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xp_logs Lorna, Jean-Phillipe, Angelo, and Alex wake up in rooms made of their worst nightmares.
Lorna opened her eyes and her surroundings had changed. The house she was living in with her human mother. "How...?" What caused her for pause when she looked in the mirror and saw her nine year old self, long green hair that came down to her back and wearing a white sundress. The scene changed as Lorna woke up on the floor, the house destroyed, metal shards were everywhere. Panic.
She remembered this.
Lorna got up and raced to the living room where her mom would be watching her soap shows. The environment started to fade as Lorna's eyes set on her mom, lying in a pool of blood. When Lorna fell to her knees she was no longer her nine year old self but her adult self. "Mom." She whispered as she lowered her head and a green aura started to emanate from Lorna.
Unknown to Lorna she was really causing damage in the room around her, as she was pulling at every metal object down to the studs.
"Lorna."
Her mother, despite very obviously being dead, turned her head to look Lorna in the eye, her own gaze glassy. "What did you do, Lorna? What did you do?"
Lorna scrambled away, "No. I didn't mean..." But her sentence was cut off as her hands started to glow green, feeling the vibration of the metals nearby pulling towards her. "Not...happening..."
"I loved you. Wasn't that enough? Why did you do this?"
"STOP!" It was the last straw as Lorna let out a magnetic pulse and the lights in the mansion went out for a few seconds before it was restored. However, Lorna did not see that happening, only what was shown in front of her.
"Why couldn't you just control yourself?"
Her fear melted into anger and spoke without looking up. "Asking for a nine year old girl who didn't know what the fuck was going on. Don't make me laugh. My mom would never say anything like that." If her fear gave her power, her anger was the fuel that fed the fire. "I don't like asking twice." She was referring to whatever it was to stop.
There was a moment of silence as the magic warped around her, trying to poke through her shields, trying to feed more into the fear. Her "mother" still lying on the floor, bloody and twisted, was starting to look more angry than sad and confused. "Ha." The voice was faint, but sounded happily amused. "You tell 'em babe."
Hearing Alex's voice put a smirk on Lorna's lips. "My mom was the kindest woman on the face of this planet. And whatever you are...you aren't my mom." Lorna walked forward and down at the image. "My power is not in control of me..."
"You are in control of your powers." Another familiar, older, slightly dry voice, full of pride for his youngest child.
The smirk stayed on her lips as she stepped over the image of her not!mom. "We are finished." As soon as she had done so the illusion broke and she was back at the party house. Now to find her husband.
The mansion was in ruins.
Jean-Phillipe came to in the long hallway that led to Cerebro. There was a disjointedness, that sense of not knowing how you had come to be in a place, but that was washed away immediately by a loud guttural roar - a distinct sound that the Frenchman knew all too well. Sabretooth was somewhere nearby.
His other senses caught up in succession, his brain filling in gaps. A haze of ruby red light that ebbed and flared - Cyclops firing a rapid series of optic blasts. Coppery wetness in his mouth - blood. A concussion would explain why he couldn't...
And then his nose twitched. A tinge of ozone, but not the one he was used to from use of his own power. Still, it was extremely familiar, combining with the other stimuli to a conclusion he had hoped never to come to.
Magneto and the Brotherhood had invaded the mansion.
As he staggered to his feet, he could see Cyclops and Magneto, battling to what seemed to be a standstill. Cyclops using ricocheting optic blasts to keep Magneto guessing from what direction the next attack would come from, but Magneto keeping shards of metal whizzing toward Scott. Both of the men looked extremely ragged, like the next one of them to make a mistake was likely to fall victim to the other.
"Damn you, Erik," Jean-Phillipe muttered. "Damn you for making me choose between you." The man who had taken him in and taught him how to master his power, versus the man who taught him how to be a good person. His first idol, and his current one. But before he could choose between the two and tip the scales...
"Hey Frenchy!"
What a scene playing out in front of her. A weird messed up family reunion being played in another's head. Lorna didn't want to question the mind of Jean-Phillipe but she was glad that no one saw hers. "Hey Jean-Phillipe!" Lorna called out again, this time using his name.
It wasn't Lorna's voice that he heard though, but Victor Creed's. "Since you picked a side, you little frog, I thought I'd give you another choice to make," the feral mutant's voice rumbled. As Jean-Phillipe turned, he could see what Sabretooth meant. Angelo and Marie-Ange, his husband and his cousin, both bruised, bloody, and tied roughly to a wall. Marie-Ange was blindfolded, which meant they had clearly remembered the information he had passed on to them before his change of heart. His fists clenched as Sabretooth's sadistic chuckle reverberated almost subsonically.
"What I wanna know is..." Claws ran slowly down first one chest, then the other, leaving a small trickle of blood behind. Just enough to heighten the fear. He knew how Creed's mind, such as it was, worked.
"Which one should I gut first? Your hubby, or your cousin? I always did have a weakness for redheads..."
That was the guy that almost killed her team a few years ago. Shaking her head not really wanting to question anymore of what his fear was. "JEAN-PHILLIPE! LISTEN TO ME. LORNA! It is not real!" Lorna yelled at the top of the lungs as she stepped in front of Sabertooth. Maybe if she put herself in front of the illusion he would focus on her.
"...quoi?" He looked back at where Scott and Erik were tearing each other apart by inches, and back at where Sabretooth was menacing the two closest people in his life. Then he blinked and shook his head several times, like trying to lose a bad case of vertigo. "Lorna?" Now he could see her, and the scene around him faded slightly, becoming less solid. "What in the hell?"
"Finally." She walking over to him and putting a hand on his arm. "Cliff note version, something is making us see what we fear most. That is my theory." Lorna gave him a little pat and looked over at the next door. "I would like to find Alex and I am sure you would like to find Angelo."
Jean-Phillipe nodded sharply. "Tu as raison. Lead the way." The sooner they had their husbands back and were away from this, the better.
Even before he was fully awake, Angelo knew what was happening. The smell in the air told him that well enough, and his eyes snapped open to see if there was any safe place in this room. He ended up scrambling to the middle of the room, well away from the blazing fire at the walls.
"Merde." Jean-Phillipe was well aware of his husband's fear of fire, where it stemmed from. And there was something in this place preying on their fears. All that knowledge didn't help the feeling in his chest at seeing Angelo glassy-eyed and panicked. He and Lorna could see in, but Angelo couldn't see out, just as Lorna had been able to see into his fearscape. He instinctively dashed forward, wanting to grab Angelo and haul him out, but a wave of heat reddened his skin and he drew back with a hiss.
Angelo had curled into a ball, retracting his skin to almost normal human appearance, headache or no headache. He heard the sound, though, and looked up, squinting through the smoke.
Lorna clicked her tongue as she saw the scene in front of her. What was it with things bring forth people's fears? "Jean-Phillipe. I can lift you over and bring you over to your man. You have the best shot of bring him back to reality."
"Do it." Erik would have been able to do it, so it didn't even occur to Jean-Phillipe to question his mentor's daughter. He instinctively deferred to her the way he would have to Magneto all those years ago.
Lorna's metals melted off her bracelet and snaked around JPC and then slowly lifted in the air and over the fire and towards Angelo. Once it was safe, she lowered him back to the ground and the metals retreated from him.
"Angelo?" He remembered how Lorna had seemed unreal at first, and how he hadn't been able to hear or see her. But Jean-Phillipe was definitely stubborn enough to keep pushing his way through whatever was doing this to all of them. "Angelo, bien-aime, can you hear me? Focus on my voice."
He could hear, but as if through water - distant and distorted. Still, he started to sit up. “JP? Where are you?”
Jean-Phillipe resisted the ridiculous urge to say "right over here". "Focus. What you are seeing is not real. Lorna and I are here."
He turned this way and that, trying to pinpoint the sound. "Tell me when I'm looking at you."
Echolocation. Good, that meant he was concentrating on something besides the false fire around him. It took a few moments, and then Jean-Phillipe had Angelo stop. "Bien, now just walk toward me." He could see the bone-deep reluctance in his husband. "Trust me. I love you, you can do this."
He had his hands stretched out in front of him as far as his skin would go, feeling around with complete trust in his husband despite everything telling him they were passing through fire, until finally a strand brushed Jean-Phillipe's hand and latched on.
Alex opened his eyes.
At least, he thought he did. It felt like they were open. But all he could was black on every side. He raised his hands - he could see them. Energy gathered up and down his arm, and he fired into the darkness, hoping to illuminate it. Nothing.
"Lor?" he called uncertainly, stepping back. Where was he? How had he ended up here?
Lorna's anger hadn't subsided from earlier as she lifted her hand as the door was ripped of its hinges before tossing it too the side. At least she was taking her anger on a door rather than people. She stepped through, ready for anything.
Angelo, lacking Lorna's special senses, was a bit more hesitant. He stopped on the threshold and called out, "Alex?"
The call of his name was distant and distorted. He whirled, trying to figure out where it was coming from, panic building. "Hello? Lorna? Anyone?" He was alone. No, there was someone there. He had heard someone. Hadn't he?
Going into the pitch black area in front of them probably wasn't the brightest idea. Jean-Phillipe cast his eyes about, trying to find something that might help besides calling to Alex.
"Alex!" Lorna winced, the patterns in this place were off, and it was hurting her brain. She was going to regret using this later. Turning to the direction of where she heard his voice. She didn't venture any deeper in, not yet. She didn't want to lose sight of both Angelo and JPC. "Alex if you can hear us come towards our voices. Remember to breathe!"
Light. What they needed was light... His eyes fell on the door that Lorna had wrenched off its hinges "Angelo, bien-aime, can you get that handle free?" He turned to Lorna. "And can you fashion it into a wire? I have an idea."
“I think I can.” Crouching over the door, Angelo used a combination of brute force and skin strands wormed in underneath the handle to break it loose, then held it out to Lorna.
Once more melt slide from her braclets into a thin piece of wire before circling around the handle several times. She turned back to the darkness ready for JPC plan.
Jean-Phillipe grasped both ends of the wire and poured current through the improvised filament.
~Incandescence is the emission of thermal radiation, including visible light, from a hot body as a result of its temperature. Virtually all solids and liquids start to glow at just under 800 Kelvin - the Draper point. At higher temperatures, the light becomes brighter.~
Somehow, Erik's lessons always came back to him at times of stress when he was about to attempt something ill-advised. The wire began to glow, first a ruddy red color, slowly growing brighter.
"I can hold this for a while, but it will get very hot, very fast. Best to get Alex's attention quickly." He cast a quick, nervous glance at Angelo, trying to assess how he was holding up in the face of heat after just being confronted by his fear of fire.
"Alex. Look for the light!" She squinted through the darkness, hoping to see a bit more from the light provided by Jean-Phillipe.
It was a distant sound, but it was definitely Lorna. He'd know her voice anywhere.
"Lor?" He tried uncertainly, squinting. His heart was still pounding, still on the edge of panic. A fleeting memory of something his mother had said once flickered through his mind. Home isn't always a place. Sometimes it's people.
He picked himself a bit, taking a deep breath and yelling with more confidence. "Lorna!"
Angelo’s face was tense and he’d stepped back a little from the incandescent light and heat, but he didn’t seem panicked. It was, after all, not really a flame, and there was something else to focus on in Alex’s rescue.
"I am here." Lorna called out after hearing Alex calling out her name. "I am right here. Jean-Phillip and Angelo as well. You are not alone. We are here. Follow my voice, look for the light!"
Alex turned around again, and finally he saw the flicker of light. It took a step forward, then another step.
Then he took off at a run, feeling as if the light wasn't getting any closer - and then it was really close. Right in front of him. As he burst through what felt like an invisible door and stumbled, nearly running right into his wife. "Whoa! Ha." He straightened up, looking around. "Ha. Right." He grinned at Lorna, throwing his arms around her. "Okay. That sucked."
Jean-Phillipe cast the glowing hot wire into the darkness and turned to join the rest. "Oui, that was extremely disagreeable." He took Angelo's hand in his. "Let us leave at once."
Lorna opened her eyes and her surroundings had changed. The house she was living in with her human mother. "How...?" What caused her for pause when she looked in the mirror and saw her nine year old self, long green hair that came down to her back and wearing a white sundress. The scene changed as Lorna woke up on the floor, the house destroyed, metal shards were everywhere. Panic.
She remembered this.
Lorna got up and raced to the living room where her mom would be watching her soap shows. The environment started to fade as Lorna's eyes set on her mom, lying in a pool of blood. When Lorna fell to her knees she was no longer her nine year old self but her adult self. "Mom." She whispered as she lowered her head and a green aura started to emanate from Lorna.
Unknown to Lorna she was really causing damage in the room around her, as she was pulling at every metal object down to the studs.
"Lorna."
Her mother, despite very obviously being dead, turned her head to look Lorna in the eye, her own gaze glassy. "What did you do, Lorna? What did you do?"
Lorna scrambled away, "No. I didn't mean..." But her sentence was cut off as her hands started to glow green, feeling the vibration of the metals nearby pulling towards her. "Not...happening..."
"I loved you. Wasn't that enough? Why did you do this?"
"STOP!" It was the last straw as Lorna let out a magnetic pulse and the lights in the mansion went out for a few seconds before it was restored. However, Lorna did not see that happening, only what was shown in front of her.
"Why couldn't you just control yourself?"
Her fear melted into anger and spoke without looking up. "Asking for a nine year old girl who didn't know what the fuck was going on. Don't make me laugh. My mom would never say anything like that." If her fear gave her power, her anger was the fuel that fed the fire. "I don't like asking twice." She was referring to whatever it was to stop.
There was a moment of silence as the magic warped around her, trying to poke through her shields, trying to feed more into the fear. Her "mother" still lying on the floor, bloody and twisted, was starting to look more angry than sad and confused. "Ha." The voice was faint, but sounded happily amused. "You tell 'em babe."
Hearing Alex's voice put a smirk on Lorna's lips. "My mom was the kindest woman on the face of this planet. And whatever you are...you aren't my mom." Lorna walked forward and down at the image. "My power is not in control of me..."
"You are in control of your powers." Another familiar, older, slightly dry voice, full of pride for his youngest child.
The smirk stayed on her lips as she stepped over the image of her not!mom. "We are finished." As soon as she had done so the illusion broke and she was back at the party house. Now to find her husband.
The mansion was in ruins.
Jean-Phillipe came to in the long hallway that led to Cerebro. There was a disjointedness, that sense of not knowing how you had come to be in a place, but that was washed away immediately by a loud guttural roar - a distinct sound that the Frenchman knew all too well. Sabretooth was somewhere nearby.
His other senses caught up in succession, his brain filling in gaps. A haze of ruby red light that ebbed and flared - Cyclops firing a rapid series of optic blasts. Coppery wetness in his mouth - blood. A concussion would explain why he couldn't...
And then his nose twitched. A tinge of ozone, but not the one he was used to from use of his own power. Still, it was extremely familiar, combining with the other stimuli to a conclusion he had hoped never to come to.
Magneto and the Brotherhood had invaded the mansion.
As he staggered to his feet, he could see Cyclops and Magneto, battling to what seemed to be a standstill. Cyclops using ricocheting optic blasts to keep Magneto guessing from what direction the next attack would come from, but Magneto keeping shards of metal whizzing toward Scott. Both of the men looked extremely ragged, like the next one of them to make a mistake was likely to fall victim to the other.
"Damn you, Erik," Jean-Phillipe muttered. "Damn you for making me choose between you." The man who had taken him in and taught him how to master his power, versus the man who taught him how to be a good person. His first idol, and his current one. But before he could choose between the two and tip the scales...
"Hey Frenchy!"
What a scene playing out in front of her. A weird messed up family reunion being played in another's head. Lorna didn't want to question the mind of Jean-Phillipe but she was glad that no one saw hers. "Hey Jean-Phillipe!" Lorna called out again, this time using his name.
It wasn't Lorna's voice that he heard though, but Victor Creed's. "Since you picked a side, you little frog, I thought I'd give you another choice to make," the feral mutant's voice rumbled. As Jean-Phillipe turned, he could see what Sabretooth meant. Angelo and Marie-Ange, his husband and his cousin, both bruised, bloody, and tied roughly to a wall. Marie-Ange was blindfolded, which meant they had clearly remembered the information he had passed on to them before his change of heart. His fists clenched as Sabretooth's sadistic chuckle reverberated almost subsonically.
"What I wanna know is..." Claws ran slowly down first one chest, then the other, leaving a small trickle of blood behind. Just enough to heighten the fear. He knew how Creed's mind, such as it was, worked.
"Which one should I gut first? Your hubby, or your cousin? I always did have a weakness for redheads..."
That was the guy that almost killed her team a few years ago. Shaking her head not really wanting to question anymore of what his fear was. "JEAN-PHILLIPE! LISTEN TO ME. LORNA! It is not real!" Lorna yelled at the top of the lungs as she stepped in front of Sabertooth. Maybe if she put herself in front of the illusion he would focus on her.
"...quoi?" He looked back at where Scott and Erik were tearing each other apart by inches, and back at where Sabretooth was menacing the two closest people in his life. Then he blinked and shook his head several times, like trying to lose a bad case of vertigo. "Lorna?" Now he could see her, and the scene around him faded slightly, becoming less solid. "What in the hell?"
"Finally." She walking over to him and putting a hand on his arm. "Cliff note version, something is making us see what we fear most. That is my theory." Lorna gave him a little pat and looked over at the next door. "I would like to find Alex and I am sure you would like to find Angelo."
Jean-Phillipe nodded sharply. "Tu as raison. Lead the way." The sooner they had their husbands back and were away from this, the better.
Even before he was fully awake, Angelo knew what was happening. The smell in the air told him that well enough, and his eyes snapped open to see if there was any safe place in this room. He ended up scrambling to the middle of the room, well away from the blazing fire at the walls.
"Merde." Jean-Phillipe was well aware of his husband's fear of fire, where it stemmed from. And there was something in this place preying on their fears. All that knowledge didn't help the feeling in his chest at seeing Angelo glassy-eyed and panicked. He and Lorna could see in, but Angelo couldn't see out, just as Lorna had been able to see into his fearscape. He instinctively dashed forward, wanting to grab Angelo and haul him out, but a wave of heat reddened his skin and he drew back with a hiss.
Angelo had curled into a ball, retracting his skin to almost normal human appearance, headache or no headache. He heard the sound, though, and looked up, squinting through the smoke.
Lorna clicked her tongue as she saw the scene in front of her. What was it with things bring forth people's fears? "Jean-Phillipe. I can lift you over and bring you over to your man. You have the best shot of bring him back to reality."
"Do it." Erik would have been able to do it, so it didn't even occur to Jean-Phillipe to question his mentor's daughter. He instinctively deferred to her the way he would have to Magneto all those years ago.
Lorna's metals melted off her bracelet and snaked around JPC and then slowly lifted in the air and over the fire and towards Angelo. Once it was safe, she lowered him back to the ground and the metals retreated from him.
"Angelo?" He remembered how Lorna had seemed unreal at first, and how he hadn't been able to hear or see her. But Jean-Phillipe was definitely stubborn enough to keep pushing his way through whatever was doing this to all of them. "Angelo, bien-aime, can you hear me? Focus on my voice."
He could hear, but as if through water - distant and distorted. Still, he started to sit up. “JP? Where are you?”
Jean-Phillipe resisted the ridiculous urge to say "right over here". "Focus. What you are seeing is not real. Lorna and I are here."
He turned this way and that, trying to pinpoint the sound. "Tell me when I'm looking at you."
Echolocation. Good, that meant he was concentrating on something besides the false fire around him. It took a few moments, and then Jean-Phillipe had Angelo stop. "Bien, now just walk toward me." He could see the bone-deep reluctance in his husband. "Trust me. I love you, you can do this."
He had his hands stretched out in front of him as far as his skin would go, feeling around with complete trust in his husband despite everything telling him they were passing through fire, until finally a strand brushed Jean-Phillipe's hand and latched on.
Alex opened his eyes.
At least, he thought he did. It felt like they were open. But all he could was black on every side. He raised his hands - he could see them. Energy gathered up and down his arm, and he fired into the darkness, hoping to illuminate it. Nothing.
"Lor?" he called uncertainly, stepping back. Where was he? How had he ended up here?
Lorna's anger hadn't subsided from earlier as she lifted her hand as the door was ripped of its hinges before tossing it too the side. At least she was taking her anger on a door rather than people. She stepped through, ready for anything.
Angelo, lacking Lorna's special senses, was a bit more hesitant. He stopped on the threshold and called out, "Alex?"
The call of his name was distant and distorted. He whirled, trying to figure out where it was coming from, panic building. "Hello? Lorna? Anyone?" He was alone. No, there was someone there. He had heard someone. Hadn't he?
Going into the pitch black area in front of them probably wasn't the brightest idea. Jean-Phillipe cast his eyes about, trying to find something that might help besides calling to Alex.
"Alex!" Lorna winced, the patterns in this place were off, and it was hurting her brain. She was going to regret using this later. Turning to the direction of where she heard his voice. She didn't venture any deeper in, not yet. She didn't want to lose sight of both Angelo and JPC. "Alex if you can hear us come towards our voices. Remember to breathe!"
Light. What they needed was light... His eyes fell on the door that Lorna had wrenched off its hinges "Angelo, bien-aime, can you get that handle free?" He turned to Lorna. "And can you fashion it into a wire? I have an idea."
“I think I can.” Crouching over the door, Angelo used a combination of brute force and skin strands wormed in underneath the handle to break it loose, then held it out to Lorna.
Once more melt slide from her braclets into a thin piece of wire before circling around the handle several times. She turned back to the darkness ready for JPC plan.
Jean-Phillipe grasped both ends of the wire and poured current through the improvised filament.
~Incandescence is the emission of thermal radiation, including visible light, from a hot body as a result of its temperature. Virtually all solids and liquids start to glow at just under 800 Kelvin - the Draper point. At higher temperatures, the light becomes brighter.~
Somehow, Erik's lessons always came back to him at times of stress when he was about to attempt something ill-advised. The wire began to glow, first a ruddy red color, slowly growing brighter.
"I can hold this for a while, but it will get very hot, very fast. Best to get Alex's attention quickly." He cast a quick, nervous glance at Angelo, trying to assess how he was holding up in the face of heat after just being confronted by his fear of fire.
"Alex. Look for the light!" She squinted through the darkness, hoping to see a bit more from the light provided by Jean-Phillipe.
It was a distant sound, but it was definitely Lorna. He'd know her voice anywhere.
"Lor?" He tried uncertainly, squinting. His heart was still pounding, still on the edge of panic. A fleeting memory of something his mother had said once flickered through his mind. Home isn't always a place. Sometimes it's people.
He picked himself a bit, taking a deep breath and yelling with more confidence. "Lorna!"
Angelo’s face was tense and he’d stepped back a little from the incandescent light and heat, but he didn’t seem panicked. It was, after all, not really a flame, and there was something else to focus on in Alex’s rescue.
"I am here." Lorna called out after hearing Alex calling out her name. "I am right here. Jean-Phillip and Angelo as well. You are not alone. We are here. Follow my voice, look for the light!"
Alex turned around again, and finally he saw the flicker of light. It took a step forward, then another step.
Then he took off at a run, feeling as if the light wasn't getting any closer - and then it was really close. Right in front of him. As he burst through what felt like an invisible door and stumbled, nearly running right into his wife. "Whoa! Ha." He straightened up, looking around. "Ha. Right." He grinned at Lorna, throwing his arms around her. "Okay. That sucked."
Jean-Phillipe cast the glowing hot wire into the darkness and turned to join the rest. "Oui, that was extremely disagreeable." He took Angelo's hand in his. "Let us leave at once."
