Early Evening, Super-Sekrit Sub Basement Boiler Room
"We might want to intercede here," Krycek said, watching the Mole Men. "Or explode, which I'd really rather avoid."
'Explode' was a word that Macbeth understood. Somewhat.
"I'm all for interceding, myself," he agreed, habitually putting his hand to his hip for a sword that hadn't been there in ... well... technically a thousand years. He looked around the room for something - anything - that could be used as a makeshift weapon. It was far easier to inflict pain on homicidal maniacs like himself with a weapon.
When he came up short, he shrugged. He would just have to make do with something taken from one of the crazy conspirators down below. Besides, getting down to their level would be more easily accomplished with empty hands.
...
"How do we get down there, then?"
"We could jump? It's not that far."
"Further for some of us," Xander says, glancing at Zero and Cally. "We could do the human chain thing and give each other a little less far to drop, anyway."
Cally swallows hard. "Yeah. Erm... I can take care of the bomb. But I don't know how much use I'm gonna be if, there's, like, fighting."
Take care of the bomb?, she thought to herself. Am I crazy? I've never done that. Gods, I wish Bridge was here. Or Sam.
Krycek nods, glancing at the members of their group. "I think we have enough people who can at least hit things to give you cover, Cally. But we should get down there pretty quick, or we're screwed."
Anders stares slack-jawed at Krycek for a moment, then shoots a panicked glance toward Cally. His mouth works silently for a few beats before he finally finds his voice.
"I -- yeah. We can . . . holy frak, I am so not cut out for this sort of . . ."
Okay, so he found his voice, but he's still fumbling around for the point. Right, Samuel, he thinks to himself, that thing blows up, we're frakked either way. Might as well not be a useless idiot for once in your life. It'll probably be the only chance you get.
"You can do it, coach," he says in his best pep-talk voice even though he kind of really wants to freak out and curl up in a ball somewhere. Somewhere not here. Forcing a smile, he adds, "You know I wouldn't let anything happen to you, right?"
But as he looks around at the other members of the group, the panic in his voice is evident. "Right?"
"My brother can disarm bombs," Zero offered. "Not that that's much help since cell phones can set them off so I can't quite call him. But I can brawl."
"I can..." Xander glances at the very familiar bomb. "Talk a lot, which helped with my last bomb-defusing situation? But I'm not seeing how that could be re-applied in this one. So yeah, also I can hit things. And be hit, granted."
"I'm sure we're all quite capable of being hit... but at least we can try to offer her some cover as she.... disarms the bomb?" Macbeth put extra emphasis on 'bomb,' testing the foreign word on his tongue before shrugging his shoulders faintly. "I have a good deal of experience in melee combat behind me. Weapon or none, I'll do my best to watch your back, lass," he said, offering Cally a reassuring pat on her shoulder.
"Melee combat, is that anything like a mosh pit?"
"Well, aside from the lack of anything resembling music," Xander, who's been in a few melee-ish situations himself, says, "....actually, it's exactly like a mosh pit."
"Swerval. Got this covered, then. Cally, you do what you have to so's we don't blow up."
"I'm staying with Cally," Anders says stubbornly. "I suck at sparring and I'll just slow you guys down."
"I'm rather inept with anything dealing with technology, so I'd prefer not having to deal with the bomb directly lest I set it off. I'd rather have to deal with those creatures down there."
Krycek glanced at them all in turn. "So let's get going, people," he said impatiently.
He stepped forward, looking over at the ground, and then sat down before he levered himself over the edge. "There's part of a ladder here," he called up. "Someone - Anders? - help down anyone who can't reach it, I'll help catch." Krycek dropped to the ground and waited, though the possibility of getting blown up was growing every second that passed.
"This is definitely not a ladies first situation," Cally says. "Ummm, Xander, you go."
Xander shrugs. "Can do. I'll just look out for plummeting short people from above." He maneuvers himself over the ledge, feels for the partial ladder, and makes his way down, with a small jump, to stand next to Krycek.
Having seen both Krycek and Xander make their way down fine, Hamlet swings on to the ladder and drops down as well. Better to do something than wait around and risk being blown up.
"Well, I guess I'm in for it now," mutters Anders with a sigh, rubbing a hand over his face.
He peers over the edge, winces, then takes a deep breath and stations himself by the ladder to help people down as needed. He's totally yielding any kind of lead to Krycek or Xander or . . . well, anyone else, really on this. Because this? So completely not a strong point for Samuel T. Anders.
Cally hops down, landing safely.
"Okay, come on, we need to get moving," Cally says. "We're losing valuable time."
Cause I'm gonna need all the time I can get, she thinks. No way defusing a bomb is gonna be easy like in the movies.
Zero rolls her eyes and jumps. She kind of falls to her knees on impact, but, "I'm fine, I'm fine."
With a mighty shout and a running start, MacBeth leaps off the platform and crashes down into the mass of Mole Men.
"Oh good, so we're going for stealth," Xander says, shaking his head and taking off after MacBeth.
Zero sighed and dashed after the boys. Time to find out what happened when you bit mole men and kicked them in the goolies.
As the students had gotten themselves situated to fight the Mole Men, the Underminer had done a final check of his bomb and his minions. As if in slow motion, he reached for the timer that would start the countdown. Closer his hand crept. Closer. Only centimeters away now. Closer... closer...
It was right as the Underminer's finger pressed the button that Macbeth crashed into the Mole Men from above. The Underminer spun away from the bomb to see the students running at them.
"Behold, my Mole Men!" He began to edge toward the exit. "You see! Even the children come to try and thwart us! But, they are too late! The bomb is set! Let us retreat to the safety of our tunnels!" He didn't seem to care that several of his minions were already engaged in battle. His only concern was getting himself to the exit. He continued to edge along the wall.
Cally swallows hard and motions at Anders.
"Get down here, you goof. Watch my back!" With that, she scrambles over and tries to get to the bomb.
Anders gulps and, being the last one left at the top, scrambles down and hits the ground with a solid thunk. Shooting frequent glances toward the rest of the gang, he tails Cally, maybe taking that "watch my back" thing a little too literally.
"Watching your back, right. Full-service boyfriend and all that. Yeah." He eyes the Mole Men. "This is so not my department . . ."
Krycek ran forward, punching a Mole Man in the head with sufficient force that he went down immediately. Seeing the leader edging away, he growled and tried pushing his way towards him. Another Mole Man raised an oversized wrench with a yell and Krycek caught his wrist, disarming him quickly.
"Oh squall no," Zero muttered. She released her hold on a Mole Man's ear, kicked another in the shins with her steel-toed boots, and headed for the leader herself. "You're not gettin' away that easy!"
She found her way blocked by yet another Mole Man. So she tackled him and started punching.
Cally scrambles through the crowd and sits down in front of the bomb. She stares at the wires, the digital timer that continues to count down, everything. She really has no idea where to start.
...And a mole man is sneaky up behind her with a very large wrench, ready to smash it right into the back of her skull.
Anders's reaction is in no way the quickest, and really it's sheer dumb luck that he manages to notice at all, but a lucky flash of light off the wrench alerts him to the danger in the nick of time.
"Coach, look out!" he yells, and dives after the Mole Man with the hard shoulder tackle he'd perfected in training with Kara. He has no technique to speak of and his knuckles are going to be bruised all to hell and back tomorrow, but he pummels the Mole Man in the face, snarling.
"Nobody frakking hurts my girl, you got that? Not frakking ever."
He's a little too caught up in this uncharacteristic burst of violent rage to notice that another Mole Man has snagged the fallen wrench and is coming at him from the side . . .
Xander doesn't have as much in the way of sports moves - mostly he's got "Dodging stupidly into trouble" and "dodging badly out of trouble" which are frankly pretty easy for the casual observer to confuse for each other what with how they both tend to get him frequently clobberinated.
He goes for the first one now, rushing the guy who's about to hit Anders. No chance Xander's going to knock him over, but at least he's got enough momentum to shove the Mole Man's arm aside and send the wrench flying.
Macbeth is quick to snatch up the flying wrench from where it landed, feeling far more comfortable fighting with a heavy piece of solid metal in his hand than he had been when he had leapt into the fight unarmed. Pushing his way past a couple of other Mole Men, he moves to finish what Xander started, bringing the heavy wrench down on the Mole Man's head and then spinning on his heel to look for any more that might dare challenge him.
Ah, the thrill of battle!
Macbeth might have been grinning quite manically.
Another Mole Man noticed Zero pummeling one of his fellows and hauled her off by the wrist. "AAOOW!" she yelped, and kicked out, hard, causing him to drop her. She held the injured wrist against her body and headbutted him in the stomach.
She kind of bared her teeth at Macbeth. "You remind me of my brother a little."
Cally starts sweating a lot as the timer continues to clock down. She fumbles with her toolbelt, grabbing a pair of wire cutters.
What would Bridge do? she asks herself. Probably stand on his head, wiggle his fingers, ask a question nobody understands, and probably kiss Xander. So... not helpful. Bomb. Think. Disarm. Yes.
Krycek shouldered aside one Mole Man and delivered a fist to the belly of another as he waded through the crowd towards the Underminer. He glanced over at Zero, who seemed to be traveling in the same direction, and renewed his efforts at moving through them, grabbing a shovel that one of them attempted to disembowel him with.
He swung the shovel, knocking a Mole Man back and bowling over another two. He darted forwards, still trying to get through the mass of bodies. "Zero-- how close are you?"
Hamlet grabs a broom from the wall, breaks the end off of it, and starts wielding it as a foil as best he can. He manages to fight off a few of the mole men, but they seem to keep coming. He falls in behind Krycek, hoping that they might make more progress by teaming up.
"Their leader is getting away!"
Anders is still busy pummeling the one Mole Man who tried to sneak up on Cally and doesn't pay any attention to Hamlet's warning. The Mole Man might be unconscious by now if Anders had better aim with his fists, which he doesn't, so unconsciousness is sort of around the corner but not here yet.
Macbeth, on the other hand, is not preoccupied in love-induced rage. He's simply enjoying the thrill of battle and the satisfaction of beating his enemies senseless with a blunt metal object.
As such, Hamlet's warning rings clearly in his ears, and he quickly doubles back in persuit of the Underminer, bloodied-up wrench grasped so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were turning white. The sick grin on his face is still there. He wouldn't be able to cut anyone open from nave to chops with the blunt piece of steel, but that wouldn't stop him from using it to leave a mark.
"And where do ye think you're going," he cries, charging toward the Mole Man with the wrench outstretched, "leaving your men to fight your battle for you like a pathetic coward?"
Cally shrieks a little as the timer ticks down past the six-minute mark. She fumbles with the wire cutters and looks.
"Frak! It has both red and green wires! The movies always say to cut one or the other! Which is it?" She's trembling more than a little.
Krycek saw Macbeth push from the crowd of Mole Men to head off the leader and took the opportunity to beat an oncoming Mole Man down with the flat of his shovel.
He stumbled as Cally shrieked, regaining his balance quickly and kicking another Mole Man in the stomach. "Whichever one doesn't blow us up!" He shouted across the room, wondering if running the hell away was still an option.
Having finally rendered his particular Mole Man unconscious, Anders stands up and paces nervously behind Cally, fidgeting with the frustration of not being able to help her with this. "How come they gotta color-code 'em anyway? How come nobody ever uses, like, purple wires or magenta ones?"
He spots a Mole Man heading in his and Cally's direction and, glowering, yells, "What part of don't frakking hurt her ever did you not get?" Anders would seriously give good money for a hockey stick or a baseball bat right about now, but unfortunately about all there is at hand is a small pile of old bolts. Of course, the pile is small, but the bolts themselves are actually pretty hefty at about an inch in diameter and half a foot in length.
Anders picks one up and wings it at the Mole Man; it doesn't connect, though it does hit the floor with a loud clang and a few sparks and halt the encroacher's progress long enough for him to fire off a second bolt (remember these are literal bolts here) that hits the Mole Man in the shoulder, and a third that connects to knock it out cold.
"You can do it, coach, I know you can," he mutters.
Hamlet keeps fighting at the Mole Men with his makeshift foil, wishing (not for the first time) that his Father had insisted he study a more damage-inflicting combat style. One Mole Man in particular rushes at him, wrench in hand. Hamlet barely manages to dodge in time, and brings his broom handle down hard on his opponent's hand. The Mole Man drops his weapon, and Hamlet kicks him into the throng, knocking over another Mole Man in the process.
He notices Macbeth heading for the leader of the creatures out of the side of his vision. Hamlet tries to make his way over there, but the mob is still to thick for him to get through. Gritting his teeth, he decides to hunker down for the moment and try and take out as many of the minions as he can.
"Which ever wire won't set off the detonator!" he yells to wherever Cally is in the room.
A stray Mole Man who had the misfortune of getting in Macbeth's way got a good konk to the side of the head, and very quickly wasn't in his way anymore. The former thane had found his way into battle mode, and the leader was the only opponent that he cared about dealing with.
"I'll make you see red, ye lily-liver'd coward!"
There was much waving about of a large wrench.
Xander, eyes darting about for something less breakable than himself that he can use as a weapon, notices something on the wall that's not exactly what he was looking for, but just might fall under that definition if you stretch it a bit: a panel of lightswitches, most of them flipped down.
But if it's gonna work, it needs to only work on the bad guys, and how's he going to warn anybody except maybe Cally and Anders who are right there next to him, without tipping off the Mole People?
Xander taps Anders on the shoulder, points to the lightswitches, and mimes covering his eyes. Then he darts to the wall, and, shading his own face, yells out the best thing he can think of on short notice:
"OH MY GOD CALLYNANDERS STOP THAT! PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON! WE'RE NOT DEAD YET!"
--and flips on the entire bank of lights.
Macbeth, being a celtic man on a mission, is not swayed in the least by Xander's exclamation. In fact, he's heard similar things before out on the battlefield. Actually, being celtic, he's not at all put off by the knowledge that his ancestors used to paint themselves blue and run into battle screaming and naked.
So, naturally, he doesn't cover his eyes.
Thus, when the ceiling moons flipped on, so many of them that he might have been persuaded to re-label them the ceiling suns, he froze in his tracks, temporarily blinded, and exclaimed something that sounded vaguely like, "Achpbbbbth!"
Of course, he continued swinging the wrench around like it was his last lifeline and he hoped to actually hit something.
Cally thankfully instinctively winces at Xander's shout, so she is not instantly blinded.
...however, when she opens her eyes she shrieks again, as the timer clicks down past two minutes. The sweat starts pouring, and she swallows hard.
She cuts the green wires. All of them. And all the red ones. And all the blue wires just to be sure. There's still a orange wire, but that one gets to stay. No way orange is the color of destruction.
But the timer is still going down.
"Frak, it's gonna blow!" She starts crying. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry!"
The Mole Men, now reminded of the explodey impending doom, have begun to run blindly down their escape tunnels... and miraculously grabbing their fallen comrades AND sealing their tunnels after themselves.
Stupid efficient evil jerks.
Getting blown up in an underground chamber is not how Anders wanted to go out, and luckily he was blinking, perplexed, at Xander's shout so he was spared the bout of blindness. If he has his way and he survives this, he's never, ever, ever going to be within five hundred miles of things that go 'splodey again.
He stares at the timer with a sinking feeling of nausea in his stomach and drops to his knees beside Cally, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her neck. "It's not gonna blow, it's not gonna blow," he mumbles disbelievingly, then turns to Cally with a crooked little smile on his face, half wishing he'd really thought to do what Xander claimed they were doing. "Least you and me go together, huh?" he asks.
"Not your fault, Cally," Xander adds.
He's... good, right? He's not blinded himself, because he kinda knew it was coming, he managed to whack a departing Mole Man over the head as the guy stumbled away after his buddies, which was at least cathartic, and... well... he's done this before. This. Right here. With the counting-down bomb and the really really not sure he's gonna walk out of the room in less than a thousand pieces. He's done this. Piece of cake. Just smile and pretend you don't care.
Except that's not gonna stop this bomb from going off, and... he kinda does care. A lot. It's weird how it seems like he'll be missing out on more if he gets blown to smithereens now, than he would've a year ago. So... he's not so much with the smiling. Just standing there with his arms crossed.
"Well, we all gotta go out sometime, right?" Zero sighed, not moving from where one of the Mole Men knocked her down hard a little while back. At least her wrist and knee would stop hurting. "Somebody wanna make out with me while we explode? Might as well go out happy..."
"This is frakking ridiculous," Krycek said angrily. "I've died once already, I really don't want to be trying it again." He walked over towards Cally and the bomb, looking grim. "There has to be something left on the damn thing."
Cally chews her lower lip, tears streaming down her face.
"Sixty seconds," she says, and turns to kiss Anders. "I'm so sorry, guys."
Xander walks over to the bomb as well, and looks. Because it's gonna matter if he's three feet closer to it if it blows?
"Cally," he says in a deceptively calm tone, because he's not, not at all. "You wanna cut that last wire? What the hell can it hurt?"
Anders keeps his arms wrapped tightly around Cally, his eyes on the timer as it ticks down. "He's right, Shortstop," he says, figuring if they all blow up, then using his private nickname for her in front of other people won't really matter too much anyway, and if they don't, well . . . okay, he hasn't really thought that far. "It sure as frak isn't gonna hurt anything, at this point."
He nuzzles her cheek and wipes her tears away, reluctantly loosening his embrace. "C'mon, Shortstop, give it a try? For us?"
Cally swallows hard again, nods, and reaches over and cuts the last wire.
Of course, the timer continues to count down.
"Oh frak. Five, four, three, I love you Anders!" She shrieks...
And the bomb completely fails to explode as the timer hits zero. But not in the literal sense of hitting Zero, as that would be odd.
Zero sat up slowly. "We're not dead?"
Krycek looked down at himself, then around at the rest of them. "I'd say 'no'," he said, sounding vaguely surprised.
"I -- looks like we're still here." Anders raises his head from Cally's shoulder and casts a disbelieving glance around. Yep, Cally feels pretty solid in his arms, and he gives her a good long kiss just to make extra sure . . . then he reaches over and tries to poke Xander in the leg, too. Because you can't be too sure, or something.
"Still here. Unless you're poking a ghost," Xander says. "Which wouldn't be real smart actually; they can be downright pissy about it. And god forbid you try to play that 'I'm not touching you...' game with 'em."
Yeah, he's still here, or he wouldn't be babbling this much. yay babble. Yay poking.
Cally blinks. "I did it? I stopped it?"
Anders's disbelieving smile breaks out into a full-fledged grin, and he swings Cally up into his arms for a huge hug. "You did it, coach! You totally did it!"
"You did it!" Zero crowed at Cally. "We're not dead! Now, if someone will help me up, we can figure out how to get out of here, yes?"
Krycek leaned over and offered a hand to Zero, looking very relieved. "Definitely sounds like a plan of sorts.
Cally, having gotten a grip on herself, and things being properly lit, motions off to the side.
"Erm, service stairway?"
Xander decides that calculating the odds on whether any of them could've raced up the stairway and grabbed somebody who could magic or teleport or wish the damn bomb away to the cornfield before it exploded, if they'd had any idea it was there is only going to hurt his head, so he doesn't.
"There's a thought. Beats rappelling up the air vent."
"Doing what?" Anders screws his face up in confusion and wraps an arm around Cally's shoulders. "Okay, no, no going back up the air vent. I hate that thing now. I totally vote for the stairs."
Krycek was already on his way towards it, glancing back briefly to give everyone else a disbelieving look. "Great, whenever you guys finish that vote, I'll just meet you upstairs."
Cally stands up and brushes herself off, and swipes the back of her hand under each eye. "Well. Whew. I'm ready to go have some serious, serious sex. You okay with that, Tiger?"
"I am so okay with that, Shortstop," Anders replies, steering both of them toward the stairs after Krycek. "But can we shower first? Or maybe we can just have sex in the shower . . ."
"If you two start stripping in the stairwell?" Xander says, moving quickly past them... "Well, okay, it's understandable but for God's sake warn me so I can cover my eyes? It's only fair."
Cally grabs Anders by the arm and is already hurrying out of the room.
"Fair's fair. Later!"
[ooc: Same Deal. OOC Commentary welcome, but this time, if a Swerval individual or two Shakespearean blokes want to explain what happened to them, they can do that ICly too. Woo!]