8359/Undercurrents: Coming Down

Undercurrents: Coming Down
Date of Scene:	17 July 2019
Location:	Medical Lab, X-Men Base
Synopsis:	Twigs tells Beast, Rogue, Jubilee and Elixir that the new drug they are investigating is called Hook, is cheaper than heroin and getting popular.
Thanks to:	Beast, Jubilee, Rogue
Cast of Characters:	Cyclops, Rogue, Beast, Jubilee, Elixir
Tinyplot:	Undercurrents

---

Cyclops has posed:
Medical is full and restraining fields are in use, confining people to the immediate space around their hospital beds. Sarah, 15, dark haired and hard looking for a kid, is sitting quietly, lost in thought. She scratches herself periodically and touches the restraining field every couple of minutes as if it might be down suddenly. Nadia, also 15, is sitting on her bed whispering to Twigs on the next one over. Both keep looking at any X-Men in the room darkly. There is another 17 year old girl, Maggie, apparently a pyrokinetic runaway. And Echo and Sable, a 19 year old girlfriend and boyfriend pair. They would not talk about their mutations.

All of the 'guests' are antsy, twitchy and eager to get out. They have been asking all day and tried everything from threats to begging to offering sexual favours to be set loose. Josh has been down to help manage their withdrawal symptoms, but the truth is they have an extremely hard and medically ill-advised cold withdrawal ahead of them if soon if something is not done.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue has been in the room for a little while now with her arms crossed over her stomach, weaing a black teeshirt, blue jeans with a black leather belt and a small silver (X) buckle, leather boots and her leather bomber jacket. She'd been here to listen and chime in where needed, but its when she sees Nadia and this Twigs fella talking dark and secretively that Rogue reacts.

She reacts by unfolding her arms and walking over to Twigs' medical bed. She puts her right booted foot on its end and shoves it across the room to send the bed, and Twigs slamming into the wall on the far side.

She glares at him then.

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy has had a busy day. He comes straight from the danger room. Still in a white lab coat over his hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, safety goggles on his forehead. Finishing a Werther's Original in his mouth, he swallows the last little bit. He walks down the line of patients. "Josh, is there a list of patients' names?"

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee, likewise, came from the Danger Room. She's dressed in a form-fitting black practice suit and a yellow rain jacket, her brass goggles perched atop her head with her hair twisted up and held in place with red chopsticks. She watches the group darkly, remembering what some of them are capable of. And knowing what others have the propensity for, if given enough rope to hang themselves.

Jubilee sighs, looking over at Josh. "They're all on the stuff, aren't they? Hook, I guess they call it?"

Elixir has posed:
Josh looks up from one of the desks when Rogue sends Twig skittering across the room. The field emitters adjust smoothly and he is just as imprisoned where he is now.

"What the fuck?! Are you crazy? You gotta let us out of here!" Twig shouts indignantly. "You can't keep us!"

Josh shakes his head and looks back to his computer. When Hank comes in, Josh holds out a tablet to him and swivels his chair face him and Jubilee who came in behind Hank.

"We've got Sarah and Nadia, our students, you know them. Maggie won't tell me much about herself, except she's 17 and has been living in the Nachesko Building for over a year and from what she's done fiddling around, she's a pyrokinetic. Echo and Sable say they're 19, which fits with their scans. They won't tell me anything else about themselves," Josh explains. "And seriously, they're all gonna be in a hardway soon. They're not /injured/ so all I can do is hold off most of the withdrawal symptoms. But it's not gonna work much longer unless I can either figure out how to re-wire or we put them on something else. Which is apparently a weaning course of treatment. Who knew?" Josh finishes, waving at some reference material he has up on the computer screen.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue doesn't look to the others in the room at the moment, her eyes are squarely on that of Twigs as he gets mouthy after her repositioning of his place in the med lab.

What she does do is refold her arms across her stomach and stares back at him with a cocky attitude-filled glare. She leans forward just a little before speaking. "Sugah. Ah I could fly you out over top've a volcano and drop you right inside'a it, an not a single person would be any wiser t'ward knowin' whatever happened t'your pathetic peddlin' ass. So you'd be wise t'mind your manners around me. If'n you knew what was good for ya."

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy slides himself between Twiggy McStickface and Rogue, and slaps his thick hand on the kid's shoulder. Enough to hirt. Then he grips, and mutters "Come here you. We need to talk."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee watches the exchange, but has more important concerns than getting into a Twig-measuring contest with a skeevy drug dealer. The simple fact is, they CAN keep him here. His continued presence is a testament to that.

"Josh, do we know if any of those opioid withdrawal meds work on this crap?" She asks Josh, as Hank has a chat with Sticky.

Elixir has posed:
"Bullshit, you're not gonna fuck us up. You're not the type," he says, puffing himself up. Which looks ridiculous since he's, well, a treeman. "Josh, get this crazy bitch away from me!"

Josh does not look in Twig's direction. When Hank grips Twig, the young man opens his mouth to say something but it catches. He tries to look defiant, but he is less certain. "You're not gonna do shit, I know who you are," he says. "You're all about us getting along with everyone and all that kumbaya bullshit," he says, but with less conviction.

"Honestly, I dunno, Jubes. I mean, this is all beyond me. I can /do/ stuff, but I don't /know/ a lot. I'm not a doctor yet, you know? So I'm trying to study this stuff, but I just don't know. I don't think anyone does. Anything we try is seriously experimental. And if we fuck up..." he spreads his hands.

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy nods at Twiggy, still gripping the boy firmly, and walking him AWAY from Rogue. His voice remains low, and there's a hint of the beast in it. "First, shut up until I'm done talking. Second, sit your ass down." He's shoved onto a low stool, so that Hank is looking down at him. "Third, you're going to tell me exactly who gave you the drugs, what they were called, when you got them, and where you were. Start talking." Voice raised. "Computer begin audio recording, Twig Alpha." He just barely avoids calling him Twiggy McStickface there."

Rogue has posed:
"Is that so?" Rogue says beyond Beast to Twig. "Look up Carol Danvers and the San Francisco bridge sometime. You might be surprised at what I'm capable'a doin' if I set out t'actually do it." Thats not her proudest moment, but if he were to look it up she'd hope it'd put a little bit of fear into the punk.

She's turning away then and walking away from it for now, letting Beast deal with it while she goes to find a place to lean back against and just try to relax. She's not a fan of these kids anymore, Nadia especially.

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee watches Hank deal with Twiggy McStickface, as Josh works. She asides to him softly. "It might be called "Hook"...I was gonna Google it, but I haven't had the chance yet. It was written on a wall, and Twig said the word while rambling incoherently in the stuff."

Elixir has posed:
Twig is sat down forcibly. He looks at Beast and Rogue, then slumps a bit.

"I don't know what the big deal is," Twigs say petulantly. "If my girl and I wanna do some shit that's our business. I mean, this stuff is cleaner than smack, and that shit's getting expensive now. Hook is way cheaper, it's a cleaner ride, too. It's beautiful," Twig says with a shrug.

"You can get it all over now, it's like the new thing, which you'd know if you knew fucking anything. Lotsa a people deal it. I just get some for me and some people I know, like Nadia. Her friend wanted some so I hooked her up, too."

"Who are you guys? Nadia said you're like, fucking teachers or something? Which is bullshit cause this isn't a fucking school. I want outta here okay? Just whatever, I gotta go."

"You called it, detective," Josh says to Jubilee quietly with a fist bump. He brings up a browser and types in hook heroin. There are a lot of hits on forums from a lot of sites. All pretty new, maybe the last two weeks.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue listens to the kid's response and she just raises her right gloved hand up to her forehead to press forefinger and thumb to her soft skin there. "Ah, god." She gently says, shaking her head as she looks up again. She glances out to the hallway door and then back toward Twig.

"I need t'get outta here. If I don't I'm gonna suck the soul right outta this jackass, then go have someone erase it from my mind." She uncrosses her arms and lets them hang at her sides as she prepares to make for the med lab exit, without Scott or someone in here to stop her, she's not entirely convinced she can stop herself from draining this kid into a deep coma.

Beast has posed:
Henry McCoy folds his arms, letting go of the boy, and looks down the bridge of his nose at Twig. "You're right. I won't kill you. I am going to put you on the next MetroNorth back into the city. But if I ever, ever see you around any of our students again." He pauses, and does his best Ricardo Montalban. "I'll do far worse than kill you. I will you hurt you. And I will wish to go on... hurting you. I shall leave you as you left her, gasping for air on the brink of death in the center of an empty life. Buried alive." Then with a dramatic pause, he grabs Twiggy by the scruff of the neck. "Stop recording." And drags the boy out of the lab. "Signing out your patient, Josh," he coughs, before personally bringing the kid all the way to the train station. Though uh, Al Bundy style, he might have rammed Twig's head and/or shoulders into walls a few times on the way out.

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee frowns, watching Hank leave with Twig, and she shakes her head. "He...didn't need to be let go. He needed to go through this to see what hell it is wreaking on his body, and that of everyone he gives it to," Jubilee comments with a resigned sigh.

Elixir has posed:
Twigs seems to get both that Hank is pretty serious and that if he shuts his mouth he is getting out of there. He stays silent and hangs his head.

"Twigs!! You can't go! Let me out! Let me out!" Nadia screams after him. She starts to cry and look hysterical. "Don't leave me here!"

Twigs does not look in Nadia's direction.

"Yessir," Josh says to Hank. He changes the records they keep.

"Yeah, he'll be high as fuck ten minutes after Hank lets him go," Josh agrees. "He's fucking lucky we didn't hand him over to the cops for stat rape. You sure you don't wanna beat his ass, Rogue?" Josh asks darkly.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue pauses to let Hank lead the Twigs out of the med bay, Beast can really move if he wants to and the boy is gonna be hard pressed to keep up. It does make her smile though. With her gloved hands now stuffed into the pockets of her leather bomber jacket, Rogue looks back over to Josh.

She gives him a grin before she raises one dark eyebrow and just tilts her head a little, following it up with a light shrug of her shoulders. "Guess that chance has gotten away from me." She replies to his question. Looking after the two of them, she adds as she starts to leave. "If I see'im around ever again, I might just accidentally on purpose give him a little skin on skin action."

With her back to the medlab now as she's leaving she calls out over her shoulder. "Who knows! I'm a woman who changes her mind on a whim! Ya can never tell what I'll do next!" And with that she's vanishing around the corner... fingering Twig's watch inside of her right jacket pocket.