Logs:In Which the People Shouted, and the Trumpets Were Blown. As Soon as the People Heard the Sound of the Trumpets, They Raised a Great Shout, and the Wall Fell Down Flat; so the People Charged Straight Ahead Into the City and Captured it.

In Which the People Shouted, and the Trumpets Were Blown. As Soon as the People Heard the Sound of the Trumpets, They Raised a Great Shout, and the Wall Fell Down Flat; so the People Charged Straight Ahead Into the City and Captured it.
Dramatis Personae Scott, Chevy, Jax, Fury, Wendy, Lucien, Shane, Gaétan, Taylor, Tag, Boss Chen, Erik, Leo, Elie, Avi, Nevaeh, Naomi, Echo, Nanami, Spencer, Clint, Winona, Terri Pryde, Roscoe, Kitty, Ryan
In Absentia Kelawini, Harm, Remi, Leonidas, Lael, Asva, Sriyani, Ion, Polaris, Steve, DJ, Hive, Skye, Heather, Tian-shin, Joshua, Matt	2023-07-28 "It's over."
Location <PRO> Occupy Lassiter 2023
july 23, 10:23pm. from the blackbird. Scott, for all of his experience with telepathy, is not good with telephones. For a few long seconds after Jax picks up, he says nothing at all, before -- "Hey, it's Scott. We're back on the plane. We got --" a pause, a mental assessment, a careful tick through his list -- "Spence, Echo, both the Māhoes, Harm, Gae, Avi, Naomi, two of their friends, and an assortment of others out. Still inside are Remi, Beau, Asva, Lael, and the third 'M-Kid'." He doesn't do air quotes, but they're present in his voice. He pauses. Swallows. "We lost the entire Extraction team -- most of them just in the prison, I think Ion is dead. We lost Polaris, Steve, Kitty, and Ryan on Distraction, we don't know what happened. DJ is here but --" there is a rustle as Scott twists to confirm that DJ is not back on his feet yet -- "he's unconscious, he went down when Hive did. Skye, Heather, and I are on the Blackbird, we'll be fine. No reports of any trouble on the buses, either. Do you want --" Though Scott made it through his sitrep very evenly, very straightforwardly, now his voice falters a little, and when he finds it again, there is a weight of exhaustion and grief finally seeping through his professionalism. "I'm going to put Spence on the phone," he says. "Please hold." --- july 23, 11:01pm. shield, detention wing. Chevy isn't normally on shift Sunday night, and he's hardly ever on checkpoint duty, anyway. But here he is, lounging alone by the secured door that (at least in theory) keeps the detainees in the detainment area. "Ah, yes, it is a nice night for a smoke, no?" he says off-handedly, his hand reaching perhaps unconsciously to pat the pocket where he keeps his Gauloises. "I would join you, but, sadly that I am trying to quit." He taps his keycard to unlock the door and kind of automatically stands to attention beside it as though he means to salute, though he does not. Not that it makes a great deal more sense to see someone off for a smoke break with a solemn, "Bon courage." Jax's eye goes a little wider as he approaches the door -- and it's not exactly surprise, though it does pause him for a time in his tracks. He's in lightweight soft polymer body armor, the flexible plates of each component expertly sewn into dark, dark black ballistic fabric styled with fanciful flourishes abstractly suggestive of wings, talons, and scales; across his back his longsword is sheathed in its wooden scabbard. Probably he has not recently taken up smoking, either. For a long moment there's just a thoughtful weight that hangs in the air between them -- and then Jax's head inclines, small and somber, and he slips out. --- july 23, 11:03pm. shield, rooftop. Jax doesn't make much noise, when he steps out of the stairwell, and in the very (very) dark ballistic fabric he's wearing he wouldn't be particularly eye catching in the nighttime, either, but the motion-sensor lights by the door give him away readily enough. Not that he's trying to sneak. He's just setting the scabbard he wears a little more comfortably before striding towards the roof's edge, and then up onto the wall as if he intends to simply hurl himself off. Somewhere -- just in the background but coming steadily closer -- there's a droning hum that suggests he might, in fact, shortly be doing that. He's glancing first to his jailer, though, and then to the winged shadow in the far distance. "Sorry," is what he says, soft but even, "but I have to go." Has Fury been here since their earlier encounter? Probably not, but he is smoking again where he leans against a tree in clear sight of the roof access. He does not seem in the least surprised to see Jax this time, and walks to the wall -- not with him, exactly, but at least in parallel. His eye tracks the shadow approaching them, then flicks back to Jax with only a slight arch of a brow at his sword and armor. "Do what you gotta, and I'll do what I can. If you come back..." He produces a keycard and sets it down on top of the wall between them. "...I'll see you then." --- july 24, 12:27am. le bonne entente, guest room. Wendy is rereading the message on Lucien's phone -- not for the first time, either. Her eyes are slightly red, slightly shadowed, though her neatly braided hair and street clothes suggest she hasn't managed sleep yet rather than that she's been pulled from it precipitously. After a long period, her lips compress, thin and unhappy. "He can't possibly take on Lassiter alone." Lucien slides his phone back, tapping it absently against one palm. He looks from Wendy -- down to Jackson's message -- back up to Wendy. "We do have some experience with amplifying a message," he replies, finally. "Let's make sure he does not have to." --- july 24, 2:17am. freaktown. Overhead, a gleaming blue dragonfly is rising into the air and taking off, silhouetted dark against the nighttime sky. The hush that had come over Freaktown's main square through Jackson's announcement is breaking, spilling into a buzz that's swelling with the cumulative anger-fear-excitement energy of the small crowd of residents present. The diminutive blue shark who gets to his feet here is tiny, but commanding all the same as he climbs up onto an empty stall, webbed hands clapping sharply together to draw attention. Shane's enormous black eyes are scanning the crowd, quick. "We got any teleporters in the house?" --- july 24, 3:21 am. somewhere along i-76. Maybe it's the trauma they've all recently gone through or maybe it's the late-late hour; maybe it's the irritated shushing from some of the older labrats along for the ride or maybe it's the 24-hour Burger King they recently hit up keeping many people well preoccupied with First Non-Prison Food In Who Knows How Long. Regardless of the reason, for a bus this full of teenagers, it's been pretty quiet. Over in one row, several of the kids are huddled around the telltale glow of a stolen graciously loaned tablet screen, perhaps even more of a prize than the burgers and fries. They've been (in hushed voices!) intermittently arguing over Whose Turn It Is With The Social Media and what videos to watch but now, hitting a freshly uploaded TikTok that's come across the erratic selection on the FYP -- a pair of very identical, very identifiable toothy blue faces recording from the fairylit chaos of a Freaktown patio. The overlapping intensity in their words, intermittently finishing each other's sentences, only leans in to the twin thing -- appropriate, perhaps, for this current familial plea. The teenager sector of the bus goes quiet while the video plays, and quiet for a few seconds after. It's Gaétan who finally breaks the silence, half-rising out of his seat, some of the video's urgency carrying into his voice: "Stop. We've gotta turn around." --- july 24, 7:31. evolve cafe. The buzzing of Taylor's phone does not stop the industrious flex of many of his arms, working his way with balletic grace through four drink orders and plating two breakfast sandwiches at once. He's plucking up the phone with a free hand, brows hiking as he first reads the messages and then clicks on the link attached. A wide-eyed surprise displaces the deep exhaustion that had been etched onto his face, and as he swipes out a reply his voice is rippling clear and purposeful through everyone's mind in the room. << Last call for caffeine, >> comes with a mental relaying of Jax's message. << We closing up shop. >> --- july 24, 4:27pm. xavier’s school. The Blackbird has long since been evacuated, its passengers already sent to the med bay to be triaged and treated. Scott, changed and showered and bandaged, looks almost casual in his old, work motorcycle jacket over a fresh X-suit as he tidies up the interior. He has packed their first aid kit back into its compartment, replaced the used supplies and fixed a few broken hinges, and now he's just wiping dried blood from the shiny surfaces. He doesn't respond, when he hears footsteps in the hangar, but after a moment he appears on the gangway, still holding the rag in one hand. He looks -- well, he usually looks unsurprised, behind the tinted glasses, but it is all the more jarring to see him look unsurprised without them. "Are all of you coming?" he says -- he doesn't wait for an answer before striding back into the plane to the cockpit. --- july 24, 7:15pm, dragon house tavern. chinatown "{Of course I am worried for them both,}" Boss Chen says evenly, studying Tag across the table. "{But what you ask will not free her or locate him, and it is not how we conduct business. We honor tradition and see to our own affairs, and Tian-shin chose to take on the American government for her other people.}" He shakes his head slowly and refills his guest's tea. "{They are fierce and brave and I do admire that, but I cannot set aside our ways and risk starting a war for sentiment.}" "{Do you want to talk about honoring tradition?}" Tag narrows his eyes at the mobster, anger sending subtle ripples through the rainbow of his hair. "{Tian-shin is a warrior and a teacher, ready to risk everything for her students. Her honor is secure. Ion might never come back, but the Mongrels are riding down to free Tian-shin and for the children who are still in there. Their honor is secure.}" He dips his head in thanks for the tea, and lifts the cup without drinking from it, meeting Chen's gaze steadily above it. "{Is yours, if you leave a respected ally's turf to the mercy of his enemies while his people are looking after one of your own?}" Perhaps another man would have been offended at the question, or scoffed at it, or taken its answer as read. Chen Ling-yin merely refills his own tea, then sets the pot aside, his gray brows furrowing in thought. "{If I ever doubted your manliness, I was mistaken.}" This he says in the attitude of a casual aside. "{Have you not heard yet what my men have been calling Ion?}" He raises his own teacup and bows his head just a fraction. "{We will see Xiao Leigong's Riverdale turf defended.}" --- july 24, 8:51 pm, lassiter. The sun is beginning to set over Ohio, gold rays catching on the iridescent shimmer of approaching dragonfly wings. From here, Lassiter's shadow is stretching out long and dark across the grounds, as if it were a behemoth twice -- maybe thrice -- its squat three stories in height. Sugar circles lower, and the shadow seem to move. Another moment of descent, and that dark mass begins to resolve not into one shadow but into the shadows of many -- a thousand people, maybe, with more still trickling in on the edges, and their tents and cars and fire pits speckling the ground with light. One shadow is rising up to meet Jax, now, light gleaming off the burnished steel of his helmet. When Magneto draws level with rider and steed, he smiles -- smiles broader still when he catches a glimpse of the sword. "Jackson!" Magneto calls. "Our people wait for you. With such an army, the world may yet bend towards justice." From beneath his cape, Erik produces an insulated mug, holding it out to Jax when Sugar passes close. "They will ask much of you when you descend, so I have brought -- well, do you still prefer mint tea?" --- july 25, 8:13am, lassiter. "My man," comes in a too-chipper salesman's pitch, from a young, bearded, sunburnt man standing outside his hastily erected merch stand -- "Way too hot out here to be walking around without a hat, eh? Only fifteen bucks --" the salesman gestures expansively at a rack of OCCUPY LASSITER 2023 bucket hats and T-shirts available for purchase, as well as a selection of egregiously overpriced sunscreen, bug spray, and umbrellas. "I got face masks too," he says, casting a somewhat suspicious look around the crowd -- "for all these New Yorkers still masking up." Does he actually roll his eyes, behind his reflective sunglasses? He sounds like he did. In large sunglasses, earth tones, a crowd full of famous faces, Leo isn't quite as attention-grabbing today as he is some other places. Even so, he pauses -- for a very long time -- searching the salesman's face with a slow growing frown as though he's not quite sure whether he's being trolled. It takes him some time to reach a conclusion, but eventually he does pull his wallet out, casting only a brief glance back to the squat building that is looming in all their backgrounds. "You know, I think I have a friend who would like this shirt." --- july 25, afternoon; coming to you live from the grounds of lassiter. There's a picturesque fragility to Elie Tessier in front of the camera, her scrubs rumpled and her hair tousled just so. "After seven long years of slavery, I have been rescued by my own firstborn son, only to be torn from him again!" Tears roll down her face, and her voice is clear though it trembles. "Free the heroes of Lassiter, and the poor children --" "-- been pulled outta hell by some legit superheroes, yo." Avi is animated, energetic; somewhere he's gotten hold of some good moisturizer and though his scrubs are a wrinkled mess his skin is glowing and hair in neat short and shiny twists that one day may be locks. Unpracticed at this, he's definitely talking more to the reporter than to the camera, "-- it's straight up nonsense tryna go after them for --" "-- killing my brother right in front of me!" Nevaeh shoulders are hunched tight and shaking with barely-suppressed sobs. "And -- and they still got my friends in there!" She breathes faster, on the verge of tears again. "I'm so scared --" "-- of what they might be doing to him, right now." Gaétan stands taller than his mother, but somehow, regardless, the curl of her arm around him seems fierce and protective. He isn't crying, for sure, but there's a set to his jaw and intensity to his (slightly bruise-puffy) eyes that suggests he's determinedly keeping it together. "Even with the limited view I got of this place, I know --" "-- what they gonna do to my big brother?" Naomi shakes at the question even as she repeats it, her own eyes bright with unshed tears and anger as she taps on her dulled scales. Turns her back to the camera, pulling up her sleeve to show the scales on her shoulder -- and the ugly scarred wound in the center of the scalebed. "More of the same cutting up they did to me! I got patches where nothing's ever gonna grow back right, I found --" "-- out I wasn't even on the list of the missing." The prior rehearsal suggested by the measured pace of Echo's words has not smoothed over the tight edge in her tone. She raises her eyes to the camera, incongruous too-big clear red frames she's acquired somewhere making her look that much younger. "And if you think I'm the only kid that's been disappeared into that place, you don't know --" "-- what it's like for us." Nanami lacks much of her usual bluster, here. She's looking very small and very frail as she shrinks in against the side of her younger, but considerably larger, sister, her eyes wide and her voice sweet and pleading. "-- throwing minor girls into a prison with guards -- full adult men who --" "-- have had enough." Spencer Holland's eyes are fixed steady and intent on the camera lens, his shoulders squared and the jut of his chin defiant. "My father and his team first rescued me twelve years ago, and there are dozens more labs out there today." His voice has risen gradually -- even now it's not loud, but there's a momentum, a certain inexorable force in his conclusion: "We need to shut them all down, for good." --- july 26, 12:37pm, lassiter. Clint is often That Guy at a protest who has to climb up where it makes the medics most nervous, but at the moment his perch isn't too outrageous: just the roof of an armored personnel carrier at the edge of Company X's lot. The direction and elevation give him a perfect view of the impromptu noise demo performance put on by the Broadway cast and crew of Captain America: the Musical. It's the climactic second act number "Never Alone" from the show, when the fictional Steve Rogers is injured and at the mercy of his foes. In the moment of his greatest peril, his comrades rally around to defeat the fascist government agents together. The cast is exhausted, working out in this heat on so little sleep, but the power of their sincerely performed energy is contagious. Clint is still watching the hastily press-ganged ASL interpreter, but sitting up level with the massive speakers blasting into the facility behind him, he can feel the thrum of the music in his bones. At the chorus closes his eyes and belts along with the amplified cas, little caring that they drown him out with: "We're stronger together, you've always known! With friends at your back you're never alone!" --- july 26, 5:13pm, lassiter. Despite a protracted silence on the issue of the labs since the last controversy, the Congresswoman from New York, Magda Carruthers, has been giving an impassioned speech. Despite how apparently emotional the allegedly off-the-cuff speech is, she speaks with the cadence of one well prepared to face an audience. "--committed to vigorously pursuing measures that will result in the efficient and effective closure of these facilities! Together, we will send a powerful message: unethical practices will not be tolerated within our scientific institutions!" Despite her arm being propped up in a sling, Winona still manages to keep her camera steady in her non-dominant arm, focused now on the politician who is speaking. There is a mirth in her eyes (despite one being darkly bruised), like someone has just told a joke that only she understands. She mouths from behind the camera: 'Looking great!' --- july 27, 2:55am, lassiter. The campfire is burning lower, but it's not gone -- nor are the Prometheans sitting around it, exchanging their tales of terror. The tenor of stories is changing, in the late hour, to more mundane horrors: guards who bounced from lab to lab, repeating every time their all-too-typical abuses of power; the sick feeling of seeing researchers who got rich off their genes in newspapers or on Twitter; the names of friends they haven't seen for years, lost in the maze of labs still out there beyond Lassiter. Playing back on dying phones the new recordings someone brought out of Lassiter, identifying their past tormentors by their voices so many years later. Terri pulls tighter into her "MOMS OF OCCUPY LASSITER" tee, each passing story making her eyes go just a bit wider, just a bit more worried. "I kind of know Jackson, so I guess I thought I kind of knew," she's saying, low, to her companion, "but it's more than just the --" it's hard to tell, in the low light, how pale Terri's face goes, "-- the removing of eyes, nu? All these little things, and -- Kitty said she knew what she was getting into, and certainly her father put her through a lot of grief, but --" This time, when she sucks in a breath, she presses an already-crumpled tissue to her wet eyes. "How could anyone do nothing, knowing all this? How could any parent leave their child there?" "It's so much more than any story can tell," Elie agrees softly, curling an arm around Terri's shoulders, "and worse, also. I endured so many years of torment, knowing my children were free and hoping they would thrive." She produces a fresh tissue from the "NEVER AGAIN" canvas tote beside her and offers it to the other woman. "Then, with Gaétan -- as awful as that was, at least I could protect him to a point with my knowledge and connections. Now..." Her breathing grows ragged, too, as she looks past the campfire to the hulking shape of Lassiter, looming against the big starry sky. "Even knowing the horrors as I do so well, I wish I were still in there to look after my brave, sweet Matthieu." --- july 28, 7:07am, lassiter. Around the grounds, the clamor of the crowd is still loud, still ongoing. But here at Lassiter's front door, for days zealously guarded against the usual influx and outflow of employees who keep the place running, there's a spreading hush. The figure responsible for this is not so very large, not so very imposing; but nevertheless the sea of people is parting smoothly before him as Jax makes his way towards the entrance. His body armor seems to soak in the light, so very black it seems almost like a void in space; the sword sheathed across his back sits unassuming in its plain scabbard. Is he talking to those still inside Lassiter? To those gathered at its walls? To the cameras, perhaps, and all the people watching beyond? He isn't looking directly at the latter, surely though he knows they are watching him; instead his chin tilts up, fixed at an angle above him like he's staring down a Titan. "Going on two decades now my people been imprisoned, mutilated, and murdered in Prometheus labs. Decade and a half since I lost my eye to some so-called doctor's twisted curiosity. Over a decade since Ryan tapped me to join him in freeing people suffering in these cells. For that crime y'all snatched back my child -- kidnapped an' abused his friends -- brutalized the folks trying to see these children free." It's quiet, when he draws his sword, but Sunbeam lives up to her name -- despite the oppressive-stormcloud grey of the sky overhead, the slender blade gleams sharp and radiant in his hand. "Now, you can shoot me if you want, in front of God and all the world watching -- and trust, you're gon' have to. 'cuz I'm walking in here and I'm coming out with these folks you been torturing. And from there we ain't gonna stop till the last of your cages been broken." There's not, at first, any response from inside -- but someone is clearly listening all the same, for Jax has only shifted his stance ever so subtly, tightened his grip just that much on the sword, when the door buzzes, and swings wide open. --- july 28, 7:17am, lassiter. "Holy mackerel." By now Roscoe's cellmates are used to his constant comments on whatever is happening beyond Lassiter's many many walls, but whatever it is this time is exciting enough that he is jolting unsteadily to his feet in bed, holding the wall, bouncing with eagerness to an accompanying squeaksqueaksqueak of the bedsprings -- "Someone's coming in, someone's coming here!" He hops off the bunk, scrambles through the rubble to Sriyani's cell to climb on Miami's empty bed for a better view, this time bouncing along to the suspicious rattle-crinkle-clank of Miami's stash -- "He has a sword," he announces gleefully, but his next words are in an awed hush. "I think we are getting out." --- july 28, 8:11 am, shield hq, infirmary. "Ryan." Kitty's elbow cast, blessedly, leaves her fingers free and mobile to poke Ryan in the cheek once. Twice. A few more times, really. "Sorry, but I know you want to be awake for this." Her eyes are trained on the SHIELD television hanging above them in the medbay, on the replay of Jax walking out of Lassiter with hundreds of prisoners. At the CNN newscaster appearing after the replay, eyes wide as he reads breaking news off his teleprompter. "It's over. Prometheus is dead." In his infirmary bed beside her, Ryan has been dozing, off and on but mostly on, and probably the painkillers he's been dosed on are only helping this along. He stirs blearily at the poke, eyes scrunching tighter in a brief reluctance to rejoin the waking world. Kitty's voice cuts through the haze, and he cracks an eye open. Drowsy as he is it's hard at first to tell how much of the screen has registered before he drifts back off -- but then, when his eyes close again it's with a faint smile on his lips, a damp trickle of tears down his cheeks. His hand shifts with a brief and awkward wobble of wires and tubing, squeezing light at what he can grasp of Kitty's fingertips before falling back to the mattress. --- july 29, 7:01, shield hq, detention wing. Is Fury extra surly because his flight came in at 4am, because he's been in Washington all week, or because he wants to make sure his agents know he hasn't gone soft? It's really not clear, but he's been on a warpath from front desk to his office, where he only stopped long enough to leave his suitcase and carp at his secretary, then he's heading up to the detention floor. He gets all the way there and hesitates just outside the checkpoint. Just when one of the agents on duty looks ready to ask how they can help the director, Fury lets himself through and strides into the detainee's common area. He stops short at the kitchen, his eyebrows arching unevenly. "Well, I'll be. Didn't think y'all had a single respect for law and order among you." It's weirdly difficult to tell if he would consider that a compliment or an insult. "I'mma just go ahead and count my lucky stars we ain't at war." The common area is -- bustling might be a stretch, half the team still injured and recuperating, but subdued though the vibe is there's definitely more lightness here than in days past. The captive members of the Lassiter Raid Team are nearly all here, scattered around the couches, leaning up against the kitchen counter. In the kitchen, Jax has evidently been preparing the team a feast -- mango waffles with coconut cream, cajun spiced hash browns, garlicky grits, black-eyed-pea fritters; he's just served a plate full and sent it off to be delivered to Ryan when Fury arrives. "Not at the moment, anyhow." Should his tone be as light as it is, on this? Oh well! "Gotta rest and refuel some time." He's just finishing dishing up a second plate -- this one he offers to Fury, and, tucked just under the plate as he offers it out -- a familiar SHIELD keycard. "Y'hungry?"