Panther - A Nightcrawler Fanfiction

42) Mind Games

[Author's Note: Sorry it took so long for me to get this chapter up. I was in a writer's block phase for this story =( But I've been working on another one all summer too =) Again, sorry for the long wait. Hope you guys had a good summer.

X-Men Characters in this Chapter: the Professor (Charles Xavier), Wolverine (Logan), Beast (Dr. McCoy), Nightcrawler (Kurt)

OCs: Panther (Emery), Chet, and Kenneth]



Emery wasn't alone. She knew that. She knew Kenneth was somewhere nearby. She couldn't sense him and she'd couldn't feel his mind, but her gut told her he was the one who'd played a trick on her mind earlier. There was no trace of the floor having had caved in, and she knew he was good at illusions.

She took another step forward and the ground cracked beneath her foot, splitting outward in all different directions.

'It's just an illusion,' she told herself and then forced herself to take another step forward. The cracks in the floor became even larger, separating and leaving various gaps in the floor. One gap spread her feet further apart than they were. She wobbled for a second, her balance threatening to abandon her. Then, she pushed her palms downward and let her plasma fill in the gaps. Stepping forward, on the sealed up floor, she found that when she stepped even her plasma cracked. She applied more plasma to the new cracks.

She continued to mend the illusion-created cracks that her feet made until she made it to a door that reached outside. By then she was tired. She hadn't exhausted her powers, no, she had quite a bit of that left, but her body was definitely feeling the strain her brain was using to combat the false reality around her.

Emery reached out with one hand for the door, while holding the floor together with her plasma with the other. As her hand enclosed around the doorknob, it melted beneath her fingertips, turning into red plasma and dripping through her fingers onto the cracked concrete. Her mind registered once again that it was in fact an illusion. The red plasma confirmed it. Now if only she could convince herself that what she was seeing wasn't real. It looked awfully real, but she knew that once she convinced herself it wasn't real, she could force Kenneth's illusion's out of her brain.

~

"Do you think you two can do that?"

"Yes." "No."

Chet and Kurt looked at each other.

"The Professor thinks this is our best shot at putting Kenneth back behind bars," Chet argued.

"I do nicht trust you," Kurt responded, crossing his arms in front of him.

"So you're going to leave Emery in potential danger because you're afraid that I'll use my powers against you?"

"Potential is the keyword. We do nicht know for sure if Emery is in any danger at all. Kenneth is her bruder after all."

"Last time Emery saw Kenneth she was terrified of him!"

"Last time Emery saw Kenneth she did nicht have powers of her own!" Kurt shot back.

"Kurt, be reasonable, Kenneth killed a lot of people. Without hesitation!"

"And Emery ist very Gut at what she does with her powers. She ist stronger than de Professor!"

"That doesn't mean she is stronger than Kenneth!"

Kurt and Chet glared at each other.

The Professor cleared his throat to get their attention.

"Boys. If this isn't going to work, we need to come up with another plan."

"We don't need another plan, these two need to get over one another and work as a team," Logan growled. "The x-men are a team. If I can work with others, you two can work with each other long enough to save someone you both care about."