Museum of Natural History, prt 2

[Hector Vidal]

(( OOC: Jumping ahead of the first Museum thread to kick off the action part of this plot. We can still continue to post on the original thread. I’m assuming here that John/Laurie/Matt have already snuck off. ))

“Hey, Hector, you OK?” Hector blinks and looks over his shoulder to find Jimmy staring at him, concerned, and it takes him a moment to figure out why.

He’d been looking over the smaller dinosaur exhibits, in particular the stegosaurus that Veronica had been fondling earlier, with a degree of fascination that, he admits, was not entirely due to a love of either dinosaurs or bones. Then he’d suddenly felt a wave of fatigue and dizziness; apparently he’d stood there dazed for a while.

"Yeah, I’m fine… just tired is all. Haven’t been sleeping much lately." Even as he says it, he feels the fatigue retreating; in moments he’s back to his usual bubbling-over energy levels. "Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out." Jimmy nods and goes back to wandering, Hector does as well, in a different direction.

Neither boy is aware of the charge of Hector’s life-force now percolating imperceptibly through the stegosaurus skeleton, and as they wander off neither notices how the exhibit is beginning to twitch.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

The dinosaur exhibit is in the center of the Museum of Natural History's atrium. On two sides are large archways leading deeper into the museum. To the south is the entryway and ticket counter, and to the north is the food court and gift shop. In the food court, Josh is sitting at a table with some of the other chaperones. The sun shines into the glassed-in courtyard, and Josh stretches briefly.

Most of the students were dispersed across the area, eating lunch. He'd tried to reel back on the telepathic monitoring - after all... it was the museum, and all of them were pretty good kids. He just didn't want anything to happen to them. It's going to be fine. Stop worrying.

Josh chewed on the corner of his lip. After seeing the future, his resolve to keep their students safe was even stronger. Don't know how I'm gonna do it...but I will. It didn't really help that the X-Men were supposedly going to become less than worthless sometime in the next 20 years. He just hoped that forewarned was forearmed.

He pokes at the chicken caesar salad with his fork. The food was all right... just not that amazing. Typical food for a place with a captive audience. I should probably be paying attention.

Josh laughs at whatever humorous thing had just been said at the table, but something over his lunchmates' shoulders catches his eye - and his kinetic sense.

Something about his abilities gave him a pretty good sense of objects in 3D space - essential if you were constantly throwing things around - and so, something was bothering him both visually and mentally. Were the bones in the atrium vibrating?

Josh stands up abruptly, and his chair jolts his companions out of conversation. "Hey guys... something strange is going on." He points out at the dinosaur exhibit. "And it's not me... I haven't lost control like that in years."

[Tempero]

After a refreshing conversation with a kid (henceforth marked as Hector, the Friend), and a rather exhausting amount of quick-paced wandering and intense reading of every single plaque available on the exhibits, Danny takes a moment to consume a delightfully cool six-scoop chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, chocolate shavings, brownie chunks, and hot fudge on top. Is Danny a chocolate addict? No, he is way beyond that point.

After the high sugar content (which, thankfully, does not affect him) is ingested, he moves back towards the exhibit, glancing at the skeletons, but more so watching the people around them. At one point he spots Hector, although the boy has his back turned to him, and spots a slight change in the light brown lines coursing through the boy's body. He had been meaning to ask Josh if the fact that his mutation vision was now always active, in the background of his sight, was improvement or cause for concern, but never got around to it.

Hector's lines are a bit tighter together, and seem to be streaming at high speed between head and stomach, but then they return to normal, and Danny pays it no mind. Should I tell the others that the kid's a mutant? If he knows and doesn't want to have anything do with it, though...

Shrugging it off as a decision-not-important-at-the-moment, Danny moves forward, and something catches his shirt. He turns around to find the culprit to be one of the horns of the triceratops. "What..." he starts saying, half-expecting to see a friend or random stranger there.

Laughing and unhooking his shirt, he proceeds to wander the museum, helpless to shrug off a feeling that something is off about that skeleton. Just went to close to it, that's all...

[Hector Vidal]

(( OOC: Feel free to control the animated dinosaurs yourselves, too… Hector has no control or connection to them, they’re NPCs at this point..))

Hector watches his classmates lining up at the cafeteria with some skepticism. The food seems OK – no worse than the cafeteria back at school, certainly -- but he’s not really hungry.

Not that this is anything new: he hasn’t really been hungry in several months now. He’s been eating what his mom puts in front of him to avoid worrying her, but other than that he really hasn’t been eating. Not that it seems to cause him any problems, granted. And he still enjoys food as much as he ever did, so it’s not like there’s anything wrong with his appetite; he just has a slow metabolism or something.

Still, he hasn’t mentioned to his folks that he’s been hoarding his lunch money, and he doesn’t plan to tell them any time soon. Some things they don’t need to know.

After some hesitation, he decides he’s in the mood for a slice of pie, and gets on line at the dessert station. As he slides a plate of somewhat-appetizing lemon meringue onto his tray, he’s distracted by a shriek of surprise from back near the exhibits.

Before he can so much as turn around to look, the first shriek is swallowed by a hubbub of voices: “What the hell?” “Hey, look, it’s moving!” “Neat! I can’t even see the motors!” “What is this, some kind of publicity stunt?” “Dennis, get away from there!” Leaving the pie behind, Hector peeks around the cafeteria wall to see a crowd of spectators hastily backing away from…

…No. No, no, no. Not again.…

…a triceratops skeleton, which has somehow torn free of its mountings and stepped down off its pedestal, looking curiously around the room, growling menacingly.

It’s not real. It can’t be real. It’s just another hallucination. I just haven’t been sleeping enough lately, is all. If I ignore it, it will go away.

He’d be more convincing to himself if it weren’t for all the other people who appear to be seeing the same thing… but he figures he’s probably hallucinating the whole scene. He’s seen enough crazy people on television to know how it works… everything in the cafeteria is actually just fine, and if he starts running around screaming or whatever he’ll just call attention to himself.

So, OK. We play it cool. He tries – not very successfully – to get his breathing under control and conceal his anxiety as he returns to his slice of pie.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

As Josh looks on in stunned amazement, the bones that we’re vibrating step off the platform and growl. What the hell is going on here?

To add to his disbelief, next to triceratops, the allosaurus skeleton they’d been peering at lets out a shrieking scream and eyes the triceratops. It tramps off the platform and slowly starts moving closer.

“Guys…” Josh closes his eyes. He wasn’t detecting any kind of telepathic attack… and it didn’t feel the way Danielle Moonstar’s powers affected him. Granted, the fear washing over him from all directions wasn’t helping. “Maybe we should…” He steps away from the table and starts making his way cautiously over to the atrium, being careful to stay out of view.

At this point, all hell breaks loose. The allosaurus lunges for the triceratops, which bolts and begins charging through the food court. The larger predator sweeps its tail to try to catch its prey, but misses. Unfortunately, the tail sweep smashes through the bottom of a pair of heavy marble pillars supporting the roof. Slowly, they begin wobbling.

Damn. Besides the problem of the roof collapsing, a lot of people were sitting in the area around the pillars. Josh darts across the remaining difference and throws his hands upward. The pillars stabilize somewhat, but a few chunks of marble still drop to the floor.

“Everyone, get out from under this!” The diners in his immediate vicinity seem stunned, but slowly begin complying. Too slowly. Josh could feel the pressure in his mind building - the stuff wasn’t light, and the continued exertion was going to leave him exhausted if they weren’t quick about it.

A few caught bits of conversation can’t help but make him grin, despite the dire circumstances…

“That’s one of the X-Men!”

“No, it’s not! He’s too normal-looking to be a mutant.”

“Some of them look just like us, mom… Anyway, he’s the hot one. He’s married to the guy with wings.”

“Look! Isn’t that Josh Dalton?”

[Veronica Devereux]

Seeing many of her fellow "classmates" scattered across the cafeteria, she had no particular place to sit. Scanning the food vender's, Veronica decided on having a large glass of coffee ice cream. I mean, it was only, what, 12 'o clock? Seemed to be the perfect time for ice cream to her, much less coffee ice cream. Once she had received her glass, she drowned the already sugary treat in a pool of strawberry sauce. Before she picked her dessert back up, she paused her iPod so she could actually enjoy her pile of strawberry and ice cream.

Slipping through the horde of people, she made her way over to a vacant table, save a few crumbs of left over pizza crust and cheese."The human race is so filthy." she commented to herself as she waved her hand over the table, sending the bits of food flying into the air and somewhere into some man's beer. Giggling, she sat down and dunked the plastic spoon into the vat of sauce."Yumm~" she practically squealed."First bite of ice cream since--" her voice was drowned out by the shriek of people nearby, and the roars of a dinosaur.

Glancing up, she felt the pink untensil slip out of her grasp, and landed into the syrup with a "slurp". In front of her was the most akward scene ever, two giant skeletons fighting each other."Now, I know I'm not good with history and whatnot.. But, aren't you suppose to be, like, still?" she addressed the Allosaurus, from whom she received a grunt, followed by a single swipe of its tail. Jumping back, she stumbled and rammed her back against one of the nearby vending machines as her ice cream was flipped into the air and flung, well, everywhere, including her pink blouse.

Clenching her fists and making a sour face, Veronica stood up and shook one finger angrily at the skeleton."That was my favorite shirt! You're going to pay for this you piece of shi--" she was once more cut off by the sound of ceiling hit the floor around her, causing her to jump.Checking over her shoulder, she saw Josh standing by a few pillars and holding his hands in the air, like he was praying or something. Glancing back at the allosaurus, she muttered to it."I'll deal with you later!" Dashing toward Josh, she skidded to a stop and placed a hand on his shoulder, and used one of her pink nails to poke his cheek."Joshie, whactha doin'? Prayin' to the ol' mighty pillar gods or something?" she joked, letting out a few giggles. Clearing her throat, she motioned over her shoulder at the skeleton that was now terrorizing an empty soda can that had fallen out of a nearby trash can."We have a few dense dinos over there, so, could we hurry up this praying act."

[Jack Russell]

Jack gives one last disapproving sniff to the slab of lukewarm meat that the food court had been trying to pass off as a hamburger as he shakes it off his tray and into a garbage can. He hates to waste the food, but there's little hope for it now. Sliding the plastic tray on top of the disposal unit, he gives the tables of students in the food court a once-over, keeping a close watch for any 'suspicious' activity. Admittedly, he'd been a little worried about taking so many of them out for a field trip, since a handful are known troublemakers and like to act out regardless of company present at the time. To his surprise, he'd been impressed with their behavior so far.

Sidling back over to the table with his fellow teachers, Jack pulls a face. "I don't think that was uh.. money well spent," he comments, suddenly craving a very rare plate of meat. Across the table, Josh has a modest salad, better food compared to Jack's splurge on a hamburger and french fries. Arthur, on the other hand, at his right, has settled for no lunch at all, just a steaming mug of green tea that he seems very content with. Jack tries to ignore the fact, playing with the straw in his cup and trying to get to the last of the water at the bottom. Hey guys... something strange is going on.

"Huh?" Jack blinks; he hasn't been paying attention, but Josh's sudden concern shifts his focus abruptly. He watches as Josh stands up and points. And it's not me... I haven't lost control like that in years. Confused, Jack looks back over his shoulder, shocked to see that one of the exhibits is slowly moving around, as if waking from a long sleep. Now startled and alert, he stands up so fast that he nearly takes the table up with him. "Holy crap..," he mutters, hearing similar exclamations from stunned bystanders across the room.

All hell suddenly breaks loose as an allosaurus skeleton lets out a shrill scream, scaring not only the people around it but also the triceratops it had been sharing a platform with. People shriek and scatter, and the triceratops charges into the middle of a crowd of people.

"Shit!" Before Jack can think about it, he takes off in a sprint towards the mess, hurdling over chairs and tables and shifting mid-leap. Unfortunately, the sight of his newly-acquired form seems to make the situation worse, and people that had been running from the dinosaurs were now trapped between trying to figure out how to escape both the moving exhibits and himself.

Snarling, he plows into the triceratops, trying to wrestle it to the floor. But it isn't about to be taken down so easily, and out of fear it fights him back, bucking and wildly shaking its head. Jack opens his jaws and tries to bite down on the dinosaur's neck, but all he can do is gnaw on the bone, gripping harder, trying to crack it or pull it out of place or something, but it gets him nowhere. The triceratops, meanwhile, skids into a wall, trying to smash its oppressor against the full-pane windows, and the glass is broken over his back.

[Hector Vidal]

He’d carefully ignored the moving dinosaur and the crowd’s murmurings. He’d refused to turn around when those sounds were replaced by growls and shrieks and mutterings about X-Men and the growling noises of what sounded like a mad dog. He’d done his best to appear normal.

After all, it’s not the first time he’s had one of these episodes. There was the time his bike had crashed against a parked car and it had chased him for blocks, driverless, honking its horn and flashing its brights. There was the time the mailbox on the corner had refused to let go of his arm. Worst of all, there’d been that incredibly embarrassing incident with the garden hose.

He knows perfectly well that these things don’t really happen, that he’s having some kind of hallucinatory episodes. And he knows that if anyone finds out about them, they’ll assume he’s doing drugs or crazy or something. And so far, he’s been fortunate enough not to have these episodes in public.

But this time, it’s different. It’s not just the dinosaurs. It’s not just the crowd noises behind him. Everyone he can see is either rushing to see what’s going on, or running away from it. The entire scene is chaos. Either he’s getting worse, or…

No, that’s not possible. I’m just --

His attempt at reassuring himself is interrupted by the sound of a full-pane window crashing. He turns around without meaning to and sees a skeletal triceratops trying to buck a no that can’t be a werewolf as glass shards scatter everywhere.

Madre de Dios… this is really happening.

[Toni Craft]

Unlike her fellow Institute folk, Toni certainly isn’t hungry enough to try and eat the the crap that the museum is trying to pass up for food. Instead she’s across the room, busying herself with a few of the small touch-tanks that outline the cafeteria. A small tortoise, Charlie, closes his eyes and leans into her fingers as she happily scratches the side of his head. The other animals in the touch tanks include an assortment of non-poisonous snakes, guinea pigs, funny little wingless bird things, and giant stick bugs.

Toni’s just about to see what would happen when a guinea pig is dropped into the snake pen when all of the animals suddenly scurry away into their respective shelters. Well, all except for Charlie the tortoise, who digs his little clawed feet into the woodchip-covered floor and tries to run away at top speed...about three feet per minute.

“Awww...where’d you all go?” Ducking down slightly, Toni tries to peek into the little hut where the two guinea pigs ran. “Here piggy piggy piggy!” She sticks her hand into the miniature house and tries to fish out the rodents, but stops when a loud crash and a slow thump thump thump echoes out from the dinosaur exhibit. The people within the cafeteria all go silent at the same moment, each one focusing on the doorway where the sounds of smashing artifacts and paintings can be heard. Some of the museum-goers start to back away from the noise, edging their way toward the opposite side of the room, but Toni remains next to the touch-tank.

“Holy—” She stammers as a massive stegosaurus skeleton saunters through the doo frame. “Are you seein’ what I’m seein, Charlie?” Toni asks the little, slowly fleeing tortoise as her eyes remain fixated on the moving skeleton. Ignoring the sign that clearly reads DO NOT PICK UP THE ANIMALS above the tanks, Toni reaches in and grabs the cantaloupe-sized reptile, and pulls him from his heated habitat to cradle him against her chest. “Correct me if I’m wrong, little buddy, but aren’t your grandparents supposed to be, you know, un petit peut moins motile? And complete with skin?” Behind the giant stegosaurus stands the impressive triceratops.

Both mobile skeletons seem reasonably uninterested in the patrons that begin screaming and running from the cafeteria. Instead they begin curiously sniffing — or at least what passes for sniffing when you’re a giant dead skeleton — around the garbage and salad bar. The triceratops shoves aside the illuminated top of the salad stand with its massive snout and bites into the tray of crisp romaine lettuce. He munches away contently, even though the leaves simply fall through his teeth and jaw bones to pile up on the floor.

“This…” Charlie tugs his tubby legs into his shell as Toni steps toward the animated dinosaur, her face alight with a wide smile. “Is the bestest place in the history of places stuffed with old stuff! Way better than the—” She’s drowned out when a larger, carnivorous skeleton comes trampling through the door, taking out chunks of cement brick when it collides with the wall. The allosaurus roars, earning a cringe from Toni as she moves to shield her ears while still clutching the terrified tortoise. “Oh...this is gonna be awesome!”

But despite her excitement, Toni wisely decides that standing next to the triceratops as it gets attacked by a rampaging allosaurus is a bad idea, so she scrambles away from the bone-filled carnage at the last minute. Unfortunately she’s not exactly known as the fastest person alive, and nearly gets trampled by a massive boney foot, but luckily for her and Charlie, wolf-Jack comes galloping in and shoulder checks a pile of moving bones. Taking the moment, she climbs up over a toppled cafeteria table and books it to the other side of the room.

She’s lucky enough to get about half way before the startled stegosaurus charges in her direction. “Uh oh…” Seeing her as either an enemy or as something that could potentially be an enemy, the skeleton roars and swings its massive body around to slam her with its spiked tail. And this time, Toni’s werewolf-for-a-boyfriend isn’t around to save her.

Deciding it was time to take action, and wishing her wonderful “My other ride is your mom” shirt a fond farewell, Toni plops Charlie into one hand as she draws her iron reserves to the surface. Just as the horrendous bone spikes come bearing down on her, she raises an armoured arm in defense and lets it take the brunt of the attack. The force is enough to send her half-ton body sprawling backwards several feet, but she also succeeds in breaking two of the offensive bone spines into splinters.

“Bad dino!” She yells, rising to her feet as the stegosaurus moans out in pain and confusion. “No hitting the people with the tortoises!” Charlie, rattled by the attack, remains inside his shell. “I’m trying to save the little guy and you’re too busy trying to smack me! Learn some manners dude!” Toni gives the shocked stegosaurus a firm whack on the nose and a stubborn finger point.

The dinosaur eyes her with an empty eye socket. Never in its long life had anything ever been able to recuperate so quickly after such a direct attack. Put off by its opponents resilience and loud and offensive nature, the stegosaurus realizes that perhaps it is outmatched against this new foe, and turns to begin heading for the nearest exit, oblivious to all the people crowding its narrow doorway.

A little exasperated, Toni pulls the near-trembling tortoise up to her armoured face and sighs. “When will people ever learn to not get the way of brought-back-to-life skeletons, hm? What do you say we go save’em together. You wanna go be a hero, Charlie?” The reptile remains inside the relative safe confines of his shell. “Of course you do! And so, off to battle we go!” She tucks the tortoise under her arm and bolts after the skeleton, grinning happily as she leaps over toppled tables and hiding patrons.

[Tempero]

He remembers thinking it was just a product of passing by the exhibit too closely, but right now, Danny's a bit too preoccupied to be cursing himself for not being a conspiracy theory paranoid freak and actually expecting a giant dead dino attack in the middle of the day.

After but a moment of staring at the things (and he is very proud of himself for not being taken too off guard), he moves out of the way as the ceiling and Josh engage in an epic battle which really just comes down to the age-old question of "To crumble or not to crumble?"

Deciding that he is not ready to use Josh's power quite yet, and he remembers clearly the explicit "no" he got when he tried to boost Josh's own TK, the white haired boy steps into the chaotic hall, and dodges a few flying splinters and more than a few screaming kids.

All right...what are the possible causes of this? Highly advanced technology? Spent in the Museum of Natural History? Or...it could be a mutant.

After all, with what all the kids at the Institute can do, he would not be so surprised.

Danny closes his eyes for a moment and focuses, and all the mutations come into full view. Every dinosaur has a dusty brown color to it. But, dinosaurs don't mutate. Especially the dead ones.

Wait...that color...

He moves his head to the side, and there it is, the greatest and most compact concentration of the same colors. He opens his eyes and without mistake, Hector is there.

Thoroughly pissed of, Danny walks up to the boy. As he walks, he miraculously avoids being noticed by any of the dinosaurs, and the flying stuff just passes him by. It is the power of all those who march towards a definitive goal, thoroughly pissed off. It just always works, for some reason or another. It is a mystery of the universe.

He grabs Hector by the shoulders and spins him around roughly.

"Where the hell do you get off causing this chaos!?" he yells, more loudly than is necessary, and contemplates for a moment using the threat of telling the kid's parents. A double-take reminds him that these are giant freaking dinosaurs coming to life, and that telling the boy's parents and getting him grounded would fade away as a valid punishment.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

> "Joshie, whactha doin'? Prayin' to the ol' mighty pillar gods or something?"

Josh grits his teeth and strains against the weight above him. A large chunk of marble starts sliding out from between two other pieces, and he applies a bit of sideways pressure to keep it in check. “Veronica, are you blind? The roof… is… collapsing!” He’s able to choke out the second sentence just barely. “Get the rest of the kids out of here!”

The bystanders were moving at the pace of snails. To make matters worse, the splintering was branching out from the fairly centralized area around the columns and snaking its way across the room. He was already holding up several tons, which was near his current upper limits. And the dinosaur skeletons were causing more damage by the second. I’m beginning to envy Atlas.

Fortunately, Toni and Jack seemed to be dealing with them fairly well, although the curator of the Museum of Natural History was unlikely to be thrilled with their methods. It had been a busy day at the museum, and between the crowds and the dinosaurs (which he still was confused about) it was complete chaos.

Toni, Jack... how are things going? We've gotta get the kids out of here!


> "Where the hell do you get off causing this chaos!?"

Danny’s voice brings his focus off the ominous weight above their heads and onto the possible cause of the disaster. It’s that kid? He’s gotta be a mutant! Josh ignores the fact that they run into way more mutants on a regular basis than could possibly be statistically normal, and calls out to the two boys.

“Kid - can you stop this?” Josh’s voice cuts over the din of battle and the screaming of bystanders. “If you can…” As he shouts, a chunk of fresco breaks loose from the ceiling over the pair of boys. “Look out!”

Josh extends a hand. A metal chair leaps up and intercepts the piece of debris, shattering it, but smaller chunks still drop toward the boys.

The shift of his attention results in more splintering above them. Shit. This is not good.

[Hector Vidal]

Having convinced himself, at least for the moment, that this isn’t a hallucination, Hector is fairly sure he should be doing something as the cafeteria disintegrates into chaos… running away seeming far and away the preferred option… but in fact what he does is stand there, paralyzed by shock.

He’s far from being the only one, of course… most of the other visitors to the museum are in various stages of either shock or panic. And no wonder, what with the rampaging dinosaur skeletons and werewolves, not to mention the crazy metal lady with the turtle beating up the dinosaurs. What in the name of God is going on here?

He’s vaguely aware of a few people moving purposefully through the chaos; they stand out starkly against the contrast of paralyzed tourists. Two security guards are practically throwing people into the hallway, shouting orders to clear out of the cafeteria. An athletic-looking woman has flattened herself against a wall and is frantically snapping pictures with a professional-looking camera*. Miss Pretty in Pink – Veronica, he remembers – is now wearing ice-cream on her chest and arguing with an older guy who is just… standing there? Yeah, but he seems awfully intent about it.

Hector doesn’t notice Danny coming up behind him until the boy spins him around.

> " Where the hell do you get off causing this chaos!?!"

Who what huh? Hector’s response, if it can really be called that, is primarily a confused glassy-eyed stare. Is he talking to me? He considers looking over his shoulder to see if maybe Danny is yelling at somebody else, but the way his new friend is glaring at him makes that fairly implausible. "I… huh?"

> " Kid - can you stop this? If you can… "

Some air of authority in Josh’s voice snaps Hector out of his daze, replacing passive confusion with active incredulity. "Me?!? How am I supposed to – "

> " Look out! "

Hector isn’t exactly clear on what happens next. A chair leaps towards them, over them, collides with a piece of something, shattering it. Foolishly, he looks up to see what it was, just in time for a shower of debris to pelt him.

The shower of plaster dust in his eyes blinds Hector, but he doesn’t need sight to tell that he’s been injured as larger chunks strike his arm and forehead. Ow!" He hits the ground hard, feeling a sickening twist in his wrist as he lands on it; screams again as he tries to lift himself up and the same wrist refuses to bear his weight.

A moment later it feels better, and he gets to his feet as rapidly as he can, unaware of anything remarkable in the instantaneous healing of his once-broken wrist. As he wipes blood and plaster dust from his forehead, he is equally unaware of the impressive gash over his right eye that has sealed over almost as quickly as it formed.

"Who are you people?" Hector realizes even as he asks it that it’s a foolish question; he remembers the guy with the wings, and clearly the guy throwing chairs around is the same kind of thing… a mutant. Which means Danny probably is, too, and Miss Pink, and… gah! Who knows who else?

"What do you want from me?"

[Jack Russell]

Crunch.

Both Jack and the triceratops are roaring now, and the fight only gets somewhere when Jack jerks hard to his left and brings the creature over in a roll with him, arching his back and pulling hard until the wires holding the triceratops together come loose. With a harsh ptwang a thick wire breaks and catches Jack over the eye, and the triceratops' head falls limply forward until he separates with another jerk. Finally using the museum's method of posing bones in place to look like the real thing, he tugs more wires loose using his claws, taking out at least one leg off the thing so it won't be of any immediate harm.

Meanwhile, chaos is still going around him. Toni is busy trying to protect a found tortoise, and Josh is struggling with the weight of the ceiling. Oh shit. He hadn't even noticed the ceiling was coming down, but what good could he make of himself with the ceiling? Hold up a column maybe, but those were starting to give way too.

Panting, he disentangles himself from the remains of the triceratops that continues to thrash about on the floor, not getting much of anywhere. A warm drizzle of blood falls into his eye as the laceration to his eyebrow starts to close up, and Jack gives his head a firm shake, rolling to his front surveying the stunned humans. A few of them are smart enough to flee, but the rest are watching or recording the event with their damned phones, even as security guards are trying their best to usher them out.

These people need to get out of here! They're just getting in the way! Considering that only a few of the fossilized displays seemed to exhibit aggressive behavior, they seemed to figure that they were in no danger, apparently oblivious to the fact that if the dinosaurs didn't crush them with mere force, the ceiling would instead. Aren't they scared at all? Jack thinks to himself, working his jaws. If not, they're about to be!

Jack drops to his fours, a low growl starting in his chest, flattening his ears and peeling his lips back from his teeth, every hair on his spine bristling. The bystanders look worried from a distance, but it doesn't do much to hasten their exit.

It's not enough.

Then he bolts, running hard, bounding clear over a line of tables, and slamming hard into Arthur and pinning him to the floor. The telepath manages one legitimate cry of terror before he's pinned, enough to send the rest of the humans still just standing around more frantically towards the exit. Jack lifts his head and roars after the humans, upping their frantic escape to almost hysterical. Don't move! Don't move! I don't want to bite you by accident! Jack shouts in his head, growling aloud and working his jaws.

Beneath him, Arthur is trembling, gasping and white. Jack! his telepathic response is loud and almost shrieking, clearly almost scared out of his wits.

I'm sorry! I had to do something! Just be still! Jack shouts back, shielding Arthur's body with his bulk and trying his best to improvise a fake mauling. Arthur finally obliges, going limp and so dead still, Jack is worried that the frail man had just fainted. Either way, Jack closes his jaws around Arthur's arm and starts to drag him off, grunting, ruining the shirt Arthur is wearing but otherwise not breaking the skin.

On the other side of the museum, his plan is working. "Oh my God!" "That thing.. that thing..! That thing just killed that guy!!"

[Tempero]

Danny is about ready to slap the kid, but Josh's voice reminds him that there's a possibility Hector doesn't know what's going on, that he's a mutant.

The warning shout is something Danny has trained himself to react instantaneously to-- he ducks, and is just a second to late to pull Hector out of the way. Most of the chunks that hit Danny hit him on the back and his arms, causing a few larger scratches.

He grabs hector by the arm, glaring at him when he asks the two most cliche questions in the history of mutantkind. Pulling the boy with him, Danny moves to a place with more or less cover, and looks over at Josh.

Josh, I'm afraid he's not even aware of being a mutant. The skeletons have the same colors on them that his mutation is, but there's no telling if they interact or not. In any case, I don't want to do the cancellation thing in case it's making him mu-holy shit! the last part is more of a gasp of surprise as he sees Hector healing up to perfect health all of a sudden. It seems to be faster than even what that doom-and-gloom guy the institute keeps around has.

color=teal]He heals...but there's something else to it. I've never seen a mutation like this...if it's physical, I might end up hurting him badly if I cancel...[/color] he thinks to Josh, and then makes a split decision. I'll copy him...that way I'll know for sure...[/color]

He disregards the fact that, if it is indeed physical, it might cause him a whole lot of pain, but somewhere in the back of his mind the argument that it has a healing factor so everything will be fine appears.

"Hector, just relax, we're trying to sort this out..." he utters quickly and then reaches out with his mind.

Fingers crossed that he won't end up growing a second heart or some other freakshow thing like that, he latches onto the elusive strings, and allows the transfer.

For a moment, there's an odd sensation, unlike any others copied, and he's worried that this might be a sign of physical mutation.

However, it disappears, and he feels not only the mutation flooding over him, but also enormous deposits of energy. In fact, he's never felt this, well, alive before. With a glance at his arm, he sees the cuts starting to heal, but his main focus is the mutation itself.

There are no weird sensations signifying the growth of a seventeenth rib, or any of the other extra ones. Good.

It's not physical...it's some kind of...er..energy thing. Should I cancel it? I don't feel any control ability... Danny asks Josh, slowly trying to lead Hector to an area less dangerous.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

> "Who are you people?"

Why not? It’s not like we’re a secret anymore. “We’re the X-Men. We run a school. I was taking the kids on a field trip… walking away and letting the roof fall in on everyone seemed like a bad idea.” Josh’s laugh comes out more as a gasp. Another chunk hits the ground.

> "What do you want from me?"

“Danny seems to think you have a latent mutation that’s causing this. Can you stop it?” He stops himself from gesturing around at the mayhem just in time.

He watches as Jack takes out one of the skeletons. So, does he have some kind of telekinesis? It didn’t explain how the dinosaurs seemed to take on a life of their own, though. If he were to try anything of the sort, it would look more like bad puppeteering than CGI.

Suddenly, Josh sees Jack take out Arthur from across the room. “Oh my god… what is he doing?” He cringes as Arthur flops onto the ground. He got it, but he wasn’t sure that Jack did. The fact was that several of them were pretty recognizable, and the media was pretty quick to blame mutants. Especially mutants that ‘mauled’ people in food courts. The headline 'Vicious X-Men Must Be Euthanized' flashes up into his mind for a moment, and he recoils slightly. There had to be a way to incorporate Jack into the day’s hallucinogenic feel. Maybe they weren’t completely screwed.

That said, the threat of death (what, collapsing ceiling wasn’t enough?) seemed to be making the crowd move faster. It looked like the room would be clear in a minute or two.

> It's not physical...it's some kind of...er..energy thing. Should I cancel it? I don't feel any control ability...

“Kid…Danny has the power to temporarily blanket mutations. If you can’t get it under control… will you let him do it? I promise I’ll explain everything after we get out of here.” Josh strains against the weight above him as his head begins throbbing. He would start letting sections drop, but was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to stop the chain reaction.