Desperado
Training Mutant
Former teacher. Former husband. Former agitator. Former slave.
Posts: 29
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Post by Desperado on Mar 26, 2012 22:09:15 GMT -4
OOC: A direct continuation of We All Fall Down..., following Jacob and Hank's search to find a place for the group to stay.
Jacob hadn't intended for anyone to follow, but he couldn't say that he minded the company. Less people around made him feel less awkward, less out of control of the situation. It let him breathe, let him find a nice peaceful place in his mind away from the anger and the confusion and the fear.
It had been years since he'd needed to do these exercises, since before he had gotten together with Larza. Eventually, though, his posture relaxed as his mind let go of the major issues of the past few minutes. It would take him a bit longer to let go of the last few months, but it was a start.
"Jacob, by the way," he said, offering his hand to the boy (Jacob hadn't quite noticed how young the man was compared to him. Now that he could think about it, he was probably the only one of that ensemble that was old enough to be out of college, or even in college) as they walked along.
"So what's your story?" He figured if they were going to be spending any length of time together, they may as well get to know each other. As he walked, he stooped over to pick up a piece of rubble of some kind, bouncing it in his left palm.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Mar 27, 2012 0:42:07 GMT -4
"Jacob", Hank repeated with a nod as he accepted the handshake. "I'm Hank."
He thought about how to answer Jacob's question. What was his story? What could he say about himself without revealing too much? What could he say without betraying others? Until he understood more about their connections and more about what might have brought them there, he opted for true without being terribly bold.
"Um....I'm a student...", he answered. "I go to a, um, special school". Great, he thought. That sounded wrong. "A school for the, um, gifted."
Well, it was better - but he traded sounding like an imbecile for sounding like a braggart. Or maybe a liar.
"It's a private school", he amended.
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Desperado
Training Mutant
Former teacher. Former husband. Former agitator. Former slave.
Posts: 29
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Post by Desperado on Mar 27, 2012 20:07:41 GMT -4
A private school, for special, gifted students.
"We used to call it 'Juvie.'" He said, though he suspected that wasn't what the kid had meant. His answer sounded kind of dodgy, but since it was the first question that he had asked that had been answered all day, he was willing to just let it slide.
Baby steps. Calm and relaxed. He continued walking to the door, expecting it to be non-existent. "I was a teacher. Until I started teaching the wrong things. Apparently, mutants in high places get nervous when someone they recently shafted and threatened start talking to their human students about freedom and the nature of a fear state. They claimed I called Mags' regime 'fascist,' but that's just wrong." They finally reached the door and saw that it was, apparently, intact.
So Jacob threw the rock threw it. The sound of shattering glass was deafening in that otherwise silent place.
"'Totalitarian,' is what I called it." He himself saw no need to deny any of this, or to hide it. It was who he was. And it wasn't as if ol' Buckethead could hear him say it and come flying down to seek retribution. Even if he did, what would he do?
Jacob had been dead before. He'd been a slave before. He'd been violated in a way that no man, woman, child, or even animal should have to endure. The very remembrance of his life without memories made him seethe. But it, too, was in the past.
And so he let it go and stepped through the door.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Mar 27, 2012 20:53:25 GMT -4
"Mags". Magneto.
Hank didn't understand much of what he heard, but he caught that. He also caught that Jacob was not a fan and that "Mags" felt the same way about Jacob.
The rest - "mutants in high places" and "fascist, totalitarian regimes" - painted enough of a picture of the "where" this man came from that Hank didn't feel the need to probe for more.
He listened, focusing instead on the here and now. Apart from Jacob's footsteps, he heard nothing.
"Sounds rough", he said in acknowledgement of Jacob's fragment of a story. Hank followed.
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Desperado
Training Mutant
Former teacher. Former husband. Former agitator. Former slave.
Posts: 29
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Post by Desperado on Mar 28, 2012 7:30:12 GMT -4
Jacob had turned and headed towards the fire escape. The elevators, of course, would be off, forcing him to have to climb up the six flights of stairs. He really wished that they had been dropped off closer to wherever "downtown" was so that he could find a decent sized building, but beggars could not be choosers.
He pushed the handle and shoved at the door, but it didn't budge. He slammed his shoulder against it. No bueno.
He had heard the kid's acknowledgement, but figured he hadn't actually been listening. "Sounds rough" was the sort of thing one said when they weren't really paying attention. Well, if only because of how he said it. No fear. No particular emotional investment. So long as he hadn't been living under a rock for the last twenty years, he had heard the name "Mags," and learned to associate it with what effectively amounted to the God-Emperor of mankind. Jacob certainly knew that if he had heard someone talking about Magneto not five years ago the way he was talking about him now, he would be trying to shush the person and/or get far away from them.
So, all he said in his own acknowledgement was, "Uh, a little help?"
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Post by Hank McCoy on Mar 29, 2012 21:38:42 GMT -4
For all intents and purposes, Hank did exactly what Jacob did. He tried the handle and when that didn't work he put his shoulder into it.
This time, the door opened readily - almost eagerly - and slammed against the inside wall with an echoing bang. It was nearly utter darkness inside and somewhere the door's latch clattered musically against the floor. It had snapped off cleanly.
"You must have loosened it", Hank said quietly. His face reddened. He moved aside enough to let Jacob have a look and peered into the stairwell. He could tell it was a stairwell because he could see the first couple of risers, then not much after that. Another couple of steps led downward as well.
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Desperado
Training Mutant
Former teacher. Former husband. Former agitator. Former slave.
Posts: 29
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Post by Desperado on Mar 31, 2012 10:42:58 GMT -4
Jacob was ready to give backup to Hank, since he figured that it would take both of them to open the door, when Hank up and slammed the thing near off its hinges. The echo reverberated through the stairwell and served as a perfect punctuation for Jacob's very wide eyes.
Holy Crap. Jacob wasn't a slouch in the strength department. He wasn't going to be going to any power-lifting meets any time soon, but he'd always kept himself at least in shape. That said, it seemed as if his initial assessment of Hank was a bit of an understatement. Either that, or he'd hit the thing just right.
It didn't really matter which it had been, Jacob opted to give Hank a bit of a wide berth as he stepped into the stairwell. It was very nearly pitch black in there, the only light coming from the now-open doorway. At first, he couldn't see any more than Hank could, but gradually the darkness began to fade into something resembling dim light. As it did so, Jacob's eyes shifted from summer sky blue to winter sky grey. At first, he thought he was just getting accustomed to the dark. Then he blinked. For a moment, the darkness returned in full force, and then slowly gave way to his senses again. It wasn't what eyes did naturally. But it was what his eyes used to do naturally.
A slow smile crept onto his face as he realized that he had his powers back. Half of coming here was to see if that was true or not. He felt a tiny thrill inside him, but instead of vocalizing his happiness, he waved his hand in front of him as if he were brushing aside cobwebs, and the dark stairwell actually began to look to Hank as it did to Jacob, the shadows retreating and letting in more light.
He felt an electric tingle flow down his spine after he had done this, a not-unpleasant sensation. He was excited, in spite of the hardships that faced them. If he died out here, he would at least die himself. Jacob Gabriel Merando, master of shadows.
It was only after the initial excitement wore down that he remembered why he didn't usually use his powers in front of people who weren't used to them: they were kind of creepy to see. This was a bit of a benign use of them, but it was still, somehow, a bit more unnatural to behold than, say, someone lifting a man into the air telekinetically. Stage magicians had been doing the latter for years without powers. Banishing darkness without a light, on the other hand...
"Can you see? Sorry I didn't warn you about that, but I wasn't sure if I could do it or not."
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Post by Hank McCoy on Apr 2, 2012 1:46:03 GMT -4
If Jacob thought that Hank would be distressed by what he saw, he couldn't have been more wrong. He was quite fascinated by displays of atypical talent. It would have made sense that discovering others with "extra-normal" ability might bring a sense of belonging to one who had discovered he was a mutant, but that was not precisely it. He was simply interested once a discovery had been made in figuring out what it was, where it came from and how it worked.
Hank suspected he'd feel the same whether he had any strange powers of his own or not.
Explaining it. Understanding it. That was cooler than just about anything.
Something about the darkness. It seemed to withdraw. That alone was unexpected, but even more - there was something else. "Absence of light" was a perfectly acceptable definition for the word, for the concept of darkness. However, it appeared from Jacob's demonstration that "absence of darkness" was something different -- it could mean "light" but it didn't necessarily mean the same thing.
"Nice", Hank said succinctly. He answered, "I can see." Strings of equations seemed to float and overlay through his mind's eye as he tried to fit the observation into some kind of explanation.
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Desperado
Training Mutant
Former teacher. Former husband. Former agitator. Former slave.
Posts: 29
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Post by Desperado on Apr 5, 2012 17:30:56 GMT -4
Hank's reaction was definitely unexpected. He actually seemed to be intrigued by Jacob's display. It was a thought for another day, though. He was still riding high on the exhilaration of being able to make the display again.
"Alright, then," he said, motioning for Hank to take the lead. "Let's head on up." He followed the younger man up the stairs, since Hank would be more handicapped in the dim light than Jacob would and thus might move a little slower. "When you reach a door, slam it open; I'll need the light to keep this up." He looked idly up the center of the stairwell. Even his supernaturally enhanced eyes couldn't see all the way to the top, and it wasn't that tall of a building.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Apr 7, 2012 10:29:56 GMT -4
Oh sure, Hank thought a little cynically. Make me go first.
He stepped into the stairwell. No reason to be hesitant, right? None they had seen anyway.
Still, it was creepy that they hadn't seen anyone who actually lived in this place. Now or whenever it all was made. He took a deep breath and swallowed as he considered "up" and all it might have to offer. The stairs were grated metal and they made a sort of metallic sound as he set foot on them. It made him think of a fire escape laid out in the shaft of an elevator. The concrete echoed everything back. Hank peered upward, trying unsuccessfully to penetrate the darkness beyond Jacob's sphere of "un-dark" influence. The silent stillness made his steps and his breathing and his heartbeat sound exceptionally loud in his own ears.
Somewhere below them, he couldn't be sure, he thought maybe he heard a soft, chitinous click-clack.
Like the sound of an insect.
Probably just kicked some debris off the stairs and heard it finding its way to whatever lay below them.
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Post by Logan on Apr 10, 2012 13:40:59 GMT -4
Logan heard the noise as well.
With Rahne off on the hunt he had made a detour for a somewhat foreboding look to it. He stopped outside, nose twitching as he picked up familiar scents and something not so familiar. He glanced back over his shoulder at the direction that Rahne had gone and then looked back at the building again, tilting his head.
"When you reach a door, slam it open; I'll need the light to keep this up."
Shaking his head slightly, Logan stepped into a space where a window once resided and picked his way through the building until he found the stairs. Quietly he sniffed the air. Definitely Hank and Deperado…only something was different about both of them
Hell, they probably didn’t remember squat.
Same old same old.
His ears perked up at the clicking sound and an involuntary growl rumbled in his throat. Weighing the options, he decided to close the distance on Hank and Des for now. He silently and quickly ascended the stairs. The unfamiliar could wait.
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Desperado
Training Mutant
Former teacher. Former husband. Former agitator. Former slave.
Posts: 29
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Post by Desperado on Apr 12, 2012 7:20:47 GMT -4
Jacob had been following Hank, keeping back the darkness, though it got harder and harder as they went up. He was out of shape, as it were, and found that he couldn't hold this as well as he thought he might. But even with his mind focused on the task, he heard a noise below them. It reminding him, rather uncomfortably, of the movie Alien, though that may have been his imagination playing tricks on him.
And against his better judgement, he looked down. He couldn't see much, but he could probably see better than Hank would. It was still hard to make out given the nature of the stairwell, but he could definitely see something.
And it was moving. It was moving very silently and very fast. And it was moving towards them.
"Faster," he said to the younger boy, an edge in his voice, "Faster would be better."
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Post by Hank McCoy on Apr 13, 2012 10:27:00 GMT -4
He kept seeing something on his periphery...the perception, at least, of something dodging out of the way of the pale light. Hank's eyes tried to track the motion, but it was already gone. If it had ever been there at all. His skin began to crawl uncontrollably.
Jacob said something, and Hank turned back to ask what it was when suddenly everything went wrong. A rising tide of scrambling, flying and skittering insects surged upward like they had been blasted out of a cannon.
Hungry insects.
Hank gasped wide-eyed as he reeled back and tried to comprehend the terror of being engulfed in shiny black metallic-looking creatures. Cockroaches. He screamed in startled shock and disgust.
Not to be outdone by the opportunists from below, another wave overcame their collective shyness of the light and cascaded in from above.
Instinct took over, and Hank McCoy jumped and flailed in horror, careening off concrete walls and metal structures.
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Post by Logan on Apr 15, 2012 13:05:20 GMT -4
Logan had only half-closed the distance to Hank and Desperado when he heard the sounds again. A few tinny clicking sounds followed by steel fingers scratching against rusted metal, and then as if the heavens were opened up the sounds increased exponentially. He turned around in time to see a black mass pouring up the stairs. His claws popped out and a low guttural growl sounded deep within his chest as he looked at the encroaching shadow.
But he narrowed his eyes as they came hungrily closer.
"The hell-"
Seeing the sheer number of them, Logan turned and glanced upward at the others. "Incoming!" He shouted up by way of a warning. Then with surprising speed he bolted up the stairs. At one point he had to take a short distance with missing stairs in a leap. His heavy body landed on rotting lumber and it buckled under his weight. Steely claws dug gouges into brick in search of purchase as the bugs chittered relentlessly onward. They scurried up the brick and descended on him in a torrent of black pincers.
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Post by Hank McCoy on Apr 17, 2012 14:13:04 GMT -4
The creatures clung. They clawed and bit. They tore his ears, his nose, his lips, his exposed legs. He tried flinging them and scraping them, but more replaced any he did manage to pry loose within instants of discovering a clear space to occupy. He shouted his rage and disgust through clenched teeth, trying not to let them move into his mouth.
Desperately, Hank lurched forward and backward, up and down with powerful leaps and jarring collisions against concrete and steel - trying to find some way of shaking his attackers to no avail.
Without warning, he collided with something a lot less solid than the architecture.
Jacob.
Hank felt the other man collapse against him and go limp. Clearly he had also been overrun. Probably never even saw what hit him.
Grimly, this new responsibility crystallizing some resolve he didn't know he had, Hank grasped his unconscious companion's clothes and moved. Leaping. Pushing upward. Careening off of unforgiving structures. And then, quite without having any sense of where he was he crashed into a metal door with all their combined weights. The power behind his forceful jump tore the door from its frame and they spilled haphazardly onto the floor of the much brighter hallway beyond it.
Reflexively, some of the attacking insects shrank away from the light and back into the hellish pit they had just escaped.
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