Explore the Pocket Dimension

Time is still passing in the outside world, but this is a place where you can train without consequence. You splay your fingers, pushing your power outwards, and a wave of red spins out from your body, wiping the ground into oblivion. The red wave erases anything that it comes into contact with. The sphere of red passes harmlessly through Phoenix, who is **** to levitate to maintain her position - you are both literally floating in the void now, the wave of red having now destroyed all matter within the pocket dimension.

“I take it you’ve wanted to try that ability for a while” Jean asks, playing with a flickering flame in her hand. She tosses it at you, and you dissipate it without blinking. The red wave continues to pulse at the boundary of the pocket dimension.

“Oh, there are loads of things that I’ve wanted to try,” you say, twisting your arms. The red wave contracts, forming a tight ring around the two of you, before it shatters, fracturing into ten-thousand cubes of light. The cubes begin to spin, until a form a continuous ring of red. “Try attacking me now,” you say.

Phoenix begins to gather her power around her, but as soon as wisps begin to form, they are sucked into the nearest cube, which pulse as they take in power. The ring begins to flash in multiple places as Phoenix summons more power, but she is unable to so much as hurl a fireball with the ring in place. The ring continues to absorb any trace of energy that Phoenix produces, and she is visibly frustrated as she tries to get off a single attack.

Your turn now. You clench your hand, and the ring disintegrates, letting loose a colossal wave of power. It smashes into Jean, who brings up a shield at the last second, but the velocity and energy contained is simply too much, and you see her body wink out of existence. You, on the other hand, recollect all the power, and feel that much stronger. Outside the pocket dimension, you see Jean’s eyes snap open. You slip back into that outside body.

“Feeling fine?” you ask, and she shudders, looking to a far away place.

Since the pocket dimension has been emptied of anything useful, you collapse it, the invisible ball in front of your chest collapsing into itself. You feel your body inside dissipate, and it is strange feeling - not painful, but as if you’ve lost something important that you can’t quite place. You understand why Jean is looking so pensive now.

“I… that was a lot, even for me,” Jean says, shaking herself out of it. “So, have you got a plan for dealing with HYDRA?”

“I’ve got something,” you say, “but it wouldn’t be wise to share it just yet. Still a lot of details to be worked out, and I don’t think it will work if I tell everyone everything.”

This is, strictly speaking, a complete lie. You have no idea how you’re going to take down HYDRA, or if you even want to. Sure, you negotiated an agreement with Summers, but there’s no reason to stick to it if it doesn’t benefit you. For now, you will play along with HYDRA until they cure your condition, at which point, destroying their organisation could be fun. If anything, should you succeed, the X-Men ought be grateful enough to turn a blind eye to whatever you get up to with the attractive HYDRA leadership.

With a smile, you turn towards the rest of the heroines, who are laying on the ground on a nearby hill, having a conversation about whether the psychic realm counts as a physical world, one that you are privy to through your enhanced hearing. You haven’t exactly been following the philosophical argument that Psylocke has been laying out, but you realise that this is a fairly important question that they are deciding. If Psylocke is right, and they are indeed separate planes of existence, then mentally fucking somebody shouldn’t count as physically touching them - and it would be something that you could do without violating the terms of the agreement. Of course, it wouldn’t be in good faith for the agreement, but you figure that is a technicality that you don’t have to worry about.

As you approach the ladies, Rachel turns towards you and asks: “What do you think, Apotheosis? Is it physical or not?”

From the glint in her eye, you sense that she knows what you’ve been thinking. This is a test of sorts, you intuit, and your answer reflects this.

“Since people are physically affected by the powers - just look at Psylocke’s blades - there’s no way they can’t be anything but physical,” you say. “Simple as that.”

Rachel nods, as if satisfied, and gestures towards the rest of the heroines. “The rest of them don’t seem to think that this is the case, but that’s enough about that for today. I imagine we should head back into the plane, before HYDRA arrives and figures out our little arrangement.”

You assent, watching as the heroines return to their room in an orderly fashion, Phoenix following close behind them, still seeming a little dazed. You figure she’ll be better soon, and breath a sigh of relief as the last door locks behind Susan Storm. There are many ways this past sequence of events could have gone worse.

What do you do next?