X-Men: Fight the Future

[Samantha McManus]

Sam has answered the call fairly quickly, having headed to the lockers in the Point and suited up.

Well, she's suited up from a locker with her name on it, that her combination worked in. She's not quite as familiar with the design of this particular uniform, but at least it fits.

Her eyes are a bit unfocused as she tries to keep tabs of the shifting boundaries of the place they're headed into.

[Narrator]

The reality bubble shimmered and waved, with the streets of Malden being...not replaced, mind you; 30 years wasn't enough for things as old as Malden to entirely change. But behind the old, familiar buildings rose a number of futuristic buildings, including a spherical, glass and steel dome.

[Robin Stanton]

"Guess I'll be the tourist guide." Robin says, looking through the portal at her home-dimension/time.

[Aiden Mitchell]

"Well, it is all rather shiny," Aiden said. He was wearing his Genoshan military uniform and had rather wanted to see what this paradise was about.

[Bobby Bowen]

Bobby let out a low whistle.

He was older and wiser, and had opted for a more muted exploration uniform, instead of his old scuba suit X-Man duds.

“Seems a little ostentatious.. I approve.”

[Robin Stanton]

"I guess? That's the Braddock Shopping Arcade!"

[John Hino]

John stood by Robin, dressed in a borrowed X-Men uniform.

"I have to say, it feels good to be dressed for battle again."

[Artemis]

Artemis had been rather... insistent on joining this particular team. She'd cited how her unique look would be slightly less conspicuous in that environment than the others, her ability to interface with advanced tech, increased mobility in an urban environment. In truth she'd spent 24 hours couped up in a basement and acting as a makeshift RAM card - if she was going to go on a mission she wanted to go somewhere new. And from the expression being projected onto her face, she was impressed.

"Oh, I could get used to this."

[Narrator]

"We've got time to buy some souvenirs, right? I mean, shutting down the device should be null persp for a team of this size," Zoe grinned, flanked by Anita and Calvin.

[William Stanton]

The comms sprung to life.

"OK, I'm here with...

Tosh, was it?

Tosh, and uh...I've got the mission schematics here, William said, over the intercom.

"There might be static once you go into the various, uh, dimensional pockets, so we're going to, uh, get this all out now.

Each of you has a, uh, 'dimensional disturbance translocator?' Something like that. It should help you locate the source of the signal once you enter into dimensional pockets. There should be some kind of device producing the signal; we're not entirely sure what sort of device it is, so you'll have to improvise to take it off-line. It is PROBABLY better to turn them off carefully, but they have to go off one way or another -- if you can't shut them off, smash them into bits.

Uh...yeah, that should, uh, about cover it. Theoretically, we should try to do this at similar points, but as long as, uh, no one takes TOO too long, we should be...should be alright, right?


Is that, uh...everyone's clear on that, yeah? Good luck, X-Men."

[Narrator]

The team entered the dimensional rift and entered...Maldon.

A Maldon infested by ZOMBIES?!?!

...Wait, no, they weren't zombies, they were teenagers. They were walking around, muttering into their throat mikes, staring off into the distance. Telepaths would notice that their thoughts were more...ordered than the random snippets of surface thoughts they were used to hearing. They were...live-blogging. Just walking around, letting their Engines film what they were doing and streaming their lives to friends and people around the world.

Damn teenagers these days, always omnipresent on social media.

Holographic billboards popped up and around the mall, advertising products people had never heard of, sequals to movies that hadn't been made yet. An interview with Ryan Gabriel of the Avengers was being hyped up for later that night; the re-election campaign for Prime Minister Dashwood was in full swing.

The other thing people from the present might notice was an uptick in visible mutations around. There was a greater diversity in unusual appendages and skin colors, as mutants seemed to be walking around and talking with normal people, laughing as they went. Even with the University in town, mutants were still very much a minority in the Maldon that most of these X-Men had came from. That didn't seem to be the case, here -- if anything, they outnumbered 'normal' people.

Though, a billboard advertising artificial horns as the 'in' fashion at the moment might explain some of the increased body diversity. Mutant fashion was in.

All-in-all, this future was a little louder, a little brighter and a little stranger than people from the past would be used to.

The device beeped quietly, indicating that the source of the disruption was coming from inside the mall.

[Robin Stanton]

"Welcome... to the World of Tomorrow!" Robin announces way too dramatically.

[Samantha McManus]

"What the hell is wrong with them?" Sam says with some confusion, as she starts making her way towards the mall.

[Robin Stanton]

"What do you mean? They're live-casting." she says, pulling a small device from her pocket that she sticks on the bottom-ridge of her eye-socket and after a brief moment her eye shimmers with the HUD being projected into her field of vision.

"Hey hey, guess who's back! Turns out there's shitty reception in other dimensions, but I found a bunch of swell dudes and dudettes. Say hi, everyone!" she says, turning around to glance over the group of X-Men, the little device blinking with a dim red light to indicate it's functioning as a camera at the moment.

[Aiden Mitchell]

"The Vigiles would love this kind of active participation in public oversight," Aiden said watching the groups live-casting.

[Samantha McManus]

"They just feel... off."

[Robin Stanton]

"I'ma... gonna go ahead and snip that one out on account of not wanting our Sam come down on me like a ton of bricks." Robin chuckles.

[John Hino]

"Is it hypocritical of me to point out the narcissism of it all when I have a 35 percent market share on the technology?"

[Robin Stanton]

"You can point out whatever the bleep you want." she says, making an actual censoring beeping sound. "As long as you hit me with that verified appearance tag so I can get this mission trending." she grins.

[Aiden Mitchell]

"Missions still get livecast regularly in this universe?" Aiden asked.

[Samantha McManus]

"Let's just get it done," she says, not pausing as she continues towards the mall.

[John Hino]

"Unless they involve something sensitive."

John's throat moved almost imperceptibly and Robin's HUD was hit with a notification.

[Aiden Mitchell]

"Somebody is monitoring for sensitive material then?" Aiden asked John moving to follow the Morrigan into the mall.

[John Hino]

"No. Merely user discretion," he answered, "Though I imagine plenty of young X-Men resent being told to restrain the impulse."

[Aiden Mitchell]

"Or perhaps one of Apocalypse's minions hasn't killed an entire team on live broadcast for the world to see yet," Aiden suggested.

[Narrator]

Someone tried to hand some of the X-Men a free sample of a kebab as they walked in to the mall proper.




Glass and steel, with a lot of smooth lines, was the architectural style du jour,with an open public garden providing a natural feel to everything. The shops themselves took advantage of the holographic technology of the day to display rotating mannequins with clothing changing every few minutes, hovering samples of food from the food court -- all sorts of shops of all shapes and sizes.

The device beeped again, indicating the device was somewhere up above, possibly on the top floor.

[Robin Stanton]

"Well there's privacy screens and you can set it up so it blurs out things or even auto-edit you out of other people's casts or only certain people can see you and whatnot. It's all very technical and boring and casting yourself doing A Crime is basically just begging for a bunch of people to come punch you in the face, so I dunno, most people aren't that dumb. Besides, you got internet and stuff, right, so who's stopping people from uploading themselves doing horrible stuff there?"

[John Hino]

John, ever the carnivore, eagerly chomped down a poor kebab.

"Looks like we go up," he said after swallowing.

[Aiden Mitchell]

"Oh, no I think it's brilliant to have cameras embedded in the eyes of your citizenry," Aiden said entirely serious. "If worlds were not ending the opportunity to study the technology would be a priority."

[Narrator]

Calvin, meanwhile, had headed into one of the tech shops, scanning and looking to grab what he could. You know, for, uh, research.

[Narrator]

After the X-Teams had reached their fill marveling at the future, they proceeded to make there way up to the top of the sphere.

There, they found a small, blinking device, just sitting there on the promenade, in a situation which certainly would not be defined as 'an obvious trap'.

Surely.

[Samantha McManus]

"Alright, I need telekinetics and technopaths front and center if we've got any," Sam says, circling around the device.

[Artemis]

Artemis must have been the only one to actually wave when Robin introduced them to all of her followers. All in all she was very impressed with what the future had to hold. Though suddenly her tough and capable design felt a little... old-fashioned and clunky compared to these styles.

"I don't know I feel about mutations being... trendy. This seems a little like dressing as a native American for Halloween. But, if that's what it takes for people to stop fearing them, then venite, ut exhiberet convivium, et risu invicem."

[...]

Artemis kept her distance from the device, her projected face flickering and disappearing to be replaced by a plethora of readouts as she attempted to scan the thing. She was going to avoid a direct interface unless absolutely necessary.

[Aiden Mitchell]

Aiden went to patrol around the promenade looking for something non-idyllic like a bunch of soldiers hiding in the ornamental bushes.

"This was far too simple," Aiden muttered as he walked.

[Bobby Bowen]

Bony took up a defensive perimeter, letting the Mind geeks do their thing.

He took a seat on a bench, running his eyes over the area around the thingy.

“Eyes open, folks. Lots of civilians and enclosed places to pop out of.”

[Phalanx]

Artemis' readouts would detect it first -- a massive buildup of energy, followed by the detection of a number of technopathic intelligences.

Sam's telepathy would be the next to twig on, as a teleportation beam, uh, beamed in a dozen black-and-yellow beings, with cables and wires sticking out, and near-dead skin being visible on occasion in cracks in the technological exterior.

"He was correct that you would attack here. You have walked into our trap -- inferior, like all flesh beings. You will submit to the Technarchy and become Phalanx...or you shall die."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh eww, that's no way to treat machines or bodies."

[Artemis]

Artemis really didn't have time to warn the others before most of the group found themselves surrounded.

"Um... excuse me? Who are you calling a flesh being?"

[Bobby Bowen]

“Yeah, not flesh. I’m metal. Are you blind as well as ugly?”

Bobby stood up, getting in a fighting stance.

[Aiden Mitchell]

"I think there's another choice, scum," Aiden said activating his ability.