I have been borrowing my sister's laptop on Mondays and Fridays to clean up my chapters and give them a last once over ever since my laptop broke but I couldn't do so yesterday which means a day late chapter for you guys (-_-)
Now without further ado, chapter 10 of Marvel's Phantom!
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Concentrating, I let go of the balls I was currently controlling and switched my control to the next 3 balls in line, throwing them in the air in a controlled arc before doing it all over again. Once in a while, a single ball from each group would switch with a ball from another group without disrupting the swing of things.
I was lying in bed, with my hands behind my head, floating in the air in front of me were 3 groups of 3 balls juggling around each other. The only thing giving away that I was currently using my powers were my glowing green eyes and the green glow around 3 of the 9 balls every time I controlled them.
I could currently control only three things at a time and only things weighing less than 30kg, but I was slowly working on those numbers, increasing them little by little.
In the beginning, I could barely lift one thing, and it had to weigh less than 10kg for me to lift it more than a few inches off the ground. But like with all my powers, the more I used my telekinetic ability, the stronger and easier to use it became.
After a few tests, I had concluded that the number of things I can control at a time had to do with my control and the weight had to do with how much power I could put behind my telekinesis while still keeping control.
Right now, I was teaching myself how to connect with a ball and throw it in the air, reach for the next one in line, and so on and so on before any of them could fall down.
It trained both how fast I could connect with a moving target and my control in manipulating things.
I always thought that control was more important than power when it came to telekinesis. With enough control, you can even rearrange atoms after all.
Telekinesis was such a strong, not to mention handy power to have, you could do almost anything with it. I always found it weird that none of the show's ghosts did more with it, even though most of them had used it at least once before. I guess it was simply too overpowered to flesh out too much.
That is a mistake I wasn't going to make.
There are dozens of people in the Marvel Universe with some sort of telekinetic ability, and without having one yourself or having an even stronger power, there is nothing you can do if one of them decides to just slap you around.
'It is about time I add another ball to the mix.' Seeing as I had enough time to think and wonder about other things while training, I should be able to handle another ball.
But not now.
Now was time to finally make use of the ability I had been training the hardest for the past two weeks.
Duplication.
I told Laura that I would have an answer for her problem in a week at the latest. But it seems like I had underestimated how difficult it would be to make a duplicate of myself.
It had taken me a lot of hours and tens of misformed clones with too many fingers, not enough ears, no nose, and a dozen more problems to finally perfect the technique.
As a plus, I could now give myself extra arms and fingers if I was ever inclined to do so.
The use of extra arms in a fight would require training before I could use them, of course, but it was a nice surprise to have hidden in my back pocket for an enemy that wasn't expecting it.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I transformed into my Ghost Form with a thought.
Laura looked up from where she was reading a school book at my desk when she noticed the mini light show.
It has been two weeks since Laura and I came to Xavier's school of Gifted Youngsters. In that time, I have had my ass kicked six ways to Sunday by Wolverine in what he calls training every day.
Laura, already being a proficient fighter, spent the time she and Wolverine weren't maiming each other, learning the things the Facility didn't think their weapon needed to know, such as English literature.
"Are you going to do it now?" Laura asked curiously.
Laura had been patient with waiting on my solution to her problem, but as the days passed without any result, she got more and more restless. She and Wolverine had bonded somewhat over their fights, and while their relationship was pretty good right now, it was, however, not enough to distract her from her revenge for long.
So when it became clear that this little project of mine was going to take more than the few days that I had quoted her, I had told her about my duplication ability and my plan.
"Yeah."
I closed my eyes and started going through my medication technique. Gradually I turned all of my thoughts in little flames in my mind's eye before gently blowing them out one by one until my mind was completely empty, just as Laura had taught me.
The meditation technique hasn't helped me to get into my mindscape so far. But it was great for removing all distractions from your mind before trying something like duplicating yourself, which requires a great deal of visualization and concentration.
When all the flames were gone, I turned my empty mind to visualizing my body, imagining every little feature and detail until I could see it perfectly in my mind's eye, until it was so real I could almost touch it.
While holding on to that image, I reached out, took hold of all the ecto-energy in my body, and slowly split it into two equal parts before manipulating one part in front of me.
The ecto-energy started to gather together before becoming denser and denser until it completely solidified into ectoplasm which started to take my form.
I groaned in discomfort as half of my power disappeared just like that.
Even though I was expecting it, that still sucked. It wasn't just that I lost half my ecto-energy, my ability to hold ecto-energy itself had been halved.
In other words, if my ability to hold ecto-energy was a cup and my ecto-energy was its content, instead of only the cup's content reducing by half, it was like the cup itself had shrunk to half its size.
Note to self: don't carelessly duplicate yourself, even if you are connected to an infinite well of ecto-energy.
Feeling the duplicate finish coming together and leave nothing but a thin link between us, I opened my eyes in time to see the duplicate do the same.
"Yo!" I said, looking my duplicate over to make sure he wasn't missing anything or didn't have an extra ear or something.
"Yo!" my duplicate greeted back in my voice.
"This is fucking weird," we said at the same time.
And it really was. There is just something wrong with hearing your own voice and seeing your own face on someone else, even if it's your own clone.
Laura walks over to where we were sitting on the bed before pressing her index finger on my duplicate's cheek to check if he was solid.
"Stop that," my duplicate said before gently removing her finger from his face.
"Does he know what you know?" Laura asked curiously, turning to me.
I grinned when I noticed that my duplicate was put off that Laura had asked me instead of him. If it was me, I would be irritated that people were talking about me like I wasn't in the room, which means he is too.
"Do you?" I asked the duplicate.
When I made my only other perfect copy with a mind last night, I was so exhausted from all my earlier tries and losing half my power in one swoop that I had simply reabsorbed the duplicate before falling asleep.
And thus didn't have time to ask it any questions.
"Yeah, I have all your memories and knowledge," he answered simply.
"Even from before...you know?" I asked vaguely.
He nodded seriously, "and my mind is still shielded," He answered, already knowing the next question I was going to ask, because well...because he was me.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Okay then, if you know everything, you also know what you have to do, right?"
"Yes, I will start with the two locations in Canada."
I nodded at that.
Weirdly enough, Canada is where the evil laboratories, super-soldier programs, Mutant death camps, and other bad shit seem to be located in this reality.
"And remember, if you are ever in danger of getting captured or something like that, dissipate yourself," I told him seriously. I can't allow people to have a copy of me or even a sample of ectoplasm, for that matter.
"You do know you just asked me to kill myself, right?"
"Is that a problem?" I asked, my eyes narrowed into slits.
I was always wary of self-aware clones. When it comes to clones, I would rather have those that are nothing more than puppets being controlled by the original's mind, but unfortunately, I was stuck with what I had.
The duplicate stayed quiet and really thought about the question for a minute.
"No," he answered after a while, much to his own surprise, "it seems like while I'm indeed a perfect copy of you, I have no survival instincts whatsoever."
"Good," I don't need a duplicate becoming evil because it wanted to be the original or some other cliche shit.
I hesitated for a second, "can you transform into our human form?"
I don't remember if one of Danny's or Vlad's duplicates had ever transformed into their human forms in the show.
Before I could wonder any more, familiar blue rings passed over the duplicate's form, turning him into a human, "yes." he answered unnecessarily.
"Great, that means I have someone to go to school in my place!"
Transforming back into his Ghost Form, the duplicate glared at me, turned both invisible and intangible before sinking through the ground.
"That was weird," I remarked to Laura, who was still looking at where my duplicate was previously sitting on the bed.
Laura nodded.
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"Kyaa!" Kitty screamed, hiding her face in my shoulder.
I rolled my eyes as the swamp monster on the big ass tv hanging on the wall jumped out from nowhere(if you had been napping for the whole movie, that is) and pulled the main character into the swamp.
Yea, let's go see what that bubbling in the swamp is after all my friends had mysteriously disappeared near it.
The stupid bitch deserves to die.
Looking at my other side, I saw that Laura had a small smile on her face as she watched the main character struggle not to drown.
Laura had been rooting against the main character ever since she threw her only weapon away to run away. Like me, she thought the main character was too stupid to live.
It has been a few hours since my clone had set out to find Zander's and Kimura's whereabouts.
Leaving me with nothing to do. I had been training my duplication non-stop in my free for the last two weeks, and now that I had achieved my goal, I needed a break.
Today was the last day of the weekend, and then it was back to another dreadful day of studying something other than my physics-defying superpowers.
So, when Kitty invited Laura and me to a movie night with the rest of the X-Men group, we agreed.
I looked up from where I was sitting in between Laura and Kitty in one of the many entertainment rooms scattered around the X-Mansion when I heard someone call my name.
Someone was standing halfway between the entertainment room and the hallway, the light streaming from the hallway illuminated that someone and revealed it to be Logan.
Standing up, I sneaked past the teens completely engrossed in the movie as quietly as I could, getting a few heys and go aways for my trouble before reaching Logan.
"What's up?' I asked him as we walked out of the room and into the hallway.
"Chuck just sensed a mutant activate their mutation," Logan explained briefly, "We need to retrieve her ASAP. Normally I would take Storm, but she is out of town with her nephew right now."
Ah, that explains the blaring yellow suit screaming for someone to shoot him.
"So this is a rescue mission?"
Logan nodded.
"Why don't you take the X-Men in training then," I asked confused, I had seen a few of their team training sessions before. They were more than strong enough to take on a group of elite soldiers at this point, "aren't situations like these why they are training?"
"Usually yes, but the situation isn't as cut and dry this time," Logan growled, "According to Chuck, the kid's X-Gene was forcefully activated."
I grimaced, Xavier's lessons had taught me quite a bit about the X-Gene.
The X-Gene could be activated in various ways. When going through puberty, in times of great stress or peril, or even for no reason. But all those ways counted as regular activations.
The only way to forcefully activate someone's X-Gene without using Magic or some other kind of exotic energy is by putting the Mutant's body through as much hardship as they can endure until their X-Gene activates to save their life.
Which means she was being experimented on.
Logan nodded when he saw my face, "the kids are too soft for this one. They aren't ready to do what is needed!"
"And I am?"
Wolverine narrowed his eyes at me, "I have seen and smelled enough killers in my life to recognize them at first sight," was all he said, "So, are you in?"
When I decided to come to the X-Mansion, I had planned to stay out of X-Men business, but this has me intrigued, and honesty I'm bored as fuck with the movie we were watching.
I just want to do something before school tomorrow.
"Hell yeah!"
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Looking out the window of the Blackbird, I let out an impressed whistle. The jet was flying so fast that the landscape outside was nothing more than a blur of colors.
Laura was sitting next to me wearing a breathtakingly tight leather X-Men suit, the same as me.
To be safe, I was already in my Ghost Form.
"We are here!" Logan said after a short few minutes.
Already? How fast were we going?
"Where is here?" I asked him as we left the Blackbird and walked out from behind the mountain we landed behind.
We were in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to see except for mountains and trees for as far as the view stretched.
"Canada," Logan replied with a grin.
"Of course, it had to be fucking Canada," I mutter, the land of evil Mutant experimentation. I wonder if I will encounter my duplicate.
Logan goes to respond when both his and Laura's nose twitch, "I found a scent."
Laura nodded that she smelled it too before looking at what appeared to be a makeshift trail, leading away from the trees and to a clearing in front of another small mountain.
I guess we are at the right place.
Logan gestured for us to follow, both his and Laura's steps getting stealthier as they went.
I didn't even try to imitate them, knowing that I would only make more noise if I tried, and simply hovered a few inches off the ground before following after them.
Instead of taking us to the makeshift trail, Logan took us through the trees a few feet to the side, far enough that if someone was on the trail, they wouldn't be able to see us with all the trees in the way but close enough that we could keep an eye on the trail and follow it.
"So why didn't you just do this yourself?" I asked after a while, "with your training and healing factor, this would have been easy."
I doubt this was more than one of the hundreds of small Mutant experimentation labs all over the world.
They probably don't have more security than a small base.
"It's always good to have backup with you. You can't get cocky just because you can't die," Wolverine replied, giving Laura a long hard look to make sure she understood, "there are things much worse than death that can be done to you. Being unable to die only means that they can do it more than once."
I frowned at that. I had seen and read enough in my life to paint a vivid picture in my mind of what the kind of people we were about to fight would do if they got their hands on someone that was borderline immortal.
"And I needed someone with your skills to make sure they don't kill the kid we are here to save the moment it looks like they are going to lose."
Another thing I hadn't thought about is them killing the kid out of spite when it became clear they were on the losing end.
We continued walking, well they walked, I floated until we arrived at where the trail ended, which turned out to be a blooming clearing.
And not blooming as spring has just come and the flowers were budding and sprouting but literally blooming, everything in the clearing was growing in front of our very eyes and didn't show any signs of stopping any time soon.
The grass alone was already 3 feet tall.
This was no doubt the work of the newly awakened Mutant.
At the epicenter of the clearing was a single-story building that I will bet my left nut on continues underground. Standing in front of the building were two armed men in uniform.
"Are there any more Mutants we should keep an eye on, or is the one we are here for the only one?" Laura asked.
"As far as Chuck could tell, she was the only captive in the building," Wolverine said, looking at Laura. He must have read something on her face because a savage grin formed on his face, "You can go crazy with the rest."
"Let's not waste any more time. Damien, you will sneak in and search for our target and protect them while Laura and I distract them," Wolverine ordered.
"Give me a few minutes before you start," I told the two of them before turning invisible and flying to the single-story building.
Having all the powers of a ghost and more, I sneaked past the guards and into the building with ease, without any of them being the wiser.
The underground facility I arrived in was clearly meant to be a small secret lab for only a small group of people. Which told me that whoever was experimenting on Mutants over here didn't belong to one of the big mutant hater groups or secret agencies.
Most likely privately funded.
As I flew past the crude tunnel walls with mold and weeds growing on them, I saw a few guards lounging around inside rooms connected to the tunnel, watching tv and playing games.
Following the tunnel to the end, I came to a heavily sealed room with a steel door.
Phasing my head through the door, I looked around the room and immediately felt flames of rage start to burn inside me.
Ever since I arrived in this world and became a half-ghost, I noticed that I cared very little about death and killing. Hell, even gore barely faced me these days but looking at the little girl lying in the far too large hospital bed, wearing a blood-stained gown with both her arms and legs pulled taut by her shackles gnawed at my heartstrings.
Standing above her was a man in his mid to late forties, looking thin and sickly with thick glasses on his emaciated face. He was holding a potted flower in one hand and a remote in the other.
The flower in the pot was slowly growing to the naked eye but clearly not fast enough in the man's opinion because as I watched, he pressed a button on the remote.
As if on command, the little girl started to scream and convulse as if she was getting tasered, her arms and feet pulling at her restraints, rubbing them raw. Taking a better look, I saw that she had a shock collar around her neck.
Letting out a growl of rage, I flew through the steel door, my body still intangible and invisible.
The scientist didn't know what hit him until I shot him in the chest with a point-blank Ghost Ray, making sure to dial down the power so that he could feel every second of his death.
A green ray left my hand before striking the scientist in the chest, throwing him on his back.
I felt a savage grin form on my face as I saw the confusion in the scientist's eyes turn to pain and fear as my Ghost Ray ever so slowly burned through him. First burning away his skin, then his flesh and bones, and then finally his organs.
This feels kind of good.
People like this belief that they are invincible and untouchable that no one can do anything to them, and taking that belief away from them and seeing the fear and pain in their eyes as I did so was an incredible rush.
Becoming visible, I watched the light leave the scientist's eyes before floating to the little girl and looking into her blank pain-filled eyes.
"Everything is going to be okay," I comforted her as I made her intangible to get the restraints and shock collar off her, ignoring how she tried to flinch away from my touch.
"And the people who did this to you are about to pay!" I told her as I heard screams and gunfire sound out from the tunnel.
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