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!)
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}
