The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Chapter Fifty Six (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *sneeze* Yep, it’s Minerva’s. InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting! :) ProPhile: *glomp* Morgan: Remember, it’s just another way to say “I love you…” Readers/Reviewers: *G* Thank you thank you thank you! And the ducks send their love…


“Wah!” Jubilee felt her feet go out from under her in the most ungraceful way imaginable. True to her life long training in gymnastics, she was on her feet almost as soon as she hit the ground. “I’m okay!” she announced, without really knowing for sure.
Rogue rolled her eyes. “Fanfuckingtastic. We’re lost.” She stood at a three way intersection of the hallways in the basement’s sublevels. “Shit!”
“He went thataway,” Jubilee breathed, pointing to the left. “I saw him!”
“Yoso tso think you saw a Sasquatch once!” she muttered, heading right.
“Plenty of people have! It’s not unheard of!”
“In Bayville Mall?” Rogue snapped.
“Okay, maybe it was just someone in serious need of a wax job…” She smirked at Rogue’s annoyed glance. “If you can’t laugh in the face of possible death and or dismemberment, when can you laugh?”
“Keep it up and the dismemberment’s comin’ sooner than you think if you keep makin’ jokes liket,” t,” Rogue muttered, brightening as she saw a new puddle. “I bet this Morlock’s leavin’ the water.”
“Eeeeeew…. I really hope that’s actually water then.” Jubilee stepped over the small puddle and caught up to Rogue again easily. “Why the Hell would he be…dripping?”
“Maybe that’s his thing,” Rogue suggested, running in a smooth gait, “maybe he’s really…”
“Moist?” posited Jubilee. “I doubt it. Shit!” She hit the floor again and groaned. “That’s the second fucking puddle of water I’ve slipped in today! If it is that Morlock, I’m kicking his soggy ass!”
“That’s,” Rogue said stiffly, “not water.” The previous darkness of the hallway had been replaced by the glaring yellow of the sodium lights and she could feel her heart hammering with the need to hurry, to make up for the lost time of the black out, but Rogue found herself strangely immobile, looking down at Jubilee. “Are you hurt?”
“Just my pride,” she winced, standing slowly. “What do you mean it’s not…” Jubilee’s eyes went wide and she slowly raised her hands before her. “Oh, holy fuck…” The blood was starting to get tacky on the floor, drying rapidly on the smooth tile. It was coloring dark brown from deep red, having been there for some time. “It’s not mine,” she said unnecessarily. “Do you think…”
Rogue did not respond to her directly, but rather shouted, “FIRESTAR!” She held up a finger for quiet and frowned. “Firestar! We’re from the Institute! We’re friends of Emma’s…”
Jubilee scanned the walls for some sign of a door or panel but found none. It was all smooth, dully gleaming metal. “Damn it,” she muttered. “What do we do now?”
“Shhhhhhh!” Rogue stalked a few feet further down the hall. “Firestar!”
Jubilee moved in the other direction. “All the all the outs in free!”1 She knocked randomly on the wall. “Hello?”
Rogue’s brows shot up as there was an answering knock closer to her end of the hall. “Do that again.”
Jubilee shrugged. “All the all the outs in free! Hello!” she called as she knocked. She turned and watched Rogue as they waited for a response. After a short time, she said, “Maybe it was just an echo of my knock…”
“No, it was a different pattern!”
“Water in the pipes?” she asked, looking at her blood palms. A sudden, albeit faint, knocking sounded near Rogue then. “Or not…”
Rogue leapt at the wall, patting it and pushing, looking for some entry. “Damn it all! This has gotta be the back of something! Can you do anything useful with those sparklies? Like blow shit up?”
“I’m sure whoever’s in there would appreciate being blown up. And yeah, sometimes… I’ve never tried it on a wall though.” She stepped back until she was pressed against the opposite wall. Her eyes traveled up and down the length of the hall, pausing as something caught her eye. “Rogue, your turn. Leg up!” She ignored Rogue’s look of mild impatience and stepped into the makeshift stirrup of her friend’s laced fingers. “Hold still. This is gonna take a second.” The vent was just barely wide enough for her to fit through, if she could get the metal part off and if she shed her coat. After a momentary struggle involving a string of curses in fluent Chinese and spotty French, she had the metal grate off, dropping it on the floor with a clanging sound that reverberated down the hall. Her coat followed suite.
“Hurry up! Your skinny ass is getting heavy!” Rogue grunted, her fingers aching and going numb. “And your fucking boots are ruining my gloves!”
“Can I get some cheese with that whine?” Jubilee mocked, pulling herself into the vent awkwardly. “Damn,” she breathed a moment later, feeling more than a little claustrophobic, “this isn’t good.”
“What’s wrong?” Rogue called. “Can you see in there?”
“Not a damned thing,” she replied, her voice echoing loudly. “Now hush. If I’m not back in ten minutes… You can have my CDs and my boyfriend.”
“I have one of my own,” Rogue said, trying to sound blasé.
“Yeah, but mine’s cuter.” She would have preferred not being face down and head first, but she did not have much of a choice as she commando-crawled forward, following the slight pitch of the duct. It was close, her breath squeezed out of her by the proximity of the metal walls, her body aching with the effort it took not to panic. “I really really hate close spaces,” she muttered to herself, hoping the end of the duct came soon.
“Tell me about it,” a soft voice replied.
“GAH!” Jubilee jerked involuntarily, her movement making her hit her head on the top of the duct and pitch to the right. She had a moment of painful, nauseating vertiginous disorientation before she found herself on her back, the wind knocked out of her lungs, staring woozily at a beautiful red head in an unfortunate yellow and red uniform2
“You found me. Does this mean I’m it?”


1 Hide and seek, anyone? And yes, that IS what you’re supposed to say though it always comes out as some nonsense phrase, lol.
2 Firestar’s old uniform really did suck. Yellow, red, Spandex… *shudder*