Fractals

Fractals Chapter Forty Nine (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… All well on the kitty front… InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are marshmallowy goodness for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile…hmmm. No smut for a few more chapters but it’ll be there. Morgan: *poke* Are you alive? Readers/Reviewers: *crickets chirp* Hmmmm.

“Ugh.” She felt hung over, she thought to herself, then remembered that she had never been drunk. Not really, anyway. Kitty rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “I swear to God,” she muttered to herself, “if this is Magneto’s lab, I’m turning in my membership to the Mutant of the Month club.”
“It is,” a familiar voice sighed. “And you can’t.”
She rolled onto her right side and waited for her eyes to focus in the semi-dark. “Emma?” she breathed.
“Mmmm…in the flesh.” She glared balefully at someone Kitty could not see. “And not much else.”
Kitty blinked. Emma spoke the truth. She sat, carefully guarding her nudity with crossed arms and legs, wearing only a heavy metal collar. “Um, there’s no good way to bring this up but…why are you naked?” Her head was slowly clearing but she was still very dizzy. The room seemed to be growing slowly lighter, but so gradually she could not determine if it was due to her eyes adjusting or someone turning up the lights.
Emma sighed. “I’m being punished. And when I get this collar off, I’m gutting Magneto with my finger nails.” She smiled sweetly and flicked her gaze towards the far wall. “Professor Xavier is not in here,” she stated as if already in the middle of a conversation.
Kitty slowly sat up, groaning under her breath. “Why would he be? And why are we, for that matter? God, I want to be sick…” She pressed her fingers over her mouth and looked around wildly. “Now!”
Emma unfolded one long arm and pointed to the corner. “It’s the best we have. Just try to be quiet about it.” She wrinkled her nose and pressed her lips together in distaste as Kitty staggered to her feet and lurched across the room, almost falling before she managed to get to her knees and utilize the corner for the suggested purpose.
Dry heaving into the corner, Kitty felt the tears leak from the corner of her eyes and run down her suddenly sweaty face. Confusion was replacing curiosity and she was shaking so hard her teeth were rattling. When she was sure her body would not rebel against her, she pushed herself to her feet and wiped her mouth on her uniform’s sleeve. She wished she had not changed clothes before leaving the house. She wanted her jeans and a comfortable shirt, not the skin tight uniform of dubious fiber content and the heavy, tight boots that went with it. “Emma,” she said creakily, “what’s going on here?”
Emma closed her eyes and marshaled her thoughts. It would not do to give her only half the story, sanitizing it for her protection, not at this point. She sighed and opened her eyes to stare straight into Kitty’s own. “Professor Xavier and I came here last night… I think it was last night… to speak with Magneto, to discourage him to cancel this ridiculous media reception on Friday. When we tried to leave…” she lifted one pale shoulder as if to say ‘bad luck.’ “Professor Xavier apparently had some sort of ‘Great Escape’1 fantasy last night and it might have worked…”
“If it wasn’t for those meddling kids2?” Kitty muttered, sliding down the wall to sit on the cold concrete floor. Emma snorted softly and remained quiet. “We can’t find Jubilee. Or Todd or Theresa…”
“They’re not here, as far as I know,” Emma said after a moment. She was exerting all of her effort to blocking out the pain throbbing dully in her hand, radiating up her arm to neck and head. If she let it, it would make her feel nauseated. But she refused to give in to the pain, even if her powers were blocked. She hated feeling weak more than she hated the pain.
“Can’t you… you know, check?” Kitty’s eyes were closed against a new wave of dizziness. “I need water…”
“Try to phase,” Emma ordered sharply. Kitty’s eyes flew open and Emma repeated herself. “Try it now.”
There was a long silence then a sharp, yelping sob. “That HURT!”
Emma nodded. “Does that answer your question? No, I can’t check. These are mutant restraint collars. We’re powerless as norms now.” She forgot her modesty and stood, pacing fiercely. “We tried to get out but… let me just say that Mystique is extremely flexible in a very frightening way.”
Kitty sulked. “That hurt,” she repeated. “It shocked me!”
“I guess I’m lucky that not much shocks me then,” Emma replied, pausing. She seemed to belatedly remember her nudity and glanced down at her breasts, then shrugged. “We’re stuck here, Kitty. Until someone comes for us or we’re sold to the highest bidder.”
Kitty huddled over her legs, pressing her forehead to her knees. She tried to take several calming breaths but winced as her hair caught on her earring and pulled when she tried to burrow her face against her legs. “Damn it! Can *nothing* go right today?” She reached up and unfastened her earring, then paused. “Oh…”
Emma paused in her renewed pacing. “What?”
“Emma, come here a minute…” Kitty felt miles better all of a sudden. The confusion was still there but a bright shiny idea was drowning it out, tamping it down for the time being. “Please?”
She sighed and padded over, kneeling down in front of the younger woman. “What are you doing?” She recoiled slightly as Kitty reached for her neck.
“Hold still…” Kitty skimmed her fingers over the surface of the collar and frowned. It seemed like one smooth, solid piece of metal but she knew that that was impossible. On the third pass, her fingers barely touching the surface, she felt the slightest hint of a seam. “Turn around…” She leaned back as Emma muttered under her breath and shifted to put her back to Kitty.
Emma stared at the blank wall ahead of her as Kitty fiddled with the collar. It pinched when she pulled and a tiny hum of current was very strong against her throat. “If you get me fried, I’m haunting you, you know.”
“I know,” Kitty muttered, distracted. The post of her earring was just barely inside the collar’s joint and the gap was infinitesimal, but it was widening slowly. “Cross your fingers.”
Emma closed her eyes as the current became noticeably stronger. “Kitty, what are you doing?”
“Shhhhh…” Kitty hissed sharply as her fingers were shocked, the pain resonating through her entire body. She did not let go, though, and twisted the earring inside the gap. She gasped as she lost her grip on the post and the piece of jewelry became lodged inside. “Shit!”
Emma cried out in surprise as the collar shocked her intensely, then fell from her neck. A livid red mark showed around her throat as she lunged to her feet and spun to face Kitty. “What did you do?”
“Shorted it out,” she replied, sucking on her sore fingers. “Honestly, I didn’t think that would work…”
“I don’t think they knew it would,” Emma replied, rubbing her neck. “Your turn.”
Kitty nodded and stood. “Just be careful…”
“Always.”

A/N Next, where are the others? Who has Jubilee?
1 A movie about an escape from a Nazi prison camp.
2 Scooby Doo moment