Given how distracted she is, the beginning is a great deal like looking up and realizing you'd wandered somewhere you hadn't been expecting to while lost in thought. She hadn't gotten a particularly good look at her alt's living room, but this is not it. It's as though she was suspended in midair in the center of a mass of swirling lines, that gradually clear out to form shapes and images.
Her world. It can only be hers, of the three, because it's dotted with minds of a familiar kind--mutants. Too few, far too few, and more winking out all the time as the Sentinels reap their bloody work.
The image dissolves, and reforms--one of the deadly metal creatures, looming over a screaming woman. A barrier springs up between them. Protection, murmurs a voice from nowhere.
Another Sentinel, shifting rubble out of the way to reach the young boy it was shielding, raising an arm to--crush him, or spear him through the chest, or something. It halts, shuddering--and collapses in on itself. Vengeance, the voice whispers. (She hates herself, a little, because she has gotten to the point where that sounds more appealing.)
She sees herself, older, wiping out a horde of them with a single magical blast. She sees others. She sees her sister, in an outfit not much less ridiculous than the one her alt had been wearing. She sees a girl with purple skin being offered a similar choice.
I will follow you, the voice murmurs. Your people need not be powerless. You can be the vanguard of a new era. A leader, as those before you were, and would have continued to be. You are not broken beyond repair.
She sees herself, laughing, face lined with past grief but not so overburdened by it that she cannot walk forwards.
no subject
Her world. It can only be hers, of the three, because it's dotted with minds of a familiar kind--mutants. Too few, far too few, and more winking out all the time as the Sentinels reap their bloody work.
The image dissolves, and reforms--one of the deadly metal creatures, looming over a screaming woman. A barrier springs up between them. Protection, murmurs a voice from nowhere.
Another Sentinel, shifting rubble out of the way to reach the young boy it was shielding, raising an arm to--crush him, or spear him through the chest, or something. It halts, shuddering--and collapses in on itself. Vengeance, the voice whispers. (She hates herself, a little, because she has gotten to the point where that sounds more appealing.)
She sees herself, older, wiping out a horde of them with a single magical blast. She sees others. She sees her sister, in an outfit not much less ridiculous than the one her alt had been wearing. She sees a girl with purple skin being offered a similar choice.
I will follow you, the voice murmurs. Your people need not be powerless. You can be the vanguard of a new era. A leader, as those before you were, and would have continued to be. You are not broken beyond repair.
She sees herself, laughing, face lined with past grief but not so overburdened by it that she cannot walk forwards.