Xaviers!

Shane had put himself between the PM and the acid and was naturally grateful for the reprieve.

"Is some room for the bloody door too much to ask?"

"Look, this isn't as easy as it looks. Knock the damn thing down."

He sighed and looked to the PM. "Mister Claremont. I need you to move over a little," he said as he formed a wooden axe. Then he un-formed it.

"Better idea," he said, sending a multitude of tiny vines from various points on his body to flow between gaps around the door to unscrew the hinges from the other side.

It's fiddly work and it's not helped by the sound of cracks forming in the concrete as the Skrull struggles against Will's grip, but after a minute that felt much longer the door finally pops out of it's frame and falls away from them. As the PM hurries out the sound of breaking concrete grows louder and a scaly green arm punches it's way free, bends at an impossible angle and starts tearing away chunks of concrete to free the rest of himself.

"I'll be back for you!" Shane told Will before hurrying after the PM.

Catching up, he asked, "What's your emergency protocol if your security detail is compromised? The fake Farage isn't the only one of these guys out there."

Will groaned in pain as the Skrull was able to rip concrete apart faster than Will could regrow it, scattering his mass around the hallway.

"Nnng. Buy...buy me dinner first, why don't you..." he said, trying to keep as much as him as possible between the Skrull and the fleeing PM.

"Believe it or not..." the PM says, out of breath, "But we don't have a contingency plan for alien shapeshifters. There's an armored limo outside that's supposed to take me to a safe location..." he recalls after a moment. While technically briefed on emergencies this is clearly beyond his ability to properly process right now. There's a loud cracking noise behind them and bits of concrete fly past them. Nothing big enough to hurt them, but still kind of disturbing considering the hulking green alien that just bursts his way out of a block of solid stone.

It takes the Skrull a moment to pick up some momentum, but soon it's charging right at Will. Or rather, trying to charge right through him to go after Shane and the PM.

The mighty oak stands tall against the wind, but ultimately falls. The reeds, however, bend and ply with the wind, and live to fight another day.

Will waited as long as he dared -- wait, wait, wait -- and then shifted into a thick patch of rubber stretching across the hallway.

"Directions would be helpful!" Shane said as he urged the PM onward. He grew an insanely hot pepper in one hand and sprayed its juices towards the alien's face.

The Skrull doesn't slow down and plows right into Will, slowing down as he stretches out the rubber until... Will loses his grip on the wall and ceiling and the two of them go tumbling forward, the Skrull shifting into some kind of quadruped animal somewhere between a lion and a rhino to stay on his feet but with Will still stretched across his head. It does protect him from the burst of ghost-pepper juice at least.

"We were headed for it. Back that way." the PM informs Shane as they're running, pointing in the general direction of the Skrull.

Will held on for as long as he could, but the force of the Skrull was just too damn much.

In desperation, Will attempted to shove his fist down the Skrull's maw -- he had to be breathing pretty hard to get through a concrete wall and then a rubber one, right? Choke out the oxygen, and down goes the man, even a crazy Alien man.

Shane cursed under his breath. "Of bloody course you were," he sighed. "Clearly we need to get around him."

He looked for some a stairwell, and, if they were to be found, would hurry the PM up to the second floor to run back in the direction they had come.

In response to Will shoving his arm into the Skrull's mouth he simply bites down hard with teeth that quickly grow to be razor sharp and spits out a chunk of Will. This conveniently gives him a hole through which to spot Shane and the PM hooking back around towards a set of stairs. He's a bit too bulky at the moment and has a little too much momentum to turn on a dime though, so it takes him a couple moments to come to a stop, claws tearing up the convention-floor carpet before throwing himself after his target, wearing a Will-ponch of sorts.

Will swore and cursed as the razor-sharp teeth short-circuited plan "B". He had to be careful -- he only had so much mass to lose, and some of it had been spread all the way down the hallway at this point. Alright, if he couldn't take the battle INSIDE, maybe he could take it OUTSIDE.

He shot out seven long, tentacle-ish arms behind him, wrapping around support pillars, doorframes, decorative bric-a-brac; anything that seemed bolted down. Goal one was to slow the creature for long enough for the PM to escape.

Shane rather roughly shoved the PM through the doorway ahead of him. "Go! I'll be right behind you!" he said before taking a moment to scatter some horribly spined "seeds" in Skrigel's path. He threw a sarcastic salute and hurried after Claremont, laying out more of the petty annoyances on the stairs.

Between Will's tentacles and Shane seeded vines the Skrull does eventually slow to a stop, held by vines around his feet and a tentacled Will around his neck and torso. Which is when he starts growing additional arms that end in large lobster-ish claws and start cutting through the tentacles one by one, claw snapping shut with loud 'snaps', followed by the twang of the severed tentacle.

The good news is, Shane and the PM manage to safely make their way down the second story hallway and to a backdoor, where in fact an armored limo and more security is waiting.

"I believe this one is yours," Shane said to the security detail. "Now if you'll excuse me Mister Prime Minister, those vines won't hold big, weird, and ugly long."

Will swore as the clippers went "clip". It didn't hurt, per se, but losing that much mass was not going to be good news for later, by any means. He was also getting a bit woozier -- it was getting harder to think straight.

With that in mind, Will's goal was just to ADD. More mass. More weight. More force, pushing straight down on Farage. Thicker, heavier, larger, denser -- putting his all into just globs and globs of clay, not caring about form or color or shape. Just sheer, out-and-out tonnage, attempting to pin Farage to the floor.

Skrigel tears at the increasing mass, snapping at it with varying claws and maws as he tries to tear his way free from the swelling lump of clay, but for every bit of headway he makes another, larger lump grows on top of him and eventually he's enveloped by the clay. With nowhere else to go his shape suddenly shrinks away as he rolls himself up into a thick, armored ball. A little like an armadillo, but the seams between the armor plates quickly fill in with some kind of hardening organic matter and all the metabolic functions enveloped in the shell slow down to a crawl as the Skrull reduces his need for food or, in this case more importantly, oxygen, to next to nothing.

Will took the opportunity to shift back down, compressing the space as much as possible, to prevent any movement from taking place.

It ended up with him sitting there, sprawled out on the floor, with quite the large bulge in his belly.

"Erp" he said, covering his mouth. "'scuse me."

Shane burst back onto the scene, arms transformed into wooden spikes and ready to get stabby. "Alright you alien shitweasel..." he began before looking around in confusion.

"...where did he... did you bloody eat him?!"

"Long story," Will said, clutching his stomach. "You'd best stay back and be prepared; I'm...not sure how long I can contain him."

At least for the time being the Skrull is lieing dormant. Although sitting heavy like an oversized burrito.

"I feel like shit, by the by.

The PM. Is he...where is he?"

"Safe and currently peeling away in a wicked armored limo and surrounded by a small army."

"Which just leaves your alien baby to deal with," he smirked tiredly.

"...and the people in the limo definitely were not Skrulls?" Will asked, pointedly.

"There isn't exactly a test and riding along wasn't an option," he responded defensively, "We'll just have to pray there are too many witnesses for the other three out there to act."

Will swore. "We just gave them perfect cover to replace him now -- because their attempt 'failed', see? They have proof of that now, so of course the PM is the PM," Will sighed.

"We'll have to make do with what we've got, though."

Meanwhile the PM is definitely safe and sound. Probably. Maybe... Then again, Shane has a point. At some point they'd have to leave him with people they trust not to be Skrulls. And there's not that many of them, according to Shari. Still, it's a nagging doubt in the back of their heads now.

"I'm in real rough shape here, though, Shane; if you could, uh, call for a van or something; I'm not sure I'd be able to get back to Xaviers on my own.

In fact, if there's an X-Corp thing in the city or something, that would be...very much appreciated," he admitted.

His skin was definitely more grey than normal in places, and his eyes were a little unfocused.

"Oh! Right!" he said, pulling out his miraculously undamaged phone. He started a call and put the smartphone to his ear. "And I should prooobably make sure my dad's alive."

"Eh," Will shrugged.

One quick phonecall later and X-Corp is one it's way. It looks like everybody made it outside, where police cars and ambulances are parked near the entrance now, keeping reporters at bay and taking care of people who got hurt in the panic.

"I am not in any shape to deal with reporters at the moment. I'm going to slip around back. This is all you, Shane," Will nodded.

If Shane could turn any greener, he would have. "Can't I just slip out with you?" he implored. "Me talking to the press can only end in tears and blown circuits."'

"Look, if one of us doesn't put some spin on this, it'll be up to the people who ran the event. You know...your father.

And of the two of us, you look more...presentable, at the moment."

It was true. Will's face had turned completely grey, and he was clearly not in a great space at the moment.

He groaned. "Ugh. Fine. Don't blame me if I give the headmistress a coro... a binary."

With that, Shane and his nice but ruined suit went to try not to yell at the media.

The crowd is waiting eagerly, shouting countless questions that all mostly amount to the same thing. "What happened?" "Was it the fault of mutants?" "Did anybody get hurt?" Almost a dozen cameras swivel Shane's way when he walks up.

Shane spoke clearly and resolutely. "This incident was not, as it might appear through their use, the work of mutants, but of an unidentified rogue element attempting to manipulate public opinion and spark a human/mutant conflict with which to hide their agenda. I stand here now to tell these criminals that the British people, mutant or not, are not so easily duped. Between the X-Men and the authorities; you will have no conquest, you will have no glory, but you will be stopped."

"Are you saying this was a false flag operation?"

"We saw mutants attacking the Prime Minister!"

"They were shouting about mutant supremacy."

"This had the hallmarks of a Brotherhood attack."

"What kind of rogue element?"

The questions come more or less at the same time.