x - generation #3
The Powers That Be part 3A Scar in the World
Ororo rides waves of air, swims through them, clutches cloud-stuff between her fingers. The power is glorious and she feels just a little guilty about enjoying it so much. But it's always been her dilemma, the dichotomy that directs her life along two divergent paths at the once. Is she a serene goddess, or a feisty weather-witch? Though she tries to present the goddess's face to the world, and manages to fool everyone but, probably, Charles, at heart she knows she is still that twelve-year-old thief roaming the streets of Cairo.
These days it's only air that she steals, and wind, and lightning. She rides up within a storm cloud, she can barely see for the dark and the wet black clouds in her face. She feels energy, pulls it, the electricity collected in the hills of the Gao-Jeng province, forces it into the clouds and then down again, finding the Pax base. Crack!
She pulls it again, sends it down. The power courses through her and for a moment she knows that she'll be hurled down with it, but then it releases her--she has won again--and she sends the glee from her victory along to speed its passage.
No other sensation, spiritual or sensual, could be so glorious!
She seldom shares the sky. Of her current colleagues, only Henry and X'ian have any hope of flight, and that only occasionally. Jean used to fly with her, but no more. Though she misses the Jean she used to know, the Jean that would spin and pirouette and veritably glow with the joy of her power, she has to admit that she actually prefers not to share the sky with anyone.
But right now she must. An intruder approaches to interrupt her reverie. He barrels toward her with all the grace of a shot rubber band, trailing fire and smoke behind him that are immediately absorbed by the clouds, dispatched by winds.
He comes at her, fists out. Does he expect by this strategy to knock her out of the sky? She nearly laughs out loud as she evades him, gliding around the boy easily. She twists, spirals, dances around him, keeping pace with him.
She looks into his face for the space of a lightning finger-snap. Familiar eyes, strong cheekbones, curly hair swept back by the wind. Almost-Paige. Paige's brother, Cannonball.
She rounds him again, delivering a gentle lightning-bursts to his posterior. He howls, twists, plummets for a moment then finds himself again and lunges for her.
She lets him grip the edge of her coat before she forces him back on the wind. They are above the clouds now, the moon casting black shadows in the folds of the storm.
"I'm gonna shut down this storm," Cannonball shouts at her, completely oblivious to the fact that he's being toyed with.
"You think you will?" He rockets toward her, she brings the wind up around him, creates a cyclone-spiral that takes his speed and energy and directs it upward, toward the stars. He flies up, up, until the wind fades and he continues under his own power. But then he's too high--his mutation grants him a limited invulnerability, but when the air is too thin he passes out like anyone else and he falls.
Ororo curses as she watches him plummet back into the clouds and dives after him, pulling winds up from the ground to slow his fall. She closes her eyes against the dark, the wet, feels rain slick off her leather hood, her overcoat. She finds the boy in the underbelly of the clouds, in the place where the rain collects to fall. She grabs him by the collar of his XSE jacket, hears his yelp as the sudden arrest of his fall snaps him back to consciousness.
He looks up at her as the two of them hover there. He takes in great gulps of air, restoring his lungs until he has enough air to blurt "you--you could have let me fall!"
"I could have," She says. "But I didn't. Remember that, and remember that your uniform does not make you invincible."
Cannonball's face twists and for a moment Ororo thinks he is about to spit in her face. "You ain't my mama--ain't your job to teach me."
"True," she says, and lets go of him.
Cannonball howls, then engages his power. At the exact moment he does a deeper thunder reverberates below them. The Pax base splits open like an egg, spilling forth blue-white light.
"Oh, Shit!" Cannonball yells. "Paige!" He rockets toward the base, and Ororo follows.
Kurt feels heat beneath his feet, and leaps from the crypt, teleporting as he reaches the apex of his acrobatic arc. When he returns, he is on the ground, crouched, panting, facing the crypt.
It erupts with blue-white fire, the heat from it singes the blue fur on his face. Will, Emma, and the XSE agent called Chamber lie at the base of the crypt, about to be consumed by the fire. Kurt teleports again, straddles Emma's prone back, grabs Will's arm and Chamber's leg and takes all of them away.
Now they are in the base's corner, further away from the crypt, rain pouring in from Ororo's lightning hole sizzles and is boiled into steam. Hank holds his sensor in his hand and runs for Kurt on his rhino-legs.
"I don't know what's about to happen, but it's not going to be gentle," Hank bellows.
X'ian is still standing over Darkstar. Hank shouts at her to run, but she merely stands as the white sphere expands, threatening to absorb her.
Around her hands darkness coils, coalesces, erupts. She forms a cloud of it, then a wall, which for a moment hides the star-heart that is forming in the center of the base.
"Rogue, get back!" Logan shouts, and runs for her, but she will not be moved, even as the energy cracks the darkness, shatters it.
"Mein Gott!" Kurt hisses. He teleports, grabbing X'ian, Logan, and Darkstar, and takes them back to where the others have gathered.
"What the hell's happening, Bishop?" Logan growls at the XSE's commander.
"How should I know. We're just security. I've paged the techs, but--"
"Let me guess, they've got better places to be just now, right? Well, they're the smart ones, then. So, what do we do to shut this thing down?"
"Evacuate the base," Bishop says, apparently without notice of the scores of soldiers already running for the holes blown in the base's walls.
Paige stirs, sitting up in horror to leap and land next to Kurt. Ursa Major cradles his unconscious sister in his great, furred arms.
Marrow stands almost arm-in-arm with Logan, their earlier antagonism forgotten.
"Will," Paige pats at her friends face, trying to wake him up. "Will, we need you."
Kurt crouches, bent over on the opposite side from Paige. "She's right, Will. We need you. Paige--part of Will's mutation is to absorb energy, is this not correct?"
"Right, I think."
"How much?" Logan asks. "How much do you think he can stand?"
"Let me," X'ian says, her hands out to caress the skin on Will's brow.
"Get away from him," Paige snaps, and elbows X'ian in her covered midriff. X'ian reels backward.
"Runaway, I'm not saying I don't understand your objection, but it may be the only way," Logan says.
"Nobody uses his powers but him!" Paige shouts. "Got that, leech? He'll wake up, I know it."
And he does, suddenly, spitting, coughing, rubbing at his head. "What?" he starts. "Paige, what . . .?" He sees the white fire, sees Hank, monitoring, slowly backing away from it. "Emma," he screams.
"Relax, Thunderbird," Logan says. "She's right here, but it might be up to you to save her, save all of us. The world too, if you want the bonus points."
Will stands, shaky, but his concentration on the energy. He knows instantly what's required of him. He's never tested the limits of his power. But this . . . this must be beyond him. He steps forward anyway, brushes past Hank, goes to the white. He thinks of Emma, of Paige, of his lost sister, Danielle. He puts his palms out, the edges of his fingertips touch searing heat. He pulls that heat into himself, feels it fill the empty spaces in his cells, boils the moisture there. Oh God, it hurts . . .
The blue-white fire is all around them pressing in, but the boy seems to be keeping it away from them. Emma has the feeling that she is in a fishbowl sunk into a lake of fire, but she can't even feel heat; the fire is simply there.
She calms herself, forces down the panic that will lead to a complete loss of what little control she has. What's happening to her body out there? It's a question she cannot afford to consider.
Chamber kneels before the boy. Who are you? Are you the one who did this?
"Why can't you stop me?" the boy wails.
"What is your name?" Emma asks. "Who . . ."
"Chen-Yao," the boy says. "Xorn. They call me Xorn--call me Xorn."
"All right, Xorn," Emma says. "How can we stop you? Tell us what to do and we'll do it."
Xorn looks around them. "Mother, Father, burned . . . dead."
It's not your fault, Xorn, Chamber sends. I saw what happened. Chamber looks to Emma; he's addressing her now. Soldiers, they came, they started shooting, they killed some of them and probably meant to kill the rest.
"Send it," Emma replies. "Why waste time with the pretense of speech. We're both telepaths."
Emma sees what Chamber saw on his earlier foray into Xorn's mind. She sees the sleepers, the soldiers, the falling flyers. She sees the child in the flames--feels the cold, then the heat, and she remembers the disaster in the Altun mountains and knows with certainty that Hank was right.
"We've got to help him get control," Emma announces, leaving this vision behind. "Chamber, you do understand what's happened here?"
Chamber nods, I think so.
"This child--he came into his power when he was not even six years old. Of course he lost control of it."
That does not answer the question, what do we do?
Emma wants desperately to send out a telepathic flare to Professor Xavier--he could be listening on Xerebro--but when she tries she realizes she's blocked. Something in this boy's mind keeps her locked in.
"What did they do to you?" She asks Xorn.
"Look," he says, and she does.
She is strapped to a table, wrapped in asbestos-lined sheeting. Men stand over her, a shaven-headed telepath leans over her as well, her cold hands tracing Emma's own seared scalp. Needles, scanners, metal scraping her skin, peeling it away, tubes linked into her muscles, feeding chemicals into her bloodstream.
Words in Chinese. "Keep this boy alive, he will help us win the world."
Horror revisited upon horror. Years in a cage, urinating, defecating in a pit. Human visitors that tremble at her gaze. A woman--chosen on purpose to look like mother--who is thrown into the cage to hold him, comfort him, but who can't get past her fear at her power, disgust at her seared visage. More experiments, more tests, spun in an accelerator. A man in a general's uniform--"again and again" he shouts "until he can give us the power we need!" Cigar smoke blown into her face.
Photos of family, friends, people in the camp, the soldiers wearing civilian clothes, arms around families, beautiful wives, small children, pictures set afire before her.
"You did this--you killed them! You burned them, they died in agony, gasping boiling air, hair singed off, skin blistering--died slowly and you did it! You killed them! You killed them all! There is only one way to redeem yourself, only one way to be anything else than the monster you were born. Give us your power, use it for the good, for the world and then perhaps you will be worth something!"
When it is over, Emma falls to her knees in front of the boy. Xorn looks at her with steely eyes. Emma embraces him, weeps onto his shoulder. "I am sorry. I am so sorry . . ."
Will finds himself in the pain after a while. His mind comes back from the heat and he realizes that he is about to burst and that he must do something to avoid the breakdown of his cells, the diffusion of his own body in the expanding sphere of energy. He needs to redirect this power.
"Please. Let there be no planes," he whispers to himself. "Stay out of the way, Storm." He backs away, keeping one hand against the sphere, points the other toward the crumbling ceiling. The energy comes in one arm, uses his body as a conduit, and shoots up into the sky.
The rest of the roof collapses at the force. He fights to keep his concentration as debris rains down around him.
"Will, how are you doing?" Hank asks.
"I'm handling it," Will replies through gritted teeth. "Get everyone out of here before this kills them all. The base won't stand."
"What can we do, Will, to help you?" Hanks asks. "Surely you can't stand this for long."
"Just do what I said, Hank," Will says. "Get out! I'll hold it back as long as I can." He shouts to be heard over the roar of the energy entering and leaving his body.
Cannonball and Storm return, together. Cannonball drops to the floor, appraises the situation, finds his sister, and visibly relaxes. Storm comes up to stand between Will and Hank. Hank explains everything they know, but Will can't hear exactly what he says.
Ororo brings the clouds in so the dull force of the storm is above the sphere. It's obvious she intends the water to be cooling, but it's not helping and Will tells her so.
She moves the water so a cooling stream in running over him. "Thank you," he grunts.
Behind them, Paige, Ursa Major, Kurt, and Bishop are busy moving unconscious soldiers out of harm's way. Kurt grabs three or four at a time, teleports, deposits them outside on the muddy lakeshore. Paige speeds around, picking up bodies, barely letting them slow her as she carries them outside. Ursa Major takes them on his great bear-shoulders and lumbers outside.
X'ian and Wolverine stand together, watching. Darkstar sits beside them, slowly coming back to herself. X'ian has long since relinquished her darkness powers.
"It strikes me," Logan says. "That we're all just standing here waiting for the end of the world. Why aren't we loading up the Blackbird and getting the hell out of here?"
"You would leave Will and Emma here to do this on their own?" X'ian asks.
"Nope. That's why we're still here. That and McCoy wants to watch. This kid left a crater in the mountains once--or so Hank thinks--what chance do we have not to end up fused to the bottom of another one."
"Wolverine," X'ian says. "If I take Will's powers, it might enable me to go in, find the boy, take his powers, and then I can stop this thing before it gets any more out of hand."
"You get points for Moxie, Rogue, but how do we know you'll be able to control it any better than he can--it's too much power, that's the problem. It'll be your problem too and I don't want you to be the one I have to kill to stop it."
"Could you do that? Do you think killing the boy would stop it?"
"I'd do it, but I think being reduced to ash is something even my healing factor would have trouble keeping up with."
"Maybe if I--"
"Not yours to do, Rogue," Logan says. "We'll see this thing through to the end. You don't have to save the day, that's up to others to do."
"Who? Will? He'll be burned out soon, reduced to ash himself."
Logan points to the plume of starfire shooting up into the sky. "I don't think so, but that may just be hope talking."
"You think?" She asks.
"Besides," Logan says. "There's Emma--we don't know what she's working on, but she could save us yet, turn this kid off at his source."
Emma takes the boy by the hand, beckons for Chamber to follow, and together they walk into the fire. The protective bubble moves with them, so they are not destroyed, but Emma fights back a wave of nausea anyway, as she expects the bubble to drop, and for the fire to rush in at any second. It always amazes her that, even though she is now just metal energy and personality, merely thought patterns unattached to any physicality, her mind reacts to stimuli and processes her responses in exactly the same way it would if she were actually still inside her body. It's annoying and comforting at the same time, especially since she has no idea what is happening to her body outside.
The boy walks slowly, but deliberately. He seems to look at nothing but his own feet, even while the fire around them slowly fades and becomes a long grey corridor with a series of doors open on either side. Xorn does not look into any of them, but Emma does. Through each view she sees almost the same repeated scene. Xorn, huddled in a corner; Xorn, standing, looking up at the ceiling; Xorn, sifting through the remnants of half-burned photographs; Xorn, rocking back and forth, singing an old song to himself. In each image, he is a different age, but still resides within the same, bleak cell. He is not the intact boy that guides her by the hand, but wears a face ravaged by fire and grief. Tears well up inside her again, but she fights them back; tears will not help him. Right now he needs her strength. He needs her to be strong enough to help him free himself.
Chamber makes no comment as they pass. In fact, Emma has to seek him out to know that he is still with them. At last they come to it, a dark pit cut into the floor at the end of the corridor. They boy stops at its lip and looks expectantly at Emma.
She leans at its edge and peers down into it.
"Is this it?" She asks him. "Is this the hole they opened up inside of you?"
Chamber joins her. I'm trying to keep up as best as I can, but this is beyond me. What are we looking at?
"They tried everything," Emma responds. "They tried physical tests, then they went for the mental. They decided that his powers erupted in a time of great pain and fear, so they called in their pet teeps and they forced him to live in that moment, over and over again. It worked. They got his power, but you can't do that to a person without opening up some nasty wounds in the mind. That's what we're looking at."
So, we close this and it just stops?
Emma shrugs. "I hope so."
Your confidence is breathtaking.
"I'm going inside, I need to destroy whatever auto-loop they installed. You stay here with Xorn."
What do you expect me to do?
"Good question. Use your own judgment."
Chamber curses, then grins. Go, do it. Save the world.
Emma leaps inside, into the black.
At least it is black, and cool at that. She'd feared she'd be jumping into fire, and this time without Xorn's protection. But as she plummets, then floats, then finally lands on a dim, pliant surface, her fear leaves her and she focuses once again on her rage against what has been done to a terrified mutant child.
The surface beneath her glows pale blue and it is the only source of light. She realizes that she is walking on water-skin, and blue and white bursts of fire swim within it. Is this the well of power they boy has access to? If it is, his power might well be unlimited.
But that's not what she's here to assess. She's not sure what she's looking for exactly, but she'll know it when she sees it.
And then she sees it.
A young woman, shaven-headed, grimaces, holding in place a long spike on the surface of the skin. She leans against the staff, exhausted.
"Who are you?" Emma calls to her.
The woman moans, but no answer is forthcoming.
"Are you the one torturing him?" Emma asks. "You're a mutant--why would you do something like this to one of your own kind?"
Again, the woman gives no answer. Exasperated, Emma approaches her. "Very well, this will be easy." She reaches out to touch the spike. She moves it and the world quakes. The woman hisses.
Emma, Chamber says, do what you have to do quickly, please. He's going nuts!
Emma grabs hold of the spike with both hands, pulls it out.
She feels psychic energy flowing through it, around it, releasing. The woman heaves and tried to knock Emma away, but Emma is fresher and stronger. It is no contest.
The woman falls back, dissolving into mist before her back can even touch the surface.
Emma continues to pull out at the spike. She meets resistance, but it only forces her to yank on it harder.
Emma, please.
Finally, when she has pulled out enough that it is almost three times her own height above her, she feels the last bit give way and break free. The spike falls at her side, bouncing on the surface before it too dissolves and is gone.
Emma, what just . . . Chamber begins, but does not finish. She realizes why as she tries to walk, but her legs are no longer strong enough to carry her, her hands dissolve , and soon the rest of her is gone too.
Will feels the whole world pulsing through him. This is enough, he has taken all he can and soon he will break apart, boil away cell by cell and be sent as a mist up into the stars along with this arc of power.
But then the sphere contracts. At first he fears it does so only to gather power to burst out again, absorbing him completely this time, but to his astonishment, it contracts again, shrinks further, until it loses contact with his hand and the last of the energy in his body bursts upward, leaving his body. His knees buckle under him and he collapses. Hank catches him, and lowers him gently to the ground.
Steam continues to rise from his body at Ororo's continuous rain storm. With chagrin, Will realizes that his clothes have burned away, so intense was the energy. Logan and Paige are at his side immediately. Hank calls for a blanket, which Bishop orders Ursa Major to supply.
Will wraps his arms around his up-pulled knees and closes his eyes as waves of nausea pass over him.
Ursa Major arrives with the blanket; Ororo halts the rain and the cold air pouring in from the broken roof draws up goosebumps on Will's skin. Hank takes the blanket from from Ursa Major and wraps it around Will. Will is taken by a sudden chill and shudders there in the wrappings. Paige and Hank busy themselves trying to warm him.
The glowing blue-white sphere has collapsed entirely now, reduced to a soft glow from within the melted adamantium slag that is all that is left of the crypt. Logan and X'ian step toward it warily, accompanied by Bishop and Marrow.
The boy's body glows. He is of human form, but he does not seem to be made of flesh. His skin is made of light. Around his head a nimbus of blue flame flickers gently. No eyes, nose, mouth, can be made out of the place where his face should be, and there is no way to tell if he is awake, no way to tell whether or not he lives.
"Well," Logan says. "I don't know what happened, but I'm glad it did."
"You people need to get out now and leave this to us," Bishop growls. "He's our responsibility."
"You're insane, Bishop! Can you stop being a good little nazi for five minutes and think about what you're doing?"
"Logan," Bishop begins, along with a lung-suffering sigh. "You never could just shut up and follow orders could you?"
Logan laughs. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. You think we're going to let you take this kid and put him back in a box?" His claws pop out, framing his eyes as he stares at Bishop. "Think again."
Bishop rolls his eyes. "Relax, Logan. We can work this out."
Can we? Chamber is standing now, wobbly on his legs, but standing. Ursa Major wraps his arm around Chamber, his hairy paws holding him up by the undersides of his arms.
"Chamber," Bishop sighs, "You all right, mate?"
I'm fine, but we can't support this, Bishop. This is not a service to the world. He dumps the torture memories given him by Emma into Bishop's mind.
Bishop reels. Laynia comes up on the other side of Bishop, balances him. Bishop sits down suddenly, and Chamber keeps transmitting as Bishop leans over and vomits onto the floor. He growls, "You can stop now. I get it."
"Good," Emma continues for Chamber. "You didn't know, did you, exactly what the Pax had done?"
Bishop shakes his head.
"You mind telling us, Psylocke?" Logan says. "Some of us are still a little confused here."
"Please," Hank says.
"They raided a mutant camp in the Altuns," Emma explains. "Slaughtered them, killed this boy's family. The trauma woke up his powers. When the rubble was cleared, they decided he'd be an excellent source of energy, but he couldn't channel it for them on command. They called in their telepaths to keep him in that moment of shock and pain, an eternal loop, so they could get at the power.
Hank shudders.
"That's barbaric," Ororo spits.
"So, what do we do with him?"
Hank has moved to the boy's side. "I don't know how to take his pulse or to wake him up, but we should be able to come up with some type of containment, or wrapping, so we can get him back to the institute, at least. There has to be something here . . ."
Logan looks at Bishop, who merely shrugs. "Do it," he says. "As far as we're concerned, the kid died here today."
Emma leans over Xorn, who is laying on a stretcher about to be rolled into the tiny cargo bay of the Blackbird. Hank has managed to make a suit for him so the heat he generates does not cause the plane to explode en route to Westchester, but Hank watches the monitor readings nervously.
You're going to be all right, Chen-Yao, she sends to him. We're going to take you to a safe place, I promise.
"Thank you," she hears, but not in her mind. She wonders how it is possible that he is able to vocalize as Hank wheels him up the ramp.
She turns around and finds herself face to face with Will. He is still wrapped in a blanket, wet hair plastered to his forehead. He smiles sheepishly at her startled expression.
"Didn't know it was possible to surprise you," he says. She laughs in spite of herself.
"It's not, generally. I guess I was distracted. I hear you saved us all--drained the power and shot it out into space. I had no idea you could do that . . . "
"You saved us," Will responds with a shrug. "I just did what I needed to do. Glad I could help."
"I could have done nothing if I was burned to a crisp."
"Listen," Will adds. "This is none of my business, but you did something to Bishop, didn't you? He agreed to this plan way too easily. Even if he believed what Jono showed him-- to immediately give us custody? That wasn't him."
"I helped him along," she admits. "Under the cover of Chamber's mind-dump. That's not something I like to do, but he . . . he'd already been through so much."
"I understand. I think you did a good thing."
"Thank you," she brushes the hair back from her face and tries to avoid looking into his eyes, knowing what she'll find there. "I'm meant to tell Logan we're ready to go," she whispers and steps around Will.
Will watches her go, then walks up the ramp alone.
The X-men are loaded, save for one. Paige Guthrie stands at the foot of the ladder, contemplating the figure of her brother as he stands, obviously ignoring her, working clean-up alongside Laynia and Alexei.
This is stupid, she can't leave it like this.
She is at his side in one quarter of a heartbeat. "'Scuse me, y'all," she says to Laynia and Alexei as she grabs Sam by the shoulder. "I need my idiot brother for five seconds." She takes hold of his jacket and drags him away at lightning speed.
She finds a free, rubble strewn space outside the crumbling base wall and throws him down in the mud. She stands over him, one foot planted on his chest, pressing him down into the squelching mud. She leans into his face, finger poking at his chin as she exclaims, "now you listen to me, Sam Guthrie--I know you're mad at me, that you think I'm a traitor and that I'm a criminal and all of that garbage, but I'm still your sister and I don't mean to let you ignore me."
Sam grins and breaks into a chuckle, which only infuriates Paige more. "What is so blasted funny?" she shouts.
"You," Sam laughs. He brings up his knees, hits her leg with the side of his leg, dumping her onto the mud beside him. He grabs her, holding her so she can't get up and starts to tickle her.
"Sam, no -- ow!" Paige shouts, angry at first and then laughing along with him. "That's not fair."
"Weak," he says, then lets go of her. he sits up. She does too and leans into him.
"I know you did what you thought you had to do," Sam says. "I think you're wrong, of course, but I understand it."
"Oh thank you, great wise elder brother of mine," Paige says mockingly.
"Now you just accused me of all sorts of evil opinions, and I'm just trying to set you straight. Don't make fun."
"You're right, I'm sorry. Sure you won't join me? It'd be fun. You should see the digs."
"Nope. You know why. Will all right?"
She sighs. "Yes and no. The Pax killed his family, Sam. How would you be?"
"He thinks they did, but I still can't see it," Sam replies. "He found his sister yet?"
Paige shakes her head. "Not a trace."
"Well," Sam says. "If I was Will--and I thought what he thinks--well, I reckon I would do it too. Just be careful, all right?"
"Of course," she says, and hugs him. "You too."
"Watch the TV in the next couple of days. Director Cassidy is actually going to admit we exist."
"Really? They're owning up to y'all?"
"You'll see. We'll do good, Paige. It's the only way to make this work out right."
"Maybe I will see," she says, "And maybe you will."
She stands up, heads back to the blackbird while Sam brushes the mud from his uniform.
Emma sits with her head resting against her arm, which is draped around the back of her seat, reaching out to Xorn. Together, the two of them ride a memory. Night, stars rolling in the pulse of worlds, and a woman--Mother?--who holds them both against the dark.
Next: Pandora