Xaviers!

"What the fudge, Thresher!"

Conduit jumps up from her seat in the circular meeting room. On the screens in front of her are numerous scenes depicting Hollydale, including the wrecked store Will is in. An half-empty pizza-box that was sitting in her lap clatters to the ground and her feet knock around a couple empty soda cans. Seems she's been sitting in that exact spot for a while. But now she's stomping through the room, looking for her oversized shark-friend.

"Your idea of revenge is too... happy," the cyborg hulk answered from the corner with disgust, "So I stirred the pot."

"You're breaking stuff! Important stuff! I set up a de-li-cat balance!" she says, overemphasizing every syllable as the young teen stomps towards the much bigger shark-man.

"We should be breaking them," he angrily growled back, "not putting them on g-rated TV! They need to suffer for what they've done!"

"Well I'm having fun!" she stubbornly insists. "We can always break them later or when they're being stupid. Like that growly one. I put her in a nasty box." she grins proudly.

"I'd look again if I were you," he said with relish as he saw the box vanish on one of the monitors.

Conduit spins around in a huff, her eyes zig-zagging across the screens for a moment until she finds the one showing the scene in the police station.

"Ugh!" she grunts, hands balled into fists. "W-well... whatever! Look at her, she's a mess. And now that's gonna mess with SleetDoggo." she says, trying to play it off and desperately trying to ignore the realization how stupid the word 'doggo' sounds when said out loud.

"Don't you see little one?" he said with tenderness, "Even in your fancy dollhouse, these people are trouble. Left alone, the vermin will destroy your world of lies just like they did to Panopticon. You know the solution."

His tone became aggressive again. "So grow up and do what needs doing! Make their existence Hell. Boil their blood and grind their bones to dust. Annihilate them!"

"No." she says stubbornly. "I'm not done with them yet. You can only boil 'em, mash 'em and stick 'em in a stew once. I'm gonna take away their world over and over, like they did to us and then you can squish 'em. Besides, what are they gonna do? It's a real world projected by computers! In there I am unstoppable!" All the screens in the room show a dramatic rendition of a camera zoom in on Conduit's face wreathed in shadows and illuminated only by her glowing eyes. In reality a very short, young teen in a knee-length dress is cackling to herself and trying to grand-stand in front of a shark that is easily five times her mass and full of teeth. She looks ridiculous.

Thresher rolled his pitiless augmented eyes. "Just you wait. They will force your hand and then they're mine."

"Hrmph. We just gotta mind-warble them again. It's just the two who caught on, it's no problem." she says and taps her ear-piece.

"Hey Ci-Ci?" She waits. Taps her foot. "Bugaboo?"

"Ah fudge, she's not in her pod!"

A couple days previously...

Conduit is practically prancing down the hallway of the Point, occasionally twirling around to look back at her companions who are following her a little less enthusiastically. "Ooh, there's so many toys in here! This is perfect! Look! A control center all set up already!" she says as she runs down into the center of the meeting room, twirling in the middle with glowing eyes. "They got a plane and a workshop and... and... Oh my god, you guys!" Her voice drops to a hushed whisper. "They got spatial hardlight emitters."

"English, please." an impatient voice asks as she steps out of the dim lighting in the hallway and into the brightly lit central chamber of the Point.

Conduit looks at Cailleach and considers her audience, chewing on her lip for a moment as the gears in her head spin. Finally they seem to click and her face lights up with a grin.

"It's a machine that makes dreams into real, physical things."

"I can already do that." is the disdainful response.

"Ah, but I can make it do that aaaaaall over! The whole place! All of them, inside a dream of our making!"

"You dreams are callow and immature. And his are brutish and uninspired." she says, gesturing at Thresher.

Conduit frowns and angrily huffs a strand of hair out of her face.

"Fine, you can have your own little spoooooky corner." she says, wriggling her fingers.

Cailleach narrows her eyes at Conduit and then she seems to strike upon an idea and one corner of her mouth twitches into a smirk for a moment.

"It's a deal, little one. Show me your phantasmagoric machine."

Back in the Present...

Conduit is sprinting down the hallway, past the workshop and towards the doors at the end of the corridor. The big burnished steel doors open as she approaches and she hurries into the large circular room that's humming with activity, countless amounts of data being channeled from the Danger Room into the giant transmitter that is the Cerebra Dome. In the middle the raised capsule is propped open, a trail of the blue-ish liquid inside leading away from it and towards the door Conduit just entered through.

"Ah crud!"

Thresher thunked in after her. "I knew the creepy bitch wouldn't follow the plan," he growled, despite hating said plan.

Conduit sighs. "It's fine, she went outside so she must have ended up in Hollydale. I just gotta track her down and... What do you mean she's not in there!?" she responds to what her power tells her about the program. "All the doors out of here lead in there. She can't just have disappeared!" she seems to argue with the data.

"Ack!" she stomps her foot, then hops into the air and stomps down with both when that wasn't satisfactory. And again. And again. "Why! Is! Everyone! So! Stupid!" Finally she stops and stares at the ground, panting. "Fine." she finally decides, standing up straight and reaching up to brush her hair out of her eyes that are set in an angry frown. "Fun-time's over. Blow it all up! Blow it all to heck and sift through the ashes!"

Without waiting for a response she starts stomping out of the room and down the hallway until she gets to the large doors of the main entrance to the Point. They snap open as she approaches and reveal the main-street of Hollydale. At least until she steps through the door and into the simulation. Immediately she's surrounded by a shimmering, fractal, pixellated distortion and she breaks into a run and leaps in an impossible arc, into the air and across the city.

When Thresher follows he's surrounded by a similar distortion except this one folds in on him, fractions of beach and ocean visible in the swirling pixels.