Little Paper Dolls: Meet the Dolls

[xp-cuckoos.livejournal.com]

Jean and Emma find the source of the distress call. Emma and the strange girls clearly do not get on.



Jean was trying not to focus on the random bodies strewn across the ground left by X-Force along the hallways as she entered the room with Emma. A guard, at the sight of their presence, readied his gun but Jean yanked it from his hand telekinetically and knocked him out with a psi blast before she got a good look at what exactly they were dealing with.

The room itself was massive, a mixture of industrial and futuristic at the same time, with the futuristic part mainly due to the series of sleep pods, each containing a sleeping girl, in the center.

"Well this is...certainly new."

"You have no idea," replied Emma. She was barely paying attention to Jean, as she had barely paid attention to the people she'd knocked out on the way into the building, barely paid attention to the wanton joy of Wade and Domino as they'd punched their way through anyone in their way, barely paid attention to anyone who screamed, or fled, or died in front of her. All of her attention had been reaching towards the pods in front of her. Five pods. Five girls. Five daughters. Herself, reflected. Mirrors. Seedlings. Daughters.

~Daughters.~ Emma reached out with her mind, trying to find her way in again to the minds that were hers and not hers and one and not one. But there was no response. They were sleeping now. Sleeping in their cradles.

Jean realized Emma was probably not going to be much help at the moment, as one might tend to do when discovering five clones of themselves. So she set to seeing what she could do medically, rather than psychically. Carefully approaching the pods, Jean studied the set up to see if she could ascertain the easiest way to wake them up. The first thing she looked for was a control panel. If she was lucky, they were all centrally controlled rather than individually.

Thankfully, she was pretty lucky. While it required an access card, she was able to steal one from the guard she'd knocked out.

The control panel had a digital interface and was easy to navigate, because evil organizations were looking for efficiency, despite what they did.

Locating the menu screen for the pods, Jean discovered that the women were being kept asleep by flooding the pods with a mixture air-dispersed sedatives and tranquilizers. Turning off the feed and replacing it with a stream of oxygen, Jean eventually opened the pods.

"They were being kept sedated, I've introduced oxygen into the mixture. They should come around, hopefully, but if not we may have to take them with us like this," Jean said.

Emma nodded absently at Jean's words, but her mind was elsewhere, a delicate questing to find the edges of the minds in front of her, waiting for them to rise from the kind of deep unconsciousness that she didn't want to quest into.

One. One was waking, rising rapidly from the black depths.

A wish list for the first thing you want to do when you meet your daughter/s, your clone/s, for the first time, normally doesn't throwing a telepathic gag at them, a mind-hissed ~Shut up!~ into their speech centres, to grip their hands, still strapped down, with iron fists to hold them still, stop the burgeoning panic bringing down the security teams that Emma was sure were still waiting for them.

But that was what Emma found herself doing, staring hard into blue eyes so similar to her own.

14's power rolled out even before her eyes came into focus. Like a wave, it spread in all directions. She felt the other occupants of the room before she saw them as her mind expanded, flowing out and around their minds like a river around stones. She recognized the closest one, that mind so like yet impossibly different from her own. She was torn between two conflicting urges; to throw the force of the raging river of her powers against the stones around her and simultaneously to run as far and fast as she could from the her that wasn't and yet could so effortlessly slide into what she was.

Instead, she froze. Rage and panic and terror raged within her and left her frozen in a mask of perfect indifference.

And then her powers flooded over the rest of the room, they latched onto the warm thrum of another of her bodies, and the world came sharply into focus. To Celeste's left, Phoebe opened her eyes.

"Who are you?" They asked in stereo.

Oh, this is going wonderfully. Jean thought to herself as she glanced between Emma and the cadre of girls. The resemblance between the six women was unnerving, and Emma herself looked to be coming to grips with her new...kin.

"You can call me Marvel Girl. It's a codename. I'm a doctor. But I won't hurt you. We're here to help take you all away from this place."

"We have people who will help us get you out of here," said Emma calmly. She nodded her chin towards the door, not yet releasing her grip on Celeste's hands, though she softened it noticeably. "They are taking care of the people who have been keeping you captive. But," she nodded at the other pods, three still bodies, "we will need you to cooperate. To help us. We need to get you out of here quickly and it will be easier if you help us carry your sisters." She leaned back, releasing her grip. "Will you do that?"

Celeste pulled her hands back. That clawing emptiness still raked at 14's mind, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before now that she had a second body back. The other three were still unconscious.

14 figured this is what a newborn foal must feel like as Celeste watched Phoebe try (and fail) to regain her feet. "Okay. We'll need just a minute," Celeste gave a bit of a wry smile. "Can you check on my sisters, please? And Phoebe, stop swearing. You're giving me a headache."

Jean tilted her head, then nodded.

"Of course," she said, making her way over toward the other pods to check on the rest of the girls. The reaction to waking from sedatives was different with everyone. The body often metabolized things in unique ways. But these girls were all the same. They should've all been coming around at the same time.

Perhaps it wasn't the sedatives. But they were all clones, so this was new territory for her. She had no idea how this worked beyond "the leg bone is connected to the knee bone," with a dash of psi-training. This kind of science bordered on science fiction. But it was real,

That was...still pretty amazing.

14 took her moment while the two strangers were distracted. She reached with her powers, but unlike last time when an ocean of psychic force smothered everything nearby, this was focused. A thin knife edge of her power, honed by years of practice, slipped out and through the facility's steel and concrete walls with hardly a thought.

She found the facility manager, a fat bald man who'd taken great pleasure at being exceptionally sadistic, cowering in a panic room on the far end of the base. She didn't have long before one of the strange women were likely to notice she was up to something, and she didn't feel terribly kind either way. She ripped into his head, forcing the spear-point of her mind through his basic mental shielding (and where had he gotten those?) like it was brittle glass. She could feel something in his mind snap at the force, but still she pushed onward.

Names and facts rushed past her. Weapon Plus. The kill-order for her parents. Project Designation 'Weapon Fourteen'. The X-Men and their hanger-ons. Clones of Emma Frost.

She withdrew from his mind, more questions than answers. Their reason for wanting her didn't make any sense. The man was too stupid to realize he was being lied to. She blinked, and Phoebe pulled herself to her feet.

"Okay. I think we're ready," she said aloud.

On the other side of the base, the facility manager slumped over in his panic room. His lights were on, but nobody was home. Blood ran out his ears.

Emma looked up from where she was checking on one of the unconscious sisters (clones/daughters) and narrowed her eyes. She didn't trust this situation at all, any more than she trusted these... children of hers. But none of that mattered for now. "Take that one," she said (ignoring the terse 'That one has a name'), indicating with a tilt of her head toward one of the unconscious bodies. "I'll take this one. Jean, are you okay?"

It was a curious question for Emma to ask, Jean thought. Honestly, she didn't think she much cared about her or was more understandingly preoccupied with the matter at hand.

She nodded. "Yeah," she said with a pause as she moved over to the pod Emma had indicated.

~Something wrong?~ she directed to Emma, keeping her mental walls otherwise high. They were already high to begin with so there wasn't much of a change to indicate the message.

Emma's control made her reply as clear as a bell to Jean and undetectable beyond the two of them. Her tone in Jean's head was unexpectedly wry, as she defaulted to the normal bone-dry humour that was her way of deflecting emotions to a time when they could be usefully examined. ~They made five of me. If ever there was a weapon that was going to turn on its maker as soon as it could... And they made five of me. I think the people out there are lucky we got to them first.~ Emma's mental voice trailed off for a moment, then returned, ~I just don't trust this situation. They might be programmed to take out their rescuers. They might do it accidentally. Are you happy to do what's needed if they start to go unstable? You might have to hit them fairly hard in the head. Telepathically speaking. Or possibly telekinetically speaking.~

Jean occupied herself by checking the vital signs of one of the pods to make sure everything was operating normally.

~Am I....happy to do it? Of course not. But these girls didn't ask to be made. They're doing what they were trained to do because their creators are psychopaths. But they reached out to you. It might be trap, or it might them asking for help. We don't know yet, do we? I won't kill them, but I will do what it takes to stop them if necessary.~

She glanced over. "Vitals seem to be fine, she should be waking up pretty soon."

~Knocking them out is fine. Or knocking them sideways, if that's all we need to do,~ confirmed Emma as she scooped up the girl from the pod into her arms. ~We need to be ready if they attack us, but I just want all of us safely out of here.~ The wry tone was suddenly back. ~All of me safely out of here.~

"What is her name?" Emma asked the girl who had woken first, nodding at the girl in her arms. Emma thought she may have been responsible for the outraged telepathic comment earlier. "For that matter, what are all of your names? I'm Emma." It was offered quietly, the smallest olive branch.

"Celeste. That's Phoebe." Phoebe walked over to the last sister, still in her pod. She laid a hand on the glass. "You're holding Irma, and... 'Marvel Girl'" (wasn't that a silly code-name) "is looking over Sophie. That just leaves Esme in the pod."

How Celeste could tell wasn't quite clear. They all looked exactly the same.

“Irma,’ repeated Emma, shifting her grip slightly. “I suggest that perhaps you and Phoebe take Sophie once Marvel Girl has confirmed she’s okay. Then she can check Esme and take her. We need to get out of here quite quickly. Our colleagues have ensured our safety for a small window of time, but that window is rapidly closing.”

After opening the pod, Jean checked Sophie over the good old fashioned way with her stethoscope, along with other tests. Her pulse was strong and steady.

"Sophie's okay to move," she confirmed, before heading over to Esme. She glanced over to Emma.

"We should probably get them some shoes and some better clothing. They won't be able to move quickly with bare feet, not to mention the risk of frostbite on the snow," she added before turning back to the girls.

"Do you know where the supplies are? Is it nearby? I agree with Emma, we need to leave very soon."

14 gave her as much of a look as she dared. "We don't even know where we are. Last thing we remember we were... at... home..." she trailed off.

Involuntary images flashed before her eyes. A splintered front door. Bullet holes in the walls. The coppery tang of blood.

She shakes it off, well aware that this is not the time to show any sort of weakness.

"And now we're here."

Jean was curious about where they referred to as 'home' but she didn't press.

"I'm sorry, this must be very disorienting for all of you. But we came because of your distress call. You reached out for Emma?"

"She wasn't reaching for her," Phoebe cut in waspishly. "She was reaching for me. Or one of the others."

14 had been just as surprised as Emma, and even more freaked out. "We didn't even know you existed."

"As family reunions go, I've had better," replied Emma, dryly. "Is Esme ready to go? I've rustled through a few of the guards' minds - there's a room where we can get clothes and blankets before we go, although it will mostly be lab coats and rubber booties all round." ~I was just going to strip a few guards on the way out,~ Emma added into Jean's head. ~You really are much more... appropriate... than me.~

The idea of giving five already distrusting teenage girls the clothing of the men their rescuers had killed, riddled with bullet holes, blood and...other things on it that come with dying didn't seem like a good idea to Jean, not if there was another option.

~No, I suppose not.~

"Yes, she should be fine," Jean said, opening the pod and telekinetically lifting the sleeping girl.

"We should be ready to go."

~I don’t think they are as averse to stripping guards as you would think,~ said Emma and on the tightest band she could, shared with Jean the knife’s edge glimpse of a man, (dead/unconscious?), something she had caught at the very edges of her consciousness, a razor-thin slip of telepathic power she had only glimpsed the very end of because of the similarity of her power to the girls’ (her own power re-made/made five-fold). ~I don’t know what she intended, what she did, but I didn’t sense malice. Fear, maybe. They are dangerous, but I think they may also be young and afraid and prisoners. I remember what it’s like to be young and afraid and a prisoner.~

Emma took a deep breath, not waiting for Jean to answer, turned to where Celeste and Phoebe were removing Sophie’s unconscious body from its pod. “There are not many choices for any of us,” she said. “We don’t have time to tell you all the reasons you should trust us. All I can offer is that we will get you out of this place and that we can offer sanctuary, if you require it. Time to heal. I would show you, but I think you would prefer that I don’t go near your mind again.” Proffering another olive branch.

Celeste smiled tightly. "No offense."

Still, 14 was left with absolutely no good options. Her life had fallen apart in the last few... how long had she been in the pods, anyway? She'd have to get the date later. Her family was... gone, her home wasn't safe anymore, and someone was after her life... lives. She wasn't sure how long it'd be before she wound up right back under a knife, or worse.

She swallowed her terror and nodded. "We don't appear to have much of an alternative."

"The nest is on fire. All ladybugs to exit swiftly and with as much destruction in their wake as possible." Marie-Ange's voice popped over the older women's earbuds. "We have all the information we could have feasibly gotten."

Jean only paused a moment to ponder the poetry of that statement. "Copy that, Tarot. We're headed to meet you. We've gotten what we came for. ETA, 10 minutes," she said before turning back to the girls with a look of assurance.

Making sure Esme could navigate safely, Jean nodded toward the door.

"We should go."