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#1
AUG 13 |
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The Xavier Academy for Gifted Youngsters
Snow Valley, Massachusetts
As with most things at one point in their existence, the Xavier Academy was going through a bit of a transition. With the shifting of their faculty and staff over the recent months and before the students were finding themselves in a bit of a limbo situation. The school was there and they went about learning and living, but there was not as formal of a structure as there once had been. How could there be when there was no Headmaster really to guide the process.
Promises were being made that the situation was being dealt with and results would come soon enough. Not that the students mostly seemed to care either way. Most were just glad that they could spend time doing whatever the heck they wanted. They were average teenagers after all save for the genetic powers they were gifted with.
While some had gone away for the time being, those students that had nowhere else to go or didn’t want to go elsewhere stayed and each and every day was pretty much their own learning experience, usually the experience of more down time than the human mind knows what to do with.
That was no problem for the girls that the students had come to refer to as the Stepford Cuckoos, three girls who were exactly identical down to their speech patterns, hair styles and every other minute detail. There were two more of them but they were not around the school. Three was bad enough. Many found them to be creepy with finishing sentences of one another and the way they seemed so detached from all things.
“Bobby Harper’s been staring…”
“…at your ass again”
Phoebe and Mindee said this one after the other in regards to the young fire-starter mutant and his proclivity to stare at just the ass of Celeste, as if somehow he could tell each time it was her.
“Clearly he’s…”
“…addled in the brain.”
“Though he is quite…”
“…cute to look at.”
Both girls smiled wickedly as they looked back at the young man who noticed their stares and turned an amazing shade of red before turning and walking away rather quickly. With a chuckle the girls turned back to find their sister had wandered ahead and didn’t even say anything.
“She is too…”
“…distant from us…”
“…lately. It is not…”
“…a good sign.”
Smiles were quickly replaced by frowns as the two remaining members of the trio stared after their departing sister. Clearly something would have to be done and rather soon. Their harmony was being thrown off and they could not allow that.
Brian Cruz, Tag to his friends and most at the school, was not one to take the campus and it’s goings on for granted. While others had been content to spend their time just milling about he really wanted to make the most of it. There was no place to go home for him. Unfortunately his parents did not take to the whole mutant thing as well as others might have.
“Carry the two over here and then X must be…I have no idea,” Brian said with a sigh as he rubbed at his already sore forehead. “And now I’m talking to myself. Clearly not a sign of anything wrong at all.”
With another sigh he flopped back in the chair so that his eyes travelled up to stare at the ceiling instead of the pile of books on the desk. Others were shirking their class work but he had figured it was the perfect time to get ahead. It was becoming clear which side was right in this matter and it sure wasn’t his side.
Hearing something, he turned to see a pale face surrounded by blond hair staring at him from the doorway. One of the Cuckoos, damned if he knew which one. She was clad in a long flowing white gown that barely reached her bare feet. She was just staring at him.
“Uhh, can I help you?”
Not a single word was uttered before she just turned and moved away. Brian found himself blinking before turning back to his work with a shake of his head. “Freaking weird. And that’s saying something when going to a school like this.”
His pencil tapped against the desk as he tried to focus his eyes back on the complex equations upon the page. Yet they seemed to be swarming around. Rubbing at his eyes did no good. “What the hell?”
Suddenly black text swirled into a pool that sucked him down. Brian found himself screaming as he tried to grab for something to stop his descent but could find nothing. Caught in a whirlpool of black ink and bit of text, he could find no purchase and found himself caught in darkness every time the ink moved over his face. Not a breath was taken as he was afraid he’d drown in the former text. There seemed to be no bottom as he just kept falling and falling. It was a nightmare, caught in the work that had plagued him with no seeming escape. To drown or die in a textbook was not something any person would ever think could happen or would want to happen.
Hitting a bottom at last, Brian flung his arms up and tried to scream to the top, to let someone know where he was, yet nothing came. There was no mouth. He had no mouth. Panic set in as fingers began to claw at his face.
Falling back, a scream came in his mind as he began to thrash. The nightmare was upon him.
Spiders. For Nicolette it was spiders. Big hairy and lumbering spiders that were dripping venom from their gaping holes that were a mouth. No amount of screams and moving around could seem to break the web it held her in. Human sized spiders. Terrifying.
While it was spiders for the young woman another young student found himself running from buses and buses of clowns…mutant clowns with powers that made little to no sense really yet they had them. Curtis couldn’t ever really remember being terrified of clowns yet there they were now scary as hell. One had razor sharp claws and another kept pulling more and more scarves from his sleeves so that a giant pile was growing around Curtis. A pile he could not escape as at last a scarf landed and sealed him into darkness. Darkness, now that was a true fear of his.
All around students began to have fears that were coming to them as reality slipped away and nightmares began. Some were fears of the students in question. Others were odd. They were scenes of ancient times usually, scenes that were bloody or gruesome or hard. A war in ancient Egypt. Something with vampires in the middle ages. One student even found himself the subject of an attack by the original X-Men. It was insane.
Yet everywhere Celeste walked, another student would find themselves keeling over into a reality of nightmares that would not let go. She didn’t speak a single word as she moved through them, sometimes causing it with a touch and others with but just a look or a thought. It didn’t matter either way. They were all doomed to the nightmares if she came near it seemed.
Her liquid mercury body shifting like crazy, Cessily Kincaid fell to the power of Celeste’s mind as the nightmares began. She was normal again, back to being a red headed cheerleader in her hometown. All was well. Then her body began to change as her skin seemed to just melt away into the liquid metal. The people turned on her. Throwing things and attacking. A swarm of them bore her to the ground as she began to scream. The screams echoed in her mind and tore through the school in reality.
One by one they students fell. The dreams overtaking them. One by one.
Case after case was coming in. Some were awake and shaking as they recounted their ordeal of nightmares. Others were carted in still unconscious yet their thrashing and screams indicated activity that was no doubt nightmares as well, all fully asleep yet not able to be roused. It left the school nurse Nicolette quite unnerved.
Medically there was nothing wrong with them. Their minds were still working just fine, at the level anyone’s mind worked in natural sleep. Their bodies were not being harmed by the extended sleep or the nightmares. In fact most were getting the usual energy and restoration that sleep brought to the body. Medically it made no sense.
“Not qualified for this,” Nicolette muttered, staring at the charts and screens before her. “Never should have taken the offer for the position. Odd stuff and heroes go hand in hand. Shouldn’t have figured the young ones would be any different.”
Nicolette did not hate mutants, far from it. Her beloved son was one, even though he did not go to the school since he lived with his father most times, and she had friends that were mutants. She was just quickly realizing that her desire to help the mutant cause could have gone better. Any of the mass groups that usually had heroes always seemed to draw in the crazy, and she ignored that for the job. Maybe she should have thought twice.
“So damn many of them…they don’t stop coming in,” she muttered as she rubbed at her forehead.
There were so many students coming into the medical labs that she was running out of beds. This had not been what she signed on for. It was far above her ability and pay grade as people tended to say about insane situations on the job. There were people more qualified for such things – Reed Richards or Tony Stark or something. Not her. Not by far.
With so many falling to the unknown malady, there was only one thing to do. One option that would free her from the worry and terror she felt at facing this situation. A last measure she could try, and really it should have been the first as she was so far out of her depth.
Grabbing the phone, a number was dialed and as soon as it connected she spoke. “Get me Dr. McCoy, please!”
Throbbing. It never stopped throbbing. A deep pain that was not a pain that filled the head over and over. It was as if there was a drumming that was going on and by the moment it got ever closer to the forefront. A beat that could not be heard fully but was so close you could almost swear you knew the beat. That was Celeste’s situation.
With a soft murmur the blond member of the triad entered a dark space in the lower levels. It was a corner under a stairwell that she found herself. It was quiet. Space to think and come down from whatever was working to steadily drive her insane.
“It’s coming…its coming…” she murmured over and over as she began to rock back and forth. So close. It was so close.
Something was clawing at her mind. Scrabbling to release itself. There was agony that was not so much agony. It hurt but at the same time there was no pain at all. It was perplexing and frustrating all wrapped into one.
With a cry, Celeste fell against the wall and began wailing as she slammed back and forth against the wall. It was like a fit as she began to thrash around for a few moments. The wailing getting louder. Then it just stopped. Nothing. With a deep breath she shot up and just stared before crumpling to the ground and not moving.
Worried shouts came as those that heard the screams came running and found her prone with her billowing white gown spread around her almost as if she was placed there. There was no activity from her prone body save the unwavering smile that was plastered over her face.
Brian’s body was one of many that started to flop around upon the beds within the medical bay. Large blue-furred hands grabbed onto the body of the young man trying to keep him from flopping off the bed.
“Keep them all stable and immobile!” Beast called out as the volunteers scrounged up tried to do what was said. Something had set the young students off.
Dreams. Something had come for them in their dreams and it seemed to intensify. With a sigh he turned and rubbed at the bridge of his nose spotting a familiar figure moving his direction. “You came.”
“Of course I came, Henry. Nothing will ever keep me away from being here to assist any that call the walls of the school home, no matter where the school might be located.”
“I’m sorry, of course you would come. I was thinking that with all that is on your plate as of late…” the doctor paused and rubbed at his head again before starting again. “No matter. As you can see the situation is intensifying.”
“Yes…you said this started yesterday?”
“A few students complained of headaches and bad dreams. The nurse on staff gave them pain relievers and sent them to bed to try and sleep again. As you can see none of them have come back from that sleep. The poor woman was so distraught she filed her resignation and was gone before I even arrived.”
A nod was given as Charles Xavier stared at all the students that were still moving with clear distress upon their faces. “And Celeste?”
Eyes fell upon the young woman in a bed of her own on the far side of the room away from the others. “Her incident seemed more traumatizing as she was heard screaming in the stairwell. When she was found she was comatose. Yet there are extensive readings coming from her of higher brain functions.”
Suddenly there was silence. Both men turned and stared at the students as their moans and cries had ceased. As one they all sat up, their eyes wide open yet not seeing anything. As one, again, their mouths opened as if to speak. They said nothing. Then it started. All at once.
“Rising! He shall rise! He shall rise! It’s coming….and the world shall tremble!”
Then there was silence as they all fell back on the bed and all activity faded away. The students were as sedate, unlike the last few hours. The nightmares seemed to be over yet they were still out of it.
A clear frown grew upon the face of the telepath. “You know what this means, Henry. I’m going to have to go into their minds and ascertain the cause of this phenomenon.”
“Of course. Professor, not to question your prodigious abilities, but will you be able to scan them all deeply without straining yourself?”
“Oh Henry, dear, that is what one brings help for. And when the help one can bring is of such a high caliber there can be no question the job will be done.” The words were in the proper yet still icy tone of the former White Queen as Emma Frost stood within the doorway.
She was not alone though. Flanked by Moonstar and Psylocke, the woman smiled and glanced at her paramour. “Shall we begin?”
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To Be Continued...
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