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THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES
It's been several weeks since Mona Elswick used some contaminated Kick that altered her mind and made her lose control of her mutant powers, leading to violent storms that threatened to tear downtown Phoenix apart. While disaster was averted by the X-Men (and nearly rekindled by the intervention of malfunctioning sentinels), there are still many unanswered questions.Where had the contaminated Kick come from?
Had it been designed to cause this kind of mayhem?
Is there more out there waiting to fall into the wrong hands?
The local authorities have had little luck in sorting out the matter and the X-Men hit similar dead ends in their initial investigations. While Kitty Pryde, Laura Kinney, and Jono Starsmore had managed to track down the dealer that sold the drug to Elswick, he hadn't been the one that created the dangerous batch and instead put the blame on an unknown man in a 'nice suit' that was keen to sell quick and for cheap. This was later confirmed by Emma Frost, but even the telepath couldn't get any useful information out of the man's mind. Just the face of a man that has otherwise remained a ghost.
With no new information surfacing, Anna Marie LeBeau and Jono Starsmore have made plans for the team to return to the city, go undercover using image inducers to hide their recognizable faces, and try to track this rat down before he disappears for good. This isn't authorized by the local authorities but...what's the worst that could happen?
Starting on Monday (5/26), various members of the team will establish a presence in different clubs and neighborhoods around the city, attempting to learn what they can, purchase Kick (they can test for the contamination using a handy dandy lil' testing kit designed by Kitty Pryde and Manuel de la Rocha!), and track down the dealer that started all this...
HOW THIS WORKS
Complete the form below to describe your character's involvement in the undercover operation!While the mod will respond to forms as they come in to provide some general information about how each character's investigation is going based on randomized rolls, the end result of the overall investigation will not be revealed until the end of the event. The event runs from Monday (5/26) to Wednesday (6/4). Investigations take time! Characters may participate as much or as little as they want.
THE INVESTIGATION CONCLUDES
Following the information gathered by Kurt, Sam, and Manuel, the team is able to locate a derelict warehouse that is the new base of operations for a drug dealer known as Ostanes. According to their intel, the man is a Genoshan scientist that has become paranoid after Mona Elswick's violent manifestation, has surrounded himself with hired protection, and has been carrying around some kind of unknown weapon, so they proceed with caution.The plan is to hit hard and fast, neutralize without killing (if possible), and recover as much of the contaminated Kick/the research used to create it as possible. This is complicated, however, when they arrive and find that the warehouse has some kind of field around it that disrupts the powers of Emma Frost and Manuel de la Rocha, preventing them from reading the minds or emotions of anyone inside or even determining how many people there are. So they'll have to do this the old fashioned way. Kurt Wagner and Anna Marie LeBeau approach first, sneaking around the grounds and the exterior of the building to assess the situation. They're able to spot about twenty men; most are armed and standing guard but others are hard at work producing more of the contaminated drug. Ostanes himself is nowhere to be found...until Kurt is suddenly shot in the back.
The projectile slams into them and liquifies against their back, beginning to spread over them and inflicting sharp pain and then numbness as it overtakes them. They're able to send out an alert to the others before finding themselves helpless on the ground. They recognize this, though. These are the weapons used by the former Magistrates they'd encountered on Genosha.
The alarms go up and the rest of the team rushes in. Paige Guthrie and Scott Summers hurry to the aid of Kurt, entering into combat with Ostanes and several of his associates. Meanwhile, the rest of the team spreads out and takes on the others, many of which are similarly armed. Near the end of the conflict, Jono Starsmore inadvertently damages one of the Kick storage containers and it springs a leak, quickly filling the warehouse with a diluted version of the drug. Everyone hold your breath!! Anyone that breathes in the exposed Kick will experience heightened emotions, mild hallucinations, and a boost to their abilities, making them more powerful but not completely beyond their control. Because the dose is comparatively mild, the symptoms will only last a couple of hours.
Fortunately, Illyana Rasputina thinks quickly and finds a way to disperse the substance quickly, removing the danger.
Eventually, the team overpowers Ostanes and his associates, apprehending them before contacting the authorities. In interrogating Ostanes, the team confirms that the man is from Genosha and was involved in creating the drugs and manipulation methods to control the island's mutants. He created this contaminated variant of Kick to remind the world how dangerous mutants are and, like his fellow former-Magistrates on Genosha, received funding and weaponry to support his efforts from a mysterious benefactor.
FORMS
FORMS: Paige Guthrie
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Jessa St. John, an incoming freshman ASU student! She doesn't quite fit in at the party school that ASU is and is pretty overwhelmed, and is looking for some solace (and maybe a way to relate to her peers).She's never bought drugs before and it shows. It's pretty much just Paige but with a different look and a different name. She's got dark brown hair, big glasses, and is pretty much only ever in oversized t-shirts and jean shorts or overalls.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: College bars and other local college hangouts - sports leagues, pool halls, and the student center.
APPROACH: Try to integrate herself some with students that are on campus and figure out where they get any of their drugs from. Luckily, she can mostly act like herself in terms of having no idea what she's doing when it comes to drugs, and she's hoping that will lead someone to take pity on her. She wants to find out the source of the contaminated Kick, but she's also trying to see if anyone has anecdotes of anyone else seemingly randomly manifesting powers after using it.
SCHEDULE: Pretty involved! Her actual college semester is over and, you know, maybe she signed up to take a summer class or two at ASU. The credits won't transfer since she's enrolled under a fake name, but, you know, she'll learn something!
PARTNER(S): I don't have anyone but if you want lmk!!
OTHER: Will not try Kick 😌 Will ace her classes (Popular Music and Crime Scene Forensics).
RESULTS: Paige Guthrie
She does, however, find one young mutant that's about to try Kick for the first time at a frat party and is able to talk him out of it. He seems a little smitten with her and tries to give her his number, along with the Kick, which tests later conclude wasn't contaminated. He isn't able to give her the name of the dealer, saying that he got it from this scary girl in one of the sororities. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead anywhere.
FORMS: Laura Kinney
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Layla Nixon, a mysterious and damaged young woman looking to make a fresh start in a new city. Says just enough to imply she's running from an abusive family and/or ex. Wants to keep her head down and work, but happy to unwind off-work. If she feels like it would be an asset to out herself as a mutant, she'll demonstrate her healing factor but not her claws.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: Laura picks a couple of clubs/bars in the rougher part of town and takes jobs as a waitress. She's an attractive girl who doesn't mind wearing demeaning clothing so this is probably easy enough to do.
APPROACH: Her strategy for finding her target is to use her mutant senses (particularly smell) to suss out who might have Kick and who might be dealing it. Her cover as a waitress should allow her to hang out at these places and make contact with all sorts of diff people without the need for extensive socializing.
SCHEDULE: Laura doesn't require much sleep, so she's happy to be at this every single evening/night in different locations. Maybe someone can force her to take breaks.
PARTNER(S): No one in mind but lmk!
OTHER: Laura is willing to drink or do some drugs if it'll help people let down their guard around her (her healing factor means it'll metabolize quickly), but for the safety of everyone, she is not doing Kick. She is not so much "enjoying the party" as she's very focused and treating this like an assassination mission without the assassination.
RESULTS: Laura Kinney
FORMS: Kurt Wagner
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Aaron Hall, an unemployed drifter who's new to the city, wandered in from Montana. No family support (implied because of his physical mutation), desperate to make friends. Seems naive and easy to take advantage of. With the image inducer he has a feline appearance, covered in black fur with a long tail. He's couch surfing and kind of a loser, but his older sister has been venmoing him money. He's a big flirt who always turns down people who try to take it further. He claims his mutation is just his appearance, the ability to climb walls, and a severe aversion to sunlight.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: Circling dingy clubs with good music scenes. He's keeping a close eye on Jono and Laura, mostly so he can do a quick evacuation if things go sideways. During the day he can't be found.
APPROACH: Kurt's mostly support, but if he spots someone who seems interesting that he can charm, he'll try to charm some information out of them. He's relying on his sincerity and naivete to get people to trust him or see him as a mark. He'll roll with people taking clear advantage of him, pretending to be manipulated.
SCHEDULE: Kurt's alter ego shows up routinely in the evenings, but disappears in the daytime.
PARTNER(S): Not determined just yet, but let me know if you want him!
OTHER: Kurt will drink and do drugs, but act higher/drunker than he really is so he's not an obvious outlier. He'll (reluctantly) take kick if not doing so would jeopardize the mission or put one of his teammates in danger. He knows it won't be a good time, but his powers aren't going to hurt anyone
except himself.RESULTS: Kurt Wagner
FORMS: Emma Frost
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Lucretia Eastridge, a recently widowed girl just looking for some fun after moving to Phoenix. Her husband was old and rich, and she wasn't particularly attached to him. In fact, she seems to be enjoying her time as a young single woman with a bunch of money! Emma has, of course, chosen a very attractive face for herself, with long, black, pin straight hair, but she's heavier handed with the make-up than she normally is. She is making up stories about her husband (Reginald Eastridge. You know, of the Hampton Eastridges? No?) and everything else in between. Thriving on just lying nonstop.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: High end bars and clubs, where she makes herself a fixture by buying lots of bottles of Dom and being overly generous with tips.
APPROACH: Overly generous and overly friendly, Emma is doing her best to come off as a somewhat vapid party girl with too much money and very little sense. Talks a lot about how she's just looking to have fun, and how Reginald never let her do anything for the year they were married. Her main goal is to trace the source of the contaminated Kick, and she's reading minds constantly trying to get leads (and see if any of the dealers realize they have contaminated Kick). Honestly, she's hoping she can find some intent so she can be mean to someone.
SCHEDULE: Pretty involved - Emma loves having a distraction right now, and between this and preparing for the gala, she's very busy. Most evenings are spent hanging out in Phoenix.
PARTNER(S): I assume she'll overlap with Manny at least one evening, but otherwise she's going it alone!
OTHER: She's going to save some non-contaminated Kick for later, just in case.
RESULTS: Emma Frost
FORMS: Sam Guthrie
UNDERCOVER ALIAS:
samson guthryjulian st. john, a session musician. he... plays the banjo. thankfully, he's not here to play the banjo. he's quiet and watchful, brown-haired, has a western-style shirt and some shiny cowboy bots on, and claims "he" "was" "invited" to "this party."UNDERCOVER LOCATION: a couple of fancy-yet-grungy (in that special rich-person way) afterparty clubs he'd visited as part of lila's entourage. i mean, as her loving boyfriend. he'll also show up to the tail-end of a couple of jessa's frat parties.
APPROACH: his biggest plus here is having been involved in kick deals himself; but on the other hand, you barely have to buy things at these kinds of parties. they simply Exist — the trick is knowing who has them, and not getting the wrong stuff.
SCHEDULE: it's an all-night scenario. this man barely has a job outside of x-manning.
PARTNER(S): he's pushing into paige's space a couple times.
OTHER: this is giving him a slide back into how he was when he and lila were together. 🥲 he'll drink some while making it look like he had more than he really did and, yes, do drugs, but please don't tell paige. (he's done kick before so he's not interested in doing it for academic reasons.)
RESULTS: Sam Guthrie
FORMS: Illyana Rapsutin
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Téa Blandino, an ambiguously European university student who is taking a gap year to backpack across the United States.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: Trendy cocktail bars hosting trivia nights/singles events/mixers etc and then house parties if she can get invited to them.
APPROACH: Unfortunately Illyana is mysterious and intriguing and fun to party with despite being deeply weird, so she's just out to have a good time and ingratiate herself to people. Since she's pretending to be hostel-surfing/backpacking, she also keeps accepting random people's invitations to sleep on their sofas, meet them in Sedona, host them when they visit France in the fall, etc.
SCHEDULE: She's at it 24/7 but she'll dip out of whatever she's doing to play Teleportation Taxi for everyone else too.
PARTNER(S): Happy to team up with anyone who won't cramp her style too much.
OTHER: Won't do Kick, but might end up in Sedona.
RESULTS: Illyana Rapsutin
FORMS: Manuel de la Rocha
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Agustín Ruiz Serrano, a young Spanish tourist with middling English skills and deep pockets that's just looking to have a good time. He's spending the whole summer in the United States; isn't that exciting! He's personable and eager to go along with anything, especially if it's novel, but is obviously out of his element/out of touch and relying on the good will of strangers. A bit of an airhead party boy. He's a good-looking guy with tidy dark hair and green eyes. Manuel can't fully drop his accent when speaking English so he's leaning into it instead; for anyone in the know, he is using a regionally specific Spanish accent.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: High end nightclubs.
APPROACH: Manuel's approach is to make himself someone that's easy to bring into a fold and find people that are already looking for Kick/already know where to get Kick and just be along for the ride. He'll be playing up the language barrier so people are willing to drop their guard in front of him or say things in front of him they might not otherwise say. Nothing to worry about here!
SCHEDULE: Manuel has other responsibilities, so this is a side project for the evenings/nights. That said, if he feels like he's found a promising group or lead, he'll stay out as late as he needs to and just suffer the next day.
PARTNER(S): Manuel will meet up with Emma (and possibly others) now and then, but is otherwise content to drift through this alone.
OTHER: Will indulge in light drinking/substance use if he needs to, but will otherwise be faking his way through. He will not do Kick under any circumstances; he'd rather compromise the investigation than his brain.
RESULTS: Manuel de la Rocha
FORMS: Rogue
UNDERCOVER ALIAS: Melodie Waterman, just a down-on-her-luck Southern girl whose car broke down as she was crossing the country from Georgia to LA, where she had a modelling contract. It was going to be her big break! Sadly, her luck ran out on a detour to the Grand Canyon (she wanted to see it to send pictures to her little sister!), and in Arizona she remains, trying to get enough money to get her car back. For those interested, she has an impound lot ticket, fake ID, and email chain replicated from a modelling agency. No one asks about any of this the whole time she is here, which is actually kind of sad to Rogue.
Rogue's enjoying being just a cute girl for a little. She has blonde hair streaked with light pink, and though she's wearing her normal amount of clothing underneath (thin, so if someone touches her it's not obvious), her image inducer finds her in more revealing clothes than she normally wears in public. She wouldn't show off her full powers, but she will exhibit super-strength as a mutation if this gets her where she needs to be. Literally picking dudes up is a real crowd favorite, anyway.
UNDERCOVER LOCATION: Nightclubs. Dingy bars. Parties. People's houses.
APPROACH: Her first night here is her 'first night in town', and she'll try to develop things organically from there; go to strangers in clubs and try to target down and out looking mutants, be their friend, look very pretty and a little desperate. They're doing her a favor by letting her stay on their couches. Which she does, happily. She likely gets a job after the first few days as a bartender to put her in a position to listen to everyone else's stories. She wants to know both where Kick is coming from around here, and also the mutant scene, to see if mutants have been being sought out or hurt in any other ways. That could be a different kind of lead.
SCHEDULE: Extremely involved. All in. She's at the clubs at night and breaking into friend groups during the day, though she will disappear to check on her team.
PARTNER(S): Largely solo, though she does probably keep orbiting to where Remy is. To keep an eye on him and so someone knows if she's about to get murdered. Of course.
OTHER: She's pretty scared of what would happen if she tried Kick, so Rogue won't do that. She'll drink and do some drugs, but never as much as she looks like she's doing.
RESULTS: Rogue
THE INVESTIGATION
THE AFTERMATH
This section will be locked until 6/4.
THE AFTERMATH: Nightcrawler (open++)
"Ah! Hah, twe—twenty," Kurt hisses, trusting the earpiece. "Armed..!" He digs his nails into the ground as they approach. Another attempt to teleport when he ends up merely a few inches forward and it burns. He curls in on himself, tail wrapped around his body, waiting for the worst.
THE AFTERMATH: Nightcrawler & Rogue
THE AFTERMATH: Scott & Jono
He hadn't lost control or anything. He'd just fucked up. Unleashed too much of the boundless energy inside him without recognizing what was around him or what would happen. Something nearby had exploded and sent him tumbling and the air had been filled with noxious mist. The contaminated Kick. With no lungs to breathe the drug in and no body to process it, it hadn't had an impact on him. But it'd had an impact on the others. Everything had gotten real bloody weird real bloody fast and then Summers had been in his face and things had gotten heated. He'd stormed off.
He still feels some sort of way about it. Angry at Scott for getting on his case when this shit just happens in a fight. Angry at the situation and that others had been the collateral damage. Angry at himself for...everything. Nothing. Whatever. But he hadn't been able to settle once they'd returned and maybe that's why he's here, in the Danger Room in the early hours of the morning, wrecking imaginary sentinels and practicing everything but the finesse that he actually needs to be honing.
The irony doesn't occur to him; he's just blowing off steam. The energy surging around him, unrestrained and bright and pulsing with heat, almost obscures him as another sentinel drops and the scenario ends, plunging the room into silence and stillness.
OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
VOLUNTEERS
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Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
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scott is keeping an eye on things at home 😌 everyone have fun pretending
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Warren can't pass as someone who goes to normal nightclubs (and he's technically not an X-man) so he'll be at the school doing teacher things.
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Manuel isn't especially keen on this plan but he has the skillset for it, so he'll make the time. He'll be hanging around higher end establishments and keeping his empathic senses on alert to try to pin down folks that're looking to buy or looking to sell so he can make nice, play the up for anything party boy with money to burn, and get himself an in.
I should do forms or something.
But if anyone would like a scene, hmu~
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
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Illyana opened a stepping disc to outer space when the Kick container exploded and airlock vented the room. She did also breathe some of the Kick in and she had Emma knock her tf out for the duration of the high, so she was fine. After they got back home she slept for like 24 hours straight.
Remy helped out in the fight, did not inhale the Kick, and then stood behind Rogue nodding emphatically while she yelled at Scott for yelling at Jono.
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Kurt was incapacitated during the fight after that projectile neutralized him, and he did inhale some of the kick. Him being restrained was a blessing in disguise because all he could do was teleport rapidly and randomly in bursts of 1-2 feet. If anyone was holding onto him... they came along for the ride and he's so sorry, that was probably unpleasant. He thought he heard angels speaking to him and giving him commands (which might have just been Emma or Xavier trying to calm him down).
Warren managed not to inhale anything and tried to use his wings to clear the area before Illyana came up with a more permanent solution. He helped during the fight, and used his healing blood for the injured. Later he'll be asking if they can experiment if his blood can lessen or shorten the effects of this contaminated kick.
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Emma inhaled some of the Kick "on accident," curious to see if it would help manifest her latent telekinesis. It did not. Her powers DID pack more of a punch, though, to the point where when she knocked out Illyana, it was not as gentle as she'd normally be. Oops! It's fine.
Paige also got dosed, but against her will :( Focused on helping Kurt/keeping him protected. Her suped up powers seemed to make her turn fully into whatever she husked into, not just her outer skin layer, meaning she didn't need to breathe after her first huff of Kick. Nice? Or something.
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Laura avoided the Kick (she can go several minutes without breathing 😌) and focused on taking down bad guys while chaos was happening around her