notrosecolored

A stone blade slipped out of the floor and started sawing carefully at the bonds around Scott's hands.

"I hope you brought at least a change of clothes in the car."

Or this was going to be awkward.

"What I wore for the drive out."

He was keeping his voice down. Once his hands were freed, he peeled the tape off his eyes and away from his face. He was pretty damned clumsy and awkward, but he got it done and got the visor on.

He stopped and caught his breath for a moment or two, before he reached down to untie his own ankles. Those ropes had left bruises they were so overly tight, and half-cut off circulation didn't help his lack of coordination, but he was getting there.

"Is the girl in one piece?" He was almost afraid of asking.

"The girl is fine. Crying, but unharmed. I got her cuffs out of the wall. She's waiting for my signal and should head straight to you once things start."

He didn't sound pleased, though. He didn't like seeing children cry. He didn't like any of this. The whole place was making him antsy and the concept was making him angry and Scott might even feel the faint tremor of the earth around them.

Once they were out, the whole place very well might get filled in with magma. Cages were not good for his mental stability.

Scott would probably notice if he weren't drugged near insentient and hadn't been whacked on the head. As it was he was perplexed by one of his arms not working right and was just narrowly managing to hold his thoughts together to formulate some kind of plan.

"Unless you plan on going to debrief Charle and get the whole team there, it needs to be soon." For Sandy, but also because: "We're underground." He could feel that. "If I stay here long, I'm going to be powerless. Literally."

Scott didn't care. Burn the place down. Burn it all down. These were the same people responsible for Jean's death.

"It's going to be in about fifteen seconds. I'm going to get on one of their computers and get some of those files sent to my people to figure out where our leak is. Sent directly to someone I trust."

Michael Holt. There were very few people born after 1940 that Sand trusted as much. It helped that the short URL that Michael had given him to start the hacking program that would do all the heavy lifting was already set to it, but that was what happened when you worked with what many considered to be the third smartest man in the world.

The earth shifted again, though it seemed more centralized underneath Scott.

"Once she gets here, I'm going to open up the exit tunnel in the corner of your cell here. Get her out. But for now, I have to do a bit of distracting. And smashing."

He was going to enjoy the smashing.

"Or do you need longer so you can walk?"

Scott wanted - almost needed - to protest those files going out of his hands and away from the X-men. These people were targeting them. They had every right and a very real need to know what was there.

This wasn't the time.

He answered Sandy's question by virtue of climbing to his feet.

"Go." He could grab and run with Allison, get them out of there and back to relative safety on his own, thanks. "Bring this place down." Scott wouldn't have minded a chance to smash a few things, either, but that wasn't how he worked. He got what needed done, done, and his priority for done was still the kid. He'd just have to delegate the fun bits.

"Don't die," was the last thing Sandy said before his presence disappeared, because dammit, he liked this one. He hadn't like someone in years.

Then he had to focus because it was much easier to be crazy than it was to direct things. And he had to direct things right to get them out safely.

The first thing was the distraction: a giant golem made of sandstone would do the trick there, appearing out of the ground in the central area... and the assembled jerks would spend that time trying to take it down when it was just an empty construct. That would give him the time to get the cell doors open and get on the computer...

The cell doors literally fell out of their stone fittings a moment after the alarm bells started blaring. It covered the noise well enough.

Scott grumbled that he would die if he wanted to, because he hated every bit of this situation and had lots and lots of reasons for grump. He should probably have been grumping mostly at himself, but standing around and waiting didn't sit well with him, even in his current state.

As soon as those cell doors came down, though, he was moving. Stealth wasn't his usual MO, and he didn't see any reason to use it now. There was enough noise around them, and even if there hadn't been he had to be found by that kid before she was found by the assholes in charge of this place.

He briefly wondered if he should have argued with Sandy about his plans, since Scott was pretty antimurder. Then he decided that, nope, he was past the point of breaking on that one.

He found Allison, grabbed hold of her arm. She screamed in surprise, went off like a spot light briefly with a bright flash of light he knew she couldn't control. That brought a tiny bit of attention that he handled by virtue of a few well placed concussive force beams, then ran her back toward his cell and that escape tunnel that Sandy had promised them.

Smashing some of those jerks straight into the ceiling and letting them splat down again was... satisfying.

The golem was both a perfect distraction to cover a naked stone man using a computer console and an excellent herding tool to get them heading towards the largest room in the compound, since Sandy was also antimurder. He might be destroying the hell out of the place, but he wasn't going to kill anyone. Trapping them in a central location until the police could show up and drag them out in handcuffs while he turned the rest of the place into slag, though...

The corner of the wall collapsed to show a rough-hewn tunnel in the ground with the barest hint of sunlight roughly twenty feet ahead.

Scott would think about going back to being anti-murder after this was done. He'd probably be glad they weren't actually dead, too, once he was in his right mind. In the moment, he kept hold of Allison's hand with one of his, and ran. It hurt his side like hell, but he could not possibly have cared less.

He stopped once they were out and a decent distance away and realized he had no idea where they were, or how to get back to the SUV. He didn't say anything about that, but turned his attention to the girl they'd brought out, made sure she was injury free, and got out of his uniform coat so she could stay decently warm. She wasn't dressed to be out and about at this time of year.

She kept almost breaking down then trying to pull it together and trying to snark and be cool. Flashes of light went off periodically, and made Scott nervous but it was what it was. What she didn't do, though, was let go of Scott. At all.

To say that Michael wasn't expecting to get a giant file of information from the Purifiers was an understatement. The fact that it came from Sandy's personal URL made it make slightly more sense... and concerned him. This was supposed to be a milk run, after all.

All the same, Scott would have at least some idea what was going on when the earth shook under them.

Scott had a pretty damned good idea. He didn't go any further away than they were, though, but turned Allison around to shield her face and head and stood looking out over the top of it to watch that place coming down.

Only once it was did he turn and start walking.

He should have been able to contact Charles but the truth was... he couldn't. He wasn't the telepath. Charles thought it was a milk run. Charles didn't keep in contact with him the way Jean had. Even barring every bit of that, his mind was foggy as fuck. He could barely form coherent thought.

So he just - walked, and used his spatial awareness to get him more or less pointed the right direction.

He'd get through to someone as soon as he could get his hands on a phone.

And yeah, that was his plan. He figured Sandy was gone the second the place came down.

Sandy took a bit to stagger away from the building to one of the jeeps they used and two, hotwire the damn thing. Then he didn't so much drive it as slump on the wheel well enough to sort of steer the thing towards where he knew he'd let Scott and the girl out.

His driving was mildly erratic since he was something of a wreck at that point but he figured between the two of them, they could probably get back to something like civilization. He hoped so, anyway. Even if he felt like he was going to pass out any minute from a combination of exertion, lack of caffeine, and surviving through a good portion of his triggers being more yanked than pulled.

"HEY!," because he might as well identify himself as not a hostile, even if hopefully Scott would recognize him and notice that unlike the hostiles, he was not actually wearing clothing.

"RIDE!"

Which was about as much as he managed before collapsing out of the side of the jeep, which rolled along slowly past him towards Scott and Allison.

Scott had turned sharply at the sound of an engine, hand up toward his temple to release the shutter and blast that jeep out of the road before Sandy's voice caught him. It made him hesitate but he didn't lower his hand until Sandy fell out of it.

Then he let go of Allison, jumped in and stopped the jeep. Break and engage the emergency break.

Then he had to, somehow, drag Sandy into the jeep and that was a fun task, but he wasn't going to leave the naked man there. He was also past being awkward about a naked man and a teenage girl sharing a ride.

He was actually grateful for being drugged while wrestling dead weight, but he got Sandy in, and then got Allison in where she primly and wisely buckled her seatbelt. Then Scott drove. Jaw set, not erratically but not as fast as he could have, headed back for the SUV at the hotel. He needed clothes for Sand and his own vehicle.

He also needed to get in touch with the Mansion and update them.

He'd do as much of that as he could before Sand woke up, but he wasn't moving the man to the SUV or into clothes on his own again. He couldn't, withut the adrenaline rush of 'we're going to die now'. Not in his physical condition.

Sand was... not exactly a quiet passenger. He might have been a dead weight, but he wasn't a dead body and that was evidently clear from the twitching, shifting, and sobbing from where they'd laid him out. Shortly before they hit the city limits, there was a hoarse scream from the back and he shot up, breathing hard and eyes wide... at least for a moment. Then they lulled back to half-awake as he looked forward at Scott.

"Whereare we?" came out in a slur as he leaned against the front seats. He sucked in a breath and turned his attention to Allison.

"Hey, kid. You doing all right?"

Scott knew enough about Sandy to be prepared for the noisy sleep -the nightmares - even the abrupt awakening. "We're about twenty miles away from O'Hare and the hotel," he said, his voice sounding pretty odd, too. Slurred, some, still, but also ever so slightly breathless.

The windows were all down, which made it cold but it was also keeping Scott awake so everyone else could deal with it. The radio was also on and blaring for much the same reason and as if the universe shared Scott's smart-ass sense of humor 'Enter Sandman' started playing.

Allison glanced back toward him, flushed and then looked straight ahead again. "Yeah. I'm fine. Are you going to New York with us?" Awkward pause. "...Do you have clothes some place?"

"I'm gonna borrow some of his when we get in," Sandy assured her with a blush of his own. There was not being a prude and then there was being naked around a teenage girl unintentionally. "The ones I was wearing got blown up when we first came to get you at the prison in town."

The music, however, had him looking a little better. Bopping along even. He'd found the song amusing when he'd first heard it.

Then he took a good look at Scott.

"Do you need me to drive?"

Scott's hair was still matted with blood, and he was pale as fuck. His jaw was still set, and he was driving with one hand and the other one was resting in his lap, but he was driving. "No."

Limited words. "After the hotel and phone call." He paused and added: "And coffee." For Sand. "I'll be fine once we get back." He had friends. God, he hoped he could still get Warren in. That was... a risk after Jean's death, but. Maybe. Maybe. If not, Hank could handle whatever needed to be handled.

All Allison said was 'Okay'. She was going to be keeping her eyes forward resolutely, now. Probably now and until Sandy was clothed, because that was just a little bit weird. She wanted to know more but not with a naked man in the car, thanks. She'd gotten a few answers while Sand was 'asleep' back there, anyway.

Sandy looked him up and down, took in the blood, took in the set of his jaw and his skin tone, and gave him a very firm Look.

"Don't be a stubborn ass," was all he said before reaching down to pull one of the floormats up to at least make things mildly less awkward. He wasn't actually going to fight Scott, but he would make his opinion known. No pushing seemed to be the order of the day.

"Pulling over to let you drive the ten minutes to the hotel just wastes time. Once you're appropriately clothed and home knows that we're on the way in and there are files, you can do the twelve hours back to New York."

Scott wouldn't even complain. See? He wasn't a stubborn ass. He was just doing what had to be done in the most efficient way possible.

And speaking of, he abruptly gave his signal and at the same time took a hard right onto an exit ramp.

"Mr. Terrific got the files," Sandy informed him as he lay back against the seat. He wasn't great either, but at least he didn't have the problem of bleeding. Or blood. Or, technically, organs.

God, what the hell was he? Sometimes, it was actually worrying.

"And we're not driving back to New York like this. You need medical attention, so does she, and Alan can get us there in an instant. I'll call in when we get back to the hotel."

"We'd better be getting copies of those files," Scott managed. He said it flatly, and his voice wasn't right and neither was his intonation, but he was going to leave it alone after that. Frankly, they could fight over that part later. Let Charles know, let Charles handle it.

Scott ran the school and the X-men but sometimes, just sometimes, being able to drop a problem like this in someone else's lap was nice.

Like when he had a cracked skull, a broken arm, and a probably punctured lung. And was still trying to fight through a sedative fog.

It was really nice, then. God, Charles should have found someone who was invulnerable to lead this fucking team. Someone who healed or hit hard or - There were options that were better than 'concussive blasts'. Bobby, maybe. No wait, Bobby couldn't lead a conga line.

Good news? He was so busy being stubborn about that, he didn't protest the method of transportation. It was a good idea. Faster. Would be better if he trusted these people further than he could throw them right now, but that was an intuitive kind of thing and Scott was ignoring it.

Allison, meanwhile, popped up with: "You know I'm here, right? And they didn't do anything to me. I don't need medical attention."

Sand kept himself still, still enough he almost set himself off again. It was close enough that there was just the faintest tremor, small enough that no one in the Jeep would even feel it over the car's movement.

He breathed in and out and in and out and his voice wasn't right either, but it was less flat and more... brittle.

"Of course," because he couldn't... do this. Not right now. Not with Scott injured and a kid relying on them, whatever bravery she was pulling out to cling to.

But he wasn't sure what he could do.

Except

He could call Alan. He could hold it together until Alan got there.

Move past it, Sand. Move past it or die. And you're not dying.

You haven't even figured out how to.

Scott was conscious, upright, driving, and taking care of shit that needed to be taken care of. That was all. Period. He was aware Sand wasn't all right, though without a clear idea of why, and knew that Allison had to be shocked and traumatized even if she was still holding it together.

This wasn't his first rodeo.

The rest of the drive to the motel was quiet, though.

Once they got there he cut the engine on the jeep - or, well, yanked the hot-wiring job, and got out. He unlocked the SUV with the remote key he, somehow, still had in his uniform. Allison got out and stood behind him, his jacket basically swallowing her. "Get inside and get dressed. My clothes are in my bag. Unlock the door from the inside and I'll make the call I need to make while you're getting decent. Allison - how long's it been since you've eaten?"

He'd... fall apart later. Physically

She mumbled something about not being hungry and pointedly did not look anywhere near Sandy.

He noticed and focused his own attention on Scott, struggling with his subconscious to remember it was almost certainly about the nakedness. Almost. Certainly.

Then he nodded and phased down into the pavement, leaving the floor mat behind. The door would be unlocked when Scott got to the room. The bathroom door would be locked, however.

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