earth_367 | A Reunion

What's Up?

It's been a month since Professor Charles Xavier fell into an enigmatic coma, leaving his institute and his protégés to continue on without him.

It's been three days since the mark that had appeared on Xavier also appeared on his first eight students, the original X-Men. While none of them have followed their mentor's lead into oblivion, word of this strange shared circumstance reached them all quickly and they've agreed to gather and discuss the situation.

For better or worse, it seems that they're in this together.

It's dark, cold, and snowing outside when they gather in one of the mansion's parlors, a large room with double doors (which they close behind them) and a lit fireplace. The flames inside crackle and dismiss the worst of the night's chill as they arrive one by one, taking positions on two couches and three chairs scattered around a low table. The antique furniture and built-in bookshelves make the space reminiscent of Charles Xavier's office and the man's presence seems to hang over the gathering.

...But at least the bar cart is well-stocked.

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Scott Summers had the foresight to prepare a snack for the group before they met up. Or maybe they just needed a distraction. Regardless, they arrive armed with enough deviled eggs for everyone!

During the discussion, Kitty Pryde says something about themselves or their life that is just...not true. They don't know why they said it or where the thought even came from. How strange.

Near the end of the discussion, Kurt Wagner's mark begins to glow, bright enough to be visible through or around anything that might be obscuring it. One by one, the others' marks follow suit, ending with Emma Frost. The glow of their mark persist for several long moments after the others go dull and seems to pulse within their skin...before they suddenly collapse back with a gasp and fall unconscious.

When Emma wakes, only minutes later, their friends are around them and they recall nothing but a blinding light.

ARRIVALS ⮾ DURING THE TALK ⮾ AFTER THE TALK ⮾ OOC

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Any parts of the discussion between the group as a whole that people want to play out or any asides between pairs or groups of characters can go here.

Scott holds up his right hand, with the shared mark clearly branded on the back of it. "Has anyone seen a symbol like this before?"

"It isn't familiar, but I have been thinking," Kurt says, holding his tail so he and the rest of the group can look closely at the mark. It burned away the fur that was once there, leaving rarely seen bare blue-gray skin. "All of the parallel lines are in fours. This makes eight horizontal lines, eight vertical lines. And as we all know, there are eight of us. Xavier could represent where the line changes direction."

Edited Date: 2025-01-14 05:31 am (UTC)

Manuel leans forward a little to look at the mark when Kurt presents his tail. He's seen it before, obviously, but his is on his chest and he only spends so much time standing shirtless in front of the mirror to look at it. The symbol doesn't mean anything more to him now than it ever has, though. Even if Kurt is right about the pattern.

"¿Y que? You think that's intended to mean something? Communicate something?"

"Or... it's a simple coincidence that I'm reading into too much," Kurt admits cheerfully.

At this, Manuel gives an exasperated sigh and drops back into the sofa.

Kurt brings out the medical report he was given. MRIs, vitals, bloodwork. There's a copy for everyone in the room.

"The doctors say that he's stable. We've hired nurses to take care of him on a day-to-day basis," he explains as he turns a page, pretending to understand more than he actually does. Sometimes it's just nice to pretend you're on top of things. "They have had thorough background checks. All fellow mutants."

Kitty doesn't have to look at the records. She's accessed them all before, looking and cross-referencing medical textbooks, pretending to be an expert to the same end. "Everything's normal." She spoils for the rest of the class. "Annoyingly normal. There doesn't seem to be a reason for this.Which. I mean, that's good for when he wakes up." It's just they're back at the start, again.

"Standard medicine will only tell us if he's deteriorating, I imagine." This is not a dismissal of the information, which is vital to tracking Xavier's health, but...

"If things become dire, or it stretches on for too long, I'm willing to use Cerebro. He was hooked up to it when this happened, wasn't he?" There's a moment where Emma considers adding that, if they really wanted her to, she would go use it immediately. But risking herself seems like a bad idea, so she keeps the self-sacrificing comment to herself.

Manuel's immediate instinct is to protest this suggestion, but he keeps it to himself even as his gray eyes flit in Emma's direction. She's not like some of the others here; she won't rush in and put herself at risk on some altruistic impulse. If she decides it's necessary...he'll trust that it is.

"That's where I found him," he confirms, "Cerebro was still active. He had to have been using it when everything happened, but for what..." He shrugs. The Professor uses Cerebro all the time and he's never made a habit of keeping them informed about it or even maintaining records. Not that they're aware of or have been able to find, anyway.

Edited Date: 2025-01-14 06:25 pm (UTC)

"Does Cerebro store any data on what the last user was looking at? Or does it not really work like that?"

This is mostly a question for Kitty, although Scott looks to Emma too for telepathy expertise. He neither likes nor dislikes the idea of her using Cerebro. It's a big risk, but also the most obvious avenue they haven't explored yet.

That doesn't mean they have to be reckless about it. "Are there safety measures we can build before anyone puts on the helmet again?"

"Doesn't work like that." Kitty sighs, because she wishes it did. "It basically just amplifies the neural oscillations of telepaths. So there's no logging system or anything, even." They should really have made the Professor have those.

"There aren't really any safety measures in place now. We could reduce Cerebro's amplification levels, but it'd reduce the strength of our correspondence, too. Which might be okay if we're not sure what we'd even be looking for right now."

Or what would happen if they found it, she leaves unsaid.

Edited (Kasey gave me the fake science here I promise) Date: 2025-01-15 12:59 am (UTC)

Emma almost idly reaches for Manny's hand as she sits back, trying to think of other options to increase the safety of an attempt at using Cerebro. Coming up with nothing, she lets out a sharp sigh.

"Without an idea of what happened it's difficult to know where to begin with adjustments or precautions. If Charles was simply overwhelmed then it's possible that even at reduced amplification I could sense the cause, but if, for example, something or someone reached into his mind while it was exposed like that..."

A small shrug, nonchalant despite the fact that she isn't feeling that way at all.

"And I'm likely your only option, unless Charles was training one of the children to use it, so we need to be very sure it's necessary."

"Lass mich nachdenken," Kurt interjects, now scrolling through his tablet and wishing he had an ounce of psychic power or computer knowledge to help him navigate this data. He does his best to understand the stakes, but this is not his specialty. Charles taught Kurt what he could, but Kurt was never a scientist.

"Kitty, can we start with those small tests? The reduced amplification?" He looks to her, trying to seem confident, then his gaze flicks over to Emma. "Baby steps for you, Emma. But if Cerebro is... compromised, it will be easier for us to pull you out. We need to know if Cerebro itself is the cause, or if Charles found something foreign."

“Yeah, three possibilities with this, I think.” Kitty’s locked in, perching on the chair arm, seemingly unaware she’s about to fall off except for that her lower half is comfortably intangible. “Could be Cerebro, in which case best case, it doesn’t work at all. Or it could work and that’d be bad. Second, Professor X was looking for something very specific we likely won’t find. Third, something found him. In which case.”

She touches the back of her neck, “I mean probably r knows where we are anyway. Each has risks. I could definitely lower the amplification. But it’s Emma’s decision. Her risk.”

DURING THE TALK: Xavier's Status

frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen - Date: 2025-01-20 05:01 am (UTC) - Expand

DURING THE TALK: Xavier's Status

blauerdamon kurt wagner ⚔️ nightcrawler - Date: 2025-01-20 05:10 am (UTC) - Expand

DURING THE TALK: Xavier's Status

empata Manuel de la Rocha (Empath) - Date: 2025-01-21 10:51 pm (UTC) - Expand

It's during an awkward lull in the conversation that Jean decides to say something which has been nagging at the corner of her mind for a few minutes.

"Has anyone talked to Erik recently?" She's neither suggesting they contact him about this themselves nor pointing a finger at him, really, but she's also sort of doing both.

Kurt clears his throat, which means putting himself on the spot. It isn't a secret that he and Erik have been talking, but it still makes for a strange situation and a stranger associate. "I spoke with him on Friday. To tell him the results of the MRI."

Kitty pulls up an extremely comprehensive spreadsheet of every weird crime in the area, and every person with mental based powers that their records had ever encountered. But she hides her work immediately, slamming the laptop shut immediately and dramatically. “No meaningful leads. I’ve been looking since it happened. I was talking to my husband when we were clipping our dog’s nails last night, and he said.” She blinks, feeling like something was off, but isn’t sure how.

Edited Date: 2025-01-14 03:21 pm (UTC)

Manuel is mid-sip of his drink when Kitty says what she says and he nearly chokes in surprise. This feels like one of her ill-conceived, poorly-timed jokes but if it is...he doesn't get it. Then he feels her confusion and that leaves him at a loss. He stares at her silently, waiting for anyone else to speak up.

Scott isn't as good at data analysis as Kitty—more of a hands-on, pen-and-paper kind of guy—but he looked at the same numbers and couldn't find any leads either. Frustrating. And... confusing? Husband? Dog?

He looks at Lockheed, like the dragon might be able to explain.

"...Kitty, what on earth are you talking about?" Emma has immediately searched her companion's brain and come up blank - no sign of anything strange, and certainly no sign of a husband or a dog. She sips at her drink, frowning a little.

"I don't know." Kitty admits. And neither apparently does Lockheed, who is mirroring Scott's quizzical glance and directing it back at Kitty herself fairly exactly.

Kitty scans her brain, imagining herself pushing through its atoms in the way she phases through matter, tries to peel back layers to see if there feels like there's anyone else in her brain. No one so obvious as the time her older self was sitting in there, taking over.

"I don't have a husband. That just slipped out. Weird! Other thoughts??"

She flips open her computer as a distraction again. They do have a matter at hand, here, and if she's going insane she'd rather no one paid attention to that.

"Just slipped out?" Manuel retorts, incredulous but still at a loss. There hadn't been any shift in her emotions when she'd said it. There hadn't been any hint of deception then and there isn't now either. There's just a lack of understanding and a thread of panic that she's turning her conscious mind from. It...doesn't make sense.

He glances at Emma, then back at Kitty, then shakes his head in frustration.

Kurt blinks rapidly at this entire exchange. "Have you been recently fantasizing about marrying some man we haven't met yet?"

“What?? No. Eww.” She looks personally affronted at this very real hypothetical scenario. “I wasn’t thinking about anything. It just. Was what I said??” This doesn’t actually make sense even to Kitty.

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367 - DURING THE TALK

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An X-Men GPSL (IC)

A Reunion

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