xp_logs | Great Attractors: Yin and Yang

Topaz, Rachel, Jean and Haller wake up to find themselves in a dark and lonely place.

drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .

Had it started raining? Topaz wrinkled her nose, listening to the noise for a minute. That was okay. The rain was okay. She reached for her blanket to pull it up and fall back to sleep...

Only to be met with empty air.

That was when Topaz began to assess the situation. She was curled up in a ball - not completely out the ordinary, she often woke up like that even if she fell asleep stretched out - but she was no longer laying in her bed. If she had to hazard a guess, without opening her eyes, she would guess she was in an armchair - also not out of the ordinary, she had fallen asleep in armchairs and in the corners of couches before. But she was almost positive she had actually gone to bed that night rather than falling asleep on the couch...

She opened her eyes.

This was not her room. This wasn't even Xavier's. Or at the very least if it was, it wasn't a part she had even seen. Not a part she would end up in of her own free will.

She was pretty sure this wasn't Xavier's though.

"What the hell...?" She murmured, pushing herself out of the chair and looking around. It looked like a library. Water was dripping from the ceiling, puddles and weak spots in the floor surrounded her. She looked down at herself - she was barefoot, wearing a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Regular sleep attire. She had definitely gone to bed, then, if she had fallen asleep on the couch she would've been wearing whatever she'd worn the day before.

"Hello?" Her voice echoed back to her, and she shivered a bit, trying to stamp down on the panic swelling in her chest. "Amanda?" That was automatic - when in trouble, call for Amanda. And she was definitely in trouble now.

And something in the back of her head whispered that Amanda couldn't save her then.

"Hello?" The panic slipped into her voice as she whipped around, breathing hitching up. Where the hell was she? What the hell was going on?! "Hello?!"

No answer. She wasn't really sure what she expected. She was very clearly alone. She swallowed hard, trying desperately to calm herself down. Panic wasn't going to do any good. Panic never helped. She needed to stay calm and figure out what she was doing. Where she was.

She closed her eyes, taking a couple of deep breaths. She was still freaked out, but she tucked that away for now. There would be time for panic later, when she'd exhausted all other options.

She opened her eyes again, looking around once more. For the first time she became aware that the area she was in seemed to be caged - like the place in a library where the most important books would go. There were podiums all around the circular area, with books chained to them. She took a step forward and then stopped as something settled in the back of her head. Now that the panic was locked down, she was starting to realize that this place, while strange and unfamiliar, was...comforting. Even if she had no idea where she was...she knew this place wouldn't hurt her. No matter how unsafe it looked.

One more sweep around the library, and Topaz's eyes landed on the book shelf in the very back of the cage. Unable to resist the natural impulse she walked over, grabbing a red-covered book and flipping it open...

"Alice?" She called as she let herself into the house, toeing her shoes off. "I'm home."

Alice's car was in the driveway, but there was no answer. She frowned, dropping her bag in the armchair as she went downstairs. Maybe Alice was in the basement...but no, empty. Where was she?

She headed back upstairs, into the kitchen. There was her mother, on the floor-

Topaz slammed the book shut, throwing it away from her. It hit the floor with a thud but stayed mercifully closed. Her heart was pounding in her chest, eyes wide, the beginnings of tears pricking in them. She dragged her arm across her eyes quickly and went to retrieve the book, careful not to open it as she returned it to the shelf where it belonged.

It was morbid curiosity, more than anything else, that had her reaching for another book.

"This is home!" Alice said happily as she led them through the door. The little girl frowned, peeking around Alice's legs as she took in the living room before them. It was nice. It looked comfortable. A large hand squeezed her shoulder, and she looked up at Luca. Her father.

This was home.

Topaz ignored the tear working slowly down her cheek as she put this book away as well. For a moment she just stared at the shelf before taking a breath and wiping her eyes once more, steeling herself.

She needed to get the hell out of here.

The cage creaked as Topaz pushed the door open, peeking out. Miles and miles of books stretched out before her. She had no idea what she was doing or where she was going.

But she started walking.

[_*_]

drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .

There was cold, smooth wood against his cheek and under his arms. For a moment he wondered if he'd fallen asleep at his desk, but it didn't feel like his office. The air smelled of mold and ancient glue.

Haller sat up, blinking in the dim light. He started with an inventory of his surroundings. Dark wooden table, solid chair, reading lamp in reach. Beyond that, bookshelves. Rows and rows of bookshelves.

He had no memory of this place, nor of leaving the mansion at all today. The last thing he recalled was turning in for the night in his own room and his own bed. Could he have experienced a dissociative fugue? If so that would imply that Davey had been out, and none of the alters had made an appearance since he'd returned from the astral plane. David's disorder could have progressed, of course, or perhaps another schism had occurred, but it seemed unlikely. None of the alters had ever been interested in libraries.

drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .

He pushed out the chair, its heavy legs grumbling against the floor. Water dripped from the ceiling to pool on the floor or glaze the reading tables. Book trolleys were overturned, and here and there ladders lay strewn like fallen branches. He seemed to be standing in the aftermath of a major storm, but the weather in New York had been clear.

A muffled shout interrupted his musings, followed immediately by a blur of colour falling at speed from a floor above his head. There was a flash of blue just before a windmilling arm hit him in the face, and the distinctively human figure dissolved into a bundle of flashing blue energy before his very eyes.

"Rachel?"

The question was rhetorical -- he recognized the girl with senses other than his eyes. Haller trotted over to the blur of light and knelt beside it, frowning.

"Ray, can you hear me?"

The ball of energy shuddered in response, then darted up and circled around him a couple of times, the lightest of impressions in his head letting him know the extent of her disgruntlement at waking up in a strange place.

"I take that as a yes," Haller remarked, watching the blob flash around him. The man crossed his arms over his chest, puzzled, and glanced up. There was a small ledge above them, more of a platform for the next ladder than a proper floor. He got the distinct the impression she'd rolled off it like a sleeping cat off a dresser.

More importantly, though, he'd never seen Rachel in this state for more than a handful of seconds -- at least, not in the real world.

"Are we on the astral plane?" he asked.

An impression of a shrug was followed up with tentative agreement that read as a "'more than likely" to him. This form would take too much energy for her to achieve, much less maintain, in the real world. In the astral plane, however, her body seemed to love giving up its existence. Which was fine because it allowed her the freedom of movement to explore the dilapidated area around them with ease, darting over broken furniture and mouldy piles of paper and pausing here and there to 'poke' at one item or another. Rachel did not like the feeling of this place, and she informed David as much. It felt... rotten. Literally.

drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .

A droplet of water dripped through and landed in a puddle beneath her. Rachel froze, another, more distinctive shudder rippling over her formless form.

Haller's wandering attention abruptly snapped back to her. "What is it?" he asked, immediately starting over. Just before he reached her the thud of his steel-toed boots against the floorboards became a splash.

Formless terror gripped him around the neck like a glacial hand. Numb tendrils crawled up his neck and into his throat and chest, and he began to shake -- a sternum-rattling shudder that clenched his muscles and shook his teeth –

A force slammed into his chest, shoving him to the ground about the same time as a book cart careened off on its own accord and crashed into a bookshelf nearby. Books flew off the shelves upon impact, thudding to the ground as the library seemed to tense from the activity, as though waiting with bated breath for the next explosion of movement.

Haller opened eyes he didn't even realize he'd closed.

Rachel stared down at her adoptive brother, her verdant eyes difficult to read in shadows cast by damp hair. Her worry, it seemed, was channelled solely through the tight grip she had on his shoulders.

She was also, he noted, sitting on his chest.

"Thank you," he said, the response deceptively neutral. The sound of his own heartbeat was fading. Whatever he'd stepped in seemed to dissipate quickly, which was a relief. The sensation had been intense -- unnaturally so, even beyond his typical resistance to emotion. The experience had been unfamiliar, and unwelcome. He set it aside and remarked, "At least it got you back into one piece again."

"I don't know," the woman said, tone mirroring his as she studied her hands. "I'm not all that attached to this body."

She dissolved into a ball of energy again, only to reassemble into her physical form next to him, one hand held out to help him up even as she shook droplets of water off the other and into the deceptively innocuous puddle. Rachel snapped a shield into place above them with a click of her fingers once they were both upright. "Let's maybe avoid the water."

"Good idea." Haller took a closer look around. He could see now that the bookshelves arched into the darkness, impossibly high; the rows between them similarly endless. Dream-like, yet still more concrete than the astral plane tended towards.

"This seems too specific to be just the astral plane," he said, resting a hand on one of the bookshelves. "It reminds me more of the demonic pocket-dimension I fell into a while ago. It was patterned off a real place. Mutable, but extremely limited . . . not fully-formed like the construct made by Kwannon and Essex."

“Putting aside a discussion on your demonic activities for now, this is probably a construct more lousily-formed or created by a lousier or less trained psi,” Rachel concluded, her distaste obvious with a wrinkled nose and all. Raising a hand, she gathered a ball of power in her palm where it pooled, growing larger as she spoke. “But why pull us here?”

Haller eyed her display. "Well, the demon's modus operandi was to siphon the victim's power, so you may want to be careful about showing off."

She rolled her eyes, hefting the ball a couple of times consideringly. “If that were the aim, my change in states would already have attracted them. Besides, someone’s coming and I’d rather be prepared than not.”

The stacks seemed to have no end, twisting and turning like a labyrinth. There was no sunlight, only the harsh glow of florescent bulbs humming with electricity. It felt like being underground almost, a monument to knowledge with little warmth or invitation. The way the shelves, overladen with books, rose up into the sky almost threatened to swallow you whole.

Jean felt like she had been wandering for hours but knew it hadn't been that long. The sound of voices close by made her slow her approach, until she was able to recognize at least one of them: Haller. It was only a small comfort in familiarity, nothing more. With him there she didn't know what would happen should something set him off. The other woman she knew of, Rachel, but didn't really talk to much.

She was barefoot, still wearing her pajamas as she awkwardly folded her arms. "What is going on?" she said finally.

Haller's eyebrows might have risen, though the expression was difficult to read. While the two women's avatars reflected the inconvenience of an unexpected interruption of sleep, his was the same flat, simplified sketch of a man as ever. Between Jean's pajamas and Rachel's sleep-rumpled street clothes he felt slightly overdressed.

"Jean," Haller said, more of an acknowledgement than question. He felt, rather than saw, Rachel's prepared attack dissipate into nothingness. "We were just trying to determine that ourselves. I think we've been drawn onto the astral plane."

Jean blinked at Haller a moment before her eyes narrowed thoughtfully and she glanced around, taking a closer look.

"That would explain a few things," she said. Slowly approaching the nearby book case, she tilted her head.

"Question is, how? And why?"

Leaning in, Jean plucked a book, entitled Mom and Dad - Presents It was older, well-worn with age, and a honey brown color like leather.

Jean paused a moment, then slowly opened the book. The pictures were in first person perspective, and seemed to spring to life like something out of Harry Potter, yet there was sound.

"Smile, sweetheart!"

Topaz blinked rapidly as her mother snapped a picture just as she finished unwrapping her present. "She's gonna go blind, love," Luca laughed, taking the camera from Alice. "Here, let me turn off the flash."

"No, that's not how you do it," Alice insisted, frowning and trying to take the camera back. Topaz rolled her eyes at both of them before looking down to see what she'd gotten. It was a jacket. A really nice jacket, actually. She pulled it out of the box to examine it.

"Do you like it?" Alice asked, abandoning the camera and her husband. Topaz smiled as she pulled the jacket out, holding it up to examine it.

"Yeah, it's brilliant."

"Test picture," Luca announced, holding up the camera. "Alice get in close, Topaz try to smile this time. Oh that's not a smile," he complained at the look the young teen gave the camera. "Come on, actually try..."

Jean glanced up. That voice....It was familiar, someone she'd run into before.

"Look at this. I think they're someone's memories. One of the students....Topaz?" she said. She glanced around again.

"I don't think we're on the Astral Plane."

Haller frowned, then turned to the bookshelf and prized out a volume of his own. It felt like any other book, but when he opened it . . .

Her first spell wasn't anything flashy or even all that impressive, when it came right down to it. The little ball of light hovered around the eleven year old's head for a few moments before blinking out of existence again.

But oh were Luca and Alice proud. Topaz giggled a bit as they hugged her, their happy exclamations getting lost in their excitement. "It wasn't that great," Topaz tried to insist over them even as she grinned, basking in their pride. She'd seen them do way better spells. Compared to that a tiny ball of light didn't even count.

"Shush, it was perfect," Alice informed her, kissing her forehead as Luca just beamed.

Carefully, the counselor closed the book and put it back where he'd found it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that this was the first time he'd ever seen Topaz happy.

"You're right," he said, eyes sweeping across the ruined archives. "These are her memories, but something's wrong. Even if her shields are full of holes and we're looking at an empathic surplus, this place shouldn't feel so . . . exposed."

"I usually only morph into ectoplasm on the astral plane," Rachel pointed out, promptly dissolving into an astral-blob and floating over to Jean to illustrate her point. The shield above their heads expanded to cover the other redhead's as Rachel re-assembled and started poking around at the books. "And many things can be created or faked on the astral plane."

She did not tag anything further on to that as she started flipping through volumes at random, never watching a single memory through before closing it and choosing another from a different shelf. If Kwannon could create an entire world to house her life in, a library of memories was not all that far-fetched. For all she knew, even David and Jean were constructs.

Jean studied the other woman. "And if you're wrong, we could risk damaging this girl's mind if we're not careful," she replied, shaking her head.

"Things have gone wrong on the astral plane and in people's minds before."

She glanced around. "I don't know how I got here, and I'm guessing either of you don't know either. I'm just asking that we take things delicately until we know exactly what we're dealing with."

Haller looked down at his hand and flexed his fingers. The corners of his mouth drew tight. He'd tried to create a shield, as Rachel had, but he couldn't push it past his fingertips. His telepathy was still useless.

"I agree," he said aloud, dropping his hand. "It's hard to tell what we might trigger. For now, let's see if we can find any seams we can open, or signs of what might be going on. Ray, you've already got a barrier. Do you mind taking the lead?"

"Sure," Rachel popped the books back into place and glanced around. Then, with an almost casual sort of shrug, she picked a direction and headed straight. "Try not to touch the water, though. There is some fucking creepy shit going on in there."

The taller man started after her, then turned back to Jean. "It seems to cause some kind of emotional overload," Haller told her, gesturing to the seemingly innocuous puddles. "Be careful."

Jean slowly nodded at Haller, her face blank. "Rachel already had me not wanting to get near it after the mention of 'fucking creepy shit' but thank you for the explanation," she said simply, keeping a good yard behind him as they walked.

"Sometimes what you lack in specifics you can make up for with profanity," Haller remarked, and simply continued on. The implications of Jean's careful neutrality slid off him like oil from a hot pan.

For Meggan, Hope, Emma, Quentin and Fourteen, everything is puppydogs and rainbows. Literally. To an unbearable degree.

Quentin had actually gone to bed at a reasonable hour, for the first time in . . . way too long. And he wasn't even chemically assisted this time. Just plain old post-coital exhaustion had him conked out as soon as his head hit the pillow. It would have been a great night, too, had Lisa Frank apparently not developed psychic powers and invaded his dreams with an explosion of color and overly adorable young animals.

There was something that looked like a molten rainbow on the grass. Or at least molten rainbow candy... and from the other things in it, pretty sticky. Hope frowned at it, hovering a little closer as she continued to take in the strange surroundings. She had suddenly found herself hovering in this strange landscape in her astral form, but she had no idea where she was. This definitely was not the astral plane she was familiar with.

Emma was used to vivid and unusual dreams; she was reasonably sure it was a side-effect of her telepathy and her brain having to sort and store an abundance of memories, senses and thoughts that weren't its own. What she wasn't used to was an abundance of pink that made her feel like there had been an explosion in a Barbie factory and so much cuteness that it would have made Walt Disney feel nauseous.

"This," said Emma, sitting up sharply from where she had found herself lying in grass as green as jewels and as soft as clouds, while tiny bluebirds played in the air above her head, occasionally diving down and grabbing bits of her hair and attempting to braid it, "is NOT my dream." Irritably, she swatted at the tiny birds, enough that they at least stopped actively attempting to style her.

Standing up and nimbly attempting to kick the tiny rabbit that had suddenly appeared and started rubbing vigorously at her ankles, Emma sent her mind questing out across the dream. Nightmare? Astral plane? Mindscape? It had aspects of all of them. It also had fellow inhabitants, she realised as her questing mind touched upon a mind she recognised as at least one of the Cuckoos. If the Cuckoos had been dipped in sugar and coated in caramel anyway.

Looking down at the unfamiliar warm sensation around her ankles, Emma kicked out more vigorously than before, attempting to dislodge a positive swarm of tiny rabbits that were adoring her feet, along with (she squinted slightly), possibly some kind of tiny badger? Or maybe a minuscule fox cub? Kicking out once more, Emma managed to clear enough of a path to allow her to stride in the direction of the mind she had found, nimbly dodging at least two tiny fauns that emerged from the edge of the forest clearing to gaze adoringly in her direction. Swatting at the bluebirds again, as their wings brushed her face in ecstatic flight, Emma strode into the dazzlingly multi-coloured forest trailing her adoring menagerie behind her.

Every night when 14 lay down to sleep, she'd find herself back in Canada. Often she was back in the pods, floating helplessly as scientists poked at her brains. Other times, she'd stand in her old house, watching blood drip from the walls and flow down the stairs while listening to the screams of her parents. So that night, when her world seemed to twist violently and whisked her away from the pungent copper smell of blood, she was almost relieved. It wasn't like her nightmares could get worse.

Everything was neon. The most disgustingly wretched shade of bubblegum pink and sunshine yellow 14 had ever seen. The grass (blindingly candy-apple green) smelled cloyingly sweet, and she was certain she could hear obnoxiously cheerful voices singing about lollipops and rainbows somewhere in the back of her mind.

"What," she said more than asked, sounding and looking all of eleven years old in her powder-blue dress.

Somehow, it had gotten worse.

The sudden presence of more minds was both a relief and a bad omen to Quentin. On the one hand, he had twice now proven himself incapable of escaping the Astral Plane when trapped there, but he stood a much better chance on this third round if there were other people with him. Especially Frost. On the other hand, if something or someone could even ensnare all of these people in the first place . . . he shuddered at the thought of what that could mean.

He grabbed a handful of cotton candy that replaced the foliage of a nearby tree and ate small tufts of it as he followed the signal he recognized as Emma's. "This is like munchie heaven," he mused. "Someone's gotta lay off the Parker Brothers."

Meggan had gone to bed early, exhausted but in a strangely happy chirpy mood despite a head that was pounding. That mood did not explain the tree she wanted to climb being covered in molasses. It had appeared on the bark as she had begun her way up, and had feared it would trap her, before she’d flown away from it. She now backed away from the honey dripping from the shrubbery, because it just felt wrong. She couldn’t explain the sensation.

She pointedly ignored the polka dotted unicorn that bounded away and over a ridge. That was more due to surprise at seeing others as she flew, who weren’t part of the candy cane shadows being cast from another tree. Now she shook her head as she landed. “This is still a dream, right? I’m not hallucinating? Despite the mess? I—I really don’t want to scale Gum Drop Mountain, and hike through the Molasses Swamp, before I have to fight a ROUS to wake up,” she said now in confusion. She had played Candy Land with Amanda long ago. This felt like a whole other thing.

Had someone cursed them to a molasses covered parallel world, where everything was happiness and sunshine and fantastical creatures roamed? This was more disconcerting for Meggan than anything else.

Hope had continued her way, not running into anyone, nor did she pick up any of the bright colored line which sometimes allowed her to track something on the the astral plane... so definitely not astral, wherever this was. Suddenly a flock of tiny candy pink birds shot at her, twittering loudly. She roared back, but the birds passed harmlessly through her. 'Where am I?' She muttered to herself.

Biting her lip, she looked up. Maybe above the trees she could get a fair look around. Floating up she scanned around as soon as she broke through the foliage. Unnaturally bright greens, interspersed with other colors, all before her. A stream of brown sticky liquid wound its way through the landscape. Finally, in a lighter spot not too far away, she spotted someone moving. Quickly floating over, she descended:

"Quentin? Is that you?" She didn't know the boy personally, but had him seen around and on the journals.

Quentin had plucked a bird out of midair — an actual flying, chirping marshmallow Peep — when Hope called to him. Startled, he released the Peep and turned to the newcomer. The visage of a young woman, floating like a ghost in the Astral Plane, her aura exuding an apprehension in stark contrast to the childlike whimsy of this place, brought one person immediately to mind.

"Daniella?! Oh fuck no. No offense, but I'm not ready for this bullshit again. It was bad enough when you made me share a brain with Maximoff. Can't a guy get a break for more than just one month? Wait, you're not her." Quentin heaved a sigh of relief. He was not stuck in the Canadian telepath's mind again. She was still hopefully safe and far far away. "You're, uh, wait, I know this one. Stephanie?"

Hope rolled her eyes at him, trying to ignore the shifting bright colors in his aura. "You might think about a moment of consideration before you speak. And it's Hope, thank you very much."

Emma made a disbelieving noise as she suddenly appeared in the clearing. "I've barely met Quentin and I am fairly certain that 'consideration before you speak' is not in his repertoire. Have either of you seen the Cuckoos yet? I can feel them in here but I haven't been able to find them yet?" Irritably, Emma swatted at the small bluebird who had settled on her shoulder, crooning some sickly-sweet song directly into her ear.

"No idea," Quentin replied, shrugging. "Hey, is Jean here, too? If we all are then she should be, too . . ."

"She's not," a voice chimed out. "It's just us."

14 had kept tracking the various mental signatures as they all gathered, slowly making her way towards them. She could feel Emma nearby, plus a few other school members she'd yet to interact with. They were the only ones anywhere nearby.

She steeled herself for the looks and questions she knew were going to head her way, reinforced her shields as high as they would go, and walked over the hill and into view of the others.

"And now it's a party," she commented dryly, hand on a hip.

Hope stared a little as what seemed like a miniature version of Emma entered the clearing. "This night is getting stranger and stranger." Tilting her head at the young girl, she gentled her voice: "I do not think I have seen you around. How did you end up here?"

14's glare in an eleven-year-old body was unsettling. "I'm not a child. Don't treat me like one."

She paused, doing her best to slam her walls back up to try and drown out that singing.

"Where are we?"

Emma frowned. "I've been mapping out as far as I can find and I'm fairly certain we're not on the Astral Plane. It feels like a mindscape. More accurately, a dreamscape." She raised an eyebrow. "Or, perhaps more accurately, we may be trapped in someone's nightmare." With a neat flick of her fingers, Emma managed to ping the bluebird off her shoulder and, with stunning accuracy, into the trunk of a nearby tree. It hit hard in cartoonish explosion of blue feathers, then flew drunkenly off into the forest, chirping dizzily. The small rabbit and tiny kitten at Emma's ankles looked up for a moment, considered their position and then went back to rubbing themselves against her shoes in ecstasy. Emma looked down and shuddered. "Definitely a nightmare. I think it's one of us that's in the dream, but we're not all here yet." She reached out with her mind again. "Meggan is out there. Close by."

Meggan herself was busy trying to get some strange Bambi imitation to stop following her. It was better than the unicorn she had ignored earlier, and not as weird as the Pegasus she had almost crashed through when she flew. It was strange, since it actually did resemble a cartoon character. She hurried around a tree, and reached the clearing where everyone else was moments later. “Oh! Hi,” she said when she saw everyone there. The deer was two feet away and now it was eating rainbow colored grass that smelled like licorice. “I swear that I didn’t play with any magic.” Because that would have been her first thought when this kind of thing happened.

"Definitely not my dream," Quentin offered. "No go-go boys. So how do we get out of here?"

Emma considered Meggan and then reached out with her mind again. "I think that's all of us," she said. "I can't feel anyone else in here." She rolled her eyes as the strange Bambi deer that had followed Meggan in looked up from the grass, saw Emma, got a look of fawning adoration and bowed down at Emma's feet, offering its tiny antlers for a scratch. Emma decided that life would be easier if she just ignored it completely.

She reached out further with her mind, tracing outwards, finding the edges of what seemed, most probably, a dreamscape. "I think I can try and get out of here," she said. "And if I can get out, then I know who the Sleeping Beauties are and can try and do something about it. I don't think this is magic. I think it's something affecting the psis. So if I turn diamond, I pretty much stop being a psi at that point. It might kick me out of here."

14 thought about speaking up. Emma's plan was logically sound, but mixing forced telepathy with what was effectively a telepathic block would still be dangerous.

Ultimately, she realized, she'd let Emma do the test first. It it worked, she'd try and follow. If it didn't...

...well, better her than 14.

She nodded in Emma's direction.

Emma tilted her head at the Cuckoo sister, wondering why the girl thought Emma would need her approval, then shook it. Whatever.

"Hope," said Emma. "I think you probably count as our responsible adult once I go. If I go. If what I'm trying works, then I will probably just vanish. If you can all keep together at that point and not set fire to anything, I'll try and get you all out. The other option is that exciting things may happen." Emma took a deep breath. "If I turn inside out in front of you or burst into flame, keep together and try some other way to get yourselves out. I doubt it'll kill me, but if it's something big enough, the backlash might render me less than useful."

"I'll do the best I can." Hope gave her a quick nod. "And if you do not succeed, perhaps someone else will." Her own abilities were different from the other psis' so maybe she would have more luck.

"Well," said Emma and then reached inside herself to find the part of her inside the dreamscape that corresponded with her control over her diamond form. In the real world it was a nearly unconscious reflex now, honed into tight control. Here it was like swimming through deep water, but eventually Emma found what she was looking for. Somehow, she wasn't surprised in this dream that her diamond form was going to be activated by pressing a large red button marked "Push me" in cartoon letters with a giant arrow pointing at it. Taking the time to roll her eyes again, Emma pushed it.

Diamond ran down her veins like ice and screaming cold and fire, every cell burning from the inside out. For a flickering moment, Emma could feel her eyes opening, saw the shape of her own bedroom, and then the cold fire rose higher in her veins. "No," she screamed. "Let me through!"

There was the hint of moonlight through a window as she reached through the pain to try and wake herself up in the real world and then it shattered and Emma shattered with it.

In the dreamscape, for a moment, Emma appeared to be encased in a giant diamond, then the facets broke apart and swirled around themselves, taking pieces of Emma apart and putting them back in patterns that relied far too heavily on the concept of entrails to be anything less than truly disgusting. Then the diamond broke apart and Emma, whole again, slumped to the ground.

That... looked painful, 14 reflected. She was suddenly very happy she'd let Emma go first. 14 crouched down next to the slumped form of Emma, careful not to touch. There was no telling exactly what had happened.

A small army of squirrels had surrounded Emma. At least a few of them were gently nudging her as though they were distressed she wasn't moving.

"Well," she said quietly. "That answers at least one question." And raised so many others

Hope floated next to Emma, looking down and shaking her head. "Well... that was no good. Anyone have any other ideas?"

"Fuck this." If one of the most skilled telepaths in the world couldn't excise herself from this diabetic nightmare, then what chance did the rest of them have, Quentin wondered. They would be stuck here and, if they didn't kill each other first out of sheer boredom, then that pegasus flying overhead would probably end up developing a taste for human flesh. So, for real, fuck that.

"These kiddie gloves have to come off," he insisted, kicking one of the squirrels as he stomped past the fallen Emma. The rest of the pack turned to him with angry, Disneyfied overly large eyes. "I'm sorry for whoever's brain we're in, but if Frost of all people can't get us out by being all gentle or whatever, then we ought to . . . fuck!" Whatever he was going to suggest next, he had no chance to say. The rodents were taking revenge on their assaulted compatriot by swarming Quentin. He stumbled back and lost his balance, careening into a deep pool of molasses. The squirrels gathered at the edge, chittering in amusement.

Quentin, oddly enough, seemed to share their amusement even as he sank into the viscous goop. He flailed about, laughing like a child at the beach, although the expression he wore was one of desperation as he tried in vain to pull himself out, and the squirrels nipped at his fingers every time he got too close to the mouth of the pool. Finally, suffering from bruised fingers and eyes almost crusted shut by the crystallizing sugar, he lashed out with a localized burst of neon pink psychic energy. All around him, the scenery seemed to peel away and reveal a hidden world behind it. The molasses thinned and and decolored into water, the cartoon squirrels transformed into smaller, dumber animals, and the grass dulled to a more real-world color. The laughter immediately faded, too, and Quentin crawled out of the pool, panting and almost radiating his displeasure.

"The fuck was that," he demanded, stripping off his jacket and shirt to wring them out as the dream world began to reassert itself and creep back into the landscape.

Meggan was worried for Emma, but she seemed to still be in the land of the living. She was at her side…until Quentin fell into the molasses. She had watched Quentin’s progress, and shook her head. “Now I’m really glad that I didn’t slap away the Martian Bambi, and just ran…and avoided stepping in the molasses puddles,” Meggan mused. If the squirrels were mad at Quentin for behaving that way, then something like a little shove might have left her with a legion of deer itching to fight. She wasn’t sure how to help with that mess. It was disgusting.

The landscape still felt wrong, even as it resettled into the cartoon mishmash. She had also felt an uncomfortable twinge of something she couldn’t explain. It…had lessened in whatever it was when things changed. Just for an instant. But, Meggan realized, Quentin had made a bit of progress, of a sorts. She reached out to nudge an errant and excited squirrel away, as it started in his general direction again.

There wasn’t anything she had that she knew of that could make a dent in gooey molasses river sludge. Meggan didn’t have a towel with her. Then again, if she did, the towel would probably become a fruit roll-up. “Right. You managed to get through there for a second. I don’t know if you should blast harder, or wait for the woodland animals to stop watching you like that, and then try something. Did the molasses hurt you?” Not a stupid question here—even if it didn’t look like it was acidic.

"No, it just felt weird," he answered, "Like I felt happy, almost. Something was invading my head and trying to push out everything negative. Fucking psychic quicksand. Also it tasted disgusting." There was an off-color comment about stick substances to make there, but standing half-naked, surrounded by women, he decided to let it slide for once. Must be the remnants of the molasses still in his head.

“That’s almost how I felt earlier, too. Even just from the little bits dripping off the trees, so I avoided the puddles of it,” Meggan realized. That must be the wrong feeling. This might not be the best plan ever, but she moved to touch it, too…just not go for a swim in it. She knew she wouldn’t pull back a bloody stump, since Quentin looked okay. Well, he wasn’t a pod person, but he seemed okay. Meggan leaned over to brush it with her fingers, before she put her whole hand in after a moment’s hesitation. There was an odd ripple effect.

Wherever she touched transformed into water. Regular, clean water, but it was only small portions of the molasses. “Oh!” Meggan moved back in surprise. One small pool of water floated in the greater mess of the molasses. The clarity of it was the exact size of her hand.

"Well, isn't that interesting," said Emma, from her reclining position. She considered standing up and then felt the state of her body and her mind and decided that a reclining position was exactly what she was going to stay in for a little while. "Quentin, would you mind trying another blast? Just there." Emma lifted a hand that shook slightly and pointed at a small sapling with leaves so green they almost glowed.

Quentin slung his wet shirt and jacket over his shoulder and focused on the sapling. Concentrating his telepathy for offensive uses came much more easily here in a realm composed of that energy, although there was no doubt that months of blood, sweat, and tears training with Xavier and Jean made this application come much more naturally than it did over the summer in District X. He held out his hand and clenched his fist, releasing the energy he had stored, and as before, the psiscape around the sapling turned to cinders, revealing the mundane reality beneath. And once again, it was only a brief respite before Candyland came back.

"I'm going to need some help with this," murmured Emma from where she reclined. As if in response to her words (and it was a Candyland dreamscape, so it was entirely possible that it was in response to her words) a unicorn stepped delicately out from behind the trees and made its way to Emma's side. Kneeling down on snow-white knees, it proffered its horn to Emma, who thankfully grasped it and used its leverage to drag herself upright, until she could lean heavily upon a silken-soft shoulder, while the unicorn gratefully nuzzled at her fingers. Pretending that none of that had ever happened and that she wasn't leaning against an impossible fairytale creature, Emma looked at the Cuckoo. "Celeste," she said. "I need to show everyone something but my powers - let's just say they've shut down in protest after whatever happened with the diamond form. It's hardly the thing either of us want to do, but your powers are the most familiar to me of everyone here. Would you mind loaning me some of your telepathy so I can make a switchboard for a moment?" Conceding to the barest modicum of courtesy, Emma added grudgingly, "It is important."

There was something paradoxical about Emma in that moment, 14 thought. Hard like diamond, but brittle like glass. Trying to hold herself regal and forthright, but leaning on the fantastic and impossible. 14 figured this was a rare moment that she would be unlikely to ever see again. There was a long, very awkward pause.

"Could you tell, or was it just a lucky guess?" she asked quietly. She shook her head. It didn't matter, and she didn't give Emma time to actually respond. Instead, she offered just the slightest strand of her own power out to Emma. Her mind like a coiled spring, ready to sever the link and snap back the moment it felt like anything was going wrong. She didn't think Emma would actually try anything, not with so many witnesses. She certainly wouldn't.

Still, an ounce of prevention and all that.

She turned to look off at some unimportant point in the distance, her mind acutely aware of how dangerous what she was doing was for herself. "Make it quick."

Emma accepted the tendril of power with all the delicacy of a Victorian lady barely deigning to touch the scrofulous hand of some impertinent suitor. Despite her desperate desire not to be doing this (and the screaming inside a small box inside her head that this was her own power, stolen from her), Emma felt the instant familiarity of the Cuckoo’s power, so easy for her to use. With a practiced touch, she reached out to everyone there and showed them what she had observed when Quentin had blasted the sapling. Not just an ordinary tree beneath its candy coating, a damaged tree – scorch-marks streaking it, a crumbling of small portions of the outer layer of bark. As soon as she was certain everyone had seen it, Emma dropped her contact with Celeste as if it burned.

“So – if we blast it or burn it, we damage the mind beneath it. And from the reaction of the pond water to her touch, I suspect that means that it would be Meggan’s mind we’d be damaging. So we’re not going to be able to blast our way out of here. Or dig our way out. Any suggestions for other ways to escape?” Absentmindedly, Emma ran her fingers through the silken forelock of the unicorn as it turned to nuzzle her, soft concern in its eyes.

“Find whatever made my head turn into all of…this...and see if it can be reversed without me rolling around through miles of the licorice grass.” She hoped it could be fixed. With this knowledge, Meggan almost felt like apologizing for what were her brain squirrels biting Quentin, but decided it wasn’t really her fault. It also wasn’t their biggest problem, if everyone was stuck in her candy coated brain. She sort of wondered if petting the absurdly adorable things in her head for a prolonged amount of time would make them revert back to whatever they had been before, or make them attack her.

"I'd assume that, whatever it is, it's the same thing keeping us here," 14 observed. "But there's something else more pressing. Look."

She crouched down and put her hand on the candy grass. A small patch of the blindingly candy-colored green was stripped away, revealing rather normal-looking grass behind it. "Am I the only one who feels that?" she asked, holding it for just a moment longer before Candyland surged back under her fingers.

"Not that, but... I am seeing something..." Hope replied, having drifted into her aura sight. "This place is alive in emotion. And wait... I can see the bonds! Bonds to people who are not here! I might get out if I follow one of them." She announced excitedly.

"Figures," Quentin said. "There's another fifty psis in the mansion so if we're stuck then they should also be. Jean's probably there, too." He paused and then quickly put his shirt back on, ignoring how it uncomfortably clung to him.

Hope finally zoomed on a fairly familiar thick thread, disappearing in the unknown. "I don't know about Dr. Grey, but I have a definite thread I can try follow to Topaz. And..." She fell silent for a moment as she focused on the threads. "And one to Meggan I can follow back if I have to."

“Go to whoever you can,” Meggan agreed. That had to be the way. One of the others had to be able to get them out of this mess. Or maybe Topaz knew something of how to stop this. “And please be careful, Hope.” She didn’t want Hope to get hurt trying to get out.

"I will be. And please, be careful yourself." With that, Hope floated up and followed the thread only she could see, disappearing from sight quickly.

“Well, that’s that then,” said Emma. “Quentin, Celeste, if you can keep scanning as best you can, and try and maintain contact with Hope, we will hopefully be able to find out where’s she’s gone. Meggan, can you just make yourself…” Emma searched for the right word for a moment, then shrugged, “as available to Hope as you can, so she can find you easily. In the meantime,” Emma turned as the unicorn kneeled daintily down, settling into repose until Emma could slide herself on to its back and it could stand again, “I’m going to find out what’s in our immediate vicinity here.” She patted the unicorn’s neck gently, nudged it with one gentle heel. “We’ll quarter the area, so I’ll be no more than ten minutes away maximum. I’m sure Celeste will be able to find me if anything’s needed.” Another nudge and Emma and her snow white steed set off into the forest, an adoring trail of bluebirds, squirrels, kittens and puppies trailing behind.