Bobnap chapter 4: Inside Rogue's Mind

[Bobby Drake]

> " You're from before Jake showed up... right? Oh, man, Bobby. You wouldn't even recognize my telepathy anymore. I can do all sorts of stuff. "

Bobby frowns a little at the description. He knows he’s just an old recording, really he does. He knows that everyone else has moved on with their lives in the last however-long-it’s-been while he’s been stuck in here. It’s nothing personal, he knows that… heck, they’d probably even bring him out into the real world if they could. Still, he doesn’t like being reminded of it.

He lets it go without comment, though. After all, what is there to say? Complaining about it will just make them feel bad, and if he annoys them too much they’ll just go away again and not come back. It’s safer to stay pleasant.

"Jake? That’s… the new headmaster, right? Professor Xavier’s replacement? Yeah, I never met him. Anyway, that’s great, Josh!" He tries to summon up some enthusiasm for Josh’s progress, and mostly manages it – he really is a good guy, and Bobby really is happy for him, whatever else he may be feeling at the moment.

> " You should see what I look like right now in the real world, Bobby. My ribs hurt like hell. "

Bobby nods. "Yeah, I saw. Or, I mean, she saw…" he indicates Marie, "…and I, um, well, you know. I try not to snoop, but it’s hard not to when you’re literally living in someone else’s head." He hesitates, then decides to go ahead and bring it up. "And, um… I saw, um, Warren there too. So, you and he are really…?" He trails off uncomfortably, waving a hand vaguely in the air.

> " If you're sure he's through there, I can use my telekinesis and atomize it "

Bobby chuckles and waves around to indicate the many other trails and doorways. "Heck, it’s hard to be sure of anything in here, but that path seems freshest. We can’t really track each other directly in here, but you can sorta feel what’s been thought recently, and what hasn’t been thought for a while, y’know? And wherever we go, we kinda think about ourselves… or something like that. At least, that’s how Cody explained it, and he knows his way around here better than any of us – been around longer. Though he’s been pretty busy lately taking care of Template. "

Thinking about Cody and Template triggers a vague disquiet in Bobby’s mind, as if there were something he’s supposed to do, or remember, or something… but he can’t make it come clear, and in any case he’s busy.

"So, anyway – not sure, but it’s my best bet. I’d say atomize away…"

[Rogue]

Something feels off. She’s distracted from the conversation a moment, scanning the ‘landscape’ around them. Nothing seems off…not like she could tell, though. It’s just a chill feeling, a feeling like something’s not right, and…

But it’s nothing, right? Shouldn’t she know if something were really wrong? Of course. It’s still her mind, after all – she should be able to tell these things. Still, she shoots a glance towards Josh, almost silently asking if he feels anything different, too. If she feels it, maybe he does? She picks up on the conversation, tunes back in, because it’s probably best she know what’s going on.

”So, anyway – not sure, but it’s my best bet. I’d say atomize away…"

“Go f’it.” she agrees with a nod, taking an absent step back, just in case there’s reason to, and trying to shake the sensation that there’s something totally wrong.

[Josh Dalton Worthington]

> Anyway, that's great, Josh!

"Yeah, it is. I mean... I'd always felt like such a loser with the teep, especially being around telepathic giants like Jean and the Professor when I was younger. Guess I just needed a little work, though, because it's sort of like floodgates opened. I can't believe I've come so far in just a year or so." Josh considers it for a moment.

> And, um… I saw, um, Warren there too. So, you and he are really…?

Oh, man. At this point, the 'era' that this incarnation of Bobby had come from really hits Josh in the face. I suppose this is before he and John hooked up. He's still got to be interested in guys, though, to some extent... right? I definitely was before Warren, though I had never really acted on it. On the other hand... the human mind is rather good at denial, isn't it?

He decides to take the honest route, and a smile spreads across his entire face. "We are. Warren and I have been dating for awhile now, and he might be the best thing that's ever happened to me. Everything is just so... right. I feel like I love him more with each passing day..." Josh looks abashed. "Mm. Sorry, I suppose that's more than you wanted to know."

Rogue shoots him a glance, which he's not sure what to make of. Is it something I said? He blinks at her a moment, his eyes questioning.

> So, anyway – not sure, but it’s my best bet. I’d say atomize away…

"Righto. One second." Josh relaxes and narrows his eyes, his head tilting to the side slightly. Okay... here goes nothing. He reaches out with his telepathy and feels the mental construct blocking their path, and begins eroding it mentally, poking holes through it until it no longer can hold itself together structurally. This is a difficult one.

Visually, the door begins to shimmer slightly, and particles begin to drift off into the open air. The pace quickens as it becomes less and less solid. After a minute, the construct dissolves into its constituent atoms before them.

"Ladies first." He holds out a gloved hand in the direction of the now-unblocked pathway, and grins a little.

[Toni Craft]

Freedom.

How long had it been since she'd felt it?

Probably not that long, but when trapped in a confining, tiny box, even seconds felt like an eternity. But now she was out and ready to exact some rather painful and torturous revenge.

Template rushes down the halls, stopping at every corner to peek around. No need to rush into a fight unprepared, she didn't need a repeat of the last brawl she'd gotten her psyche-self into.

Her presence in Rogue's mind, she knew, was much more profound than the others, which made her far more powerful. But she was not strong enough to alter the world around her. That power belonged to the master of this realm, the host herself.

And she was here.

Perfect...

And even better, she had brought a guest. Another prominent mind. But that one was not like the other psyches. It was independent and free, able to roam in and out of Rogue's cache of psyches at will.

She felt inspired by this newcomer. If she could get to this fresh, powerful mind, she could use it and gain the ability to leave this hellhole for a realm.

But first she needed more strength. She needed power if she was going to go up against the god-woman and her friend. So Template was searching, trying to find another psyche she could drain.

With her much more opaque presence, she could sense, somewhat, the others around her. Some were nearly undetectable, the weaker ones, but she didn't need to focus on them anyways. Instead, she headed for the nearest semi-strong psyche.

She rounds another bend in the hall when suddenly her senses go wild. Someone with reasonable strength was nearby. Template stops and waits, listening and feeling for any movement.

A brush of commotion to her left, behind a wooden door.

Template reaches out and grasps the doorknob and twists.

Inside is an almost sickeningly display of stereotypical teenager belongings. Posters, pictures, a stereo in the corner. Disgusting.

But what catches her eye, is the young, half see-thru male pressed against the wall, eyes wide in fear.

"H-How did you get ou--" Cody is silenced immediately as Template presses a forceful hand over his mouth, enjoying both his squirming motions, and the power he unwillingly relinquishes to her.

She watches, morbidly amused, as his panicking face grows paler and paler with each passing second. His screaming wide blue eyes stare at her as she continues to drain him. The teen would have collapsed to the floor if it hadn't been for the fact that he was completely absorbed before his legs even began to give way.

Template straightens and feels the added strength flowing through her. "That's better," But it still wasn't enough. Her body yearned for more. She needed to find more psyches to consume.

Using the added vigor, Template opens the door again, leaving behind the room that had, only moments ago, held Cody. That wasn't going to make Rogue happy.

She feels the other psyches around her and heads off for the next closest one, catching a wisp of it's power...

Something regarding claws....

[Bobby Drake]

> " Everything is just so... right. I feel like I love him more with each passing day Mm. Sorry, I suppose that's more than you wanted to know"

Bobby shrugs. "Knowing more than I want to know is an occupational hazard in here. We get pretty good at blocking stuff out when we want to. But seriously, it’s great that you’re happy. I don’t know Warren all that well but he seems like a nice enough guy."

He wonders, with everyone coming out of closets all over the Institute, whether he and Josh had ever… experimented. He almost asks, before deciding that he really doesn’t want to know. John isn’t the only one who knows how to hide from dangerous information, after all, and anything that seriously alters his self-image counts as “dangerous” in an environment where coherent self-image is all that keeps him alive.

Or, well, not “alive” exactly, but close enough.

He wonders what would happen if Marie touched Bobby again, out in the real world. Would he “update”? Or would he disappear and be replaced by another Bobby? Or would they both be running around? (No, that can’t be right… New John replaced Old John. Of course, New John was Humphrey Bogart for a while there, and Bobby still doesn’t understand what that was about, so… he shrugs. Whatever. It isn’t going to happen anyway, so it doesn’t matter.)

Bobby watches Josh blow the barrier apart, incredulously; his old roomie wasn’t kidding about having gotten better at this telepathy business. Even as a noob he’s pulling stunts Bobby wouldn’t even know how to start doing. That’s good, he assures himself. Life goes on, and all that. Everyone’s learning new things and dating new people and, really, it’s all good.

Or, well, most of it, anyway.

Isn’t it?

He shakes the thought away… some questions are just too dangerous to ask. It makes him wonder what Cody’s up to in the real world… whether he even knows he left a piece of himself behind in Marie’s head. If the Cody Bobby knows is anything like the original, he’s probably found some normal girl and is raising a family of seventeen out in the Bayou… practical guy, Cody.

> " H-How did you get ou--"

The thought pulses through Bobby’s mind as soon as he thinks about Cody, along with a strange draining feeling, and then all at once he has no idea what he’d been thinking about just then. Some other “psyke” in Marie’s mind, he remembers that much; something about whoever it is raising a family in Louisiana. John? Magneto? Logan? Hardly likely.

He shakes his head to clear it… he was just woolgathering, probably. He forgets about it as he follows Marie toward the recently opened “doorway.”

[N.P.C]

Template

(( OOC – OK, picking this up again. No particular ordering. ))

(( OOC -- For those just joining us, some background… Josh and Rogue are telepathically wandering around Rogue’s mind, which is full of the ‘psykes’ of people she’s absorbed: Cody, Logan, Magneto, John, Bobby, Peter, Josh, and a bunch of NPCs from an HFC party. Template is a powerful malicious consciousness that Rogue absorbed who is attempting to escape. ))

Template smiles triumphantly as she finishes digesting Cody. The boy may not have had any true power, but he’d been resident for longer than anybody else, and his… essence, for lack of a better term, had pervaded much of this realm. So, as she draws that essence into herself, she learns a great deal about this mind-world she’s trapped in.

The special ones – the telepath, “Josh”, and the one whose mind this is, “Rogue” – are her tickets out of this prison… she knows this now. With Rogue’s essence destroyed, Template can occupy Rogue’s body. Or, with Josh’s essence assimilated, she can use his power to return to her old body… or, perhaps, occupy his? In fact, as she contemplates the new parameters of her existence, she realizes she may not even have to choose… she might be able to occupy all three bodies at once. Wow… what a team I’d make! The possibilities are thrilling.

But, one thing at a time. She’s not powerful enough yet to challenge either of them… so her first order of business is to feed on the others, steal their strength.

And this is the place to start… the memory of a well-appointed ballroom, decorated for a Halloween party, now home to a dozen businessman-types who huddle here, afraid to leave, afraid of the strange world they’ve found themselves in. Morons. I’ll give them something to be afraid of…

---

Arvind spots the new arrival immediately. So do most of the others, he sees. It’s not very difficult, since she’s the only new thing they’ve seen in a long time, ever since they settled in this room to await rescue. (Except it’s not really a room. It’s a memory. He knows that, and so do most of the others. But they don’t talk about it, and Arvind tries not to think about it.)

"Hello, Miss! Are you here to rescue us?" Superficially she doesn’t seem like much to pin their hopes on, just an ordinary-looking young woman… but there is something imposing about her. Something dangerous, even. Still, he is an important man, and has dealt with dangerous people before. He "We have been kept waiting here a long time, and would like to return home now."

---

Template laughs. These guys don’t have a clue, and even if they ganged up on her – which she doubts they’re going to – they really don’t stand a chance. This is going to be fun, and she intends to take her time with it.

"Home? No, sorry guys… that’s not gonna happen. You’re stuck here. With me. " She concentrates on the memory they’re hiding in, the “ballroom”, and takes it into herself, establishes control of it. Strange creatures skitter out from the walls and descend on the other “guests” – the fake ones, the pure memories – and consume them. She laughs again as the ballroom becomes a scene out of a horror movie, full of screams and fountains of blood and the disturbing sounds of insectoid feeding.

"At least, until I decide to kill you."

She waits until the self-important Indian man who first talked to her actually understands her words, waits until he’s fully assimilated the horror around him. Only then does she reach her hand through his sternum, rip out his heart, crush it in her bare hand… and she’s glad she waited, because the man’s fear and despair are more satisfying than the minor rush of power he affords her.

"So, who’s gonna be next?"

[N.P.C]

> " So, who’s gonna be next? "

"Nyet… there will be no other victims." The voice comes from behind her, along with a silvered hand the size of a football on her shoulder, spinning her around to face an armored giant of a man, colorless eyes almost glowing in rage. He slams her against a wall, actually dazing her, then pins her arms above her.

Behind him, a short, hairy little man with claws half the length of his forearm extending from his hands is making short work of her insectoid thought-form followers… not all that impressive, really, she’d mostly conjured them for effect.

Well, that’s convenient, she muses. I thought I would have to track these two down!

"No? Are you sure, honey?" She lets her voice grow pouty, almost seductive, as she slumps in the steel giant’s grip. "Well, poo. I was so looking forward to it, too. Oh well… I suppose you’ll have to make it up to me then, sweetheart… now, won’t you?"

He’d surprised her, at first, but now that she’s taken his measure she realizes he’s no match for her in here… he’s just another shadow, for all his superficial appearance of power. Granted, his mind has more strength than the Louisiana boy, or these second-banana businessmen, but not enough to stand against her. In fact… this could be fun.

She slides a stocking-clad leg along the back of the armored Russian’s leg, murmuring "Ooo… so hard… so firm… is it like that all the way up, big boy?" To no effect, sadly; he doesn’t seem in the least distracted, and his grip doesn’t shift. Even when she makes the stockings disappear, along with the rest of her old costume, he doesn’t flinch. Oh well… no fun, after all. May as well get this over with. She wraps her legs around him and squeezes, sees the impatience on his face turn to surprise, then fear and pain, as his hips crumple.

"Pity… this could have been more pleasant for you" She frees one hand casually from his grip, strokes his face once, then drives her suddenly-taloned fingers across his chest while her other hand pulls him into her.

Oh, yesssssss! The rush of power is purest ecstacy, and she throws her head back and shrieks in joy as the metal body disintegrates into dust.

[N.P.C]

Psyche-Logan
“Petey!” The fact that it isn’t the real Piotr being disintegrated doesn’t matter; he’s as real as anybody else Logan’s met in this strange mindgame existence he’s been stuck in ever since he skewered Rogue, and now he’s gone, and Logan goes a little crazy. Well, OK – a lot crazy. In fact, the room fades out into a kind of haze, where nothing matters except tearing that psychotic invader into the smallest possible pieces.

He’s not sure how long his slashing frenzy lasts, but when his mind returns to normal she’s been reduced to ribbons of flesh and cleanly cut fragments of bone and splatters of blood, and all the Hellfire businessmen are staring at him as if he was going to kill them next. It’s anticlimactic, really, but Logan doesn’t care. He ignores the businessmen and crouches down next to where Piotr “died,” letting a handful of metal dust drift through his fingers, then jumps back to his feet when he hears her voice from behind him.

“That was… unpleasant. We’re not going to do that again."

It takes Logan a moment to identify the voice as coming from the fractured skull that landed in a potted plant several feet away… by which time it’s clear that the fragments of flesh and bone are knitting themselves back together. The process accelerates, and suddenly Template is back on her feet again, this time in a steel-armored body.

Template

It was frightening, at first, when the homicidal creature came after her with those claws – she’ll admit that, to herself if nothing else. Somehow she’d proved unable to affect him with her newfound power; she assumes that’s because of his single-minded grief-fueled rage, and makes a mental note of that.

This time, it’s not nearly so frightening, and now that he’s thinking, he’s no more a threat to her than any other mind-shadow in this place. She grabs him around the neck with her left hand, lifting him off the ground. “It’s an interesting look, don’t you think? I rather like it. Shiny and metallic, I mean. I think I’ll keep it."

His attempts to free himself amuse her, and she laughs uproariously as his claws shatter against her arm. “Foolish, Logan. It’s just a look. Your precious adamantium claws would slice through your companion’s steel body in the real world, but here they behave the way I want them to." She stares intrigued at her free hand, and foot-long claws extend from the back of it. “I like that, too. Stylish and dramatic."

She experimentally swings out with her clawed hand, lopping off Logan’s left arm at the elbow. “Yes… definitely dramatic." He stops thinking so much as she carefully dismembers him, but by now it doesn’t matter… he’s lost. Not that he ever had a chance in the first place.

Finishing off the rest of the room is hardly worth the effort, but she’s so hungry! Every bit counts, after all. And once she’s done, she steps through a curtain into another memory, another victim… this one, perhaps, a little more challenging than the others, but not much.

"Come on out, old man! Let’s see what you’re made of, shall we?" She recognizes her surroundings as the Statue of Liberty, and there’s some kind of mutant battle going on in this memory, but she doesn’t care about any of that… only about the white-haired man who seems to be running this particular show. Or was, until she’d arrived.

[Rogue]

Once through the now-opened doorway, it hits suddenly, like a physical impact even though here there is no ‘physical’ – the shockwave of fear-pain-dying, carrying a familiar presence along with it… She trips, but catches herself before she can fall, one hand steadying herself against what is apparently a tree as she turns to look at the others.

Before she can speak, ask if they felt that, it happens again – more fear, as if from several sources – the pain is weaker this time, though… And then it’s only the fear, the pain fading out…

”Guys, somethin’s really wrong.” She doesn’t like the way her voice comes out weak, and how she’s shaking, now, eyes flicking around the scene they’ve entered, then back to Josh and Bobby!Psyke. ”I think She got ou—“

Another flash of surprise-pain-fear-death, and her words are cut off. She frantically pushes it to the back of her mind…or the equivalent for it, here, since this is her mind; it sort of works, the sharpness to it dulled out so she can function, but there’re still tears stinging her eyes as the next one flashes through.

”...We have t’hurry.”

[Bobby Drake]

"Are you OK?" Bobby rushes over to Marie as he steps through Josh’s recently swiss-cheesed doorway to see her bent over against a tree… then looks around, bewildered. Something feels wrong about this space… or, well, not wrong exactly… not hostile, not unpleasant, even vaguely familiar, but not quite like the rest of Marie’s mind either. He can’t put his finger on the difference, and in any case he’s distracted by another wave of disorientation.

> Guys, somethin’s really wrong. I think She got ou—...We have t’hurry.

‘She’? From pretty much anyone else around here, that refers to Marie, but from Marie herself… well, there’s only one person that can mean. Geez, is that where John took off to? He really doesn’t want to believe that, but… well… John was trying to hide from Marie… and there’s really not anywhere to do that in Marie’s own head… maybe he thought he could negotiate some kind of deal with the enemy? Wouldn’t be the first time…

He carefully takes her uniformed arm to help her up. "Hurry where?"