ArchivedLogs:Aid

Aid
Dramatis Personae Blink, Jax, Shane	2017-09-12 "{Wow! It's an /invisible floor!/}"
Location St. Martin
The sleek black jet does not make all /that/ much noise overhead, as it veers in on the small Caribbean island. Jackson -- in black quick-dry pants, solid black boots with glittery rainbow laces, his bedazzled X-jacket worn over a red and black performance shirt -- is trading places at the helm with Scott, leaving the older man in the cockpit while he heads back. "My French is not great," Jax is fretting about this far more than about the swath of destruction beneath them. "Joshua says a lot of this quarter got screwed for evacuation because people were worried about letting mutants on the boats. No guarantees on who's /left/ down there now, though." At the back of the jet's cabin, Blink has been checking over their gear. She's dressed in a tailored black leather jacket with violet piping and a circled-X emblem at its belt, black tactical pants, and black combat boots with purple laces. Her hair is braided tight and coiled up into a bun of swirled pink and black at the back of her head. "Understood, we'll be on our toes." She considers her teammates for a moment. "I had Matt text me some relevant phrases but...vous Français es plus bon que...moi?" A purple glow envelops her hand, but she holds off for a moment. "Are we ready?" "{My French is alright.}" Shane only has on boots, black tac pants as well, a grey tee in some stretchy material. "Though probably slightly less okay if some terrified half-starved kid accidentally lights me on fire. Any luck we'll just get a rash of safe, harmless, totally in-control stragglers." He rolls his head one way, then the other, clear inner eyelids sliding shut. "I'm good." Blink nods and closes her eyes for a moment -- her eyes can be seen flicking this way and that behind the lids -- her face tense with concentration. Considering this focus, the way she flings the light from her hand to form a portal against the back wall of the cabin looks quite casual. Through the swirling purple mists of the portal, a damp, litter-strewn street can be seen, lined with badly damaged buildings and seemingly abandoned. "Go," she says. "Guess so." A resounding bit of confidence from Jax -- nevertheless he is nodding to Blink, looking through the mist for a moment before stepping through it into the street beyond. His eyes close, brow creasing in concentration. Shane is soon to follow. Hop! Right on through. He tags close to his father's elbow, blinking briefly against the sunlight but then relaxing. His nostrils twitch -- wrinkle -- twitch again, black eyes focusing in on one house nearby, its roof torn off and a kind of lopsided look to it that it probably wasn't built to have. Blink slips lightly through the portal just as it begins to close again. For a moment she just gazes around in blank dismay at their surroundings. She opens her mouth, but then thinks better of it, seeing her teammates concentrating on their various senses. She turns a full circle, keeping watch. The air is ripe with cloying decay, which reaches deep into the brain to signal danger. But the only movement that comes from amidst the rubble smells and looks like one damp yellow mutt, licking its chops as it ducks out from beneath a broken roof beam. It stares at the newcomers for a moment, then starts barking loud and shrill. The noise soon attracts other movement from further down the street, though the two humanoid figures are considerably more cautious emerging from the half-destroyed house they have been scrounging in. The taller one looks human, maybe seventeen years old, half-hiding the shorter one behind them. The smaller one might be eleven or twelve, and has vivid green skin and large, distinctly catlike eyes. The teenager pushes the younger child back into the shelter of the building, leaving a makeshift sack with them. Then pads toward the newcomers. "{Hello, hello. Are you aid workers?}" Their voice sounds cautious but hopeful. "{Or are you also stranded?}" Jax's fist has balled up at his side, his lips compressing thinly. His brows furrow at the nearest house that Shane watches, head shaking slightly. "I don't think anyone in there's --" He breaks off when the mutt comes into view, watching it with a smaller frown. It's the people down the street that attract his attention, his hand dropping to his side as he takes a step forward. "{We are here to help.}" His French is slow and a bit stilted. Shane's, though, is fluid and easy. "{We heard there were folks got left behind. I'm really sorry that happened to you.}" He's trotting up past Jax -- just a little bit, though, his smile polite and closed-lipped as he comes to a stop. "{Are there many more of you? We can get you to safety. My friend,}" with a small gesture to Blink, "{can move people quickly.}" "{Hello.}" Blink waves, keeping her movements slow and relaxed, though her French is halting and come with a heavy Bahamian accent. "{I...can make a door. Doors. To go.}" The teenager frowns. Studies Shane closely. "{We do not have money,}" they admit. "{We gave the other people who came all we had, to take the sick and the very young.}" Unseen by them but probably plain to Jax and Shane's keen senses, the green child has picked their way expertly through the rubble and is now perched on the remains of a collapsed roof, peering out from behind it's corrugated eave. "{How big is your door?}" the child asks abruptly. "{There's thirteen of us.}" Though here they pause, counting on their fingers. "{/Fifteen/.}" "{Jeanne!}" the teenager hisses, "{I told you to stay back!}" "{We are not looking for money,}" Shane replies with a small shake of his head. "{We're volunteers. There's a safe house in San Juan with food and shelter, at least until you can figure out what to do next. Is anyone hurt? We have some first aid but also medical support on the other island.}" His black eyes dart up toward the green-skinned child on the roof. "{We can show you. How the doorway works. I've seen it lots of times and it's still a little bit like a magic to me.}" Only as an afterthought to Blink: "Do you mind a small demonstration?" Blink clearly did not understand what either the teenager or the small child said, eyes skipping between two of them. She seems quite relieved at Shane's request. This time she make a flourish with her hand as it begins to glow purple, flinging the light from her fingertips (a motion clearly copied from the Harry Potter films) and in the opposite direction from the wary refugees. It spins out into a portal beside her, it's twin appearing only 15 feet away, on the other side of the street. She hops lightly into one and out the other, waves brightly, then jumps back through, taking a bow as the portal begins to close again. Blink's demonstration delights Jeanne, who forgets her shyness and clambers out to the edge of the sloping, wrecked roof. "{That /is/ a magic! I want to try!}" She turns to her older companion, "{Oh, Pierre, you /must/ show them what /you/ do!}" Pierre is less impressed by the teleportation than just /startled/, taking a step backwards and tripping on one of the innumerable pieces of debris strewn on the ground. He falls backward and lands rather heavily with a cry of pain. Suddenly, the smaller detritus on the ground around him shifts and flies up into the air. Followed by larger debris. The collapsed house beside him creaks and groans as its looser components shift, tilting the already wildly canted roof and shaking Jeanne with a shriek from her perch. Jax's eye opens wide. He takes a half-step forward, hand flinging up reflexively. From a distance it doesn't look like much of anything -- but the barrier that forms beneath Jeanne is solid and immediate, extending out from beneath the rickety sloping roof and catching the child as she tumbles from her unstable perch. "{Sorry!}" Shane's eyes open wide, even as he takes a half-step towards the unstable building. He stops when Jax's shield goes up, relaxing (if only slightly) when his teammate catches Jeanne. His eyes dart to Pierre. "{Are you okay? Is everyone else -- okay in there?}" Kind of sheepish, now, his hand rubs at the back of his neck. "{It just works like a doorway. Everyone can go through, it's -- it looks startling. But it's safe.}" Blink's reflexive reaction to the child falling off the roof is a fraction of a second slower than Jax's, and so the portal she throws ends up underneath the forcefield. A moment later, however she teleports /herself/ up beside Jeanne. "{Sorry!}" she calls down to Pierre, that one word at least coming easily enough. Then, to the little girl, more haltingly again, "{You want...coming with me?}" With the turn of one hand, she opens a portal in front of them, and the other she offers to the girl. The other end of the portal opens in the street below, well away from any levitating objects or wobbling houses. Jeanne's scream of fear trails off into a surprised "eh?" as she fetches up against Jax's shield after falling only a few inches. "{Wow! It's an /invisible floor!/}" She pats at the barrier holding her up, peers through at the portal beneath her. When Blink arrives she smiles brightly and rises -- slow and careful, uncertain of what exactly she is standing on. Even so, once she has gained her feet, she takes Blink's hand and pulls them both through the portal, grinning wide. "{Oh, let's do that again!}" Pierre has sat himself back up, brows knitting with concentration. Slowly, the objects levitating or rattling in place around him settle back down to the ground and are still once more. He hops to his feet, eyeing the house beside him as it creaks and taking a few steps further into the street. "{I am sorry, this --}" His gesture encompasses himself, the ground, the house beside him. "{-- I did not mean to do this.}" Blink's portal does not frighten him at this time. He runs over and scoops Jeanne up in a tight hug, and even after he set her down does not let go of her shoulder, holding her close to the side. "{Thank you. You have come because you know -- no one else will help us, yes?}" He looks between the faces of the X-Men, eyes lingering longest on Shane before snapping back to the child beside him. "{We will take you to the others, at Mama Camille's. There may be more now than when we left -- people have been drifting in, as they hear her call.}" He nods back up the street, in the direction from which he had come, and gives a sheepish smile. "{Come! But ah, maybe we /walk/ there, no?}"