News [Open!]

[angel]

Lying on his stomach, stretched out on the couch, Warren had to fend off the kids who were trying to push him off. Definitely time to start looking for my own place. As he saw it, he'd gotten the couch fair and square - but apparently the others weren't so sensitive to his predicament.

"Huh." He flipped through the different channels, which were all showing clips of the same thing - apparently some guy had saved a politician. In a superhero outfit. From a mutant who'd started to turn into a bug.

"Just what we need." The cute blonde presenter was rambling about the new reality television show that this guy - Kyle Kennedy - was supposed to be starring in soon. "Bet he read Superman comics as a kid." Not that Warren could talk - he'd run around in his cape and undies more than a few times, at least until his wings had started showing. But this guy, with his corporate sponsored tv show, was more likely to get in their way than actually help out.

A woman flashed up on the screen, a redhead who looked familiar. Moving so that he was sitting on the back of the couch, his wings hanging down, Warren turned to the person who'd just sat next to him. "Isn't that the woman... Um, that Phoenix lady?" Her name flashed down the bottom. Madelyne Pryor. Strange, she looked just like... Dr. Grey, that was her name. But Warren had seen her die from the skies over Alcatraz. "Huh."

[Nightcrawler]

Kurt slowly strode through the hallways, taking the now-familiar turns of the mansion with hardly a thought as his mind whirled around the recent events. He'd stayed on the helicopter with Ororo, keeping her as possible, hoping that she'd at least open her eyes.

No such luck, so when they arrived back at the mansion he'd teleported her to the medical lab right away, then sat back helplessly as people who actually knew something about medical procedure had looked her over.

He left with sadness and illogical guilt rumbling through his gut, and when he made it to his room, the rush of adrenaline gone, he'd nearly passed out on his bed, barely managing to slip into his pajama bottoms before his eyes were closed.

Still, it was a new day now, and when he'd poked his head into the medical lab to check up on Ororo, she was blessedly gone. In all honesty, he knew she wouldn't blame him but he still wasn't ready to face her.

So, glancing over Forge's new stump with a grimace before he teleported away, he found himself walking through the common area just in time to see the red-haired woman appear on screen.

He stopped. He blinked, shook his head, and looked again.

In an instant he was crouched on the back of the couch, his tail lashing behind him in confusion and excitement. "Dr. Grey!" He wasn't even aware that he'd slipped back into German as he turned to look at Warren. "Sie ist lebendig!"

[chamber]

Chamber snapped out of his lazy mid-morning newspaper read at the sound of her voice.

Jean?

He lowered the paper, leaning forward. He couldn't believe his eyes.

Jeannie!

Standing, he looked around, pulling the communicator from his back pocket. Shit. What good was a communicator going to do him? He tossed it aside, watching the rest of the clip before she disappeared and the news went on without ceremony.

Jean was alive?! Where was everyone? Had Ororo seen this?

He ran into the hallway, looking for her.

[angel]

"Well... I mean, isn't it kinda... Hasn't she been buried twice now?"

That sounded a bit insensitive. But seriously, what was with her? Warren hadn't been around the first time she'd died, but apparently the lot of them had been extremely cut up about it. Then she'd turned up, apparently having been having a bit of an underwater nap, and then killed the Professor before Wolverine had killed her.

Oh, I wonder what he's going to think.

"English, Kurt."

That also sounded a bit insensitive. He gave the blue mutant an apologetic smile, fully expecting to get thwapped with the lashing tail.

"Uh... Sorry. This is a bit... weird. And what's with the guy in the super suit? I thought only we got them." His even had a cape.

Why would she have a different name? And why would she be working for some guy doing a reality show? Yep, definately weird.

[logan]

Logan and Rayen had been gone for four or five hours, and returned in a particularly good mood. They went into the mansion talking, and actually holding hands (a sight that caused a few students to double take at – Logan wasn’t exactly the hand-holding type,) and both seemed to be in great spirits. Though not that it’s any of your business, but they hadn’t done what you think they’ve done, simply enjoyed a great day out in the mountains together.

So it was that they went up the stairs, a desire to simply put their jackets away, and for Logan to grab his spare cigars.

Unfortunately, life around the X-Mansion is a hardly ever so simple…

There was a congregation of people around a TV set, all watching something. Among them, of course, were Angel and Nightcrawler.

Logan went by, assuming that maybe they were watching that cartoon that was so popular around the mansion, about the stupid meat superhero and his salad sidekick, when something caught him. Angel had said something regarding a supersuit – though in the corner of his eye Logan saw only the news.

He paused a moment, curiosity too much, and stood stock still as the footage on the screen showed what was absolutely, positively, Jean Grey. It was only a brief piece of footage, but enough to stun him right there. There was no doubt it was her.

Logan looked to the left, right at Nightcrawler. The Elf acrobat seemed to be in the same state of stunned affairs. He turned back to the screen, but she was gone.

“That was Jean. That was Jeannie, wasn’t it?” He managed. “What the hell is going on?”

His mind reeled him back, taking him down memory lane with a few short stops to déjà vu boulevard. She’d come back to him once, changed… could this be another incarnation of the Phoenix? Could this really be Jean?

He turned to look back at Rayen, emotion simmering in his eyes. Loss, grief, hope, shock… but largely confusion and anxiety.

[conduit]

Rayen let Logan's hand fall from hers as his attention was absorbed by the woman on the television. She watched quietly, seeing nothing so spectacular in the questions she was being asked. Even Kurt seemed transfixed.

Jean. She didn't know this person, but apparently she'd been a friend of them both.

When Logan looked at her, she wasn't sure what to do. He seemed rattled to the core. All she knew was that she didn't want him thinking he needed to stick with her if there were things to take care of.

She smiled a bit, concern on her eyes. "You okay?"

[logan]

He did his best to shake the emotional impact out of his head. Logan was good at that, dulling the emotional and physical affects on him. Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he bit the inside of his cheek and thought about it for a second. Taking a deep breath, though barely visible, he looked up at her with a much calmer face. At least the thought it was a calmer face – it still looked very rattled.

“Yeah… yeah, I think I am.” He looked back at the TV, and to the other two X-Men before returning his eyes to hers. “The woman that was there, on the TV, she was an X-Man. One of the originals.”

He considered the gigantic speech he could rattle off on, explaining the whole story, and settled with: “She’s dead.”

[Nightcrawler]

Kurt forced himself to calm down, smiling apologetically at Warren. "My apologies. It was just a shock."

Glancing back at the screen, he ran over the details in his head. Jean had been dead once, or so they had thought, and she had turned out to be alive. Her telekinetic power had shielded her from the crushing water.

The "second" time she had died, it was considerably harder to survive. Adamantium claws to the gut had this funny way of killing people.

Besides, there had been a body, hadn't there? Undeniable proof of terminble life. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, running through everything in his head. It was possible to survive a strike from Logan, as Mystique had proven, but she had presumably had medical assistance, and Jean was dead before there would have been a chance for such action.

He had no idea what Warren was talking about with some guy in a cape, as the image of Jean on the TV had blocked out everything else. Except the name on the screen wasn't Jean Grey.

He started when Logan walked in, fully anticipating the effect this would have on him, and hopped off the back of the couch, watching Logan carefully. His eyes flicked to Rayen walking with him and he offered her a brief smile before turning his concern back to the Canadian.

As the words left Logan's mouth, Kurt set a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. "Logan, we will find out. You can count on me to help if you need it."

[logan]

Logan tensed as Kurt touched him, surprised at his own anxiety. Still, Kurt’s words were comfort – the man had a way of dealing with people that was direct and warm. Didn’t shake the nerves though.

He looked back at Nightcrawler. “Yeah, may just take you up on that, Kurt. We should get ‘Ro and head over to DC right now. We could get there in a four or five hours by car. Can you get her, you and her meet me in the garage?”

Logan looked back to Conduit, trouble furrowing his eyebrows. “Rayen, I need you to stay here with Forge. We need to handle this.”

The final statement left no real question. Whatever it was that was so important about Jean Grey, it was significant enough for Logan to bring just the X-men along to DC.



(ooc – Kurt, I figure Anna would want Storm In on this, right? I also figure NC would probably run into Chamber in her office, so we can he’d want to come along too. ROAD TRIP!!! )

[Nightcrawler]

"Ja, Logan, I'll go find her." Kurt took a step back, his mind already drifting away from the room they were standing in and forming an image of the hallway outside the offices. "And do not worry, mein Freund. We will get to the bottom of this." With a puff of acrid smoke, he was gone.

(ooc - Yeah, she'd want to be a part of this. After all, Ororo and Jean were close, and she would want to know what was going on. We have to consider who is going to be watching the students, though. Sorry to say it, but a one-legged Forge doesn't seem like the best babysitter to me.)

[conduit]

Rayen watched the exchange, feeling bad for them all. Had to be hard seeing an old friend you thought was dead. The mutant world was a strange place.

Nodding at Logan said he'd have to go, she spoke quietly. "Of course. I wouldn't want to go with. You take care of what you've got to." She offered a bit of a smile, and touched his arm before heading out of the room.

There wasn't much to say, no kisses goodbye or anything. Holding his hand had seemed strange enough. IF he was going to be gone for a few days, maybe she could get her head screwed on straight. It didn't seem there was a person in the house she could talk to about this who wasn't biased in one way or another.

Heading up to her room to change before she found her brother again, Rayen wondered where her mind had gone.

Oh that's right. That smirk of his.

[logan]

(Logan/Nightcrawler/Storm/Chamber continued in thread: "Out the door" in the Grounds board.)

[tingrin]

Sibyl had spent most of the morning by herself. She'd taken a shower and dressed carefully, twisting her cotton candy blue hair up and away from her face, a mother of pearl butterfly securing it at the crown. It cascaded in long curls down her back and she admired it in the mirror, picking a pale gray and lavender dress and white slippers to wear for the day.

"Have you seen Pee-ter?" She said to a student she passed in the hallway. She knew they weren't terribly familiar with his given name, but the anglicized version fell heavily on her tongue. She always wanted to add a sound in there, the round ‘o' in his name lovely to her ears. English had never really impressed her.

No one seemed to have seen her guide, and it was with quiet interest she watched the news report a few students were gossiping over in the rec room. She wasn't sure if she had classes today, and couldn't find Candice. Did anyone do anything on a schedule around here? Or was it Baltimore that had them all shaken.

The young Russian made his appearance not very long after her, his expression apologetic when he saw her. He was dressed in jogging pants and a sleeveless top and from the thin layer of sweat on his forehead had clearly been out running.

"I lost track of time," he said to her in English. "I am most sorry. I should have been here to greet you this morning and continue your tour."

Sibyl laughed softly, looking him over. "But you have been enjoying yourself. Who could blame you? I was fine." She waved the thought off, indicating the TV across the room.

"There was a woman on the television everyone seemed to know. They call her Jean. Why is that unusual?"

“What?”

Piotr, who rarely watched that much television, stared at her for a moment or two. “Jean? Are you sure?” When Sibyl nodded her assent, the big man paled slightly. “There was one amongst us, Jean Grey. She…died. Then she returned. Then, well, it sounds rather strange now I come to tell someone else, I must admit, she died again. At Alcatraz, do you remember I told you about that?”

She nodded slowly, frowning softly. "She was talking on the television."

"Perhaps she has come back to life again?" It didn't seem that far outside the realm of logic, particularly with all the fantastic things mutants could do.

“I sincerely hope that this is not the case,” he said, grimly. He proceeded to detail to her exactly how Jean had become the Phoenix, how they had ended up fighting opposite her and the horrific scenes towards the end of Alcatraz, how Logan had been the only one who could end it.

Sibyl listened, absorbing the details, appropriately detached. "Such a shame," she said softly, perhaps too softly for others to hear. "She sounded truly beautiful."

Turning her attention elsewhere, she looked up at him with a soft smile. "So. What do you have planned for me today?"

Her calm, cool acceptance of the facts took some of Piotr’s anxieties away and he managed to smile back, although the disturbing news of Jean’s possible return nestled at the base of his thoughts for a while.

“Classes will not begin again for a few days, so I am free to show you around the mansion more leisurely, including the grounds. There are the most beautiful rose gardens that the Professor used to get his students to tend. I believe he solved the problems of some of the more difficult students out there.”

"Oh yes, let's go there." She had some problems herself she might be able to work out in the rose garden.

"This man, I saw his picture in the hallway. He seemed so pleasant, his smile." Sibyl nodded, stepping towards the stairs with Piotr. She watched him carefully, wondering what was going through his mind. So many things had changed for them in the last year. She knew exactly what that meant.

"I did not speak with the Professor all that often," said Piotr, softly. "But when he came first to my home, when he spoke to my parents about who, what I was, I will never forget his words. He spoke not of my shame, but of my gift. He spoke not of my being outcast, but of maybe being part of something greater. I loved him for his words, words that made my parents weep with joy and hope."

The big man sighed a little.

"I regret his loss keenly."

Her smile was slow and warm. "I wish I could have known him."

Breaking him out of his reverie, she touched his arm. "The rose garden. Can we take a walk there." She edged towards the door a bit more.

[Exit Colossus and Oracle to thread Roses]