[day_108]
[day_tue]
The stadium shook with reverence and something deeper. Tremors rippled the arena floor, fashioning and flattening dunes. A bare foot tamped shifting sand, a sole coming to rest before its twin pushed onward. This impression would not last.
The flock bore witness to the solitary procession of a humbled predator. In the place of official blue-and-gold or preferred brown-and-tan, branches of forest green faded down his pale gray frock. Each step was deliberate, each breath measured. He stopped at the altar of upturned root and shale in the center of the stadium, where a trio of attendants, all draped in the same weeping willow, stood in wait. It was the second who spoke:
“Brother.” The word was a whisper from the priest’s lips, yet the acknowledgment filled the arena.
“Brother.” The beast in mourning bowed.
The first attendant stepped forward. “Today, we honor those we lost to Otherworld.”
The third matched her stride. “Today, we honor The Fallen.”
“Today, I honor Gorgon.” Wolverine — the oldest to claim the name — crossed his arms, sliding his hands up his sleeves. The back of his ceremonial garb swelled as his fists swung free, each producing a single blade. His frock fluttered away in ribbons, revealing the scabbards strapped across his spine.
He rested the left sword on the altar, and the first attendant, Wallflower, named it: “Grasscutter.”
He rested the right sword on the altar, and the third attendant, Wind Dancer, named it: “Godkiller.”
“These blades secured freedom for Krakoa. For all mutants.” Nightcrawler no longer wished to whisper. His message needed to be felt as much as heard. “They will continue to bring new life to our nation — as the weapons of The Crucible. The worthy will wield them. The worthy will remember. We will not forget.”
“Gorgon gave his life for our sacred land.” Wallflower hefted the first sword and ran her forefinger and thumb along the sharpened edge.
“What are you willing to give?” Wind Dancer lifted the second sword and found its balance in the breeze.
Wolverine looked to the priest, whose pious eyes pled what a holy tongue could not speak, before offering: “The air in my lungs.”
“This blade, like the stadium around us, is anointed with a pheromone trigger.” Grasscutter pressed into the beast’s bare chest.
“Whenever you enter this arena, you will be stripped of breath and unable to retrieve it.” Godkiller traced the ridges of his ribcage.
Nightcrawler wanted to wince, to cringe, to look away. But he couldn’t. Not in front of his congregation, thousands deep. Not as the tips found purchase, sinking deeper. Not as his old friend fell to his knees, refusing to wheeze. Not as the crowd roared its approval. Not until Wolverine disappeared in a cloud of brimstone.
“Are you okay, my friend?” Kurt Wagner had his ceremonial robe wrapped around the oozing wounds before the portal opened inside his forked tower.
Logan choked down a throat full of rapidly clotting blood. “Are you?”
The demon slumped. “What this nation asks of us may be too great.”
[00_last]
[00_gasp]
•||[x]||•
“When one man dies,
One chapter is not torn out of the book,
But translated into a better language.”
Excerpt from Meditation XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
– John Donne –
[01_like]
[01_home]
Through the House of X, they crossed. Two at the head, eight at the heel. Ten followed the path, and ten did descend. Autumn fell through, and Winter pressed on. Spring grew weary, but Summer burned hot. What a year it had been. What a season it would be.
In the fifth cradle, they assembled. The shamed and the proud, the dubious and the dutiful, the suspicious and the surprised. The Quiet Council of Krakoa converged in the secret space, equals ever on unequal footing.
The Red Queen nudged the elf to her left. “Is it me, or has the world gone topsy-turvy?”
“It’s not you.” Exodus brushed past, his gaze fixed on the dome overhead. “The gravity has shifted. We’re standing on the ceiling.”
“We ask for answers, and you bring us to a basement?” The Black King scoffed at Magneto, who opened his mouth to retort, only to be interrupted.
“Patience, Sebastian, everyone.” Professor X raised a placating palm. “Every question you have will be addressed, I promise. We have much to unpack, but if we are to move forward, we will do so together. And one of us has not yet arrived.”
A single flower bloomed in the chamber, and a voice escaped its pulsating pistil. “I thought I had more time.”
Nightcrawler was the first to recognize the lyrical lilt. “Moira? How…?”
Dr. Moira Kinross MacTaggert doffed her cap and tossed it on the sparse desk that lined the western wall of her home. “Kurt, it’s good to see you.”
“Are we resurrecting humans now?” Mister Sinister’s eyebrows wiggled suggestively. “Because I have a few ideas.”
“We are not, and I am not,” Muir Island’s renowned researcher corrected Essex’s disgraced scientist, then turned to the quieted Council. “As happy as I am to see most of you, if you’re here, then we’ve already failed. Because we always fail.”
“How can you be so defeatist?” Storm narrowed her eyes. “At least tell us what threat is looming. There may be something we can do, some way we can help.”
“Ororo, I wish you knew how much I missed you.” A weak smile played across Moira’s lips. “I don’t want to diminish your optimism — truly, I don’t — but I’ve lived nine hard-fought lives. And, in every one, we lose. In the war for survival, mutants always lose.”
The White Queen curled her lip. “Have you considered who the constant is in these lives of yours?”
“That’s fair, Emma. I knew you’d be take the most convincing. Your cynicism is understandable.”
“You doom our race, and I’m the cynic?”
The researcher looked to the other telepath in the secret space. “Charles, if you would show them what I showed you all those years ago.”
And so he did.
[day_109]
[day_wed]
Krakoa | Professor X | Magneto | Mister Sinister | Exodus | Mystique
Black King | White Queen | Red Queen | Storm | Nightcrawler | Jean Grey
Moira X [Redact] | Ricochet | Husk | Rockslide | Frenzy | Skids
[day_107]
[day_mon]
A blue blur burst forth from the botanical border. Tread-tipped toes barely touched sovereign soil before bounding for the rooftops. Without a map of the island on any commercially available app, the runner had to rely on signposts to find his way. Behind glare-resistant goggles, his eyes darted from glade to garden, from Blackstone to Boneyard, from glyph to glyph. His mind didn’t have to race to decipher the indigenous alphabet. He learned — no, knew — the Krakoan language the first time he passed through a gate, some two weeks prior.
Kicking off the thatched canopy of the tiki bar, the blur leapfrogged The Green Lagoon, tucked, and rolled into a sprint on the opposite bank. Sunlight glinted off the rabbit emblazoned on his back, a shimmer of silver amid the azure. Fingertips tested the integrity of the pouch attached to his chest as he hurdled another obstacle on this course.
Toggling the timer on his heads-up display, the courier skidded past the entrance to The Akademos Habitat. A wave of white hair splashed down his concealed face, and he flung it back with a practiced flick of his neck. A nest of enormous eggs, half-buried in the verdant earth, dwarfed his five-foot, eight-inch frame. Vaulting the nearest shell, he came sliding down the northern hub of Zeta House.
And was nearly trampled in a stampede of trees.
“Get outta that garden, boyo!” The boisterous brogue belonged to the devil-bearded drover, who was riding a thorn bush like a bucking bronco alongside the charging thicket. “There’s a tingle in the air, and the oul fella’s makin’ overtures. Ramrod and your mate, Black Tom, are throwin’ shapes on the big man’s behalf — puttin’ his feelers out, seein’ if the missus is still keen. If Krakoa’s finest fronds get gammy in the run-up, Ms. Marisol’s on tap to lend her fine flourish.”
The bewildered blur wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of that tale even if he wasn’t busy weaving between leaves, ducking branches, and bouncing off bark. He caromed off a succession of sycamore, cypress, and spruce, only to spiral into a trunk that looked all too human.
“Please tell me you are Groot.” The runner — who was now more of a dodger (and an artless one at that) — felt vines entwine his arms. Lifted above the tree line, he dangled in the air before being placed gently on a side path.
The carved visage moved a mere millimeter. “Будь осторожен.”
Ricochet sat just in time for a golden apple to fall into his lap.
[00_gold]
[00_rush]
[leg_661]
[acy_661]
•||[u]||•
Altered Visions Presents:
UNCANNY_X-MEN
State of the Union
[02/02]
story///Doug Bookey [+] C.T. Kinkaid
script///C.T. Kinkaid
[02_alt]
[02_vis]
[day_108]
[day_tue]
“Today, I honor Rockslide.” The mourner’s right arm bulged but did not buckle under the weight of the megalith perched between spikes on his shoulder. The slab was nearly twice his size.
At the altar, a new trio of attendants presided. The first hefted a boulder in his rough-hewn palms, each interlaced finger a wedge of tufa. The third suspended a cross-section of mantle between his detached hands. It was the second who spoke:
“We gather not to clean these slates. We will not wash away history. No.” The priestess paused, her audience rapt. “We venerate it.”
With that, her fellow attendants hurled their sanctified stones into the sky. They slammed into hallowed ground, on either side of the mourner. The lizard did not leap. He did not flinch. He held fast as the shockwave rocked the already jittering earth.
“These are the pillars of our society. Symbols of all that we once were — and all that we shall be.” Surge’s voice boomed. “This is The Tomb of The Fallen, a dolmen for the worthy. But every tomb needs a lid.”
“Rockslide gave his life for our sacred land.” Onyxx clasped the megalith still balanced on the mourner’s shoulder.
“What are you willing to give?” Hellion’s artificial phalanges secured the back of the massive slab.
“My left arm.” Anole bowed as the capstone drifted overhead. It dropped directly onto his meager limb. The mourner teetered but would not topple. “Santo always said…I should have…a matching…set.”
His knuckles skimmed sand before lurching upward. The lid launched into the air, passing the apices of the pillars, but it was the sound that the flock would remember. The wet rip of rending flesh. The bright pop of ball leaving socket. The deafening smack of a closing tomb.
Under the stands, a familiar yet foreign stack of stones turned away. The cairn shuffled through the darkness, exchanging the clamor of the crowd for the quiet of the catacombs.
“That couldn’t have been easy.” The figure was backlit; her tone, however, held no malice. “Watching your own funeral.”
“They…they created a monument to me — to their version of me.” The grim golem faltered. “How do…how can I live up to that?”
[01_grave]
[01_stone]
What is a GLIMPSE?
[day_111]
[day_fri]
Mistaking her form for a mermaid would’ve been forgivable. She moved through the flooded base effortlessly. So effortlessly, in fact, that she didn’t even kick her legs. The interconnecting tunnels had all the hallmarks of a Habitrail, she mused as she entered the atrium of X-Lantis.
{Ms. Jean!} The green lobster wasn’t actually beside himself. Rather, that was his blue brother.
{Hi, Bill. Hey, Don.} Jean Grey offered a friendly smile to the crustaceans. A stream of bubbles escaped her exposed nose. {Thanks for waiting for me.}
{Of course, of course.} Bill the Lobster scurried across a control panel and snapped at a button to release the chamber’s inner door. {Don and I were just debating whether you can get your claws dirty while underwater.}
{Oh?} The former Phoenix waited for the interlocking panes to part. {What’s the verdict?}
{Yep.} Don the Lobster was less patient, slipping through the first crack to form.
{Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.} The viridian decapod scampered through the threshold under Marvel Girl’s hovering heels.
{Nope.} The cerulean shellfish stopped three-quarters of the way down the corridor. {He’s still in there.}
Jean floated ahead. {Would you two mind guarding the door?}
{Not at all.} Bill — antennae swiveling, pincers poised to strike — posted himself next to his brother.
The First Lady of the Atom scanned her palm to release the seal to the connecting suite. Searebro was just as she left it: a staggering sphere fabricated from Atlantean technology, Shi’Ar science, and mutant ingenuity. A symbol of solidarity. A testament to what could be achieved when people unite.
The only difference was the diver methodically dismantling the central communications array. Pure white plasma poured from his wrist mounts. Ankle jets, in tandem with artificial fins, kept his body steady as his arms made precise arcs. The pack on his back hummed almost imperceptibly as it powered his suit and fed oxygen into his ornate helmet.
Jean watched from the scavenger’s blindspot, directly behind his paddling feet. A twitch of her fingertip opened the vents that split Searebro along its hemispheres. Enwrapped in his work, the diver didn’t notice the water level drop until a pressure warning screeched in his ear.
“Sorry, I thought you could use the air.” Marvel Girl, legs still in relaxed repose, approached the floundering thief as he tried to figure out which way was up. “I noticed you only have about twelve minutes left in your tank, and it’s a long way to the surface if you don’t want the bends.”
“Wha-how?!” Nicholas Powell jerked his torso and unleashed the full might of his blasters at the woman behind him.
“Telekinesis,” Jean Grey explained, while waves of electrified ions washed over her and harmlessly dispersed. “I used it to pluck oxygen out of the water on my way in. Now, I have this hydrogen cloud trailing behind me, though, so if you could turn your blasters down, I’d appreciate it.”
“Y-you’re…” The thief smacked at his wrists, halting their flow. “Jean Marvel Grey Phoenix.”
“I get it all jumbled up myself sometimes.” She extended her right hand. “You’re Chance, right?”
“I…yeah, yes.” He accepted it and shook. Nervously. “Would you believe this isn’t what it looks like?”
“It isn’t? That’s too bad.” Marvel Girl released her grip. “I was hoping I found someone who might be interested in bartering.”
“What, um, what would you have in mind?”
“I’d like to take a look at your helmet. In exchange, you’re welcome to take whatever you’d like from this room after I leave.”
Powell tried to regain some modicum of composure, but there was no filling that tank. The clasps under his chin couldn’t unlatch fast enough. “Yeahbsolutely.”
“Allow me.” Grey positioned her hands six inches from either side of Chance’s head. With the splay of her fingers, his helmet exploded. First into major components: the visor, the cameras, the shell, the head cradle, the padding. Then into fine detail: circuitry and wiring, plastics and polystyrene. Finally into a fine mist of molecules.
The thief’s mustache twitched. Every other fiber of his being was paralyzed with fear and awe.
“Thanks.” Jean closed her hands, and the helmet snapped back into place. It barely muffled Powell’s relieved sigh.
Drifting around the equator of the chamber, the former Phoenix reached out, mentally rather than physically, and Searebro responded to her every request. A skullcap peeled from the sphere. Liquid crystal pooled and flexed. Silicon wafers flitted and fluttered. Cables split and rewove. Pathways materialized, written in wire. The C-Shell was born.
The Marvel took her helm and left Chance to his devices.
[00_under]
[00_water]
What is a GLANCE?
[day_107]
[day_mon]
The rapidly deflating dirigible hit the ground running. “Are you hurt?”
“Nothing a bucket of unstable molecules and a fifteen minute break won’t fix.” The courier plucked at the tatters of his uniform. The slits were thin and countless. The pouch affixed to his ribs, thankfully, remained intact.
Fading concern slowed the onetime weather balloon’s pace to a jog. The stampede survivor was on his feet, stuffing a golden apple into the remnants of a pants pocket, before she could offer assistance. She gave him a once-over anyway. “The lacerations do appear to be superficial.”
The runner watched a layer of rubber slough off his would-be helper’s form. “You, uh, wouldn’t be Husk by any chance?”
“Why?” The counselor quirked an eyebrow. “Am I being served?”
“Heh, in a way.” He flipped open the enclosure on his chest and reached inside.
Alarm registered. She snagged a skin tag behind her ear and peeled forward. Spikes shot out along her mandible.
“Whoa-hey-whoa.” Ricochet threw his hands up, palms out. “Don’t maim the messenger (any further).”
Husk halted. “You’re a messenger?”
“Yeah.” He contorted his trunk. One thumb underlined the emblem on his back, while the other haloed his scalp. “Silver hare. Silver hair. It’s a pun. Maybe not a great one.”
“Ah.” Realization dawned. “The delivery service Prodigy has been recommending to everyone.”
“Prodi…?” And dawned again. “Oh, Speed’s Prodigy, not Rit…right. Right. Someday, I’ve gotta meet that guy.”
“In that case, yes.” The counselor smoothed her skin back into place. “I’m Husk.”
“Okay, cool, cool. I’ve got a package from” — the courier paused, scanning his heads-up display — “Jon O. Stormare. Any relation to the actor?”
“No.” Her features warmed. “Spellcheck hates his name.”
“I’m just going to dip into this pocket dimension (pouch dimension?).” His hand eased past the open flap and carefully pulled out a large, white paper bag. “Fresh from Cafe du Monde.”
She wasted no time unrolling the crimped top. Inside, a pair of green socks rested on a piece of parchment. Below the barrier was a mound of warm fritters, covered in a blizzard of powdered sugar. A laugh burbled on her lips. “My feet are going to smell like beignets.”
The delight from the first bite of fried dough was short-lived. Analytical eyes fell on the departing deliveryman, who slinked into dismay as he walked away. Husk had something else to chew on. Paige Guthrie covered her mouth as she asked, “What’s on your mind?”
Ricochet hesitated before gesturing to one of the outsized orbs that comprised the Akademos Habitat. “You work at this clinic, right? You’re some kind of doctor?”
“I do. I trained with Mutantes Sans Frontières.” She folded the beignet bag closed and pinched the crease, her attention never wavering from the courier. “I’m a cognitive behavioral therapist.”
“Can I ask your professional opinion?” He tucked his hands into his pits, shoulders tight, head low.
“Of course.”
“Why can’t I sense danger anymore?”
[01_sign]
[01_here]
What is a GLARE?
[day_108]
[day_tue]
Traversing the island’s tumultuous terrain was no easy task. Cracks cratered into chasms. Streams churned into whirlpools. Geysers sang like teakettles, gushing steam. Mountains crumbled and rose again. The earth quaked. At every turn, the landscape threatened to detonate and devour.
So Joanna Cargill did not turn.
She barreled ahead, a machete cleaving a path south, a bulldozer leveling sand and soil. There was something satisfying about pounding Krakoa’s upper crust back into place.
The substitute Santo Vaccarro did not run. He didn’t dart or dash. Instead, he hopscotched between rubble and ruin, possessing and abandoning debris and detritus, leaving behind tidy pylons with each leap.
It was all the golem could do to keep up with the pathfinder’s frenzied pace.
“This place, it’s almost like home. We built a sanctuary, Faraway.” His tongue was picrite, his jaw feldspar, but she knew the noun was proper. “We had everything we needed. We were everything we needed. A society of mutants, created by mutants, created for mutants. We thrived. We were safe. Until the machines came.”
Frenzy crossed the frothing lowlands in two swift strides. “Sentinels.”
“Is that what you call them?” The replacement Rockslide skipped his sentience across stones. “We didn’t have time to name them. They attacked without warning. And never relented. I remember the terrible thrum of their engines. That sound, it drowned out the screams. We were gone in less than a year. All of us. My friends. My family. My body. Myself.
“Except I’m back somehow. Only me. Why do I get a second chance?”
“I wish I had an answer.” She kicked a steel toe into the base of a bluff and commenced climbing. “Just know you’re not alone. Almost everyone here has led multiple lives. Most not by choice. My favorite memories — my best moments — were on a world that will never exist again.”
“How do you go on?” The question echoed through the cliff face.
“By pushing forward.” Cargill crested the crag. “Who you were is less important here than who you’ll become. Krakoa offers us a new beginning, a chance to redefine ourselves as we want to be seen, and it starts” — pointing past the overlook — “here.”
The epicenter of the earthquakes. The embrace of two long-lost lovers. The junction of Krakoa and Arakko. The Unification Zone.
“Why is this island always trying to kill me?!” Petra surfed a landslide, diverting its course west, away from the Hellfire holdings on the coast.
“Because it met you?” Rictor, perched on a platform of peridotite, stifled aftershocks.
“Harsh.” Frenzy landed beside him.
“Yeah, well, I might be feeling the stress of holding an entire archipelago together.” Julio Richter grimaced. “I honestly can’t tell if Krakoa and Arakko are fighting or fu–“
Joanna Cargill cleared her throat.
“–ornicating?”
“You can’t feel the love?” Avalanche danced across the writhing ridge where the islands intertwined. He absorbed the upward energy of the jutting formation and redirected it down, beveling edges and burnishing the surface. “What a butte.”
Rictor sighed. “Did you find any heavy hitters?”
“Loa’s breaking up the worst of the boulders before they reach the arena. Iceman’s supercooling lava flows. Magma’s sealing crevasses,” Frenzy reported. “But Rockslide’s here.”
Below the platform, gravel hopped like popping corn and amassed into an approximation of an arm, which waved. “Hello.”
Hiding his skepticism would’ve taken effort the geomancer couldn’t spare. “Isn’t he compromised?”
“Aren’t we all?” The pathfinder plummeted from peridotite. “Give him chance.”
“What do we have to lose, right?” Julio wished he could shrug his resignation.
Santo spread himself thin, encircling the knoll Dominikos Petrakis had refined. The ring, perfectly round, burrowed through granite and basalt, scraping the Moho discontinuity. Atop bare lithosphere, arches — forged from excavated minerals — filled the trench. Packed earth plugged gaps and reinforced walls before the next level emerged, the openings slightly smaller and offset from the first. Another level followed, smaller still. And another. And another. Gates begat doors begat windows begat lancets and lunettes and, ultimately, a single skylight, peering through the center of it all.
The structure was a spire of resonant rock. A mutant minaret. Vibrations coiled up its igneous arches and mellowed. Krakoa and Arakko had their release valve.
[02_tall]
[02_tale]
[day_112]
[day_sat]
The Storm descended.
“Brothers and sisters of Krakoa!” The Goddess roused her parish, the congregation gathered for morning mass. “Today is a great day, for today we learn the truth.”
With that invocation, a silhouette obscured the hollow of The Arbor Magna, blocking the warm glow of its heartwood.
“I see her.” Ororo Munroe’s words felt fresh, despite their daily recitation. “Do you?”
“We see her!” The legion chanted. “But do we know her?”
Storm motioned the figure forward. “What is your name?”
“Moira.” The woman stood revealed. “Moira Kinross.”
“And how do I know it’s you, mother?” the windrider inquired.
“Because I lied.” Guilt did not cloud the admission. “In wait, I lied. A sin of omission. You deserve to know. You all do. Krakoa was founded on a simple truth: We fail. Mutants always fail.”
“Oh, dear.” The voice, wise and worldly, bellowed as its owner emerged from the great tree. “You’re half right. We only fail if we don’t work together.”
The freedom fighter shifted through the throng of onlookers. A ‘don’t-you-dare’ glare kept the Primals at bay.
“These are my mothers, my sisters. I know them.” The Goddess held their hands high. “As do you. Their names are Moira X and–“
“Destiny.” Mystique swept her wife into her arms. Their years apart melted away as their kiss deepened.
Storm beamed. “Destiny.”
Behind the believers — beyond the fanatics and the fanfare — Sally Blevins, agent of nothing, tapped a message into her phone. A single thread that would weave a web: “Activate Cicadas.”
[02_all]
[02_out]
next///NEIGHBORS