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It was late in the house of Xavier. All the children were sound asleep. The cleaning crew finished gathering their last bits of debris from the ground to toss in the bags for the rest to take out in the morning. In the Cabin of Logan, a lone candle remains in the window, a sign that would be wiped out with a bit of breath before Jean finally returns for a spot of sleep in a place she considers sanctuary. Across town, little Jimmy was fighting with his dog over a teddy bear..
'Ew, gross! You got slobber all over it!'
And in another house, a man was drinking his fifth bottle of beer as he watches an old showing of 'Whatever the hell that program is', recorded with a laugh track..
With everyone sound asleep.. all seemed right in the world…
Save for the endless scribbling and scrawling that a dark-ringed eye'd Jean produces.
Judgement. Duplicity. Conquest. Strife.
Judgement. Duplicity. Conquest. Strife.
Her eyes burn red with fire.. until her eyes snap shut and her head slams down hard upon her desk.
~~ The various sleeping minds, or could they be asleep? Were pulled into a maelstrom of chaotica. The sounds itself were warped, the sounds of the mansion of course. Warped in a sense that a few words bleed threw but aren't discernable, and the ringing of the bell sounds close to a gong played in slow motion. The mansion itself was the same, yet deserted.. papers were strewn about the grounds. Dead leaflets curl and create a lovely crackling sound against the wood that was exposed due to ruined carpet.. and the area itself was surrounded in gray.. ~~
Judgement. Duplicity. Strife. Judgement.
The sound of rolling thunder strikes in the distance, illuminating the halls.. but is there anyone there?
Kwabena Odame had come back to the mansion for the weekend. Following the altercation between George Stacy's killer and his daughter, the Ghanaian just didn't want to be in his apartment for a few days. Fortunately, Kaleb didn't have much work for him.
Adopting one of the guest rooms, Kwabena is currently smoking a cigarette while staring at a radio playing jazz music. The soft spoken announcer comes on to discuss the works of Miles Davis, at which point he considers whether he ought to pour himself another glass of whiskey or just stamp out the cigarette and finally get some shuteye.
A moment later, he finds himself barefoot in the hallway, wearing nothing more than his X-emblazoned nightgown. His silver eyes glow softly in the grey, and he looks about in a disoriented manner. "… de hell?" he murmurs, before padding forward and reaching for a discarded piece of paper. The flash of lightning helps him to see what's on it, but it seems blurred. "… what da hell was in dat whiskey?"
Julie had been dreaming about …some unfinished work or other, before the chaotic arrival to the place, glancing around and finding herself in a …different mansion's garage. She hrms, peering around for something familiar, or whatever she was last looking for, as she meanders through.
Two places at once. Or all at once. Anything can happen in a dream. The key would be to reach over willingly to pinch yourself and..
WAKE UP!
But in all places at once..
Pieces of the mansion seemingly move, breaking apart like a veil to reality. No where is safe, but there is no where to hide. The dresser that remains topped over upon the floor in the hallway where Kwabena stands seems as heavy as a boulder made of vibranium..
The garage that Julie exits crumbles apart, slamming an old carriage and buggy down in front of her. It dents the floor as it lands and bounces, shaking the atmosphere in which she takes up..
But there was a view of outside.. a sanded beach, which was far beyond the reach even if one were to run from it. The soothing sounds of a crashing wave apparent. And yet, an inferno of light boils up out of the sea and pierces the metallic halo around a silhouetted angel, a harbinger of the modern age wielding wires and television as his trump. He shouts a Word, and the word is Treachery!
A gong is rung in the background as what remains of the mansion breaks away, the walls falling down like shutters gone backwards revealing windows that stare adjacent.
For a moment, nothing happens…
Until a sudden slam of Jean (in both areas) lands against the glass, cracking it.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" She shrieks, her bloodied fists pounding upon the glass, the entirety of -her- on fire, as if she were burning alive. And the smell..
Oddly enough smells like cookies.
"You. Do. Not. Belong!"
Kwabena is halfway through a valiant (and failed) attempt at raising the dresser when the walls collapse. The gong shakes him to his core, and he shields his eyes against the brilliant light with a terrible grimace.
He spins around then, instinctively armoring up with a fast series of cracks and pops. He adopts a fighting stance, but it slackens somewhat, fists loosing. "What in de hell is going on?" he cries out.
"Jimminy Chrysler!" Dizzy calls out, as the wagons fall out of crumbling rafters, seeming surprised the old wagons dented the floor somehow, rather than, say, smashing. "I guess, make that Studebaker, I guess this'll buff out." She looks toward the crazily-distant shore, with that very quietly-accepting dream-haze about her features. The lighter horse-buggy, she yanks from its side onto its wheels again. Looks around for who or whatever else she's seeing or hearing as the rest falls away. "Ay! Anyone else around?"
Down the hall, Julie.
To your left.
Are you be able to move?
'Ba-ba-bump-ba-ba-bump-ba-ba-bump-ba-baaaaa'
The sound of whistling is heard to the tune as the image slowly appears, three men all down the row, sitting within their chairs.
Heads leaned back, faces painted white..
STRIFE.. STRIFE.. STRIFE..
Papers burn in the wake of fiery trail of plasma soaring past in the hallway. The vaguely humanoid figure sweeps up on an arc past glass windows. The windows melt away into jaggeed chunks as the ascent reaches the stars, roof now gone, and in their cruel glitter launches a salvo of countless missiles, lasers, things for which have no name.
He screams a Word, and the word is..
A little girl lays dead in the middle of the hallway where Kwabena crouches and Julie passes. It was clear that she was fading fast, but there was a smile upon her face as another little girl joins her to hug her tight. Perhaps it was wrong to move her, but her best friend doesn't care.
'Please don't go Annie! Please! Sta—..'
With Kwabena's questioning, both of the girls slowly turn to look towards him, the blonde one obviously broken, and the little redhead with eyes, burning with fire.. the phoenix crest implated upon her forehead.
"STRIFE!" They both say in unison, a cacophony of voices that tremble the foundation of what remains of the pieces of the manse that they were in.
Halted in his approach by the eerie word, Kwabena grimaces again when the mansion further destroys itself, but when Julie passes, he gasps. "Diz!" he rushes toward her, reaching for her shoulders. "Tell me you ah here. Tell me dis is not some fucked up acid trip!"
Julie steps off a carriage with no horses, looking around. "Says to Kwabena, Beats me. Since I don't know what that is, and I don't know what this is, maybe." Seeing the three guys in the chairs, "Hey, youse over there. Whassamatta you? Who do you think you are?" grumbling, "Sitting around at a time like this," she says, stooping to look over the girls. "So, I dunno, where to, girls?"
Wanda goes home.
The all too typical sound of chains would drown out the childrens cry for strife. But the little blonde girl, lifeless now in the arms of the redhead slowly vanish into nothing. A woman, white as a sheet dances around those three men, holding a razor.. spinning.. spinning.. spinning.. and with each inch of a twirl she takes, the men disappear but leave behind seats filled with blood and a teeny bit of a scalp.
It could be an acid trip, yes?
"No." Jean finally says, haggard looking as she was, wrapped in a straight jacket with the endings in chains. Hollowed face, bones marking where they lay instead of the thickened flesh of someone actually having a decent life.. and a meal..
"I dream this dream a million times, it comes at random it does.." She says.. through the windows of melted glass..
"I dream this dream a million times, it comes at random it does.."
She says down the hall, limping, dragging her broken body after the twirling woman..
"I dreamthis dreams a million times, it comes at random it does.."
She says behind them, on fire, latched upon what remains upon the walls that -she- begins to crawl upwards..
"And the only thing that is different is you." She says, it was her this time, but not. Her entire body was covered with the stars in the sky. Pleiades made it's mark. Stardust trails behind her hair and thought bubbles form above her..
"But how?"
"Was it you Jean?"
"They aren't supposed to be here."
"You do know.." Says the starry woman, who's fingers slowly begin to extend.. "She's hiding from me. She knows that she is where I go to -die-!"
All of the Jean's present, shriek and begin to scatter, even the one that climbs the walls moves about in a circle until she vanishes.
"WAKE UP AND GET OUT!" The cosmic being screeches, reaching out with those long fingers to sloooowly attempt to plant them into the middle of Julie and Kwabena's foreheads.
Kwabena however is distracted. His skin has begun to flake away, that hardness falling like chips of asphalt to reveal a hairless, white skinned body beneath. He watches in horror as he adopts a European visage, the nightgown metamorphosing into a nice suit and tie. His eyes become blue as day, and his form shrinks down to a mere 5'6".
Looking up, the now-white man yelps and scampers backward at the finger that reaches for his forehead. "Don't touch me!" he cries, forming a fist and making an attempt to bat it away.
Julie is looking around about at the tableau, "Awright, maybe not Kwabena, either." she murmurs, as he apparently turns into someone else. Hazily thinks to fumble at where her belt would be for an angle-grinder, looking at the chained-Jean. "Ay, Miss Grey!" Or so she calls out as they shriek and do the quick fade. The lady made of stars snaps her attention there, and she only takes a half-step back, seeming a bit transfixed by all that, being something of a stargazer, herself. "So, who's this, are you the queen of the Fatas?" she says, though that's in Italian. "Or something?"
"Or something." The cosmic woman said, and without movement from Julie, the touch to her forehead was simple. While that touch did not grant knowledge of the supreme, the message of the dream in it's entirety was sent along. What Jean dreamed, Julie now sees clear and quite possibly could recall it if she were able.
Kwabena-not-Kwabena was not so lucky; one could even surmise that he was frightened enough that he turned white. For as he scrambled back and screamed, those long fingers took a reach and impaled themselves sharply into his chest. Dreams were deposited, but a final warning remains..
"I said that eventually.. I was going to …"
"EAT YOU!"
From here, to there, the cosmic woman bellowed in his face, the sound of apocalyptic horns emerging from her lips, loud enough to break the reality in the mind of Jean as pearly white teeth elongate..
JEANS OFFICE:
Jean wakes up with a start.
Her start is a throw back in her chair which sends her sailing against the wall behind her, the strength of it to -not- dent, but like a slap enough to wake her up. Pens and pencils fall to her desk, papers slowly sail towards the ground, and as she looks around the room in a bewildered fashion.. she was finally awake.
A hand lifts to deliver the second blow of awaking, both hands soon smacking at her cheeks as she stands quickly and begins to pace. She was awake now, and those she had captured within her dream should be released from their thrall. A slew of quiet swears draw from her lips, her head shaking as she draws in a breath and exhales it out quickly, her nose wrinkling as she gives a sniff.
"Gross.." She mutters to herself. "..didn't know a nap causes bad breath.. gotta relay this information to Columbia.." And off to her private bathroom she stalks, probably to brush her teeth and reflect..
Dizzy starts awake, there, in an oversized NHRA baseball shirt, her eyes darting around, as the alarm clock begins to spin way too fast with a complaining of gears, as ssix hair curlers spin out of her hair or alternately tug at her, a few things rolling off the table, she cussing at herself a bit before she tamps down the Vrrr in the room that was startled out of her. "Mammamia, what was that about." She sighs, looks at the clock, hopelessly scrambled. "Hope I ain't late for something." Swings her feet out of bed and slips on some old sneakers.