A suspicious bundle

[Blurt]

Outside the front gate of Xavier's Institute, a black car came into sight, driving slowly down the lane. It came to a stop outside. There was a long pause.

Then one door opened and a ragged duffle bag plopped out onto the ground.

Another pause, and the far side door opened and closed.

The car lingered for a moment; there was a murmur of voices, a scuffling of feet on pavement, and it drove away.

The bag remained outside the gate.

[forge]

(ooc Forge and Domino continued from Interior: “A little leg work” )

It took Forge the better part of five minutes to get down to the lab and release the drones, and when he finally made it out to the front, Domino was already waiting by the gate. He felt himself fortunate she didn’t decide to hop in and just try to disarm the damn thing. Lucky or not, like she said, probability is still probability.

As he walk/hobbled out across the grass, she could tell his gait was definitely worse. What she may or may not have known was that he could no longer concentrate fully on the leg, because he had two radio controlled helicopters flying above him about five feet. For all that could be seen, they just seemed to follow him without any visible control on anyone’s part. It was an easy guess to assume he was manipulating them.

“uhhh, sorry about the lag time there.” Forge said as he hobbled all Allistor Moody style. “Damn leg works just fine when I don’t have to split my concentration. Keep forgetting its only day one.”

[Domino]

((Apparently I'm actually not going to be around until later tonight, because I get to go with Mum to the airport to pick Dad up. I'll be back eventually, just probably around seven or eight.))

Though Domino had decided the bag was probably - if it was an explosive at all and not just someone's forgotten stuff - a simple bomb, something homemade and easy to disarm, if delicate, she'd decided not to start alone. You never knew around a place like the Institute; it could be something insanely complicated, and she'd rather have the drones anyway, just to be safe.

Whatever the drones were.

Having had to take the long way back to her bedroom upstairs and, while there, changed into jeans and soft shoes that wouldn't jar the ground, she was only at the gate about a minute before Forge hobbled out - hobbled being the operative word; it was now much more crutch than prosthetic. She frowned briefly at it before discovering the little helicopters above his head, following him like pets. The circuitry and gearwork for such little things must have been incredibly intricate -

“Uhhh, sorry about the lag time there. Damn leg works just fine when I don’t have to split my concentration. Keep forgetting its only day one.”

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I just got down too. Wanted more protection against potential fiery death-balls than a rayon-cotton blend."

She pulled a pair of gloves from a largish bag over one arm, white with foil-threaded sections on her palms and fingerpads to keep the heat from her hands in. "How do you want to do this?"

[forge]

Forge leaned down, getting the best look at the bag he could from their safe distance. “Well, the drones have cameras, I can get you a close up look at the sucker. Then I figure it'd be best to try and carefully move it? I'm pretty steady with the little guys, I think I can get it further away from school using them.”

He looked over at her, a smile playing on his face, born of nervousness. “Then I guess we see what all the fuss is about when it comes to you and your esteemed lineage.”

He shrugged.

“Or it turns out it's someone's laundry. Hey, whatever. Makes for an exciting morning, eh?”

The drones whirred away from him, zooming over the gate, and slowly descending down to hover right above the bag. They circled around it as he pulled out his goggles and handed them over.

“I gotta remember that not everyone can see digital imagery. The goggles will bring up a HUD, and have a view from the drones. I'll put it up so you can get a good idea of the thing. At least tell me if it's a really shitty idea to move it."

[Domino]

Neena squinted at the bag against the bright summer sunlight, focusing on the usual key spots of suspicious unidentified packaging - side pockets, motion triggers in the strap, a stiff zipper that might indicate a circuit that would complete when someone tried to open it - but found nothing out of the ordinary, except that it looked fairly full, but neither with too many square, harsh edges or with too much cloth padding to disguise square, harsh edges. That didn't mean that a bomb couldn't be nestled in the center, of course. And if it were, it would probably be harder to deal with, since its planter knew how to hide it.

"It really depends," she said in response to his suggestion. "I'd like to see what's inside before we move it. Best bet with a random dropoff is a kilo or so of plastic explosive with screws stuck in it, attached to a stopwatch and a little charge, like a flint mechanism or a sparkler. Disarming 'em isn't usually more than pressing a button, but you nudge those things the wrong way and they go off like a rocket. If the planter's a little less kind, it's a gas bomb with a pull trigger on the zip, in which case disarming it becomes cutting the cord, but we really don't want to move it."

She smiled back, as reassuringly as possible, aware that not everyone was quite as comfortable around things that went boom as she was. "We've got at least twenty minutes, no matter what it is. No bomber would be dumb enough to put less than half an hour on the timer after dropoff, especially if he programmed it at home. But around here, it could be twenty minutes until anything, up to and including a nuclear warhead. I need to see inside the bag - do those things do infrared or ultrasound?"

“I gotta remember that not everyone can see digital imagery. The goggles will bring up a HUD, and have a view from the drones. I'll put it up so you can get a good idea of the thing. At least tell me if it's a really shitty idea to move it."

She nodded looked back at the bag, taking the goggles with barely a glance and putting them on, blinking at the sudden alteration of perspective. Now she was closer, and it was easier to tell that there was (probably) no wire on the zipper other than what the factory had put in, no fluid leaked onto the nearby ground, no light from inside as if from an LCD countdown. All the grooves, dents and bulges on the bag's surface looked like clothing, though a few small corners looked more sinister.

"So far, so good," she said. "Does technopathy work over distance? Anything digital in there?"

[forge]

Forge looked over at her with a smirk that said 'what do you think?,' and mentally swapped the video feed to infrared in one eye, and ultrasound in the other. If you're going to have drones for scouting, you might as well go all the way. Each of those little buggers was outfitted with the maximum optics package available on the market – and a couple of things not on the market.

He couldn't help but stare in awe at Domino. She really was the best. He always admired seeing a pro at work, he just never thought he'd be standing next to a bomb disabler and watching it happen.

He almost missed her question he was so impressed. “Huh, oh, no – I have to either be touching the item or have it rigged to accept wireless commands from my pocket computer, which I'm touching constantly. Gives me that affect of looking like I have a very telekinetic control over things. In truth, I'm controlling the drones by regular remote, I'm just manipulating the remote from my person using my mind. Couldn't do any of this thirty years ago.”

He took his eyes from the side of her head, and stared out at the packaging, though in truth he was also watching the film the drones were picking up.

“My sister could tell that. She can detect and alter electricity from a distance... she's in no condition to help this time, though, unfortunately. Looks like we'll have to use the old fashioned guesswork. So moving the thing is pretty much out. Damn, wish I had some of that Nanofiber armor now.”

[Domino]

Neena reeled a little as her vision suddenly became not only out of perspective but also in a totally different range of light and sense, throwing one of her hands out in front of her for balance.

So weird. And yet so cool.

She closed one eye and then the other, repeating the motion every few seconds, which gave her both a good clear view of the vague shapes of everything inside and of any heat sources - as well as a really funny look on her face, but her priority was not dying in a huge blast of shrapnel at the moment, so she didn't mind too much.

"Nice," she said appreciatively as she scanned the bag in ultrasound and then in infrared. The ultrasound revealed mostly folded and bunched cloth, and though there were a few bottles of liquids and gels, they looked like shampoo or soap or suchlike, and none of them were wired. She couldn't see any wires at all, not did the infrared come up with anything other than a vaguely greenish tint towards the center of the bag due to simple isolation. No circuits, no batteries, no nothing. But towards the middle of the clothing there were dark oblongs - things that could be books, or gameboys, or anything. Things that could be bombs. Things that probably weren't, but that could be.

Even if there really wasn't a bomb in there, which was looking more and more to be the case, Neena felt the excited tightness in her stomach that came with every time she thought the world was about to explode. She loved her job. It was what made her so good at it. That, of course, and being able to bend probability. She'd probably be dead without that.

"Hm," she said, pulling the goggles off; the technopathy thing was still cool, even if it didn't work over distances. That just would've been cooler and have made this a lot easier, in case of the kind of heat-shielding foil that was in her gloves. "Well, in this case it barely matters. I'm not picking up any power sources with the infrared or anything suspicious-looking with the ultrasound - I'm leaning towards it being someone's luggage. Any new kids lately?"

“My sister could tell that. She can detect and alter electricity from a distance... she's in no condition to help this time, though, unfortunately. Looks like we'll have to use the old fashioned guesswork. So moving the thing is pretty much out. Damn, wish I had some of that Nanofiber armor now.”

She spared Forge a concerned glance for his sister. As an only child, she couldn't hope to empathize, especially since she didn't know the situation, but it was plain to see he was worried.

"Actually," she said, "I think we can move it. If there's even a bomb inside, which I don't think there is, it's well done enough that nudging it a little shouldn't set it off - it has to have heat shielding on whatever's powering it for the infrared not to pick it up, so whoever made it is definitely a professional. Only the homemade ones get really delicate. I'd like to go through the bag first before we send someone's stuff off into the wilderness, as long as that's all right with you - any wires and we'll move it, but I think we may be out of danger."

[forge]

“New kids? Not that I'm aware of. Not for weeks. Thermal scans don't pick up life, or I'd assume there'd be someone in there. We're too far in the middle of nowhere for this to be an accident. I suppose it could be some sort of activist crap, like a bag of fetuses or something... but no clue.”

He scanned back over the film footage, watching the car stop, and leave the package. When he checked the film footage at a different angle, he cursed the completely random bad luck of having a spider create a thick web over his lens. What were the odds? Then again, this gave Domino a chance to prove her merit to him, and how else would that have really happened? He doubted her luck included pulling this whole scenario together, but it likely had a hand in that damn web.

“I can't imagine why someone would drop a bag of random stuff off. But stranger things have happened.”

He nodded as she said it was possible to move the bag, and glanced at her. “I'll have the drones carefully open it. I'm steady with them, don't worry, and I'll keep that camera on those goggles – so just let me know if I'm going too fast or anything. Guide me in.”

Ignoring possible innuendo jokes he could snicker at (after all, this was a bloody bomb they were dealing with,) he moved the little helicopters toward the duffel bag, and extended the small arms.

[Domino]

"A bag of fetuses?" That would be new, certainly. Probably create quite an impact. And be disgusting and heatbreaking, but the only thing it really inspired in Neena's mind was "You gotta wonder how they'd get that many fetuses together in the first place."

Probably inappropriate, but with 90% of her mind wholly focused on what she was doing at the time, the other 10% tended to find its own path, regardless of logic or her usual good sense. (Of course it was a metaphorical bag of fetuses, but still. That was a lot of fetuses. Feti? No, fetuses.)

Still, if there were no new kids, why was there a duffel bag full of New Kid stuff on the drive? That one led her back around to the oblongs being heat-shielded. Another person - though it'd have to be a semi-stupid person - might just say 'oh, they're books' and leave it alone; as far as you could disguise a bomb in a black duffel bag, it was a pretty good disguise.

The tension in her stomach cranked up a notch.

She chewed her lip, bringing the goggles back up to her eyes. Of course, nothing new presented itself except what she already knew, but it made her feel better to try.

“I'll have the drones carefully open it. I'm steady with them, don't worry, and I'll keep that camera on those goggles – so just let me know if I'm going too fast or anything. Guide me in.”

Ooh, little arms and everything. Almost cut her entirely out of the operation. A shame, really; Neena liked getting her hands down into the wires, if only because it made her feel more in control, though in reality she was less so, what with the propensity for knocking the wrong wires out of circuits or overstretching or connecting things that weren't meant to be overstretched or connected. Of course, it wasn't a problem for her, but the robots would certainly help everyone else in the field.

"Mmkay," she said, staring with searing intensity through the goggles, as if it would help. "Vibrations won't set 'em off, they're too padded, but go slow... little more... okay, right there. That's close enough. Now just undo that zipper and lift off the first few layers and we'll see whether this guy left us books or something a little more interesting."

[forge]

A bead of sweat dripped down Forge's forehead, and it wasn't the summer heat. He'd grown quite used to the heat in his life, being put in some fairly bizarre military actions with Bishop.

Man that sounded gay.

Shuddering off the thought, he concentrated on the work, doing his best to ignore the fact that potential failure here could mean detonating an explosive that would release a gas and kill everyone around. Or it could damage some kid's zipper on his duffel bag.

Using precision likely unavailable to anyone without his powers, he moved the drones into place. Carefully they clasped the zipper, and slid it back – very slowly.

Moments inched by as he began to pull delicately the layers of clothing away from whatever the suspicious bundles were beneath. Finally, after the most paranoid moments of his life (well, not the MOST, but way up there) a few books were revealed at the bottom.

“Oh... well, maybe inside the books?” Forge asked. “Shit, should I open them?”

It would be a strange trap to load up the insides of books with C-4, though not unheard of. If Sabertooth were smart enough, this would be a fitting revenge for getting his arm torn off by Logan out in the woods.

[Domino]

A nearly inhuman stillness settled over Neena as she slowly bit through a spot on the left half of her bottom lip. She only remembered to stop when she tasted blood in her mouth, the same black as her lips and the circle around her eye. She actually had a scar there, imperceptible against the other black skin.

What if she was wrong? What if she'd missed a wire? What if the warmth of the center of the bag had circuitry in it? What if the removal of the cloth made it explode by sheer virtue of the drones' wingbeats, their vibrations mistaken for footsteps by some imprecise, badly-calibrated sensor? What if they were all going to die?

Though her power had made her lazy in some quarters, her work had never, at least to her knowledge, been one of them. If anything, she was even more hyper-aware than those around her; something as simple as a bad day could tilt the odds.

Slowly, very slowly - as per her request, she reminded herself to ward off the frustration - the zipper was pulled back, the clothing peeled away. A little boy's jeans, a few t-shirts. And then... books.

Books.

“Oh... well, maybe inside the books? Shit, should I open them?”

What if there was a string-pull inside those? Something stupid, like a match or an imperceptibly tiny flint, that she wouldn't have picked up? But they'd been solid... paper or tightly-packed plastique? A lead-lined battery?

So many possibilities.

Shit fuck damn.

"Do those have any sort of blade attachment?" she asked. "No heat - I mean a knife. And then you'd need to slide it inside the cover to make sure there's not a string-pull in there, but you'd have to keep pressing down on the covers to make sure it actually cut and didn't just trigger it. Can they do that?"

If nothing else, she had a pocketknife; she could do it. But then there was the whole I-am-so-much-safer-over-here element.

[Blurt]

Across the lane, Topher Lung had found a really good tree. He hoisted himself up into the lower branches with barely any trouble at all, and within five minutes he had scuttled all the way to the top. He hung onto a thin branch, letting himself wave in the wind with the tree.

He looked down the road once, but his mother was long gone.

He threw a few pine cones at a squirrel.

Then he looked over at the mansion gates... the house beyond... the spacious grounds. There were trees there too, and sports fields, and a swimming pool, and he heard the faint neighing of horses. Really, it didn't look like a bad place. And he would have to come down sometime.

Resigned, he slowly made his way back down the tree, and he was nearly at the bottom branches when he stopped short. There was... SOMEthing... HOVERing... over his duffle bag.

He squinted at it in confusion, and realized it was two little helicopter-looking things... robots! With mechanical arms!

Awesome!!

... But they were messing with his stuff!

He swung down in a jiffy and ran over to his bag. "Hey, get out of there!" he cried, kicking one robot squarely in the side. He threw a shirt over the other one, which was entangled deeper in his bag, and bent down to examine his captive.

"Hey, can you hear me? Somebody there?" He put his eye up to something that looked like a camera.

[forge]

Forge barely caught the boy running up to the drones in time to cut off the engines, so the blades didn’t cut him up. Good thing too, the little bastard kicked one! He through a shirt over the other!

Forge didn’t have time to think about what he was doing, he only knew that the kid was probably walking up to a bomb. Or that it was likely the kid’s duffel bag… that one was the more likely scenario, but just in case.

He bolted toward the gate, the leg cooperating fully for a change. He wasn’t thinking about it at all, his subconscious fully taking over.

“Hey kid! Get away from there!” He shouted, planting his hands on the gate in an attempt to leap over.

Unfortunately, the leg worked too well. He meant to leap off of it out of instinct, throwing himself over – but he underestimated the power of the limb. It hurled him way over the mark, sending him sailing over the gate and over the kid.

“Oh crap!” He managed, and landed six feet beyond the boy, awkwardly landing on his shoulder and back with a thud and slid to a stop in the gravel…

Still, he didn’t have time to worry about the pain. He turned to the little bald boy.

“Is that your bag, kid?” he grunted.

[Domino]

((*does a triumphant Sneaking On At School dance*))
And then... there was a kid. Out of nowhere.

It was slightly more jarring for Neena than for a casual observer, since her eyes were engaged from the vantage of the drones; the first thing she knew about the boy's presence was the sudden reeling of the little helicopter as the kid kicked it, spinning her vision and totally throwing off her equilibrium. She closed her eyes tightly and ripped the goggles off, slightly sick to her stomach at the bizarre sensation of standing stock-still while the greatest contributor to sensory input spun like Sasha Cohen on speed, one hand pressing to her temple to stop her head's sudden pounding.

She reopened them to a kid right next to a bomb.

A few steps behind Forge, she made for the gate as well, though words failed her in the moment of stress and the only thing she could shout was "Hey!" at the top of her lungs. She, though, made it over the gate more gracefully, landing in a neat crouch on the other side, and though she heard the thump and crunch of a bad landing on gravel, her eyes were only for a kid standing next to a freaking bomb.

In her mind, it had become a nuclear warhead, able to be set off by the gentlest nudge, despite obvious size discrepancies that would become much clearer when she stopped to operate on more than just instinct (and, of course, luck). But at the time, there was nothing in the universe as important as getting a very excitable trigger away from the payload.

"You wanna stand back a little, babe?" she asked the boy, the slight twang of her long-suppressed accent coming out in the stress of the moment.

[Blurt]

[OOC: *doubles over with laughter*]

Suddenly there was a commotion. Topher heard someone yelling at him, and looked up just in time to duck as a man came hurtling OVER HIS HEAD. He yelled right back, only he said something like "What the HECK!?"

He turned in confusion to the man, who was lying face-up in the gravel. He didn't have time to answer the guy's totally obvious question before some other weirdo woman hurtled over the gate.

"What what what? Stand back where WHAT?" These people were nutcases. He stumbled backwards, towards his duffel bag.

Then BAM. There was the thought, sure and strong from the strange lady with the black patch on her face.

Topher burst into laughter. "A BOMB?"

[forge]

The kid… was laughing. Damn. It was just his bag after all.

“Oh ha-ha kid, so this IS your bag.” He stood up, brushing gravel off of his shirt, and wincing at the innumerous small scrapes and bruises now on his back and shoulder.

He was completely relieved, however, and thanked the Gods that the bag actually wasn’t a freaking surprise nuke from the Brotherhood. He passed a relieved glance at Domino, who’d done a fantastically agile little jump over the gate. Pretty impressive… but that only made him realize what a retard he had to look like when he flew over the gate. Hold the phone, though-

“Who are you?” He asked.

Immediately he searched the school’s archives using his pocket computer, though it looked like he was doing no such thing. Blurt could easily read his thoughts, as they were unguarded, and it seemed like his mind was a series of computer screens, information passing too fast for anyone to possibly read.

“You’re not a student. Your parents just drop you off here?”

[Blurt]

Topher was still laughing, although it quieted down a bit as the tall man stood up in front of him. "Uh, yeah, it's my bag," he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Not a bomb. Just my stuff."

He blinked in surprise as Forge's thoughts flashed through his mind like a slide show on speed. "Whoa, how do you do that? Do you have like a computer in your head?"

"Uh, yeah." He glanced down the road. "My mom left me here. She says to say that I need a good home."

"My name's Topher, Christopher Lung." He put out a hand at the man, trying to be businesslike and adult.

[Domino]

Well.

This was fun.

"What what what? Stand back where WHAT?"

"NOT that... way..."

Too late. Neena's heart tacked away in her chest. Something was going to explode, and here she was running towards it. Nice. Very nice.

Or maybe not.

“Oh ha-ha kid, so this IS your bag.”

The tension disappeared, leaving her somach feeling empty and weirdly floaty so soon after mind-numbing terror. She let out a deep breath, vague and undirected frustration settling in the back of her mind to replace the fear.

At least it wasn't a bomb. No one was going to die today. At least here and now, and not from being exploded.

"You okay?" she murmured in Forge's general direction, over the kid's head, eyeing his shoulder. He'd be lucky if he hadn't at least sprained it, and with that kind of a landing, even a dislocation... but then, all things considered, he probably had been lucky. She liked Forge; he had tiny helicopters and talked geek with her. He'd likely be fine.

She returned to looking unamused at the back of Blurt's head. Stupid pseudo-bomber -

Had either of them said it was a bomb out loud? It had all been kind of a panicky blur, but she was pretty sure they'd only asked him to step back or watch out or whetever... hm.

Her suspicions were confirmed as he apparently talked nonsense, though she thought it probably had something to do with whatever went on inside Forge's head. She certainly didn't think in computer-looking images - actually, she thought either in diagrams or in slightly extended Times New Roman, or both, the latter a caption of the former - and it made sense, what with the techno-whatsit.

"My mom left me here. She says to say that I need a good home. My name's Topher, Christopher Lung."

Wow. No matter what kind of crazy telepathic - it was the telepaths who thought and the telekinetics that moved stuff, right? - powers the kid had, and though she knew it happened quite a bit more than she'd have liked, Neena had a hard time believing any parent could abandon their child.

She wondered how well you could fake telepathy if you knew your subject. Forge had spoken of Mystique almost as if he'd come head to head with her, and he - she? - could've gotten that it was a bomb from either of their minds.

Neena brought one hand up to rest on the spot on her abdomen she'd had to show earlier.

"It's nice to meet you, Topher," she said. "You gave us a bit of a scare there."

[forge]

Forge had drawn the same conclusions, for verily the same reasons. The kid had definitely seen into his mind, and he’d spoken of the bomb as if either of them had actually said it aloud. Granted, he could’ve simply assumed that’s what they were worried about, but it wouldn’t explain how he ‘saw’ what Forge was in his mind.

He was shaking Topher’s hand when Domino said it was nice to meet him, and just after he’d given her a nod to indicate he was alright… well, at least he was alright enough to be numb on his back where he’d no doubt be very much not alright in a few minutes.

“Also good to meet you, Topher. I’m Forge. This is Domino.” He said. “I apologize about going through your stuff… I guess I’ve been watching one too many action movies, eh?”

He gave the kid a warm, insider’s smile, and knelt down. Notably, his cybernetic leg (which was uncovered and obvious) didn’t squeak or make any hydraulic noises. It just moved normally.

Of course, when he was down, he had to put his hand out to keep his balance. He’d almost forgotten about the thing, and reflected for a moment how effective it had been when he’d done so.

“So your mom dropped you off, eh? Well, we’ll definitely take care of you, bud. If it’s a good home you need, it’s a good home you’ll get.”

He reached down and pulled his drone free of the entanglement, and handing the shirt back to Topher. The little helicopter buzzed back to life and sped up into the air, joined by its mate.

[Blurt]

Topher turned to the woman. "Not MY fault you thought my bag was going to explode.

"Yeah, she left me here," he said to her. "I don't get all that stuff about someone else changing to look like me, though. I'm really Topher. I'm eight and from New York," he said brightly, turning back to Forge.

"You MUST watch a lot of action movies, Forge and Domino aren't real names." He paused a moment. "But I'm not supposed to call you Bandero. Ok."

"Whoaaa..." Topher was momentarily derailed by noticing Forge's fake leg. He took a step back and looked warily at the man who was untangling his helicopter. "You're like... the Terminator. That's freaky." He took his shirt and looked at it like it might turn into a robot too. "Those things are crazy. Did you make them? Wait, you have, like, power over machinery? That's awesome... Are you magic? Can you teach me?"