Xaviers!

Tosh was doodling notes on a whiteboard as he waited for the others to arrive.

Chelyabinsk:
Test?
Crash?

Mondegreens

00102012
22210011

.\-|-/
. \|/
. /|\
./-|-\

Tereza, normally a prompt attender at things like this, is conspicuously absent.

Will was conspicuously NOT absent, though he was not his normal gruntled self.

"Alright, what have we got here."

"I'll explain when the others get here. I'd rather not go through the crazy weirdness twice."

Sam is almost felt before she's seen, with at least Tosh feeling the almost oppressive presence of the unseen flock moments before Sam strides in. She gives Tosh a look like she's about to tear his head off before she grits her teeth and her hair goes white. This is punctuated by a worried look to Tosh which is similarly choked back down, her hair going black.

"One, two, three, four, five, six..." She mutters under her breath.

"This... had better be good, Tosh."

Will shot Sam a worried look at her shifts, but otherwise stayed quiet.

"Yes. We're all ears," Chase said from the corner. When did he even get there? Damn not-technically-ninjas.

Sam's distractingly scary entrance set Tosh up to jump and actually shout when Chase spoke up.

"You've really gotta stop that!" he complained.

"Ahem... okay... Sam, could you fill Tereza in when she gets here?"

Sam's hair starts to turn red but she fights back an angry look as it returns to black.

"I would, but I haven't seen her since yesterday."

X-23, wearing workout clothes and with a towel slung over her shoulder walks in on the assembled group and catches the tail-end of Sam growling at Tosh.

"Pretty sure she took the Blackbird out. She was talking about taking care of something." Despite the clear evidence on Sam's face suggesting otherwise, she sounds like not telling anybody what you're up to is a perfectly reasonable course of action.

Will looked away, a little guilty at that.

"I'm...sure she's probably fine."

"...bloody better be," she mutters under her breath and turns to Tosh.

"Anyway, get on with it."

"Moving on then," he said.

"Okay. To start with: While examining the temporal dilation device, I discovered a biometric component that pretty much killed the prospect of unlocking its secrets in the remotely near future. Because, well, it was coded in trinary." He pointed at the unusual code sequence on the whiteboard. "However I did find an equally unusual skin sample on it. One matching nothing on record. A comparative image search... there wasn't enough for a DNA test... led to a Russian conspiracy theorist claiming that the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 was a hoax to cover up a crash of some sort of prototype and that he himself was chased off the site by a woman calling herself Business Mandy. It hit me that this and Islands Industries are both mondegreens... misheard lyrics... but that's not an important detail."

"After some conversation, he rather eagerly sent me assorted 'evidence' to test. I wasted a week but just as I was ready to throw in the towel I found blood in a soil sample. Green blood. All the characteristics of a shapeshifter but no x-gene. No human genes. Shit was a triple helix."

"I'm saying they're aliens. Shapeshifting reptilian aliens trying to start World War III."

"I wouldn't be so quick to block something out as an important detail," Will noted. "But that's some incredible findings you have there.

If we're talking shapeshifting reptiles, we're talking Skrulls. They want to conquer Earth, generally. The Fantastic Four usually end up running into them. It's not common knowledge because, from my understanding, Mr. Fantastic is a dick.

They can be anything solid. Elasticity, flight, mimicry. Very dangerous in hand-to-hand combat, but generally lacking in imagination, if I do say so myself."

"...so what, we're supposed to phone up the Fantastic Four and tell them a bunch of aliens who misheard some rock lyrics want to take over the world?"

"Well, I'd like it better if we had a plan of action.

Do we, Tosh?"

"Not as such, no," he admitted, "I just put this much together right before I went to you."

"So what good does this do us? What are we supposed to do with this information?"

"Know thy enemy...but also know where thy enemy is. Any ideas where Tereza might have slipped off to?"

"If I had to take a guess? To figure some things out." she says. When that doesn't seem to explain as much as she thought she would she adds "Russia. Her old school."

"...oh, bloody hell."

"Well. I guess that makes our next step pretty clear, da, comrades?"

"You guys need to have a little faith in your comrades, da?" X-23 says, jerking her thumb at one of the smaller monitors, currently not occupied by Tosh's findings. It shows an incoming object on the radar.

"...oh thank God."

"Can you bloody blame me, after we nearly got killed both times we went to Russia?"

"Wait, people went to Russia already? Damn, do I have to get back in the loop," Will muttered.

"Went there and fought an alien apparently. I knew he wasn't Russian," Chase commented.

"I'm going to the hangar," Sam says, turning quickly and heading that way.

"...as much as I'd like to give them privacy, there's a good chance," Will started, trailing off as he lamely headed out the door after her.

"Good chance of?" Tosh asked, following out of curiosity since the meeting was apparently over for now.

"Of continuing this meeting with the running and the punching and the stabbing."

They make it to the hangar just in time to watch the hangar doors open and the Blackbird to navigate itself inside with it's VTOL jets.

Red is warring with black in Sam's hair as she strides over to be right where the gangplank is.

Will stopped a respectful--deferential?--distance behind.

There's a short period of time between touchdown and the gangplank opening. Tereza's standing at the top of the ramp, looking slightly surprised at the number of people here. Of course, there's also a Tereza strapped into one of the seats with prisoner restraints.

Maybe she was prepared for this or maybe she just reacts faster when Tereza is momentarily surprised by the crowd, but the restrained Tereza immediately opens her mouth and shouts for help. "Don't listen to her, she's trying to take my place!"

"Would you shut the fuck up?" Tereza responds, sounding profoundly exasperated.

"Somebody had better start explaining," she growls, her hair finally washing to all red as the flock stabs out from her mind, trying to feel which of them is which.

"Two Terezas? That's... not a coincidence is it..." Tosh commented, disbelief rapidly becoming certainty.

The mind of the Tereza in front of her feels... weird. Like she's slipping off of it. The feeling is familiar, like that time she got choked by a tie.

The restrained Tereza is projecting a lot of anger that is doing a fairly good job of keeping out at least a cursory glance.

"She's some kind of shapeshifter! Get her, now!"