Jubilee's aim holds up, her detonations will be a very valuable supplement to you and Magneto in terms of directing trajectory -- we've been over it all. I still don't know Zenith's limits as well as I'd like. Don't let her overextend in her desire to be as useful as possible. I'm a little worried," she adds, glancing back at Jean again with the crook of a rue-edged grimace, "that Magneto might try to die up there. I don't think fey is the right word but ... keep an eye on him if you can."
"Fey implies some sort of looking forward to death," Jean agrees, nibbling thoughtfully at a lower lip. "And you're right, it doesn't feel like that. More... weariness. Blackness. But I'll do my best to keep him going," she promises, and leaves off the nibbling of lips to resume nibbling the maple bar. "Enlightened self-interest -- I'm sure that his Valkyrie would come chasing after us and giving our loved ones tumours if he died on our watch. But I'll try and ride herd and give Scott a hand."
"Thank you." Ororo looks away again, catching her lower lip in her teeth. After a moment's pause for breath, she turns back to face her, and lifts her hands, palms up. "And take care of yourself up there, Jean. Take care of you, too."
Jean has collected the maple bits in a napkin, the better to abscond away with them, but she returns to Ororo to press one hand against the uplifted ones. "I promise," she offers, oddly solemn for all she sports a smile.
Ororo lays her other hand over it, holding Jean's one hand in both of hers; she squeezes for a moment, and then releases her with a simple, "Good luck."
"We'll need it," says Jean, the ruefulness back in her tone, but a little of the fear gone from her eyes. With one last squeeze of a hand, she takes herself out. "I'll see you from orbit," she promises.
Nerves, farewells, comfort and donuts.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Monday, August 18, 2008, 4:40 PM
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In what is rapidly becoming a media circus, technicians scurry back and forth across the green, talking rapidly to each other. The wings of the Pegasus are close to the sleek lines of her body, and she resembles nothing more than a fairly large space shuttle, although there are a few minor alterations to her design that are even visible to the cameras as they make the occasional zoom close up. Speculation has run rampant by the newscasters as to just what this new mission purports to accomplish, but NASA has been quite discreet on the subject so far. The day is very clear, and morning is slowly bleeding away into afternoon; the air is getting very hot and humid, yet still they are not ready to go.
The countdown clock shows numbers in large, red digital life beside the observation area, but they have been frozen for some time now. Perhaps this is a little worrying.
Waiting out of sight of the media circus, the crew of the Pegasus II sit in the air conditioning and wait. Said air is vital, given the Floridian heat, and even moreso considering that there are flight suits being worn in anticipation of launch. They are a very bright reddish-orange. There are patches. Jean Grey is snugged in between one of the two flight crew and Scott Summers, and appears to be trying to meditate. (Alternately, she's asleep.)
Across the waiting floor sits Jubilee, clad in a similar, if smaller bright orange suit. She's picking at one of the patches and frowning. "God. What was all that about time bein' of the essence?"
It's good Jean isn't the type to listen in, as what she'd find in Zenith's thoughts is not terribly encouraging. /Orange/ is not a flattering color. /Jumpsuits/ are not a flattering cut. The real fear lies deeper, swathing beneath a coping strategy of continually tugging on her clothes to make the lines better for any pictures. She gives Jubilee a grateful smile for breaking the silence. "Hurry up and wait."
Logan is not in the waiting floor. There is no trip into big scary space for the old Canadian. But that doesn't meant that they get to leave without him in their hearts... and in their ears. His crackly radio transmitted voice calls out to his sky high bound teammates from his ear set. "Don't worry 'bout the cameras. darlin's.. you all look fine." He teases trying desperately to lighten the mood. "And Bright Eyes..." he whispers.... "You did remember to go first this time, right?"
In the control room, Ororo has been having a heated argument with one of the NASA types, on again and off again throughout the whole hurry-up-and-wait of the atmosphere. Eventually, she strides off and out through the front door, lifting a hand towards the earbud in her ear and then lowering it without actually touching the thing to activate it.
A helicopter whirs by, a little closer than is strictly usual to the observation area and then out, beyond the field and over the access highway on which all of them were driven up. Zoom!
One eyelid flickers open from where Jean is sitting, and the observation of "Just pretend we're at the DMV," is offered, before Logan's voice in her ear prompts a small smile and a little bubble of thought sent out to try and find him. (Never mind that the odds of him being within five hundred metres of a tamed bomb like a spacecraft are small.) "We're all wearing the diapers this time," she calls back.
Jubilee obligingly rolls her eyes and calls skyward "Yeeeeeees, I already weeeeent." Zenith is given a brief, tense smile--uncertainty tightening the edges. "I want a milkshake."
"You could eat?" Zenith asks of Jubilee a little incredulously. She smooths her jumpsuit across her chest. "I can't even imagine that without feeling sick."
"Alright, Darlin' I'll buy you a hundred milkshakes when you get back." Logan offers with an amused chuckle before the crackle of his transmitter leaves him silent to the crew, and his hand leaves the switch. Storm coming outside catches his eyes, and he strolls up slowly beside her, bright expression quickly exchanged for concern. "We know what the hell the hold up is, yet?"
CNN, Fox News, all of the usual suspects have been covering the impending launch all morning, even if that means late at night for those not on the East Coast. However, with the delay dragging out, most of them have begun switching off to discusing other headlines. In one production truck, however, there is a sudden call. "Hey, what's that? Dan, zoom in tighter..."
A live feed suddenly comes back over the television coverage, a camera zoomed in tightly on a man on the scaffolding that allows access to the rocket. He has climbed onto the outside of it, with his legs hooked around a bar, so he can lean out as he fiddles with some kind of object attached to the huge tank of rocket fuel. The anchor says, "It appears we have some sort of motion down at the shuttle, perhaps a sign of the cause of this delay...We don't have clarification quite yet."
"Magneto," Storm says, tone low and jaw set with frustration. "He is late. The copters are out looking for him. Apparently they are also doing some last minute checks -- I don't think they are all that sanguine about Forge's design philosophy." She wiggles her fingers through the air, catching sunlight on the bluey-silver gleam of her polish, and then scruffs her fingertips through her hair, nails scraping along her scalp.
"If you get nauseous in microgravity, tell me right away," Jean bids, opening both eyes this time to peer at Zenith with the intensity common to medical doctors. This is eased somewhat with the explanation of "-I- don't want to be cleaning up free-falling vomit." There's a snort from the Scott beside her, who is doing a much more successful job than she about appearing smoothly serene. (Or possibly just stiff.)
"Well, no," Jubilee admits a little sheepishly. "But I want one anyway." Jean gets another eye roll and the impression of a distinct urge to kick Scott in the knee. Just because.
"Dude." Zenith says, packing a world of 'I cannot express my amusement at the lack of trouble I would have with that' into the single word. "I spend more time in altered gravity than I do normal. I'm talking nerves. Worse than opening night."
The NASA control room is not sharing the newsmen's reaction to the man at the shuttle. Someone yells out, "Who the fuck is that? What's he doing out there? Get someone up there, now!" There is a sudden blaring of alarms as military police start scrambling to get to Pegasus.
The TV camera catches the man suddenly looking up. He leaps back onto the scaffold and begins scrambling. The anchor again comments, "It seems... It appears something may be wrong here. We'll stay on this." The man runs like hell, the gray worksuit he is in making him an indistinct blob scrambling to get away from the shuttle. The camera leaps back, momentarily to look at the object. It is a box attached to what looks like a fat cylinder. This is probably very interesting.
In their splendid isolation of the waiting area, Jean is nonetheless distracted from coming up with a quippy reply to Zenith by the flurry of alarm bleeding into the aether from some distance away. Crackle, crackle goes the radio, and along comes the mildly querulous voice of Jean asking "...is everything all right?"
At the mention of Magneto's name, Logan's reaction should be expected. A deep chested rumble that borders on a predatorial growl, clinched fist, and the following hatred filled sentiment: "If he does /anything/ to... I swear to god I'll find a way to take his head clean off." But hatred and loathing are dashed the instant alarms sound, and Logan presses his hands firm against the railing as his eyes scan for more clues.
"Ask them if they got any comic books while you're at it," Jubilee pipes up, not privy to telepathic alarm.
"Not sure," Ororo says for her radio's benefit, with two fingertips pressed to her earbud as she peers over the railing. "We'll keep you posted." She catches the wind to give her a little lift in her swing up and over it, not quite flying. With the improvement of her vantage, she's sure she sees someone running away. "Wolverine," she calls to him, summoning more wind to give her more lift and never mind surreptition, "why would a tech bolt?"
The man in grey is running like hell. He has something clutched in one hand. He gets to the bottom of the ramps leading up toward the shuttle and leaps over a railing, out into the open green around the launchpad. This is a frantic sort of bolt, the man looking panickedly behind him every few steps. By this point, there are men in uniform closing in on him. Out of earshot of both those watch and the cameras, he turns around and holds whatever it is in his hand out. The uniformed men stop.
Radios crackle. "Subject claims to have planted a bomb. We need to give him space. Call for a negotiator. Repeat, bomb on the shuttle." This does not go over so well in the control room. The television continues on, unaware of this development. The talking heads scramble to find something to say.
"Not one damned good reason I can think of." Logan answers Storm as a clamber, half a climb, and locking legs nearly accomplishes for him what wind and grace accomplished for her. Keen eyes lock onto the fleeing man, and then they tighten, muscles roll, and prey is spotted. "Lets go."
"Hello?" Jean wonders into the radio. "Hello...?" With a mutter, she turns to one of the nameless flight crew, and inquires about other bands. "If this is a scenario like Contact, I'm going to find Jodie Foster and slap her."
"Right." With a little more lift from the wind, Storm starts off in flight to improve her line of vision on the fleeing man. Without the stark badassery of her uniform and the drama of her silvery cape, her flight, in daylight, seems a little odd: hair loose, whipped by the wind, clad in jeans and sweater as she has been all day. With his bat out of hell impression ongoing, she reaches up to tap into the radio connection at her ear, and finds largely fuzz. Messing about with frequencies in midair is not her strong suit.
Zenith looks anxious, finally settling into a kind of stillness for a moment. "What--?" she asks Jean.
Without the privilege of flight, Logan drops from the railing. But it is a controlled decent, hands and feet finding rail, edge, fence and girder, skin only barely muffling the sound of a metal skeleton smacking hard against metal fixtures. It is a little more difficult, but he manages to keep a 'straight line' path beneath Storm and not far behind.
Military police with guns drawn on the man are slowly standing down, backing away. The technician, his hand clasped tightly around whatever it is, is shakey and yelling at them. He is, however, slowed in his attempt at getting away for the moment, giving Logan and Storm time to zero in on him. The television cameras have focused on this. Radio chatter around the launch area is growing to a fever pitch as information is relayed, authorities scrambling to figure out who it is and if the threat is real. For those in wait, a voice comes on. "We have a situation, but remain calm. It will be dealt with. There is no reason to get excited." Isn't that helpful?
Jubilee glances sharply at Jean, low-level anxiety bubbling up into bright-edged concern. "A situation? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" She struggles to stand, intending to find a window to look out of.
A sharp snort from Jean is the immediate answer to the broadcast, followed by a turn and a twist in her seat to try and get a look out the window of the waiting room. "Search me," is her answer, followed by returning to her seat, closing her eyes and looking, to outsider eyes, preturnaturally still. The range is not good, out at the edges of her awareness, but her mind slips free to find and seek one of two familiar patterns that -ought- to be somewhere near here. Logan's is settled on, simpler without the crackling static of the storm queen's thoughts to contend with. Pushed out with a pulse of power to try and get it to transmit is a sense of concern with Jean's face attached to it.
"Detonator," Storm says to her radio, attempting to tune in to Logan's frequency. She spins off at a downward angle, gearing to come in for a landing. "Damn, it would be useful to have Jean right now." The wind that blasts into the bomber's face, byproduct of her passage, is not a precision instrument.
The arrival of Storm, heralded by the gust of wind, makes the man with the detonator in his hand take a few steps back. His eyes are wide and wild and stringy hair is matted to his face by sweat from his run. "Stay the hell away from me!" he shrieks, waving the detonator around wildly. "If /anyone/ gets near me, I'll blow the whole fucking thing up!"
Back at the shuttle, people are carefully investigating the device the man planted. The radios chatter, "It looks like the thing has pressure sensors. We can't move it." "We need a bomb squad out here, NOW!" The best part is that that last sentence is not broadcast on the right band. It comes loud and clear for Jean, Jubilee, Zenith, and everyone else in waiting.
Magneto cracks into existence with a dramatic swirl of his cape and the resonant hum of the magnetic field that surrounds him fading in his wake.
"Damn it." Logan's voice calls back over the radio to Storm as Jean's image makes it to his mind with almost a hunger from the X-Man. While his mind reaches out instinctively in return, he is not blessed with telepathy or control. As he closes on the scene himself, his fingers begin to fumble with his ear piece as well, sending now for X ears only. "Only one kinda person I can think who'd wanna blow this. We aint gotta lotta time."
Zenith goes abruptly white, and swallows convulsively. Her eyes get a little line of concentration between them as she readies a gravity shield for herself. Just in case. "We're not even in /space/ yet," she says with limping, shaky humor.
Jubilee blanches and sits back down heavily.
"Welcome to the life of a superhero, Ms. McMillan," Jean offers in dry response. Scott has gotten himself a hold on the radio unit, and is making inquiries in approved Team Leader fashion, assisted or interefered with, depending on point of view, by the two seasoned shuttle pilots also in the group. Jean, thus relieved of radio, resumes trying to make contact with the other X-Men out there. The gist of it: Can the group sitting and waiting be of any help? Aloud, there's a sudden mutter of "And where the -hell- is Dr. Lensherr anyways?"
"Wolverine and I are on it, Cyke. Loner in flight, detonator. -- I will try to knock it out of his hand," Storm intones from the air, her eyes a blaze of white as cold, unseasonable wind, fraught with tiny hailstone stings litle baby icicles, batter at the bomber's hand. She hovers at her vantage, coming no closer as though she is actually at standoff. "If it flies, jump him before he can pursue or catch it. Gently."
"Stop it! STOP IT!" The bomber screams, yanking his hand back close to his body. "If I drop it, everything goes! If it hits the ground, we'll all die! Now get away from me!" He is frantic, eyes bloodshot and wide. The uniformed men who had been in persuit of him are fairly taken aback by the presence of the pair of helpers, but they don't seem to know what to do about it.
On television, an anchor crows, "There seems to be a pair of... people, civilians, maybe? One of them was in flight. We can only assume this is a mutant helping in what is rapidly evolving into a stand-off with a crazed terrorist!"
Where is Dr. Lensherr? This is a question many sweaty-palmed government officials are asking, when they are not asking about the bomb or who is that flying woman or any number of unhappy questions. The answer, which has only just begun to crop up, is that he is en route. En route where? Nobody seems to know. Is he even in Florida? Nobody seems to know that, either.
There is, however, a single black Crown Victoria with government plates rolling calmly for the launch pad amidst the bomb-prompted chaos. "Who is that?" "Who is what?" "They can't be there." "Who?" "Fuck." "He definitely cannot be there." Phones ring, fists are shaken. And so on and so forth.
"Zenith, please," she begs of Jean, pausing in chewing on her lip to speak.
Logan's thoughts are frantic, and contact is desperately sought for Jean's mind as it brushes his again, but there is one strong image that the man with the bomb, and a desperate need to stop him, and keep him from dropping the detonator. "Storm," Logan's voice calls out softly, hopefully amplified by the radio. "I need one shot, one good shot. If he don't wanna let it go, I can help him with that."
The chill, battering wind recedes from the bomber, and Storm refocuses her attention on her hovering in place, essentially buffeting herself with opposing winds in order to accomplish it. "Take your shot," she says. "Just say when. The air will bring it up to me. It's small." This isn't as easy as it looks; the tension that thins her voice through the radio's channel suggests he take his shot quickly.
Reassurance and steadiness is projected out to the Logan at the edge of Jean's range, before she withdraws herself, all the better to let him concentrate. "They're handling it," she informs the waiting room.
The man rants, "You can't stop it! Do you realize the odds of it coming for us?! Stopping it goes against everything!" His voice is quivering in his addled state, as he continues backing away from the hovering woman. Storm is dominating his attention, leaving an opening for Wolverine to make his move. "It's nature! It's the will of the universe! You can't send freaks of nature to stop nature! This... this whole thing is wrong! It has to come!"
The television cameras as tightly focused on the stand-off, though they are too far out to pick up any audio. Radios are alive with information that the bomber is NASA personel, not a random terrorist. There is a line over the radio that those waiting can pick up, "It's Roberts. He's snapped. Where the hell is the bomb squad?" "A fucking GEOLOGIST?" someone else yells in disbelief.
Roll roll roll roll. A police car diverts from the bomb fiasco and u-turns after the crown vic, lights flashing but siren silent. The crown victoria speeds up slightly. The police car speeds up also. The crown victoria speeds up a little more. It is a slow speed chase on the way to the shuttle.
Logan's eyes tighten hard on his target, each breath measured, each glance studied. He waits a moment. A moment more. A breath, a third... pulse matched with pulse. And when the speech hits its height, when the man seems the man seems the most distracted Logan moves. "When!" he shouts as he ducks, hands spreading out behind him in full spring. SNICKT SNICKT. A flash of adamantium and blood. The man looses possession of the detonator. The hand does not.
Not wasting her time on censure or disbelief, Storm catches the hand in a full blast of wind, elevating it and its contents even as she darts forward to catch it despite the spattering rain of blood, as carefully as possible. Through the radio she manages a grim, "Gods, Logan, that's /disgusting/--" which will probably make Scott and the others feel really good about what's going on that they can't see.
"What's going on out there?" wonders Jean, leaning over to try and come within range of Scott and the radio. "Storm? Wolverine? Hello?"
When Logan moves, a camera man with a good eye for action zooms in. Across the United States, morning audiences are treated to a tight close-up of a mutant's metal claws lopping a crazed geologist's hand off. Anchors scramble to apologize, directors cut away. While Scott, Jean, Zenith, and the crew do not see the man being literally disarmed, the entire world will. On replay. For days.
There is a scramble as Roberts the Mad Bomber collapses, screaming and clutching the stump of his right wrist. Military police swarm him, sirens continue to blare as ambulances move in. One of the MPs gives Logan a look. "What the hell do I do with you?" he asks.
Storm shoots through the air back toward the ship, spinning in the air and landing after a possibly unnecessary flip with a light touch of sandals to grass. Holding the bloody wreckage of Roberts's hand, as well as the detonator, she exchanges a few short words with a nauseated MP, and hands off the detonator to the arriving bomb squad. There is blood on her sweater. Eeeew. Lifting a slightly bloodied hand to her ear, she tells her radio, "Ugh. It's done. I think Logan and I might be temporarily under arrest."
It takes Logan a moment to stand after the spring, but as he does the grin on his face is wide. "Got the job done, dit'n it, bub? He'll live." He answers the MP as he cranes his neck to pop it in a series of metallic clinks. On his mind however directed to Jean is a rather sincere apology and an image of a very angry Chuck.
"Stop. Halt. Sir, you are under orders to -- there is another vehicle. You are in the wrong vehicle. Sir." The single police car's megaphone issues forth a series of monotone decrees, as subtle as possible while still being blared through a megaphone. There must be an issue with the radio in he crown vic. Like, it is off. Both cars are cruising along at a fair clip now, with the black one nearly at the base of the tower when it finally slinks down to a quiet roll. The black and white circles around once, and is joined by another. Doot de doo.
"Oh, good lord," says Jean to the interior of the waiting area, shaking her head with a hand pressed to one temple. "Jubilee, Kitty, Rogue, the next time Logan asks if you need a hand, for God's sake say 'no'." With that cryptic remark, she settles back in her seat, still shaking her head.
Luckily for those in persuit of the Crown Vic, the bomb squad is headed in that direction as well. It proves a good illusion of overwhelming force. Men in padded bomb gear are already started up the tower, equipment in tow. The radios chatter for all to head, "It looks booby trapped, pressure plate under it. It will probably detonate if we try to move it." "This is going to be a pain in the ass." "Well, we can't scrub the launch. Our window of opportunity is only so large."
Then addressed to those in the waiting area, the radio babbles "The threat has been neutralized. We have to deal with the device he planted. Are any of your people capable of disarming a bomb without risk of it expoding?" the mission chief asks hopefully.
The MPs look at Storm and Logan, (while the man who ended up with the hand just looks green on his way to join the rest of the bomb squad. "We're going to have to arrest you," Logan's buddy says. He looks skeptical about this. "We'd really, /really/ appreciate it if you two didn't resist." The bomber is quickly loaded into an ambulance, with /heavy/ police escort.
Clunk. The Crown Vic's doors unlock, and out of the passenger seat steps Erik Lensherr, shorn and shaven and in a suit so black as to be nothing short of diabolical. The dress shirt beneath it is a dull, bloody red. The drink in his left hand is an expensive shade of amber. The cigar in his right, already on its way back into his mouth, is Cuban. The nearest security officers are getting out of their vehicles as well. One hesitates, gets back in, and then gets back out. Contradictory orders fly from radio to radio.
"Yes, yes," Ororo says as in a tone that suggests bland impatience, since being arrested has become for her a relatively minor inconvenience, "no need to read me my rights, gentlemen. Just take me somewhere where there is a shower." She can disarm a bomb, though! Especially if it is made of silly putty.
With a loud slide, Logan's claws retract, and the poor MP that will have to arrest him is given a rather particular look. But after a quick glance to Storm and an exhausted sigh, his posture relaxes and he allows it.
"Disarm? Seriously? Like, cut the red wire or blue wire?" Zenith rubs her hands together. "Shouldn't they know that?"
"I could, with difficulty," says telekinetic Jean somewhat reluctantly, nibbling thoughtfully at her lower lip as she glances around the waiting area at the faces within. "And perhaps there are complications." Scott has an idea, and voices it: Kitty?
The voice on the radio explains a little more fully. "The bomb is attached to one of the fuel tanks. It's booby trapped, if it's pulled off, it will blow. We can let the bomb squad try working on it where it is..." The man does not sound like this is an idea he wants to entertain. "Can your people get it off or nullify it or-- anything?"
Down on the ground, Logan and Storm are handcuffed, though fairly gently and led to waiting black and whites to be detained. Such is the cost of heroism. Storm's driver comments, "Try not to get that on the seats, please?"
Kitty has been here all along! Really. She's just been all quiet and unnoticable in her bright orange flight suit. "I hate to say it, but I'm not exactly surprised by any of this today." Just what does that say about her life?
Information at last! Scott and Jean put their heads together, although not a lot is actually said -aloud-. Jean's face is expressive. Scott's is... less so. "Working on it," says he. Eventually, he nods. "Zenith, Shadowcat, Phoenix," he decides. "Zenith, you and Phoenix can contain any missteps, and get her up to the site of it. Shadowcat, I'd like you to phase it free, if you can."
Zenith pushes to her feet immediately, nodding. She likes having orders to follow! "Okay," she says, rocking up on the balls of her feet.
Well, /that/ surprises her. Kitty honestly hadn't been expecting to be handling explosives today. "Okay. You can let me go once you get me up there- I'm weightless when intangible," she tells Zenith. She has the distinct feeling that the news broadcast is going to result in a very interesting conversation with her parents. "Can we make sure Piotr doesn't see this?" she wonders.
"I'm already trying to figure out how to keep my -mother- from seeing this," Jean murmurs, rising and setting down her helmet on her seat after a last brief word from Scott. "Come on, ducklings," she encourages, stepping out towards the door out with a look of someone bracing for an onslaught. "Let's go make nice to the news cameras while we save our chance to save the world."
While the team from the waiting area gets its heads together and works to manage the remainder of the bomb scare, some other news camera has in its pan of the area settled upon a particular OTHER point of interest and zooms in for a close-up on Erik Lensherr's arrival and his baffled security. The buzz of a different variety of panic has taken the news crews by surprise. Even in the observation area where people have binoculars, the general furor has picked up the speed and volume of chatter. The general thrum of the populace has been taken up with a good deal of ?!.
Someone shouts, "IS THAT MAGNETO?"
With the increasing roar of chaos and the renewed focus of attention elsewhere, the emergence of the team to handle the bomb attached strapped to the fuel tank draws less attention than it might, especially from the cameras.
"Any publicity is good publicity. Wish I was wearing something else, though." Zenith follows, nodding in understanding of Kitty's directions.
"I think once Dad realizes what's going on, he'll be TiVoing it to show at family functions," says Kitty as she follows behind Jean. Her cousins will not be happy. 'Kitty's been to /space/ and you couldn't get into dental school?' She is also suddenly very aware of the small breakout on her forehead. The things that come to mind when you're about to risk their life. "Okay," she says, taking a deep breath. "Whenever you two are ready."
"All right," says Jean, and hits the button to open the waiting room doors. A metal staircase later, and they're walking towards where the bomb lives, Scott in the background relaying the plan over the radio. Absently, she pats her hair, clashing wonderfully as it is with the red-orange flight suit. "Now, Zenith, I'll be wanting you to set up a containment bubble first, and I'll support it with a second one of my own creation. That way, anything that gets past you will be stopped by me. Kitty, I'm sure you know what to do."
The radio responds to the plan wholeheartedly, once Scott manages to explain what exactly is going to happen -- which maybe takes a false start or two, and results in a general sense of "Just do what you need to do so we can get this bird in the air, ladies and gentlemen."
"Going up," Kitty murmurs to herself, waiting to feel the bubbles forming around her. Top floor; electronics, women's shoes and explosives. She ignores the cameras.
And up she goes, with the rather more steady platform of Zenith's gravity beneath her, and the spidersilk shell of Jean's telekinesis wrapped all 'round. Hello there, Mr. Bomb! We'd like you to mee Ms. Pryde!
On the ground, Jean's glimmering slightly. Clearly just a trick of the light, no?
Ms. Pryde is a bit too focused on the box of possible 'splodey death to be looking down at her teacher, who may or may not be doing her best Twilight vampire impression. Once she is face to face with the bomb, her body becomes insubstantial. "Okay, you can let go," she tells the two mutants below her. The next actions taken are very, very slow and very, very careful. Reach, extend her intangibility, remember to breathe and slowly- slowly! do what she was sent up there to do.
The bomb is a nasty-looking contraption as described, and with Kitty's delicate handling, it phases cleanly away from the metal skin of the fuel tank to be handed off to the waiting bomb squad technicians.
Jean lets go. So does Zenith. The bubbles remain, however, until bomb and X-woman are back on terra firma. There are sighs of relief. Jean stops glimmering.
(For the record, Jean Grey is in no way, shape or form a vampire from Twilight.)
Even though she clearly possesses Sparkle Power.
Jean would kick Edward's ass and sling Bella into couple's therapy.
But first, she should probably help save the world.
"I think that I would like to go a very long time before having to do that ever again," says Shadowcat, wiping the sweat away from her face.
"At least," Jean agrees, "Asteroids don't explode. Let's get back in there before the cameras get bored with Magneto, huh?" A nod back towards the safety and temporary anonymity of the waiting area precedes Jean heading there herself.
"Are we sure that was the only one?" Kitty asks. "This is something I'd like to be very sure about."
"Mad geologist," is Jean's answer. "We're good."
The media is very definitely much more interested in Magneto's arrival than in the potentially much more explosive spectacle of the bomb squad and their lovely mutant assistants. The three women's return to the waiting area is unimpeded. Magneto, on the other hand, gets a very cautious scrum hovering at what they believe is a safe distance. A few very brave souls shout questions until he, too, is swallowed up by the giant buildings of the space center, and the police and MPs begin chasing everyone back behind safe lines. Eventually, the great red numbers of the countdown restart. Someone cheers.
The bomb squad is of the opinion that explosive devices should -not- be disarmed near the amount of rocket fuel that's in Pegasus II's main booster. With the device gingerly stowed within a very heavy duty box and loaded very carefully into a very reinforced van, they begin to drive away to a save distance to go make a big boom.
So now the only explosions they have to worry about are the accidental ones. That does not offer as much comfort as Kitty would like it to.
Orange-red flight suits are not nearly as stylish as Magneto's assassin-black suit, but -they- are pressure rated. As the countdown proceeds, the waiting room sees the addition of one aging terrorist. Jean mutters something about 'fashionably late' having a time and a place.
Incidentally, the waiting area? Doubles as a handy elevator. Up, up, up go the mutants and their two shuttle pilots!
The news helicopters, sensing that things are changing towards launch (And being given stern warnings involving government airspace restrictions, the nearest fighter base, and how these things could combine badly for them.) veer out to a safe distance. They continue to film nonetheless, as do the NASA-approved cameras that have an angle on the gantry walkway leading out to Pegasus II's cockpit. Up, up, up goes the elevator! (Gosh, rockets are big.)
Kitty's thoughts now consist of a single mantra as she prepares herself mentally: Don't phase don't phase don't phase don't phase. She does the same thing before boarding a plane, but it is somewhat more important now.
Eventually a tone sounds, and the elevator stops and locks in place with an audible ka-chunk. The door to the walkway opens, and a "Look alive, people," is the signal from Cyclops. The two pilots, veterans of shuttle flights, and one a veteran of the first Pegasus mission, take the lead.
Closer to the moment now, Zenith pulls on her store of poise and composure used on stage, and so walks with the others with no sign of anxiety and her inner thoughts.
Jean is quiet now, the quips dried up in the face of a walk that makes things altogether very -real-. Head held high, shoulders back, she allows an expression of focus and resolve to substitute in for composure as she follows the rest of the crew into the belly of the Pegasus, cameras panning to catch her in turn after those ahead, before moving to close-ups of those who follow. The news networks are having the best day -ever-.
Don't phase. Don't phase. Kitty may not actually /need/ the mantra anymore, as days of accidental intangibility are long past, but it gives her something to focus on, at least. She follows closely behind Jean, and doesn't even notice the cameras. Amazingly, she does not look particularly nervous. While not the /best/ treatment for anxiety by far, the bomb-handling apparently took all the panic out of her.
Eventually the fashion parade of mutants has to end, as the last member of the crew is inside, and the heavy door is swung shut. An hour still reads on the countdown timer, ticking down as the crew buckles in and systems fired up and checked, and checked again, as lines are disconnected, as communications are tested, and as last-minute instructions are patched through. There are, happily, no more bombs. Finally, the gantries withdraw, leaving Pegasus II and her merry band sitting alone on the launch pad as the numbers tick down. 10... 9... 8...
7... 6... 5... Out in the observation stands, the numbers are chanted by a crowd gone electric.
4... 3... 2... and throughout Mission Control the scientists and observers alike hold their breaths.
"One, and... Main engines green and lit--" And all sound is lost, but for the roar of the engines, the Pegasus II almost disappearing within its' own smoke cloud. It seems forever as it fights gravity before the tip of the great red fuel tank breaks through, and the rocket begins to rise. "Liftoff!" comes the cry. "We have liftoff of the Pegasus II. Godspeed you all."
Every successful shuttle launch has its delays. Most do not have bombs or terrorists. OH WELL. Logan is happy to see that others lend a hand.