2013.10.21 - Well, Genosha Blew Up, But That's Not The Problem

It hasn't been more than two hours since the world learned that the Spire had fallen. Unconfirmed reports claim that Magneto has been killed and Bastion is in ruin.

Its well past nightfall in Scotland, and a small team of X-Men have gone into quarantine at Muir Island. Shift really should have gotten some sleep, but he hasn't. He's found his way to the command bunker, and is quickly making a few contacts. One of them happens to be Pete Wisdom.

Its a video call request. Kwabena sits before the console, and he looks like hell. His face is dirty, bruised and beaten. His X-Men uniform has no shortage of burns and tears. Worse yet? He's lost color, a sickly nature having come about him.

And the man who answers the videocall? Is doing so pretty obviously from a mobile. It's got that whole Blair Witch shakycam thing going on. "Just got your text, mate. Lot of you all right?" Apparently he hasn't even seen the news yet.

There's probably a reason for that-- while not in the same shape Shift is, Wisdom's suit's in shreds and tatters with the SHIELD uniform actually showing through; he's covered in soot and blood and dirt and bits of what's probably gore, and there's someone's posh mansion in the background behind him. Then he squints into the phone. "How in fuck d'you get zombied in Bastion?"

The call is heavily encrypted, so it takes a moment for Kwabena's image to clear. By the time it does, he's staring at Pete, wondering just how in the hell he got so banged up. However, it doesn't really show in his eyes. They are glassy, emotionless, like a soldier suffering shell shock.

"Bastion is ovah." His words come in monotone. "De Spiah is gone. I can confirm dat a Magneto is dead."

Whatever else he was going to say is suddenly cut off by a violent coughing fit. When it's over, Kwabena is wiping blood from his mouth and nose. He makes to speak again, but merely slumps, wheezing for a moment.

"--shit. D'you need a healer? I've got a healer who can teleport--" Yeah, actually, way more concern for Shift right in this second than for 'you lot didn't hurt my Hammer Bay did you'; that'll come later. There's been talking behind him, but he's moving now, goes into a side room or something and shuts the door. The dude is bleeding from the mouth and nose when he coughs, and he's grey. Yeah it /kind of looks/ like he /may be dying/. "She can handle more than one-- isn't SHIELD--"

Kwabena is quick to wave his hand in a dismissive way, though for a moment, it sounds as if he can't yet speak. It takes a moment before he's fully recovered, during which he recognizes that Pete has gone to another room on his end of the communication. "No, no. We're undah quarantine. Can't send anyone else in, it's too risky. Not until we know wha- *COUGH COUGH!*"

A fire enters Kwabena's eyes, which is quickly snuffed out. The fire of annoyance, and it's the one moment where his glassy expression seems to break. It lingers there, etched across his sickly face, but a determination takes over. He's got a message to deliver. Pete needs the information.

"Not until we know what dis is." He sits back, letting off a slight sigh. "Dis has gone way beyond Magneto, Pete. Beyond Bastion. Beyond Genosha. Here's what you need to know." His voice goes constrained, as if he were fighting back another series of violent lung expulsions. "A scientist known as 'Milton', aka 'Sinistah', has been conducting high level experiments on mutants. He has five of dem in his servitude. Limited intelligence on dem, but he's referring to dem as de Horsemen of de Apocalypse. Look it up. Revelations Six."

He leans to the side, coughing again for a moment, before looking back with watery eyes from the ordeal. "We've already encountahed two of dem. Pestilence, and Famine." Beat. "I've got... fucking tuberculosis."

"I know what the fucking Horsemen of the Apocalypse are," Wisdom snaps irritably. "And you've got late stage, by the looks of you. Let's see your hands. Any clubbing? You been x-rayed? No, I'm listening, I've got it; five doesn't make a lot of sense unless this Milton bloke's been reading Good Omens--" He's talking fast; he doesn't /move/ like he's hurt-- it's possible none of the blood and stuff on him is his. Or that this healer's /that good/. But he's animated and quick and angry, even if it's not Shift he's angry at. "--and it's the lot of the world that /doesn't/ have access to healers getting exposed to this shit that's the worry. And I'll find out about the rest on my own. But listen to me, I'm at fucking Doctor Strange's house and I just got back from hell with the Defenders and we've got more magic packed into one place than Glastonbury Tor. We can at least make sure no one who's still alive over there dies of fucking consumption."

A hearty smirk is given at Pete's retort, which is really the first sign that the Kwabena he knows is still in there, somewhere. "Yeah, it's late stage. Came on strong. Mattah of hours. Dis shit's weaponized, dat much is certain. My whole team's got it. TB, cholera, de goddamned 'bubonic plague'."

He nods his head in stalwart agreement when Pete expresses his concern for the world's health safety. "Dat's de thing, Wisdom. We've got to move fast. De mutant he's named 'Pestilence' is a teleportah. He could be halfway across de world by now already, spreading dis shit. You might need to bring dis to SHIELD, de CDC, I don't know. But I can almost guarantee it's not going to be contained at Genosha."

He makes to sigh, only to be caught up in another series of violent hacking. "Listen. Pestilence? He's a friend of mine. I don't know what dey did to him, but he's not himself. I don't think he's even in control of his own mind. I know dat you'd do whatevah you could to stop him. I would too. But... remembah, somewhere trapped inside of him's a mutant with a good heart. About one of de best souls I know."

Kwabena is abruptly stricken with more coughs, so much that a speck of blood and pus ends up spattered on the camera.

".. FUCK!"

There is more anguish in that single word than he may have expressed during the entire conversation.

He's listening, all right; looks like he's also doing other shit while he holds the phone, because things are being moved around and whatever, and his face is grim; grimmer still at the 'not himself'. "I know what that's--" he starts.

And then that violent explosion of lungs from inside to outside, and abruptly the Englishman's eyes are the featureless orange-yellow of fury. "You fucking proud idiot. Where are you. If you're in X-related quarantine there're really only four places you could be and two of them are a stretch, so you know I'll fucking figure it out."

He turns and puts his hand on the doorknob, starts to pull it open. "Even if for whatever reason you'd rather die than trust me, you'd be pretty bloody stupid and probably deserve to die if you can't bring yourself to trust--" He pulls it open. "Amy! Got a bit of a situation--!"

Pete's sudden outburst draws a wide-eyed glower from Kwabena, even as he's wiping the blood from his face and nose once again. The napkin he was using is now bloodstained beyond use, so he discards it angrily and retrieves a fresh one, soiling it as well. "Godamnit, Wisdom," he starts.

And then, he stops.

Sure, the situation was heavy. He'd just been through hell at the hands of Magneto, only to watch one of his most trusted friends quite literally disintegrate before his very eyes. The angry emotions fade from his expression like a leaky cup until once again, the shell shock has returned.

A tiny cough and a long face comes next. Kwabena reaches up to rub at his forehead. For the time being, he was still in command of the operation. It was his call to make.

"You're talking magic users, right?" he asks, leaning forward, his voice hoarse. "You know how I feel about all of dis mystical stuff." Still, he's considering it. "Dey'll be coming into a quarantined location. If dey aren't able to ward off whatevah de hell dis his, den I'll have no choice but to insist dat dey remain in quarantine with my team."

A door opens. It is only mildly creaky. The boots thumping on the wooden floor are way louder.

"Dude, what are you screaming about?" a young woman's voice complains from off-screen. "I told you to take a shower! You're just itchy from all the dirt, it's not hell lice. There's no such thing as hell lice."

Then, louder: "--I'm up here, Rain! In the library!"

Well. Actually. That depends on one's mystic taxonomic system and whether one counts their infernal counterparts as a seperate species or merely ramped up versions, distorted by corruption, sin and their very own natures. The mirror can be a very ugly place when turned on a soul, despair, guilt and other vices, virtues turned too far with a joyous, wretching cackle almost like a laugh amidst snapping sinews and bones. It's all quite ugly, really. But is it simply earnest? An honest reflection of creatures above, like the world's most heartful fun house mirror? One might consider that even demons probably dislike Hell Lice. There is a bottom of the order somewhere, maybe.

But either way. Rain is - well, whether called for or passing, fate or phoned (Does Fate have a phone?), she's there. She seems closer to her cheerier self, but concerned. Rain pauses, hearing the shout. She beams and heads over that way. She waves a little, concerned. "Um. Did -" Did she hear Hell Lice?

"It's not me," Pete says to that female voice in the background, his own self burning with an anger that dangerously approaches anguish for someone who's totally made out of sarcastic cynicism and has no feelings. "It's Shift. His whole team. Some fucking idiot superscientist's made some people into the Four Horsemen and Shift's team got exposed to Pestilence and Famine; they're dying. I need to get in touch with a lot of people, very quickly, see if the hosts can be located without more people dying-- but--"

Then he turns to glare at the phone screen again, eyes dulled down from that seething yellow orange to a dull red. "How you feel about this 'mystical stuff' isn't actually my concern. You fucking /take advantage/ of help when it's /offered/, Odame. You two--" Now he's looking back at Amy and Rain, and he turns the phone around so they can see Shift and he can see them. "You could probably get the plague for a minute or something if you tried /really hard/ for some sort of completely daft experiment, yeah? But quarantines make you do things like type 'L O L' into your interwebs?"

His face-- his eyes are blue again. And they're pleading.

Another particularly violent round of hacking and coughing comes from Shift's end of the connection. "Ah," he answers to no one in particular, and spits out a virulent, "Fuck it!" before leaning to the side, retrieving a hypodermic needle, and promptly injecting himself with a balled up fist. That automated robotic doctor they've got on Muir Island can go shove its protocols in a USB 2.0 for all he's concerned. He's not waiting another two hours for another inoculation.

Pete's scolding him, and he's right to do so. Shift is suffering from shell shock. He's also suffering from an acute case of grief, and he's already had a history of PTSD. The glassy expression seems to sharpen, as if Pete just reached out and lashed his mind through that video phone. He even sits bolt upright, simply staring at the videoscreen when it's turned around to reveal Amy and Rain.

He looks bad. Sickly. His normally dark face is gray, there are rings developing under his eyes, and let's... just not talk about the blood and pus seeping from his mouth and nose.

"I hear you." His tone has become more dutiful. "Pete... alright. Okay, fine. Just..." He lifts a hand, stuttering for a moment while making a pausing gesture toward the video screen. "Promise me dey undahstand security. Nobody can talk about dis place, what is going on here. Oddahwise I'll be crawling to your doorstep begging for a job."

The phone, when turned, reveals two women who assuredly have magical powers. The one standing closer with her arms crossed isn't even out of her teens and has an affection for black. She's not the Wicca practitioner here, but she sure looks like it.

Her defiant expression softens as she realizes she's not dealing with a pouty Pete. Letting the tale of scientific apocalypses slide, Amy (presumably she's Amy) walks closer, leaning over to get a better look. She squints in morbid fascination, crowding Wisdom's personal space to continue looking over his shoulder.

"Wow. Um, Rain, gonna need an assist on this one--don't worry, uh, 'Odame.' I'm really awesome at secret stuff. Try asking me where the Twelfth Alignment of Outer Gods is, I will literally burst into flames if I tell you."

Rain is apparently the older of the two. While there's a genuine magic heritage, they happily hide behind Wicca and new ageyness. Although, most are glad Rain's not into being skyclad and all that jazz. She has a generally laid back sort of expression, probably quietly doing math in her head or daydreaming. What was that theory now? She seems more retiring, though she smiles politely at the others. Curiousity leads her to peer over too. "Uhm. Sure thing. What's up?"

Rain looks concerned. At the mention of secrets, she just sort of smiles wistfully. The best ones hide in plain sight. "Hmm. Er. I wouldn't ask that if I knew you'd burst into flames..." Rain frowns faintly. "But I am pretty good at keeping secrets." She's one heck of a non-answerer, too.

"They keep more secrets than I do," Pete tells Shift firmly, looking-- significantly more relaxed now. Because now his friend's not going to violently expel the entire contents of his chest cavity and die really disgustingly. It's not like he doesn't /get/ horror, like he doesn't get grief and shellshock and the thousand yard stare. It's just that--

--and Shift had the right of it--

--there's a time and a place, and it's /after/ immediate threats are dealt with. He hands Amy the phone to hold and tugs Rain over. "And I am ready to give you glowing recommendations any time you're ready to stop being a paramilitary, but you don't have to get fussed about it on account of me or the people I trust. Here: tell the lovely ladies where your sorry ass and your team are. I'm getting changed."

No threat of hell lice is a plus.

If it wasn't entirely rude to groan, Shift would. He looks between the images of Amy and Rain as they crowd Pete out of the picture for a moment, his expression more than a little dubious.

"It's -Shift-." Such a pointed response when Amy refers to him as 'Odame'. After all, that name had recently been peppered across the news in association with brutal drug-related murders. Should she make the connection, she might not want to offer her help. His eyes flick back and forth between them, and eventually a sardonic smirk crosses his image. "Let's hold on to de fiahworks for anodah day." He mutters under his breath, "I've seen enough for a lifetime."

With the phone handed off to Amy, Shift turns his head aside and coughs once, twice, okay, three times, before turning back to face her. "Sorry," comes blithely. "Here ah my coordinates." He feeds her a series of exact coordinates in latitude and longitude. "If you're coming in via air, don't use autopilot, and stick with de exact coordinates, approaching due east-north-east at precisely eighty-point-five degrees. Your aircraft's sensors will go blind." Beat. "But you're not coming heah via aircraft, ah you?" The African shakes his head, scowling somewhat. "No, of course you won't be coming via aircraft."

"Okay, Shift, you can call me Princess Amethyst. I'll show you my tiara later," Amy says, phone in hand and a challenging look in her eyes.

She tilts the camera so both her and Rain are in view. When he starts rattling off numbers, the teen bobs her head in agreement and doesn't write anything down. Her attention wanders to something out of frame until he guesses that they won't be coming in by aircraft, at which point her eyes snap back with a perky smile.

"Nope! We'll be using a combination of dimensional path-forging and flying unicorn. Tell your guys to get ready, me and my witch friend will be there soon. Gotta pick out the right magic wands, you know?"

Odame? Headtilt. Rain peers at Shift. Well. ... fortunately, she's more about the ultimate balance than denying care to someone ill. She blinks between the two, uncertain of what to make of this. She just peers at Shift. Again. It might be a little unnerving with wide, intent dark purple eyes. Hmmm. She'd newt that! (Kidding). She seems sympathetic, at any rate. "Pleased to meet you, Shift. I go by Rain." She's sure the dude's had a bad day. At that.

She is for her part, a quieter audience. Somehow, she's glad she made her channeled relic guns and not a 12-inch wand. Because she would never stop joking about the 12 inch wand. "... yeah, wand." She has no way to follow that up. It's too much. Not without a joke about - okay, nevermind.

What might they expect? Shift, for a moment or two, just stares at the duo. He's developing this itching fear that he might come out of this replacing tuberculosis with a pair of wings, or a tail.

Or worse.

Amy gets a look. Rain gets an even longer look. And then? What's to expect, he's coughing again.

"Okay," he answers. "Whatevah. At dis point, I'll just... I'll just... prepah for your arrival."

Where the hell is Pete? The two ladies are certainly disturbing his calm.

There's Pete! World's fastest shower, apparently, and-- it really /is/ Doctor Strange's house, because like, Pete's not wearing a /normal/ suit, no, he's wearing what looks like a tuxedo that's older than God, with most of the parts that make it look like a tuxedo left off as too fucking fussy and besides what the hell, tuxedo. Also, his hair's wet. "Shut up, the floor is magic, it ate my clothes and spat this out," he says by way of re-greeting. "Ready."

"Cool. I'll find Pete--there's Pete!"

The library blurs wildly as Amy tosses the phone. Hopefully that's what happened. Maybe it was magic.

Whatever it was, Amy's boots are clearly heard tromping away.

"..." Rain just beams at Shift. She seems amused somehow, and sympathetic. "Don't worry. You'll be alright." She promises. She's got all of the social skills of ... your average internet denizen. Owch. Either way, she kind of blinks as Amy looks for, and promptly finds Pete. "You must be awesome at finding Waldo, too," She is impressed. Somehow. Either way. There's Pete. Wave!

Apparently not magic, because a second after the room spins there's a hand over the camera, and then Pete's face again. "Yeah mate see you shortly. Don't die while we're in transit, it'd be fucking awkward."

There's a pause, then, and Pete... has to clamp down on a look that's six parts irritation and one part dread. "You're at fucking Muir, aren't you. You /would/ pick the arctic circle. That mad Scotswoman ain't there, is she?"

And yes: as Amy's stomping out, Pete lightly nudges Rain with his elbow. "It's cold," he tells her dourly. Then to Shift again, "Take a nap. Maybe you'll miss the unicorn."

"Sweet Jesus. Wisdom." Shift leans forward, momentarily confused by the blurring and turning of the camera. "What are you wearing?"

He doesn't further acknowledge the remark about the floor eating his clothes. Instead, Kwabena just... rubs his temple again. "Yeah. Muir," he answers. "And no, damnit, it's just me and de team. We're undah quarantine, everyone else had to jump ship." He sits back, and gives Pete a good, hearty smirk, though in his eyes there is no smirk. No, in his eyes there is gratitude.

"Alright. We'll be ready." Then, he reaches out and disconnects the feed with a flip of a switch.

"..."