Beyond Evolution

The crack in the barrier had reverberated across worlds. It sent aftershocks through the hell dimensions, rattling chains and shaking loose stones. Most of them ignored it, certain their isolation would protect them from harm even if the human world fell. Some placed bets on who would be left standing when it was all over. Some prepared to fight for their own survival if the Elder Gods came for them next. But some had been watching and waiting, and now they moved.

N'kar the Betrayer appeared on the school grounds from a portal of fire, his horned head wreathed in flames. He stood a head and shoulders taller than the tallest man, his body broad and covered in skin that looked more like cracked stone, his hands massive and clawed. Not just a demon, but a hell lord, a wielder of powerful dark magic. Behind him were his priestesses, twelve of them, once human but now twisted by decades of dark magic and service to a hell dimension. They had no real loyalty to the Elder Gods, but N'kar craved destruction, and there would never be worse destruction than the Elder Gods set loose on the world. They needed to be a part of it.

The grounds of the school were already torn apart, turned-up earth slick with blood. Smoke and dust rose from parts of the building that had been reduced to rubble in an instant. The ground was littered with bodies -- most of them Cthon's human followers, which was of no concern to the Elder God himself, they had always been expendable. A means to an end to keep Earth's fighters busy, nothing more. Their numbers had dwindled to a pitiful few, and Yog-Sothoth's monsters were spawning slower and dying faster. But that didn't mean the tide was turning in the school's favor. The Elder Gods had never truly needed any help from lesser creatures.

At least no more of them had come through the opening in the barrier. There were more still waiting, gnashing teeth and snarling in the darkness on the other side, but their massive bodies crushed against the barrier and couldn't fit through. The crack wasn't big enough for them yet.

(Open to fighters!)

We're putting the same headings here as in the OOC post, to keep everything organized. At the start of the trip, everything is normal! But once you step over the threshold to the park, those that Arcade has chosen are transported to Murderworld, a decrepit and evil-feeling place. There are screens all around, which immediately relay a message that there are four keys hidden throughout the park. The fifth is hidden somewhere~, but seeing as the Funhouse in the center of the park has four locks on it, it's a safe assumption that the fifth key is inside.

There are killer clowns wandering through the park, looking for some murder and mayhem. There is also a time limit and countdown, so there's no time to all stick together to move through the park. If you step on a trap square, you are transported immediately into said trap. All traps once activated are aired on the same screens, so that everyone can see what's happening to everyone else. Handhelds work to an extent, and all powers are shut off.

Once the final key is found, your characters will be transported back to the school, not the original theme park. No time has passed for all normal characters.

Time is paused this weekend for this! Enjoy!

We are trying this week to keep tags at a max of 150-175 words! Obviously do what you want, but that's the dare this week!


10/14 - 10/16: Everyone's worst fears have come to life and are roaming around the school. They can be killed, but do keep coming back to life.

10/18: X-Men locate the thief that got away from Colin.


11/5/22 - 11/11/22
11/1/22 - 11/4/22

Rapid fire for this weekend! Eva and Violet go on at 8 at the club, and when people from Xavier's try to leave they are scanned and ticketed if they aren't registered. Have fun with it -- people can run away, get arrested, etc etc. See headers below!

A portal opened up mid-day on the lawn and multiple of these things came out. They are extremely dangerous (and very hard to kill!). They fire poisoned spikes, as well as their tentacles shooting fire. Once they're down to one left, it jumps back through the portal (which stays open during the fight), which closes right away.

WHO: Riley WALKER (AURA) & Holly Black (ASTICA)
WHERE/WHEN: Some hole in the wall restaurant /
WHAT: Just a chat about the Source of all the friction.

( Your weirdness meter is totally skewed somewhere weird. )

( EXT. CLEARING - DAY )

(Open to the one with the beeping collar - you know who you are! - and then to everybody on the island.)

Halloween! At precisely 8:00 PM everyone turns into their costumes. You can interpret this how you want: powers or no powers, knowledge of the school or thinking they're transported from an entirely different world, evil or good, etc etc! Everything will go back to normal at the stroke of midnight, and any injuries sustained will reverse themselves. The gym and part of the grounds have been converted to a haunted house/tunnel/yard/whatever, which will also turn into an actually haunted place.

Threads can be normal-sized or RFS thanks to some special requests! Feel free to tag with a subject of RF if you want! OR DON'T, IT'S A FREE COUNTRY!

WHO: Holly Black (ASTICA) & Cleo Morsi (ASP).
WHERE/WHEN: Limbo, Yana's Castle / October 25th, during the Creepers' Ball.
WHAT: Well.

( It was a hard no because it was too riddled with complications. )

((ooc: Backdated to a few hours after Omari found Cleo.))

The sun had set by the time Cleo and Omari had returned from the city. If she was going to give in to his wishes - she wasn’t quite ready to admit that his wishes mirrored her own just yet - then she was determined to at least get that meal out of him first. The greasy dive they’d found themselves in was far from a five star dining experience but the cheesy fries had been amazing. She’d have to take Riley there. If Riley was well enough. If Riley was still speaking to her. And now she was back at the school. This fucking school that had sunk its claws into her and wouldn’t let her go.

It was extraordinary, really, how much progress had been made on repairing the damage wrought by Selene and her tribe of death gods. The people here knew what they were doing. Because they were practiced at it, she noted to herself with a trace of bitterness. This had happened before and would happen again. There were still signs of battle though, the odd patch of the grounds still cordoned off, scorch marks on the lawn which hadn’t been treated yet, a classroom inside which remained inaccessible. Scars. Cleo felt a sickly, churning feeling in her stomach as her gaze paused on such things, reminded that she hadn’t been on the side of the angels during the conflict. She didn’t get the luxury of feeling like an innocent victim, persecuted by the big bads, couldn’t say that these scars were her own. Selene had made Cleo part of the problem and now she was returning to the scene of the crime.

The boxes of her stuff still sat there untouched in the new room she shared with Clarissa, as if those in charge of such things were confident she’d be back sooner or later. They’d known her better than she knew herself, clearly. Clarissa wasn’t around so, once Cleo had bid goodnight to Omari and found it in herself to awkwardly thank him, she perched on the edge of her bed, just as she’d done before making the decision to run. She felt silly. Embarrassed. Guilty. Angry.

Part of her wanted to just curl up in her bed and finally get a good night’s rest. She’d been sleeping on a couch with springs stabbing through the threadbare fabric to brand themselves into her back every night since she’d left. It hadn’t done her spine much good. Dr. McCoy was probably going to give her a disappointed look, wasn’t he? Or maybe not. He should understand as well as anyone how she’d been feeling. She supposed it didn’t matter so long as he made her better so she could dance again. Her soul was screaming to get back into the studio with Mr. Sheppard. Being able to dance, to lose herself in the beat and the rhythm, that was the only way she was going to feel freedom once more. It was the only way she could be liberated.

But she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t visit the medlabs or the dance studio, couldn’t unpack or do anything else until she’d seen Holly. She didn’t want to, except she did, but she didn’t. There was no option though. Facing her was the right thing to do. The only thing. So she peeled herself uncomfortably from her seat and slipped out into the halls, padding along quietly with head held down until she reached Holly’s door. Her friend would be back by this time of night, she was sure, back from trawling the streets to find her sorry ass. Cleo almost passed by Holly’s room entirely, courage failing her, but she reached out a hand to press against the wall beside her and hold herself in place. If she was going to stay here then she had to confront this. It was the only way to move on. With a confidence not felt in her heart, Cleo knocked on the door and, when it opened, hung back, staring at the floor. “Hey. I’m back.”

[ HOLLY ]

Once the gods were done with the school, they could move onto other, easier targets. Gorge themselves on the souls of the millions of citizens of New York and further until Selene had finished her ascension and called them all back to where they’d been pulled from.

But.

Until then, the school proved to be a fertile hunting ground, most of the gods able to feed off the chaos and fear just as much as the souls being reaped.

Back at Selene’s island, things were going just as well. The teams seemed evenly matched, and she was confident that those fighting for her would prevail. They were, at the very least, very capable of keeping the teams from venturing further and finding her or the dagger. As long as that was accomplished, nothing else mattered.

(Continued fight threads for both the school and Utopia scenes -- please look to thread headers for which one your char belongs in!)

Reef wasn’t as careful as he should have been. With his mutation, what he could do — what he could do to those around him — it was only right that he learned to stay out of the way, to cover himself up, to keep as far from human contact as possible. It could have been worse. There were people whose mutations killed with just a touch. But his invaded their minds, forced them to see things they hadn’t asked to see, and that needed to be afforded the right amount of respect and care. He was a ‘member’ (inasmuch as one could be to a club that had no official roster) of the No Glove group, but even with them he tended to stay on the outskirts. Despite his past, it had never fully sunken in for him that he needed to be more aware of things. Maybe it was because of, rather than in spite of, though. He was used to people coming up and taking, used to his power being constantly on being a good thing. He simply didn’t have the everyday training that others took upon themselves, with the gloves, the long sleeves, the constant ducking and dodging of the most basic encounters.

It was because of all that that Reef didn’t see the body coming for him, or anticipate the collision that was about to happen. He was wearing a hoodie, at least, but his hands were bare. And when the other person hit him, they went up reflexively to the other person’s shoulders, brushing their arms as they did so to try and steady them both.

Good intentions and the road to hell.

Purple crystals. That was what the brush showed. Chunks of translucent, purple rock, scattered over a work surface. A white hand reaching out to them, feminine but strong. A shaking, rumbling. The feeling of sudden and intense dread.

And then the vision was gone and they were back in the hallway with Reef, who was busy studying their face, trying to ascertain if they were okay or not.
(Open to anyone!)

It was Halloween and it seemed just about everyone was getting into the spirit of the occasion here at the school. Cleo wasn't among them though. She wasn't squealing her way through the haunted maze, wasn't wearing a cheap costume and wasn't planning on attending any of the parties. It wasn't that she was a killjoy. She was just new here. The last few days had been spent readjusting, mostly sticking to her room as she got used to the sudden change of circumstances in her life since Drake and his knives had swooped in to snatch her from the dangerous situation which had descended upon her. These people were strangers, and she hadn't had time to plan things like Halloween costumes. She should have been on stage tonight, wearing something stupid and spooky themed, albeit briefly. It felt odd that she wasn't there, counter-intuitive to be wandering the cobweb-decorated halls of a mansion instead of earning her coin. For her, Halloween only served to add to the surreality of the last week.

She just wasn't in the mood for it. She felt strange. What happened the other day in the alley had lingered in a way she wasn't used to. Cleo shrugged off hardship. It was expected and she weathered it when it came along. This was different though. Every time she let her guard down, images of that night wafted across her mind's eye and she was straight back to feeling small and vulnerable. That wasn't who she was. Cleo was tough, she was in control and independent and smart enough to slither her way past trouble to a more advantageous position. That was how she saw herself. But now she wasn't so sure. She hated that some nobody had made her feel that way. She hated that she blamed herself for getting into that situation in the first place. She hated all of it.

And this afternoon she was winding her way around a fucking mansion, a mansion she actually lived in now. Insane. She had her own bed and a creepy psychic roommate and she'd soon be picking up her education where she left off. None of this was what she'd wanted, not at all. Life had been hard but it had been hers. This? This wasn't hers.

But she recognised that she'd have to be an idiot to walk away from it. No rent, free meals, the lap of luxury. Who knew how long she'd choose to stay here (and it was her choice, she kept reminding herself) but for now, it would be ridiculous to complain about the turn life had taken. She should only be grateful to Drake for making this happen. And she was. She just wished she didn't feel so uncomfortable.

Cleo sighed as she passed through a doorway, eyeing the contents of the large room she'd happened upon. There were couches, chairs, a beanbag. A big TV, books and magazines, even board games. She peered down at the cellphone-ish device the administration had given her, tilting it as she studied the map. This was one of the rec rooms, apparently. A room dedicated to nothing more than fun, relaxation, whiling away the hours doing whatever. Feet carrying her aimlessly inside, she pulled back the hood of her hoodie to shake her hair free and rested on her forearms against the back of a couch. She eyed the room which was bigger than her entire apartment had been and laughed, shaking her head. "This is fucked up."

[ HOLLY ]

WHO: Holly Black (ASTICA) & Riley Walker (AURA).
WHERE/WHEN: Riley’s dorm / Backdated to September 16th-ish.
WHAT: Holly and Riley both have some shit to work through, and there’s no one else either of them would trust to go to.

( I killed you, right? )

Surprising absolutely no one, the reason they needed this device so badly wasn't information that was being shared, only that Helena and Margarethe needed it if they were going to be sending back the people that had come from the past to make all of this possible. A followed B followed C: Without the device there was no way to make sure they got back to their own time, if they didn't get back to their own time to tell those they had left behind what needed to be done to avert this horrific future then it would all happen again and they would end up right back here in this same place, the cycle would go on and on, there would be no end to the destruction and the death that had prevailed over their lives for so long. Most of them could pick and pinpoint when the road to all this had started and by now the Visitors had heard the story but that wasn't the most important part of it. Not yet. Letting them see all this, the consequences, that was the point. The details would come. Butterfly would make sure of that, if they had come this far she was never going to leave something like that to chance.

They were in a different section of the Hive to the team with the bomb but they could hear the fighting where they were, too. Outside the war was raging and the tinny voices of the Sentinels echoed through the walls, the booming of powers and explosives going off made the ground shift but they were still undetected, they still had a clear shot to get to where the device was locked away. Synch's device. Whatever it was.

Quickly, quietly, they moved as a pack, they kept the Visitors safe in the middle of them, still protecting them because they were precious.

A code had been given to them to tell them where the device was being kept, so they had to get into the basement levels of the Hive, where their experimental tech was kept. Every level looked the same as they went down and they got a long way before they met any resistance. When they did, though, it was heavy. There was a huge bay of Gen IVs in production, some of them half finished, some of them fully functional, but the moment the large squad of mutants made it through the doors, the labs they needed to get to on the other side of the bay, the Sentinels lit up, swivelled to look at them, dozens of pairs of evil eyes fixed on them.

ALERT. INTRUDERS. ALERT. ALL UNITS ENGAGE. INTRUDERS. ALERT. ALERT.

Red lighting swallowed the bay, bathing it as though in blood, then absolute Hell broke loose.

[ RETRIEVAL TEAM: OPEN TO ABBEY VISITORS & GENOSHA VISITORS, X-MEN SIGMA & X-MEN OMEGA ]

WHO: Holly Black 2026 (ASTICA) & Riley Walker 2018 (AURA).
WHERE/WHEN: Genosha | 2026, the day the visitors arrived.
WHAT: Unsurprisingly, Holly has feelings with the return of the best friend she killed.

( Holly didn’t believe in that fucking shit, but it was a miracle because what else could it be, even if it seemed to shake her to the very core? )

WHO: Holly Black (ASTICA) & Riley Walker (AURA).
WHERE/WHEN: Kitchens | Backdated to like a week before Anniversay (May 15thish)
WHAT: Just a cute moment between friends. No, seriously.

( “What I’m surprised about is that you’ve become a homemaker.” )

Over a densely populated area of Westchester County, far from the facility the X-Men had infiltrated but dangerously close to the school, a contingency plan was being put into play. The attack on the facility hadn’t been entirely unexpected; the program’s founders had considered everything, every worst case scenario they could come up with, and they had known that if an attack came it would come from Charles Xavier and his X-Men. The school had enjoyed a relative degree of safety so far, it was simply too public to ever be targeted, but there were plans in place to deal with it and the teams it housed if they ever directly threatened the program. And now they had. A single team could be dealt with at the site along with their mutant subjects, but there had never been just one team at Xavier’s -- the arrival of another highly-trained team could turn the tide in their favor, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Nobody else could be allowed to leave the school grounds.

A direct attack on the school was still out of the question, but there were other ways.

Downtown, the clouds of aerosolized Kick were almost invisible as they drifted through the city. People breathed them in without even knowing. It only took a moment for the mutants in the crowd to begin feeling its effects, like amphetamines coursing through their veins, their abilities heightened beyond what they’d ever been capable of before. The slightest telepathic push was enough to tip them over into violence. From the safety of a government helicopter circling overhead, a psion gave them that push and more. Xavier’s. It was all they could think about, getting to the school and wreaking havoc, every other impulse overpowered by that one need. Once it was in their heads, there was no forgetting it. One by one they turned, on foot, in the air, teleporting, whatever would get them to the school fastest.

Alarms sounded as the mob of people reached the school’s front gate and tore through it, shrugging off whatever damage the security systems were able to do along the way. They didn’t feel the pain, or care about it. All they cared about was reaching the people inside and tearing them to pieces.

Henry Gyrich smiled tightly as the report came in. That ought to keep them busy.

((School attack thread! Mutants of all kinds are attacking the school, but it's going to get around pretty quick (aka: feel free to already know in your tags!) that they're not under their own control so try not to kill them! Mutants will also be making it hard to get into the Danger Room (blocks of all kinds, cybers making its programming weird, etc), so teams try and protect the kids since they have no protection right now!))

Of course it had been a dahlia.

Now that the looming crisis facing Japan seemed to have been dealt with (X-Men, or another mutant group, undoubtedly) had ended, Holly had retreated into herself some contemplating the life -- and people -- she'd left back in Los Angeles. Even though she knew full well that the whole thing was perpetrated by some sort of Xavier's guiding force or whatever, it was impossible to not notice that people were receiving things that they wanted or liked, perhaps subconsciously. That left Holly more than a little perplexed as to the context of her gift. She didn't necessarily regret leaving the Dahlias, even if it hadn't been under the best of circumstances obviously. The whole thing was still open-ended, she hadn't made amends, and nor had she actually said her piece to the leadership there about how she truly felt. But there was more to it than that, and she was having difficulty reconciling that at present. There was a Dahlia-related issue that had never been truly resolved that was more important to her, if she could admit that, and Holly frankly didn't have the emotional depth to do so.

That didn't mean it wasn't there, and it didn't mean the flower, given as a romantic gesture suggesting a pointed connotation that she'd deeply repressed hadn't put her into a mood. Of course it did. That was par for the course with Holly with these types of situations: she made them messy, she made them angry, she made them hurt.

It wasn't fair to anyone else, of course, but Holly had stretched out fully along the length of one of the sofas in a student rec room, and had the TV remote possessively clutched in one hand even though she wasn't actually watching anything. The background noise was helping her deal with her souring mood. In truth, it wasn't even the whole dahlia thing or Factor Three that had gotten to her the most. The North Korea situation had sparked something inside of her that she hadn't dealt with since she'd arrived. It had pushed her forward, even making her reach out to the Dahlias (and received no answer, of course). So ultimately, she was frustrated, she was confused, she was pissy.

And that didn't bode well for others, either. "What the hell do you want?" she snapped, more vitriol in her words than she likely even intended there to be as she turned her head to the side to glare at the newest arrival to the rec room who had done nothing but... enter, and perhaps want to relax watching TV. A nice greeting, of course!

[ OPEN ]

WHO: Holly Black (ASTICA) & Luc Page (CHROMA).
WHERE/WHEN: Girl’s rec room | 14 September, evening.
WHAT: A swing and a miss.

( There was no denying it: It was hot. )