xp_logs | Hotel California

Marie-Ange reaches the center where she is found -- then found again.

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__*__

Jean and Scott are reunited.

Scott looked around the corridor he'd emerged into as he let the door slam shut behind him. Where on earth was he now? It kinda looked like he was back in the hotel, and to be honest Scott wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing anymore. He sighed and rubbed at his eye as he looked around waiting for the next surprise to pop out at him, and the hotel didn't disappoint as a familiar red-head rounded the corner. Scott sighed, he wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.

Jean slowed to a stop, staring Scott down. Cocking her head to the side, she outstretched her hand and telekinetically lifted him off his feet, cutting air off from his windpipe.

"Taking the form of my husband...that is something I will not abide," she said calmly. There was a difference between being angry and being offensive.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this?" She released some of the pressure so her assailant could speak, albeit with some difficulty.

Scott tried to suck in a gulp of air as he glared at Jean, his eye starting to glow as a cold smile touched his lips. "No you've gone too far. As if everything back there wasn't bad enough," the X-Man gestured back towards the door he had just left, "now you try this. You can try to mess with my mind all you want but my wife would never just attack me. You're starting to lose your touch."

Jean rubbed her forehead. It was hard to know what was real. All she knew was that she was tired and annoyed and trying not to be those things.

"She would if some psychopath were posing as her husband. He couldn't have gotten here that quickly. I'm not playing your game anymore. Just tell me who you are. If I did something to make you want to retaliate against me...let's talk about it. You and I. Not looking like him."

"Quickly?" Scott echoed sarcastically, "Eight hours wasn't quick enough in my books. But I came here to look for my wife, not copy 500 this hotel has decided to throw at me." He shook his head at Jean. "You wanna know how I know that you're no more the real Jean than anyone else here? I can feel her in my head, but you I don't get anything off."

"Eight...hours," Jean murmured to herself, shaking her head. She pulled out her phone. "The missed calls."

It'd been a lot longer than she thought. If she was to believe what he said.

"And what is she feeling?"

God, she was so tired.

"...Nothing," Scott admitted after a moment's pause, "I haven't sensed anything since she disappeared." He glared at 'Jean' before continuing coldly, "So why don't you just let me down so I can go and find my wife."

Jean stared at him for a long awhile. All of the clues that came up were telling. Was it really him? Could it be? She didn't want to make that mistake again. She'd made it before, that very day, and days past when Matthews wore Scott's face inside her head and he died at her feet.

"What if she's right here?" she said faintly. She looked away, and with the turn of her head he dropped to the ground.

"Go, then."

But if it wasn't him whoever it was would have to make their move some time. They wanted her to suffer, obviously. She wasn't going to give them the satisfaction anymore.

Dropping to the floor Scott sucked in a deep breath and stood up looking questioningly at Jean. "How do you know?" he asked quietly. "How do we know that you or I are the real Scott and Jean?" he asked doubt entering his voice.

The question made Jean fall silent for a few moments in consideration.

"Hope," she said with a tired smile.

"I have no other options."

Scott nodded slowly, "Hope," he repeated softly, "that's more than enough for me," he told Jean as he held his hand out to her.

It took her some time to make the next step. She half expected an invisible wall to separate the two of them and a hand to come out from behind him and cut his throat again, a falling chandelier, a gun shot, dozens of scenarios. But there was still that hope.

Finally Jean stepped forward, limping, but still walking as she closed the distance and, after letting out a breath, took his hand using the one she didn't normally use. And the link burst to life like a switch being flipped.

It was like a light bulb had been switched on in his head, the feeling of a connection to another person so deep that it couldn't be described. A smile touched Scott's face, "Jean..." Scott tightened his grip on Jean's hand pulling her in to a hug before the sheer litany of her injuries registered with him, "My god, what happened to you?"

Closing her eyes, Jean sank into Scott's arms, still hesitant to fully give in to relief because they weren't safe yet but she allowed herself some comfort. She shook her head.

"Matthews...someone made me think he..." A glimpse of bodies strewn across the floor and a beaten, blood-soaked little girl laying amongst them flashed across the link, too quick in Jean's weakened state for her to block. Stiffening, she shook her head, trying to clear the memory away.

"I tried to stop him. But it wasn't really him. I don't know who it is."

Jean's shoulders sagged and her breath caught in her throat.

"Has it really been eight hours?"

"Longer," Scott replied sadly as he wrapped his arms around Jean, "It was eight hours since you vanished, and then however long it's been since we've been in here too."

Scott sucked in a breath as the images from Jean's mind assaulted his over the link before he tightened his grip around Jean's shoulders, "I'm sorry Red. I don't know what's going on here either. This place, it seems to have a way of getting at your worst fears and rubbing them in your face."

Jean rested her chin against Scott's shoulder, then pulled herself away, trying to regain composure. "I also think this person seems to feed off of emotion. It almost felt like they were trying to get a rise out of me."

Scott nodded, memories of Jean and Logan coming to the forefront of his mind, "That's exactly it, they wanted to get a reaction, and were willing to do anything to get it. So you think we're dealing with some kind of empath then?" Glancing around Scott realized that they were still standing in the empty hallway, "We should probably see if we can find the others and figure out how we're gonna get out of this fun house."

"Among other things," Jean said gravely. They seemed to possess a lot more abilities than that. She nodded at his next suggestion, then paused.

"Wait, I think I sense Haller," Jean said. Perfect timing.

~Haller,~Jean thought. ~I'm with Scott. Sending you our location. ~

Her teammate's response was slightly muffled, but immediate. ~Jean,~ Jim replied, clearly relieved. ~Are you all right? I've been looking for you -- I'm with Nico now. You're with Scott?~ There was only a hint of uncertainty in the question.

~ I take it you have had similar problems with imposters lately? ~ Jean thought with a frown. ~It's really him. We had our own little moments of doubt but they were resolved. I can feel him through our link. How far away are the two of you? ~

~It's hard to tell here, but it's not far if we can contact each other,~ he replied with a telling lack of response to her initial question. ~Stay where you are. We found somewhere stable -- Amanda and Wanda are there now figuring out what the hell is going on. I'll come to you.~

~ We are near the manager's quarters. ~ Jean said. Hopefully they'd remain that way. She glanced to Scott.

"Haller and Nico are on their way to us."

Scott nodded and cast his gaze around the corridor, "Good, it's not a moment too soon," he commented, anxious to get out of the hotel. "Do they have any idea what's going on in here?"

"Nothing that they've told me yet," Jean said. She had her suspicion that it was a person but with all of the abilities that it possessed she was beginning to have her doubts. And she didn't like that.

But something kept bothering her, in the back of her mind.

"I need to find something out first," she said.

~Haller, I'm moving a little. Still the same hallway, but there's something I need to know first. There's a man who's related to the manager. He's mentally ill. I need to see if he's okay. ~

There was a pause, then the brief sensation of a nod. ~Go ahead. I can feel Scott now too. I'll let you know if you start dropping out.~

~I will. But God, I hope not.~ Jean thought.

She glanced to Scott. "Can you come with me? I need to check on one of the residents. I think he may be in trouble."

Scott nodded, "Of course. We can at least check on him before Haller and Nico get here. What kind of trouble are we talking about?" he asked as he followed Jean down the corridor.

"I don't know. I kept trying to get down this hallway for hours, it seems. Whatever this is is trying to keep me from there. I want to know why."

Jean stopped in front of the door, staring at the doorknob. She heard nothing around them but their own breathing. Nothing.

Slowly, she opened the door.

A lone form lay at the foot of a bookshelf, face turned to the side and one arm outstretched. There was a certain rigidity that indicated rigor mortis was well underway. His face was pale; blood had already begun to pool in the interstitial tissues. There were no visible wounds. His milky eyes stared at them with the emptiness of the dead.

There had never been a chance to save him.

Jean stared at the body for a long while, a quiet sadness bleeding through her eyes. It was not sudden, but accepting, almost reconfirming. She knew. Somehow, in the back of her mind, she knew what she would find in that room.

Something told her she'd already seen it before.

Perhaps she had been hoping for a different outcome.

__*__

The mystery is solved, but another problem is revealed.

The one thing about the pain in her back was that it focused Wanda's attention on the here and now instead of the lingering echoes of terror that ran through her. She stood, ironically, in a library - a place she felt most familiar at times and watched as the others walked the pace of the room or tried to recapture their balance. "By the way, if anyone feels like pocketing something as a memento," she said, "do not bother. We appear to have been brought to another dimension and I have a feeling we do not want to bring anything from this realm back across."

"That may be a problem." Marie-Ange gestured at her clothes, which were torn, and marked with blood and grime and filth. "I was attacked. I do not know how much of this is mine." She was not mentioning that she didn't know how much of it had come from severed heads. She was never talking about the heads. "If I have to, I suppose I can just strip down if we find a way out." She swiped at her face, catching a smear of blood on the back of her hand. "This place... it knows what we fear. It must, because Gambit attacked me."

"It does," Jim confirmed from his place against the wall. He glanced at Wanda. "It . . . well, probably this will make more sense with context."

"Only to us," she responded. "It will only make sense to us and I worry about that." Wanda drifted over to the dark wood desk that stood at the back of the office and started to search among the books until she found a slim, leather bound volume and held it up for the others to see. "Take notes, children. Anyone who wanders around calling themselves a something 'ologist' will probably keep a journal hidden somewhere." She pointed at Marie-Ange. "And no, I am not admitting to it."

Her brief attempt at humor faded quickly, the image of 'teasing' Marie-Ange with Chthon's influence still heavy in her mind. "What we have here is a gentleman who more than dabbled in the art of demonology." She tossed the journal to Jean to flip through. "Amanda and I had to piece together what we could get out of the journal with the books around us. When the person in question summoned the demon, they struck a deal. Knowledge, however, brief for the man and time on the earth for the demon. Thanks to the deal struck ..."

She nodded at Jean. "What do you see?"

Jean caught the journal telekinetically and the book came to rest on a nearby table, neatly opening up to the first page.

A nearby chair scooted into place behind her and she sat down. With her good hand clutched to her chest, she flipped through the journal with her other one. The smell of the book was musty and pungent, couple with a hint of something cloying that had started to fade.

She shook her head. "There are places that are blurred. Like someone spilled water on it. It's like...parts of the journal are erased," she said, rubbing the paper.

"But why? It seems more like a prose-laden textbook on how to raise a demon than a man's journal."

"It is a symptom," Wanda explained. "Or a physical metaphor because when the bargain was struck, the demon fulfilled his promise. Knowledge as was asked for but the price was not just a quick jaunt around the East Coast. The creature devoured the man's essence. It took his name - the magical one that holds the power - it took his soul and the very building blocks that made him human."

She sat on a clear surface of the desk. "And what it expelled was this dimension. It also gave the demon a front row view of the nature of human fear and suffering, bolstering its already expansion knowledge. Whatever fear and terror we experience is over or under laid with the dimensional taint of the demonologist, adding and compounding our own."

Jim rubbed the back of his head. "As near as I can tell, this place is somewhere between reality and the astral plane. Obviously the demon has the most power here, but it does have some contact with reality. At least if it finds the right type of person." He turned to Jean. "The man you were investigating -- from what you told me, I think you were right about him being a psi. No one else would have come close enough to this dimension for the demon to register. You said he'd been diagnosed with dementia or depression? The demon probably wrung him out over a long period of time. When you came to stay here it saw a fresh meal."

Grimacing, the telepath spread his hands. "And then we showed up with actual practitioners . . ."

"So we are a buffet of deliciousness, and we are fueling the stoves as well." The metaphor was unpleasantly accurate. "And the kitchen was built out of that idiot's memories. Did anyone else have Biblical torment? It was like lectures at my old school with the angry sisters, and then Gambit showed up and tried to take over, as though he was... directing things." Marie-Ange asked. "I think I can confirm that it is astral as well. My powers.. " She closed her eyes, pointedly, and twitched a hand, and a miniature inches-tall copy of Haller appeared, standing with hands spread. "I cannot do that outside. Not from memory."

"There's a few things that aren't quite the same. And . . . well . .." He cast a glance at the far wall, from which hung a small, finely carved crucifix. "I don't know if I'd call it all biblical, but there definitely seems to be a theme to how it's coming at us."

"That explains what's going on here," Scott cut in. He'd been happy to let the other' talk while his mind grappled with the information they'd uncovered. Unfortunately they couldn't spend all day discussing why they were here. "That brings us onto the question of what do we do now to deal with him and get out of here?" He asked, tossing the question out to the group.

"Thankfully there are boundaries to even what demons can accomplish," Wanda responded, twisting her fingers together. "There are still prices to pay. In order to create this place, he had to create anchors or it would have vanished the moment he lost concentration. Two anchors, to be precise - the original body of the summoner and..." She grimaced. "Whatever happens to be left of the soul. If we can locate them, we can destroy them and then there will be no more dimension and we should be free."

"Ok then," Scott nodded, "That sounds like a plan to me. Two objectives means two teams. We split up, take down the anchors and get out of this place," the X-Man offered as he examined the group which was gathered together. "Wanda, Marie-Ange and Nico, you're with me. We need take out the summoner's body. Haller and Amanda, you guys need to go with Jean and take down the soul anchor."

Jim exchanged an uncomfortable look with Wanda. "About that. There's another problem. The demon also picks up things from us directly. For most of us it was just used to externalize negative emotions, but in one case . . ." He turned to look at the man who had not yet spoken.

"It's Gambit. Perhaps it was de demon to start, but it's Gambit now." The Cajun had deep circles under his eyes. "Dat means it has knowledge of you all, and more importantly, it has Gambit's cruelty to apply dat knowledge to. Whatever plan you have in mind, he's already thought his way through it. And a dozen variants."

"But we have a small advantage," Jean said. "We have you here. You know him best, for better or worse."

"And he knows me. Dis is as dangerous as it gets." He rubbed his bottom lip for a moment, wishing Ororo was there. "Dere's only one thing dat he won't expect us to do. Give him what he wants."

"Which is... us?" Marie-Ange almost-asked. "We bait a trap with ourselves and hope it does not end in too many horrible injuries?" She waved a hand. "Well, it is not the worst plan we have had, no?"

Nico didn't take active part in the conversation, and she was glad nobody asked her to. Too many thoughts in her head that needed to be safely put away before she could even start considering being useful. All the talk about demons wasn't making her any calmer; there was always a prize, and she knew that better that probably most in the room. Still, she nodded silently when Scott talked to her. She wanted that demon dealt with. Personally.

"It's the only plan we have. Let's hope it's enough." Amanda had been quiet throughout the talk, one part of her attention focused on the house, feeling what she could. It was getting difficult - Gambit's influence was spreading, shadows gathering. "Because we're fucked if it isn't."