The mind of Mystique didn't like Rogue's body, not one bit. Instantly she reared up inside Rogue's head, bitching and revolting, vying for control in a sudden bombardment of memories and emotions. In short flashes, Rogue not only witnessed, but, in a way, experienced, the past of the mutant shape-shifter whose real name was Raven Darkholme. Rogue fought back, biting and clawing through the onslaught of the Raven psyche.
"My body, not yours. Mine, me. Rogue, Rogue, Rogue. Not Raven, Rogue…" the girl screamed inside her skull. The two forces collided, neither refusing to budge. Nails scrabbling against the stone floor, Rogue pushed back harder as the tips of her fingers darkened to a ruddy blue. "No! Not your body!" But the riptide of memories almost carried Rogue away. Visions of old missions for Erik, objects seen though a hundred different eyes, even a sketchy picture of a bloody childhood. The images were filled with pain, a constant aching anger that never seemed to fade. The emotions seemed to shoot through Rogue's body, chilling her down to the core of her being.
But Rogue was no stranger to pain herself. She wasn't frightened by it. In fact, she was learning to embrace it. It made her sharp, focused, brought her goal into perspective. And though she was a young, lean, whip of a girl, her will was stronger than her muscles. Her determination fueled by the horrors that Carol had been subjected to, Rogue slammed Mystique into the back corner of her mind, forcing the persona into submission with a primal yell that echoed about the cell as well as in her own mind.
Instantly, the blue receded from her hands and arms, and she was essentially Rogue again, save for the quiet protests in her head, uttered sullenly by the rebellious metamorph. For a few, short seconds, Rogue remained stationary where she sat, poised on all fours, panting hard. She was utterly exhausted, mentally and physically, and what she really wanted more than anything was to wake up in her warm bed and have this all turn out to have been a bad dream.
"Fat chance," she said to herself, softly. Shaking lightly, she got to her feet. The cell door was wide open, freedom within her grasp. She made to walk right out until she came to the prone body of the real Mystique. It was only then that the thought crossed her mind, the inkling that making a break for it looking like herself would almost assuredly be a death sentence if she crossed Magneto's path…but that walking out looking like his partner would be an amazing advantage. In desperation, she examined her own small hands. Just a minute earlier, they had been blue and scaly. Clearly, just like Logan, she had taken Mystique's morphing power, now all she had to do was figure out how to turn it on. Her scream earlier was likely to have attracted attention; she was running out of time. Glaring at her own pale skin, she demanded that it turn blue.
Nothing happened.
Inside her own skull, Raven laughed at her, but Rogue paid no heed. Staring at the body laying on the floor, she fixed that image in her brain, then closed her eyes. Like a personal cartoon, she imagined her own body changing. Her skin, darkening, her legs lengthening, her hair turning a ruddy red. Again, there was nothing …but then suddenly she was thrown horribly off balance as her legs shot up, making her another foot taller. Pitching to the ground once again, she stared in awe at her body. Rapidly, the changes took effect. The blue rippled over her skin like a wave, starting at her feet and rolling up across her scantily clad torso. She felt the subtle shift of her facial features, and felt her eyes re-focus. Then, as suddenly as they'd begun, the changes stopped. As she rose to her feet, her balance wavered as she struggled to cope with her added height. Reaching out for the wall to steady herself, she began stripping off her remaining clothing. Mystique went naked and, despite her own reservations, Rogue would have to as well. Releasing her hold on the rocks, she took a few, shaky steps, and found that her perception was compensating for the height increase. Making for the door, feeling proud of herself, Rogue gave the real Mystique a good, hard kick before locking her in the cell, and grabbing the keys. She didn't make a run for it thought. Not quite yet. Instead she walked to the cell next to her own, inserted the key in the hidden lock, and hauled the big door open.
It was foolish, Rogue knew that. But it was…just something that she needed to do. Some way to put her spirit at ease, and maybe help Carol's on into the world beyond. The woman's body was shockingly light as Rogue lifted her off the floor with ease, gaunt bones digging into her hands. Gently, she placed the woman's body in the middle of the floor, directly in the narrow strip of sunlight that penetrated the shadows of the room. The light exaggerated the Carol's gaunt features even more, making her look more like a skeleton than a woman. With shaking fingers, she closed Carol's empty blue eyes, and folded the woman's hands across her stomach.
"I'm gonna try not to let you down, Carol," she said softly, fighting back tears as she stared at her companion's limp body. "I wish I could take you outta here with me. Wish you were up here with me, too." She gently tapped her temple with one delicate, blue finger. "Don't know why you're not, but whatever happens, I won't forget you," she assured the empty shell of a body. "And neither will all the people you saved." Turning on her heels, she strode swiftly out of the room, quietly locking the balky door behind her.
As she walked, she discovered that this body was better built for sneaking than her own. Never before had she ever felt so limber, so…graceful. Mystique's body was perfectly poised and balanced, making it not only beautiful, but giving it…her, deadly precision in battle. And, while Rogue was only borrowing Mystique's form, not her thoughts, this body didn't need Raven's brain to look good, it knew how to do that on it's own.
With more composure than she was feeling, Rogue/Raven strode into the main chamber, her head held high. The room was huge, bigger than she'd expected. Not wanting to break character, she didn't dare stand there, gaping at a room that the real Mystique had seen a hundred times, but from what she could see, it looked as if the entire facility had been carved into a hollowed out mountain. As she reached the center of the immense cavern, she counted at least 4 hallways leading out of the room…and she had no idea where any of them led. For the briefest of seconds she considered accessing Mystique's memories to try and find out, but in doing so she risked losing control and making a scene…and completely blowing her cover. So instead she used her own, iron-clad teenager logic and quietly muttered as she walked,
"Eenie, meanie, miney, moe…"
With fresh resolution, she strode towards the passage directly ahead of her. She was just starting to feel slightly relieved when…
"Mystique, there you are." The voice, though soft, was formidable. Like it didn't need volume to convey how powerful it was. She recognized that voice. With silent grace, she spun around to face her former attacker. With all the pride that Rogue could muster, she stared back into the eyes of Magneto.
She debated whether or not to say anything in response, and figured that Mystique was a woman of few words. Her only inclination that she had even heard him was a slight inclination of her head.
"I take it our visitors are comfortable?" Again, she nodded haughtily, adding a small, sardonic half-smile to the ruse. "Good. Then would you please assist Toad in loading the chopper? The sooner he finishes," he muttered with some contempt, as if Toad were completely incompetent (which, in reality, he was), "the sooner things can get underway." He gave an impatient wave in the direction of the tunnel on the right, and Rogue's heart skipped a beat. A chopper? That was her ticket out of her. Of course, she had no idea how to fly a chopper…or how to fly anything for that matter, but given her present circumstances, Rogue figured it was really a moot point. It wasn't as if she has a whole lot of other options anyways. In what she was beginning to think of as true Mystique fashion, she gave another slow nod, and coupled it with a subtle shift of her weight towards the passage Magneto had indicated. Then, with a flourish of his bizarre cloak, the man turned away without another word. Rogue took it as her signal to leave.
As she walked away, confident at having fooled the Master of Magnetism himself, she felt a slight chill run down her spine, and noticed that Magneto's reverberating steps had stopped suddenly. She could feel his eyes following her as she walked away, but didn't dare stop. Instead she focused only on the passage ahead. Just 10 more yards and she would be home free…7…5…3.
Then, all of a sudden the little warning light in her head went off. Instinctively (though who's instincts they were, Rogue didn't know) she whirled, just in time glimpse the length of chains zooming through the air before they wrapped around her mid-drift, pinning her arms to her sides. Thrown off balance by the surprise assault, Rogue toppled over onto the floor.
"A commendable effort, Rogue," Magneto chortled, walking into her line of sight. "But a wasted one at that. Mystique has been my partner for years, and she knows this place like the back of her hands. Did you really think I wouldn't notice that you were walking in the wrong direction? That she'd been replaced?" A coy smile played over his lips as he glared at her.
"Kiss my ass," Rogue muttered harshly, struggling against the restraints. Already caught, she happily surrendered her hold on Raven's body, shrinking back into the form she knew best. Unfortunately, the chains tightened along with her transformation.
"Go and fetch Mystique from the holding cell, then load the girl in the chopper," Magneto ordered to someone that Rogue could not see. "It's time."
"Find anything?" Ororo stuck her head back into the war room, where Kitty was still hard at work, stooped over the keyboard, sorting through the massive amounts of information she'd stolen. Her fingers flew across the keys as she skimmed file after file, sorting them into numerous sub-files.
"Nothing yet," she sighed. "Most of this stuff is benign crap that I can't make heads and tails of. Spreadsheet of random numbers that could represent anything from dollars to frequent flyer miles. Fuel consumption tables, but they don't specify fuel for what!" She threw her hands up in exasperation. "And file after file of meaningless blueprints! I don't have a clue what the heck they're for. They look life UFO's." To illustrate her point, she started opening said files, one after another. She was right, there seemed to be an endless number of them. "So unless Magneto is planning on starting a TV show called mutants in space," she babbled on, pushing the rolling chair back from the massive desk and uncrossing her legs, "we're shit outta lu- Oooof!" Kitty never finished her sentence as she pitched to the side and tumbled over, discovering that prolonged periods of sitting (for example, the 4 hours she'd been at that desk) often put limbs to sleep. Kitty landed flat on her rear, hard. Moaning, she rubbed both her legs furiously, trying to work the blood back into them and stop that deranged tingling. Ororo rushed across the room to her side.
"Kitty are you," she started to ask, but the girl interrupted her.
"Yeah, yeah," she muttered. "I'm fine, just a bump on the butt and a bruise to my…" but she trailed off, her eyes leaving her throbbing legs and fixing on the computer screen. Her gaze fixed on the screen, she tilted her head to the right, looking at it sideways.
"To your what-hey!" Ororo exclaimed as Kitty grabbed the hand she'd offered to help the girl up, and instead used it to force her teacher down to her level. "Kitty, what in the name of-."
"What does that look like to you?" she demanded, taking 'Ro's head between her hands and forcing her to look at the computer screen from her angle. Perplexed, Ororo's eyes traced over the blue print image frozen there. Then it clicked. Suddenly the image didn't look like a spaceship anymore. In fact, it looked kind of like a torch. An all too familiar torch.
"Oh Goddess," 'Ro said breathlessly, frozen in place. Then, like a flash of lightening, she was on her feet and out the door, yelling, "Jean! We found them! Jean!" at the top of her lungs.
"Hey," protested a flabbergasted Kitty to an empty room. "A little help here?"
A/N-Deux: I'm sorry, by the way…