Too Little, Too Late

Participants: Jean Grey and Ororo Munroe
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): Western Indian coastal town
Time of Day: Mid-afternoon, local
Weather: Spotty
Summary: The two leaders of a particular branch of the X-Men arrive in a disaster area to offer their unique form of aid.

<You couldn't have known, Ororo. No one could have.>

The reassurances were probably unhelpful, pressed gently into the very outermost edges of Storm's psyche. The other X-Man knew the truth in Jean's telepathic words. That didn't make it easier to swallow. Jean felt a kind of guilt and regret like pangs in her chest, stepping off of the X-Jet and into the devastated coastal town on the Indian peninsula. They'd arrived an hour after the earthquake and consequent tsunami did.

Jean knew that Ororo was thinking along similar lines to herself. Though Storm would've managed it far easier and with more grace, either of the mutants would've been able to drastically lessen the destruction with their abilities, if they'd only been there. While Ororo was on high, marshaling the atmosphere where and how she needed it. Jean and Storm had such a refined and long-standing psychic bond, though, that she could feel her best friend's frustration and pain even at a distance.

<This definitely wasn't natural, otherwise things would've been different. We'll get to the bottom of this... After we deal with the fallout.>

She shifted the several tons of debris her will was keeping suspended midair. Where they had fallen in the destruction had cut off a very vital route for expedient transport of supplies, injured people and resources.

<You couldn't have known, Ororo. No one could have.>

Jean’s gentle reassurances were pressed to the outer edges Ororo’s bruised psyche like soothing balm to a wound. There was a comforting familiarity to the telepath’s soft, mental utterances, and though they weren’t stood at each other’s side, the red-head’s broadcast thoughts wrapped the Storm-Caller in a caring, psychic embrace. But it was not enough to ease the frown that creased her brow, nor totally banish the dark clouds of frustration that had gathered in her sub-conscious.

Ororo Munroe understood the Earth in a way that few could; the weather was a part of her, tied to her very being, leashed to every thought and feeling. She was finely attuned to the bio-sphere, and she felt even the slightest shift in ambient atmospheric conditions. Earthquakes, tsunamis…they didn’t exist in a vacuum. Both cause and effect should have alerted her to their coming. And yet she had foreseen nothing.

The West Indian coastline had been ravaged because of it.

Borne aloft on air currents high above the town worst hit, Ororo extended her hands, fingers splayed, marshalling the winds. Strong gusts swept through the skies, eddying and coiling through risen dust, dispersing charged particles before they had chance to form angry thunderstorms. Only once the dust had cleared did the air about her cool, and soft waves of cirrus cloud rolled across the sky, catching the sun’s rays, taking the edge off the unrelenting heat beating down upon survivors without shelter.

She descended soon after, eyeing the destruction below, seeking sites that needed the mutants’ immediate attention. Too many did.

Ororo finally landed at Jean’s side, as heavy rubble was shifted from a pot-holed road, suspended by the psychic’s will alone. “The skies are clear.” Looking over her shoulder, back into the township, her eyes found the first of many collapsed buildings. “I will begin searching the wreckage...” If there was anything to find, other than suffering and loss, she was sure Jean would direct her accordingly.

Jean Grey

To a telepath, sites of such unexpected destruction and loss were their own kind of battlefield. She didn't want to begin to imagine the kind of nightmares and coronas of foul energy were being dumped into the Astral Plane from this tragedy. Jean was busy enough wading through the psionic residue thick in the air like poison, trying to drain her vitality and encourage her to instinctively shield her mind.

Jean couldn't, though. Too much good could come of her using her telepathy to even consider a course so selfish. Fear, grief, shock and pain scraped through her psyche. Jean ignored it all. The worst were the faint echoes of final thoughts from those lives that the unnatural disaster had stolen. Ororo's mind, brooding and tormented as it was, was a relief on Jean's burden when the goddess landed beside her.

"I'll help-" Jean said, placing the cleared wreckage gently out of the way with a thought. "Let's put our heads together." She turned to Ororo and moved close, taking her friends's hands in her own. Jean bowed until her forehead and Storm's connected. Psionic energy and tines of electricity popped together in the air around them. Wind pulsed, raising auburn and platinum hair in twin halos.

Binding their wills together, Jean and Ororo became symbiotic for the next few minutes. Though they stood in the same spot, their influence was plain. Jean found minds, conscious or not, in need of aid; Ororo wound ropes of fresh air through the wreckage to sustain them, then together Jean's telekinesis and Storm's commanding of the wind gently sifted through the detritus, unearthing and freeing the trapped.

Gentle telepathic encouragement from rescuers had hands there and ready to receive them. Jean soothed pain, brought peace and... When the two X-Men opened their eyes, a full hour had elapsed.

Ororo Munroe

Without needing even a gesture or backward glance, Jean carefully shifted the rubble she’d lifted to one side, not losing her focus for a second. Despite the weight of the debris, it barely made a sound as she placed it into a neat pile, away from the wreckage, an incredible showcase of her mental control. ‘I’ll help,’ she began, before stepping toward Ororo, offering her hands to the other mutant. ‘Let’s put our heads together.’ Offering her palms, open, to the red-head, Storm let her friend take her fingers in her own, binding them together physically, just as they were about to be mentally.

“Be careful…” Ororo cautioned softly. She knew well that the site of a disaster was dangerous for a telepath – opening one’s mind to pain, fear and suffering risked a great deal of mental scarring, scars that never quite healed as well as physical ones. Her warning spoken – out of love for the other than mutant, rather than doubt of her emotional strength – Ororo bowed her head until it rested against Jean’s, and her eyes fluttered closed, giving over her will to the psychic.

The wind rose about them, and sparks of lightning danced about invisible orbs of psionic energy. Their hair rose as their minds melded, entwining red and platinum strands. All the while, their gifts worked in perfect unison, Jean pinpointing the location of those trapped, while eddying winds shifted and cleared detritus. The trust between the pair was unparalleled, for they felt everything the other did, open enough with each other to connect as one being – or their attempts would have been for naught.

When Jean finally released the Wind-rider’s hands, almost an hour had passed, but the effects were clear. With a brief glance at their surroundings, noting first-aiders and rescue crews dealing with many of the injured, Ororo instead focused on her best friend. Raising her fingers, she softly cupped Grey’s cheeks, tilting her head upward so that their eyes met. “Are you alright?” Storm truly believed she was, but it would be careless not to be certain, and the weather Goddess was far from careless.

Jean Grey