~Hey everybody~
Thanks for reading :) and here's chapter 9!
Nothing crazy important to write here.
So enjoy and R&R!
Explosions of Every Kind Chapter 9: Lost Inside
"Argh," Rogue grunted as she was slammed into the large oak in the backyard by a laser. She scowled and rubbed the back of her neck. "That hurt!" she shouted.
"Keep going, Rogue. You can do this."
She thrust herself back up onto her wobbly knees; they'd been at this for hours.
"Focus!" rang out the Professor's voice.
Three laser guns rose from the ground and shot at her simultaneously. Rogue flipped over one blast and rolled past the next. Then, she stood still and tried to focus all her energy on her memory of him, then into her eyes… nothing happened, and she got shot again. This time she went flying into a cement bench, breaking it in half.
"Ouch! This ain't workin'! Y'said if Ah focused on the memory of the person it would work," Rogue hollered to Xavier from the other side of the field.
"Try harder. You can do this," he encouraged.
"Could Ah try without the lasers!" she screamed to him.
From that distance, she saw his head nod and hand wave her over. Rogue let out a huge sigh and lugged herself across the turf.
"Professor, it's too soon. Ah can't focus on just one and use it, Ah'm trying, but Ah can't." Rogue's bruised body collapsed onto the ground; she was exhausted; hours of training and repeatedly getting blasted into a variety of objects could do that to a person.
"You're stronger than you think, and more focused. Let's try Bobby."
She nodded her head, knowing this wasn't going anywhere and closed her eyes. Rogue's eyes jerked and jolted from side to side as she searched through her psyches and memories to find Bobby. Then, all of a sudden, her entire body chilled and when she breathed out frost could be seen. Her eyes shut tighter.
"Professor, Professor! Ah think Ah found him."
Her excitement was short lived however. For when she opened her eyes and raised her hand up to freeze the tree in front of her nothing happened.
"Errrrr!" She stood up and punched the sky. "Ah touched him but couldn't get to him."
"Calm down, Rogue. That was a remarkable step forward."
"Ah'm not ready for this."
"We can take a break if you like."
"No, Ah mean Ah'm not ready t'be tryin' this. Y'said we'd work on touching before being able to manipulate other powers."
He looked down, almost ashamed, "I know what I said."
"So y'just planned to break our deal?" She was frustrated and he knew he should choose his words carefully.
"Of course not. But since you did it once, I bet you can do I it again when your fully conscious and in control."
Anger was boiling under her surface and she wanted something to punch relentlessly. "Whatever."
"Please Rogue, let's try once more then take a break."
She glared at him then nodded and asked, "Who?"
"Avalanche."
She nodded once more and shut her eyes. Inside her mind, she soared frantically. This, she had no control over, she couldn't slow down. All the people were shadows and the background was polluted by a dark, purple haze. She heard the shouts of a fight in the distance and hysterically followed. Her head swung back and forth, lost. The shadows were darker than usual and alarming; it seemed they were following her. Then the charcoal smog her feet had been floating in started to shake and whatever lay beneath it began to crack with the sounds of a vicious thunderstorm. "Avalanche," she whispered. But when the dark cloud dispersed, Rogue plummeted through the cracks under her, screaming.
Her body was trembling so violently next to the Professor he decided to take her by the shoulders and shake her out of her own mind. "Rogue, come back. Come back. It's not worth it."
Her body went limp from fear and her eyes slowly opened. "We're going to take a break," he said sternly. Then he led her to the living room and set her on a couch.
Rogue had dozed off and had another nightmare similar to the one from the infirmary. When she awoke, the living room was empty and she was in a cold sweat. "Ah can't do this," she said to herself.
Rogue stood, not realizing how unsteady her legs were, and fell back onto the couch. She tried again, this time holding onto the table next to the couch for balance and managed to make it into the kitchen. She reached up to a shelf and found herself an apple to snack on. Halfway done with her treat, Xavier sent her a telepathic message to meet him in his office.
She arrived at his door, finishing off her apple, and entered guardedly. "Yeah?" she asked.
"I'd like to try something different," he offered for her to sit down in the open chair. "I'd like to, if you want, enter your mind and look through it before you go in blind searching for just one person."
"We're gonna explore mah mind?"
"In a sense, yes."
She was hesitant, but eventually agreed to the proposal.
Xavier placed one hand by both of Rogue's temples and they closed their eyes. When they opened them again they were no longer in his office.
The purple haze had turned red and foggy, the black bottom had mostly repaired itself and the shadows were more gray and flighty than dark and chilling.
"What are we gonna do now? Jus' walk 'round and talk t'everybody stuck in mah head?" she sounded surprisingly mordant.
He looked around then answered, "No, I have an idea. Let's try to look for someone."
"Who?"
"Let's say, Kurt."
"Okay," the second she knew she had a target the haze shifted into a darker blood red and the shades became stalking and mad. Rogue took a deep breath and they ventured towards a crowd of shadows. A few steps before they reached them a towering brick wall shot up from the ground. Rogue pounded against the wall for a solid ten minutes with no reward.
Xavier put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Calm down and focus. Don't think of breaking the wall. Think only of Kurt."
At that, she stopped hammering the brick barricade and breathed. "Kurt," she whispered. Then she sat down, not trying to find him, but letting him find her. "Kurt," she repeated.
Out of nowhere, the wall came tumbling down. Xavier smiled, "That's it." Rogue looked around, but suddenly lost it. All her concentration left her and she freaked as every shadow rushed her. They all tackled her at once and her screams became muffled. At that moment, Xavier broke the connection and they both retreated out of her mind. She, gasping for air, when regaining consciousness.
"No! Ah won't do that again," she protested.
"You were so close," he persuaded.
"Ah was almost suffocated by the people in mah own head!" She shook her head back and forth as if trying to jostle everyone inside it.
"No one said this would be easy."
"You, you," she started to stand and pointed at the Professor, "you're insane. Ah won't do that again."
"Perhaps in time," he offered.
"Not in this lifetime!" Rogue retorted.
He simply nodded. And she stormed out, but right before she slammed the door she had a thought and turned back to Xavier and asked, "How come they didn't attack you?"
"I'm not sure," he answered plainly.
"Great," she commented, "Ah have a suicidal mind that's only after me. Perfect." Then she stormed out.
Rogue made her way down to the living room for some mindless television or perhaps a book to read to get her mind off of the events of the day. But when she rounded the corner into the living room instead of finding peace and solitude, she found Gambit. Gambit, lolling on the sofa with his arms bent and hands clasped behind his head. He smiled at her from where he lay and she shrugged it off with a sneer. After realizing what she had done in the infirmary she wasn't going to give him another inch of her attention. To think, she actually let him sleep with her in the bed! 'What was I thinking?' she reprimanded herself. Now she was determined to avoid him. But it was too late for that at the moment…
"Hello chere," he purred.
'No wonder he was in such a good mood,' she thought. Rogue turned her head as if she didn't hear him and sat on the spare sofa picking up whatever paperback novel happened to be next to it.
"Nice day," his thick Cajun accent made this more of a come on than a comment. Rogue just shoved her nose farther into the book. "Y'can't ignore me forever," he remarked.
"Ah can try."
"Aren't we goin' t'talk 'bout what happened?" he ventured.
"Nope," she said certainly.
"Rogue," he said while he reached out to touch her. As he did however her legs recoiled and tucked into her chest.
"Nothing happened," she lied, "Ah was just confused and sc-scared." She didn't like admitting she had been scared, but if it got her out of talking about what happened she would gladly admit that.
"Y'were scared so y'reverted back to y'r feelin's an' instincts."
"Y'insinuatin' that Ah wanted t'do what Ah did?" she questioned callously.
"Yes," he acknowledged boldly.
"Then y'r crazier than the Professor." With that proclamation she turned her head and continued reading.
"Fine. Then y'give me no choice."
"Huh?"
Before she realized it, Gambit was on his feet and looming over her; he bent down and scooped her up, bridal-style of course. "Gambit!" she shouted. Rogue was kicking and pounding her fists against his chest, she even contemplated knocking him in the head with her book. "Gambit put me down!" He walked over to his couch, struggling to keep his grip on her and they plopped down together. "Gambit!" she screamed again as she batted him away from her. She was lying on her back and he landed to the side, slightly on top, of her. She started to elbow his chest, "Get off!"
"No. Jus' relax."
"No! Get off."
He knew it would take some fighting for her to calm down so instead he did this: smooch! Gambit leant down and kissed Rogue on the lips, willingly putting himself in a coma.
She pushed herself out from under his unconscious body, cursing the whole time, and fell with a thump on the living room floor. She pressed herself upward using the couch as leverage, when suddenly a surge of pain resonated through her skull. "Ahhhhh," she cried as her knees buckled below her. "Not another person. Ah can't take it!" At that moment Rogue collapsed to the floor, panting. Her strength came slowly back to her and she grabbed fistfuls of the floor rug to relieve the pain in her head. "Gambit, you fool!" she bellowed as the rug started to glow pink. "No, Ah didn't mean to- shit." Rogue scooped up the carpet, unlatched the nearest window and sent it flying. The younger students thought they had seen fireworks in the backyard.
She took several deep breaths and sat on the floor. "Inner search. Inner peace? All Ah have to do is fahnd one person," she instructed herself. Rogue closed her eyes tight and crossed the threshold into her mentality. When she opened her eyes her psyches weren't on the prowl, they were tranquil and floating about as if she wasn't there. The mist had turned a light blue and some of them even spoke to her. They had color now, although it was distinctively duller than the originals'.
"Hey Stripes," rang out a familiar voice.
"Logan?" Rogue endeavored.
"Yeah, who you looking for?"
She hadn't thought about it; she decided to venture for someone else this time. "Jean," she answered.
"Check that way," he pointed in a specific direction with a bottle half full of beer in his hand.
"Thanks."
Many of her shades tended to drift about without a purpose, trapped. But the various ones that she knew better or had absorbed more than once stopped to talk to her. Rogue had found the redhead peering out of a floating window, still with that can-do grin on her face, though it was noticeably faded.
"Jean?"
"Hey Rogue," she sounded like herself, only sadder than usual.
"Y'r not happy 'bout bein' in here, Ah wouldn't be either."
Jean smiled at her. "I'm not in her, well not all of me. I'm here to you, but the real me doesn't feel as if she's lost any part of her mind."
"Really?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Ah wanna try something," Rogue said hesitantly. Then she reached out her hand and Jean took it. The instant Jean touched her, Rogue snapped back into reality, knowing she could do this. Rogue lifted her arm and with a flick of her hand levitated the nearby flower vase into the wall, shattering it. Her breath hitched, and then she tried again. Rogue levitated the book she was reading toward her, next, as an experiment, she used Gambit's powers that she was forced to have for the time being and kinetically charged the novel. When she realized what she had done, Rogue telepathically tossed the story out the open window.
She tried once more, but the television remote would not come to her. She had lost focus during the explosion and was no longer linked to Jean. "Damn," she whispered. After that, she sat on the floor, her back leaning against the couch where Gambit laid unconsciously drooling into a pillow, and thought. "This changes everythin'. But Ah have t'be calm and stay focused, that'll be a bitch durin' battles, but Ah'll learn, Ah'll learn…. and Ah'll get better, much better."
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I'll be working on chapter 10 soon, so much love! and bye for now.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN XMEN/XMEN EVOLUTION