JEAN: Professor! I sense...!
XAVIER: Thank you, Jean. Alex and Lorna were here to monitor Cerebro; Lorna was using her magnetic powers to probe for structural damage when the surge of psychic backlash fed them BOTH impressions, a virtual reality of the battle: as though this crisis used my telepathy to begin flooding this environs, too!
LORNA: My powers were in use already---sorry for the room, Professor---but you kept from releasing your blast, Alex. I’m proud of you!
HANK: Jean, this molecule I’m thinking about---pick this image out, to add to your telepathic “touch”...
JEAN: An L-Theanine! Its image might stimulate the dopamine receptors in the brains of those who perceive it. Many thanks, Hank!
ALEX: Hank, I nearly totaled you---I thought -I thought I was THERE with my brother and the other X-Men, under attack! under attack!
XAVIER, thinking:
Jean is using ESP to suggest the image of a natural amino molecule, L-Theanine, drawn from the mind of Hank McCoy and meant to stimulate dopamine sensors that elevate the underlying emotional level to meet the extraordinary demands of the Tranzmetamorphosis. If---when---we survive this crisis, I am so thankful she’s returned. It’s critical we understand: she lives now as though she is a totally new being.
Her plan to shut the aperture is our last hope of restoring those affected by the trauma---the sheer power and facility is a thousand times what she possessed as Marvel Girl. For the beginning of this pastiche epic, see
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/12/frightened-off-face-of-earth.html---Cease
And there, within the mountain maelstrom...NIGHTCRAWLER: This image of the Phoenix bird pushes the firestorm heat into the stratosphere? Unglaublich! Then I must join you, Cyclops, in the cavern...how have you not burned to a crisp?
CYCLOPS: My body utilizes ambient energies, ‘crawler! I seem to be metabolizing this for my laser beams...which I’m using to pepper the wolf sorcerer. But that Box is key! And X-Men--- Let’s wipe out the machine!
(Insinuated in the Super Computer’s mainframe, Machine Man’s trying to hijack the dimensional nexus in which the Slave Box is suspended. His telescoped eyes take in Storm’s efforts outside the cave, as cold meets billowing heat.)
Storm focuses within and reaches again to the Pacific winds leading into the fiercely fueled firestorm.MACHINE MAN (thinks):
The woman’s actually the psionic origin of a low pressure front! Its
coolness meets the billowing, radiant, all-melting heat to create sudden thunder clouds, nearly at ground level! These X-Men are amazing...but what can YOU do, Aaron Stack?MACHINE MAN (aloud): I’ve never seen a construction of this complexity! It rivals the human brain for its sheer enigmatic schemata!
COLOSSUS: Should I try to destroy it?
MACHINE MAN: I think I can override it with my digital ‘lock picks’: render the complex safe until the thing just stops? Do i TRY to send the whole thing to the future? It would be handier if I pushed the whole thing into the past. But who knows what the consequences of that would be? forward or back? Either way, are we dumping our problems on some other generation? If I push across space, the odds...
CORPSE FLOWER (leaping): Die! Die!!!
Colossus fights the She Wolf, Corpse Flower. Suddenly Wolverine dives in, sending himself and the larger-than-human She Wolf rolling, going fang and claw against one another.
MACHINE MAN: Who am I to simply destroy the machine? I’m certain there’s a...consciousness somewhere inside there.
COLOSSUS: Then---how can we disable its effect? Such manipulation negates all choice!
MACHINE MAN: There’s a sector about four meters by seven wide that feeds the galactic crystal power to the machine. There’s an incalculable risk to your life, but it can be rendered inert.
COLOSSUS: That is what power such as mine is made to do, comrade robota.
NIGHTCRAWLER: While it’s short circuiting, I’ll teleport the Slay Box out of its “battery” position*BAMF!* ---and perhaps help our every-less-ghostly Viking friends remove it from here!
SULINAR VIX: While you traverse the world between places in your world, wretched creature...you are most vulnerable to one who walks freely amidst the many planes of co-existence!
NIGHTCRAWLER: Vast ist? Nein!
When Kurt Wagner re-materializes in the air above the nexus processor, he falls violently, as though struck from above...
MACHINE MAN: I HAVE the electrically-generated power to affect a repelling charge around your person, using your metallic skin! Nice touch, by the way.
COLOSSUS: Shto! It feels---invigorating! (
The ground itself rebels as he runs; with massive force, the mutant Russian slams into the core of the super computer’s operations. Then Machine Man imparts an anti-gravity field about himself and Colossus, and from above, he hurls the steel-skinned X-Man into the machine once more, amidst sparks and carnage of hardware.)Wolverine’s distracted by Kurt’s fall; the she-wolf then doubles in size. He battles for leverage in her mouth. STORM: The winds will blast you apart, sorcerer! Do not risk your life for this!
REMUS: You, the child of your own people’s future---why would YOU not understand? Tomorrow knocks restlessly at the door of your world. Heed the call; heed the salvation of all!!!
(Sharptooth grasps the air before him; a psuedo-plastic hand appears to cover Captain Ray. Captain Ray exerts all his strength:)
RAY: Live or die! I will be free!!! It was MY pride that forced me to keep the Box until we reached the volcano---to let me be corrupted by distractions that left our task incomplete, upon the breakthrough of the ice! But I will see this Box in the hands of no one, Wolf!
MARC KANE: The Wolf cannot defeat this storm mistress in time to re-unify his self and complete the spell; already, the summoned “cosmic-blink” energies destabilize.
Some hundred feet away, in the shadows, Corpse Flower swallows the feral mutant with a blazing red-eyed glaze of satisfaction.
NICOLA: of all the mysterious phantasms explored in our spiritual lives, Marc---never have enigmatic secrets been so thrust before our realization.
RAY: The Box, my prince! We’re moving it!!
Storm defends the Dragon’s Line from the four armed men. Drawing once more upon the wilderness inferno, she shapes the clouds into pyrocumulus forms---from these, she begins to stun her opponents with lightning!
STORM: You should have been forewarned.
CYCLOPS: Nightcrawler’s zapped! Wolverine’s swallowed whole! I wouldn’t count either of them out yet---but it’s down to me!
