2012-09-17 Them! Part 1

''' From the news: Following on the heels of last week's bizarre prison break, we have another subterranean mystery on the books. Authorities are already postulating a connection between the successful, tunneling escape of the Arkham Asylum prisoner, Grant 'Terminex' West, and the events in Grover's Mill this morning. ''' Employees of the town's First National Bank arrived this morning to find the vault had collapsed through the floor, into a subterranean cavern not thought to have been there when the bank was constructed. Investigators are on the scene now. We will update our listeners as news comes in. Meanwhile, in other news...

As interested parties arrive in the sleepy nor-easter town of Grover's Mill, they find how lucky it was to catch the news story. Driving by on the interstate would have given no clues, and even strolling through town is relatively quiet. Most people are going about their business, opening shops, and generally doing what they do. It's a cloudy day, and if the weather man was right, it'll definitely be raining later today.

The town is sleepy, that is, until one turns the corner to find the FNB. The bank edifice is surrounded by yellow caution tape, and a couple of Sheriff's Deputies are wrangling press, none of whom are being allowed in yet. There are also plenty of locals lingering about to catch a glimpse of the inside, which is strangely obscured by a thick layer of dust all over the insides of the bank's windows.

For the resourceful, these Sheriff's are not being /super/ vigilant. A fake ID or a decent fast talk ought to get someone beyond the line, just not a press pass. Also, there are only a couple guys here, so sneaking about is always an option as well.

Barbara Gordon is a mild mannered librarian most days. But that's just a day job. She's Oracle all the time. So when this strange event came over her network, she called up one of the available Bats, Nightwing, and asked if they could go check it out in person. Babs doesn't get to get out and do detective work much anymore, and this sounded like a nice, safe, investigative opportunity.

By the time Dick arrives to pick her up, she's in a crisp tailored suit with her hair back in a bun, and has two fake FBI IDs in little leather billfolds for them. She is Agent Wilson, he is agent Phillips. Hold on for one more day, kids.

When they arrive on scene, she might get a few looks for being in a wheel chair, but Babs is having too much fun to care.

Tunneling antics must be popular. First the escape of Terminex, then Moleman's attack on Metropolis -- needless to say, Nightwing wanted to investigate. He wasn't there for the first, but he was there for the second. Being that it's daytime and Barbara called him to go out in civvies, he does just that. He's also wearing a suit, well-tailored but not so expensive-looking that it might seem suspicious. He's glanced at the names on the IDs and gave a snort before following her to the site.

He has the requisite dark sunglasses on and put on a 'don't you dare try to stop me' expression as he walks up to the local authorities, flashes the FBI ID, and makes to walk himself...and Agent Wilson, through the tape towards the crime scene.

An escaped nutjob with uncertain-- but clearly useful-- resources, an entire bank vault apparently excavated and dropped into the underworld.. it would be ludicrous to suggest that this was a normal day for Frank Castle. Just, disturbingly close to normal, and plenty to get Frank's interest. He shows up early, not long after the police are setting up actually, though it's unlikely anyone notices him at this point. Dressed like he's living out of the rusty, several-color (none of them factory) van up the block, Castle follows the radio chatter and lets them go through their perimeter sweep, then he changes his clothes and gets down to business.

Wearing a long, brown coat over a decent shirt and his nicest slacks, Castle ditches the face-obscuring lowered Yankees cap, slips on a pair of sunglasses, and walks right up to the checkpoint. The arrival of Oracle and Nightwing as Feds makes his cover seem kind of uneventful, relatively speaking-- he's flashing an insurance investigator's badge, "Won't touch anything, promise." He boldly, seemingly boredly lies. "Can't promise anything for them, though." He asides more quietly to one of the outer perimeter guards, forcing a wry half-smirk.

Not too far away, a recent-model Camaro in black-and-yellow two-tone comes whizzing along the street, bearing New York license plates and two people. The driver is frowning in concentration, gripping the steering wheel tightly and craning her neck to see over her knuckles. "Is that the bank you wanted, Sam? It looks awfully busy... with /newspeople/?" Jubilation Lee observes, faintly surprised.

She notices also that the road is nearly blocked in front of the bank, cluttered with news vehicles. "Oh. Right. Don't wanna hit them," she notes, spinning the wheel and taking a turn into the nearest parking lot. She gets there easily. That loud screech of tires that comes from taking the turn too fast? Totally meant to do that. Honest!

Sam is ready to call a priest--any priest. Not just because of Jubilee's driving, for which he may need an exorcist. If he weren't a mutant with amazing powers of surviving damn near anything, he'd have made her pull over before they were out of Westchester. As it is, he's simply struggled through being queasy and tried not to put his foot through the floor trying to brake.

Sam had intended to open a bank account here--easier and safer to access for the Outsiders. Not much seems safe lately. Aliens in the park yesterday, something up in the bank today. He's not interested in going in. He does want to know what's up so he can take his business elsewhere if necessary.

"Well. Ain't this a mess." He unbuckles and takes a slow breath. "Let's go see what's what, Jubilee."

The Sheriff's definitely take notice when Dick and Babs show up in their black sedan. They already /look/ like Feds, and almost forget to ask to see the ID. They try to put on a tough expression, but both small town deputies think it's pretty damn cool that two /FBI/ agents just showed up to their crime scene. They hold the tape up so Dick can roll Babs under it. Finally. Grover's Mill would be known for something else! Ok, not really boys, but keep hoping. Hope is good.

And it's true, after the Fed's, the deputies almost turn their noses up at the insurance investigator. But, bank insurance. This branch does a lot of business in town, and they need to get back up and running soon. They know better than to keep the man out. "Yes sir, right this way." They do not hold the tape up for him though.

Luckily, the deputies are too busy with holding the line to do any more than shoot Jubilee's driving a dirty look, and then go back to managing the 'crowd'. Ok, so three news vans is a big deal in Grover's Mill!

Once inside, our intrepid heroes find a nearly deserted, if boring looking bank branch. Aside from the entire place being covered in brown grit and dust, it looks fairly unmolested. Making one's way into the vault area however, reveals electric lights undoubtedly set up by the Sheriff's department, surrounding a ragged whole in the floor through which can be seen the top of the bank’s vault. That’s probably not where that goes. And the town's Sheriff is on his cell phone, obviously talking to the nearest CSI department, and complaining about how long it takes to get people to Grover's Mill. He's pacing about in the lobby, potentially avoidable if one is clever, or easy to attract, of course.

It's not too surprising for Feds to show, as banks are Federally insured and bank robberies are federal crimes. As they roll inside Babs simply can't help it. She taps her S-Phone and The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" begins to play as low-level background music in her and Nightwing's earpieces. Her eyes sweep the mess inside and she pushes her glasses up on her nose. "Well, that's not something you see every day," she comments to her 'partner'.

Agent Wilson pulls a camera out of the bag slung across the back of her wheelchair and begins snapping crime scene photos. Only this camera is targeting one of her satellites overhead to focus on areas for special imaging shots. Infrared, high contrast, shots looking for power sources and heat signatures. The resultant images go to her S-Pad which she hands to Agent Phillips to review.

Agent Phillips takes in the mess inside as well and spends a moment or two looking at the big hole in the ground. He then whips off his dark glasses and said, in a completely serious voice, "Don't worry. We'll get to the -bottom- of this -whole- mess." He even manages to look completely serious as he glances to Agent Wilson and takes the S-Pad from her. He...might want to get down in that hole too to snoop for clues, but for now, he'll look at the images in his hand.

If Frank gives a crap about the less warm reception.. it doesn't show. It's not unlikely that it's just what the Punisher was going for-- hardly anyone even gives him a second look, he's brushed through like so much ho-hum, strolling easily in Barbara and Dick's wake. Sometimes, it just doesn't pay to be in a hurry. It also gives him a chance to casually size up the 'Feds' as they enter, keeping a peripheral amount of attention on the pair, and the Sheriff, though neither are immediately approached.

Castle shadows their course, however, also heading for the proverbial ground zero: the vault that his 'company' needs a pair of eyes on. He pauses only a moment, stooping to draw a fingertip through the grime layer dusting the bank. Something tells him /that's/ not business as usual. Castle doesn't bother avoiding the Sheriff, after all-- first the guy would have to /want/ to engage him, and hey, there are two FBI agents who just walked in! He stoops again by the ragged edge of the vault floor, and frowns. He frowns big. Probably because of the pun.

"You sure you oughtta get out, Sam? You look a little green," Jubilee says, noticing something besides the road and the selection on her iPod Nano for the first time since hitting the road. "There's a burger place just a block down, if you need something to settle your stomach."

Still, seeing what's up could be interesting. She unbuckles her seat belt and opens the door, levering herself up from the car's low seat. She takes the keys from the ignition, then shuts the door, moving around to the other seat to help Sam up if he needs it. "I wonder what's got the local media so stirred up? That's a lot of vans for a town this small!"

"There's nothing wrong with me that bein' in the driver's seat wouldn't fix," Sam mutters. Now, the uncertainty has more to do with the fact that damn near everywhere he goes anymore things are blowing up, falling apart... not to mention the whole dimensional rift and giant floating head with itty bitty arms and legs from a couple weeks ago.

"Seein' what's up is not interesting," Sam adds as he gets out of the car and looks down at Jubilee. "However, we'd be irresponsible to just walk away. So. Stay outta trouble and..." He nods toward the nearest news van. "...I'm sure if anything were to get even a little exciting in that direction no one would notice if we had a look. So let's go." He offers Jubilee his arm. They should be able to just walk in once people are distracted. "This once." Another stern look. "Once."

Decent satellite imagery shows all kinds of interesting things. Like, strange heat variations indicating an underground passage about 20 feet wide, heading northeast from the bank before the images fade out.

"Hell, I'll call you back, just get them down here!" The Sheriff snaps his phone shut with authority - that'll show 'em! And then approaches the 'agents'. "Excuse me..." he starts, his tone indicating he knows his deputies must have vetted them, but he still wants to know who they are. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my crime scene?"

Castle manages to avoid the Sheriff's notice for now. Peering down into the hole shows him the top of that vault, just a few feet down from the floor, and also a 15 foot ladder which leads from the lip of the hole to the floor of the cavern below, with 'Property of Grover's Mill Sheriff's Department' stenciled on the side of it. Electric mechanic's lights have been hung out at various points to light the vault area, and the cavern below.

Fortunately, the media and the deputies still haven't taken any notice of Sam and Jubilee, leaving the pair free to move about easily, or circle around the building, for instance. Or do something fun to a news van, of course. So many options!

She's always wanted to do this. Barbara whips out her FBI ID, hopefully in perfect concert with Dick. "Agents Wilson and Phillips. Your crime scene is inside a FDIC-insured bank and your crime is under federal jurisdiction. Bank robbery and bank burglary are under the purview of the FBI, Sheriff." Babs works on handling the man so Dick can do some investigating.

Richard Grayson does indeed whip his FBI ID out at the precise moment Babs does. Maybe they practiced in the car? Since 'Wilson' seems to be taking care of the authorities, 'Phillips' does indeed start snooping around. He does note Castle inspecting the edge of the hole and approaches him, "Just who are you? This is a Federal Crime Scene now." It will also get him closer to the Sheriff's equipment to see just the sort of things they've already mucked up.

The hell? Frank may not be an architect, but it doesn't take one to hazard a guess that this... gaping cavern wasn't under there when the bank was surveyed and built. "Tends to track with the force of entry." Castle murmurs to himself, sighing lightly as he leans over to peer into the lit hole, and looks between it and the Feds with a bit of a furrowed brow. "Maybe." Frank half-agrees more audibly as Dick approaches, though he doesn't bother to stand back up. He just plucks the investigator's badge back from his jacket-- slowly, he's respectful of Dick's abilities already, one way or another.

It's flipped open fairly nonchalantly, not at all the smooth and television-perfect grace exercised by Nightwing and Oracle. "... but there's a hell of a lot of money tied up in it, too. Or can you tell me how they got in, and why, and that all the other branches and people working there are safe already?" Frank cants his head, but the dry tone suggests no small amount of 'rhetorical' in the query. "You want to go down first? Don't worry, my type doesn't get the glory." Thank God.

"Well... much as I'd love to firework-bomb a new van, it looks like they're not paying any attention to us, or the back of the building. And most banks have a service entrance around the side or back for handling cash deliveries," Jubilee says, looking at the building. "Let's just try going around the side. If it's locked, I can take care of it," she adds, holding up her finger and blowing on it suggestively. Without waiting for an answer, she moves that way. Impetuous girl!

Sam is up to his ears in impetuous girls half the time and not in any happy way. He lets Jubilee go on ahead. He does want to know whether it's safe for the Outsiders to make contacts here and he should at least look in. Sure. At this point, there's also the issue that if he said no and went to grab a coffee--and, Lord, does he need a coffee--he would get not one step before Jubilee went right off in the other direction and got herself into whatever's up. He has zero illusions about his actual authority around here.

The air literally goes out of the sheriff with a massive sigh when he sees the badges. His nightmare comes true. Finally, a real goddamn crime in his county, and he gets bumped to crowd control by the feds. He shrugs and holds his hands up, talking to Agent Philips, "Alright, Agents, that's fine. The county CSI people are on their way down, but I'll instruct them to coordinate with you when they get here. Should be within the hour." He starts to head for the front door, and turns back, trying to be the cooperative 'local authority', "Do you need anything in here?"

At the actual 'scene of the crime', Dick isn't able to see too much from up here. Luckily, it looks like all the sheriff's department managed to do was set up a bunch of lights before they left the scene alone. Although, peering in more acutely, adjusting for the light, both men may just notice the bits of crushed giant ant bodies sticking out from under the fallen vault.

Sam and Jubilee are in fact able to slip around unobserved. At the back door, the lock poses no challenge for Jubilee whatsoever, and opens obligingly. Inside, the conversation between Barbara and the Sheriff is not in line of sight. In fact, the door reveals the employee break room, and easy access to the rear areas of the bank without even needing to go through the lobby.

"I just need the room with the hole emptied of personnel for the moment so Agent Phillips and I can do a photographic walk-through before there is too much crime-scene contamination. We're just here for our first-responder forensic skills. The agents in charge of the case will be arriving shortly," Barbara explains to the sheriff. In about 40 minutes if her eavesdropping on FBI communications is any indicator. Hopefully they'll be long gone by then.

Richard Grayson pulls out his own camera to take pictures, especially of the crushed, giant ant body parts. Those are sent to 'Wilson's' phone. They -are- going to need to go down there. He glances at Frank at his questions, "Well, they obviously dug from underneath." He blinks, his expression serious. "As for why, this was probably the most accessible. If the other branches are in busier locations, it's harder to navigate...or dig tunnels." He looks back to 'Wilson' as she asks for the area to be cleared. "Looks like yes, I will be going down first."

Frank squints down the hole, more than paying a great deal of attention to the agent, as he slips his fake, but high quality credentials back away. "Not consistent with any explosive patterns I've seen, hell of a pest problem too." He's noticed what Dick has, and apparently agrees with the conclusion, "I'll cover you." Which doesn't sound as cowardly as it normally should when a pencil pusher offers to follow an armed agent into a dark crevasse potentially filled with man-eating arthropods.

Actually, Jubilee wouldn't leave Sam alone in this condition. She's hardly a heartless girl! But since he's going anyway, she has no reservations about going right off and getting into trouble. Jubes edges up to the back door, which turns out to be locked. But she gives it a quick burst of fireworks power, getting it open quickly. "And we are /so/ in," she says, leaving it open for Sam. "Looks like the employee break room. The rest of the bank's through that door." And on she goes, looking for signs of something out of place. Nothing so far... except the sounds of someone talking nearby! Oh, fudgesicles...

Breaking and entering is bad but is it like opening something that's already been opened once--since the hole is already there, does that mean it's a lesser offense? Sam shakes his head and gets it back in the game his mind wanders everywhere these days, it's driving him crazy. Usually he's so focused on the task at hand.

"Well, voices means there can't be anything too dangerous in there, right?" Sam's ready to go, yes. He takes a step back and... that step sounded different than the one he just took. He does it again. Thud. THONK. Like the floor's been hollowed out underneath. "Jubilee, get back here. Floor's not right." He pulls up his shields and holds out a hand to her, pushing the shield out to her as well with an effort.

The Sheriff nods, and says, "Don't worry, we'll keep everyone outside. We know our business." Well, nevermind the insurance investigator and the two in the break room, fella! But he heads out through the front door once he's confirmed the instructions.

For Dick and Frank, there's definitely no sign of explosive, as Frank pointed out. There is a faint acrid odor, however, acidic in nature and foul, but also subtle. Someone not used to working with chemicals would probably just put it in the 'weird smells' column and move on, but it's definitely some kind of strange, high-powered acid which has become benign.

The break room does echo weirdly as Jubilee and Sam walk through, exploring from this angle of the building. Strange cracks in the linoleum begin to appear then, and the floor sags, just as Sam's force field wraps around them both. With a crumbling crash, a portion of the bank's weakened foundation breaks away under Jubilee and Cannonball, dropping them to the floor of the tunnel that leads away from the vault. They're now looking at the vault from the other side, standing in the faint light from the strung up lights that don't venture very far down this way.

With the Sheriff and his personnel out of the way, Babs toggles her comm to whisper to Dick. "They're clearing out. I don't think I'll be much use in that hole. I can hold the fort up here if you go down and look around. Send the photos to my account. You've got maybe 15 minutes to snoop. I want to be out of here long before the real Feds show up." She taps a few things on her S-Pad and starts working on altering the footage from the bank's security cams to scrub them from it.

Richard Grayson nods to the instructions in his comm unit, "Got it." At the crash from the other room, he frowns briefly before asking, "Wilson, do you want to investigate that?" Or he can send the Insurance guy. Either way, he's going down into the hole, a small, yet bright flashlight held in his teeth for the quick trip down. Climb -down- the ladder? Not likely. It's much faster to slide.

The insurance guy is, apparently, about as eager to get down there and see what's up as Nightwing-- even if he does give way to the fake Fed. His trip down is an odd mirror, every bit as practiced and smooth, swift as the first man down, though Frank lands with a much more notably THWUMP once the landing space is clear. His own flashlight comes out, military surplus, and a second bright beam joins Grayson's in the darkness, passing first over the spattered ant bits. "Don't suppose this comes down to some jackass leaving an open bag of Skittles in their safety deposit box." Frank observes gruffly, turning his attention to the end of the tunnel that he can see from here, "You /smell/ that?" What /is/ that?

"I dunno... last time I walked in on voices, it was mall security," Jubilee whispers. "Maybe we should... oh, good idea!" The force field wraps around them... And suddenly the floor cracks! "Oh, oh, oh!" Jubilee grabs for Sam's hand, and then the floor sags and gives way! They fall through, Jubilee's dismayed wail following them all the way down! The landing is a lot less painful than it could've been, with Sam's force field around them. Jubilee stumbles, barely managing to keep her balance. "Oh, this is /soooo/ not good. How are we gonna get back up?" Still, first things first: Light. She quickly conjures up a small cloud of light gold plasmoids, swirling about just above her hand and lighting up the area they're in. "There's a steel wall down here... /why/ is there a steel wall down here?"

"I've gotten out of worse, I'll fly us out as long as the ceiling doesn't follow us down--and probably even then. This must be near the vault if there's a wall." Sam keeps the shield up around both of them and comes to see what she's looking at. Keeping them in one piece was harder than it should have been and he's irritated with himself. His control always goes to hell when he's distracted. He starts looking around to see if this is a pit or an actual tunnel.

The bank's cameras prove to be even less of a challenge for Barbara than the Sheriff was. They're on wireless circuits, with backup batteries, but it turns out the server they broadcast to has already lost power, so there hasn't been a footage update for hours.

Down at the bottom, Grayson and Castle can see the vault hanging open, with the door facing the side the ladder is on. Inside, the vault is a mess. The cash drawers are all over the place, as are bricks of cash. It's hard to tell how much was taken, but given this was a night job, and the thieves had all the time in the world, there is a /lot/ of cash left in here. Interestingly though, the safe deposit boxes have been ripped open. Well, not all of them. But two of the regular rectangulars are hanging off their hinges, and four of the big, low, square jobbies are completely off, and the drawers are dumped out around the cavern, outside the vault.

On the other side of the vault, the dust settles around Jubilee and Sam, swirling manically around shield energy and whirling plasmoids. There's plenty of room for a human sized critter to walk around the vault, without needing to squeeze, but only one at a time. Down the other way, the tunnel goes another 100 feet or so, and then ends in what looks like a collapse. The walls here though are slick, like a fake, Disneyland, dirt-colored plastic-molded cave.

"I'll check out the noise," Babs says to Dick. She rolls towards the break room to investigate, pulling a taser from a secret compartment in her chair, along with a couple batarangs. Can never be too careful. "Dick, I have another hole in the floor here, but it's brand new if it's the crash I just heard. I'm guessing the tunneling went under this room." She frowns and snaps some pictures. "There's light coming from it, though. Someone else may be doing their own investigation." As the images from Dick's camera come to her of the vault, she takes note of the opened safety deposit boxes. "I'm going to see who those boxes were registered to," she notes as she begins working her way into the bank's computer system.

"And...just -why- would you put Skittles in a safety deposit box?" 'Phillips' just has to ask. The smell of the acid is memorized so that he can try and help replicate it back...elsewhere. "Looks like it wasn't necessarily about the cash..." he points at the bricks still there but then nods again at Babs' discovery over the comm. "We're not the only ones down here." He's not going to call out...who knows how structurally sound these tunnels are? But he's going to move a little further down the tunnels in the direction of the newer collapse to see what's going on there.

"Exactly what I was thinking." 'Castiglione' agrees. "They were after something specific, or someone specific's shit." Frank observes darkly, turning the light from the path to the cave-in back into the vault. Who the hell breaks into a bank-- hell, breaks a vault /out/ of a bank, and leaves all the cash? /Crazies/. They never get simpler. "On the list of things that inspire goliath ants to gnaw in and do some banking..." He shrugs. The whole thing is nuts.

The secondary crash didn't really forestall Frank's initial investigation; as far as he can guess this whole place is about to fall in. The voices and flickering light around the steel of the vault, though? "Yep." The Punisher echoes agreement to Nightwing's notice, and... there's a pistol in his hand already! A M1911A for the acquainted, though it's been customized and refitted so many times it's easy to excuse identification problems from trigger to hammer to chamber to mag well.

"It does look like a vault wall, if you took off all the drawers and shelves and all," Jubilee observes. "Maybe there's a way around it. Somebody must've been digging down here if the foundation was weakened enough to fall in under... wait. I'm hearing voices again. Somebody else is down here, too!" In her excitement, she forgets to keep her voice down.

Something smoothed this, Sam wants to know how, maybe even what. Stone doesn't mark it. He backs up and spreads his shield to cover the area behind him. Just that effort is making him sweat a little. Still, he focuses and smacks a blast into the wall, a small one. It caves in a dent, like a fist into drywall, and he can work out a small piece of whatever the new compound is.

Luckily, /that/ computer system is still online, because it's not hosted here, it's backed up at FNB HQ. It's a quick matter of SQL injection and database mining for a pro like Oracle, and voila, she finds all of the boxes are registered to the same name. Is anyone surprised? The name turns out to be Permanent Pest Control, which in turn, after some cursory research which is almost laughably easy for someone like her, Oracle finds is a shell company set up to shield some of Grant West's assets should he ever be sent to prison. The same Grant West who in fact just broke out of Arkham Asylum last week. The same Grant West who is also known to some as 'Terminex', the insect wielding super-villain.

Down below, the vault doesn't seem to be yielding up much more information. Missing stuff. Torn open safety deposits. Glazed walls. Glazing which ends suspiciously close to where the tunnel is closed off at the collapsed portion. And in the middle of the open areas, the investigating parties come close to meeting, face to face. Let's hope the don't surprise each other!

With Sam's excavations, the glazed wall does indeed eventually give up a piece of itself, yielding a small disk-shaped souvenir, no bigger than his palm, and about that thick. Behind it is the kind of plain old loose dirt one would expect to find underground, some of which spills out onto the floor like an hourglass flowing down. Don't worry though. It slows and stops after a second.

"Looks like Terminex came to get some stuff he'd deposited before he went to Arkham, Dick," Babs relates over the comm. "I think that's all we're going to find here. We have the real feds coming in soon. We need to bug out." Oh, bad pun!

"Sounds like kids." Frank observes, lowering his weapon and sliding it away inside a concealed shoulder holster in his longcoat. Dick would likely catch a glimpse of a matching one under the other arm, unusual indeed. "I was a Marine." Frank offers up honestly, if not particularly informatively. Either way, with their opposite number not exactly a threatening remnant supervillain army of ants, the 'agent' is free to make his escape with the evidence they came for-- Frank jots his notes down on a pad of paper, substantially less fancy, before he takes up position at the other end of the vault, shining a light down the narrow passageway Jubilation discovers.

"This place isn't safe. I mean it." He can tell they're young, but there's a bit of urgency, weight to the words that don't come from your average authority figure telling young'ins they are where they shouldn't be. "The hell are you doing down here?"

"I'm a little more worried about /us/, if somebody's down here to do any shooting!" Jubilee fires back, not entirely honestly. But since Sam's looking at something down here, she leaves her plasmoid makeshift light on and whirling. "What's so interesting about that..."

She doesn't really get to finish, because someone's shining a light down this way, and calling to them. "What are /we/ doing down here? The ground gave way!" Jubilee calls back, as if that should be obvious. Just two kids breaking and entering and prowling around a crime scene in a bank and falling through a floor. What could be more innocent? "What are /you/ doing down here?"

"Probably the same thing we are." Sam straightens up and comes to see who the new person is. "I'm perfectly aware of the conditions down here," he calls. Certainly better than any city boy. "We're safe enough." His shields are holding and there's nothing big enough to fall on them that he couldn't handle, even like this.

"Can we help you?" He steps past Jubilee to intercept the new person.

Investigation done, and real FBI on the way, 'agents' Wilson and Philips make good on their escape. This leaves just Frank, Jubilee and Sam alone in a short tunnel with a whole bunch of cash. But for how long? And how soon will the real authorities show up asking awkward questions? Lets see what happens next!