Panther - A Nightcrawler Fanfiction

44) Tracing Back

[Author's Note: {12-16-2013} Posted

[10/19/13] höllisch = infernal

X-Men Characters in this Chapter: Nightcrawler (Kurt), Professor X (Charles Xavier), Wolverine (Logan), Rogue (Marie), Gambit (Remy), "Phoenix" (Jean), Cyclops (Scott)

OC's: Chet, Kenneth, Panther (Emery)]

"What did you do that for?!" Kurt yelled at Chet. "I could've caught her! Let me out of this höllisch trap!"

"I would also like to get out of your hold," Kenneth sneered at Chet.

"You will not release either of them until I say it's okay," the Professor interjected. "Both are harboring ill intentions right now, and I will not have a fight starting when we should be concerned about Emery's well-being."

"I swear to Gott, Chet! When I get my hands on you..."

'Kurt, be calm,' the Professor told him.

"I can find her you know," Kenneth said.

The Professor turned to look at Kenneth. "Tracing her portal patterns with your own."

"It would take a while to figure out where her portal took her, especially considering she panicked. She probably doesn't even know where she is right now."

"And you want me to let you go find her so she can panic again and send herself to a whole new location? No way," Chet laughed spitefully.

"We will discuss this further after we have returned Kenneth to his cell," the Professor said sternly.

"What? No! You need me!"

"We will determine that ourselves, but for now, you need to go back to prison. Wolverine, Gambit, Chet, please escort Kenneth back to prison. The rest of you will help clean up this explosion. That includes you Kurt, so Chet, release him."

"Kurt, you can move again," he sighed. "But you can't come after me!" he added hastily.

Kurt grumbled but allowed Chet to leave.

"Now let's get to work."

"Don't you think we should be focusing on how to get Emery back?" Kurt asked.

"We don't know where she is, let alone if she's even still in this dimension. We don't know how to find her."

"Cerebo."

"And if she is not in this dimension, Cerebo will not find her."

"We have to try!"

"If you'll recall, Cerebo did not pick up on her whereabouts to begin with."

"But she's out there somewhere!"

"Kurt, I understand you care about her, more so than any of us do I might add, but there is nothing we can do at the present. So help pick up the mess she made, and then we will discuss whether or not to trust Kenneth when everyone involved has returned home."

Kurt dropped his head. "Yes, sir."

Emery gasped as she hit the pavement. She pushed herself to her feet and absentmindedly brushed dirt off her butt with one hand while the other rose to cover her eyes. Her head was swimming. Why did that happen? Why were Kenneth and Chet together? Wasn't Chet part of the X-men now? Did that mean Kenneth was part of the X-men? Why would Professor Xavier let Kenneth join the X-men? He wasn't an outstanding guy in any way. He was only there to haunt her, to tear her apart emotionally. Was the whole world out to get her?

Her head finally stopped spinning. She dropped her hand to her side and caught her first sight of where she was. The laboratory. Seeing Kenneth always reminded her of the one thing she didn't want to remember, the one place that she never wanted to return to. The laboratory: where both she and Kenneth, at different points in time, had fallen victim to the government's experiments on mutants. It was how her fluffy, cat-like tail had turned into that of a demon: leathery with a sharp tip. She didn't understand how it'd happened. She didn't understand how it hadn't happened to her brother. He'd been inside longer. Not that the building was there anymore. No, they'd moved to a new location, completely demolishing the building that was once there.

But Emery knew the feel of this place. The tarmac was still in place, as was the expanse of sand between it and the nearest city. She was only about a hundred-twenty miles from where she'd been found by the x-men. She could walk it again if she had to. The only problem was: everything was glowing. Every speck of sand, every particle in the tarmac, in the air... it was all glowing. She couldn't see anything in the "real" world, because she saw it all in it's state of plasma.

She tapped into this kind of vision before. In fact, every time she used plasma in any way, she saw a bit of this. But this. Everything was plasma, in every color of the rainbow, flashing before her eyes like a lightning storm and yet flowing around her like a stream. Her head began to throb in pain. She closed her eyes to shut the world out, but the headache kept building up.

What would the Professor say? What would Kurt say? What should she do? How could she get rid of this feeling?

What would Kenneth do?

Anger.

Focus.

Force.

Violence.

Kenneth would concentrate his powers and expell them all at once, or somehow pull them inside.

Pull them inside. Emery thought she could do that.

She dropped to the ground, bent her legs into a meditation position, and tried to reign in her powers. It felt like it was working. Her headache began to go away; she felt more in control. And then her mind ghosted across the truth, hidden from her mind by her own brother.

It was her parents that had sold her to the government. They'd sold her to them, just as they'd done with Kenneth. Kenneth had been suppressing her powers, hiding her powers from everyone for a long time, until he'd been locked away in prison with that power inhibiting collar around his neck. But even that didn't stop him. He still found a way to get his collar off, without sounding an alarm. He'd only put the collar back on when others were to see him. When he was alone in his cell, he went into her mind.

He'd been helping her.

Her grasp over her powers broke, shattering into a thousand pieces in her mind. The resounding explosion around her shook the very ground she was sitting on for miles around. She didn't move until the ground stopped shaking. Then she opened her eyes. She found that she was sitting in a circle upon the ground, and a wide circle around her on the ground was scorched black.

She sighed. At least her vision was back to normal right?