One day, everything spiraled out of control. Her stepfather drank an entire case of beer while watching a football match, but he was still unsatisfied. Apparently, the team he was rooting for was losing badly. Not getting the alcohol he wanted, he started getting violent again, but this time, he didn't hold back. That was the moment Sally Blevins' mutant powers awakened.
The drunken stepfather couldn't beat his stepdaughter as punishment for her insolence. All his blows seemed to slide right off the teenage girl's body. Seeing this, the man sobered up quickly and, screaming about "damn mutants," ran off to call the cops.
Sally returned to her dying mother. She wanted to help, but her newly acquired powers betrayed her. She couldn't do anything; she couldn't help her mother because everything she touched slipped out of her hands. Even the damn phone wouldn't obey! She couldn't even call an ambulance, and her mother literally died before her eyes.
After the girl had cried what felt like all her tears, she heard the sound of sirens. She was scared of what her stepfather might have told the police. Cops usually believe whatever men say, only figuring things out afterward—that's just how the world works.
Sally ran away from home, unable to take even the bare essentials with her. If it hadn't been for Caliban finding her that same evening, Sally might have died from thirst or hunger. The Morlocks helped her a lot in the beginning, essentially feeding and caring for her until the blonde learned to control her powers at a basic level. That's why she's so attached to these people and can't abandon them, despite the fact that the Masquerade here reminds her a lot of her stepfather.
Emerging from the flood of foreign memories, I spent the next few seconds just trying to catch my breath. Now I understood Skyds much better, having lived through all her memories and felt everything she experienced at that moment.
Losing her mother turned out to be more painful than I could have imagined. I… I hardly remember mine, as she died when I was too young to fully grasp her importance to me.
But that didn't change the fact that I had been forced to experience someone else's emotions and judgments. No doubt I would have felt something similar if I had just viewed her memories, but this was much deeper. At that moment, I could barely distinguish myself from the girl, and that's dangerous—one could lose their mind like this!
Even after distancing myself from it all, I could still hear her voice whispering in my head, much louder than Mystique's or that vampire's. I even had to put myself into a light meditation to effectively clear my thoughts.
Of course, without chakra, I couldn't fully enter my inner world yet—that would take a lot of training—but still, some of the shinobi techniques I picked up from the Naruto world helped me deal with the obsession. I couldn't completely silence the whisper in my head, but I managed to turn down the volume.
Having gotten a grip on myself, I focused on Sally. The blonde looked a bit better but still quite rough. She had handled my touch far worse than Mystique; it seemed that without her protective aura, she was quite vulnerable. Now I understood her motives, why she had been so insistent on continuing our little experiments.
There were a lot of things mixed in, but the desire for normal communication with the outside world was clearly her primary drive. She felt my powers as though I was devouring her protective field, which wasn't far from the truth.
Sally had hoped that I could completely absorb it and take her powers away forever. Deep down, she knew it wouldn't be that simple, but she gave in to impulse and desire.
Pulling on my gloves, I laid Skyds down on my mattress and covered her with a blanket. All I could do was hope she'd feel better by morning because I had no idea how else to help her. Everything I knew about medicine suggested that the girl's body had experienced something similar to extreme starvation and now needed rest and nourishment. While she was unconscious, I couldn't feed her, but in the morning, I'd make sure to pick the best can of beans in tomato sauce for Sally.
That night, I struggled to fall asleep. I battled the voices in my head and pondered my next move. Before, I had just wanted to go with the flow, but now I realized that my powers could throw me a much nastier curveball than I'd initially thought. They were indeed quite dangerous and treacherous. I dread to imagine what the original Rogue must have gone through if I—an experienced traveler between worlds—was barely handling the negative aspects of her powers!
I needed to learn how to control my abilities. Sally's experience showed me that it was possible with long and hard training. In my case, the problem was that every practice session could come at a great cost—to both me and those I tested my powers on. I had to find an alternative, and I quickly came up with a few possible options.
Unfortunately, I couldn't just go out and grab what I needed; there was no universal cure for my problem. But there were possibilities, which meant all I needed to do was act, not sit idle. Yes, as always.