Xaviers!

There wasn't much that he could do about the blink dogs, so instead Victor sidled up to help Chase with Basil.

"Here, lemme take a look at that arm." He said as he fished around the back of his belt for a little first aid kit. There wasn't much more than bandages in there, but seeing as how that was exactly what the man needed it was good enough.

Will Stanton wrote:Will continued bouncing off the walls, angling himself and shooting back towards Leo.

"Batter up!"

Leo raised his tail and struck as Will approached. He did wonder just then how much poison he could use before his body needed to make more.

Victor Freud wrote:There wasn't much that he could do about the blink dogs, so instead Victor sidled up to help Chase with Basil.

"Here, lemme take a look at that arm." He said as he fished around the back of his belt for a little first aid kit. There wasn't much more than bandages in there, but seeing as how that was exactly what the man needed it was good enough.

Basil didn't seem to recognize the young man. He let him wrap his arm, but seemed anxious to keep moving.

"I'm fine. We need to get back to Alice. She's not safe alone."

Chase Delacroix wrote:"Assuming you mean Will, it looks like the newbie's got a handle on this."

Still, he didn't take his eyes off of the poisoned one like Leo had.

The dog just kept blinking until it was out of sight of the crew. One would presume it would keep doing this until it felt it was safe.

Leo Eskandari wrote:Leo raised his tail and struck as Will approached. He did wonder just then how much poison he could use before his body needed to make more.

Striking through Will into the canines held captive inside Will, the dogs would whimper, but eventually they too would go stiff and stop wriggling about inside him.

Leo watched as the movement inside the Will-bag stopped.

"They out or just playing dead?" he asked Will.

"They're not moving, at the very least," the Happy Fun Ball replied. "I'll let 'em out as soon as we have a plan to get Basil out of here without his head exploding."

"Speaking of," Chase said, looking to Basil, "We'll help this Alice first, but do you have any idea where the earrings are controlled from? A security room perhaps?"

Basil started moving as he answered.

"Every day when we moved from the outside to the in, they would allow us to take off the black discs. We did it ourselves, without special tools. They replaced them with these." Basil tilted his head to show off what was in his ear now: A numbered tag that read '37C' to Chase as they moved.

"These can act as power dampeners in gen-pop. However, to get here, I had to wade through several individuals who lopped off their own tags to regain their powers. I'd wager leaving with the tags on shouldn't kill anyone. Otherwise the tagless would have also been headless."

"You say 'we'. How many people are we talking about?"

"I'm not exactly certain. There were seven members of the Court, but Dory, Bunny, and Caterpillar have all gone missing in the last several hours. The way Alice speaks, there's over one-hundred in the general population rooms. "

"...I can find them," Sam says quietly.

"It certainly simplifies things if we don't have to worry about the indoor tags melting anyone's mind," Chase said, "I just hope that portal generator is still here because there's no way Vic can ferry out that many."

"There's always another way." Victor mumbled. "Even construction of this facility aside, this place can't depend on one mutant for all of their ins and outs. What if they slipped and broke their neck, then everyone would be trapped, including the staff. It takes a lot of food to feed a hundred people, and I don't remember seeing any sort of hydroponics bay in that map you guys scrawled out. They may have sealed off the entrance, but there should be some sort of elevator or ramp or something somewhere. And my bet would be that it's not far from wherever the doctors stay."

"Plus construction alone -- you can't just teleport a full facility underground; there had to be some way of getting it all here. There must be another egress point."

"If we find the ones in charge that are fleeing, we have our way out."

"It's worth a shot, assuming they don't have a few hours' head start on us."

"A Tweedle might know." Basil offered. "They're basically in charge of lugging heavy things... including patients. They definitely would have been employed in the hauling in and out of things like supplies."

"This place is a bloody pressure cooker. I... think there might be a riot down in general population. It might be... enough. I'm feeling the flow of this place."

"The minds of the ones you are looking for, The Tweedles, all feel the same." Basil added, to help Sam distinguish them from the general population.

How would he know that?

"Just do it fast, there could be more of those things," Leo said a little anxiously. Though he was more anxious about being in such a facility in the first place.

Sam closes her eyes and tries to feel out those pockets of otherness, of sameness, people that are outside the more organic flow of the riot.

Between all the individual minds filled with panic and chaos, Sam could feel quite a few distinctly similar minds, many of them seemed to be running on 'idle'. Unconscious perhaps. A few were on alert, but none of them seemed to be particularly frightened.

One of them was near, and incredibly still. If she compared his location to the map in her mind, he seemed to be setting inside of a utility closet for some reason.

"...this way," Sam nods as she opens her eyes, heading, well, that way.

Following Sam would lead the group to a utility closet further into the ringed facility. This particular room didn't require a key card to get into, likely to allow the patients who were trusted access to cleaning supplies so they could help maintain the facility.

That meant the door was held closed with a chair propped under the knob. Undoing the makeshift barricade would reveal a miffed looking, beefy young blonde man, who'd definitely been tied up and shoved in here to get him out of the way.

"Come back to finish the job, aye?"

"Funny, I expected a pudgy bald guy," Leo quipped from outside the closet.

"Lucky for you we have more ethics than your employers," Chase said.

"So's there a point t'this then oir you all jus' get concerned about my pretty face?"

"We have a common interest in getting out of this place. Help us get everyone out of here and we'll see about keeping the prisoners from tearing you apart," he said. They had no intention of letting anyone get killed, but this guy didn't know that.

"You realize what she'd do to us if she found out we helped, aye?


Then again.... Not like she took all of us along...."

"Exactly. She's gone with no intention of coming back now that this facility is burned. You're just a discarded tool to her, just like everyone else here. Besides, I'd be more afraid of the prisoners you've played jailer to. And the crazy mutant attack dogs."

Will belched at the "attack dog" comment.

For show, you know. Just as an added threat that wouldn't come to pass.

"The freight elevator in th'kitchen is yoir best bet, but you won't get it t'go wit' outta card.

Mine's been knicked. You all found one'o'em lyin' about?"

"Told you." Came a voice from the back.

"We didn't. But we don't necessarily need one if we find the rest of our advance team. All you have to do is show us where."

"And put in th'passcode." He offered. "It dunna jus'go up witt'a card, th'card is t'get th'kitchen doirs unlocked.

So you betta' watch my back."

"Don't worry about it: we're the good guys, we know what we're doing."

"On the way, you can tell us everything you know about Queenie," Chase said.

"And what the hell that machine in the computer room is," Leo added.

"She's a telepath. Wicked powerful, absolutely mental.

"You prolly mean Th' Queen's Throne. Power amplifier. Works on folks asides from telepaths.

She ordered a bunch've us t'haul it inta' Observation."

"Or she wants you to think she's powerful. I've seen her work."