The X-Men had managed to break through Selene’s outer barriers and in to where Proteus himself was hiding. It was then that he was taken out, swiftly, and his control over the various minds here and elsewhere ended. The compound was simple enough, and not too many turns later they found Selene herself, still involved in her ritual.
“But how can you focus on me when your home needs so much help?” An image in all of their minds suddenly, of the school and the chaos and slaughter that was happening there. The teams started to disperse immediately, the stopping of Selene and her crystals left to a trusted few.
The others teleported out, landing back on the grounds in the midst of the fight. They weren’t the only ones arriving, though. In the front hallway of the school, the time-travelers that had been taken a year ago were dropping back in place as though no time had passed for them at all. And outside something strange(r) was happening -- black, whirling portals were beginning to appear, and out of each fell a stranger. Portals were opened up near some of the current residents as well, sucking them in.(Everyone’s here! Wait for thread titles and then go wild)
There was blue light on the lawn that illuminated the evening twilight. A flash that engulfed the school, bled through the walls and shone brightly through the windows and then, where there had been an empty space, the names of those on Layla Miller's list appeared on the grass, clustered together as they had been just moments before in the future; they were a tangle of blood and muck, burned hair and skin, with haunted eyes and shivering limbs, still fresh from a battle they had only just fought a few hours ago. They had been patched up a little, the worst of their injuries had bandages slapped on them but with so few healers and so many of the others gravely injured in the fighting if not outright dead they had been a lesser priority; their lives were not in danger and it was time to go.
An alarm went off int he depths of the school and the medical team that had been mobilising, waiting for the return of the lost souls kicked into action; through Ziggy they had known that their missing friends and family would be returning soon but now when, specifically, there had been no date or time, just the word soon. Hours? Days? Weeks? They had not been able to pin it down and so they had taken a shift system putting themselves on standby, waiting, watching, holding their breath as the whole of the school did, time sliding by them and hope sliding with it. They hadn't been idle, they had searched for a way to help, to get tot he future themselves if they could or pull everyone back, but there was little within their power and so they had been forced to wait and make what arrangements they could for when the time came.
When it did they moved fast, team members and the medlabs moved fast; they grabbed first aid kits and shot out of the school, racing across the lawn to get to those that had finally been returned to them.
Those that had been caught up accidentally in the mission, the missing names that had not been on the list, they appeared much in the same place that they had been when they had gone missing. Their memories were gauzy and soft, the future they had been merged with dissolving from their minds, a half-remembered dream; looking at the date would be confusing: Where had the last month gone? Where had they been? What had they been doing in all that time?
In the middle of the visitors sat the device that they had lifted out of the Hive, the Drift device that had connected Helena and Margarethe as though they had been Sentinel pilots, combining their powers into a mix that was far greater than either of them could achieve alone and with Source kicking their powers past even those limits everyone had been brought back by the pair who were now indelibly linked, inexorably joined. It began to melt the moment they materialised, overheated and began to crumple in on itself. Never to be used again. A door to the future that was closing.
Layla Miller had left with them, saying only that she couldn't stay in the future, but she wasn't on the lawn with them. Butterfly was gone, the future was gone, but horrors of what had happened were not; they were stuck to the skin of the group that stood or sat or lay on the grass outside the school, they were written in blood on their faces, bruises on their arms and legs, in fractured bones and concussed heads. That future might never happen in this timeline, now, they had created a separate, parallel timeline, but it would never truly be gone from this world, either. They had brought fragments back with them, inside them. Who knew how long those wounds would take to heal.
Suddenly she had become very interested in the watch on her wrist. It wasn't actually working, it had stopped in the journey to get here and she was debating the use of getting it fixed by someone in the Tunnels or the Junkyard when she got back there but what she was really doing as she looked down at the motionless face was keeping her eyes averted from the goodbyes. Some of them were a bit teary. Some were overly loud. There was a lot of compensating for the shortness of time they had together. Layla didn't want to intrude, she was already doing enough of that, she was the one ripping these people apart, away from their friends, their significant others. Some of them weren't going to like what they found out when they got to 2026.
She had specially requested that Everett Thomas be brought down to the Danger Room, too, and when he arrived she looked up from her very interesting broken watch and walked over. Getting here had been one thing, she had only needed one mutant for that, one mutant that was powerful enough to do it on their own but she had known that once she got to 2018 all the mutants she had known would be eight years weaker, eight years less experienced, and getting herself and all the names on her list back to 2026 would be a feat she would need a little more power for. So she collected together Everett and Margarethe and explained to them: "You two are how we get to the future." What followed was several minutes of explaining and re-explaining what she needed them to do, that she knew they could do it because she had seen them all in the future, so one way or another they had to get there. That probably wasn't that reassuring. It certainly wasn't easy to explain.
They got there in the end, though. Everett duplicated Margarethe's powers and within minutes her hands started to glow blue, his reflecting it. That light grew, enveloping them both until it started to expand out to fill the Danger Room. It was working. They were creating a pocket of time out of time that could be compressed and manipulated and it was working.
Something went wrong, though. Didn't it always?
Layla had seen it as a possibility, of course, she always saw the possibilities, but she had neglected to mention it to Cal and the others. They might have told her no, called the whole thing off, she couldn't have that. The names on her list all disappeared with her in a flash of blue light but so did a percentage of the school who weren't all even in the Danger Room with them. Just like that, blue light filled the school and pulled people away, seemingly at random and with no way to get them back.
Pride was amazing.
New York Pride was way different than in Texas. Not that Benji had worked up enough nerve to go it before. Even when he had kind of, sort of came out to him mom—who wrapped him in a big hug, and kissed his hair a lot, and said she loved him—going to pride was a big step. Parents were one thing, the world was different. But this time, Benji felt good about attending. Billy had invited the whole QSA, which admittedly made the decision easier; he wouldn't be going alone and attempting to blend in, like he was supposed to belong. His friends would surround him, and love, love, love would consume him.
After this terrifying week, and the even more terrifying month, Benji needed to feel something other than fear. And pride was certainly the place.
But at some point, watching the floats go by, and cheering on every color of the rainbow, their little group got split up. And Benji was pushed deeper into the crowds. There was one, horrible moment where being alone caused his hands to sweat—and he forced himself not to shift, not to do it, not here, not here, he couldn't here. But by some kind of pride-induced fate caused him to look to his left, and there standing just as lost as he was, was Nathaniel.
They had all come as one big group, thanks to Billy and Teddy's planning, and so it wasn't a surprise to see him, but Taylor had been attached to his side. And it wasn't like Benji was expecting to get Nathaniel alone. Their conversations had been small, since the attack, but bigger than they had been before memorial day. They were still friendly, starting over in some weird, slightly awkward way. ( Navigating this new friendship wasn't going to be easy, and admittedly, Benji was striking out. At least in his opinion. )[NATHANIEL!]
04:57. Dawn. Light was only just beginning to creep into the sky when the fighting finally stopped.
Some of those that had been fighting off the mutants simply sat down where they ended up, checking themselves over and catching their breath. Others frantically searched the rubble or the grounds for their family, their friends. If they had a handheld they tried it but the network was glitching out badly and most of the school had lost their units in various skirmishes, explosions or escapes.
To say that the school was a mess would be to sugarcoat what they were looking at. Rooms had been destroyed, there was fire and water damage in hallways and classrooms, odd places for fires to break out when mutants weren’t in the mix but here it made perfect sense. There were gouges in the lawn, floorboards and sections of wall missing inside the mansion itself. Then there were the bodies. Not just of those that had attacked the school where those trying to defend themselves had been given no choice but to put their attacker down fully, but bodies of those that had called this place home.
Worse than the damage to the walls, worse than the ruined rugs and the smashed windows, the doors that had been ripped from their hinges or bodily smashed through, worse than the scorches running an arc up the side of the building, was the blood that soaked the grass and stained the wood. Worse than all that were the vacant eyes and rigid limbs. They had lost people. They had lost students and residents. They had lost family, loved ones, pieces of themselves. The attack had been relentless, lasted hours, the injured were everywhere, scattered and disorientated or else running on fumes trying to keep helping, keep saving what they could, and perhaps the full effects of the night wouldn’t be felt until the creeping sun had brought light to the scene around them or until a few days had passed, a few weeks, but there would surely not be a single soul that had not been touched by the ordeal, tainted by it.
Xavier’s might have regained some of their fallen friends under these terrible circumstances but they had lost others.
Ad eternum.
Kiden had always liked going out into the city during holidays. Despite the celebrations everything seemed more relaxed as people weren’t bustling about their lives as much. Instead, they’d take their time a little more, to do things with their families. In the city that meant there was always something going on, and the streets were more packed that normal. It allowed her to slip through the crowds, without the use of her powers, without attracting much notice and that suited her just fine.
It also allowed her to wistfully recall the fleeting, hazy memories associated with her father taking her to a concert in Central Park when she was only a little older than a toddler. It was one of her happiest memories, and that’s pretty much what drew her out into city today. Good times, pleasant memories.
She inhaled deeply, unaware of the aerosol she was bringing into her lungs, and savored the day.~*~
In less time than it took to blink Kiden Nixon was back at Xavier's with her body full of a dosage of Kick that they wouldn't dare experiment with in their own base. An overdose. Her eyes were wide, pupils not dilating properly, as she took her steps in real time towards the building, joining the other mutants that had been caught up in the same trap as her in their assault on the school. Her pulse was rapid and unstable, her heart threatening to hammer its way out of her chest with it’s heaving, spasmodic beat. The telepathic command shoving her towards violence filled her with a sense of anger she didn’t know she was capable of, but it was palpable, overwhelming in earnest and driving her to lash out at a place she considered home. That was all incited by the fact she felt amazing. Powerful. This was a type of high she’d never experienced before, not in her life, and it was a shame that Xavier’s was intent on ruining that. It was also a shame that Kiden had gotten herself clean only for this to happen, to take on a drug more deadly than she’d ever toyed with for what it could do to one’s power and health.
The danger in this whole scenario that was obvious all over the grounds was playing out similarly within Kiden. The drugs in her system heightened her already powerful abilities several degrees, but the most important part was that Kiden was no longer in complete control of them, there was no block or limitations on them. They were unchained. Without boundary. Time began behaving oddly in her vicinity, both with her intention and without. Pockets and tendrils of time rippled, winking in and out of existence in a fevered pitch. People stopped momentarily so they could be overcome by the others on kick; attackers sped up, rapidly overcoming the lawns to get into the building itself. Grass grew and died, leaves changed colour and dropped from trees, and all the while Kiden was pushed further towards the building, up the stairs and into the school itself on a single-minded goal of taking out her anger on Xavier’s.
Kiden had enough independent thought to single in on one person. Maybe she ought to talk to Helena Tucker specifically.
As Kiden engaged her powers again, wrapping herself in a bubble from a faster-time stream, she stepped inside the main hall quicker than anyone outside of it would have been able to comprehend. Except it was unmanageable, the sheer magnitude of her powers on kick were well beyond her comprehension and control. The bubble around her stretched, growing oblong before popping off into several others and causing pockets of time much like a child blowing them with a soapy mixture on a hot summer’s day. They spread out all around her, breaking into adjacent speeds in the time stream and branching out throughout the school without anything short of sheer random luck, or un-luck as the case may be, capturing other occupants in stasis.
In an attempt to regain some lost control, Kiden furled her brow and concentrated on trying to bring everything back together even as her powers fought against it all. Everything was spiraling for her, and her expression became one of confusion as everything seemed to ripple and overcharge around her. Then, in another blink of an eye, Kiden Nixon was overwhelmed by her raging, wild powers and vanished into the time stream entirely, taking several others from the school along with her. All the temporal anomalies ceased thereafter, but the attack on the school continued.
How quickly time had passed at Xavier's for Benji and he still managed to forget about midterms. Not that Benji was a bad student by any means, but the sheer amount his free time he had was used to help build sets for the school musical. And also hang out with people (which was a wholly new experience; Benji didn't have many people to "hang out with" back in Texas).
So while he managed to get homework done, he felt it slide right through his brain onto the paper and not stick when he really needed it. Math and science were easier for him general (numbers just made sense), but things like poetry and Spanish were harder, and always had been. He was certain he sounded terrible during the oral exam this morning to Señor Espinosa (Benji was hopeless with rolling his R's) and he definitely blocked out most of the discussion about sonnets (Benji and rhyme schemes clashed, distressingly so). Benji wished that all his classes could have been fun like Mr. Sinker's.
But now Benji really, really needed to nail his history paper. He could remember dates and years, but all the battles were blending together into one big long battle which was not right at all. And Benji knew staying in his room would only be asking for a distraction—there were so many movies on his laptop just waiting to be devoured. So he shoved all of his notes into his bag and trudged down to the library. Distraction free studying! No movies, no friends, no... Nathaniel; he had been the biggest attention stealer lately, without even knowing it. Benji wasn't going to tell him.
There was a table in the back of the library, perfect and quiet and oh—already occupied. Benji only noticed because of the open book, and the slightly askew chair. He hated to admit that he sometimes couldn't tell when Bebe was nearby unless he was concentrating really hard, and then he felt bad for even thinking about it, and then he wondered if that made him a terrible person (yes, Benji thought, definitely yes) and he had already worked himself up about it by the time he sat in the chair diagonally across from her.
"Hi Bebe," Benji said quietly, scratching the back of his neck, and looking thoroughly put out by his own thoughts. She couldn't possibly know what a horrible person he was, but that still didn't make him feel better. Instead he silently unpacked his textbook and his notes, and with a very miserable sigh, he folded his arms underneath his chin and began to read.
It didn't take long before Benji felt the need to fill the silence, which naturally was the exact opposite function of a library. "It's okay that I'm sitting here, right —" Benji gasped, clasped a hand quickly over his mouth, but it was too late. It definitely wasn't Benji's voice that came out of him.
![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}