Day 3
Part 12: Impaled at Point Reyes
"Ok, so not such a good idea" Berto cursed to himself.
Illyana was busy blowing chunks in the sand dunes. She was on her knees bent over and way past the point of having anything left to come up. She'd had the dry heaves for the last several minutes. Between the dry heaves she was alternating with crying and screaming. The three men, Berto, Sam and Peter could only stand by the car and helplessly wait.
The three had taken Illyana on drive and a hike. They had first driven to the town of Inverness (main gateway to Point Rayes) and had stopped for lunch at the Great Whale Pizza parlor as Berto had planned. Illyana had now not eaten for over two days and the smell of fresh pizza apparently worked its magic (Illyana had eaten half a pizza and Berto swore that she had drunk almost a liter of coke).
Sam was driving as Peter was beginning to get a bit punch drunk from lack of sleep. Illyana had also remained awake but she appeared to be just as functional as she was two days ago (which is not quite a complement). The drive was mostly silent with Illyana sitting in the front passenger seat staring out the windows of the Ford Explorer.
They had just passed the various maritime radio stations on the right side of the road and were in the dune fields when Sam had started talking about food. Sam was no foodie, but he did like good beer, good barbecue, good pizza and good food in general. Yes he thought of sushi as bait and French food as over prepared and silly; but he did know more about cooking then grunting and throwing random things at a grill.
It had been an innocent question. One that you would ask of anyone if they had been away for a long time in a strange land.
"Man that was good pizza. So Illyana, had any good eats lately"?
It was a good question. Something to get a conversation started.
Illyana had just stared out the windshield at first. Then she started to answer the question.
"No. Can't really recall what I've been eating. I would grow hungry from time to time so I'd have the servants bring me something. Before that I was... I was..."
Illyana went silent, suddenly her face paled and she started to sweat profusely.
"Oh gods. What was I eating? I was eating... Oh gods! Pull over. NOW! Pull over now!" was Illyana panicky cries.
Sam quickly stopped the car and Illyana frantically opened the door and ran off the road into the sand. She got maybe fifteen feet away before she fell to her knees and lost it. Lost everything she had just eaten in one giant almost unending spew.
Finally the dry heaves stopped and now it was just Illyana screaming on her knees.
Berto had an inkling on how this trip was going to end. With a flash Illyana was gone again.
The three men looked at each other. Sam summed it up eloquently. "Well shit".
Part 13: Yet another meeting
Logan got straight to the point. "We're not helping her. She's getting worse".
Logan, Scott, Emma and Hank were sitting around a small conference table. Illyana was back at the pond staring at the fish and drinking black tea. Sam, Berto, and Peter had gotten back an hour ago. They had reported what happened and Peter had gone out to the pond to comfort her (which was manifestly not working).
Emma glanced at beast and he nodded his head. Emma started, "It's not us. It's her. She's going... well".
"Insane"? asked Scott.
"No" injected Hank. "Just the reverse. She's both going sane and is in turmoil. It's not pretty".
"You don't have to be telepath to figure out she's been doing horrible things and now she'd coming to grips with just what she's been doing". Emma finished Hank's and her joint conclusion.
Login analysis was spot on. "Kids right on the edge. Going hysterical. Something's close to breaking. Kid needs what nobody here can give".
"Which is?" Scott asked, he kind of knew but wanted others to also voice the conclusion without his opinion contaminating their conclusion.
"The ability to stop hating herself" was Hank's answer. Logan and Emma both nodded in agreement.
"And her brother is insufficient to..." began Scott.
"Yep" Logan cut off Scott's statement. "The whole (I pretended I was dead and abandoned you to losing your mind and killing yourself but I'm sorry I did not know but I did have you back as a younger innocent version, who was not a evil demonic sorceress, that I loved oh so much before she died) speech appears to have isolated him just a little, heck more then a little. She hates herself. Going sane as it were is just giving her more reasons to hate herself".
Scott tossed out a random idea. "Sedative? Give her some breathing room"?
Hank just shook his head. "I was going to suggest it but the latest lab tests on her blood show a sudden and frankly alarming ability to neutralize all foreign drug compounds. It wasn't there before but showed up after Pixie's little panic attack. I think she's actively defending herself against another episode and whatever spell she's using is very paranoid as it were".
"Paranoid? How?" inquired Emma.
"At one point I mixed some of her blood in a flask of pure alcohol and got a vigorous endothermic reaction. In short it burned, violently. Sedation is out for now I suspect".
"Damn, I wish Kitty was here" Scott griped.
"General yes and a possible no" was Emma's answer.
Logan gave Emma an angry glance and was about it rebut the statement when the reason for Emma's statement became clear to him. "Shit. Girls barely holding it together. Rejection by Kitty would push her right over the edge into... into... into something I really don't want to think about".
The meeting had rather ground to a halt with no conclusion. Suddenly Logan had an idea. "Anybody know where Lockheed is? I know it sounds trite but Illyana and Lockheed were real close".
"No" was Emma's reply. "He vanished when Kitty was lost".
Part 14: Cuckoos
Some minds telepaths don't touch. The minds of insane telepaths are high on the list and make up most of the recommended no go areas. Non telepathic minds are rarely uber dangerous. Feral people are scary and many of them are functioning with impaired mental states so telepaths find such minds... difficult due to the ferocity and violence. Highly evil minds are also difficult in that immersion in such vileness is not good.
Rare is the non telepathic mind that can ignore control of a telepath's intent upon entry of their mindscape. Entry into such a mind is terrifying to a telepath because instead of being a conductor and overseer of the mindscape they find themselves swept along by the mindscape; reduced to being a passenger instead of a driver. Not only are they powerless to change what is occurring, they almost always become trapped in the mindscape as well. Such mindscapes are rarely nice places.
Think of a house made and furnished in glass; broken glass. Everything cuts. Everything can hurt you. Any movement results in pain and blood. If you enter such a mindscape you don't find yourselves at the front door, no it's not that easy. You find yourselves deep within the house. A house that has things living in it that don't like you. You will move regardless of your intent when the things find you. You will move if you ever want to find a way out, assuming there is a way out.
The glass does not transform. The glass does not listen. The telepath is powerless to manipulate or relocate within the mindscape. All they can do is move. Movement means pain. Too much movement equals too much pain. Such minds can shred a telepath and not even notice. If the broken glass analogy doesn't do it for you then think knives, razor blades, fire, spiders, heck kittens if that's your ultra phobia.
Illyana's mind is one of those minds. Not by her choice and not necessarily a condition she actually recognized. This was not about her ability to block telepaths. This was about what had been done to her. Her mind driven insane with the intent to destroy her, plus that whole she's now a demon and has no soul. She had survived, but imagine the person that can live in a house of broken glass. Imagine the person that has been shaped by such a house. If feeling equals movement then they would learn not to feel very quickly.
Illyana slept, for the first time since leaving Limbo, on the third night of her being at the X-Base. Her dreams were very troubled.
The Cuckoos had been watching Illyana telepathically. Her mind block was just as effective against them as any other telepath. But now Illyana was asleep. Time to try a trick they had thought of.
The Cuckoos mentally shifted into Illyanas mind block, the inevitable fog of grey with the inability to determine scale defeating them; as it did all telepaths. Then they did something other telepaths could not do. Each of the girls, while still linked in their hive mind, started to move in different directions. One left, one right, one up. In short triangulation. Multiple telepaths could not do this because you really needed a hive mind; individuality and conceits like privacy cause the telepathic unity to breakdown. Too much noise on the line as it were; but if you had a true hive mind, well then it just might work.
It did. The location of Illyana's mind was revealed. To say that the girls were rather smugly proud of themselves would be an understatement. The three nodes of the hive mind quickly conversed.
"Shall we take a quick look? Let's. Emma/Frost/Momma said not to. This was easy. It was. There might be danger. Might. Oh lets see. Nice to show that we can do things better. Let's. Yes let's. Agreed, let's".
The girls took a look. The triangulation showed where the mind was but not the mindscape. To enter they needed to relocate their minds as it were to the same place as the mindscape without first being able to see what was going on in the mindscape. They did. Teleporters call this a blind jump. It's dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. It can be bad if the location is not friendly.
They didn't know what they were doing and the destination was not friendly.
Screams.
Pain.
Suffering.
The girls found themselves bound to a pillar.
A demon, or was it a man, was hurting them.
Screaming, he was screaming at them as he hurt them.
NOT HER, YOU ARE NOT HER. NOT HER...
They tried to leave the mindscape.
Nothing, they remained where they were, where they had entered the mindscape.
The demon/man started to do... things to them.
Bad things.
They commanded the mindscape to change.
The mindscape did not hear them.
The mindscape did not even know they were there.
The mindscape was too busy screaming, just like them.
The girls did what most children would do. They started crying for their mother.
The mindscape paused, the demon/man frozen, a single word echoed.
"Mother"?
Then another though.
"I have no mother. I cried out for my brother but nobody came".
Suddenly Illyana's mindscape shifted. The demon/man was gone, so was the pillar. Just a stone floor with four kittens. Three were mewing in hysteria; the fourth kitten was looking at the other three. The three kittens were hurt, the forth... well the forth looked... horrible. It was burned, disfigured, bleeding all over and cut open; it looked at the other kitten with the one eye that remained.
"GET OUT". The thought was a command. The three kittens vanished and the forth transformed into... into something that wished she had a mother to go cry to. Someone who could make her hurt go away.
Illyana awaked to convolutions for the first time in months and a massive headache.
Part 15: HACK THE SYSTEM
An hour later.
2:49am. Time to learn the truth.
By not talking about Kitty, by not answering her unasked but obvious question as to where was Kitty, Illyana know that something bad had to have happened. Illyana had endured the last few days of pain, violence, and regrets all while waiting, hoping that Kitty was going to walk in any minute, but losing hope as the hours passed. Hope that hat turned into the belief that Kitty had to now hate her.
The Cuckoos had pushed her over the edge.
Enough.
She could feel a panic attack lurking in the corners of her mind. She needed answers.
Illyana stood before one the PCs in Hank's lab. Everything in the lab was enchanted by now. Hank was not the only one who was busy every time she visited his lab. Technical hacking was not Illyana's area of expertise. But Kitty and Illyana had once played a game of how to use magic to replicate hacking skills. Keystroke logger virus? Easy, just have the keyboard remember the keystrokes. Same for any biometric scanning such as finger prints, retina, and the like. It had been a fun game that they'd never told anybody about.
Time to see if Schrödinger's cat was hungry or fly food. A joke Kitty like to say but one that Illyana never really understood, no matter how many times Kitty explained it. Something to do with removing uncertainty about the future.
Illyana was brief and to the point. "Computatrum propter hank". Hanks computer desktop appeared as the Top Gear screen saver vanished.
Now things got a bit more complicated. How to search a system that she had no idea how to use? Again magic was the answer. A rather complicated spell that issued an intelligent query into the various data applications and file systems. Kitty had helped put it together with Illyana years ago (Kitty had been trying to crack the computer security of Doug's private files). It specified file types and data base structures. It was a rather disturbing collection of python software mixed with arcane symbols and SQL. They had named it IMP (Improper Mutant Penetrator) in a fit of giggles. It really was a good penetration and data access virus, one that Shield would wet themselves over if they were to ever find out about it; but Kitty and Illyana had forgotten about it after they had hacked Doug's embarrassedly bad poetry files.
"Ostende mihi Pryde"
It worked fast. Brought up relevant documents and folders (here's a hint kids. Don't use the root account as your normal login. Hank really should know better). The word document Kathryn_ in the personnel directory looked like a good hit. Illyana opened the document.
Bingo.
Illyana quickly scanned the document and then stopped half way down the first page. The line marked Status.
Status: Deceased. Believed to have died entombed in the Breakworld Bullet while saving the earth. The Bullet has no life-support systems, food, or water. All calculations show she could have only lived for two days max. Our inability to locate the bullet after it passed though the earth makes this almost a certainty.
Illyana went numb. A soft "no" escaped her lips as her suppressed panic surged . A mental recollection of Kitty giggling and announcing that Schrödinger was going to need a new pet. She had laughed then, not now. Now was panic, a very bad panic attack. Her headache went into migraine mode. Hank would have freaked out if he could have seen what brain monitor would show at this point.
She quickly scanned the dates. Shards it was months ago. While Illyana had been rampaging all over Limbo looking for her soul, so she could find the courage to face Peter and Kitty again, Kitty had died.
Died.
Died in a way that Illyana could have prevented, but she had been too busy, too scared.
Illyana felt a wail growing in the back of her throat as she franticly thought, "No no no NO! This is not happening. Not happening". Illyana clenched her jaw shut to stop the screams.
"Wait, believed dead, not dead. They couldn't find her. Lost. But I can find her, go to the moment in time after the bullet passed thought the earth".
Illyana grasped this sliver of hope, it pushed back the panic attack. "I can make a right choice. Do the right thing for once".
Hope blossomed.
Illyana vanished in a burst of light only to reappear immediately, a look of confusion on her face.
Blocked.
She tried again and again returned immediately.
Not just blocked. Forbidden.
Illyana summoned a light disk in front of her and examined it (as only a mage knows how).
It was Paradox.
Any travel before the time she regained her soul sword was apparently considered paradox. Illyana started cursing. Paradox was forbidden to demons and devils.
An easy explanation, which is not quite correct but sums it up quite nicely, would be to say that paradox was greatly frowned upon by the universal bookkeeper, lots and lots of extra paperwork. People sometimes get to skirt the rule, but not demons and devils; they had abused the rules too many times and pissed off the great accountant in the sky. The resulting administrative ruling, no paradoxes for demons or devils; no exceptions.
Illyana's cursing gave way to screams and tears. A flood of tears, but not just grief, more rage at herself as well. Again she failed. Again she picked wrong. Again!
Illyana had been on the edge the last few days. Now this.
Panic, hysteria, and rage took over.
No.
I refuse to accept this.
I choose to find a way.
Part 16: Schrödinger's Kitty
A large mass of metal for grounding? The Golden Gate Bridge should nicely suffice.
Illyana stood on the top the main cross beam that connected the two sides of the north tower. A mild rain squall was blustery blowing scattered rain about. Off in the distance the city lights could be occasionally seen peeking out of the fog.
Illyana spoke to herself as she prepared for what she was going to attempt. "Calm, be calm". She was not calm, she was trying to not have hysterics. "Fuck it. I am not calm. I am going to do this".
Illyana was terrified. Of what she was about to attempt. Of the possibility of failure. Of what failure would mean for Kitty. Of what failure would mean for herself.
Illyana gathered her power, her focus. A teleportation light circle appeared beneath her but she went nowhere. That was not the plan. She stood within the circle, the disk provided the means to move to a place in the past where Kitty was, to a place she could be saved by Illyana. All that was needed was sufficient power to force past the barrier of Paradox. Paradoxes existed, they just took effort. Lots and lots of effort. In theory a demon was forbidden to create a paradox, but if sufficient power was gathered... well Illyana was going to try to break that rule.
Below her one of these boom cars was in the southbound lane. You know the car type, the one that has a stereo system capable of annoying folks eleven blocks away. The car was playing Bring me to life by Evanescence as it passed underneath the north tower. Somehow the song was appropriate for what was about to be attempted.
...
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become
...
Illyana chanted an invocation, or was it a prayer, as the power grew.
Let me save her (so I can be better then I am)
Let me save her (so she can save me)
Let me save her (so I can find a way out of the darkness)
Let me save her (because I love her)
Let me save her (because I want to be not as I am)
Let me save her (because I so hate what I've become)
Let me save her (because I hate the horrors that I've done)
Let me save her (so she can save me from the nothing I've become)
Please, please let me do a good thing for once
It began to rain harder and flashing lightning illuminated the sky. Illyana pushed power into the light circle, attempting to force a transfer to the desired point in time. Random bursts of stray power flashed from Illyana only to be grounded by the Bridge's mass of iron. Lightning joined the party, attracted by the accumulation of power.
No go, the barrier would not yield.
Illyana was at the max power she should could safety handle as the power was not going anywhere. It was just accumulating in the light circle. Illyana's suppressed hysterics broke free and took over, with a screaming tearful "NO" she manifested her soul sword and drove it into the light circle while abandoning all attempts to shielding herself from what she was doing.
All that she had, all that she could do flowed down into the circle. Nothing held back. No protections if the spell failed.
Screaming about what she had become.
Screaming about what she had done.
Screaming about what she had lost.
Screaming about what had been done to her.
Screaming in grief over Kitty.
In the end just screaming.
Part 17: Cold light of reason
The rules held. Paradox by demons was forbidden. The power flashed out of the circle like a colossal short circuit with Illyana as the fuse. A massive flash of light enveloped the top of the north tower.
The rain tampered off to just a medium drizzle and the lighting stopped. The top of the North tower was now mostly bare metal, the paint having been burnt off by the savage lightning and magic discharges. Parts of the tower are scorched, but the cables that held up the bridge were still safe. The massive metal spire had done its purpose and had grounded all the energy being haphazardly thrown off by the enchantments.
Illyana was sprawled on the top of the main cross beam that connected the two sides of the north tower. The rain gently falling on her upturned face, replacing the tears she no longer shed. The metal upon which she lay sizzled, and pinged as it cooled, from the rain and the moisture dripping off her body; yet she suffered no harm from the heat radiating from the bridge structure.
Illyana stirred after a time and pushed herself to a sitting position. She coldly examined her surroundings and her failure. She then shakenly got to her feet.
"So the answer was no".
Illyana groped for the emotions that had driven her, but found a curious numbness instead. Something was wrong, well it had been wrong before but now it was more wrong. If a telepath has been in her mental house of broken glass (to continue the analogy) they would now find that some hereto hidden rooms were now open, exposed, and in utter ruin. They would see the rooms trashed and burned and hear the additional tinkling sound of cooling broken glass. There would also be bodies in these no longer hidden rooms that had been alive but moments before. Things that had somehow survived the holocaust that had been unleashed upon her mind by Belasco.
Things now dead.
Illyana contemplated her situation. The world was now more stark, the decisions more obvious.
"This is futile. Paradox is forbidden to one such as I. So long as I remain soulless, a demon, I am bound by the rules for such entities. Kitty is lost to me, along with everything else I once was. To escape this I need my soul back".
She looked upon the city lights, now emerging from the fog and the low hanging clouds and spoke bitter words, her face wet with rain but not tears "Not for me, never for me. I am not her". A thought appeared to faintly echo in her head, NOT HER.
Illyana vanished with a burst of light, leaving the bridge top deserted. The only sound the fading sizzle of rain as the heat dissipated.