Pied Piper Rescue pt 2
"For the transformer core..." Anne trails off, and turns to stare at the new arrivals, trying to take stock of who has made it back.
Oh. Look. Children! Bahir, having lifted a slightly warped bit of metal to study it, fumbles it as he turns to look at them. He studies their faces closely, telepathy brushing over their minds. They are strangers. "Shit. Hey, you--." Oh. /Look/. Lots more of you.
Natalie straightens abruptly, leaving off her rather pointless task to stare after the... children? She glances over at the others, questioning.
Right in the middle of all the new kids, is definitely someone familiar. Once they're through, Zenith tries to turn to look back over her shoulder, trying to pull her hand from Amadeus's. "We need to make sure--everyone else--"
Percy drops his jumper cables immediately to the floor with a sharp intake of breath, hit by a fresh wave of fear and adrenaline from these new and unfamiliar sources. He casts a wave of calming breath into the air to undercut the wild edge of flaring tension on the air.
The new kids have already exited the building, and at the sound of others coming behind them, they move swiftly away from the outpost, melting into the jungle. They're good at that, by now.
Pete races out of the portal, checking himself and jagging left to avoid either tripping over someone on the other side or being slammed into by anyone following him through. His gun is half-raised, points of heat gleaming faintly at the tips of his left hand as his gaze pans over the room. Slowly, slowly, he lets his mutation slip into the background again, and lowers the gun, breathing out a quiet sigh of relief once he's sure the people who are /supposed/ to be there /are/ there.
Remy is somewhat inglorious in his arrival back in the universe that begot him: he trips two steps through, jostled by the zerg rush, and sliiiides across the floor to stop himself with a wall. "We didn't set -this- buildin' on fire, right?"
Amadeus quickly releases Zenith's hands, shaking and dropping his automatic, looking down at his hands, then to her. "God, did I hurt you? I can't fucking go back in there, I'm too high-strung right now, I might hurt someone if I touch them..." he says, tone shaky as the reality of the entire day starts to hit him.
The dull gleam of metal at Tom's ear reflects in the sweep and flash of the flashlights, flicking over him as he jags through the portal at Remy's heels. Snot and tears have made his face sticky and wet, unchecked by pride or even by notice. His body is lean and fit, clad in dark fatigues that look as though they haven't been changed in quite some time, and he stinks like a young man who has been locked in a cell in the dark for a time measured in weeks. He stumbles to a halt, tumbling into a flaily sort of kneeling crouch on the floor, and stares around, breathing hard.
"Is that everyone?" Natalie asks, her voice raised in breathless high pitch. "Do we have everyone?"
Giving up on his search for metal with a hole in it (Really, metal with a hole in it? Why!), Bahir watches as people come through. Escaping children ought to be of concern -- but they aren't, really. His eyes are all for those coming through. "Well?" he demands, telepathy scouring newcomers for a familiar mind or two. Darn inhibitors.
Walter looks around at all of the chaos, having, twice in his life, run out of a building to find himself in a war zone. It's all rather nostalgic. He continues to just haul Nadia along, not seeming to even be all that aware of her weight. "Anyone wanna fill the new kid in on what's going on?" he wonders loudly, following the general flow of bodies.
"Wasn't burning when we left," Pete calls over to Remy. He glances over the roof and walls to make sure. "We should still get everyone who's not cleanup up and out as soon as we can." He blinks at Walter, bemused.
Behind them, the computer starts to beep, loudly. A glance reveals the clock at thirty seconds.
"Gambit here," says Remy, pulling himself up to sit with his back against the wall, sparing the beeping a look half-terrified and half-resigned. "Is that thing gonna explode an' kill us now?" he wonders, pushing to his feet again, muscles tense for all the gallows humour.
Tim steps forward as he releases the not-kid-anymore he was carrying through the portal and reports: "al-Razi, West, Rider, Rasputin and..." Tim points to Remy and Tom. "and a bunch other accounted for." But the loud beeping noise doesn't sound friendly, and his eyes go wide as he turns back to it.
Pete twitches at the beeping. "Tell me that fucker isn't about to self-destruct."
Against Walter's pull, Nadia struggles -- her face is streaked with snot and tears and grime, lean and pale in the uncertain light, her dark hair in a long and ragged braid. She is fatigue-clad, and significantly taller than when she was kidnapped; her voice is high with fear and confusion, and she cries in Arabic. Even as she fights, she still moves forward.
Abandoning her attempts at haphazard transformer construction, Anne rushes to the computer again, avoiding the crush of other people suddenly in the room. Not that she can do anything except watch the timer count down. "I think everything's just about to go dark," she reassures the others.
"You want to stand around and find out?" Natalie asks, glancing at the clock and then, swiftly, moving for the door. Swiftly.
Back on her feet again, with Sal with other tasks to do, Illyana wobbles to stand with her hand against one wall. This is the unhappy kind of drugged! Things were nicer before! "{Piotr? Emma?}" she wonders tremulously. "{I'm lost--}"
"Great idea," Bahir snaps at Remy, and then turns sharply at the sound of his name as he makes his way out. What was that? al-Razi? "Where the fuck is my cousin?" he asks the others.
"Let's not an' say we did... c'mon, Stinky," says Remy, looking around for Tom. "Let's get movin' again, just in case."
"Psycho Bitch reporting in," Sal says over the radio and to the room at large, then goes off to do something guardly.
Tom nods distantly, looking around as though not really seeing. He moves blindly forward, sticking to Remy's heels mostly out of habit, although there is still a hint of awkward stumbling in his carriage. Like he's not really used to being in motion after two weeks stuck in a box.
Ten-- Nine-- Eight--
AND THEN IT EXPLODES AND WE ALL DIE.
NEW GAME!
WHO IS GMING THIS SCENE ANYWAY?
Walter glances over at Sal at that comment, looking quite confused by the code name. Lalala, human taxi, confused as anything, rescuing people on autopilot. At mention of explosions, he picks up the pace a bit, the girl bouncing in his arms.
"{This way, Illyana,}" Percy calls in Russian, with a beckoning gesture to the wackiest of his ex-Pawns. "{Move with the rest of us. We'll find Emma later when we can. Come on.}"
Having lost one set of momentum, Zenith scrabbles for something to replace it. She clamps one hand over her bleeding arm, and then goes looking for Pete, remembering his difficulty walking before.
Pete backs steadily away from the portal, watching it warily in case it explodes. Or disgorges a wave of guards. Or no-longer-children. It is a portal; who the hell knows what to expect?
Remy is good at providing gentle exercise to restore mobility. He leads Tom in the direction of Outside. "We gonna need t'borrow one of their boats for these folks?" he wonders. "I can probably get one going, if they got any here."
As the group moves outside, the vision that greets them is dramatic. Apocalyptic, even. The outpost has been almost entirely destroyed by flame, a roaring fire that's consumed most everything in its path. It lights up the night sky with an excellent sense of dramatic theatrics. Behind them, it becomes clear that the building they were all standing in is /indeed/ on fire, a slow creep that's just beginning at one corner. And toward the river, there's promise of safety. Two boats sit bobbing there, just waiting to be used.
Illyana's head comes up, and she pushes away from the wall, steps still weaving. "{Percy!}" Her face lights up, even through the dullness of the drugs. "{You're /there/. I can /feel/ it.}" This may seem obvious, but it apparently has some deep meaning for her, and she goes to cling to Percy.
The familiar, whether hallucination or not, is responded to. "Bahir?" Nadia calls, scrambling and squirrelling around to try to track his voice. She smells bad. Poor Walter.
"Fuck." is all Amadeus says now, starting to walk away from the portal and the general chaos, pulling out a white stick and putting it in his mouth, then he pulls out a lighter and holds it up to his face, lighting it. Who knows where he got a stick of pot in Nicaragua, or perhaps he somehow brought it with him, one may never know, but he doesn't wander too far away, he stays in everyone's line of sight. "Today was a good day." he says once he steps outside, sliding his hands in his pockets, then takes a deep breath with the blunt inbetween his lips.
Anne stays to watch the last of the countdown, just in case there is something she can do, before following the rest of the group outside.
"Go check on the boats," Bahir says to Remy, giving a slight nod. "Get them started. Who else can use a boat?" He opens his mouth, likely to say something else, and then his mouth just hangs open a little bit, when he hears, turns, and spies Nadia. Telepathy lances toward her, thwarted by the inhibitor, and he moves swiftly in her direction to pull the bit of metal away. Fire? What? Who cares! Lapsing into Arabic, he says, "Is it you?" There is something like fear in the question.
Tim's steps are rushed and hurried as he keeps escorting his 'not-child' up and out of this mess. The sheer impact of the destruction finally lands on him and his steps slow as he meanders over to the side and hands him off to someone else and works his way to the side of the group. "I think I'm gonna be..." and to finish the sentence, Tim... uhm... well it's green, chunky and not very pleasant.
The countdown's end is anticlimatic. At 'zero', it simply stops, and with a protesting whine, the portal fades away. Those on the other side? Well...
Walter really isn't smelling all that much better. 2 weeks without a bath is rough, regardless of metabolic activity level. He blinks as Bahir runs up to them. "You know her?" he wonders dumbly, attempting to set the girl down onto her own feet now that nothing appears to be exploding.
Natalie pauses, hanging back behind several of the others to find a view of Bahir and Nadia, although it's the former her eyes linger on. She watches. Spies. Shamelessly.
Sal is not so illegal as Amadeus; from somewhere within her fatigues she produces a cigar, which she proceeds to light using the flickering flames from one of the buildings. Clamping it between her teeth, she fades into the background to work escort duty to the boats.
A vague clap on the back is given to Tim as Remy passes, an attempt at reassurance and manly, manly congratulations for making it. He takes care to steer the absentee Tom around the green chunks. "C'mon down with me to the boats, Rains. That school o'yours got a lake, don't it?"
Zenith stops when she reaches Pete. "I got a little juice left--" she offers diffidently, with a twisted smile.
Percy shepherds Illyana after Remy towards the boats, making vague reassuring noises to her in Russian. "{Yes, here I am. We'll be out of here soon, all of us--}" and more in that line. He glances over his shoulder more than once, noting Bahir and Nadia and the general clumping around there, but he is not about to leave the crazy unchaperoned.
With the removal of the inhibitor, Nadia's empathy unfurls in a wave, edgy panic bleeding away through the sheer joy of Bahir's face. "Are you real?" she asks in the same language, hands frantic as she reaches for him, practically climbing up him in her haste to get away from Walter and to get back to Bahir. << Bahir, Bahir, Bahir! >>
"Yup." Tim answers as he grins big, (but not before coughing as the first pat lands on his back) and wipes the sick away from his mouth. "Spent half my time on the lake." And as he follows along with Remy to the boats, he turns over his should and calls out: "Walter." with a jerk of his head.
"Well," Pete mutters, grimacing against the sting of smoke and glare of firelight. "It looks like we won't have to worry about shutting this place /down/." His gaze finds Zenith a moment after she speaks. He blinks at the hand she has pressed against her arm, and frowns. "You're hurt. Has that been seen to?" The offer filters through after a moment, and he shakes his head slightly. "Save your strength." He glances after the children. The no-longer-children. "It looks like they might need the help more."
One of the last outside, Anne stumbles a little as she makes her way in the direction of the boats. Serious use of her powers followed by time functioning solely on adrenaline catches up to her, and she looks weak, though still keeping mostly upright. Certainly no energy left for conversation.
The blaze and crackle of the flames seems almost to bestir Tom a little ways out of the hazey fog in which he is wandering, although not by all that much. He turns away from his rescuer only to spin once in a circle and peer up into the clear sky, blinking repeatedly as he takes a deep breath of air that smells like smoke as much as like freedom.
Natalie lingers, one of the few who looks as if she still has energy to spare. She looks a little at loss for it, and so... she lingers. Watching.
Not crazy! Drugged. Illyana isn't going to let go of Percy unless he pries her off at this point, anyway. "{Everything's--fuzzy. I'm supposed to--travel--my place--}" She looks back over her shoulder, confused. "{The others...?}"
Walter flinches at the empathic wave, stumbling back at the emotions that aren't his own. "I'm... going to take that as a yes," he says, starting to wander towards the boats himself. "Need any help?" he offers, it something of a slogan for him, it seems. Walter West. Need Any Help? (tm)
Relief washes over Bahir's features as their minds meet, but it is brief: fear follows again, higher, and a terrible sense of loss colors the minimal shielding of his mind. << Nadia, >> he says, eyes bright. He shields again, high and hard. "Oh, God, what happened to you that you stand so tall now," he murmurs beneath his breath. He embraces her -- and then releases, leaning back with his hands on her arms. Walter who? Fire what? X-Factor where? "Do you need this?" he asks, lifting the inhibitor in a question as he gestures at the crowd.
"You drivin' the other boat, then," Remy assigns, with many a glance over his shoulder at Tom, and a low murmur of "Make sure he don't do anything like run back into the building or the jungle or somethin'...?" But the boats are arrived at, and Remy hops into one of them, setting to work with his Swiss Army Knife and a yanking of the electric cables out from under the dash. "You an' Tim here, I figure you got a lot to catch up on," he offers, as wires are stripped and exposed by busy fingers that are trembling even more now. "You could spell him... unless y'know how t'hotwire an ignition."
"{Don't worry about it,}" Percy soothes more or less at random, pacing toward the boat that Remy has occupied. "{Everyone is coming along presently. You don't need to travel anywhere, it is better for you to rest.}"
"It's a graze," Zenith tells Pete, but her face is crumpling with the signs of shock. "Kinda hurts, but--" She actually looks at it properly, and takes in the way her side is soaked. Even a slow flow, if left long enough, will get somewhere. She pushes off shock with an effort. "Are you okay--" She looks away from her arm again like that will make it go away. Denial! Good times.
Hello, sky. Tom's hands find the pockets of his filthy fatigues, and he stands there looking up for a long moment longer, lips pursing slowly and brow furrowing into a frown. That's more like it, right? Frowning Tom.
Nadia's abilities are more refined than the last time Bahir's mind touched hers: she doesn't echo and amplify the sharp taste of his fear, but her voice is nearly a keen as she answers him, "Yes, yes -- please -- what is? I don't know what--" She hasn't had time to process anything but the lack of difference in their heights, and even that is subsumed by the need to stay in contact with him. He lets go, and she latches on again.
At the mention of hotwiring, Walter's down on his knees, ripping off the casing. "Got any tools?" he wonders, looking up at Tim, the correct wires already in his hands. There's a somewhat dazed expression on his face, as if he's not entirely sure how he knows what he knows.
Natalie's lingering finally breaks off, and it's Tom she goes after. Her gaze breaks away from Bahir and Nadia with some effort, but break away it does. "Hey," she says, drawing up behind Tom and extending a hand to tap at his shoulder.
"{Don't go away,}" Illyana demands of Percy. "{Where I can't feel you.}" Once she's extracted that promise from him, though, she can be finally scraped off and placed somewhere on the boat to sit docilely.
Tim goes over to Tom and offers out a steadying hand if he wants it. "No, rigging a boat isn't somethin' they tought me, I'm afraid." He admits embarrassingly and he turns to Tom... but then Walter asks for tools... and... Tim looks confused. But he does hand Walter his knife... it is a big knife. "Hey." Tom recieves at last.
The answer from Remy comes in the form of his boat's engine bubbling to life, causing the boat to bump and tug at the ropes mooring it to the dock before his hand idles the motor down to neutral. There is a bemused look at Walter for the question, shared partially with Tim. "The fuck they -teach- you at that school?"
Bahir takes her hand, instead, rather than allow her to climb up onto his shoulders or anything, and presses the inhibitor into it. "It can help you. If it is too noisy here. It is your choice to use it, or not."
"Fine," Pete assures. He studies Zenith intently, eyes narrowing as he notes just how damp her clothing looks. After a moment, he offers her an arm. "Here, we'll help each other to the boats. I'll take a look at that once we've got somewhere to sit down that's not on fire, see if we can take the sting of it away." He adds a mental litany - disinfectant, bandage, fluids, blanket to stave off shock.
Tom startles at this shoulder tap. He whips around sharply on his heel, something in the motion of honed reflexes, but when he has turned, he can't remember why he is tense. Oh. Now there are two people talking to him. He looks from the boy -- older, some part of his brain says; age-mate, some other part of his brain says, wandering randomly in the mental mist -- to the woman. He blinks a few more times, processing a little more now than before, but still sticky with tears and grime and snot and sweat, and still stinky with especially the latter. That shower, when he gets it, will be nice. "Hey," he says, repetitive, nicely noncommital.
Natalie jerks her hand back at the sharp whirl, her eyes widening slightly as she blinks at him. "Sorry," she murmurs. "Didn't mean to--" But then there's Tim, who's meant to know some of these kids, apparently, and Natalie frowns and steps back, letting him move in.
Oh. Look. Children! Bahir, having lifted a slightly warped bit of metal to study it, fumbles it as he turns to look at them. He studies their faces closely, telepathy brushing over their minds. They are strangers. "Shit. Hey, you--." Oh. /Look/. Lots more of you.
Natalie straightens abruptly, leaving off her rather pointless task to stare after the... children? She glances over at the others, questioning.
Right in the middle of all the new kids, is definitely someone familiar. Once they're through, Zenith tries to turn to look back over her shoulder, trying to pull her hand from Amadeus's. "We need to make sure--everyone else--"
Percy drops his jumper cables immediately to the floor with a sharp intake of breath, hit by a fresh wave of fear and adrenaline from these new and unfamiliar sources. He casts a wave of calming breath into the air to undercut the wild edge of flaring tension on the air.
The new kids have already exited the building, and at the sound of others coming behind them, they move swiftly away from the outpost, melting into the jungle. They're good at that, by now.
Pete races out of the portal, checking himself and jagging left to avoid either tripping over someone on the other side or being slammed into by anyone following him through. His gun is half-raised, points of heat gleaming faintly at the tips of his left hand as his gaze pans over the room. Slowly, slowly, he lets his mutation slip into the background again, and lowers the gun, breathing out a quiet sigh of relief once he's sure the people who are /supposed/ to be there /are/ there.
Remy is somewhat inglorious in his arrival back in the universe that begot him: he trips two steps through, jostled by the zerg rush, and sliiiides across the floor to stop himself with a wall. "We didn't set -this- buildin' on fire, right?"
Amadeus quickly releases Zenith's hands, shaking and dropping his automatic, looking down at his hands, then to her. "God, did I hurt you? I can't fucking go back in there, I'm too high-strung right now, I might hurt someone if I touch them..." he says, tone shaky as the reality of the entire day starts to hit him.
The dull gleam of metal at Tom's ear reflects in the sweep and flash of the flashlights, flicking over him as he jags through the portal at Remy's heels. Snot and tears have made his face sticky and wet, unchecked by pride or even by notice. His body is lean and fit, clad in dark fatigues that look as though they haven't been changed in quite some time, and he stinks like a young man who has been locked in a cell in the dark for a time measured in weeks. He stumbles to a halt, tumbling into a flaily sort of kneeling crouch on the floor, and stares around, breathing hard.
"Is that everyone?" Natalie asks, her voice raised in breathless high pitch. "Do we have everyone?"
Giving up on his search for metal with a hole in it (Really, metal with a hole in it? Why!), Bahir watches as people come through. Escaping children ought to be of concern -- but they aren't, really. His eyes are all for those coming through. "Well?" he demands, telepathy scouring newcomers for a familiar mind or two. Darn inhibitors.
Walter looks around at all of the chaos, having, twice in his life, run out of a building to find himself in a war zone. It's all rather nostalgic. He continues to just haul Nadia along, not seeming to even be all that aware of her weight. "Anyone wanna fill the new kid in on what's going on?" he wonders loudly, following the general flow of bodies.
"Wasn't burning when we left," Pete calls over to Remy. He glances over the roof and walls to make sure. "We should still get everyone who's not cleanup up and out as soon as we can." He blinks at Walter, bemused.
Behind them, the computer starts to beep, loudly. A glance reveals the clock at thirty seconds.
"Gambit here," says Remy, pulling himself up to sit with his back against the wall, sparing the beeping a look half-terrified and half-resigned. "Is that thing gonna explode an' kill us now?" he wonders, pushing to his feet again, muscles tense for all the gallows humour.
Tim steps forward as he releases the not-kid-anymore he was carrying through the portal and reports: "al-Razi, West, Rider, Rasputin and..." Tim points to Remy and Tom. "and a bunch other accounted for." But the loud beeping noise doesn't sound friendly, and his eyes go wide as he turns back to it.
Pete twitches at the beeping. "Tell me that fucker isn't about to self-destruct."
Against Walter's pull, Nadia struggles -- her face is streaked with snot and tears and grime, lean and pale in the uncertain light, her dark hair in a long and ragged braid. She is fatigue-clad, and significantly taller than when she was kidnapped; her voice is high with fear and confusion, and she cries in Arabic. Even as she fights, she still moves forward.
Abandoning her attempts at haphazard transformer construction, Anne rushes to the computer again, avoiding the crush of other people suddenly in the room. Not that she can do anything except watch the timer count down. "I think everything's just about to go dark," she reassures the others.
"You want to stand around and find out?" Natalie asks, glancing at the clock and then, swiftly, moving for the door. Swiftly.
Back on her feet again, with Sal with other tasks to do, Illyana wobbles to stand with her hand against one wall. This is the unhappy kind of drugged! Things were nicer before! "{Piotr? Emma?}" she wonders tremulously. "{I'm lost--}"
"Great idea," Bahir snaps at Remy, and then turns sharply at the sound of his name as he makes his way out. What was that? al-Razi? "Where the fuck is my cousin?" he asks the others.
"Let's not an' say we did... c'mon, Stinky," says Remy, looking around for Tom. "Let's get movin' again, just in case."
"Psycho Bitch reporting in," Sal says over the radio and to the room at large, then goes off to do something guardly.
Tom nods distantly, looking around as though not really seeing. He moves blindly forward, sticking to Remy's heels mostly out of habit, although there is still a hint of awkward stumbling in his carriage. Like he's not really used to being in motion after two weeks stuck in a box.
Ten-- Nine-- Eight--
AND THEN IT EXPLODES AND WE ALL DIE.
NEW GAME!
WHO IS GMING THIS SCENE ANYWAY?
Walter glances over at Sal at that comment, looking quite confused by the code name. Lalala, human taxi, confused as anything, rescuing people on autopilot. At mention of explosions, he picks up the pace a bit, the girl bouncing in his arms.
"{This way, Illyana,}" Percy calls in Russian, with a beckoning gesture to the wackiest of his ex-Pawns. "{Move with the rest of us. We'll find Emma later when we can. Come on.}"
Having lost one set of momentum, Zenith scrabbles for something to replace it. She clamps one hand over her bleeding arm, and then goes looking for Pete, remembering his difficulty walking before.
Pete backs steadily away from the portal, watching it warily in case it explodes. Or disgorges a wave of guards. Or no-longer-children. It is a portal; who the hell knows what to expect?
Remy is good at providing gentle exercise to restore mobility. He leads Tom in the direction of Outside. "We gonna need t'borrow one of their boats for these folks?" he wonders. "I can probably get one going, if they got any here."
As the group moves outside, the vision that greets them is dramatic. Apocalyptic, even. The outpost has been almost entirely destroyed by flame, a roaring fire that's consumed most everything in its path. It lights up the night sky with an excellent sense of dramatic theatrics. Behind them, it becomes clear that the building they were all standing in is /indeed/ on fire, a slow creep that's just beginning at one corner. And toward the river, there's promise of safety. Two boats sit bobbing there, just waiting to be used.
Illyana's head comes up, and she pushes away from the wall, steps still weaving. "{Percy!}" Her face lights up, even through the dullness of the drugs. "{You're /there/. I can /feel/ it.}" This may seem obvious, but it apparently has some deep meaning for her, and she goes to cling to Percy.
The familiar, whether hallucination or not, is responded to. "Bahir?" Nadia calls, scrambling and squirrelling around to try to track his voice. She smells bad. Poor Walter.
"Fuck." is all Amadeus says now, starting to walk away from the portal and the general chaos, pulling out a white stick and putting it in his mouth, then he pulls out a lighter and holds it up to his face, lighting it. Who knows where he got a stick of pot in Nicaragua, or perhaps he somehow brought it with him, one may never know, but he doesn't wander too far away, he stays in everyone's line of sight. "Today was a good day." he says once he steps outside, sliding his hands in his pockets, then takes a deep breath with the blunt inbetween his lips.
Anne stays to watch the last of the countdown, just in case there is something she can do, before following the rest of the group outside.
"Go check on the boats," Bahir says to Remy, giving a slight nod. "Get them started. Who else can use a boat?" He opens his mouth, likely to say something else, and then his mouth just hangs open a little bit, when he hears, turns, and spies Nadia. Telepathy lances toward her, thwarted by the inhibitor, and he moves swiftly in her direction to pull the bit of metal away. Fire? What? Who cares! Lapsing into Arabic, he says, "Is it you?" There is something like fear in the question.
Tim's steps are rushed and hurried as he keeps escorting his 'not-child' up and out of this mess. The sheer impact of the destruction finally lands on him and his steps slow as he meanders over to the side and hands him off to someone else and works his way to the side of the group. "I think I'm gonna be..." and to finish the sentence, Tim... uhm... well it's green, chunky and not very pleasant.
The countdown's end is anticlimatic. At 'zero', it simply stops, and with a protesting whine, the portal fades away. Those on the other side? Well...
Walter really isn't smelling all that much better. 2 weeks without a bath is rough, regardless of metabolic activity level. He blinks as Bahir runs up to them. "You know her?" he wonders dumbly, attempting to set the girl down onto her own feet now that nothing appears to be exploding.
Natalie pauses, hanging back behind several of the others to find a view of Bahir and Nadia, although it's the former her eyes linger on. She watches. Spies. Shamelessly.
Sal is not so illegal as Amadeus; from somewhere within her fatigues she produces a cigar, which she proceeds to light using the flickering flames from one of the buildings. Clamping it between her teeth, she fades into the background to work escort duty to the boats.
A vague clap on the back is given to Tim as Remy passes, an attempt at reassurance and manly, manly congratulations for making it. He takes care to steer the absentee Tom around the green chunks. "C'mon down with me to the boats, Rains. That school o'yours got a lake, don't it?"
Zenith stops when she reaches Pete. "I got a little juice left--" she offers diffidently, with a twisted smile.
Percy shepherds Illyana after Remy towards the boats, making vague reassuring noises to her in Russian. "{Yes, here I am. We'll be out of here soon, all of us--}" and more in that line. He glances over his shoulder more than once, noting Bahir and Nadia and the general clumping around there, but he is not about to leave the crazy unchaperoned.
With the removal of the inhibitor, Nadia's empathy unfurls in a wave, edgy panic bleeding away through the sheer joy of Bahir's face. "Are you real?" she asks in the same language, hands frantic as she reaches for him, practically climbing up him in her haste to get away from Walter and to get back to Bahir. << Bahir, Bahir, Bahir! >>
"Yup." Tim answers as he grins big, (but not before coughing as the first pat lands on his back) and wipes the sick away from his mouth. "Spent half my time on the lake." And as he follows along with Remy to the boats, he turns over his should and calls out: "Walter." with a jerk of his head.
"Well," Pete mutters, grimacing against the sting of smoke and glare of firelight. "It looks like we won't have to worry about shutting this place /down/." His gaze finds Zenith a moment after she speaks. He blinks at the hand she has pressed against her arm, and frowns. "You're hurt. Has that been seen to?" The offer filters through after a moment, and he shakes his head slightly. "Save your strength." He glances after the children. The no-longer-children. "It looks like they might need the help more."
One of the last outside, Anne stumbles a little as she makes her way in the direction of the boats. Serious use of her powers followed by time functioning solely on adrenaline catches up to her, and she looks weak, though still keeping mostly upright. Certainly no energy left for conversation.
The blaze and crackle of the flames seems almost to bestir Tom a little ways out of the hazey fog in which he is wandering, although not by all that much. He turns away from his rescuer only to spin once in a circle and peer up into the clear sky, blinking repeatedly as he takes a deep breath of air that smells like smoke as much as like freedom.
Natalie lingers, one of the few who looks as if she still has energy to spare. She looks a little at loss for it, and so... she lingers. Watching.
Not crazy! Drugged. Illyana isn't going to let go of Percy unless he pries her off at this point, anyway. "{Everything's--fuzzy. I'm supposed to--travel--my place--}" She looks back over her shoulder, confused. "{The others...?}"
Walter flinches at the empathic wave, stumbling back at the emotions that aren't his own. "I'm... going to take that as a yes," he says, starting to wander towards the boats himself. "Need any help?" he offers, it something of a slogan for him, it seems. Walter West. Need Any Help? (tm)
Relief washes over Bahir's features as their minds meet, but it is brief: fear follows again, higher, and a terrible sense of loss colors the minimal shielding of his mind. << Nadia, >> he says, eyes bright. He shields again, high and hard. "Oh, God, what happened to you that you stand so tall now," he murmurs beneath his breath. He embraces her -- and then releases, leaning back with his hands on her arms. Walter who? Fire what? X-Factor where? "Do you need this?" he asks, lifting the inhibitor in a question as he gestures at the crowd.
"You drivin' the other boat, then," Remy assigns, with many a glance over his shoulder at Tom, and a low murmur of "Make sure he don't do anything like run back into the building or the jungle or somethin'...?" But the boats are arrived at, and Remy hops into one of them, setting to work with his Swiss Army Knife and a yanking of the electric cables out from under the dash. "You an' Tim here, I figure you got a lot to catch up on," he offers, as wires are stripped and exposed by busy fingers that are trembling even more now. "You could spell him... unless y'know how t'hotwire an ignition."
"{Don't worry about it,}" Percy soothes more or less at random, pacing toward the boat that Remy has occupied. "{Everyone is coming along presently. You don't need to travel anywhere, it is better for you to rest.}"
"It's a graze," Zenith tells Pete, but her face is crumpling with the signs of shock. "Kinda hurts, but--" She actually looks at it properly, and takes in the way her side is soaked. Even a slow flow, if left long enough, will get somewhere. She pushes off shock with an effort. "Are you okay--" She looks away from her arm again like that will make it go away. Denial! Good times.
Hello, sky. Tom's hands find the pockets of his filthy fatigues, and he stands there looking up for a long moment longer, lips pursing slowly and brow furrowing into a frown. That's more like it, right? Frowning Tom.
Nadia's abilities are more refined than the last time Bahir's mind touched hers: she doesn't echo and amplify the sharp taste of his fear, but her voice is nearly a keen as she answers him, "Yes, yes -- please -- what is? I don't know what--" She hasn't had time to process anything but the lack of difference in their heights, and even that is subsumed by the need to stay in contact with him. He lets go, and she latches on again.
At the mention of hotwiring, Walter's down on his knees, ripping off the casing. "Got any tools?" he wonders, looking up at Tim, the correct wires already in his hands. There's a somewhat dazed expression on his face, as if he's not entirely sure how he knows what he knows.
Natalie's lingering finally breaks off, and it's Tom she goes after. Her gaze breaks away from Bahir and Nadia with some effort, but break away it does. "Hey," she says, drawing up behind Tom and extending a hand to tap at his shoulder.
"{Don't go away,}" Illyana demands of Percy. "{Where I can't feel you.}" Once she's extracted that promise from him, though, she can be finally scraped off and placed somewhere on the boat to sit docilely.
Tim goes over to Tom and offers out a steadying hand if he wants it. "No, rigging a boat isn't somethin' they tought me, I'm afraid." He admits embarrassingly and he turns to Tom... but then Walter asks for tools... and... Tim looks confused. But he does hand Walter his knife... it is a big knife. "Hey." Tom recieves at last.
The answer from Remy comes in the form of his boat's engine bubbling to life, causing the boat to bump and tug at the ropes mooring it to the dock before his hand idles the motor down to neutral. There is a bemused look at Walter for the question, shared partially with Tim. "The fuck they -teach- you at that school?"
Bahir takes her hand, instead, rather than allow her to climb up onto his shoulders or anything, and presses the inhibitor into it. "It can help you. If it is too noisy here. It is your choice to use it, or not."
"Fine," Pete assures. He studies Zenith intently, eyes narrowing as he notes just how damp her clothing looks. After a moment, he offers her an arm. "Here, we'll help each other to the boats. I'll take a look at that once we've got somewhere to sit down that's not on fire, see if we can take the sting of it away." He adds a mental litany - disinfectant, bandage, fluids, blanket to stave off shock.
Tom startles at this shoulder tap. He whips around sharply on his heel, something in the motion of honed reflexes, but when he has turned, he can't remember why he is tense. Oh. Now there are two people talking to him. He looks from the boy -- older, some part of his brain says; age-mate, some other part of his brain says, wandering randomly in the mental mist -- to the woman. He blinks a few more times, processing a little more now than before, but still sticky with tears and grime and snot and sweat, and still stinky with especially the latter. That shower, when he gets it, will be nice. "Hey," he says, repetitive, nicely noncommital.
Natalie jerks her hand back at the sharp whirl, her eyes widening slightly as she blinks at him. "Sorry," she murmurs. "Didn't mean to--" But then there's Tim, who's meant to know some of these kids, apparently, and Natalie frowns and steps back, letting him move in.