Precursor To The Beast: Presented by Solemn and Assallya, more to come.
Laura's scream reached every corner of the Danger Room, a scream of unimaginable pain. To her credit, she fought hard against the control. As hard as she had ever fought against anything; against conditioning, and soullessness. Against being used again. Sharp as her mind is she simply couldn't stab back against the darkness - couldn't slash through the shadows reaching to all the unwanted corners of her mind.
At first, it wasn't as if the Shadow King knew (or did he?) that there was some special scent, a special trigger. If he did, his sadism was just an extra twist of the knife - a twist all too familiar. She could feel her consciousness whittling into the onrushing white noise. It grew and she fell to one knee, her claws sawing at the edges of her fingers in an attempt to drag her back.
Sarah and the Danger Room seemed to be miles away, and then lifetimes. Every death she'd ever been a part of, her mother's, her sensei's, her first kill, her last kill, the hundreds of others in between. They all flashed through her mind in a Kubrickian attempt to red wash her strengthened consciousness. It stopped for an instant, her eyes opened and she spotted an undoubtedly bewildered Sarah.
Laura knew Sarah could see the horror and the pleading and the pain in her eyes and she tried her hardest to scream, to tell her to run. She felt the adrenaline building like before, she felt her flesh getting hot and her heart rate increasing. A flood of heightened senses, her organized thoughts flittering like kindled ash, the scent she could never ignore flooding her mind.
It was different this time, she could feel everything. She could tell it wasn't like it was because...the world didn't just go red. Laura was present. Paralyzed in her own mind, watching her compatriot fade from friend to prey. There was nothing she could do except beg to wake up or...beg that Sarah could kill her. She hoped, in these moments before it all left lucid and moved to paralytic nightmares, that Sarah could get away.
"Laura?" Sarah asked, seeing nothing much more than a severe headache.
Then Sarah spied the blood. Laura could see through the red haze that it unsettled the blond mutant. She somehow realized something was wrong.
"I think we should get the professor," Sarah said after only a moment's consideration and then moved to tap the communicator at her belt. Laura watched Sarah pat herself down, finding only soft silk, the sheer material of her sorceress' harem outfit. She was probably looking for the communicator that she normally glued to her skin while she was in costume on a mission but couldn't find it. She then saw Sarah almost call out to the Danger Room for help. The useless ditz apparently, momentarily forgetting that without power, the Danger Room wasn't going to be opening a radio channel to anybody. Then she turned away from Laura, padding across the steel tiled floor on her bare feet, apparently going for the gym bag that had previously been in the captain's cabin of the ship.
Laura couldn't make out what the word Sarah said meant. She couldn't recognize her own name, anger flooded in with the most sadistic of euphoric mental grins. She was going to feel herself enjoying this, to feel herself reveling in the hunt. X could see how it unsettled her, she could feel it in the air. She could taste Sarah in the worst senses imaginable.
Time moved a little slow than it had before, her movement wasn't as rigid as usual. Her body almost seemed to flow, her arms hanging lazily with claws fully extended. The blood had run down her gloves, soaking in with the old stains. Fitting. Laura tipped and swayed slightly, as if getting used to standing as she rose. Her breathing picked up audibly, adapting a soft growl with every inhalation. She took a rough step forward as Sarah shuffled back. The comprehensive parts of her brain seemed to struggle with reality, it was impossible to tell if this was really happening, but in her stomach she knew. She could feel just how hungry looking at Sarah made her.
As her prey - no, Sarah. Still Sarah... Moved for her gym bag. Her body processed it immediately as a potential escape route, her overwhelming urges bled into the little bit that was still conscious. In a futile attempt...she thought of the ship, then to the mission. To her friends. Her family, Logan. Her loved ones, the people that mattered. To meeting Sarah for the first time.
Her memories faded into nothingness, her last stretch of hope popping like a kite string.
X took another step forward, this time much more balanced. Her torso bowing low and her arms extended on either side. It was unfortunately all too obvious that this was no mere headache.