The Demutanator

[frost_queen]

The Demutanator

What's Up?

The residents of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters wake up one morning to find that their powers don't seem to be working. Like, at all. Though this initially leads to some distress (even though everyone is safe and healthy!), within a day they track down the source of the problem and get to work fixing it! They'll just have to deal with being normal humans for a few days whenever they're at the school. It's fiiiiine.

Volunteer Slots

February 21st: Jean Grey, unsure of what else to do, decides to head out for some outdoors time, and finds that about a mile away from the school, their powers suddenly start working again. Well, at least it seems to be localized.

Manuel de la Rocha is minding their own business in their room when they hear a loud bang outside. Almost like someone running into a door or a wall... They go out to find Kitty, and any others who have witnessed her mistake.

February 23rd: Scott Summers runs a game of tug-of-war (classic mud puddle included) with the kids since it's the only time they can truly play powerless. It's actually kind of a hit, and the students beg them to run more games in the future.

February 21st

On a bright, sunny day, the residents of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters awaken to a strange and somewhat troubling situation - all of their powers are gone, though otherwise everything is painfully normal. Kurt Wagner is the first to notice, and does some quick research and discovers nothing in the news about this phenomenon at all. In fact, no other mutants anywhere seem to be affected, leaving them even more baffled.

February 22nd

The team pinpoints a child's clubhouse in a nearby park, and inside they find twelve year old Buster McKeever and a strange contraption. He tells them that he built this because his best friend, Opal Owens, was struggling with her powers (the ability to possess inanimate objects for short periods of time), and he wanted to make her life easier. He was able to achieve this because of his powers, which give him super intelligence, but once he turned the thing on... well, he's got no idea how to turn it off since he's back to a regular twelve year old's IQ. Notes he wrote suggest that simply turning it off isn't an option, and while it will run out of power within a month, the X-men aren't willing to wait that long. But at least they know the cause! Kitty Pryde updates everyone on their findings.

February 23rd/24th

With the problem sorted out and anyone who wants to helping with disabling the machine, there's nothing to do but just go about life as much as they can.

February 25th

After a few days of work they're able to safely turn off and dismantle the machine, which used a piece of extra-dimensional technology to make it all work. Luckily, after that's destroyed, there's no chance of replicating it or its effects, a relief to everyone. After talks with Buster and Opal's parents, the two agree to join Xavier's to hone their abilities, and maybe be a little bit more careful with mysterious tech.

FEB 21 | FEB 22 | FEB 23 | FEB 24 | FEB 25 | OOC

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FRIDAY: FEBRUARY 21

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

FRIDAY: Scott & Jean, late evening

[totalities marvel girl]

Jean ends up being gone for most of the day. At first, she'd just wanted to be alone and clear her head, but after she'd discovered that her powers worked outside the school's immediate radius she'd done what she tended to do in trying situations (check in on other X-Men in other universes). Maybe a little reckless of her, since she's been trying to go on fewer astral jaunts since her Involuntary Reed Richards Ride-along the other week, but it'd gone fine.

Now, it's late evening and she's just getting home. She hasn't told anyone what she's discovered yet, and she hadn't realized just how late it had gotten, but it seems like a problem for tomorrow to her right now. As she ducks into the mansion, she isn't surprised to find someone waiting for her there.

"Hi, Scott," she says as she shucks her winter coat.

FRIDAY: Midmorning, Kitty & Manny's door & Open++

[passingthru KITTY PRYDE]

Of course Kitty technically knows that she can't go through walls anymore. Powers are off. But muscle memory wins out when distracted, and she's wandering down the hallway (on her feet, successfully,) when she receives a text from Peter Peterson asking her out tomorrow. Of course she squeals in excitement, then turns to leap directly into the nearest friend's door to fashion an appropriate return text. Manny's, she thinks, which is a good choice. He knows men's emotions.

But the phone goes flying. There's a loud crack as her nose hits a solid old oak door, gravity and mass taking their tax. Kitty lets out a swear word not worth documenting because it's at such a high register only people with dog-hearing powers could tell what it was anyway, and stands in shock at the sheer audacity of the wall.

FRIDAY: Emma & Kurt

[blauerdamon kurt wagner ⚔️ nightcrawler]

When Emma knocks on the door, she can hear a slightly muffled "Eine Sekunde!" followed by the sound of something being knocked over and a few choice German curses. Eventually, Kurt gets a good grasp on the handle, and the door cracks open.

Inside is a unfamiliar-yet-familiar face, Kurt's same features but bare of any blue fur. His hair is a more standard black, and his eyes are deep brown without a single fleck of gold. When he shuffles backwards to let Emma in, he doesn't quite know how to grasp the door unless he keeps his fingers close in pairs of two. "How bad is it?"

FRIDAY: Scott, morning.

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

For the first time in a long time, Scott sleeps through his alarm.

Panic shoots through him at the sensation of light on his face—sunlight, from the window. He shakes off sleep, confirming the pressure of the goggles on his face before he opens his eyes. According to the clock, it isn't even 7 AM yet, but his heart rate doesn't settle. His head feels... strange. Something's wrong.

Scott scrambles out of bed and into the bathroom. The mirror shows just his face, washed in red and in need of a shave. He closes his eyes, and then opens them again. Nothing looks wrong. But there's an emptiness in his skull, near the orbital sockets, almost as if...

He slides two fingers under his goggles and pulls them off. Light and color floods his vision. The tiles of his bathroom are pale blue. The towels are bright, bright white. His eyes, which he hadn't seen since he was a teenager, are light brown. (A woman in his memory, blonde and smiling, with the same brown eyes.) Scott stares at his reflection, feeling dizzy.

His phone beeps from the other room, the exact tone that he assigned to Kurt. Taking a deep breath, Scott grabs his glasses out of the medicine cabinet, and goes to check.

FRIDAY: Assembly

[blauerdamon kurt wagner ⚔️ nightcrawler]

Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM, a mandatory assembly is called. Kurt almost trips over himself before reaching the podium, earning a laugh or two, before he gets down to business. He re-introduces himself, just in case anyone was wondering who this new German stranger is.

• Everyone try to relax. No one is in any danger.
• We know for sure that this is limited to the students and teachers, and we're working on a solution. This is temporary.
• Please do not post about this on social media for the safety of yourselves and your fellow students.
• Don't leave campus until this matter is resolved.
• Please reach out to your teachers for help. If you're struggling or need to talk, we are here. We're in the same boat, and understand how disorienting and/or upsetting this is.
• Special activities will be hosted this weekend to keep everyone's mind off this.

FRIDAY: Scott & Kurt, before the assembly

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

Scott is still wearing his ruby quartz glasses when he meets Kurt in his office before the assembly. In his brown cardigan, polo shirt and chinos, trying to sort through a random pile on Kurt's shelf, he looks like it's any other normal day for them.

Except the man currently running through his points for the assembly is pale-skinned and five-fingered, and Scott keeps stealing glances at him out of the corner of his eye, like he used to as a teenager. Everything about Kurt's appearance had been fascinating then. Disconcerting, to see impressions of his brother in this strange man's face and mannerisms.

At least Kurt's voice sounds the same. In the pause between points, Scott says, "We can't tell their guardians."

SATURDAY: FEBRUARY 22

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

SATURDAY: Kitty & Kurt

[blauerdamon kurt wagner ⚔️ nightcrawler]

With a heavy sigh and wounded pride, Kurt pulls up a program for the danger room. It's the introductory obstacle course for freshmen with no prior athletic experience. He and kitty had personalized it to be a classic Robin Hood experience, where the students must escape through Nottingham with a small weight (stealing from the rich to give to the poor, naturally).

Kitty and Kurt's cheat codes have both been indefinitely turned off.

"When is the last time you did this with no powers?" he asks. "Genuinely no powers, not just pretending no powers."

SATURDAY: Manuel & Emma, evening

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

Emma is seated on her bed in a romper, chewing on a Red Vine (cheap, disgusting, an occasional guilty pleasure) as she watches Manny organize her bedroom. Normally she feels bad letting him do too much of this, but stress cleaning works for him, and his room is too immaculate to be of any relief. And honestly, hers is in worse shape than usual.

So here Manny is, currently in the midst of trying to organize her dizzying array of books, half of which she should probably return to the library.

"One of the children gave me a look today that I couldn't make sense of and I almost yelled at him."

SATURDAY: Scott & Kitty & Jean, evening

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

It's a good thing that Kitty gave Scott a few hours of notice, because he spends too long dawdling in the wine cellar, trying to decide which bottles to steal. Charles Xavier is in no state to care about who drinks his champagne, but Scott is still too rule-abiding to touch the most expensive ones. In the end, he picks out two bottles that are good but still easy to replace on the next time he drives into town.

"Special delivery," he calls out before entering the kitchen, giving the girls time to cut off any secret conversations. (Not that Scott thinks they'd be talking about him. Or hopes for it. But just in case.)

SUNDAY: FEBRUARY 23

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

SUNDAY: Scott & Manuel, late evening

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

Scott isn't consciously sneaking when he returns after dark, but he had sort of banked on no one being around to see him carry a 12-pack of Bud Light through the house. And definitely not being spotted by Manuel, maybe the second-worst person to see him doing this.

He slows to a stop, considering possible excuses, and finally just says, "Don't tell Kurt."

SUNDAY: Scott & Kitty, afternoon

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

Scott blows his whistle after the second bout, letting everyone pick themselves up out of the mud and regroup. "Good effort. Two minutes and then we go again!" Grumbles of resentment follow this announcement. Coping with defeat is a worthy lesson, but not one he wants the students focusing on while they're all anxious from losing their powers.

He goes over to Kitty, who's congratulating her students' undefeated streak. "We should pick new teams," he says quietly.

SUNDAY: Kitty & Emma, early evening

[passingthru KITTY PRYDE]

One of the pieces of this predicament sticking in Kitty's mind is that Buster couldn't figure his machine out because his intellect was tied to his powers. She'd never thought about this before. Was being smart part of her own genes, or attributable only to her X-Gene? She could still hack into just about anything, she's tried. She can still do advanced calculus, but that could be memory. Is she naturally smart, or just older? One way she can think to tell.

She stands in front of Emma's room door...and knocks. Doesn't say anything, so that Emma wouldn't be tempted to leave her out here while she can. Both of her eyes are still black and blue, and she's holding a carved wooden chess set in her hands. It's an experiment.

MONDAY: FEBRUARY 24

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

MONDAY: Scott & Emma, late afternoon

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

It was admittedly weird to resume classes like everything was business as usual, but the X-Men are nothing if not experienced with weird scenarios. Scott spent the first ten minutes of each class answering questions about the depowering machine ("we're working on it" repeated as many times as necessary), broke up one fight (fists only), and counseled one crying student. Honestly, he'd expected worse.

"Hey." Scott pokes his head through the door of Emma's office. "Can I talk to you?" The students are on his mind, although of course that can't be read on his face. Serious as usual, with his reflective red glasses in place.

MONDAY: Kurt & Manny, around lunch

[blauerdamon kurt wagner ⚔️ nightcrawler]

Kurt ordered Thai. Enough for the two of them and whatever scavengers (Scott, Kitty) root through the fridge around midnight tonight. With extremely deliberate motions, he tries to arrange the chopsticks in this absolute mess of digits. How is this harder with five fingers than three?

He glances up at Manny (another thing to adjust to: people can immediately tell what he’s looking at now that he has visible pupils and irises). All the same, he tries to keep his face extremely neutral. “What am I feeling right now?”

TUESDAY: FEBRUARY 25

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

Obvs don't feel like you have to wait until the actual day to start a thread on that day lmao 😘

VOLUNTEER SPOTS

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

Claim one if you want! <3

Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

[passingthru KITTY PRYDE]

Bad news, Buster and Opal are both going to be Kitty’s baby protégés by the end of this after many lectures abt responsibility. So maybe it’s bad news for them. I love this so so so much Rin thank yoooou!!!!

I have one more vol spot: Kitty is gonna barge into someone’s room to tell them abt her first date w Peter Peterson tonight only she won’t because the door and wall are real. I’m gonna make it an open thread so everyone can equally laugh but if anyone would specially like their door and wall to get revenge, there u go.

Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

[seeingred scott summers ⊗ cyclops]

buster and opal are so good 🥺

open to threads!! lmk if you want to do something with scott (normal)

Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

[blauerdamon kurt wagner ⚔️ nightcrawler]

Buster and Opal did nothing wrong!!!

I'm also excited to do threads with human boy Kurt :) I'll have him post about his uhhhh discovery as soon as I'm done with lunch

Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

In case you couldn't have guessed it, Emma hates this 😌 I'm obvs open for any and all threads!!! Let's write!!! 💖