Marvel, Rebirth:

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

 

"Sierra we must always be friends, for the sake of the universe!" Ashley exclaimed with surprising seriousness. She then turned back to the jet's controls, looking out the window.

 

"Oh, we're flying about the city now...good thing the stealth thingy is on...or those blue winged guys might have seen us."

[shadow pridak money gang]

IC:

 

Dallas had been absorbed into two things - the broiling quagmire of his own thoughts and thrashing empathetic powers, and the cutthroat game of Flappy Bird that had sucked out whatever remained of his soul and shot it directly into a thick green pipe. Sometimes, for fun, he pictured Nicole's face slamming into that pipe and turning into a mush of goo. He always felt absurdly guilty when that thought came to mind, even though he had no reason to. Was it his fault he had been kidnapped? Bound up? Brought to the Hellfire Club, maybe killed if the people with the thinking caps hadn't come at him? Why was he victim shaming himself? Was that even a thing that happened?

 

Things would be easier if he could just hate Nicole, but you might as well ask the sun to shine at midnight, a deaf person to play the Fur Elise by ear, or Florida not to suck. It's not going to happen because I ask it to. The hate had to come naturally, and hate never came naturally to Dallas Green. Pain does, though. That I can feel in spades.

 

"Oh, we're flying about the city now...good thing the stealth thingy is on...or those blue winged guys might have seen us."

 

"Wait, what?"

 

"Yeah! Look, Dallas! They're like Smurf angels!" insisted Ashley excitedly. Dallas tilted his head, sending long blonde hair falling down his face.

 

-Tyler

Edited February 5, 2014 by Aegon Targaryen

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

IC: "I just need advice, doc." He walked into the room, and flopped irreverently down on a chair opposite Dr. Thomas, "I mean, obviously, right? What else would I be needing from a counsellor. Maybe prescription meds..." Metal fingers tapped a chin of flesh thoughtfully, before waving dismissively in the air. "No, no, this isn't Breaking Bad: X-Gene edition. We'll just stick with advice. I'm sort of at a crossroads, see, and I'm sort of wondering..." He twisted round to face the counsellor fully, suddenly snapping to a more attentive pose, the elastic in his muscles pulled taut. "...what am I supposed to do with my life?"

 

 

IC: Well...that had worked a little better than expected. Song could already feel the dimming of thoughts in Kristen's head. It was like suddenly being thrown into a black and white film. So now what she had at her disposal was a mind that was both malleable and unconscious. What was that American word? Oh yes. Jackpot. It was one of those. Should prove useful if Lynae decided to keep this one around. Now time to see what useful...redecorating could be done around here

[AuRon the champion]

Ic:

 

If anyone asked Kristen, she was having the best nap of her life. For the first time in years, sleeping wasn't some out of body experience that when her body rested, her mind stated awake, staving off the collective.

 

For the first time in years, she could have a happy dream again. And she did.

 

And of course, it was the most impossible, impractical, self-centered dream that every human wanted.

 

She dreamed that everything was right in her life... And that her greatest wish was fulfilled.

 

She knew her mother.

[Flex Lord Splash]

IC:

 

John held Matt in his arms while he watched the kid get to work. Sand began to bubble up from the earth as the kid raised his arms. Then before John's eyes it began to swirl into the air before morphing together. The sand began to take on the shape of a large glass coffin as it began to assemble in the air. It was over in minutes and the boy slowly lowered it to the ground.

 

"Nice work kid." John said before turning to Christine.

 

"Go get some of Matt's nicer clothes and maybe a rag. We want him to look nice."

 

"Okay," Christine said before vanishing inside. She returned a few minutes later with some of Matt's clothes in her arms. Together they pulled on a grey Polo sweater and a pair of dark blue jeans and nice shoes. Christine dabbed at Matt's bloody wounds before wrapping them in gauze before she pulled the shirt all the way on. They also closed his eyes too before finally laying him in the glass coffin. John crossed Matt's arms over his chest making an X before he turned to the kid.

 

"Sorry you had to see all this kid. Think you can close this thing for us?" he asked.

 

The kid nodded and suddenly the glass coffin had a top, sealing it from the world forever.

 

"Alright, time to start diggin'." John said as he grabbed a nearby shovel. He walked past the graves of many of his dead friends and X-Men from an generation before him: Ashlynn, Beast, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Jeremy Wagner, Iceman, even his father's. John positioned himself near Ashlynn's, and Matt's parents graves. He then sank his shovel into the wet earth and began to dig.

 

About twenty minutes later and he was done. He hadn't dug the hole incredibly deep. Just deep enough so the coffin would fit inside. Christine came over and together they lifted the coffin into the hole.

 

"John this hole isn't deep enough." Christine commented.

 

"I know John said." Now that the coffin was in the hole only the glass top rose above the earth; showing Matt's still form inside. He looked so peaceful, almost like he was just sleeping in the glass case.

 

"This class case will keep the air out and keep him from decaying." John said. "Anyone who wants to look at him and remember can just move the top layer of soil away." John said. He then kicked some soil onto the top of the glass case and spread it around until it was covering most of it; leaving a circular hole in the middle so visitors would know they could look inside.

 

Christine grabbed John's hand and squeezed it as they gazed down where they'd buried their friend.

 

"You want to say some words or somethin'?" John asked.

 

"Alright," Christine said after a minute. "Matt was one of the nicest people Ah ever knew. He had a big heart and the right intentions even if he was a bit slow at times. He always made a way to make me laugh and sometimes punch him," Christine smiled with tears in her eyes.

 

"Ah met him while Ah was still with the Brotherhood and that's when we became friends. Once Ah came here we became closer, Matt often came to me to talk about Aleks, and vice versa." she paused to collect herself.

 

"Matt died fighting to protect the life of his friend. He died as an true X-Man. When the rest of us gave up and threw the towel away, allowing the X-Men to die Matt didn't. He still pulled on his costume and went out to protect innocent lives and in that process lost his own. Ah'll miss him."

 

"Well said. I'll miss him too. Rest in peace Matty. It should be me down there instead of you." John said. He pulled away from Christine's hand and then began to walk away through the rain.

 

Christine watched John go before taking one last look at where they'd buried Matt before turning away and heading inside.

 

IC:

 

Conrad could see one of his targets and their friends in one of the bathroom windows. They appeared to be looking at the angels. The angels. I didn't think about them possibly spotting me. After that thought Matt saw something swoop over head and a blue body was now floating in his sights with a pistol aimed right at him.

 

Conrad pulled his eye away from the scope and looked at the angel. He looked down to see a shadow on the ground near his feet, knowing there was one behind him as well.

 

"Well, well, well. It seems I've been discovered." **** it, SHIELD is forever getting in my way.

[otter]

NPC-Kris Kross:

 

Kris looked scornfully down at the would-be assassin, snorting at the man's words. "You stuck out like a sore thumb, kid," he said, his voice - a light, airy tenor - at odds with both his tone and scornful, annoyed expression. "Next time you want to try and kill somebody, do it where you can't be seen." Before Conrad could respond - or even protect himself - Kris's leg shot out for the barrel of the man's rifle, crushing it, in Kris's own words later, "Tighter'n when my dad crushed a can against his skull." He stepped forwards, purposefully forcing Conrad to move back towards Marky Mark. No better way to deal with the guy than by putting him in between two rocks...or maybe one rock and Marky's hard place. Nobody really knew for sure what Marky liked, but they had their guesses.

 

"Now, I would appreciate it if you would tell us just what it is you're doing, and why, and who it's for. You have two minutes, starting one minute ago."

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

"They seem friendly...we should say hi!"

[shadow pridak money gang]

IC:

 

"Ashley, babe, I don't know if that's a very scholarly decision."

 

-Tyler

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

"How else are we suppose to establish diplomatic relations with the Smurfs? We must form a peaceful alliance!"

[otter]

IC:

 

Morrison almost did a double take when Dallas suggested that trying to say hello to the blue flying people was a bad idea. Like he was actively trying to protect himself.

 

"...I think something's seriously out of whack, here."

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

I stood up and walked over to the nearest window. Sure enough, blue angels.

 

"Hah... it seems the Blue Man Group finally grew wings." I said faintly. "Good for them."

[shadow pridak money gang]

IC:

"Hollywood already did. And then they did it again. You made me watch both movies with you half a million times one night because you had a nightmare."

"They were really really bad nightmares..." Ashley insisted, and Dallas reached over and squeezed her hand.

"I know they were. But it's okay. They were just nightmares. The Cat doesn't really store toddler skeletons under the Hat."

-Tyler

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

 

"But he did have a copy of Much Ado about Nothing in Orcish....there should be a law again that!" The comm panel started beeping incessantly, drawing Ashley's attention.

 

"I'm seeing a lot of flashing blips on the radar...none of them look like a wolf/bat thing...." Ashley frowned. "I don't think she's in the air anymore."

[Eyru]

IC: "I just need advice, doc." He walked into the room, and flopped irreverently down on a chair opposite Dr. Thomas, "I mean, obviously, right? What else would I be needing from a counsellor. Maybe prescription meds..." Metal fingers tapped a chin of flesh thoughtfully, before waving dismissively in the air. "No, no, this isn't Breaking Bad: X-Gene edition. We'll just stick with advice. I'm sort of at a crossroads, see, and I'm sort of wondering..." He twisted round to face the counsellor fully, suddenly snapping to a more attentive pose, the elastic in his muscles pulled taut. "...what am I supposed to do with my life?"

 

IC

 

The counsellor was quiet for a moment before responding with a question of her own. "What do you like to do, Alexander?"

[25K Now!]

IC: Mikhail

 

"Clarification?"

[Advent Child]

IC: "Just saying, I stand firmly on the side of 'against' as far as establishing smurfly diplomatic relations, yeah?" Nero chimed in.

[AuRon the champion]

Ic:

 

"I don't know what that word means," trinity said, tilting her head in confusion as she looked at Mikhail.

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"I would really prefer to just ignore these guys for now."

[shadow pridak money gang]

IC:

 

"See? These guys are picking up what I'm putting down. New York was just hit, and now these things are just raining from the sky across the entire city? Pretty suspect."

 

-Tyler

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"Besides, if Song decides she would rather have the angels be enemies than friends, we could have a big problem."

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

 

Ashley caught a glimpse of Liberty Island from the window, or what was left of it. Lady Liberty appeared to have lost some weight.

 

"HYDRA are such....not nice people!" >:c

 

And that was the harshest thing Ashley ever said about anyone. It was obvious it shocked everyone. Maybe.

[shadow pridak money gang]

IC:

 

Dallas was speechless.

 

-Tyler

[otter]

IC:

 

"Ashley just said something bad about somebody. Yep, the universe is falling apart..." Morrison looked longingly out the window, up into the sky.

 

"Oh, how I wish I could just disappear right here and now..."

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"I see. Apparently the great and mighty pokemon's seemingly unlimited knowledge does not include how to teleport."

[otter]

IC:

 

"I chose to spend a more permanent existence on the Earth than I used to. That led to me having to give up a few abilities I had. And remember what I said about being an entitled brat, and such like that? You aren't helping yourself here."

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"As if I care about how you see me."

[otter]

IC:

 

"Your afterlife is in my hands, child, and I might just decided to end your life prematurely."

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

 

"Hey...do I have to give you guys a timeout?" Ashley asked, though in a rather friendly tone.

 

"Now kiss and make up."

Edited February 5, 2014 by Yoko Littner

[otter]

IC:

 

"I refuse to touch this child's skin until she decides to try and be properly respectful, or at the very least friendly, towards the rest of us in this plane," Morrison growled back.

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"You don't have a very thick skin for someone your age." I smirked. "You can't even take comments from a teenage 'self entitled brat'."

Edited February 5, 2014 by Cupcake Killer

[otter]

IC:

 

"I'm a fox, not a rhinoceros."

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"You just noticed?!" I said, faking surprise. "That makes you almost as blind as you are sensitive."

[Snelly]

IC: Ashley

 

Ashley started to laugh hysterically.

[otter]

IC:

 

"Tell me, child, what's your experience with fire?"

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

IC: Watching Kristen's dreams, Song made her conclusions. Clearly the girl had lacked any significant maternal influence for most of her life, which led to such issues as confused sexuality and a fascination with older female figures like Lynae. A fairly easy psychological issue to work with.

Start with the dreams. The average human had about seven dreams a night, they just never really remembered any of them. While the same appeared to be true of the one Kristen was currently enveloped in, it was clearly significant. This was more than a simple meshing of imagery, this was a heartfelt desire, a desperate yearning need. And if it were altered slightly, the need would be altered in turn.

Song reached out to the maddening choir of voices that skulked around Kristen's head, grabbing a metaphorical fistful of them. They squirmed like fat maggots, but could do little other than shriek. What was sound and fury against a genuine telepath? She picked a few of the most intelligible voices and stuffed them into the gleaming image of the mother-figure. Almost immediately the former portrayal of perfection began spouting threats and vulgarities.

 

"Heartless! Worthless! Brainless!"

 

"Why are you here? Why are you keeping me here? Why!"

 

"Hateyouhateyouhateyoudiediediediedie!"

 

Yes, that should do it for starters. It was a simple change but should change the desire for a mother to a desire for the mother's approval. She wanted the mother-figure and she wanted the voices to stop, and the only way she'd have to do that would be to subconsciously latch onto maternal figures in her life and seek their approval. Lynae would be the obvious connection at first, but work could be done to attach her to Song herself. Assuming Kristen was a permanent fixture at least. No need to go the full nine yards if Lynae was just going to drink and discard.

But back to the matter at hand.

A few more dreams should provide a few more crippling psychological issues. People were so much easier to control when they didn't have their heads on straight. Song delved into Kristen's memories to find more ammunition, an insidious slime-mould seeping through the girl's psyche. Oh here was something useful, she'd been blackmailed by someone. Recently too, should give the lasting feeling of it much more of a sting in her subconscious. Blackmail was fairly similar to mind-control; someone using an advantage they had over you to force you to bend to their whims and desires. Blackmail simply relied on a more tangible form of leverage rather than psychic powers. And what form of leverage had been used in this particular instance? Ah, compromising pictures. Fantastic, body issues got thrown in along with everything else.

Swirling memories around Song constructed another dream for Kristen, a hearty broth of fears and nightmares for her to sup on. She was once again starring in those pictures, only this time she was actually in the picture. A tiny two-dimensional Kristen struggled within the image, pressing against an invisible wall that stopped her reaching the third dimension. A third dimension where spiky silhouettes of people she knew were pointing and laughing. That should conjure up feelings of isolation, drive her away from her past acquaintances and into the arms of the Hellfire Club. Along with the constant reminders of her feelings of inadequacy and a time where she was, to all intents and purposes, owned by someone else it should bring her sense of self-worth to an all time low. Just the sort of thing you needed in someone if you wanted them subservient.

One more should probably do it, a trio of terrors in the night to carefully twist her mind in the right directions. Once more Song reached for that gibbering collective of noise, sweeping them up in one great bundle. Every echo, every shriek, every wail, just scooped them up like a net of fish. It should ensure that the voices left Kristen's conscious mind alone, but of course Song's motive's were not just altruism. She bundled up the massed madness into a great ball of compressed chaos, and shackled it to a dream representation of Kristen. It was effectively binding her subconscious to memories of guilt and shame, to all the bad things se'd done and now regretted, then letting the dream-Kristen drag it round as a physical (at least in terms of the dream's logic) burden to exhaust her. Like Sisyphus and his boulder.

Every night Kristen should be playing these dreams in her head, repeating the conditioning over and over but never really remembering it save for perhaps a vague sense of unease. It was this unease that would drive her closer to Lynae, whose approval and attention would be the soothing balm. If she lasted longer than the Black Queen's usual pets then further work could be done, but for now the simple subservience package would suffice. Song wasn't trying to gain anything, as of yet, she was just making sure she stayed in practice. Couldn't lose your edge if you in the business of breaking minds...

 

 

 

IC: "Like to do? What I'd like to do is be a billionaire and live in a life of luxury, preferably with a minimum of three swimming pools; one for weekdays, one for weekends and one for special occasions, the problem is how do I get to that?" He tapped his fingers together, fingernails of one hand clicking on the metal plates of the other, his very own in-built Newton's Cradle. "I've been going to this school for...years now. But what qualifications have I got from it? I want to get a job the only thing I can really put on my CV is 'highly trained at punching things'. The only future I can see with that is staying on and on as a full-time X-Man but there's an ever increasing number of graves out in the grounds that tells me thats a bad idea. And if I do try to get a job in the real world, what exactly am I going to do about this?" He held his trademark mechanical limb up for inspection. He often took it for granted, but for someone like Doctor Thomas who didn't have daily exposure to it, it was quite a marvel. An almost exact replica of his flesh-and-bone arm in proportions and appearance, a veritable work of art. It even moved like a real hand, impressive considering it had no obvious joints or pistons propelling it. Alec was, however, completely right in that it marked him out. His mutation wasn't as severely obvious as the likes of Nightcrawler or Marrow, but it was clear enough he'd have a downright impossible time trying to pass as fully human. "I could get an image inducer or something I suppose, but then I'd have to constantly be on the alert to not let people realise the truth. Not to break the illusion, or just touch someone and freak them out when they feel steel not skin. And if I go au naturale I leave myself open to all kinds of discrimination. Not just the dirty looks from the anti-mutant crowd, but the worry that I'm only being hired as a publicity stunt. Because I'm not mutant enough to freak people out but just right to make a company look good if they take me on. Its just..." He sighed, slumping back in the chair he was occupying, "Those seem to be my only options. A long life of doubt, or an early grave."

Edited February 6, 2014 by More Fierce Than Fire

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"Not much, but logic says it wouldn't be good for anyone in an airtight jet."

[25K Now!]

IC: Mikhail

 

Mikhail shook his head. "It does not matter."

[otter]

IC:

 

"Well, I figured I'd educate you as to what it does to organic creatures after we landed."

[Blair the Cat]

IC:

 

"Would pretending that I'm afraid of you make you feel better, Firefox?" I said in mock sympathy.

[otter]

IC:

 

"Not particularly. I'd be happier if you'd stop acting quite so foolishly as you are now, but I don't want fear. I'm neither a tyrant nor a demon...nor an embodiment of death, for that matter."