Test Your Powers

With a couple of hours to kill, you decide that there’s no better way to spend it than finding out exactly what you can do.You trained with the Avengers and X-Men, testing your conventional abilities, but you’ve always had the feeling that there was something more that you could do. You were never pushed to your limits.

You head outside with that in mind. The ladies are sitting in a circle, talking, and they don’t grow quiet as you come closer.

“Have you even seen the new Fantastic Four suits? They look absolutely atrocious,” the Invisible Woman says. “I’m glad I came here out of uniform.”

“It doesn’t even look practical,” Phoenix says. “Honestly, I’m not even sure why you guys bother with them. You just end up changing it every couple of months.”

“Phoenix,” you call out. “Do you have an hour or two to train with me? I’m going to try some new things, and figured you’d be up for it.”

“Sure,” she replies, and waves goodbye to the others.

The two of you go a little distance away, until the others are no longer in eyesight.

“What did you want to do?” Phoenix asks.

“This,” you say, shifting your hands in front of your chest, as if you were holding an invisible ball.

The world appears to double, the one on the left mirroring the one on the right precisely, and Phoenix looks across at herself.

“What the hell did you just do?” she asks.

“A pocket dimension,” you say. You step into the right hand side world, and it suddenly shrinks down to a dome that goes no further than a minute’s hard jog. “It reflects the real world, but is separate from it. At least, I think that’s how it works.”

“Wait, but there’s still a me outside in the real world,” Phoenix says. “Does that mean I’m a fake person? Am I not real? This is not the fucking time to have an existential crisis, I should think, but I’m seriously going to blow if you don’t give me a straight answer.”

“I don’t know,” you say, looking around. “There’s only one me, and it seems I can move freely between both worlds.”

You step through the world and reappear in the real world, where there’s a statue-like Phoenix staring straight ahead. You wave a hand in front of her face, but she doesn’t blink.

“Hello?” you ask.

There’s no response. After several minutes, it becomes clear to you that she doesn’t do anything, or can’t move for some reason. Sending a mental probe into her head, you figure you know what’s going on. You move back into the pocket dimension, where Phoenix has set half the ground ablaze and is curled up into a ball.

“Phoenix,” you call out. She looks up at you, eyes bright red. She lashes out at you, sending twin mindspikes aiming to shatter your brain. You redirect the forceful attacks, and they hit the metaphysical ground with such **** that the earth erupts, showering the two of you in dirt. You send out a wave of calm, stilling the psychic world, and everything goes flat for a moment. Phoenix continues to glare at you, but doesn’t speak.

“Can you feel two bodies somehow, Jean? One you’re currently moving and occupying and another that’s not being moved?” you ask.

“What do you mean?” she asks, and then – “Oh. I see. This is strange.”

“There’s a you in the real world, and one in here, right?”

“Holy fuck, you’re right,” she breathes. “What the hell?”

What do you do?