xp_logs | Something Slender (and Awful)

The X-Force rescue team arrives, and the Slendermen meet something scarier than them - Gambit.

The other side of the portal Amanda had ripped open looked enough like the part of New York that the team had left that, initially, it was difficult to tell if they'd actually gone anywhere. But the little things - the angles where things met, the shadows objects cast - said differently.

Even having braced himself mentally for the change, Doug found himself stumbling from the roughness of the transition. If it weren't for every pattern around him screaming his wrongness, it could have just been brushed off as tripping and stubbing his toe. He didn't quite go to one knee, reaching out to steady himself on his fingertips before straightening and unzipping his jacket to get at the holsters inside.

There hadn't been very much time to prepare, but Doug was a firm believer in redundancy. And he'd been in the office when Maddie arrived, so while Amanda had been calling the rest of the team, he'd darted into his office for the two pre-loaded guns and holsters in his safe, and his windbreaker that was cut to hide them. He was already looking around, moving away from the portal and covering as many angles as he could.

There was something fundamentally wrong about this place. Remy's spatial sense was fluctuating wildly, pinging off things there were not visible and recording many that were as open space. He shook his head, like a man trying to clear water from his ears, trying to let his mind catch up to his powers. He could taste something in the environment watching them; waiting for them, eager to strike. A feral chord resonated, from instincts which had been deeply suppressed, and his knuckles went white where he gripped his staff.

"You still alive, Nico?"

"Think so." Nico's reply was a bit weak, but soon enough she had recovered her footing- and breath. "This place is sending me all the wrong vibes, not to mention it looks like a heroin addict's worst nightmare." Still, she rolled her shoulders, Staff of One firmly held as she looked around. It was as if the space they were occupying had been forced into, familiar sights becoming twisted and anything short of nauseating. "If anything I'm pretty pissed off now. Let's go."

It was difficult to figure out how to begin trying to find the abductees. If this place was astral in nature, like Maddie had suggested, then who knew where they might be. Logic didn't apply to a place like this. He scanned the scenery, trying to find some kind of pattern to it, some subtle direction that might point the way to the Slendermen's proverbial larder. "Any ideas how to track in here?" he asked quietly.

"Find what de others are hunting." Remy said quietly. He waved off to his left. "Dis way. Both of you keep keep going straight. Gambit catch up in a minute." He took several steps back and turned, disappearing into the unnatural fog.

Yeah, Doug didn't like the sound of 'Gambit catch up in a minute' at all. But Remy was his boss, and anyway too quick for Doug to catch before he was gone. "Well, I see we've already fallen victim to the first horror movie trope," he said with a wry flick of his eyes to Nico.

Nico grunted. "This is a creepy Scooby Doo episode. On crack." Closing her eyes, Nico took a deep breath. "ecnalaB." She glowed for a moment, and then took a couple of cautious steps. "Yep, good to go. Now let's get some video recorders, knives and some bad nutritional advice." Because she really wanted to emulate that stupid vlog.

Doug shook his head. He was supposed to be the Genre Savvy of the piece. But whatever. He indicated Nico should cover him, and they moved off into the gloom. They made their way down the alleyway that stretched in front of them, just like one in New York. At the end, they turned a corner...

And found two tall, black-clad figures waiting for them.

"Ruh-roh, Rhaggy," Doug muttered.

Well wasn't that nice. "So, they die when we hit them, right? Right?" Lifting her Staff, Nico started to think up a spell. "Fire? Ice? Electricity? Cake? What the hell am I supposed to throw at these things?!" Making a supreme effort to keep whatever was left of her cool intact, Nico glanced over at Doug. Well wise guy, time to have some ideas.

Doug's stomach picked that exact moment to grumble. "Now I want cake," he said with a frown. "Amanda said it'll probably take a lot of juice to gank these things. I mean, we're on their turf. So, y'know, don't hold back." He wasn't sure if gunfire would work, but he did have a couple extra tricks up his sleeve. Literally, in the case of the M67 grenade that dropped into his hand "Hit 'em!" he yelled, yanking the pin and holding it for a second or so before hurling it.directly at the Slendermen.

"You want cake right now? I don't know if that's admirable or slightly disgusting." There was no more time for idle chat though. "Bricks with a chance of gravel." Waving the Staff of One, Nico summoned a torrent of...well ,bricks that literally rained over the creature.

The first slenderman was down, but the second loomed, moving faster than they thought, flickering through the disjointed world. A thin arm shot out, knocking Doug's guns away, and another took hold of the staff. Nico struggled with a grip like steel fighting her, bending her towards the horrible grinning mouth, just starting to taste the first delicious cracks of fear as it pulled her in. It suddenly stopped, as if confused, and the glowing end of a metal pole jutted through the centre of its forehead. The mouth twisted in pain, and then the head exploded, showering Nico with flecks of matter.

Behind the crumpled slender man, Remy pulled back his staff. His red on black eyes seemed to burn against the strange surroundings. He hefted the staff in one hand, and in the other, writhed and screaming and desperately trying to claw itself free, was another slenderman.

"Dis whole place is a big hunting blind. Camoflague for dem to disorient dey targets, split dem up, and den take dem down." Remy grip on the throat of the slenderman tightened, as he pulled it closer. "'cept when dis one ambushed Gambit, seems dat he didn't like what he found. Been trying to get away ever since." He hoisted it face to face with him, and terror rolled off the slenderman like a palpable force.

"Gave me de thought dat it can led us to de others, neh? Doug, see if you can talk to it."

Doug grimaced as he snatched up his dropped weapons and reholstered them. Remy's body language. and manner wasn't exactly comforting, but Doug shoved that aside and examined the captive Slenderman. "I haven't seen any of them do anything like verbal communication," he told the Cajun, leaning in closer to look at the featureless face. "Hey!" he yelled sharply from up close. The figure focused on him, hissing its displeasure.

After trying some simple sentences, Doug grimaced in frustration. "It's like...if you took a shark and crammed it into a humanoid form that fed off of fear. It's a...phage. A phobophage, if you will. There's some body language there - it really doesn't like you, Remy - but it's just animal cunning. The fear of a shark that just ran into an orca."

"Let's chew a bit den." Remy grabbed the creature's face, turned it towards him. "You going to find de others. De others dat you hunting. If not, Gambit going to take you back into de real world - into de sunlight, wit' me."

Sunlight didn't really bother the Slendermen even if they preferred shadow, but Remy was definitely frightening to it. It continued to thrash and struggle against the Cajun's grip.

"I don't think it really understands you, Remy. But turn it loose, it'll lead us to more of them, and probably the kids." Going for reinforcements didn't require a complex understanding of language - even a pack of wolves can take down the biggest bear in the forest. And the best place to find those reinforcements would almost certainly be wherever the Slendermen were trying to feed on the New Mutants.

Remy let the thing go, and it scrambled away with pathetic haste to flee. "Don't lose it. Otherwise, dere's no way to track de kids."

"On it." Doug may not have been as fast as the Slendermen, but he was in good shape, and he didn't have to keep up with their runner, just keep it in sight. And the thing wasn't smart enough to try and lose him, it just kept going in a straight line away from Remy. The landscape shifted around them, but Doug didn't have any problem keeping sight of the thing.

Hope had stayed in the back of the small group so far, desperately searching for a way out. Once more she scanned the horizon, then stared. There was a Slenderman coming at them at breakneck speed, but it ignored them utterly. Instead it tore past them, seemingly intent on getting somewhere with a terrified look on it's face.

What in the world had caused that? Hope looked again and there were actually people coming in their direction. "Look, there are other people here! We are not the only ones here!" She pointed out with a sigh of relief.

Amanda, Maddie, and Jubilee hold the portal. Maddie's battle plan is a a bit...batty.

Amanda shuddered as she shouldered her way in through the gap she and Nico had opened to the Slendermen universe. Everything felt wrong, beyond the weirdness of the place itself, she was now cut off from her connection to New York, and the sudden absence was disconcerting. She hadn't realised, but even in remote areas of the world, there was still some kind of connection for her mutation to latch onto. Here, there was absolutely nothing.

She looked around - everyone seemed to be in one piece, if not a little disorientated - and then focused on the youngest member of their rescue team. "You all right, Maddie?"

From where she stood doubled over, hands resting on knees as she tried to fight the dizziness that the trip had bestowed upon her, Maddie raised her hand and flashed an 'Okay' sigh. Once again, the media had lied to her; teleporting was not fun. At least it wasn't as bad as her trip in Genosha. There, the world felt ready to explode into teeny tiny pieces, now it just felt like it was hurling itself toward the sun.

There wasn't any time to talk further, however, as a tall, skinny shape appeared. Then another. And another, until the group was facing a small army of Slendermen, all dressed identically in their black suits, faces disturbingly blank and featureless, all reaching for them with unnaturally long arms.

"Look sharp," Amanda said, perhaps unnecessarily, planting her feet. "Looks like we rang the doorbell."

"Aw shit," groaned Maddie as she pulled herself upright to face the creatures. She had expected this, of course, but not so quickly, and not so many of them! If she was a gambling woman, she would put her money on these Slendermen being out for blood, probably her blood moreso than anything. She had killed one of their compatriots. That made her Public Enemy Number One.

"Right. My dude went all melty after I kicked it in the head," she called out to the other two. "I knew training to fight zombies would pay off. So we try going for their heads first."

It had taken a few headshakes and blinks for Jubilee to get her bearings. Inter-dimensional travel had obviously gone downhill since she'd last travelled.

"You got any idea where the others are?" She asked, blasting the head off one of the Slenders as it got close enough with a quick burst of plasma. "I am totes all about getting the hell out of here quickly, yeah?"

Maddie stretched her neck to either side, trying to get the kinks of interdimensional travel out of her system, and to give her the opportunity to scan the area for any signs of life. "I can feel Clint and Billy fairly close by," she replied. "And the others are... all over. They seem close too, but this place has a way of changing how distance works."

"Uh dude. Headless Nick at two o'clock. Apparently you can't just go for the head. Shit."

"No worries, I've got it." Amanda grimaced at the sight of the creature shambling towards them and clapped her hands together sharply, generating her shielding spell around the creature and shoving it down into the ground. To her disgust, it exploded into thick white chunks of matter, veined with red and black. "Ugh, that's totally off. They all do that?"

"Maybe?" Jubilee replied, taking a knife from a hidden sheath on her forearm and chucking it at the head of another arriving on the scene before following up with several blasts of multicolored plasma once she saw that didn't work. "They're like fucking sharks to a buffet."

"Mine just oozed into goo." Maddie's nose wrinkled in disgust as the Slenderchunks flew through the air. "Ew. That's just nasty."

"Okay. I've found the others. Lemme see if I can link this shit up." She closed her eyes, forcing the image of the chunky mess away from her thoughts, and concentrated on reaching out to the minds of the women near her. She pressed upon them the sense of a map, flat and never ending, with little dots where she had felt living people. Some felt farther away than others, and that's how she placed them, but the reality was in this world you never knew where something really was. And with its shifting nature, Maddie wasn't even sure if such a map would help much if at all. But it was the best she could do.

"Right ladies. Let's go give them a HA! And a HI-YA! And a OUU-WA! And then we kick them! Sound like a plan to you," she asked them. "Cause it definitely sounds like a plan to me."

"If Billy and Topaz are using magic, I might be able to sense it closer to." To Maddie's telepathy, Amanda's mind would have been a series of locked doors as she shielded the parts of her mind she didn't want Maddie accidentally peeking into. There was far too much that a teenager didn't need to know in there. But the map helped, as much as it could with the shifting nature of this place. "And smacking these fuckers around is definitely a plan." At least while she had the magical juice for it, then it would be time for the Doc Martens and the sap she had in her pocket to come into play. "Jubes, you're our WMD - take the point and do as much damage as you like."

"With pleasure," Jubilee said with a grin, throwing up several plasma balls to dance above thier heads. She moved to the front and started walking forward at a steady pace, sending her preprapared blasts at them before generating and replacing them in the line. It took more power to generate than maintain she'd worked out long ago and she let herself fall into a rythmn, happy to trust Amanda to pull her out if needed.

"Wait. Hold on." Maddie stopped abruptly to concentrate, clearly confused. "There's a big clump of kids. At least four, all together." She flashed an image of this change in telepathic sensing to Amanda and Jubilee. "This possibly makes things a whole lot easier."

Amanda paused as well, a Slenderman hanging suspended in a shielding bubble, flailing helplessly. "There's magic up there," she agreed. "Either Billy or Topaz. Maybe both." She grinned. "Looks like this is going to be more of a pick up than a rescue - they're doing pretty good on their own. Maddie, let the rest know, please and thank you?"

"Rockstar, lets go get our little ducklings, shall we?" Jubilee said, clapping her hands together as she generated another burst, this time wider to clear the path ahead for several feet. "MMm, omelets, my favourite."

Maddie relayed the message, flashing the map in their minds as a reference. That had to be good enough for right now; there was no real way for her to really show everyone's position relative to everyone else. "That has to be Topaz," she remarked to Amanda, smiling at Slendy-in-a-Bubble. "Billy and Clint's signatures I would know anywhere. They're not in the big group."

Topaz's head snapped around as the sound of something exploding reach her ears. Exploding? Yup, definitely exploding, she realized as she looked just in time to see Slendermen exploding into white, gooey junks that sprayed everywhere. She could only gape as she recognized the approaching figures and the cause of the explosions. Amanda and her mates, come to the save the day - again, in her case.

"How the hell...?"

It was the flickering of light that caught Clint's attention before anything else. It was fairly far off, but approaching quickly. He made out the figures bringing the bright lights with them and nodded to himself. There was Maddie - that made sense. He didn't actually know the other people with her, but he figured they could only be helpful. Then the sounds of popping, sizzling, and splattering reached his ears and he wrinkled his nose - he was never going to be able to eat eggs again. "Guys," he called to his friends, "We've got company!"

Marie-Ange and Wanda decide that they really need to be paid more for their jobs.

The landscape was wrong - Marie-Ange's artist instincts told her that, it fit together at wrong angles - in ways she'd seen from some of her less talented classmates in classes, and in surrealistic paintings hanging in museums. She came out of Amanda's portal into a stumble, and caught herself on a lamppost that was more cold black metal, and had nothing to do with giving off light. Behind her, Wanda was softly cursing the moment they came out from the portal. Even without looking through the veil of chaos, the entire place felt wrong and heavy to her; even if one looked away from the slanted buildings or jagged pieces of street, if one shut their eyes, something dragged down at them. She caught Marie-Ange's elbow gently in her hand to help steady her.

"I do not like this place." Marie-Ange muttered. She took a moment to glance around - they'd spilled out into the faux-New York into little clumps, but her team was still more or less together, at least in part. There was a curious heavyness to her thoughts, like something was blanketing them with a quilt, and she shook her head to try to brush it away. "Hopefully we can find Madelyne's classmates quickly..."

"Because the faster we find them, the faster we leave," Wanda agreed, spreading her senses out to touch the chaotic threads that surrounded her. She immediately pulled back, almost physically gagging, at the discordant views her powers just gave her. Nothing was right. Everything was an edge or two off - sometimes not enough to be noticeable at first but so very wrong nonetheless. "Oh this is going to be a lovely experience."

"I think we should ask for a raise when we get back." Marie-Ange muttered. She scrubbed at her face with one hand, and plucked a staff, gnarled and heavier than she'd expected, from the air - it seemed to grow even after she created it, becoming thicker and darker in color. A glance at Wanda told her as much as she'd determined from her own unpleasant mental reactions to the place - this was not just a side dimension, it was the nest of the things that had taken the students, and it was built out of nightmares. "Are you alright?" she asked.

She rolled her shoulders and tried to brace herself as mentally as she could. "I have been worse." It was true. She had been. It didn't make this situation great but Wanda could bear through it if she had to. And considering that there were children trapped here, she would bear through it. She'd even invite that unnatural chaos into herself if she had to. "I would ask you the same but I think I know the answer." They started to move forward slightly, trying to keep the others in their sight as they waited for a sign.

"Wet blanket inside my head." Marie-Ange said, offering the explanation that was unasked for. "Made of sheep." She shook herself, and her eyes darted off to a alley draped in grey. "Cannibal sheep."

The shadows in the alleyway were writhing, curling around each other like tangle strands of kelp. They pulled themselves forward, and the black tendrils gripped one of the buildings, making a hand easily half as tall as Wanda. It shrank as one of the creatures eased forward, dapper and black-clad and blank-faced as it approached the women.

"Oh, you must be fucking kidding."