Operation: Shaboom: Paradise
Jan. 10th, 2008 06:00 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsMarie-Ange seeks out the people on her list who could be responsible for the effect. At the last house, the home of Ben DeRoy, she finds answers, and a solution to the problem.
The DeRoy residence was neat and trimmed, like the rest of the houses. It still had the sense of newness about it, even if the house was obviously at least a decade old. In the driveway was a sparkling new Ford, all deep blue and chrome. It looked no different from the other two houses she'd gone to before, but DeRoy was the last one on Marie-Ange's list that fit. If she was wrong, there would be no time to try another guess. Her instincts, which she'd spent countless hours honing under the tutelage of Wisdom and Remy since joining X-Force said this had to be right. If not, the pull of the past, tugging at her identity would win out before she could have another chance.
Like the last few houses, Marie-Ange approached the porch with a purse under her arm, and a man's hat in her hands. The last two houses hadn't recognized it either, but of course, they wouldn't have. She'd 'borrowed' it from a car parked several streets away that had it's convertible top down. She knocked, waited, knocked loudly again, and after a quick glance to check for the twitch of curtains from nosy neighbors, turned the knob.
The door swung open easily, no doubt something to do with the 50s being a time as people were perceived as not having to lock their doors or something. For the first time in days, Marie-Ange was confronted with the modern world.
The door opened into a living room area, with a tired looking couch and a big arm chair. They faced a television that wasn't new, but wasn't new in a modern manner; a colour Sony from the late 90s. Just a quick look around revealed this was an old man's home, but one from 2008, and not 1959.
On the side table near the staircase, there was a clipboard full of forms, and a carousel of drugs, all carefully nested in the slots. Just a glance at the forms showed that Ben DeRoy required the services of a nurse at his home daily. Obviously, whoever came and went was caught by the effects coming through the door. Marie-Ange's own 50s garb wavered slightly as she moved through the living room, as if trying to revert back. It was also hard not to notice the sheer number of pills and drugs stacked on the desk, and the regime that was carefully followed on the forms. Ben DeRoy was obviously a very sick man.
The first thing Marie-Ange did was find a phone, and leave a terse voicemail at the office explaining the situation. If she couldn't find an answer here, or couldn't stop what was happening, Betsy and Pete and Sarah needed to know what was going on.
The idea of Pete turning into his 1959 counterpart brought to mind images of bad James Bond movies that Doug had refused to watch, even when it was the only thing on the television at three in the morning. Later, Marie-Ange would find it amusing - now, it was simply terrifying to think they might have to resort to that.
After hanging up the phone, she picked up one of the bottles of pills, and then set it back down. It wasn't any medication she recognized, but her knowledge of medicine only went so far as to know commercial brand names for prescription drugs, and over the counter headache remedies.
The forms, however, were much more useful. While the technical medical language was still beyond her, it wasn't hard to interpret the rest. Mr. DeRoy wasn't just ill, he was dying. The nursing sheets were from a hospice service.
Before she could finish flicking through the last of the paperwork, the sound of music, muted as if behind a door, filtered down from the second floor. The poppy sound of horns and close harmony singing of a couple of male voices, obviously from the 50s.
Oh life could be a dream, shaboom, if I could take you up to Paradise up above
The initial urge to scream and throw something breakable was swiftly surpassed by two thoughts. First, that someone or someones was upstairs. Second, that they were probably responsible for this entire nightmare.
Marie-Ange waited, almost holding her breath and listened for any sounds besides the music. Footsteps, creaking floorboards, the squeak of a door. But except for the song, she heard nothing. The lack of a car in the driveway hadn't ruled out the presence of a hospice nurse, but the lack of sounds did. By now, if there was anyone in the house besides the owner, they would have come downstairs, or made some kind of noise.
Nonetheless, Marie-Ange's search for the stairs was preceded by a search for a large object with which to defend herself. It was only sensible. Much to her annoyance, the search took her into the kitchen, where she found a medium sized frying pan drying in a dishrack.
She felt entirely ridiculous climbing the stairs in her stocking feet, with a frying pan in hand, but it was safer and quieter then clomping around in the shoes that were part of her uniform at the diner. And still she heard nothing, except the music, and as she crested the top of the stairs, labored breathing.
Only one of the bedrooms had an open door, and the others showed no signs of occupants. Edging around the doorway, Marie-Ange could clearly see a man lying on a bed near the window, surrounded by various elements of modern medical technology.
Oh everytime I look at you, something is on my mind
The man on the bed turned to regard her, lifting off the oxygen mask from his mouth. What surprised her more than anything was the fact that he didn't seem immensely old; but withered instead, as if the disease he suffered from was sucking him dry from the inside. Two livid pink scars stood out on his bald head, no doubt left over from the surgeries trying to remove the tumour in his brain. Surgeries that has obviously failed, leaving Ben DeRoy months to live as the cancer slowly stole parts of his mind away.
"You look new, dear." He said halting, a wheeze in his voice without the mask. "They always send the nicest girls, that service. You remind me of one I used to know, oh, years ago." He motioned with his hand for her, struggling to sit up in the bed.
Marie-Ange set the frying pan out of sight on the stairs, and approached, looking around the room carefully. "I only just arrived here on Monday." she explained. What did nursing aides do, besides dispense medication and give sponge baths? She certainly wasn't giving him a sponge bath. Or change a bedpan.
She stood awkwardly for a moment, and then asked, "You knew someone who looked like me? An old girlfriend..." with a slight nervous giggle.
"No, no..." He chuckled softly as she finally approached, gripping her arm so he could sit up properly against the pillows. "She used to work at the factory. Originally in the steno pool, I think. We met at the VA dance in..." He trailed off vaguely for a moment. "That was before Carrie, of course." He said finally, weakly.
"I don't hear about young people going to dances much these days. You're missing out, you know. Everyone in their best going out clothes... the music. Where is that remote?" The remote was on the side table near the bed, but it disappeared before Marie-Ange's eyes, and Ben's hand came up holding it from the bedclothes. "There it is. The music was... fun." He thumbed the volume a bit higher on the small CD stereo that she had heard earlier.
Sha-boom sha-boom Ya-da-da Da-da-da Da-da-da Da, sha-boom
Every time I look at you
Somethin' is on my mind
If you do what I want you to
Baby, we'd be so fine
Ben sighed. "Long time ago." He muttered.
At the factory. In the steno pool. Marie-Ange had seen her alter ego's stenography class homework, and the second-hand typewriter on the card table that served for a kitchen table in her apartment. It was an odd relief to know that the waitress-that-was wasn't a waitress forever. It gave her a bizarre, twisted kind of hope.
"No, I do not think we go dancing quite so much now. And when we do, it is not quite the same as when you were a teenager." She hadn't missed the remote disappearing, but if the surprise showed on her face, Ben didn't notice it. "My boyfriend likes the Beach Boys. Surf rock, I think he calls it. But his is on his computer, and when you were young, it was all records, and a dance hall host, yes?"
"There were. Once we drove four hours to see Bobby Rydell, if you can imagine." He coughed and reached out, getting Marie-Ange help to steady his hand long enough to drink from a cup of water that hadn't been there a moment ago. He settled back into the pillows with an exhausted sigh. "So different. When I was your age, there was the army base and the factory. This was the place you moved to, not away from. So very different..."
Marie-Ange picked up the small tray of pills, and he took them slowly, between sips of water. Outside the window, she could see two boys go past on soapbox racers, and brand new model 1959 cars on the street. The world outside his window was reflecting his memories; the soft focus days in his youth. On the side table was a picture of him and presumably his wife, DeRoy as a good looking young man in a suit, his hat perched on a thick head of black curls. This world was his reminiscence.
Sofia had been right. Her observation about the town was not that it was back in time, but it had been shaped by a single personality into the idealistic copy. The glass, the remote; DeRoy was creating the reality he wanted around himself, and didn't even seem aware of it. Marie-Ange couldn't help but wonder how long it had been going on. It explained Doug's reporter contact trying to investigate the town. The oddity of the factory's sales, which disappeared only days after he retired and no longer needed the job. Maybe DeRoy had been subconsciously rearranging reality for years. The kind of power that required; it was like Xorn again, someone who could reshape reality just by thinking it.
And now he was a frail, old man, lost in his memories, and slowly losing his mind to cancer. What happened if his nightmares began? Or his mind lost what memories he had, and began just to change things as randomly as someone switched thoughts? If Remy was right, the effect field was growing, and as sick as he was, Ben could live weeks, even months more, deteriorating slowly.
The most powerful mutant Marie-Ange had ever encountered didn't even seem to know that he was one, and the seemingly nice old man was devouring up lives to fit his drug addled memories. She stared in a blend of fascination and horror where he lay, oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, breathing shallowly and with difficulty, in a narcotic doze while his teenaged years were brought forcibly back to life outside the window.
Marie-Ange couldn't be certain how long she sat watching. Long enough, certainly to hear the pass of several cars, and the end of the stickball game out in the street. Children were off of school, playing in their yards. She could hear a mother calling her son in for dinner. Cars pulling into driveways - fathers coming home from work to share dinner with their families.
Outside, it was 1959, and this was a factory boom town. The local sports hero was dating the head cheerleader, the community center had just hosted the 'dance of the decade', if talk was to be believed, and somewhere, someone was probably making a fresh apple pie.
She sat long enough for Ben DeRoy's breathing to change to a raspy wheeze, punctuated by the occasional light snore. He was asleep, and still nothing changed.
Her hands were steadier then she'd expected, lifting the oxygen mask off his mouth and nose. It made a quiet windy noise as she set it on the bedside table carefully. There was a spare pillow on a chair, and she stared at it assessingly for a few moments before picking it up, hands just as steady as before.
It took longer then she thought for the breathing to stop, and she waited for a long minute even after she couldn't hear anything more. Even after outside, the cars shifted, or appeared, or disappeared altogether. It wasn't until she could feel her own clothes, slacks and a sweater, that she lifted the pillow away.
The pillow was returned to the chair, the oxygen mask replaced, and Marie-Ange crept back down the stairs. She put the frying pan back in the kitchen, put on a pair of ankle boots that were in the spot she'd left her shoes, and left, closing and locking the door behind her.
The DeRoy residence was neat and trimmed, like the rest of the houses. It still had the sense of newness about it, even if the house was obviously at least a decade old. In the driveway was a sparkling new Ford, all deep blue and chrome. It looked no different from the other two houses she'd gone to before, but DeRoy was the last one on Marie-Ange's list that fit. If she was wrong, there would be no time to try another guess. Her instincts, which she'd spent countless hours honing under the tutelage of Wisdom and Remy since joining X-Force said this had to be right. If not, the pull of the past, tugging at her identity would win out before she could have another chance.
Like the last few houses, Marie-Ange approached the porch with a purse under her arm, and a man's hat in her hands. The last two houses hadn't recognized it either, but of course, they wouldn't have. She'd 'borrowed' it from a car parked several streets away that had it's convertible top down. She knocked, waited, knocked loudly again, and after a quick glance to check for the twitch of curtains from nosy neighbors, turned the knob.
The door swung open easily, no doubt something to do with the 50s being a time as people were perceived as not having to lock their doors or something. For the first time in days, Marie-Ange was confronted with the modern world.
The door opened into a living room area, with a tired looking couch and a big arm chair. They faced a television that wasn't new, but wasn't new in a modern manner; a colour Sony from the late 90s. Just a quick look around revealed this was an old man's home, but one from 2008, and not 1959.
On the side table near the staircase, there was a clipboard full of forms, and a carousel of drugs, all carefully nested in the slots. Just a glance at the forms showed that Ben DeRoy required the services of a nurse at his home daily. Obviously, whoever came and went was caught by the effects coming through the door. Marie-Ange's own 50s garb wavered slightly as she moved through the living room, as if trying to revert back. It was also hard not to notice the sheer number of pills and drugs stacked on the desk, and the regime that was carefully followed on the forms. Ben DeRoy was obviously a very sick man.
The first thing Marie-Ange did was find a phone, and leave a terse voicemail at the office explaining the situation. If she couldn't find an answer here, or couldn't stop what was happening, Betsy and Pete and Sarah needed to know what was going on.
The idea of Pete turning into his 1959 counterpart brought to mind images of bad James Bond movies that Doug had refused to watch, even when it was the only thing on the television at three in the morning. Later, Marie-Ange would find it amusing - now, it was simply terrifying to think they might have to resort to that.
After hanging up the phone, she picked up one of the bottles of pills, and then set it back down. It wasn't any medication she recognized, but her knowledge of medicine only went so far as to know commercial brand names for prescription drugs, and over the counter headache remedies.
The forms, however, were much more useful. While the technical medical language was still beyond her, it wasn't hard to interpret the rest. Mr. DeRoy wasn't just ill, he was dying. The nursing sheets were from a hospice service.
Before she could finish flicking through the last of the paperwork, the sound of music, muted as if behind a door, filtered down from the second floor. The poppy sound of horns and close harmony singing of a couple of male voices, obviously from the 50s.
Oh life could be a dream, shaboom, if I could take you up to Paradise up above
The initial urge to scream and throw something breakable was swiftly surpassed by two thoughts. First, that someone or someones was upstairs. Second, that they were probably responsible for this entire nightmare.
Marie-Ange waited, almost holding her breath and listened for any sounds besides the music. Footsteps, creaking floorboards, the squeak of a door. But except for the song, she heard nothing. The lack of a car in the driveway hadn't ruled out the presence of a hospice nurse, but the lack of sounds did. By now, if there was anyone in the house besides the owner, they would have come downstairs, or made some kind of noise.
Nonetheless, Marie-Ange's search for the stairs was preceded by a search for a large object with which to defend herself. It was only sensible. Much to her annoyance, the search took her into the kitchen, where she found a medium sized frying pan drying in a dishrack.
She felt entirely ridiculous climbing the stairs in her stocking feet, with a frying pan in hand, but it was safer and quieter then clomping around in the shoes that were part of her uniform at the diner. And still she heard nothing, except the music, and as she crested the top of the stairs, labored breathing.
Only one of the bedrooms had an open door, and the others showed no signs of occupants. Edging around the doorway, Marie-Ange could clearly see a man lying on a bed near the window, surrounded by various elements of modern medical technology.
Oh everytime I look at you, something is on my mind
The man on the bed turned to regard her, lifting off the oxygen mask from his mouth. What surprised her more than anything was the fact that he didn't seem immensely old; but withered instead, as if the disease he suffered from was sucking him dry from the inside. Two livid pink scars stood out on his bald head, no doubt left over from the surgeries trying to remove the tumour in his brain. Surgeries that has obviously failed, leaving Ben DeRoy months to live as the cancer slowly stole parts of his mind away.
"You look new, dear." He said halting, a wheeze in his voice without the mask. "They always send the nicest girls, that service. You remind me of one I used to know, oh, years ago." He motioned with his hand for her, struggling to sit up in the bed.
Marie-Ange set the frying pan out of sight on the stairs, and approached, looking around the room carefully. "I only just arrived here on Monday." she explained. What did nursing aides do, besides dispense medication and give sponge baths? She certainly wasn't giving him a sponge bath. Or change a bedpan.
She stood awkwardly for a moment, and then asked, "You knew someone who looked like me? An old girlfriend..." with a slight nervous giggle.
"No, no..." He chuckled softly as she finally approached, gripping her arm so he could sit up properly against the pillows. "She used to work at the factory. Originally in the steno pool, I think. We met at the VA dance in..." He trailed off vaguely for a moment. "That was before Carrie, of course." He said finally, weakly.
"I don't hear about young people going to dances much these days. You're missing out, you know. Everyone in their best going out clothes... the music. Where is that remote?" The remote was on the side table near the bed, but it disappeared before Marie-Ange's eyes, and Ben's hand came up holding it from the bedclothes. "There it is. The music was... fun." He thumbed the volume a bit higher on the small CD stereo that she had heard earlier.
Sha-boom sha-boom Ya-da-da Da-da-da Da-da-da Da, sha-boom
Every time I look at you
Somethin' is on my mind
If you do what I want you to
Baby, we'd be so fine
Ben sighed. "Long time ago." He muttered.
At the factory. In the steno pool. Marie-Ange had seen her alter ego's stenography class homework, and the second-hand typewriter on the card table that served for a kitchen table in her apartment. It was an odd relief to know that the waitress-that-was wasn't a waitress forever. It gave her a bizarre, twisted kind of hope.
"No, I do not think we go dancing quite so much now. And when we do, it is not quite the same as when you were a teenager." She hadn't missed the remote disappearing, but if the surprise showed on her face, Ben didn't notice it. "My boyfriend likes the Beach Boys. Surf rock, I think he calls it. But his is on his computer, and when you were young, it was all records, and a dance hall host, yes?"
"There were. Once we drove four hours to see Bobby Rydell, if you can imagine." He coughed and reached out, getting Marie-Ange help to steady his hand long enough to drink from a cup of water that hadn't been there a moment ago. He settled back into the pillows with an exhausted sigh. "So different. When I was your age, there was the army base and the factory. This was the place you moved to, not away from. So very different..."
Marie-Ange picked up the small tray of pills, and he took them slowly, between sips of water. Outside the window, she could see two boys go past on soapbox racers, and brand new model 1959 cars on the street. The world outside his window was reflecting his memories; the soft focus days in his youth. On the side table was a picture of him and presumably his wife, DeRoy as a good looking young man in a suit, his hat perched on a thick head of black curls. This world was his reminiscence.
Sofia had been right. Her observation about the town was not that it was back in time, but it had been shaped by a single personality into the idealistic copy. The glass, the remote; DeRoy was creating the reality he wanted around himself, and didn't even seem aware of it. Marie-Ange couldn't help but wonder how long it had been going on. It explained Doug's reporter contact trying to investigate the town. The oddity of the factory's sales, which disappeared only days after he retired and no longer needed the job. Maybe DeRoy had been subconsciously rearranging reality for years. The kind of power that required; it was like Xorn again, someone who could reshape reality just by thinking it.
And now he was a frail, old man, lost in his memories, and slowly losing his mind to cancer. What happened if his nightmares began? Or his mind lost what memories he had, and began just to change things as randomly as someone switched thoughts? If Remy was right, the effect field was growing, and as sick as he was, Ben could live weeks, even months more, deteriorating slowly.
The most powerful mutant Marie-Ange had ever encountered didn't even seem to know that he was one, and the seemingly nice old man was devouring up lives to fit his drug addled memories. She stared in a blend of fascination and horror where he lay, oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, breathing shallowly and with difficulty, in a narcotic doze while his teenaged years were brought forcibly back to life outside the window.
Marie-Ange couldn't be certain how long she sat watching. Long enough, certainly to hear the pass of several cars, and the end of the stickball game out in the street. Children were off of school, playing in their yards. She could hear a mother calling her son in for dinner. Cars pulling into driveways - fathers coming home from work to share dinner with their families.
Outside, it was 1959, and this was a factory boom town. The local sports hero was dating the head cheerleader, the community center had just hosted the 'dance of the decade', if talk was to be believed, and somewhere, someone was probably making a fresh apple pie.
She sat long enough for Ben DeRoy's breathing to change to a raspy wheeze, punctuated by the occasional light snore. He was asleep, and still nothing changed.
Her hands were steadier then she'd expected, lifting the oxygen mask off his mouth and nose. It made a quiet windy noise as she set it on the bedside table carefully. There was a spare pillow on a chair, and she stared at it assessingly for a few moments before picking it up, hands just as steady as before.
It took longer then she thought for the breathing to stop, and she waited for a long minute even after she couldn't hear anything more. Even after outside, the cars shifted, or appeared, or disappeared altogether. It wasn't until she could feel her own clothes, slacks and a sweater, that she lifted the pillow away.
The pillow was returned to the chair, the oxygen mask replaced, and Marie-Ange crept back down the stairs. She put the frying pan back in the kitchen, put on a pair of ankle boots that were in the spot she'd left her shoes, and left, closing and locking the door behind her.
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