11329/Pieces of Mind: Equal Exchange

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Pieces of Mind: Equal Exchange
Date of Scene: 06 June 2022
Location: NYU Skirball Theater
Synopsis: A ball of terrorized, damaged souls erupts into the astral!
Cast of Characters: Charles Xavier, Tabitha Smith, Wade Wilson, Jonathan Sims, Ruth Aldine, Jane Foster, Zandra Mitchell




Charles Xavier has posed:
It all happened so quickly. Those in the astral plane were bombarded by a rush of new people, but these were different. They were not simply lost, but in a state of tortured pain. Those that arrive batter at the energy of everything around them, tearing holes in the bridges, destroying footprints and other souls equally. These are in, fact, what one would have expected the others to be after being torn from their bodies: shreds of emotion and frustration. Oddly, they are also lightly tainted by magical influence of some kind - damage.

The sanctuary shudders under this impact, as Xavier himself moves his focus to erect shields and to animate astral guardians to emerge from the walls to defend it. However, he is also able to light up a blazing trail, a flood of orange astral energy that winks up off of each of the angry arrivals, showing a direction and source.

<< I am holding their arrival point open, so that you can find the source... hurry! >>

There is a shredded place, in danger of collapse, where the frenzy is at its peak. And that place connects to the physical world, a theater in Greenwich Village.

This could be a good break, that there were already groups assessing the last site of energy flux, at the University housing in Greenwich. the distance between there to this new place is relatively small, if anyone can get there in time...

Tabitha Smith has posed:
The last time Tabitha was exposed to anything remotely astral, a lot of psychic energy was being thrown around and it left the girl with a slight case of latent telepathy and some major helmet hair from wearing a Maggneto Helmet to work on shutting things out and getting her head nice and Tabitha only.

So when things started getting wonky on the astral side again Tabitha volunteered. Though she might have needed a nudge out of her own head and into the astral which is such a trip.

Just to be on the safe side in case someone wanted to get funky while the professor was working she totally left in structions to yank her back into her own nugget resting near by. The Magneto helmet in a backpack beside her just in case.

"Don't be afraid to Pull the Pin Professor. Never know if meatspace is how they wanna get you!" she says and smiles.

And so disembodied Astral Tabby does her best to muddle her way through the aether of the astral and follow the trails being set out.

Wade Wilson has posed:
    "So I says to the guy, 'Porker? I barely know her!'" Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, aka The Merc with a Mouth, aka... the list could go on forever. Myabe it's other people who have the mouth problems and not him, hm? Maybe so. Whatever the case is, the mercenary is chatting with... no one visible as he walks the NYC streets in his usual garb of red and black under the grey hoodie and sweatpants straight out of Rocky Balboa's training montage.

    Why was he in Greenwich? None of your damn business. It's a free country and he can walk where he pleases. It had absolutely nothing to do with the ping from Chuck X that speared through his mind and told him where the site of the astral disturbance happened to be. (Hope you liked the pinup of Beautiful Bea, Charles; I know you share the desire to be stepped on as much as I do!)

    As he approaches he reaches into the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and draws one of his old faithfuls, a large caliber handgun. He raises it and fires three lound shots directly into the air overhead. "Time to scatter people!" he calls to the already fleeing crowd. Nothing gets civilians out of the line better than the threat of violence and Deadpool is known for such things.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    The flow of (mostly) healed souls has been sent to the Archive, only a few for now, not enough to tax the place. It's enough to give Jon a thread to follow when he gets the mental 'ping' to come and help. He comes in from the astral side of things, multicolored wings spread out while he flies in to the area. He lives /very/ near Greenwich Village, so it's a fairly quick response time on his part.

    He follows the trail of orange astral energy back toward the source of things. Noting others moving along in the astral plane he waves to them, to indicate he's on the same trail.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Ruth Aldine, aka the Unemployable BLINDFOLD, has been -- well, she has been balancing concerns in her life at the moment and she's not doing it super duper well because of conflicting ideals. On the one hand, she should probably gain some kind of skills other than sitting scenically and filing for government checks and/or Sentinel attacks, because Lex Luthor will absolutely cut that off the moment he can.

On the other hand, CHARLES XAVIER - the man with the plan and the Dream - has asked for her help, if not in so many words. Both in general (project with people) and in specific (here, right now).

When the call came out, Ruth had been listening to an audiobook and eating soup. She puts the soup on a tabletop and pauses the podcast, leans back in her chair, and --

INTO THE ASTRAL REALM!

"Hi Boomz," says Blindfold in the astral - sharp, coherent, fast-moving, monochromatic (it's a vague blue) - as she whizzes forwards. "You get lost or anything you follow me, least I can do. Hey though I got to ask, did you eat, pardon, those mushrooms in Mexico too? Because I feel like maybe those mushrooms did this."

AND THEN -- she approaches the Professor's astral location. "Got it," she tells him with a wave-wave before - forward! She cannot, of course, see the color, but she can kind of taste it - and there is the question of DIRECTION. Somewhere.

"I can sense we're going towards the city," Blindfold announces. "Not sure where. Hi sir," she says to The Archivist JUST as she whips past him a mere astral-centimeter or two away, before doing a complex reorientation so as to be 'facing' towards them to be friendly like. "I don't usually go this far, sorry, but don't you worry about me."

Jane Foster has posed:
Sunday evening, the last dregs of the weekend ahead, and Jane settles in to binge watch a drama series with plenty of potential while red-lining a script. Something perhaps to ease the transition back into the work week, a guilt-free past time that demands little processing power.

The hue and cry goes up, at first unnoticed while she parses through the conundrums facing a Danish political operative. With tea in hand, she leans forward and forgets the red pen for the moment. Notes are far less interesting than dodging around fiascos, oil conglomerates, and an Inuit activist.

Shockwaves ripple through the Astral Realm and knock her sideways. Papers hastily shoved together end up on the coffee table, barely time to call to the snoozing golden groggily perking a floppy ear from a dog bed: "I'll be back as soon as possible!"

That was the intent. The reality is somewhat different, traversing a realm at speeds generally controlled by instinct and intent rather than physically moving her legs. For the astrophysicist, getting her bearings takes more time than leap-frogging over footsteps into what /is/ Greenwich Village mostly. She still looks identical to how she did on the last encounter at New York University, down to every last detail, and that really should be concerning to anyone who notices the utter static quality compared to nebulous changes. Well, not something to worry about. There are faces she knows, some she doesn't, and a polite wave for all. Tabitha though gets a surprised note.

"No frost giants or trolls around, are there?"

Charles Xavier has posed:
In the Astral....

The arriving, upset fragments are attacking anything in sight! Four of them lunge directly at one of the arrivals in front: Ruth! They are barely human, driven, tormented awareness, as they attempt to tear into her astral form. They are blurs of emotion, primal id! Two others swarm and pounce at a smaller lost soul, going for the incorporeal jugular. The source of them is easy to follow, though it is not very safe..

--

At the Theater....

Outside, everyone seemed to be unaware of any trouble, at least until Deadpool shows up and shots are fired. That definitely causes a lot of screaming and scattering, but also a brave soul at the front of the theater who was exiting steps aside partially, holding open the door for Deadpool, as if mostly just taken by surprise to have Deadpool suddenly right there. Better to step aside than be shot.

Zandra Mitchell has posed:
    The message wasn't sent to Zandra.

    She is, after all, a very new student at the Xavier Academy, and up until the first astral incursion at the school's graduation party, she didn't even know what a psychic is - let alone that she might be one. She just figured her power is water morphin', and that was straightforward enough.

    But she was part of that incursion - and she felt the impact of it firsthand, having been possessed by one of the astral interlopers. It was something of a crash course in the strangeness that could occur in a place like Xaviers, and she... hadn't handled herself as well as she could have.

    In fact, it was perhaps because Alexandra had been feeling guilt and stress in the aftermath about her refusal to give the soul of Debbie the scientist a home for any longer than she had to that she'd been granted a Sunday in the city with her parents, Ferrell and Janice. The three had gone to church in the morning, then decided to catch a movie on the evening - they'd even let her pick one about a vampire, even though she usually wasn't allowed to watch scary movies.

    "Now, if you need to excuse yourself because it's too scary, don't be embarrassed," Ferrell had told Zandra as the three had filed into the darkened theater.

    "Don't worry, I've seen plenty of scary things lately," Zandra tried to reassure her father - failing to do so, judging by the look on Ferrell's face.

    As Zandra's eyes adjusted to the dark, she'd noticed a strange group down in the front row - they appeared tense and on edge. One of them had turned to look at her with an odd, pitying expression. Zandra had smiled awkwardly back, but something felt off.

    "Oh, honey, did you remember your drink?" Janice had asked.

    "Oh, crud!" Zandra had said, "I musta left it by the popcorn bar. Can y'all take the bag?"

-------------------------------------------------------

    When Zandra returns a few minutes later, though, she nearly drops her Xtra-Large Dr Pepper - as most of the people inside the theater have slumped over, and there's an eerie green light filling the place.

    "Mom? Dad? Are y'all alright?!"

Charles Xavier has posed:
Inside....

Inside the theater, sudddenly there's a touch to Zandra's ankle! "Get down!" hisses the voice of another girl, warningly. She's hidden in the seats to Zandra's left. The front of the theater, the stage, is covered in a rampant green glow, a few figures silhouetted in the light as they move there, quietly speaking to one another.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Not that I can see, Dr. Foster." The oddness of Jane's form isn't lost on Jon, but he's waved it off as 'one of those things' long since. Certainly at least for the moment. "Hello, ahh, Blindfold, right?" Jon's been spending a lot of time practicing both flying and astral travel, so he doesn't have much trouble furling his wings in to keep from hitting other people as they approach the source of the disturbance. "Don't think we've met," he notes to Tabitha. "I'm Jonathan Sims, the Archivist."

    And then spirit fragments are attacking, and almost on instinct he sends out a telepathic compulsion that amounts, mostly, to /fear/. Primal fear, since they're primal shards of emotion, the kind of fear that sweeps over rodents and lagomorphs when a predatory bird swoops in, say. The hope is to scatter the shards enough to be able to get nearer to the source.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Tabitha did not eat the Mushrooms. She did however bring a heap back and a couple bricks of fine Del Rey weed which is locked up in the X-Lab and Tabitha is sure that Hank McCoy has not used all of. It's medicinal and it helps Tabitha in a number of ways.

That is not the cause of the trip so when she gets a boost out of her brain via the Professor and the more experienced Psychic in Ruth to guid her and be the responsible one. This makes more sense than people might think.

The others that congregate along the way get a weird sort of wave as they arrive. "They'd be easier to handle. Trolls and Giants have perfectly explodable lungs and I'm totally not gonna get in trouble back home for that!" she states and grins a Ruth. "I should totally go Scandinavian Shield Maiden at our next hallowern. Like that Lagertha chick on Vikings but not that hot!" she plans.

Plans can wait though as Ruth gets swarmed and Tabitha jumps into hero big sister mode to counter pounce. Luckily she's had plenty of martial arts training over the years which should be helpfully translatable to astral combat. Psychic Bombs not advisiable while she's not sure what they could do to Ruth so splash damage is to be avoided.

Wade Wilson has posed:
    "Thank you kindly" Deadpool says to the doorman before slipping into the place and shrugging out of his hoodie and sweatpants. The suit's underneath, no need to get your mosaics out. He starts reaching into the duffel and strapping his accoutrements on piece by piece. Dual holsters for the large handguns. Knives. Knives. Knives. Knives. Double Katanas for his back.

    He might get a few looks from anyone left in the lobby of the theater, but does he care? Not one bit. More of his arsenal comes out of the bag.

    A few flashbangs. A few pineapples. A Derringer--just in case. More knives. And... that looks like all. He tosses the sweats and hoodie into the duffel and tosses it to one side of the lobby. He'll get it after he's done here.

    "Okay... now onto the main event" he says as he strolls to the theater in question. He unsheathes one of the katanas and one of the handguns--calling it a pistol seems too light for the amount of damage he's done with them and pauses at the door.

    Before uncermoniously kicking it in and shouting with little care to his own safety, "And I'm all outta bubblegum!" The pistol is raised and he says with all the flair and machismo of Jon St. John, "Come get some!"

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Ruth is suddenly decapitated by an astral fragment. THE STAKES COULDN'T BE HIGHE-- ah, she's alright; her head sort of pulled downwards at the last minute, and she leaned back at an oblique angle. "Oh this is weird," Ruth says, as she --

Seems like she's having some kind of grand-mal fit --

Including some motion and evolutions that should rip her arms out of their sockets--

But those aren't her arms, are they?

"Um, hm," Ruth says. "This is kinda -- hold on, I'm sorry, I'm kind of hallucinating again --" She curls up into a sudden fetal ball and -- a quartet of small comfortable loveseats, rendered in a manner that looks as if it would have the right SHAPE to be ultra-comfortable even if they don't look RIGHT, appears just as some of the thrashing, screeching id-seized entities approach her.

"R E L A X," Ruth pronounces outwards. An emotional impulse. Trying to calm the madenned souls down.

She's freestyling. "Hi ma'am!!!" she calls to the familiar presence of Jane.

Zandra Mitchell has posed:
    When the hand touches her ankle, Zandra very nearly screams - and this time, she does drop her soft drink, leaving a puddle to spill down the entry ramp. She stops herself from actually hollering out, though, and quickly drops down onto her knees before scooting backward on the seat of her blue jeans in the direction of the voice that had called out to her, hiding between the rows from the line of sight of the people near the screen at the front.

    "What's goin' on?" she whispers with a worried tone, aqua strands of hair flicking out of her face as she turns her head to look at whoever it was that accosted her. The sounds of gunplay outside reach her ears, but she thinks - hopes - prays - that that's just something that's on in the next screen over. The girl is positively covered in what appears to be sweat already in spite of the fact that, like most theaters, the air conditioning is probably set much cooler than needs be - though if she were asked, she'd describe the phenomenon as 'leakage.' As if that made it sound any better.

    Then, a madman with a mask and a gun kicks the door open and starts shouting about bubblegum.

    This time, Zandra does scream. Much as one might expect a teenage girl in a tense situation to scream when a madman with a mask and a gun kicks the door open and starts shouting about bubblegum.

    "EEEEEEE-!!"

Jane Foster has posed:
In the Astral, Jane more exudes amusement than actively smiles. "Exploding lungs would be convenient. Not an option that I see here, though." The few moments between arrival and everything turning pear-shaped covers her getting her whereabouts in the dark echoes of a theatre. Surprise and fear blossoming around her like stains bleeding through the bathroom ceiling give plenty of cause to worry. Spiritual fragments swarming in frightened shoals shift her onto a very different footing. Tabitha asked for a Scandinavian shield maiden and she has one; albeit in disguise.

"Expect a shark stirring this up?" she asks, already on the move to get in the way of a fragment. Blindfold has her own sea of concerns to worry about. Her own reactions are practically instinctual, snapping her wrist up to collide with a fast-moving projectile. Much like Wonder Woman deflects trouble with her pretty jewelry, she can perform much the same, save it involves a nearly unbreakable metal object with absolute correspondence into the Astral Realm. Albeit her gesture is backed up by a variation on jujutsu principles. Her style uses momentum to redirect and send a target to the ground or hurtling away from the target. Jon and Ruth need time to perform their work, and perhaps the spirits need a bit of a surprise to stop attacking.

"Are they looking for hosts again?" She won't toss anything that stays at bay, and even when force is called for, bare minimum is the natural end.

Charles Xavier has posed:
In the Astral...

The spirits have a mixed reaction, to Jon's terror, the directness of Tabitha and Jane, and Ruth's ...calming influence. It gets a little tangled. Many of them bolt back towards where they came from -- towards the source, as if to safety -- one curls up on a loveseat like a confused cat, and one other begins to attack the loveseat like a rabid spiritual wolverine.

The source, as it was, is a fluxing place, that reeks of magical influence. And in that spot, is something much worse -- a pile of the psychic fragments, tumbled together, into a ball. The retreating, feared ones return to this ball, creating a weird growth on one side of it that pulses with responsive terror. They do seem like the spirits of before, except that they have been whipped into this rage state, and are being forced together.

In the Theater....

"Is it working?" Asks one of the people on the stage area, in the green glow. "Of course. Just do the right sigils. Just get through this. Think about -- who does he have? Your son?" There's a muffled reply that Zandra won't be able to hear. "Don't mess this up, I want my family back. Do it /right/."

Zandra's new friend just shakes her head and starts to move on the floor towards one of the back doors, clearly intending to get out of there with her life. Perhaps the warning toward Zandra was just so she wouldn't bring those glowing green people over to her location.

Wade's arrival causes a lot of attention in his direction, of course. Immediately, one of the people on the stage splits off and erects a glowing dark reddish shield, and flings a dark, red magical lance the size of a spear towards Wade, yelling at the other people behind him to hurry up, finish the thing!

Tabitha Smith has posed:
From the Astral side of things Tabitha looks to the fellow mutant that has head on neck issues and winces. "I'm sure you're used to this Ruth but but can we try avoiding losing heads and stuff. I don't know the rules. And I don't wanna find out that this is a what happens here happens in Arr Ell for the newbies." she states worriedly. "Plus you're my ride out of here and if you die I might as well not go home." her body is literally next to the man that gave her a home and a family. Unlikely they'll kick her out but damn if she won't cop flak from everyone for getting someone killed.

The glowy ball gets a hmmm as she looks to the others. "Sooo, umm. power source? People not want to be in this thing. We scatter it and everything gets nice and normal. Normal for us?" she adds and holds out a hand and tries and maybe wants to generate a bomb. Sure she is psionio with her plasma control but she lacks a nervous system right now to channel anything like a current for ignition.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon takes a deep, if unnecessary, breath, and pulls back the pulse of fear, as he approaches the source of the disturbance. "Much better idea," he murmurs, noting Ruth's couches, but it's too late for that now. He sort of hovers over the ball, peering at the magical influence in the area.

    "This is... rough magic, possibly a test. It looks like maybe... whoever's throwing souls into the astral had someone use magic on them first--probably those witches Fitz found out about--putting them into this riled-up state to make them easier to turn into... this. Like someone thought 'what happens if we magically rip a soul into pieces and then push it into the Astral Plane.'" He has to visibly swallow back bile; even without a physical body that's the reaction he feels.

    "If we can stop the magic that's holding them together we can help them, but... we have to stop the magic first." A beat. "I would imagine whoever's doing this is on the other side, but I think we can disrupt it from here. Maybe force the ball apart, or try to heal the people within... or if we can find the tether to the physical plane..." He chews on his lip, his form pulsing faintly teal as he starts to subconsciously pull on more of Ma'at's power.

    He looks around at Ruth, Tabitha, and Jane. "What's easiest for you three?" A pause, noting Tabitha. "...I'm guessing pulling the ball apart? Unless you can blow up the tether."

Wade Wilson has posed:
    Deadpool's been around the block a few times. Magical responses aren't entirely out of his wheelhouse, even if he himself never employed such measures. He takes a stab--literally--at deflecting the lance of energy and manages a perfect parry. He did -not- however expect the shock-back from the attack to send a shock of paralytic energy up his arm, forcing him to drop the blade.

    "Well... shit..." he murmurs in response and then fires off a few rounds to the attacker. Usually, he would go for lethal shots, but given that he's trying to play nice with both SHIELD and Xavier's crew these days he goes for less lethal means. Kneecaps were a fave. This guy get's both and a shoulder shot at in quick succession. Hopefully, Wade's training as a sniper doesn't fail him today.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
"That's right," Ruth tells Jonathan, belatedly as it may be. She's not paying close attention, it seems, to the present, but she may be --

-- Well really she's just a weirdo. "I'm glad to see you again. The Professor sensed an event and he's dealing with it, and we're trying to find where it's coming from."

Ruth's vaguely relaxing emanations seem to have spared her. She drifts forwards, before saying, "Magic? So you think they're actually doing it for real right, sorry, right now? My God, that's horrible. It's not even dinner time."

She has jokes? No, she seems to be dead serious, although she's also picked up on Tabitha's remarks, which seem to bother her more than the near occasion of spirit-death. "Sorry, but, sorry, I, sorry, am kind of, yes, I'm kind of doin' this by the seat of my pants," she tells Boom-Boom.

Then a pause.

She shifts a little, regarding the ball.

Another pause.

"THAT YOU?" she shouts at the ball.

Another pause. "No, it's not," she says.

"You know, that's a cool idea," she tells Jonathan. "Lemme think about it. Boom can I do a thing?"

Jane Foster has posed:
"It's that katamari game, except with a giant blob of souls." Jane shakes her head, seeking her bearings among the chaotic whirlwind of fragments that flee and hover and panic. She drops her arms, favouring a less guarded position than one that expects a spirit to attack or a flensing rain of broken edges.

Easier to promote brainstorming and resolutions by not focusing on -- that's magic, possibly, something in the real world that rings hard on this side. Her senses coexist on both sides of the divide, though in sharpened clarity among the ephemeral people like herself. "Mosaics made of id, splintered identities used like confetti. Without the corresponding emotions to counterbalance, of course they are going to be tormented and unrestrained." Sharp, precise words match the clean imagery, barriers to keeping the soul-deep dismay from rolling over her in bloody waves. "Priorities: stop this ball." You're up, Tabitha, she nods in that direction. "Sort and separate them -- can you feel like pieces to do that? While we pull them back, removing the tether may be easier. Two; put the souls back if we can or collect the pieces if we cannot. Phoenix might have ideas on recovery." Not 'stitching back together.' Hope springs eternal, as she adds dryly, "Then figuring out the kind of magic it takes to perform this horror, and I can have them held for questioning. Sound good?"

Time to wish that she had a big net. Lots of buckets. Psychopomp Basketball it is?

Zandra Mitchell has posed:
    Zandra wouldn't have faulted her new 'friend' for fleeing if she'd been cognisant of the fact. The impulse is one she currently shares. On the other hand, her parents are still in the theater, and there are now two parties breaking out into violence - one seemingly engaged in some manner of devil worship, and the other equipped with an arsenal of weaponry.

    "Sugar," she curses out loud as the mystical spear soars past, then gunfire replies from the other side. "Sugar, sugar, sugar!"

    A moment later, the potty-mouthed teenager melts, almost instantaneously, into a large puddle of water her own size - which begins to rapidly slither down the aisle toward the stage, leaving a pile of drenched clothing behind. It veers off toward the sixth row, where the teen's parents are slumped between several other theatre-goers. The water-elemental flows down to wash over the feet of Ferrell and Janice.

    <<Mom! Dad! Wake up!>>

    The mutant projects her plea telepathically through contact in her liquid state, trying to rouse the two.

Charles Xavier has posed:
In the Astral....

The churning ball has started to find a single goal, a hive-mind purpose. It is full of distinct individuals, but it has taken on the singularity of a mob. It twists, still inhuman in form, as all of the spirits lack the ability to form particular /limbs/... so it is a roiling mass of emotion of pain. It starts to move, towards everyone... but mostly towards the sanctuary.

And with the combined will of perhaps fifty souls, that is a strong desire.

In the astral, strength of will is speed. And it is rushing for the sanctuary, as if it were called. Then again, maybe it was: Xavier made it clear that all lost souls should come there!

--

In the Theater...

The mage that brought up a shield has done shields ... in /theory/. It deflects all of the bullets! ... except the last one. The shot slams into his shoulder and with a yelp he jerks backwards and tumbles into a curtain as he tries to get out of the way. The reddish shield falters, but the ritual seems to continue. The three other figures are kneeling on stage, in a neat little circle, the green glow shared between them, desperate to hold it together.

Zandra's pleas do not awaken her family, but small spikes of recognition flare in the Astral. Images of Zandra's face, quick and soft, show like memories of hope. They ARE there, the magic is just clouding everything, the mob heart is overpowering the individual.

--

Everywhere...

<< There aren't enemies here. We must help them all.... Jon, may I send those in the sanctuary to your sanctum? I may be able to close the sanctuary gate behind it, to break the tether, but I.... >> is Xavier's wish, but then there's silence from him.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
"Good thing those are verfy nice pants when you wear them Ruth." Tabby points out and flicks and shakes her fingers out as she gets nothing. "You know. There's something to be said about not having nerves and glands and stuff. All that sloshy flesh and hormones. I feel really not crappy!" she states as she tries to focus on the job and fails.

Back on track though she loks at the sphere thingy. "You wanna try something Blindfold? Rock it babe!" she says sounding like she's actually in charge and knowing what she's doing but clearly isn't and actually deferring to Ruth's slightly higher expertise level. When the ball starts rolling towards the Sanctuary she does seem a little more frantic. "Umm, might wanna work fast. Think we are on a clock now. Anyone else got ideas or should we really just kick at it like a soccer ball. Or a foot ball if anyone is not American... Or Australian but they play every football so they need the deliniation more than we do!"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    << Whatever you need to do! >> Jon replies to Xavier, even as he's nodding to Jane. "Sorting and research I can help with, but first--" First, the ball is taking off toward the sanctuary. Shit.

    He'd fly to try to get between the ball and the sanctuary, but even the will of the goddess imbuing him isn't /that/ strong, not without drawing on it a /lot/. And there's work to be done, after. Instead, he tries to slow the ball down, summoning up the idea of jelly-thick air, sticky tar, things that will make it harder for the ball to just zoom along.

    "Whatever you're going to do, Blindfold, better do it!" he agrees with Tabitha.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
"The what game?" Ruth asks Jane. She purses her lips as the explanation makes sense. "So like... I heard they do that with paper. To recycle it."

A beat or two passes.

"I know, right?" she tells Boom-Boom before she floats around and to the rear of her.

"You're being anxious. Sorry," Ruth tells Boom-Boom before she shoves her arm down into the top of her head.

Her ASTRAL head, that is to say! This parallels a sudden telepathic connection as Ruth feels her way through something. Her thumb runs over braille coding - SEX WORDS, LIQUOR, LIQUOR 2, LIQUOR 4, I BET YOU WONDERED WHERE LIQUOR THREE IS, MORE SEX WORDS, INEVITABLE FUTURE, INAPPROPRIATE FEELINGS ABOUT CAPTAIN--

"The hell symbol is that," Ruth mutters to herself.

CHILDHOOD THEFT, JEROME APPRECIATION - there it is. Ruth cranes her arm around and Tabitha's astral left arm comes up as if to parallel it. "Sorry," she tells Jonathan. "This looks stupid but it usually works."

The left hand produces a sphere that suddenly balloons outwards, then seems to get right-clicked and dragged down, before being thrown in the direction of the oncoming death-ball of souls. It floats - flits - Ruth cranes her head and it changes direction AGAIN before

FOOM!

ULTRA COMBO PSYCHIC DEATH BALL -- because its motion vector (metaphorically speaking) is exactly the opposite of the inbound one, AND it erupts to a field perfectly matching the suffering's spirito-physical scope!

"It's like the thing on the desk that goes click click click," she explains to Jane and Jonathan, as if she is trying to impress them (SHE KIND OF IS). "We have to do the sorting thing, I think. Less it didn't work. Oh, no, no."

Wade Wilson has posed:
    Deadpool eyes the ritual and then sighs. "Fine... if you're not going to react then I'll just make a bigger noise" he hoslters the gun and removes one of the flashbangs from his belt. The thing about military grade flashbangs is that they have easy release pins. No locking mechanism on the trigger point means no need for two working arms if you know what you're doing.

    Deadpool knows -exactly- what he is doing.

    A quick flick with his thumb removes the pin and he launches the explosive over hand onto the stage. "Sorry for the big noise everyone!" he shouts as he watches the canister land on the stage near the ritual circle and its witches. One Mississippi. Two Missipppi.

    The flash of the flashbang isn't much. A bright light that sears a black dot in anyone's vision nearby. The 'bang' is the true means of disruption. The measure of the devices DP uses are in the area of 150 decibles. That's jet engine levels of sound. In close proximity that blast of sound is a physical thing that pushes on senses and destroys soft tissues, like ear drums, with relative ease.

    In a theater built for amplification of sound... the effect is likely magnified. That's is why Wade gave an apology to everyone in the place--awake or not--when he threw it.

Zandra Mitchell has posed:
    When her attempts to rouse her parents produce little fruit, Zandra's form slumps for a moment, the liquid seeming to have a body language of its own. She can perceive the reaction, though - while she's only a neophyte in psychic matters, her senses in aqueous form don't follow quite the same rules as her human ones do. The water takes on human form as Zandra crouches dripping in the dark, trying to physically awaken her mother and father with her hands on their knees.

    When that doesn't work - as expected, at that point - Zandra turns around and peeks over the seats toward the stage, brow furrowing.

    The green glow had been there when she'd returned to the theater, when most of the people inside - including Ferrell and Janice Mitchell - had fallen under whatever witchcraft was at work. Seeing that same green glow shared between the three warlocks - or what have you - Zandra decides on a course of action, liquefying into water once more.

    <<Hold on. I'll try and help save y'all...>>

    Luckily, it's a moment later that the flashbang goes off - allowing Zandra to avoid being blinded or deafened by the device. While the witches are presumably disoriented by the detonation, the water elemental flows quickly toward and up onto the stage, low and sliding at first, then rising up into a humanoid shape to try and engulf one of the trio in an attempt to aid in disrupting their efforts. Zandra is a pacifist - she's not trying to outright drown anyone - but her usual principle of kindness and doing no harm loosen a little where family is concerned. A warning would be sent to any that she might come into contact with on her course:

    <<Y'all better let my mommy and daddy go if you know what's good for ya!>>

Jane Foster has posed:
Arm in astral skull: ew. File that one under 'dark elf inspiration.'

Flashbang on the stage, probably under 'light elf inspiration' and 'never let Thor see this.'

Jane is going to be happy not to be deafened by the noise of Wade's flashbangs, but whether the equivalent exists in the Astral Realm for a Newton's cradle effect promulgated by Boom-fold -- Blindboom -- shall be a matter to wait on. Jon flies in one direction after the souls. The brunette astrophysicist experience a brief 'why me?' moment when playing astral baseball comes to mind.

Chasing down souls, even in bits, is damn near her job title, though. She can move fast enough to catch anything that comes ricocheting out of the explosion, hopefully, snagging those 'loudest' souls that retain any bits of memory-identity.

Zandra is someone she can see, after all. Woman and man on the ground, good choice of where to go. Other pieces could be simpler. Maybe this isn't going to go anywhere, but chasing down fragments to pin them is the first choice. The second, if it's more clear, is circling back to the stage where the flashbang went off and a dangerous human puddle is accosting people. They need to chop off the awful magical effect at the roots, and she can be rather useful at that.

Hopefully if everyone is busy looking the other way.

<<I /know/ it would be easier to do this the other way. The other way is obvious. Hush, Undrjarn, you're not helping.>>

Charles Xavier has posed:
In the Theater...

The flash bang is a lot. The magical people in the circle are certainly disrupted. They are barely holding onto the ritual in a thread. From the left side of the stage, from beyond a curtain, two of them actually seem to be fighting in hand to hand -- there's tumble there. One emerges victorious, and with a mic stand, slams down on the head of one of the three in the circle, knocking her off the stage entirely. Evidently one of them decided to switch sides! Zandra has tied up one of the others; she resists, telepathically arguing that she has to finish this ritual, or her family will be killed. That leaves only one person still 'chanting', if you can call it that, she is more than a little distracted and blind.

--

In the Astral...

The ball of souls was moving very quickly, and during the chatter amongst the young women, the banter about games and recyling ... it... traveled. Quite a bit, really. The ball is late, arriving in front of the ongoing sphere. The amalgam of souls isn't hard, though, but extremely soft. It is like a loose clumped snowball meeting a bowling ball. It splatters into pieces, shreds. It has lost a lot of speed, though, so there was success in that... now there are about nine pieces resuming course. Jane, however, is now right THERE, and is able to immediately react to the smaller soul clumps!

Ahead, the sanctuary is rapidly moving souls out, a grand evacuation, towards Jon's place of safety.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
The handy thing about having a power than can level buildings and collapse mountains is that there is a lot of it. And because that power is psionically controlled it really isn't difficult to weed through the nonsense in Tabitha's brain and .

Lucily Ruth is a monument to discretion and all the other innapporpruate feelinsg. Mostly to any woman with an X on their uniform.

And you thought Ruth was weird.

And of course the fact they have nine balls to contend with gets a yikes look and a look back at the woman working her mind brain like a turret.

"Blindfold. MORE DAKKA!" she says and lets her osmotically developed nerd knowledge sine through. Smaller bombs but more of them. Hands held out in front of her like psionic mortar cannons.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Slowing down the ball didn't work, but at least the explosion gave Jon time to catch up. He plants himself between the balls and the sanctuary, and erects a glowing magical wall between the souls and Xavier's sanctuary, trying to keep them from going there until they've been sorted out by Jane. Just in case the other three don't manage to keep them away.

    "If you're going to banter," he growls irritably, "do it /while/ you're carrying out the mission!" Irritation because he's starting to feel the impact; the Archive can handle a /lot/ but it's going to notice that fast of an influx of souls. A glance over his shoulder to be sure the exodus is proceeding apace, and then he focuses back on holding the balls from getting to Xavier. If he can.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Ruth isn't any more comfortable being elbow-deep in Tabitha than that sentence was to write. Don't worry, Ruthketeers: she's on it. It being Tabitha.

Ruth frowns as it becomes clear to her that the plan didn't work. These objects are moving in space and she has sometimes had issues with this, but their behavior is pretty clear here. Miss Foster is moving to -- to gather them. They're coming faster, and then - Oh god dammit, Ruth thinks, I just spoiled my recommendation letter. Good going, Ruth. Brilliant of you.

Brilliant, Ruth thinks. Doesn't that mean light.

Ruth turns her head to look towards the sanctuary for a moment.

She pulls her hand out of Tabitha's head and takes -- something with her? Grody. No, it's something that Tabitha might find weird for a moment: it is a memory of vision, which means Tabitha gets to be surprised at what she is 'seeing' right now all over again for a moment. Ruth reaches into it and pulls out what Tabitha saw about the sanctuary and hurls it to the other side of the oncoming globules, perhaps to confuse them - because for a moment it gets an echoed psychic 'savor' the same as Xavier's call...

Ruth kicks off (of Tabitha's head) like a swimmer to approach one of the balls. Swimmming through the astral Aether, she dives towards it - and when she reaches it she hugs it to herself and in a shimmering instant:

<<Hey Claire can you tell them it's going to be okay?>>
<<huh what uhhh ummmm>>

Ruth hugs the glob - aiming to 'bust' it, to let the individualized entities return to their core identity, hopefully a single person, God forbid fragments - and then does the breast stroke towards a second, and if need be, a third, a fourth -

<<Yes?>> Claire asserts, amplified by Ruth's mental efforts. <<They're -- they're going to help you, they're like... mental... mutant... life guards...?>> "I bet Ms. Pride, sorry, never had to do stuff like this," Ruth huffs to herself.

(Her physical body is sweating again despite the mansion's tasteful levels of air conditioning.)

Wade Wilson has posed:
    Deadpool straightens to see that his Boom Box (trademark pending) wasn't entirely effective at disrupting the ritual at hand. He frowns significantly and calls to the remaining witch. "Oi! Did the big boom not send enough of a memo?" He can't even tell that he's screaming at the top of his lungs at the person. Or that the person is likely absolutely deaf regardless of their continued chanting.

    The turn coat in Victorian garb is smiled at. "That's right! Give 'em the good 'what-for'" he yells, again not noticing his own volume regulation--or in this case, a lack thereof. His ears are so warm and itchy. Worst part of having healing that makes Wolvering go 'Whoa, bub!' is the itching. Still situation at hand, focus DP: stop the ritual now, congrats and introductions after.

    He draws a small throwing knife from a sheath at his thigh and gauges the distance. Then he throws it in absolutely the wrong way toward the last chanter. Usually these things are done with the blade gripped. Wade went for the opposite, holding the instrument by the weighted end and flinging it. The balance is the same, it just results in a blunt object slamming into the witch (and hopefully knocking them unconscious) rather than a blade entering their skull (and likely killing them.) Grat hat, Wade... gray hat all the way.

Zandra Mitchell has posed:
    As the Aqua-Teen continues to wrassle with the ritualist that she's engaged with, forcing water churning in and out of the woman's mouth through hydrokinesis to keep her from chanting, she fires a psychic message back:

    <<Well, you can't hurt my family to save yours!>>

    The water is sucked back out long enough to let the woman catch her breath. It's not -quite- waterboarding; nobody's being put in danger of drowning. It's just disruptive, and probably pretty unpleasant, if it's working as intended. Meanwhile, the rest of her aqueous form is pushing the mage into the ground with continuous hydrokinetic force.

    <<What do you mean, anyway? Who's going to kill your family if you don't finish what you're doing? Did you make a deal with the Devil? You shouldn't be doin' witchcraft like that!>>

    It would take quite a bit of effort to shout all of that while wrestling, but the method of communication allows the teen's zeal to be expressed at full force.

Jane Foster has posed:
Angular momentum and laws of conservation of motion are quintessential to the study of very large and very small bodies in the universe. Jane can calculate the former all the live long day. Living it out on the plane of thought and intent is another matter.

Souls dislodged by impact travel in all directions, demented psychic particles whirlygigging without any obvious laws. She dashes on electric trajectories, lifted on elemental risers above a non-existent flat plane because the contrivances of needing stairs and ground are the province of Earth. Not here, where she can stretch forth and twist herself up to reach across a shrinking distance to snag a glowing shard.

Ruth swims. Jon flies. Tabitha blows things up. She follows warped invisible space to leap and bound in four dimensions, trailing a stream of motes stuck together by a single unspooling golden thread. A hushed serenade of broken links or fraying threads murmur around her ankles, the filaments not reaching far though they should.

Shattered pieces await to be seized gently. Some will float past to reach Jon in his teal aura, maybe to Blindfold's awaiting arms. Tabitha is a goalie to fear. Jane calls to them, encouraging when she has the breath -- breathing here is no issue, why does it matter to breathe? -- to spare.

The whirlwind of fuzzy light and tangled emotions insist on being caught. "Let's go home. Ah, back you get. Wrong way." Precise, focused words to match clear thoughts.

And maybe not tripping over herself in the meantime.

Charles Xavier has posed:
In the Theater...

"Are you two ... capable of doing a small ritual circle to close this?" asks the mage that moved to help out, as Deadpool's flung object knocks the last chanter out. All of these magicians are dressed very normally, blended into the crowd: which may make them more eerie, in a way, that they aren't in strange ritual getup. His question is no doubt because the two he's talking to are 1) a water person??? and 2) Deadpool. This could go either way with their capability.

"I can lead this, but it's for three, to unlock the link," the mage adds. He shoves the unconscious person out of the circle, and looks expectantly at Deadpool. Is it magic time?

Zandra's grabbed person is mostly thinking of her family, shreds of thoughts of how they were taken, this person KNEW she did magic, and made her do this... she's not even sure who took them, only that they had to do this horrible ritual until they were told to stop. ...Not that any 'stop' has been incoming...

--

In the Astral...

The team moves to hurry to capture and heal the fragments, before they can reform. They are able to wrap up well over half of the pieces, to draw calm into enough of the souls there to stop the movement. There is only pain now, and longing to return to their bodies. The nets around them must be kept apart -- it is when they are treated individually that they can find healing, not when they are forced together into mobs. << Must go to heal place!! >> thinks one of them at Ruth/Claire. It is not its own thought, though, but something put there.

Were they sent on purpose?

Tabitha Smith has posed:
At least when Ruth unplugs Tabitha feels a little relaxed. definitely less awkward but that might need some talking through later and maybe Ruth needing a bucket when any memories gleamed hit her actual stomach later on.

Tabitha at least keeps up the barrages with a hope that the blasts can either disperse the energy by the soulballs enough they stop being a problem or maybe, muddied up as her mind is. The energy she fires might be cleansing. Worked on Maggot a while back and he was doped up on MGH.
rth a shot!

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon draws on more of the goddess' power, giving in to the fact that he's going to have to sleep a /long/ time after this to make up for it all. He's still got the wall up trying to keep the souls from getting to the 'heal place,' at least until Jane's got hold of them and sent them on if she's going to.

    He starts weaving small barriers around individual souls to hold them in place so they can't pull back together, to make it easier for the others to chase them down or barrage them. He imbues them with a sort of calming aura, reassuring. They'll be taken care of. They'll be healed. It's okay. Just hold on. Let us take care of things. The psychic equivalent of bedside manner, and given that he's a therapist that's fairly comforting indeed.

Wade Wilson has posed:
    Asking Deadpool if he knew magic was like asking if a kiwi could fly. "Absolutely" the Merc says. "Let's magic the shit outta this thing and close this hole." Again, he's been around the block. Any magical ablility from DP would -have- to be a ritual since the man hadn't a shred of true magic in him. Shikalah did ritual magic with him before...well, memory lane and the spank bank sometimes intersected. That was one of those times.

    "If you can lead, I'm pretty sure we can follow" he glances to the water that is subduing one of the individuals. "Trio as we are. Will it make sure all the rest of these people are safe from whatever they were trying to do?" he asks. He's deliberately ignoring the amount of blood coming from the ears of a number of the theater guests. B1etter to have blown eardrums than be sacrificed in some evil spell, right? Look, if DP is involved, a lot of someone's are likely to be hurt in the process. This is just another one of 11those times.

Zandra Mitchell has posed:
    <<Well, that's what you get when you do the devil's handi->>

    Zandra isn't quite as belligerent with her thought projection this time; actually, if anything, a heavy sense of sympathy emanates from her as she becomes less forceful, cutting her own comment short as she hears what the other mage is suggesting.

    <<Sorry - I'll let you go as long as you stop, alright? I'm sure someone can help you save your family...>>

    The hydro-girl flows up into her more coherent humanoid form, wet steps looking liquid footprints as she approaches Deadpool and the mage who seems to be on their side. Is she being asked to do /witchcraft/ herself? There's no way that her parents would ever go for it.

    On the other hand, her parents are in some kind of magical coma, and she doesn't know the secret to getting them to wake up. True love's first kiss is out, obviously, given that they're both comatose, as aforementioned. She reaches out a watery hand to the mysterious magical maverick, intending to touch his arm so that she can communicate.

    <<Can I help like this, or do I need to be normal? I don't know anything 'bout witchcraft.>>

    She'd be wont to admit it, but she's at least a little curious.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
They manage to burst, rupture, save, drain, the people - again - the people who were hurt, somehow, afflicted, somehow.

Ruth can feel it, now. They were shattered, somehow.

She knows the feeling, even if the shards have formed into something that's at least hanging together, especially lately. Maybe that's what education is, Ruth thinks: You just figure out what's broken and you stick together what you can.

"You hold on a moment," Ruth says, psychically reaching out to take hold of that declarative soul. Just a moment - like catching a butterfly between your hands, taking a quick peek at it, and then letting it fly free, startled at worst.

"This, no, this is pretty bad," Ruth reports. "Sir," meaning Jon, "Sir I'm going to tell the Professor this too but, sorry, I think this, this is a compulsion that got put in them. I don't know how this happened and I don't want to like - hold on - Claire baby go back to nappin' thanks I appreciate it - anyway, where was I."

Ruth's astral form rubs its astral forehead with one astral hand.

"It's like a command," Ruth says. "And then they were all going at once." A beat. "I bet a lot of them came out at once." Another beat. "... With this... Oh! Oh god."

Charles Xavier has posed:
"The idea is to reverse it, not just end it. If we end it, they'll be adrift," the mage answers, with a sort of irritation - but perhaps that can be forgiven, since he's trying to hurry, or something else. The question Zandra asks telepathically gets a positive response that isn't in words.

With that, the three, led by their new pal, begin to reverse the tether, to pull the psychic imprints back towards their bodies.

--

In the astral, the souls react to this pull. They see a path home! They were sent, kamikaze like, at the sanctuary... but with the delay, the calming, the healing, and now a path home... there's another route open to them.

--

Many of those lost will still need help, and it will be a grueling set of hours to restore everything, but as the ritual anchors them back towards their bodies, and those in the astral safeguard the process.... the worst is averted.

But there may be more questions now, about the motive behind all of this pain.