15225/AVENGERS FOREVER: Et In Cosmos Ego

AVENGERS FOREVER: Et In Cosmos Ego
Date of Scene:	06 July 2023
Location:	Eta Carinae, Constellation Carina
Synopsis:	The X-Men investigate the mysteries of Ego the Living Planet!
Cast of Characters:	Logan Howlett, Rogue, Negasonic, Jean Grey, Tabitha Smith, Remy LeBeau, Ororo Munroe
Cast of NPCs:	Ego the Living Planet, Portcullis
Tinyplot:	Avengers Forever

---

Logan Howlett has posed:
The Xavier School

Several hours ago ...

The time manipulating mutant Hwang Chung-Ae sits on the opposite side of Professor Charles Xavier's ornate wooden desk. The stark white-haired Magneto stands to Charles' side, cupping his chin with his hand.

"And how are you so certain of the location?" asks the white-haired man, his brow furrowed.

"It's alright, Erik," Charles says softly, "Chung-Ae has been honest with us so far. I sense no duplicity here."

"It's a long way to go on a hunch," the Master of Magnetism sniffs.

"And a disaster if he's right and we do nothing ... "

                                    ****

Low Earth Orbit

Now ...

The Blackbird sores up and out of Earth's atmosphere, once again bound for the stars! The team members are aboard, dressed for hostile non-earth environs in what must be X-Men-issue space suits. As the great black nothingness of space opens before them, their path is suddenly intercepted by circular portal.

"Right, that's our way through," Logan answers, patting their friendly neighborhood portal-maker on the shoulder as the young woman sits and focuses her attention, "Remember, the other side is over seven-thousand light years away so without these portals we're not coming back."

The Wolverine turns to the rest of the team: "Whatever was messing with time in Korea is fixin' to do it on a way bigger scale out here. If we don't stop it here, it'll tear a hole in space-time that'll suck us all in like the shower drain."

He sighs, turning to secure himself in his seat: "These missions are soundin' weirder and weirder."

Rogue has posed:
Somewhere in the back passenger compartment Rogue is doing lunges in her space suit. She's testing out its stretchiness all while trying to ignore what they're doing. She's uncomfortable in the suit, but really just uncomfortable in what they're doing all together. She doesn't need to be in a crash harness during takeoff, as she controls her own gravitational pull anyway, so she's just pacing, lunging and fidgeting with her gloved hands on her hips. Her suit is mostly black form-fit material, with dark green gloves and matching boots up to her knees. Her chestnut hair is in a bun on the crown of her head while her snow-white bangs are loose around her face. She's muttering something under her breath.

"Seven thousand light years. Like I know how far that is... Does this mean my watch operates in light minutes now...?" She asks, grumpily looking at her left wrist.

She's not wearing a watch.

Sighing then, Rogue just places her right hand on the nearest bulkhead, and leans against it before her free hand goes up to tug uncomfortably at the tight collar clutching around her slender neck. She tilts her head to the right, then tilts it to the left before she just drops her hand from the wall again, and once more does another lunge in the faux-leather suit, causing it to creak and squeak against her body. "This thing is gonna be the death'a me, I swear it!"

She's a ball of joy right now...

Negasonic has posed:
    This is absolutely bucket list material. Dinosaurs. Check. Ass whupping Marrauders. Check. Dealing with anti-mutant terrorists. Check.

    Space. Check.

    Not that you could tell how excited Ellie is because she is kitted out in her space gear, buckled in as appropriate, and glancing out a viewer sullenly. How she can manage to appear nonpulsed and bored, while secretly being keen as hell about all of this, is a true work of art.

    Just sullen and silent. Here to provide radiation safe, question mark, nuclearkinetic explosions.

    Until Logan says the missions get wierder and weirder. "I mean aliens infecting dinosuurs and battling through the jungle was pretty weird... not sure if time travel and space is weirder or not... "

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean sits at the controls of the SR-X, double checking various status indicators and sensor readouts as the vehicle follows a largely pre-calculated course. In space, doing things by the seat of your pants can be a risky endeavor, so it's best to plan ahead. Once the portal opens in front of them, she locks them into the final trajectory, hand resting on one last control as they glide through the empty abyss.

"At least for now," she ammends, to what Logan says about how they might get stuck out there. "Until we get everything finalized and tested with the Shi'ar engines." That had been a large part of the plan for the SR-X, a bit of a 'thank you' from Lilandra for her throne. But the whole thing had been a bit delayed by a certain messy assassination at the Starport, the perpetrator of which had been one of the engineers installing the damn thing. It set everything back, both technically and diplomatically. With their access to such portal-happy folk, it is perhaps only a backup option, but still one that would be... comfortable, to have.

For now: who says being an X-Man is comfortable?

"Rogue, you've been somewhere almost 3 billion light years from Earth. This is just a trip around the block, by comparison. And to my understanding, no, no time dilation because we're not actually accelerating to cover that distance. But my astrophysics is a little, uh... rusty." Which is to say, half-remembered, from the last time she downloaded that kind of information.

"Alright, here we go..." Keeping on the same course, she pushes down on what is apparently the accelerator. Nothing crazy, just a bit of an 'oomph' to push them through.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Sure she has her own uniform under the spacesuit. But Tabby has no problem making layers look good. Well not all the time. It's a spacesuit. But at least it spares everyone having to listen to her whop and holler at going into space and not in handcuffs.

That last bit is purely subjective. But everyone can at least mute her with their audio and comms equipment.

Which lets Boom-Boom enjoy the trip, listening to some old eighties rock. And not listen to any complaints about her playlist.

Eventually as they get closer to their destination and Tabby gets bored. Just shy of 'Are we there yet' she finally joins thje conversations.

"What's that in parsecs? Never did find out where the good space weed came from." she ponders with an attempt at a hand on chin in thoughtful expressions. It kinda fails.

"Weirder yes. Awesomer too. So if we go back in time by accident, who's rules is it. I mean like alternate realities like Back to the Future. Unalterable fixed things like terminator where only the names and faces change but the same crap happens and if it's not you some one else will? And so on?" she asks.

"I kinda want Bill and Ted where we can go back and plant shit afterwards so we have an easier time." she sounds hopefully. As does the air guitar riff she places.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
Remy didn't know how he got talked into these things. Well, that's a lie. He knew full well it was Rogue talking him into coming along, because she could always talk him into anything and she knew it. Which would be fine if she only used her powers for their mutual good, rather than convincing him to come along to space.

Space. Listening to Tabitha isn't helping much, as the Cajun's head is swimming a little bit with the whole experience.

He mutters a few Catholic prayers under his breath, kissing his fingers as if he had a crucifix. If ever he did, he pawned it. Still, the thought that counts, non?

"Just tell me when we get there, oui?"

Logan Howlett has posed:
From his seat, Logan looks sidelong at Negasonic: "You didn't see the time travelling metal fella and his vortex. Least when we were fightin' the Brood we didn't have to worry about whether we'd come home before we'd left."

The portal-wielder - a diminutive German girl called Portcullis - turns slightly in her seat, smiling through the faceplate of her helmet to address the team: "I promise you don't need to worry about that. The portals operate on a universal constant, so they won't let you travel to any point where you could interfere with causality or relativ -- "

Logan points at the portal-wielder, craning his head to look at Rogue: "Hear that? Just don't think about it."

As they pass the portal, they see a strange sight indeed. The star of this system is what is known as an O-type - or a 'blue giant'. Over a hundred times larger than the Earth's sun, the light is blinding and even millions of miles away it dominates the viewport.

And there, suspended against the blue-white backdrop of pure fusion, is a planetoid. A little larger than Earth's moon, it orbits on an eccentric loop that any astrophysicist would identify as being non-native to the system.

Their destination.

"Now, take it easy, Jeanie. We don't know what this thing is. Find us somewhere big and flat to land and we can set up there. Portcullis, keep your ... uh ... portals at the ready."

As they near the planet, it orbits and they get a better look at it. Purple. An odd, purple hue with pinkish clouds. It's rocky - that is, terrestrial - and appears to have vegetation in some places.

Very specific places.

The planet rotates and the team can finally see it for what it is. Something like a giant, spherical head floating in space. The mountains and crags have formed into what looks like a malevolent face with two great, glowing pits of yellow for eyes.

"Weird enough for ya?" he asks Negasonic.

Rogue has posed:
The conversation being had doesn't seem to really comfort Rogue very much. She appears near to where Jean is, still standing, and exhales sharply. A glance is given to Tabitha, then to Negasonic and then over to Logan and Remy. "Look." She starts. "I saw what space did ta Sandra Bulloch and Matthew McConaughey. They came home and everyone they knew was like eighty years older than when they left!"

The reassurance from Logan's portal-friend draws Rogue's green eyes to stare at her with a pretty powerful sus-slant to her expression. Her eyes flutter as she closes them then and turns to walk past Gambit where he's seated.

She stops, and takes a step back, then pats him softly on the shoulder before she houlders out her hand. "Gum?" She asks.

Prior to taking off she'd dumped a bunch of her stuff on Gambit, because her space suit doesn't have pockets... which had her on a whole different rant about how these suits are... okay, nobody wants to relive that conversation.

Rogue's just uncomfortable!

She does the little finger waggle thing, hoping Remy will have not misplaced the gum pack she'd handed him, making him her traveling Purse for this mission...

But, even if he did lose it already, she ends up sliding her head in from off-camera to peer outside at the planet they're arriving at. Slowly...

Slowly...

Rogue's eyes peer out at what that thing is.

"You've gotta be f'ing kiddin' me." The Southern Belle groans, she groans as long as a light year at the sight of that purple world ahead of them.

Negasonic has posed:
    Ellie looks away from the viewer to glance at Tabby and arch an eyebrow at her. "Good space weed?" she inquires, not sounding too interesting, but definitely somewhat curious. Like in a scientific way, not in a getting high way, surely not.

    "That time question is interesting, like don't we have some time displaced x-ers floating around. Did they save the future or not. How does that shit even work?"

    She looks at the viewer as they approach the planet and takes in the sight. "Well." she says and there is a definite pause. "I give that an eight out of ten on the wierdness scale, need to leave room for something more ridiculous. Alien infected dinosaurs gets a five now. Killer robots is bumped down to a 2... maybe a 1..."

Jean Grey has posed:
"Nice work," Jean tells Portcullis, once they're through. It's gotta be a big day for her too!

The way the star immediately fills their vision when they come through the portal is something that even awes Jean. My, what a big, tasty looking...

Ahem.

In all seriousness, it is a sight beyond what most people on Earth could ever dream of experiencing. Whatever part of Jean it is that's filled with infinite cosmic knowledge, witness to the life cycle of such heavenly bodies, the end of which this one nears? That part of her isn't driving the ship. And little old human Jean can't take her eyes off it for a few moments, before Logan brings her back and she starts checking the navigation.

"Plotting a course in." It ain't like driving a car. You gotta account for all the gravity stuff, although fortunately the computers on the SR-X are sophisticated enough to handle all of that quite trivially. A few adjustments, and her hands move arcross the controls, putting them on a particular arc toward the target.

All of this proceeds well enough, until they're a bit closer, and the planetoid's rotation brings it into better view.

"So... by 'flat place,' I assume you mean not in it's mouth? Uh. Should we hail? I'm going to hail. Seems rude to land on what might be someone's face without asking."

She touches a button. "Uh, hello? This is the Earth vessel Blackbird."

In whatever time there is to wait on any reaction, she glances back at Negasonic. "At least in Rachel's case, we're fairly sure that her timeline is uniquely separated from our own. Which tends to support a many-worlds hypothesis."

Ororo Munroe has posed:
"There is something alert down there," Ororo says, rather calmly. Her eyes are turned out the viewport, gaze gone stark white with that preternatural vision of hers. She's dressed in a spacesuit like the others, her plaited hair gathered in a bunch at the back of her neck to keep it clear of the helmet and suit.

She looks back at the others. "I can feel the weather currents moving, but by no natural hand. There is an awareness keeping them carefully in check across the whole of the planet. Every sirocco, every blizzard and typhoon-- it is all part of some environmental design. The sheer scale of it is ...daunting," she admits, and turns her gaze back to the strange planetoid.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
the whole idea of everyone else getting older while she stays trim and twentytwo might appeal. For a few seconds. "I'm sure if we need to we can have Illyana do that weird timey wimey thing with her limbo portals. Cable would just hand us guns and be like deal. Then travel back on his own. Then Hope would follow. Just before we do, we do a Marty McFly and get as many sports results and lotto numbers as possible. Make some bookies cry!" she suggests evilly.

Ellie gets a grin as she nods her head. "Spice is a euphemism. Han Solo wasn't hauling paprika to restaurants. It's gotta flow. Plus after alien infected dinosaurs, sentinel cyborg dinosaurs and critters.

Once they get close enough there's a groan and a shake of Tabby's head inside her helmet. "Gah, you feel that Jean? There's some huge psychic stuff going on. Noisy as flark!" she says and groans audibly.

Logan Howlett has posed:
"Just because it has a face doesn't mean it's alive," Logan says apprehensively, "Could just be someone came through here and drew a face on a planet -- "

It's then that Ororo speaks and Logan glances over, raising an eyebrow as she recounts what she senses coming from the planetoid.

" ... okay, yeah," Logan adds, muttering a little sheepishly, "Don't land in the mouth."

                                    ****

The trip towards the planet takes time, though a few jumps through portals measures the trip in hours instead of days. It isn't too difficult to find a suitable landing area that isn't part of the wicked-looking face, and soon the Blackbird is settling down on a vast and dusty plain of purple sand and rock.

Despite the great intelligence that seems to dominate the psychic landscape completely, it does not speak. At least not in a sense that is easy to parse. Thoughts drift like continents over the stretch of eternity. But it's there. It's aware.

"Okay, let's start scouting. Keep in ear shot. Jeanie, want to set us up with a telepathic link? Don't stray too far and if you see anything weird ... well, weird for this? Come on back."

Rogue has posed:
When Jean calls out over open comms, Rogue brushes her gloved hand against the woman's shoulder. "Don't tell'em our planet's name!" She quietly hisses, her eyes going to the redheaded pilot, before she looks back toward the ominous face-planet outside of the viewport. "If they know where we come from... they'll start comin' over askin' if they can borrow eggs, or our salt... or somethin'...." She mutters whilst folding her arms across her stomach to just stand there beside the viewport in the cockpit area of this considerably larger Blackbird variant from the team's standard bird plane.

Upon approach, and when people start talking about a recon on the surface, Rogue has to look around at everyone, her white bangs fluttering around at the sides of her face. "We can't just go out there... How do we know if there's air?" She asks with concern strewn across her facial features.

But they're headed out anyway, so it would seem. She draws in a breath of the filtered X-Bird air one last time before she'll venture out with others.

"Guess I'm doing alien planet... recon."

She lets her eyes wander over the strange new world, feeling an overwhelming sense of awe at it, and no small amount of discomfort continuing to roll around in the pit of her stomach like a fat hamster that tripped inside its hhamster wheel.

Rogue will test her own personal flight, and soon flutter up in to the sky to get a better view...

Negasonic has posed:
    "I can't believe we are actually landing on it. I add a vote for not the eye or up the nose either... not just in the mouth."

    She licks her lips and then keeps watching as they descend. "I really do wonder what is weirder than this, but then again, I am sure in time we will figure tht out too." she notes amused. Mild amusement in her voice, not just sullen either. Seems something can make the mask crack.

    Negasonic slips up to her feet and then pulls her helmet on, and checks everything like they did in the danger room to do some training for this. Satisfied that she isn't going to die right away she looks ready to follow the more experienced lead.

    Not that she would admit it.

Jean Grey has posed:
"It's definitely alive," Jean tells Logan, voice lacking any kind of doubt. Presumably, she's felt whatever Tabitha has, although perhaps a more disciplined sense of caution has held her from being hasty with trying to make any kind of more direct contact.

Nothing wrong with trying the radio first! Except Rogue thinks otherwise. "If it doesn't know anything about Earth, the name itself isn't going to give much away. But we should at least attempt good faith diplomacy. Right?"

Yet there is no answer on either front, or at least, none that she can readily comprehend. Which leaves them nothing but to proceed forward. She's far more cautious now, as the SR-X makes its approach, monitoring every kind of sensor they have for any kind of unusual reading. And yet ultimately, there's no real other option but to find a spot that looks the least like any kind of sensitive organ, orifice, or extremity, and put the Blackbird down. A nice forehead landing, perhaps.

----

"Let's double up. Regular comms and mindlink. It's psychically active and powerful enough that it could probably jam us out if it started trying." Maybe that's true of EM communications too, for all she knows. But that one isn't a problem Jean knows how to solve. At the very least, it's no extra effort: the X-Men space suits all have nice built-in communications.

"Use your suit," she reminds Rogue, since she's yammering on about weird alien air. The fancy space Blackbird, at least, has those fancy magnetic airlocks, so they don't have to worry about losing all their atmosphere when they open up and start trekking out onto the surface.

One small step...

Tabitha Smith has posed:
The face on the surface of the planet that gets a shrug. "Either someone decided they wanted their face to be seen from space like a monument. Rushmore style, or that huge psychic thing is like planet brain." Tabby ponders and hmms while the Blackbird is brought in for a landing. Piloting skills are one thing but telekinesis should help Jean make the touchdown soft enough.

The helmet of her space suit is still on. Though she might not have activated the EVA functions yet, breathing the same air recycling as everyone else.

"Bet it smells like farts out there! Least we aren't landing in the nose. Gotta wonder if this is a dude's head where's like the rest of him?" sure she's got a few tangents she's going off in but she is at least dooing the team player thing. <<Mindlink rocking. It's kinda hard to explain how the big mind out there feels. But probably no poking. It probably gonna feel like poking Blob with a finger. But brains.>> she's guessing while she finally gets the suit doing extra vehicular curriculars so they can all go for a stroll outside.

Ororo Munroe has posed:
Ororo follows the others out into the alien environment. Rather pragmatically, she doesn't want to flex her powers if she doesn't have to, and elects to rely on the suit air supply rather than risk the alien atmosphere. A dozen steps away from the vehicle she flexes her legs and rises into the air, slowly. As if testing the air to see if it will respond correctly to her willpower. She nods once in satisfaction and hovers lower, landing almost daintily near Jean.

She makes sure Jean is watching and flicks off the communicator switch on her suit. The weather shaper leans forward and presses her helmet visor against Jean's so they can speak relatively privately. "I can not make any guaranties about my powers," she advises the telepath. "The will controlling this planet is vast. The atmosphere is like its skin. Wresting control from this entity will be difficult and exhausting. To what limit, though, I do not know." A corner of Ororo's mouth curls down in an apologetic moue and she shrugs one shoulder at Jean before breaking contact again.

Logan Howlett has posed:
The world is strange.

Natural landscapes are often characterised by randomness. That is not the case here. While it certainly has the appearance of natural geography, all of it seems as though it has been laid out by some sort of intelligence. Rogue will spy a ravine that takes an unusual ninety degree turn. Ororo will see a wide ocean with a shore that plunges into it with a straight drop.

And what's more bizarre, there's no life. The landscape could certainly support it, yet there's nothing.

"Feel like we shoulda bought the kid along," Logan says into his comm, trudging up over a dune and peering out into the distance, "He pointed us here. Couldn't even tell us what we were looking for."

The search doesn't yield all that much save for the wonders of a truly alien world.

                                    ****

Some time later ...

The desert is vast, but it does give way to other biomes before long. A strange, lifeless forest. Craggy mountains. And Rogue will spy what looks to be the great ridge of hills that make up the sinister-looking brow of the planet.

The strangest thing, however, is found when Negasonic's boot bumps something half-buried in the sand. The sudden jolt causes the purple dust to fall away, revealing bones. Not human bones, but something metallic and stark white. Much taller and broader than a human.

Tabitha will find something similar. Strange electronics that have burnt and sparked out belonging to some sort of machine that has been pulled asunder by a savage force of some kind.

The great consciousness begins to tug at Ororo's control of the weather around her, gale-force winds buffeting Earth's Goddess of the Weather in ways that may feel altogether unfamiliar and terrifying.

And finally, a voice that speaks directly to Jean as it senses that telepathic strength and and seems to grab at it as though in a choke hold.

<<You trespass ... what I have is mine. Mine alone. Never to be shared.>>

It is then that Jean will finally view the workings of the being's mind. Like a great, blurred image coming into sudden and sharp focus. A place in the northern pole. Deep beneath the ground. A heart of diamond, pulsating with blinding energy. A thing the being covets more than all else.

Rogue, from her lofty vantage, will see the features of the world contort. As though forming a menacing snarl.

All around them, the purple dust on the ground begins to form shapes. Strange, humanoid bodies with a sharp hexagonal head. They have no features. Only their strangely-shaped heads and grasping arms. They form from the ground. Countless thousands of them.

Reaching for the interlopers ...

Rogue has posed:
Throughout her flight in the sky, Rogue continuously fiddles with her helmet. She is constantly adjusting it and constantly stroking gloved fingers over the seal to make sure its still sealed... Her eyes check out the gorge when she'd flown over it, looking down in to it, and some part of her wondering if something made it since it had that unnatural sharp degree shift. But then again... something might have made a damn face on the side of the whole planet... so is it any weirder if they made a gorge too?

She ventured onward, trying to be the advanced eyes in the sky for her team, but not wanting to leave them behind too far, just incase they needed to flee. She'd swept close to that ridge of mountains in the distance, but soon curved away from them and made her way back.

It was on her way back that Rogue noticed movement. It caused her to slow for a moment.

"Ya'll, I think the ground is movin." The Belle's voice sounds off to the rest of her people. But when she descends and begins to see more shape within the movement she drops down to take a closer look.

And she's summarily grabbed out of the sky, and pulled down in to the massive amount of strange humanoids!

What follows is a series of grunts and distorted noises from Rogue both in the mind link, and the comms inside her helmet. It takes her a few moments, but she's soon bursting free of her captors, and flying toward the team again!

"Hostile! Very hostile! Very grabby too! I think we should go!" Rogue says, as she looks down to see one grabbing hold of her suit to try to rend her back down to the ground.

Instead, Rogue grabs IT and just hurls it toward the horizon before it can tear her suit open and kill her dead!

Negasonic has posed:
    Ellie crouches down when she kicks the sand and exposes the skeelton. Well okay. Technology skeleton. "Well.. definitely not the first sentience.. planet aside... to visit here I think." she carefully hefts the item to show off to the others.

    "Oh... uh... I am pretty sure this is unfriendly?" she considers the approaching thousands. She didn't hear the planet sized psychic threatening after all. She lifts her suited fists, and starts to build a charge arcing energy around her and through her. She holds off actually firing the blast for now, just letting it build. If someone says don't blow up the hexagon-heads. Well she can direct it towards space right.

    That said if they get to threatening close she will be launcing through them instead of directing a blast at them.

    Rogue clarifies that though for her and she lets out a wide flat blast, sort of like a headmans blade but at waist level as it explodes outwards away from her with literally metric tons of explosive forward and then explodes in the center of a large group.

    She genuinely tries to not make a huge crater this time, cutting scythe not just round boom. New Trick.

Jean Grey has posed:
"Yeah, we're pushing things here," Jean confides in Ororo in turn, when she comes nearer to speak, physically bridging the gap. "I can touch people around the world if I have to, but this mind IS that world. It's a whole different kind of scale." There is real concern there on her part as well, proof of just the scope of what they're up against. "If things get rough, I'm not taking undue chances. We back out if we have to."

Space and all its grand mysterys, it commands a certain respect.

They spend more time in surveying the place. Jean is less proactive in this than the others, because her attention is very much focused elsewhere, on the planet-mind. She doesn't make hostile efforts, even try to push any deeper contact, but she monitors it as she can, taking whatever subset of the whole as her narrow sample, to try and anticipate any threat it might pose them. As it turns out, she doesn't have to do a whole lot to achieve that.

"Uhnnn-" The contact is a bit painful at first, and she kneels down amidst the alien landscape.

<<We're not here to harm you, we came seeking->>

They do want something from it, it's true. Even if the boy couldn't precisely tell them what. But -theft- shouldn't be the X-Men's approach. <<We met, were attacked, by a stranger from the future. He was chasing someone, who sent us here. Maybe you can help us, we could work to->>

It seems the planet isn't buying what she's selling. Why is it always like this? Now she's back to the normal comms, perhaps preferring them with the loud voice shouting at her in her mind. "I saw something at this place's northern pole, that it seems to be guarding, protecting from us. I tried to ask nicely, but I don't know that sharing is an option here..." Although the others leap into Hexagon-smashing action, Jean is not quick to do so. The psychic weight seems to fall heavily on her, and a number of the creatures can be seen moving in around her!

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Where Tabby treads, she grins with amusement. She likes doing space stuff so being the alien kinda makes her giggle. "Imma hug a face but without the icky implications!" she jokes and widens her arms as she explores. Footprints settle on things not of her world at least.

A few pokes of her toe getting a hmm as she spots busted tech. "Looks like a dead Terminator. John Connor ain't here buddy!" she jokes and hums the first couple bars of the movie's them.

Her own boot ruffling stuff into view gets a grin as well. "This is like why you gotta blow out all the dust in our computers and stuff back home. Bust out the air compressors on the X-Box!" she says over the actual physical comms.

While she is only still a baby Telepath. The presence she felt makes some noise. Unfortunately it's too loud for her to filter out what is being said. <<Ouch, my flarking brain ears, not so frakking loud!>> she yells out telepathically.

Any good time se was having pretty much went inside, and then out the window. So many weird purple things shaped like dice?

<<Umm, yeah. I kinda wanna go home now. Which way is the ship? How far>> Not being a flier she might have a longer trip to make on foot with Negasonic.

Unlike her fellow Mistress Exploder. Tabby is not holding back. Arms sweep and her body twists and turns as she keeps pumping out bowling ball sized spheres of plasma. All flying out towards the numerous masses.

BOOM! Purple dust makes for pretty purple fire and smoke while she puts on a fireworks show that might well have made the fourth of July displays to shame. <<Storm, Rogue, Negasonic and me might need a ride back to the ship?>> sure she's totally just defending herself, but hopefully Jean can understand the psychic presence and negotiate. Or give it a nose bleed it'll remember for a while.

That's a really big nose though.

Ororo Munroe has posed:
When the alien attackers boil up from below, Ororo takes to the air again. She's hardly the physical powerhouse Rogue is, after all, and seems to be holding back her powers for the moment. "The largest clusters are coming from the southeast and the north," she informs the others, both verbally and telepathically. "There is a small ridge to our west that is forcing them to spill around it on their approach. There are...." she pauses a beat. "..a great many of them," she concludes, in a grim tone.

Logan Howlett has posed:
<<I do not trouble myself with the wants of gnats. I am EGO!>>

The strange creatures turn back to purple dust when destroyed, but it's only a handful of moments before they begin to reform. The creatures themselves are not particularly strong, quick, or tough but the sheer number of them is where their true danger lies. A horde. The antibodies of the planet.

Through the comms, Logan's growl can be heard. The slash of his claws rends creatures to pieces as he provides a rearguard, letting Portcullis sprint back to Blackbird unharmed.

"Alright, that's as good a lead as we've got," he commands, "I don't want to give this ... thing ... any more time than we have to. It's too far to cover on foot. Get back to the Blackbird."

Already, Portcullis stands on the loading ramp of the parked jet as the hordes approach from all side. Her hands reach out, forming portals for the X-Men to hasten their return to the ship.

"Go go go ... " Logan calls out, already moving to the pilot seat of the ship to start the take-off checklist. He might not be one of the 'licensed' X-Men, but he knows what he knows.

Rogue has posed:
One of the issues for Rogue here and now is that she can't be as brazen with her strength as she might normally be back home. Why? Because she doesn't want her damn space suit to get torn open... and these things are all hands so far, so fighting them requires her to get up close and personal.

Thusly, the Belle is holding back.

But she does advance toward where Jean is being surrounded.

With Boom Boom AND Negasonic The College Aged Warhead with them, the blast power is pretty damn immense to help fend off the horde, but Jean is getting totally blockaded.

Rogue sweeps in out of the sky, going straight for the Hex-Men's knees! She flies right in to their legs, trying to break them in half, many of them doing just so. They burst in to purple powder that falls across her low-flying form, while others just crumple over, or try to get out of the way of the battering ram that is the Mississippi Missile!

"Come on, lets go!" Rogue urges Jean with a hand on her shoulder then as her eyes inside her helmet scan around for the others, including Storm up in the sky.

Rogue will make for the portal provided by the newbie on the mission. Along the way, more punches are sent in to the blocky faces of their latest enemies.

"God, if i start hearin' hissin' noises..." Rogue mutters mostly to herself as she punches fists right through purple faces!

Negasonic has posed:
    When the annoyances reform from the dust, well, she lets the next explosion charge a lot longer as the antibodies gather themselves up. The next lobbed explosion is ... immense in a large group of the cubed minions of this Ego planet.

    That one is liable to leave a small crater maybe.

    Sh does fall in with Tabs and Rogue though to get to where Jean is, and help clear the way. "Rogue... can you drag us all airborne with Jean's help... we need an evac not on foot to get to the Black Bird I think... so we can get hustling and leave this planet."

Jean Grey has posed:
With the myriad of planetary defenders closing in, and Jean still suffering under the weight of such an immense psychic presence, things appear grim. She is able to hold up her hand and telekinetically shatter the few that come nearest, but there are more, so many more, and putting her mind to both tasks at full strength seems impossible. Things look bad...

...until Rogue sweeps in, turning countless of the things back to purple dust as she sweeps through them!

The physical rescue is a start, but perhaps more important is having someone there to lean on, both metaphorically and literally in this case. With the support of the other woman's very strong arm, she's pulled back up to her feet, while her presence seems to bolster Jean's resolve a bit. Along with the call from Logan, it also gives her the clarity to reject the voice in her head and focus on the mission, on what they need to do next. And in this case, those earlier words with Ororo turn out to be a touch prophetic. Discretion seems the better part of valor here.

"Always nice to see you," she tells Rogue, before joining her in their escape route toward the nearest portal, while echoing Logan on the comms: "You heard the man, find the nearest friendly hole and jump in." Phrasing?

With as much power as she can muster, she blows away any of the hexagons-faces who pop up in their route, and flies on through!

Tabitha Smith has posed:
They reformed. <<The crap! Not cool! I am not gonna be killed by swarming space dandruff!>> or whatever it is but Ego seems to be treating the X-Men like a skin condition.

Explosive time bombs keep flying. Detonating whenever they get close to one of the horde. And any miss has her redirecting the blasts back.

Is there a portal. This is why teleporters should come on every mission.

Still, she has to get there and hope nothing gets between her and her exit. <<How much blast we gotta boom to make sure these things stay down?>> It's a good question and as Boom-Boom gets to the nearest portal by Portcullis she lingers just a bit, an arm over head charging a bomb matching a sedan for diameter, the blonde's eyes glowing. The blast wave should hopefully make some room as it blows all that purple dust back far enough. Extra time after Jean's path clearing

But she won't let it go till everyone else is through. "Get to dah choppa!" she does her best Arnold waving with her free hand, to make sure Ellie knows which way to haul her behind as well.

Jean's directions as well getting a snicker.

"That's what she said!" Everyone through, she starts counting. "Tick... Tick... Tick..."

Ororo Munroe has posed:
Ororo deliberately brings up the rear, making broad S-shaped passes that kick up great screens of dirt and high winds in the X-men's wake. She stops just outside of the portal and gestures at the desert with sweeping motions of her arms, face set in concentration.

The wind starts to turn and whirl, then spin, and in moments a tornado forms that stretches up the better part of a thousand feet! It keeps its base fixed unnaturally in the spot directly ahead of the portals, sending the antibodies flying in all directions or blasting them into dust.

Ororo darts through the portal, counts heads, and flies towards the landing deck of the Blackhawk. "We're all clear, Portcullis. Cut the portals. Logan, do you need a hand at the conn?"

Logan Howlett has posed:
<<Flee, cowards.>> Ego's voice booms, this time finding the psychic network the group have been partially communicating on in order to be heard by them all, <<Flee and live out your miserable, tiny lives. Motes suspended in the beam of an incandescent sun!>>

Despite the sudden presense in his brain, Logan focuses on ushering the team out of the portals they appear in at the base of the ramp and back into the Blackbird. The hordes of antibodies are already at the ship as the last of them climbs inside, Logan kicking one from the loading ramp as it closes up. There's still several dangling from the fusilage as they take to the sky.

"Now's the time," Logan shouts over the roar of the engines, and the explosion detonates! He hunches against the controls as the explosion tears a scar across the desert landscape below. Hundreds of the creatures destroyed, Ego's very facade scarred by the attack.

<<Aghhh! You will pay, gnats!>>

What happens next is like something out of a theme park ride. The Blackbird speeds through the skies of Ego, bouncing as the very weather itself tries to drag them into the ground. The Wolverine wrestles with the controls the whole while, sweat beading on his brow behind the glass faceplate.

A great, purple hand stretches up made from the ground itself. It swats at the Blackbird, looking as though it will slam into it before another portal opens and suddenly they're flying through a deep canyon. A canyon that begins to rumble and close around them, gravel and rocks raining down onto the hull.

Then another portal! And they're flying through the very mouth of Ego! Huge teeth crumble and shift as they come down around them, threatening to lock the X-Men in the pitch black void before -

Fwoosh! They emerge in the snowy polar area, Logan bringing the vessel to a skidding and violent landing without the landing gear. But they're there! A cave, unnatural in appearance, lays before them. When the ramp refuses to open, Logan swears and pops the hatch above them. He's already clamboring out via the pull-down ladder.

<<No! NO! Get away from there!>>

The ground begins to shake violently, as if in an earthquake.

"Jeanie, grab whatever it is you're gonna grab and let's GO! Rogue, keep her safe! Storm, Negasonic, Boom-Boom ... get ready to hit this place with everything you've got! No holding back! I want you to crack this bastard in two! Portcullis, get ready to take us home!"

Above, the clows peel away and the skie changes. Multiple colors swirl into eerie whorls as the planet begins to enter some strange dimension. Hyperspace?

Rogue has posed:
At the portals, Rogue had made sure to get Jean through first before she'd hung back to wait for the others. She gave Storm a look of HUGE EYES at all of this, Storm likely knowing all too well how much Rogue hates space, just like everyone else. She hates it because of reasons LIKE THIS!

But once everyone made it through, Rogue was up the ramp as Logan cleared it. She instantly started helping people get to seats, and helping them get in their crash webbing, especially the younger ones like the Newbie and Ellie too since she didn't have TOO much experience in the Blackbird, let alone the SPACE variant.

Once they started on their way though, Rogue was right there behind Logan, with one hand on the ceiling of the cockpit, and the other clutching the back of his chair. She watched the flying, her jaw clenched tightly as she had Carol's side of her mind screaming back-seat-piloting commands, none of which Rogue allowed to fly out of her mouth... because Logan was under enough stress already.

She had to brace herself from flying out of control in the cockpit, since she wasn't strapped in, using her own flight power to maintain her position behind the Captain's chair.

She breathed a sigh of relief then when they finally landed, and ended up over beside Jean.

Through the mask covering her face, Rogue stared at the redhead. "Ya ready ta do this?" She asked her, taking her by the hand to walk with her out of the Jet and on to whatever direction they need to take.

"Where the hell are we even goin' anyhow?" She asks, looking back over her shoulder at the others, then once more over to Jean at her side...

Negasonic has posed:
    Elie lifts her head at the Get to the Choppa "God that is such an old reference.. " she doesn't argue though she pivots and moves fast through the portal heading onto the blackbird quickly ahead of her comrade. Then she braces for the transport. Once they land halfway around the world so quickly she nods to Logan.

    "Okay..." well she is determined to get the rear ramp open, trying to fit her and Tabby up the hatch above and fire off a shot while people getting in and out would be hard.

    She cranks the manuals until she gets it cracked so she can start charging, a lot, god knows how long it will take the others to get it together. Seconds will be ticking by. No one let her just do her biggest. Heck ... Hank told her not to push it... but well the field leader said go big and go home.

    Energy and plasma start to rip around her, waiting for the cue that they are ready to go.

    Her biggest boom yet. The plasma is ... dangerous as it starts to sheath around her.

    She fires it off though when told... it will be EPIC.

Jean Grey has posed:
Jean's glimpse of the creature's mind was far from clear, so the information she acts on here... there is an element of chance, of tempting fate. The cave entrance is the starting point.

She -was- encouraging people to get in various holes!

Emerging from the plane, she levitates toward the cavern, pausing only at the edge when Rogue joins her. "We don't know what this might do, and going in means being -inside- this creature. Who knows, this could be... something it could close around us." She's really trying not to invoke the spincter imagery that might remind them of another fun time up a giant's butt...

But Jean is also building up to something here, that she knows Rogue won't like to hear. "I think I should go alone." It's not the first conversation they've had like this. Rogue is the tough one, but a tendency for resurrection makes her far more willing to risk herself than someone she cares for.

A moment later, Jean steps off the edge, floating downward, as a crackling energetic aura springs to life around her. A bit of pre-emptive, aggressive self-defense, to discourage it from trying anything in the first place.

Eventually, she descends beyond view.

...

...

Then there's a bright flash, visible even from the top, a rumbling roar at whatever great depth. It is followed, just long enough after to be suspensful, by Jean flying upward, encased in a more visibly burning aura. "Time to go!"

Tabitha Smith has posed:
There is an upper limit on how much Boom-Boom can boom. And while it's clearly a lot. Once on the Blackbird she briefly finds a place to grab hold and hang on for the launch. Seatbelts bot quite quick enough as she comes through maybe last.

Of course that just gets her bounced about with grunts and swearing when she's thrown down the back. She's had worse bumps.

It's frantic but eventually she steadies herself and then with another landing she's being tasked with another boom.

That gets her grinning, strained an expression as it is as she puts out another moment of charging. A small vacuum of whatever gasses in the air she can start coalescing and ionizing into that superheated plasma she's known for. And then shaped into another sphere as large as a family sedan. Glowing hot and a very pale blue as she puts a lot of herself and her energy into it. Behind her glasses and the helmet of her space suit her glowing eyes half close as she squints and concentrates. "Oh god, any bigger I'm gonna have to start huffing MGH." she warns.

That's probably a bad idea.

Her blast and NTW's going off one after the other is if anything going to be loud and bright. Boom-Boom's left wiped from it though, barely able to stay on her feet long enough to make sure she's back aboard with everyone else.

Ororo Munroe has posed:
"I'm not fond of plans where you go charging off on your own," Ororo reminds Jean. Her disapproving scowl is tempered by real concern in her sky-blue eyes. But she lifts off the ground again and puts her back to Jean, clearly willing to defer to Jean's instincts here.

It takes Ororo a little longer to pull her power together than the girls. But they are creating a LOT of static energy, the crackling byproduct of their plasma buildup. Ororo grabs that charge and forces it to stretch out unnaturally, creating more electrical differential and refusing to let the bridge close. She holds it as long as she can, groaning with the effort and electricity licking across the outside of her suit.

She makes a noise between a groan and a cry of relief and relaxes her entire body at once. A bolt of lightning the size of a tree trunk explodes in the air, driving itself into Ego's flesh with temperatures exceeding the surface of the sun. And it does not merely flash once and vanish; it acts like a living thing, crawling across the ground and leaving great, gaping cracks in Ego's 'skin'.

Logan Howlett has posed:
Logan is trying to keep an eye on everything at the same time. Jean disappearing alone beneath the surface of Ego. Tabby, Negasonic, and Ororo aligning themselves to bring three very different kinds of 'bang' to bear. Roiling plasma, nuclear fire, and the wrath of the elements all focused on a single point.

As Jean gives the all clear, Logan pulls back on the yolk. The Blackbird is hating this, and it shows by the way it groans and shrieks with each motion. But it's rocketing skyward all the same, and the trail of immense destructive power fires out from its aft as Jean catches up with the aircraft.

<<ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!>

Ego's howl of pain ripples through their minds. The destructive trail burns through the crust of the Living Planet, creating a massive crater which in turn burns through to the oozing mantle of the world! Ego's cry in their heads becomes faint, dull, and then stops all together.

The feeling of another consciousness is gone. The feeling of a hand on the world's weather system slackens. The rippling tides of hexagonal-headed antibodies turn to dust at once.

When the ramp closes and they make orbit, they will see the slack-faced orb that is Ego hanging suspended in space. Not the blue giant system of Eta Carinae, but somewhere very familiar. The outskirts of their own solar system. Beyond Pluto. The distant bulb of Sol glowing far away.

Logan lets go of the controls, breathing heavily. He turns to Portcullis, who gives a grim-faced nod before creating a portal. On the other side? The skies above Westchester, New York.

"Everyone in one piece? Let's get some ground under out feet."