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Post by Bobby Drake on Nov 14, 2006 8:02:59 GMT
Warren hasn’t said much of anything since calling the Institute, and has only the vaguest recollection of what happened after that. They came and took Josh and brought both of them back to the medlab, hooked him into some machines that go ‘ding’, asked him some questions he didn’t know the answers to.
He thinks maybe someone went to rescue his car from where he left it, he’s not really sure. Someone brought him coffee and a sandwich, of which the coffee was by far the most appreciated.
Ororo is off somewhere, assembling the hordes. Something about finding out who did this and why, which is going to have to wait until Josh wakes up. In the meantime, Warren’s keeping an eye on him. Someone tried to get him to sleep, somewhere in there… Warren’s not sure what he said, but he suspects it wasn’t polite. If he could remember who it had been, he’d make a mental note to apologize later, but he can’t.
It doesn’t matter.
On the plus side, now that he’s looking at Josh under decent lighting, he doesn’t look nearly as bad as he seemed to on the Mansion lawn – what had seemed like burns turn out to be mostly bruises. Even so, though, he’s a mess. Beaten unconscious, knifed, who knows what-all else. Not good.
You’re going to be OK, Josh. You hear me? You’ll be fine. Just, you know… rest. Wake up when you’re ready… I’ll be here.
He turns around at the doors whooshing open and nods vaguely at the new arrival(s). " He hasn’t moved or anything yet… but the monitors say he’s OK."
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Post by Ororo Munroe on Nov 15, 2006 5:19:43 GMT
Ororo strides quickly down the corridor, glancing at Toni as she arrives at the medical lab, a clipboard in her hand.
"Ready? He's a mess, but I think he will pull through fine." She hits the door release.
Warren is there, still glued to Josh's side. Ororo can hardly blame him. He'd been in apparent shock since discovering Josh outside Baker Mansion. As soon as the call had come in, they'd set out down the road to help. The tears streaming down Warren's face, as he'd crouched over Josh's battered body, had nearly unhinged her.
> "He hasn’t moved or anything yet… but the monitors say he’s OK."
"Good. He'll come around." She takes a quick once-over of the flat panel displays. Hmm. The monitor displaying Josh's brain activity was still consistent with unconsciousness in telepaths - or so the readout said. Poor Josh. If only we knew what happened. At least you've got your guardian angel watching over you, now. She'd been trying to construct the details of the event for the past hour, while Hank attended to Josh's wounds.
"Hank is running some tests across the hall. It looks like the transfusion we gave him helped a great deal. Fortunately, we had his blood type on hand." She makes a mental note to ensure they have units compatible with each member of the X-Men, despite the foreboding feeling it gives her. "It looks like - apart from that knife wound - most of the damage inflicted on him was impact trauma. Josh took quite a beating, but Hank thinks he should wake up shortly. He only has superficial burns on his lower arm, thank Gaia." She places a hand on Warren's shoulder.
"I won't even attempt to convince you to leave, my dear. Is there anything we can get for you?" Ororo rubs his shoulder lightly.
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Post by Warren Worthington III on Nov 15, 2006 7:54:42 GMT
> " Is there anything we can get for you? "
"Two hours alone with the bastards who did this," Warren replies in a calm, completely uninflected voice, before returning his attention to trying to establish some kind of mental contact. Come on, J… give me something, will you? Don’t have to wake up if you’re not ready, but just… I don’t know, blink at me or something, just let me know you’re still in there somewhere, OK?
Nothing. Warren’s become familiar enough with Josh’s mental touch to know when he’s tuned in… the effect is hard to describe, but he thinks of it as the telepathic equivalent of those little “mm-hmm” noises and head-nods people give to show that they’re listening. Even when Josh is asleep there’s something, like an echo… he’s wondered whether he ends up in Josh’s dreams when he does that. But this is different, it’s more like when he tries to talk to Josh when he’s out of range… except he’s right here.
Then his own words come back to him, and he realizes he’s forgotten to mention something. "Storm – there was someone driving away from the Mansion when I got there, some kid on a motorcycle, wearing an Institute shirt, no pants, looked pretty beaten up too. I think he was involved in the fight… Josh sent me some images before he went down, and he was in them… blond kid, kinda short, with some kind of flamethrower? There were other figures too, less clear… I’m not really sure who was doing what. Anyway… maybe whoever it was knows something?"
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Post by Toni Craft on Nov 15, 2006 17:50:46 GMT
"Ready? He's a mess, but I think he will pull through fine." Toni nods and follows the older teacher through the door. The sight beyond isn't as welcoming as she had expected. Warren's call hadn't left them many details, but fortunately Hank had been around to look at the boy.
Josh was laid out, unconcscious, on the medical bed. His face was disturbingly calm but the rest of his body showed the effects of his battle with his unknown combatant. Warren hovered over him, his eyes refusing to leave Josh's face.
"Jesus..." she mutters, taking the moment to blink a few times before her normal attitude kicks back in. "Someone certainly looks like they've had a rough night. Josh isn't looking so hot either." Almost instantly, Toni mentally slaps herself and sobers up. "Sorry, force of habit."
She stands next to Warren and gazes down at Josh with a frown.
"He doesn't look too bad." She tries to make light of the situation, but instead it comes out as another smart-mouthed response. Offering up her best apologetic glance she looks down at her clipboard.
Toni thumbs her way through the sheets. It was just some print-outs from the variety of medical devices, mostly the MRI reports. She takes one one of the brain scans, pulls it off the board and stares at it. After a few moments Toni flips it upside down...then sideways...
With a sigh she reclips the scan. She didn't have a medical degree, but her minor in biology and her experience with her mentor, Dr.Caine, let her examine the read-outs with a relative amount of expertise. Angry brain blotches are nowhere to be seen, which is good for Josh.
"He hasn’t moved or anything yet… but the monitors say he’s OK."
"Yeah, don't worry wing-boy, the kid's gonna be fine." Toni isn't totally up on the whole 'reassurance' thing. She usually let Ororo take her shot at it first; it gave her material to work with.
"It looks like - apart from that knife wound - most of the damage inflicted on him was impact trauma."
"And luckily for Joshy-poo, he's got a skeleton built like mine. I'm not seein' any breaks, fractures, or shatters on his x-rays." Toni nods towards the array of back-lit pictures on the wall behind her.
"Is there anything we can get for you?"
"Scotch? Martini? Shotgun?" Toni remains uncharacteristically stoic, despite the obvious humourous undertones of the questions. Another time, when things were back to normal, she would let loose on the topic, but for now, she calms herself, if only for Warren's sake.
"Two hours alone with the bastards who did this,"
"Ah, of course. I'll see what I can do about that later, but for now I suggest you relax for a bit and take it easy. Josh'll be up and floating around in no time." Toni crosses her arms and watches as Warren gazed at his younger lover. If it wasn't for him, she'd probably pummel Josh's assailant herself, if only she knew who it was.
"Josh sent me some images before he went down, and he was in them… blond kid, kinda short, with some kind of flamethrower?"
Short. Blonde. Flame-thrower.
Son of a mother-fucking---
"Fucker." Toni hisses through her teeth. "That fucking brat. And just when I thought he was actually up for being the good guy." Her fists clench and she shuts her eyes for a moment. "I think..." Toni takes a calming breath and looks over at Ororo. "I'm gonna kill him."
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Post by Rogue on Nov 15, 2006 19:56:18 GMT
It doesn’t take long for Rogue to hear of what had happened, and she’s understandably upset upon hearing the news. One of her close friends is hurt – it’s enough to make her a wreck. Or would be, if she wasn’t feeling oddly detached at the moment. She reasons it’s just the surprise; that the serious worry will set in soon.
She enters the med lab, and glances around the room at the others. Josh is laying there, motionless on a bed, Warren sitting nearby. He’s obviously a wreck, himself, worried sick. Ororo and Toni are also there, and Toni looks decidedly pissed off about something.
Hopefully that’s not a bad sign.
“Hey. How’s ‘e doin’?” she questions quietly, moving towards the group, readjusting the gloves on her hands, then crossing her arms, glancing over at Toni. “An’ wha’s goin’ on?”
She’s been around the teacher long enough to know she was nearly always upbeat, and that otherwise meant something bad. Not that seeing Josh unconcious here, like this, didn't mean something bad in itself, or anything, though.
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Post by Ororo Munroe on Nov 15, 2006 21:06:19 GMT
>"Two hours alone with the bastards who did this,"
Ororo drops her hand from Warren's shoulder. "I can't say I feel differently, but that will have to wait until Josh wakes up."
Toni's off-beat sense of humor doesn't seem to be working its usual magic on Warren, but it's understandable - and the gesture is appreciated. For a few moments the two of them check over readings and the charts they brought in, until Warren speaks up again.
> "Josh sent me some images before he went down, and he was in them… blond kid, kinda short, with some kind of flamethrower?"
Ororo's blood runs cold at his words, and her eyes harden. How many pyrokinetics could there be in upper New York? And wearing an Institute t-shirt? That factoid was the most curious of all. But it could be only one person.
John, you are in a world of trouble right now.
Toni seems to have cottoned on, as well.
> "I'm gonna kill him."
"I think John Allerdyce owes us an explanation. Please excuse me while I check into this. I believe Jake is on the phone with Joshua's parents right now." She nods at the group and hands the clipboard over to Toni.
Ororo passes Rogue on the way out, giving her a distracted nod.
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Post by Josh Dalton Worthington on Nov 15, 2006 21:29:28 GMT
> Don’t have to wake up if you’re not ready, but just… I don’t know, blink at me or something, just let me know you’re still in there somewhere, OK?
Still deep in his unconscious mind, Josh feels the touch of Warren's mind against his. There's love, and fondness, and all the other things he's learned to associate with Warren... but also something else there. Concern and worry. Fear, even.
He doesn't understand it, exactly. They're together, and that's all that's important... right? There's an odd heaviness about him... like exhaustion. A minute or two after the plea, Josh is able to gather the strength to reach out and tenatively poke a mental finger at Warren's mind in response.
The panel displaying Josh's brain activity gives a chirp as his cortical functions stray above the baseline.
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Post by Warren Worthington III on Nov 16, 2006 5:47:20 GMT
Warren is only vaguely paying attention to the banter going on around him, though Toni’s routine with the brain scans gets a tired chuckle out of him. Still, it’s oddly comforting to have other people around… makes the medlab feel less sterile.
> " "Fucker. That fucking brat. And just when I thought he was actually up for being the good guy. I think... I'm gonna kill him." "
That grabs Warren’s attention, but Storm replies before he can ask.
> " I think John Allerdyce owes us an explanation. "
"Who?" The name sounds vaguely familiar… Josh had mentioned a – wait. " Wait... John? Bobby’s John? What the hell is going on here? Why would he – " the half-phrased question is cut off by a familiar mind touching his own, and the chirp of his cortical monitor. " Josh!?! "
Nothing more follows the initial poke, but it’s enough to reassure Warren that Josh is in there somewhere and listening, and he feels a sudden lightness that has nothing whatsoever to do with mass. Vengeance and John can both wait until Josh is awake.
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Post by Toni Craft on Nov 17, 2006 5:08:35 GMT
Ororo obviously came to the same conclusion Toni had.
John, the little bugger, was the one responsible for Josh's condition. And after all the time and effort and friendship thrown in the pyro's direction, not only from Toni, but from all of them at the institute, this is how he bounced back to repay them.
Killing John sounded really good. Veeerry theraputic. Toni was sure they'd all feel better once they'd issued a few well-placed sucker punches to his kidneys.
"I think John Allerdyce owes us an explanation. Please excuse me while I check into this."
"Yes, and please excuse me while I go hot-wire the jet. That son-of-a-bitch is going to want to stock up on painkillers and applesauce cause he's not gonna have any teeth left once I'm through with him." Toni grinds out through a clenched jaw. Her hands fist tightly and the odd numbing sensation in her skin lets her know that her epidermis is solidifying involuntarily. She takes a slow, calming breath and tries to relax, the senseless fingers eventually returning to normal.
" Wait... John? Bobby’s John? What the hell is going on here? Why would he – Josh!?! " Toni's head snaps up and an instant later she's at the blipping (or rather, blipped) monitor.
"Way to go bird-boy!" But that seems to be the only spike they were going to get out of him. "Well, it's definitely a start, and it means he's in there. His body's probably too far into repair mode right now to wake up, but this is at least good news." Toni offers Warren a genuine reassuring smile as the scanner returns to it's normal display of less than extraordinary readings.
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Post by Josh Dalton Worthington on Nov 17, 2006 6:45:49 GMT
Slowly, Josh becomes more aware of his surroundings. It starts first with being able to sense others in the room besides Warren. Rogue's mental signature is... odd. He supposes it has to do with the multiplicity of minds within her own. Toni's burning brightly with.... hm. Anger? The concern sheathing Warren ebbed after their earlier mental contact, which warms his mind with happiness.
After a short while, Josh slowly opens his eyes. Despite the fact that he's not moving, the room appears to tip dangerously.
"Uuuh. What did I do to my head? The room's tilting..." Josh holds his head with both hands, slowly sitting up. He can tell he's been dosed with some fairly strong painkillers.
"How did I end up in here?" The last thing he can remember is reaching out telepathically to Warren, scared that it might be the last time ever... With that, events rapidly begin to fill the blanks spots in his memory.
"Oh, Warren... I thought I was never going to see you again!" He slides his arms around the other's back, hugging him tightly. Josh's eyes are wet, and he swallows hard. "I thought I was done for."
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Post by Pyro on Nov 17, 2006 11:34:30 GMT
OOC: First psyche-land post…
Click on... click off…
The backwoods – or rather back-warehouse-districts – of Rogue’s mind have never been its most stimulating area, but it’s somewhere her various pilfered fragments are seeing a lot of lately. Template’s got to be kept under control, after all, and somehow they know this, and know that Rogue’s not quite able to do it herself, and have managed to work out some sort of system to stop the psycho-bitch breaking loose. All that *me against my brother, me and my brother against my friend, me and my friend against my enemy* shit… apparently the last layer of that is *me and my enemy against Template*.
Click on… click off…
Not that the fragment of John is complaining… well, not any more than he’s expected to. Truth is, protecting Rogue’s not such a big sacrifice, and it’s easier than being stuck with Bobby in the *conscious* mind, because he’s apparently a later version of John – cozy, cuddly, loved-up John - while Bobby’s still firmly in closet-land and refuses to believe what’s going on outside.
Click on… click off…
It’s hardly exciting work though, even less so now Template seems to have stopped ranting and railing and just mooches around her cage. Boring, boring, boring…
Click on…
It’s odd, the way Rogue’s brain works (though John being, erm, clearly and distinctly John, doesn’t question it too much); things she knows, they know. Most of it he’s stopped paying attention to, though her hang-ups over his relationship with Bobby are pretty entertaining to tune into when the boredom gets too much. These Josh thoughts, however, can’t help but grab his attention… especially when his name comes up.
It’s something you learn quickly in here, how to grab attention, a subtle (or not so subtle) mental poke. John of course is a natural at it, and demands she finds out more…
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Post by Rogue on Nov 17, 2006 17:42:20 GMT
"I think John Allerdyce owes us an explanation. Please excuse me while I check into this."
"Yes, and please excuse me while I go hot-wire the jet…
Wait…what? What does John have to do with this? She’d seen him just the other day – movie night. Nothing had seemed …well, no, everything had seemed out of the ordinary, but nothing had seemed totally wrong. John wouldn’t just beat on Josh for no reason…
Right?
Of course not! She shouldn’t even think he would, because that’s belittling him. He’s not a monster – she knows this firsthand, he’s in her head, after all. And there’s a sharp spike of his attention, a mental poke, really, at sound of his name. He wants to know what he did as much as she does, she can tell, and it’s almost amusing. Almost.
You tryin’a give me a headache t’day, sugah? she thinks at him, Be patient. An’ stop pokin’ me.
" Wait... John? Bobby’s John? What the hell is going on here? Why would he – Josh!?! "
The monitor attached to Josh gives a sharp chirp of brain activity, and she turns her attention from her thoughts (and placating Johnny-psyke) and over to where Josh is now shifting awake.
”Uuuh. What did I do to my head? […] I thought I was done for."”
She tamps down the urge to simply ask a bunch of questions in a hurry. He’s hurt, traumatized. No reason to push and make it worse. But she has to understand what’s going on – John wouldn’t…at least, not the John she knows.
He’s a complex person. Sometimes he wasn’t John, he was Pyro – the name he took on, the name Magneto claimed was his “real” name. But that wasn’t the real him, right? Because she didn’t want to think that her best friend – and yeah, he still kind of is, because every time she does see him, it’s like he never left, except that he did and there's the very small but still odd distance there as an almost-painful reminder – would do something like this. No. It wasn’t John. Pyro.
Pyro, she can be angry with.
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Post by Bobby Drake on Nov 17, 2006 20:08:10 GMT
(( OOC: In Rogue’s head… ))
Bobby isn’t really sure where he is right now… or when, for that matter. It’s some memory involving swamps and a rainstorm, not a particularly interesting one. He’s learned to prefer those… they’re harder to find, since Marie doesn’t remember them often, but that means he doesn’t get as much company.
It’s not quite as bad as it was around Holloween, when Marie’s head got messed with and things got really crazy (Sam Spade? Vampires? Medieval knights? What was that all about?) but it’s still been pretty bad… there must be like a dozen psykes (that’s Marie’s term, anyway, and it’s as good as any) running around in here now, mostly noobs still running around like chickens with their heads cut off – or, well, heads with their chickens cut off, more accurately.
It’s not that Bobby isn’t sympathetic… he is. He remembers when he first found himself in here, it took him forever just to figure out how to move, how to communicate. Even remembering things takes effort… it’s not like he’s in his own brain anymore; he has to “borrow” storage space in unused corners of hers. Fortunately there’s a lot of capacity. But there’s a lot of little tricks to this existence Bobby’s learned only with experience, and it can be pretty freaky until you get used to it.
He’s looking forward to them getting their bearings… he could use the company. Not that there aren’t other psykes in here, but… well, it’s complicated.
Cody’s just about his best friend here… he’s the most experienced, and was a big help in Bobby getting his bearings once they got over the whole awkward current-boyfriend/ex-boyfriend thing (which is ironic, given how things turned out afterwards). Taught him a lot about “life as a ghost,” as he calls it, and pulled some kind of rabbit out of his ass when that “Template” woman showed up… that was freaky. If they hadn’t worked out how to coordinate and lock her up, she might have taken over the whole damned place. Marie-as-God he’s managed to reconcile himself to, mostly; Template-as-God would be intolerable.
On the other hand there’s Magneto, who Bobby tries to stay away from. He’d never intended to be stuck in here after pulling his weird little stunt with Marie at Liberty Island, but here he’s been since then. Powerful. Dangerous. Not entirely sane… in here, Bobby can tell. He just smells wrong, or something. They cooperate when they have to, to deal with Template, but other than that Bobby stays away from him.
Logan’s pretty cool, but keeps to himself, doesn’t talk much.
And then there’s John. He got his bearings pretty quickly – hell, he seems to know his way around Marie’s mind better than Bobby does – but what with Alcatraz and everything they pretty much left each other alone… hardly talked at all until the whole Template thing happened, and even then it was more like civil enmity than anything. But after Holloween… geez! Bobby shudders just thinking about it. He’s all... cuddly and shit, thinks they’re, like, dating. Which, he’s gathered from Marie’s own awareness, is about right, but whatever weird shit his body may have gotten up to out there, that’s got nothing to do with him in here... he’s having no part of it.
So it’ll be nice to have more company in here, he figures, once they stop being noobs. In the meantime, he’s just hanging out here in the swamps, practicing keeping from getting wet. It’s not too hard, as long as he remembers it isn’t really rain, it’s just the memory of rain. The problem is, that has a way of reminding him that he isn’t really Bobby, just a memory of Bobby… and he tries not to think about that.
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Post by Warren Worthington III on Nov 18, 2006 17:30:40 GMT
Warren manages to resist the urge to crush Josh against him, not wanting to cause more pain; instead, he slides a wing behind his back to help support him, wiping the tears from the boy’s eyes with the gentle swipe of his thumb.
> " Oh, Warren... I thought I was never going to see you again! "
He chokes a bit at that, then grins reassuringly. " You gave me a scare there. All of us. Don’t do that again, OK? I’m booked solid through the month, no time for funerals. " His grin is forced, but behind it is a genuine relief. More seriously, he adds " So… what happened? "
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Post by Josh Dalton Worthington on Nov 19, 2006 8:29:48 GMT
Grateful for the support, Josh leans into Warren's wing and slips a hand into Warren's own. It's still a chore to hold his body upright. I'm lucky to be here right now...
> So… what happened?
He begins slowly, but as more details surface, Josh begins talking more quickly. "Okay. So, I followed Bobby all the way to Baker Mansion. I think you all know how much of a dickhead different Bobby's been until lately. I wanted to know where he'd been disappearing off to... and so I followed him. He met John there." He stops for a second, looking slightly guilty.
"You all know about... that, right?" He knew Toni and Rogue did, for sure. He wasn't absolutely certain he'd actually said anything to Warren about it, but their thoughts co-mingled often enough that he had to have an inkling of the situation. "Yeah. So they met each other. I thought it was a date, and started to leave."
Josh's face screws up. "Then John stuck him with a needle full of something that knocked Bobby out." His hand tightens around Warren's slightly. "I tried to save Bobby, but John had a teleporter blink him out. After Bobby was gone, I tried to get out. John tried to blast me and I deflected the attack with my powers, which is what set the house on fire. I was almost able to knock him out, but he caught me with a shot that threw me up against a wall... and that's when I tried to contact you, Warren." His thumb rubs circles into Warren's palm.
"I tried to convince John that we could protect the both of them. He seemed to think that Magneto would kill Bobby if he didn't bring him back to their headquarters. I pointed out Magneto's just as likely to get rid of Bobby when he's finished with him, but John wouldn't have it." Josh bites his lip.
"The really screwed up thing, though, is that he actually seemed to think that it was in Bobby's best interest. I think..." He hesitates. "I think he actually does love Bobby... as fucked up as that may sound."
He shakes his head. "We've got to figure out where they're holding Bobby." Josh closes his eyes for a minute, and then opens them. "He's out of my range, or is being shielded."
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