7473/The Nightmare Barrier: Xi'an

The Nightmare Barrier: Xi'an
Date of Scene:	22 August 2021
Location:	M'Kraan Crystal
Synopsis:	Xi'an faces the shadows of her past, fear and temptation, to overcome a creature of nightmare blocking the heart of the crystal from her and her allies.
Cast of Characters:	Jean Grey, Xi'An Coy Manh

---

Jean Grey has posed:
Only hours ago, Xi'an had been on Earth.

Now, she plunges into a gulf of darkness, itself overwhelming a winding street inside an impossible city, which is contained within an infitely-faceted crystal, sitting at the center of an alien world so distant from her home the scale and units involved are difficult to grasp. The universe is filled with countless wonders and terrors alike, and to minds lesser than those of the heroes gathered here, the simplest reality of their situation might be enough to drive them mad.

Fortunately, these are a hardier lot.

Unfortunately, it is not merely the status quo of their situation that is trying to unravel them, but an active effort, a deliberate assault. Something is here with them, harrying them, holding them at bay from whatever lies ahead. A vicious cosmic guard dog, with teeth and claws of madness.

A beast that, among them all, Xi'an sought out for conflict, rather than merely being chased down. Here, there is no hunter and hunted, and by whatever odd twist of fate, an odd sort of familiarity in all of it.

---

When she can see something other than darkness, it is hard to distinguish at first, because it is still very dim. Dawn or twilight, in some grey world, inhabited on the margins by shadowy figures and jagged forms. Xi'an's eyes adjust, although given her training, she is quickly cognizant that all these physical analogies are only that. Whether it is precisely like her prior experiences in the Astral Plane, or someplace that blurs the separation of real and imagined, form and thought even more? It is hard to say. Yet there is something similar, to the subjective quality of this 'reality.'.

In this way, it recalls her training with Jean: how such forms serve as shortcuts to abstract constructs like thought, memory and will. How they conform to the intentions of their inhabitants... and how, for all of that, they can be more real, more dangerous, than the world of flesh.

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
She had run after it. She had run after it... because she thought that she could catch it.

Darkness beyond easy assessment. Something is present here. Something is with them and she thought that she could catch it. That if she could seize it -- that --

That the others could kill it. That was the thought. It was filtered, transformed within her, but that was the name of the impulse. To kill the hostile thing, even if it might have been transformed in a miniscule slice of a second into 'seize it and hold it still without harm'.

Frustration, despar, helplessness. The darkness and the void. At least there is not agony, and that is nothing to be disdained. Time passes, and she lapses into a something that isn't sleep, before...

The world begins to fill in.

Something. Present. For a moment she wonders: Am I dead? It is like the space, the psychic zone of noospheric complexity that they called the Astral, which she could only pull herself into with difficulty. After a brief snarling fishhook interval of cursing her own weakness, she speaks to herself quietly:

"Well, then, here you are. Yes? I suppose you're stuck with it. Nothing to be done... I hope that the others, that..."

She trails off.

"And yet... is this...?" She has the feeling, subtle and perhaps deceptive, that she is seeing with the use of her eyes, or at least something like them. It is a shade, a nuance, but it suggests a hypothesis to her with its ups and its downs: namely, that she is not dead.

"Perhaps this is the truth of everything... like that old Greek thing... what was it called," Xi'an murmurs to herself, in a sort of blurry mix of Vietnamese and French, the linguistic mishmash she tends to think in (mostly the one, but with heavy support from the other). "Tartarus...? Sheol? No, Sheol was the Jewish..."

"Ugh," she mutters to herself. A feeling like wanting to fold her arms. If I'm going to go out, I should do it properly, she thinks, before she focuses - orienting herself. Simple exercises. This part is up, this is down; this is left, and this is right. Her eyes turn towards the horizon, however false either eyes or horizons may be.

Even if I'm dead, Xi'an thinks--
-- interrupted by: *even if I am dead?* God in Heaven, how ridiculous can I be right now...
-- and intruded again by: If this is some sort of alien crystal sorcery, perhaps it isn't a ridiculous prospect.

Jean Grey has posed:
At the margins, the forms resolve, although the identifiable features do not necessarily equate to a coherent whole.

The background is a chaos of mismatched shapes defining sort of canyon or corridor-like path around her (is she still in that street, perhaps?): there are some trees, exemplars of species native to the tropical forests of her homeland, but also mixed among them chunks of broken buildings, jutting rebar, and other such symbols of industrial wreckage and ruin. A jungle, one could say, both of the natural and concrete varieties, all mixed together.

Among these chaotic boundaries live creatures of shadow, stalking Xi'an along her path. Some are very plainly human, or nearly so, representing an assortment of humanity's worst: merciless soldiers, mercenaries and pirates, gangsters and criminal enforcers, and mobs of anti-mutant bigots. Each is defined by the typical trappings of their stereotype, from clothing and weapons to posture and attitude, save that they lack any facial features, their visages pure darkness.

A smaller few are less than human (or maybe more?), discrete portions of their bodies incorectly sized, their silhouettes suggesting unnatural and menacing additions.

Is she dead?

Is this some kind of hell?

As if to answer her, the shadows seem to loom closer, surrounding her, following her, forever closing in, an endless horde ready to swallow her alive. Far from silent, eerie presences, they are outwardly antagonistic, jeering her in every language she knows, the cacophony echoing in impossible ways.

Amidst this, where she looks ahead, briefly there is light, very much like a sunset on the horizon, the kind that one might find at such a moment of fading light. But it IS fading, which seems the more pertinent fact: in fact, as Xi'an looks, something seems to reach to blot it out. A hand, impossibly large, reaching down from the darkness beyond her little bubble of dim reality.

As it does, the shadows around her deepen, lengthen, perversely ignoring the requirement that a shadow should require a portion of light to endure. They take on greater scope and scale, become enlarged cariactures of their own shapes, if far from humorous.

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
A shadowy world. A city street? How many has she walked? A ruin? How many of those has she seen? The trees are not unfamiliar. But the wreckage is not. This is something that has been cultivated, or grown, thinks Xi'an Coy Manh, and the two are not the same.

This highfalutin inner discorse fades once she sees the shadows behind her.

Was I walking? Of course I was, Shan thinks to herself, glancing over her shoulder -- a soldier, two of them. Further, then, with a suggestion perhaps of the waterfront. A shadow from around a corner. Sailors. It is unfair, perhaps; but even so, it makes the muscles of her back tense.

Someone seems to shout something about 'muties'. Did I hear that or imagine it?

Something else, casting a shape over her like a great predatory bird.

They're getting closer, she thinks as the walk turns into a run, the same loping-jog she had used when entering that pursuit that led her on this ill-fated journey into the depths of the ancient crystal. Was it made when humanity was young? Before humanity was born at all? The springing recoil of that leg makes this easier to manage than forcing it.

Glancing round; watching where she's going. (Am I still on that road?) (Did that road rise to meet us sooner than this?) (Is any of this real?) Her jaw tightens, as she feels the vestigal, visceral urge to scream for help. But there is no help and there never was, was there?

Ahead, then, and she can see a light. A sun, perhaps, or at least SOMEthing; after all, she remembers, all roads went to the center. If this isn't some sort of afterlife then the others will likely be there too, won't they? It's where they would go, some of them, but then --

Her left leg comes up as her right leg stays extended, skidding to a halt as she brakes herself with the more durable organ at the sight of something coming down to put out that light. It would be funny, charming, in a cartoon; but this is real, a HAND, something dark and horrid coming down and dimming the light.

Did it?

This time the shadows grow sharper, in paradox. "Get AWAY from me," she finally shouts over her shoulder. She wishes deeply, for many reasons, that she hadn't given James the damn GUN! Which of them is the truest? She doesn't know. Her heart is starting to race -- she thinks.

Jean Grey has posed:
Glancing back, even to yell, reveals a starker terror: this is the more classic demon, shadow beast, essence of primordial evil, whatever you want to call it. No clear shape but a great, gaping maw and glowing eyes, both defined by the sickly green glow at the core of its being. Chasing her, it opens its mouth ever wider.

Ahead of her, looking back to that dimming sun, a huge shadow stands instead, fully backlit. If the hand was the smallest suggestion, this is the full image, of a terror that is both uniquely and universally mutant: the titanic, vaguely humanoid and yet clearly artificial form of a towering Sentinel. It reaches down for her, and that hand encloses her body like she was nothing, lifting Xi'an skyward, drawing her toward it.

Like the human wraiths, the Sentinel does not have its own face, only a black void.

Except quickly, she is face to face with that familiar visage. The blunt-fingered, robotic gauntlet that grips her is now a claw, and the face is the demon's, terrible and otherworldly.

It swallows her alive, throwing her into a deeper darkness.

As she plummets, somewhere, there is a recollection: your own thoughts can betray you, hurt you, every bit as much as they can serve.

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
Behind her the Beast; raging, primal, hungry, devouring. Xi'an shudders, as if struck by electricity, and turns instead towards the machinery. It rises upwards, its face concealed as she is drawn upwards by it. Staring into the dead gauntlet, held by the claw, and now --

The demon itself.

Some part of Xi'an gibbers and it is a part that reaches her mouth. "Get away from me!! Leave me alone!!" she shrieks out with a sudden lung-cramping force, long-contained and long-suppressed words let loose here with no one to see and no one to think of, only herself, miserable as it may be. She tries to kick but it is, of course, useless, and a moment later -

Thrust into the thing's mouth -

Devoured.

She is soaked in (sweat?) as she falls, plunged into a gloom deeper than the one before: a positive void, lacking even the subtle sparkles of living retinae, and she screams for another moment, this time without words, before her hands come up to clutch her head and she makes herself breathe. Gasp in, gasp out; gasp in, gasp out.

Your thoughts can betray you.

Calm, she tells herself. Cool breezes. The ocean from the hill.

Your thoughts can hurt you.

The hill is on fire. The ocean is black. The wind is stagnant, and reeks.

"Damn - damn - stop it! WHY - why is it me -!!"

The control is not easy. It is like a steering wheel in a storm, and it is that image, that meta-motor metaphor, that she clings to; because a wheel in a ship in a storm is something you can imagine, something that you CAN hold even if your thoughts may be something far stranger and more horrible/disgusting/beautiful by far. If you can hold the wheel, then perhaps the rest is possible, too --

Or you can drown, Shan thinks: Always on the table.

Jean Grey has posed:
In that void, it feels like she could fall forever. Maybe she will. That would definitely be a kind of hell.

In that plummeting eternity, Xi'an passes through her own life and memories, although limited to the experiences of greatest despair and hopelessness. It is not a happy tour. Yet there is a sinister purpose in what she sees, the hand of some unseen editor evidenced in the film print. Because her life is not purely despair. And all she really has to do is reach and find one of those censored recollections...

It's there, even as a brief flash, even if it quickly sours. For a moment, she sees it, recalls some idyllic slice of time.

The fall ends, as she hits the cold, dark water. An improvement? At least she stopped falling.

But the water chills, and yes, threatens to fill her lungs-

Discipline!

-before she claws her way out, coughing painfully on the deck of...

Well, a boat. A physical(-seeming) boat, with a matching wheel. Why not? It's a crude image, but it puts the agency directly in her hands. It fights her, to be sure, but the exertion becomes a point of focus. A task. Overcoming the mechanical resistance in her hands. She strains and turns-

-and finally, it spins, freely. It's not a ship's wheel, now, but the kind seen on those secure hatches on ships, bank vault doors, and the like. And it opens just such a door, which swings open in front of her.

She's in some kind of industrial space now, and the memory is clearer. The factory, or a nightmare of it. Rows of partially-constructed Sentinels stand looming in their bays, and as if alerted by her arrival, begin to move, snapping cables in showers of sparks as they stumble into motion. Around her, stand her teamates...

Except these aren't the people who were there in reality. Well, perhaps some of them were. Yet these are the faces of the people she was just with, moments (eons?) ago as she stood in a different place, looking toward a reflective, gleaming-

As the Sentinels turn, so do they. And these are not her friends. They've been transformed, retrofit with all manner of cybernetic equipment, limbs replaced with cruel weaponry, eyes glowing with artificial light, armor replacing skin. They surround her, and they are not her friends.

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
The fall is delirious, dizzying. But you can get used to anything.

(Can you? Maybe that's the real power of humans - and of mutants. They CAN get used to anything; there is nothing, in time, they cannot come to tolerate, even to embrace.)

As she falls, memories pour past her. The dim precursors of being shoved out of the way in the crib are a mild surprise. Beyond that, the tensions. The arguments. The flight. The seizure of a soldier - then Tran's seizure and immediate destruction of the man.

Madripoor. The twins. The invitations. The temptations. It would have been easy. But it would be wrong. And --

It is perhaps here, when she is in a mixture of anger and horror and helpless tearful frustration (she is crying, HAS been crying for nearly a minute without realizing it) that she reaches out to pull a leaflet back. There is a brief flash there. A sunny day. Leong trying to eat a butterfly.

It keeps going. Horror upon horror upon horror upon (a prayer in church) upon horror upon horror upon (they accepted her) upon horror upon horror upon (the Professor shakes her hand) upon --

SMASH
splash

Onto the deck. She feels like she's vomiting the water out; maybe she is. Heaving, she staggers upwards. A boat, she thinks.

She giggles, horribly, into her wrist, because -- because -- it can't be a coincidence, she thinks. Or if it is, I'm going mad, and at the moment that wouldn't be so bad, would it? Trapped here, in some alien Hell... "What is it the man said in his interview on the television," Shan husks as she grasps the ship's wheel. "You look at the modern world... and you must go mad."

The ship struggles, and she turns the wheel against a current. "Anything else... would be... crazy."

Soon enough it's changing. She lets it change.

A suspicion is coming to her -- and Shan stops herself, squeezing her eyes shut. No, she tells herself. No, no, no. Don't be like that. Don't jump towards this. You jumped already, even if you were scared... wanting to lash out... But look where it got you. Learn from it. Learn from it, damn you. Be like the Professor, like Ms. Grey, like dear old Haydee. Don't jump at it.

She lets go of the wheel... and the door swings open in front of her.

In she walks. Her face tightens at the sight of the sentinels. She folds her arms in front of her but it's all quite alright because they're all there, she thinks. She immediately tries to reach out, to find a commander, a technician, but then the friends turn towards her. The faces are similar but alien. She grits her teeth; it makes her queasy, makes her pulse race. She feels the cold-hot trickle of adrenaline even if she is not screaming and thrashing, not any more.

"I remember when we were afraid of this," Shan says, her voice quavering slightly but forming words without the spikes and valleys of terror. "Do you remember? With Warlock? None of you would admit it as such, but we were all concerned. Like an infection. He might not have meant anything by it, and yet here you are, here we are."

She breathes deeply.

"Who knows if this will work," Shan says, pivoting towards the rock-jawed face of her Southern friend, gazing into his blank dual red optics that were once such oddly gentle eyes. "Forgive me if this is you, somehow," she states, before--

--throwing her mind out, in an effort to seize control of the simulacrum of Sam Guthrie!

(And in the event of success; well, she shall be glad to ride the Cannonball Express once more.)

Jean Grey has posed:
When she makes contact, Xi'an realizes a few things:

Firstly, that the fake Sam is just that. She knows his mind, and what she finds there is not it. In fact, as she seeks and tries to take hold, he bursts into shadowstuff and slips through her grip, as if she were trying to hold smoke in her hand. Of course, this truth is sort of obvious in retrospect: how could any of them actually be here? But the act of doing solidifies it in her mind, what is fiction and reality.

Second, after the perhaps obvious step of trying this a few more times (it is, at the very least, an easy way to dispel phantoms that are threatening her), she is able to rather quickly sort through who is present. And the faces that remain are those incorrect for the memory. For that memory, at least. They're at home in a more recent one.

Thirdly, it seems like James Proudstar's cyborg incarnation might be trying to murder her, and in some ways, he is a good substitute for Sam. Yet whens he reaches out for him, or for the captive, wired brains of any of the other 'visitors' to this memory, she finally feels a touch of something real. And through one, she can feel them all, at least faintly. Feel that they are, in some sense, here with her. Physically, in front of her? Maybe less so.

Yet clearly, there is some shared structure to this delusion.

As she discovers this fact, the cybernetic shadows each convulse and begin to scream, reaching to claw at their own implants, to yank free wires from their own flesh. In the scream, there is a psychic echo, filled with faint hints of the terrors each must be experiencing, the darkness of their own souls.

Shan cannot grasp it for long, before it fades back into their own individual torments and the shadows themselves melt away.

As they do, she can see a familiar sight behind where they were standing. Here is the commander, with her frightening weaponry and haughty sense of command, leading a squadron of modified monstrosities. She has faced this before and knows how it ends.

Simple, yes?

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
How COULD any of them actually be here? Shan wonders.

Either way, at least, goodbye Roberto: goodbye Rahne: goodbye an unusually fierce and heavily armed Douglas; she is able to move forwards, and it is James who is contending with her, with something not too dissimilar to his usual crushing power. And this time -- there is a tickle of --

-- it's like I'm trying to -- work at far too long a range, thinks Shan (WHOSE ENTIRE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW began when she tried to reach someone who was on the outer fringes of her range).

There is a moment of visceral terror when she is looking directly at a simulacrum of Kitty Pryde who rips her face open, revealing a sort of skull, and then immediately rips it off and hurls it onto the ground; a moment she will see in her dreams, later. A new entry in the gallery. But after this, her head turns and she can see, past that:

"You," Shan says.

She shifts herself, one hand going on her hip.

"I wonder sometimes how this might have happened, if I hadn't been so young then. Unsure of myself... Perhaps not full-grown in my mutant ability. The telepathic abilities were barely present in me then... the best that I could do is be a 'repeater' for the Professor. But even then, of course, I had 'that', and that was all that I could rely upon. Perhaps I have reached out too often with it. Perhaps I should have used it more," Shan says, as she walks forwards, fingers forming tight little fists.

"What could I have done instead? It is difficult for me, my lady. Ah, I do not even know your name. I could have read it out of your head, of course, but at the time there was no reading. Just that feeling, like I was sticking my hand into a puppet..."

"And then, pfau. In I go."

"But without people like you, I might as well have no power at all... and yet," she concludes, "is that truly so..."

The thought trails off. She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, bringing both hands up to frame her face. "Second time is the charm," she says, and she throws her mind forwards -- a sudden flare of light round her head as the possession snaps invisibly across the factory floor (if that is what it is), to aim and seize the figure.

I'm not sitting down, Shan thinks. And I'm not quite as close. Will the implants still do THAT?

Will the blade still come? Was it destined for me? Will it hit the metal? Will it -

Oh God I can't look, she decides with a sudden cold, queasy flush, the growing steadiness taking a sickening lurch perilously close to dumping back to where she was, before righting - slowly - as Shan closes her own body's eyes...

Jean Grey has posed:
It is fairly obvious that this is a 'trap,' insofar as whatever she faces thinks and operates in those terms. A feint at least, an invitation into reckless miscalculation, to overconfidence in the certainty of a prior outcome.

It isn't necessarily a BAD trap, either.

As Shan surges forward, it is as if something else is there, the woman's head glowing with its own aura. Sickly green instead of vibrant magenta. In the instant before everything changes, she can see that demonic visage that once pursued, once consumed her, superimposed over the commander's own.

She feels control over the other body, so different from her own. Admirable, in some ways, desirable. Deadly and powerful. Memory of the computerized backup is less distinct in this shadowplay, but she can feel the body fight her, two sets of mental input fighting to send the same nerve impulses. Weapons burst from her skin in preparation. Feel it charge forward and strike.

CLANG.

Metal strikes metal.

The self-image is well-ingrained, present throughout this dream, as Xi'an fled, and now as she fights. The play repeats, but the detail is different. It is a moment of relief among panic and fear, a rare thing in all this persistent horror. This time, she's not forced to watch as she disassembles her own flesh.

And once the moment has passed, she rests back full control of the body.

Then her old body opens her eyes, revealing a green glow, and a wicked smile.

"The puppetmistress now on strings," taunts a voice, darkly familiar. "And all of this," it declares, running her hands over her own flesh, in vaguely lascivious appreciation, "for me to play with. Mm. Better with a little meat on her bones, though."

None of this is really how it went, exactly, but the metaphor has reached its apparent peak. There's no longer a factory, and the body she's in is no longer some femme fatale packing internal buzzsaws. She is herself. And she faces herself, herself corrupted. It is a bizarre image, where she has taken on the comical form of some kind of criminal matron or madame, appearing as she might have if she had embraced the criminal inclinations of her family, if she had risen above them all.

Or maybe if her brother had.

It all bleeds together, now. She is a corpulent Egyptian mastermind, a ruthless gang lord, or perhaps simply an indulgent sybarite, exultant in her own power. "You can triumph in all of this. We are already you, you already us. Let go. Come with us. We can find the woman. You can have the flesh for your own, to play with, to inhabit, whatever you wish."

A thick-fingered hand is offered, outstretched, while the other now holds, bizarrely, a chain leading to a version of Jean, crawling on the floor, held with a leash and collar.

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
It has been argued that the truly human - the truly *intelligent* - thing to do if you fall into a trap is to try and bear it out, find the trapper, and kill a threat to your kind. Will that be a relevant metaphor? Maybe!

She feels that body in a way that echoes perfectly her incomplete memories of Xi'an Coy Manh, Mind Controller (Age 19). It is beautiful and rippling and -- something else is there. She is crossed, briefly interspaced, feeling the body struggle her. Skin erupts (it doesn't feel bad, Shan thinks, it's more like pulling out ingrown hairs than anything) and

CLANG! There it is.

Victory. Relief. She feels the phantom ache of her toes curling in her left leg. It doesn't happen often, always toes curling, but it happens now. And then--

It all flies away.

Her own voice speaks to her, and Xi'an stares in agog shock at the little shimmy over her carefully shaped, perhaps-a-little-too-thin body and the lush tone of that voice. The world is turning round. She reaches up to touch her own face, as if to desperately hope that SHE is there. The image before her has a certain cruelty and coldness in the face, something almost hypnotic for all its evil, like a cursed sword or a vicious beast in repose. Her lips part in a gasp -

The shape is rising and -
she
can
see

"YOU," Xi'an says, thunderstruck. It whirls in front of her. That would explain everything. It is the Shadow King. It was *all* the Shadow King -- if Professor Xavier could contact Lilandra across the depths of the voids, could not the Shadow King (himself, perhaps, the Professor's better in the psychic arts) hurl himself across the stars in turn? Perhaps he came here - perhaps he was TRAPPED - was D'Ken showing some signs of EATING A GREAT DEAL? she wonders, dizzily, which she SHOULD have asked --

But thoughts can be enemies as well.

Her eyes rest on the figure on the floor. Red-haired. Well built. On a leash and collar, like an animal. Xi'an is surprised to find that her hand had already lifted, perhaps one-fifth of the way towards reaching out for that proffered thick hand. She knows if she touches it, it would be warm, like leather, even though there is no hand.

"No," she breathes out. "It's not you."

"Or if it is," she continues, "you're desperate... trapped here as well as I may be. But I doubt it. A scholar must not commit to a conclusion unless she is sure, don't you think?" Shan brings her hand upwards to sweep through her bangs, which is absolutely not going to fool anyone, but who is there to be fooled?

"I have nothing to do with you. Shoo, begone. If you wish to speak with me now, person to person, take a more pleasing form... one without... such accoutrements." Though, of course, *this* time, she does not throw out her efforts at mental control.

Just in case.

Jean Grey has posed:
"I am nothing if not reasonable."

With a spread-handed gesture, suggesting openess, deferrence even, the figure before her changes. It takes its older form from the many it has previewed, the one that the Professor first met so many years ago. Maybe not its first host, among humanity, among mutantkind, but its first in the recent memory of the living X-Men. One that could be argued might warrant some grudge. Charles did kill him, after all, leaving the shadowy presence beneath to wander free.

And so, again, he is the Egyptian fixer, con, thief, procurer, pimp -- perhaps many other things -- Amahl Farouk. The fez does give him a certain kind of friendly appearance!

'Jean' remains at his feat.

"Apologies. Is this better? In any case, you wish to speak, so let us speak. There is no need for animosity. Using you was never personal, any more than it was for this man. It is a requirement of my existence. And the rest... a mere consequence of my natural appetities. Would you condemn me for that?" ... pre-emptive body-shaming callout?!

He makes a wide gesture with one of his large hands.

"All of that aside, my offer remains. Your friend is here. The alien and his slave ripped her power from her, used it to unlock this place. But she exists. Her flesh can be returned. Admittedly, this is but a... fascimile, but it demonstrates that the essence of her is here, that she can be reconstructed. Go ahead. Reach into her," he invites, white-toothed and grinning. "Feel that she is not some meager specter, like those others. Reassure yourself. And then we may bargain. The alien has his ambitions, but do they truly concern you? Is it not more important to have your friend, your mentor, your-"

Still, that smile.

"To have her back. And free of her burden, at that. A happy outcome, for everyone. And one that only you can guarantee. None of the others have your talent. Even now, they thrash about, threatening great harm to this place, playing heroes despite knowing nothing of the forces with which they grapple. With a thought, you can calm them. Pull them back from the nightmare, from the struggle."

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
Not better, Xi'an thinks, but it will have to do. She senses, perhaps, that there should be a seat behind her.

She does not sit. "I doubt this," she states. "I doubt this very much. Not only from what you say being convenient for your own interests, but for what I know of what you do... what it is that you..."

Shan's jaw tightens. She doesn't finish the sentence. Her eyes turn down towards the simulacrum of Jean.

I could reach out, she thinks... and know everything. I could simply move now, boldly, with decision, and triumph. The mission a success. Jean returned to us. Miracles, and who would be to the credit? Me. (Her arms fold.)

And if it is a trap, Shan thinks, I will be lost. If it is Amahl Farouk in true, he will be able to seize me... or at least, I cannot be certain that I would withstand him, grown though I have. With Illyana's aid I might chance it, and yet... Can I be certain? Her eyes turn upwards.

"You speak of my friends. How do I know that they struggle? You could be lying to me. In fact, you almost certainly are, even if you were speaking nothing but guidance; you would have every reason to push me in the way that you desire!" (That was arcing towards yelling.)

A breath passes.

"And if you yourself do not have the power to stop them... then that is very interesting indeed."

And even if it isn't Farouk, Shan thinks -- could these thoughts... If I *imagine* it to be him, would it not be *as* him? A simulacrum? I could defeat myself with my own power... deluded here, amplified perhaps by this technology... ...I wonder, Shan thinks further, if every thought I think is an open book to the crystal.

Nevertheless.

She is so beautiful, Shan thinks, unbidden. Looking back up, she states: "The alien's ambitions, too, are not irrelevant to these matters. Their fleet threatens my home, and I would not be driven from my home a third time." At this her head tilts back, her expression sinking, perhaps none-too-surprisingly, into one of those crueler molds she glimpsed.

"Do you control this place, this Crystal?"

Jean Grey has posed:
"I have what power you have seen, at the very least," the creature, whatever it might be, declares. It is a bit of a tautology, perhaps, although not a bad reminder. "They have all suffered as you have, or worse. After all, you have abilities that they do not. Even the little witch is not protected, not here, where thought is real. Perhaps for her it is the worst, in fact, as she is so used to her authority, to her demense. What is she, when she is somewhere truly, utterly separated from all of that?"

Again, a sweet smile. "Just a scared little girl."

He laughs. "Or there is the man with the magic ring. It is quite useless here, of course, for even the people who would one day make his toy could not master the crystal. You have seen what happened to them."

In all of this, he exudes great confidence, and indeed contempt for their chances.

Then there is a quiet, a pause, perhaps only as long as Shan's own thoughts.

"The alien's only interest in your world was the power that had burrowed its way within her. Do you think a single planet, a billion light years away, is of any consequence to one such as he? Count your world as part of the bargain. Count a dozen, if you like. Is the deal not good? You will accomplish all you have wished. Your world, safe. The woman," and now she is standing at his side, tall and proud rather than low and humbled, and with a gentle guiding push at the small of her back, starts walking forward, closing the space with Shan. "Alive and whole. Refuse, and you gamble these things. And the house always has the better odds."

The last he seems less concerned with, and promptly brushes over. "None truly controls it, save for the creature, the power they took from your dear friend." For a brief moment, even he seems somewhat humbled. "And even then, control... maybe this is not the correct word."

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
It's a tautology AND ambiguous. It is good, I suppose, Shan thinks, that it would only have what powers I have *seen* Farouk use. Seen, or perhaps more essentially, *experienced*.

Yet, she reasons further. It must be only for this context, or -- or am I even still here? I *could* be dead. (But I still feel a little thrill, don't I? It seems unlikely.) So it is not a matter where it could use Farouk's power to suppress the others... if it is speaking honestly at all.

The mention of vulnerability, particularly Illyana, makes Shan's expression darken further, her teeth baring slightly. It is manipulative... and successfully so. "I did see such things," Xi'an answers. "I have no intention of mastering you. You may set yourself at ease with this. At most I would ask you - if you would accept scientists from my world - and if your answer is no... then your answer is no."

Her tone is lower now, almost purring somehow. Despite saying no? Well, it is a form of authority. Her head tilts forwards now at the limning. The sudden motion pushes the Jean-figure forwards and Shan's hand comes upwards again, as if to reach forwards anew. Her hand comes up again -- but she stops it, fingers curling into a loose fist.

"You are presenting the morality I would expect from that man quite ably," Shan continues. "For your moral calculus, I would say... if you asked me to choose between Earth and an alien world I would never see... I would surely be tempted. But that is not the exchange you speak of. This is a madman with the power of this crystal -- your power -- and even if his agenda shall not lead him to reach Earth until I would be long dead, I would be rightly damned to let others die or suffer simply because it was *easier*."

She sucks in a deep breath, gazing at the Jeanlike figure. "And-- that besides; I am sure that she would disapprove."

Xi'an swallows dryly.

"I will make no decision until I have spoken with the others," she states. "You will return me to their presence, and if they are destroying... portions of this place, I will encourage them to cease. There is, however, something which only I among them can do, and I shall do it now."

And with that, she dares to open the gates of her mind - despite that horrid presence just behind the nearby, gorgeous, guiding, lovely form of Jean Grey - to reach out. To test, to see if there is, truly, a 'her' there. It is a tentative thing - taking long seconds where her previous mental reachings were a thing done almost in their initial conception - but, well, look at who is sitting over there. It is very hard to be too careful, with that sort of a reminder right over there.

Jean Grey has posed:
It is a dangerous move. To risk contact, to approach. After all, Xi'an has laid out her own morality, one that makes clear that giving D'Ken what he wants is off the table. A fact of no small importance. She taps into Jean's own guidance. And she is thinking all of it, so the fact remains: it knows. It can see the course of the discussion, the negotiations, the temptation. It can see her heart, and thus... perceive in the outcome of all of this only one thing: its own failure.

Of one sort, at least. One option remains.

Thus as Xi'an makes tentative contact, it abandons all subtlety. The trap would have been better, but perhaps it can still win.

With a hiss of malice, the false Jean disintegrates. Not instantly, but slowly and 'painfully,' making a great show of her pain and suffering.

The rotund form of Farouk surges and swells, it becomes again the bloated version of herself, and then exceeds those bounds too, almost exploding in horrid flesh. But all of this is really just theatrics, a final attempt to throw Xi'an off as she seeks the mind within those corpulent layers of flesh.

In this more direct confrontation, much becomes clear.

The first being that she was very much correct. Whatever this thing is, it is very clearly not the Shadow King, not any part of her family, nor anyone she has ever known. The fact is, she is a billion light years from home and NOTHING is familiar here. The only constant is herself. All of this final grand show, this negotiation, this probing temptation, is precisely as Shan guessed, a construct of her own fears, a villain given power by his grandiose stature in her own mind. If he felt more real, more sinister, more deeply possessed of her thoughts and secrets? That was very much her own doing.

That said, this is not some spontaneous anomaly, some twisted force of nature torturing her with such precision. There IS an entity. Peeling past the layers, she can touch it, although its mind, when she finally takes hold, is totally alien. Not 'man with bird feathers' alien, but wholly beyond humanoid recognition. A predator, or maybe a parasite. Something that lives naturally adjacent to the astral plane. Evidently, this makes the crystal an acceptable habitat as well.

Also? It's D'Ken's pet. That echoes, in the final straw that provokes their confrontation. She would never give him want he wanted, and THAT angers it.

The being's powers, by coincidence, do include some very vague similarities to its chosen disguise. Like him, like her, it latches on to a psyche. Unlike either (is it bad, to imagine a point of similarity with the Shadow King?) it does this to feed, and to eventually consume, causing a sort of destructive resonance of negative psychic energy. The process is torturous to sentient beings, and this is why D'Ken is fond of it.

But making contact this directly, with a more stable self, it cannot initiate the process again, and recoils. As it does, she can feel, as she did in the moment in the Sentinel bay, the presence of her teamates as it preys on them simultaneously. They are suffering, yes, but they are fighting back. And it cannot hold them all, and fight Xi'an.

There is a final psychic scream, frustrated and savage, and then... then it is simply gone.

Xi'an is on that hill beside the sea, and the sun isn't setting now, but rising, warming her skin.

Xi'An Coy Manh has posed:
The agony makes Xi'an recoil. It shows in her face and her carriage even if she does not do a full comic-turn flinch. Did she--

-- but the others also did that, the ones that shadowed Doug and Roberto who are surely on Earth --

And then it is upon her! "Darkling creature-- I have you now!" Xi'an proclaims, a violet corona flaring as she reaches outwards, grasps, struggles. It's like grasping a fish that's moving in four dimensions - like that mind of that damn IMP in Metropolis but -- no, it's far smaller than THAT (but perhaps, Shan thinks, they're akin, like I'm distant kin to a fish):

Grip -
REACH inside...

And like that, it's gone.

Did I kill it? Xi'an thinks.

Somehow, it comes, not with a sense of guilt - that perhaps she had slain a creature needlessly - but with a sort of thick, heady thrill that rises and passes. As it passes, she feels obscurely horrified.

Her eyes saccade for a moment, and then she is standing on that low hill, facing out onto the dappled seas of the Gulf of Tonkin. No, she thinks; a memory alone.

But the sun is setting the sea aflame with jewels, and for a moment, at least, she smiles.

"Well, now," she says, dusting off her hands. "I just have to find the others... surely that will be simple, yes? Of course not..." And that is when she sets down, arranges herself gently - takes a moment to loosen the grip on the prosthetic - and closes her eyes, to reach.

<<Do you hear me? Reply if you can. It is Xi'an -- I am listening!>>