Compromising Positions

[Robin Stanton]

"You didn't shout Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet..." the baseball complains as it slams through the window and goes flying out towards the gulch.

And as she's sailing through the air Robin unfolds back into her normal self, aside from the two grappling-hook spears that are her arms and before she can go careening into the chasm between the two mindscapes she fires them off towards the edges to try and help pull them closer together.

[Narrator]

When she had tried this trick before, it had been nigh-impossible; the worlds being too far apart with no connective tissue.

Now, however, they were hinged, and connected via the power of the X-Man, thanks to the mental energy provided by Sam and the science brought by Tosh.

And so, slowly but surely, as Robin pulled, the top half of the world...

began...

to...

rotate...

[Robin Stanton]

"Yessss..." she grins through the strain as she can feel things move. She lets up for a moment to reinforce her grip and bulk up her arms with a shuddering ripple. Even with the Scienced-up hinges and the Morrigan's mental oomph it's still bit of a daunting task. Movement or not, she failed at this before and not only is the chasm wide, the weird twisty geometry makes it hard to wrap your head around.

As she hangs there, arms straining against the weight of her Dad's mind she starts to hum and slips into quietly singing to herself.

"We must be strong! And we must be brave!
We gotta find every bit of strength that we have and never let it go!"

[Narrator]

The Power of Song is a curious thing, and effective, too.

As Robin strained and put all her effort into it, the world continued to flip, slowly...but now faster, and faster...

...and now it had gone beyond that 50/50 gravity point, and was falling down towards being combined rather than falling up away from the other side. Meaning it was accelerating thanks to gravity.

Meaning Robin was in the way where the two sides would presumably slam into each other very hard.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin's eyes bulge out a little as she realizes the two halves have reached some kind of tipping point and she lets her arms go slack, falling down deeper into the rapidly shrinking divide. Then she reaches the extent of her arms and let's them stretch just a moment before letting them snap back towards more normal proportions and catapulting herself upwards between the two cliff-sides crashing towards each other. The scream escaping her mouth is somewhere between thrilled excitement and mild panic.

[Narrator]

One world, crashing into another, was not without it's dangers. After all, there was now a massive Faultline between the two halves, and it didn't always line up perfectly with it's counterpart on the other side.


In addition, as the two sides slammed into one another, a massive shockwave rippled out, knocking over anyone standing in it's path, breaking windows and causing property damage all throughout both sides of the town. There would be some cleanup the citizens would have to do.

But, for better or for worse, where once stood two mindscapes, layered on top of one another, there was now just one.

[Samantha McManus]

Thankfully, Robin is airborne again at about the time Sam has poured out the window, the flock converging on Robin.

Robin will rather suddenly find Sam's waiting arms under her as the flock merges back into the redhead just as what passes for gravity around here kicks in.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin sails clear of the two halves slamming together by mere inches and sighs in relief as she flies up and away from the massive crash and into the safety of the flock converging around her. "Oh hi Sam!" she grins as she's caught and the two hang in the air for a moment before Robin looks down and notices that her hand got caught in the crash of the big reunification, her arm stretched to it's limit.

"Ah beans..." she manages before the both of them are flung back down towards the ground and land in a great splortch of pinkish goop cushioning most of the impact.

[Samantha McManus]

"...I imagined that going quite a bit better," Sam groans as she extricates herself from the bubblegum crisis.

[Robin Stanton]

"My bad..." the goop blubbers, although it sounds more like 'mwah blawd'

[Narrator]

Whether it had gone better or worse, what was done was done. It looked, at least for now, like everything was holding, if not quite the same as it was before.

Then again, what ever is?

[Samantha McManus]

"We need all hands on deck here. Robin can't stay linked up to Will for much longer."

[Robin Stanton]

"I'mb fiiime..." she blobs as she starts pulling herself together. "Did it wowbk? Howb'sit blooking?" she says as she grows some eyestalks to go with her vague approximation of a slug.

[Narrator]

Indeed, it appeared to have worked. Only time would tell if the new connections would stick, but this was probably all they could do in here -- or, at least, all they could do in terms of re-integrating the two Wills.

[Samantha McManus]

"I mean it's kind of a dog's breakfast but that's not exactly our fault. It'll give them something to do, aye?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Cause everybody loves homework!" Robin exclaims with ironic enthusiasm as she bounces up into a more humanoid shape.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"So... what now? Is that all we can do?"

[Samantha McManus]

"For now. We might need to check up on him every so often, but for now we should let him heal."

[Robin Stanton]

"Guess we'll see how it all translates into practice. Can you take us back out?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Aye. Mind the gap, and all that," she says as she starts to ease all of them out of Will's mind.

[Will Stanton]

Up, up and out through the mists of the Astral!

And into some hellish cold, as the trio had been moved from their nice cozy place in the dorm kitchen to the Point at some point? And there were icicles everywhere? And a pack of wolves looking at them strangely? Another day at Xaviers, I guess.


The Will-dough stayed still for a moment, and then twitched. Once, twice, three-times, and then it spilled out of the bowl, reforming back into a humanoid shape, hands and knees on the floor, breathing heavily.

For Sam, Tosh, and the variety pack of wolves, Will would look a bit different than normal -- obviously the same person, but just a little...off.

To Robin, however, it was very familiar.

[Robin Stanton]

"Whoa, hey, who messed with the thermostat?" Robin groans as she wakes up to the cold.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam's eyes flutter open and she takes in her surroundings.

"Wait a tic... where are we?"

She looks to Tereza.

"What happened?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Yeah. What gives with putting us on ice?"

[Tereza Rozanov]

"You're welcome," Tereza says, arms crossed. "Next time I'll let the evil mushrooms eat you all. I had to drag you out of the room and deal with some strange visions to boot."

[Robin Stanton]

"Ooh... yeah, that one's on me. My bad." Robin grins sheepishly. "T'was for a good cause though! How you're feeling, Daddio?"

[Will Stanton]

"I think I'm going to throw up," Will burbled. "But I will live.

Let's...let's not do that again for a while, ok?"

[Samantha McManus]

"So ah... you're the owner of one less Will?" Sam says with a grimace to Tereza.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Wait... what evil mushrooms?" Tosh asked, lost.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"I see," she says, looking at Will with a concerned eye. "Well, that will simplify some of Mom's work, I suppose."

[Will Stanton]

Will gave a tired and pale thumbs up to that. "Groovy.

Man, can anyone else hear that? Like, echoing footsteps in my brain."

[Samantha McManus]

"I think uh... all your constituent parts have a fixer-upper on their hands."

[Will Stanton]

"Normal speech, Sam. We can use our outside voices here," Will smiled up at her, tiredly.

"Not surprised in the least to hear that my brain, as always, remains broken. But...

Thank you. All of you."

[Robin Stanton]

"Long story, Tosh. Brain nasties."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"We do what we can. I'm sure maintenance will be after a wolf pelt when they get a good look at what I did to the kitchen."

[Robin Stanton]

"I'll see what I can do to help. The mushroom madness getting out was kind of my bad anyway. Worth it though!"

[Samantha McManus]

"You're not broken, Will." She insists.

"This was just a patch job after both sides of you had started building again. It was messy. But it'll heal, and we'll keep at it."

[Will Stanton]

Will waved Sam off, a little, as he unsteadily rose to his feet.

"I get ya, I get ya, I know what you mean. It was a whole thing, and you guys did a lot of good work, one can assume. I'm whole again, and that's important."

[Samantha McManus]

"And look, none of us are judging based off of anything we saw in there, aye?"

[Will Stanton]

"That sounds an awful lot like a "but" is coming," he said, with a wry smile.