The funny thing about being made of sheer capital-N Nothingness for so long was that Umbra hadn’t accounted for [i]pain.[/i] The sensation of flesh being flayed from bone, the hot and debilitating throb of burning meat, the numbness of lightning- Everybody had a tolerance for pain that sat somewhere, he wasn’t used to it. It overwhelmed it, his senses on the verge of rushing to a foreign brain to throw a foreign, metaphorical breaker to shut everything down.

It left him open to damn near anything Xavier could do on the mental front, no less.

Hearing the commotion ahead, Ryder booked it and whirred her laser gun to life. She hit the bottom of the elevator shaft with a grinding noise as her telekinesis cushioned the fall against twisted metal, and saw the chaos. Lasers flickering off walls, Wolverine going mad in Umbra faces, Beast doing beastly things… That was what she hoped for. Becker was gone, but Umbra’s consciousness occupied the body the exact same way. And Umbra was barely clinging to reality as it was now that several highly trained mutants were unloading hell and fury into him. Storm’s lightning barely gave him the chance to move.

Becker was an ordinary human. Umbra was being flogged so much his loose footholds over reality meant damn near nothing.

[i]NO.[/i]

[i]NO. NO. NO.[/i]

The hallway shuttered.

Ryder pointed the gun at his face, and another beam filled the hall. Neon blue, unlike the bright red from Cyclops’ powers. It left a nice hole where his jaw was five seconds ago.

But he still existed.

[i]SHE IS MINE.[/i]

[color=00ffff][i]No, I’m fucking not.[/i][/color]

In the lightness abyss that Xavier had dropped himself into, Ryder appeared. Not unlike the first time they properly interacted, her presence weighed down on this space like an anvil. The walls that were and weren’t there became nails on a chalkboard. She was what he wanted, but he could no longer reach for her.

[color=00ffff][i]Your fucking master plan came apart. And it’s your own damn fault, you piece of shit.[/i][/color]