Frostbites (Jean)

Participants: Jean Grey/Anna Marie LeBeau
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): Baffin Island, Arctic Circle
Time of Day: Mid-afternoon
Weather: Snowstorm
Summary: An old X-Men distress beacon is activated in the Artic Circle, and available mutants are scrambled to respond. Two taking point are Jean and Rogue, who find a little more than previously expected.

“Ah'm all for a cool summer breeze, but ah prefer 'em a little more gentle,” she shouted over her shoulder, her voice only just loud enough to combat the roar of the Artic wind that buffeted her body. Shuddering against its chill, she clung to her hood with her gloved hands, doing her utmost to stop it being torn away from her ears, both of which had turned a bright shade of pink. Refocussing on the uneven terrain before her, Rogue picked out her footfalls as carefully as she could, though occasionally she found herself sinking into the odd snow drift, and let out frustrated whines of displeasure when she did. “And now ah've got some snow in mah boot...”

Usually, she would have resorted to flight – infact, most scouting missions were better served through taking to the air – but the winds had kicked up a thick layer of freshly-fallen snow, obsucring the ground from above a certain height. With their entire operation focussed on finding an active distress beacon, they needed to be able to see their surroundings, or they'd be out in unfavourable conditions for an unnecessary length of time.

The beacon had been activated only the day prior. An old X-Men device utilising an almost unused frequency had contacted the War Rooms of X-Lantis and the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning, and all available mutants had been scrambled to help analyse the situation. Based on the evidence they could collect, no recent member of the team was unaccounted for – but the X-Family had quite an extensive set of relatives, some who hadn't been seen for years. Just because no-one was obviously absent didn't mean an old ally wasn't lost somewhere about the globe.

Or an old enemy, looking to draw them in to a well-set trap.

Either way, it was decided they had to be certain what had triggered the distress signal, and a response team had been assembled to scout the area: Jean Grey and Anna Marie LeBeau taking point – a joint task force of the Red and Unity branches of the organisation.

Coming to a halt on a small bluff, Rogue squinted into the white haze ahead, and waited for her partner to join her. It took a few moments before the pair were on even footing, once Jean had halted her progress, Anna looked over to her and raised a brow. “Y'know, ah'm flattered you wanted to spend time catchin' up and all, but don't y'think we've got people better designed for this kinda outin'? Ah mean...Bobby don't feel the cold much and Hank's got all that fur...” She shrugged a little, though there was a glint in her eye that betrayed her comment as playful sarcasm: it had been a long time since she and her former team mate had properly worked together; at least without the survival of mutantkind at stake.

Tag: Jean Grey

The wind and snow whipped and beat at the two women as they marched. Jean, a fur-lined parka thoughtfully thrown over her X-uniform, bowed her head further against it. Several locks of auburn hair had been plucked by the gale from her drawn hood and lashed her stinging face. If Jean had had any spare attention left, it would’ve been maddening.

Rogue’s words carried back on the snow-driven winds, and if Jean didn’t have room enough to be annoyed, she could only form a grim smirk at the sarcasm. While her body was bent against the arctic gales, her mind was bent to another job altogether. Jean’s psyche scoured the landscape in all directions, looking for absolutely anything of significance - the barest psionic residue or echo.

By the time Rogue stopped on a rise in the terrain and Jean made it up to her, she grimaced at herself. "If being suited for the mission factored in, they’d have sent Storm," she commented with a sigh, one hand on the rim of her hood to keep it from being yanked down. "Sorry, Rogue. I was doing some recon but came up empty. Here, let me just-"

Jean’s will became a tangible thing with a thought, limning each of them in a fine but unwavering film of telekinetic force like a second skin. At once the wind was a distant thing and the snow crowding around their calves was held at bay by a centimeter. Their body heat immediately began to fill the psionic insulation, making things noticeably more comfortable.

Anna Marie LeBeau

“Yeah... havin' 'Ro around would be pretty great right about now.” Rogue sighed mournfully, lamenting Storm's absence as the wind snatched her hood from her fingers and lashed her hair about her face. Her brow furrowed and her lips pursed, showing her displeasure at the gale; not that it abated. If anthing, it only stung her cheeks with renewed vigour. At her side, Jean offered an apology, causing Anna to raise a brow – initially confused as to what she was sorry for. Then, when a psychic shield shimmered into being about her person, taking the teeth from the wind's bite, she eyed Grey for a long, long moment. “N' you didn't think to do that about fifteen minutes ago, huh?”

“Ah guess s'better late than never,” she muttered after a moment of quiet, wiggling her cold toes in her left boot, relishing the warmth that had started to permeate the rest of her body. Looking back out to the rolling snowrdrifts ahead, Rogue's green gaze searched the horizon for any sign of life. What she expected to find, she wasn't entirely sure: if Jean's telepathic recon hadn't picked anything up, her eyes most certainly wouldn't. Which meant one of two things: whatever had activated the signal no longer was capable of thought, which didn't bode well for their health, or that it had never been capable of thought to begin with.

The mutant wasn't sure she was fond of either eventuality.

Stepping forward off the bluff, Rogue began making her way down its slightly steeper side, moving much more quickly thanks to Jean's aid – the packed snow and ice parting ahead of her feet, lessening its resistance. As she moved, she checked the small, electronic device strapped to her wrist – a pointer created by minds much more technical that hers, that would aid in pinpointing the beacon's location. Unfortunately, it had suggested the pair were close since they'd landed.
“You think these thing are broken?” she asked, shaking her wrist, totally unaware of the slight chasm ahead – the land falling away sharply, its sudden lip covered by a thick layer of snow.

Tag: Jean Grey

"N' you didn't think to do that about fifteen minutes ago, huh?"

"What do you think that apology was for?" Jean countered, but it was distracted. Two age-old friends sniping back and forth at one another as a reflex, more than anything. She could taste the discomfort that her recon report had brought up in Rogue's mind, and it was mirrored in her own. There was a very, very long list of potential reasons for her telepathic scan's findings (or lack thereof). Few of them were pleasant.

Jean cast a glance behind her, falling back on more tangible senses to keep what scope of their surroundings she could since her telepathy wasn't being much use. Whether she was being paranoid or pragmatic, she wasn't entirely sure. She was just looking back forward again at Rogue's question, shaking the gadget they were using to hone in on the beacon, when her eyes snagged on the split in the ice just ahead.

Falling wasn't a hazard that either of them really had to worry about, since they could each fly in their own way. Still, Jean acted on impulse, and a wish to keep Rogue from the fright. Pushing forward, she grabbed Rogue's shoulder while the other X-Man's boot hovered in the open air of the crevice, stopping her at the last. "No," she answered, belatedly, "no, I don't."

Jean shared a look with Rogue, then shrugged and drifted out of the snow to gently float down into the fissure alongside the other woman.

Anna Marie LeBeau

Rogue came to a rather unexpected halt as Jean darted forward, placing a firm and warding hand on her shoulder, stopping the Southerner’s progress toward the chasm. “Wha’?!” Anna-Marie exclaimed, surprise evident, nearly unbalancing with her change in momentum, her footfall altered awkwardly. She blinked, confused at Jean’s action and her ominous response to her earlier question, until she followed her friend’s eyes down to the ground – to the gaping nothingness her boot hovered over. Falling wasn’t too much of an issue for either of the pair, but the sudden plummet would have come as a most unpleasant surprise. Glancing back to Jean, she smiled sheepishly. “Ah, uh, didn’t see that.”

A moment or two of silence stretched between them while Rouge caught her breath – Jean’s quick action had startled it out of her – and they examined the dark crack in the ice ahead. It was more than possible (if not likely, knowing their luck) that the activated beacon was beneath the layers of snow they’d trudged through, lost beneath an Arctic frost shelf. It would most certainly serve to explain their tracker’s suggestion that they were almost on top of their destination, but unable to see it. “Ah guess we’re goin’ in?”

Jean shrugged in response, as if to say ‘What other option is there?” before drifting forth, rising out of the snow and gracefully descending into the fissure. Rogue followed suite, floating at Jean’s side, their powers of flight stopping them from plummeting. The deeper they went, the darker their surroundings got, the only light coming from the ever-more distant gorge above. The sound of the wind was replaced with the groaning and creaking of the ancient ice shelf, bearing an eerie and ghostly quality.

“D’you think there’s a chance Hank’s messed up? Ah can’t tell which is more unlikely, McCoy makin’ a mistake when it comes to technology or someone actually comin’ down here and activating an old distress beacon…”

Jean Grey

"Stranger things have happened than Hank making a mistake," Jean said thoughtfully to herself while the pair of the floated slowly downward. "Not many, though." Even in their fantastical and convoluted lives with superpowers and clones and magic and interstellar war and reality being rewritten twice a year, most of that was a lot easier to grapple with than the thought that Hank was in error with this.

Jean reached out with her mind, trying to read an errant thought or distant psyche... Stillness... She cast out a probing blanket of her telekinesis, using the resistance she felt with her mind to get the vaguest surface read of the chasm beneath them. "Though, you have to admit... This is a pretty good place to activate a distress beacon." If Jean had found herself in the chasm, or below it, or under the ice, or wherever they were headed, she'd have been tempted to do the same.

"Wait--" Jean held out a hand to gesture to Rogue to stop. Her brow creased. She stared down into the gloom brooding under their feet. Her telekinetic ripple had found a clump of things at stark odds with the smooth, craggy ice on all sides. Specifically, something of a particular shape. With a twitch of her focus, a hi-tech torch flickered to life, its light bouncing and rebounding off of the bluish, glacial boundaries of the fissure.

Its light also fell on that chasm's bottom and a clutter of survival supplies arranged intentionally enough to make Jean think of a makeshift camp.

Anna Marie LeBeau

"Stranger things have happened than Hank making a mistake… not many though." Anna-Marie ‘mmmed’ in agreement. Hank McCoy was renowned for his prolific understanding of science and technology. Reality had been re-written more times than Rogue dared to count, and Earth had made contact with more alien species than she’d ever thought possible – but no matter what strangeness they encountered, Beast seemed to be able to make sense of it. Tracking an old beacon was child’s play – beneath him really. If he said one had been activated, there was no reason to doubt that. Unless said beacon was activated beneath a clearly uninhabited glacial ice shelf floating in the Artic Circle.

“Though, you have to admit... This is a pretty good place to activate a distress beacon."

“Ah suppose if you were caught under all this ice, y’might not have much of an option. Just seems strange someone would accidentally find their way down here out the blue. Ain’t exactly a hot tourist spot.” Indeed, it was far from ‘hot’. Sub-zero temperatures and blizzards saw to that. And she doubted it was a place for casual expeditions – even trained explorers would struggle conquering the terrain.

“Wait—“ Jean reached out a hand and gestured for Rogue to stop, which she did almost instantly, hovering at the red-head’s side, brow raised. “You got somethin’?” As if in answer, a light flickered on far below the pair, turned on with the slightest application of Jean’s telekinetic will. Beams of harsh light lit up the fissure, casting a blueish hue over both women, and illuminating a cluttered pile of supplies situated a few meters beneath them.

A camp – though not a very well maintained one.

“Ah guess a closer look wouldn’t hurt…” Taking off again, Rogue descended faster than previously, with more purpose, touching down on the fissure’s beside the light, casting a long shadow. So as not to spook anyone with her arrival, she raised a hand to her mouth – cupping it so as to better direct the sound – and shouted a loud “Hello?”

Other than echoes, she received no response. Turning to Jean, she raised a brow. “Suspiciously quiet or just quiet quiet?” It was hard to tell in their line of work. They could be dealing with lost, scared scientists trapped following the derailment of an ill-fated expedition, or be walking headlong into a trap.

Jean Grey