Diamond Bright

Classes were done for the day, and while normally Emma would be doing some stupid group team-building project with the other students in her human development class, she was skipping whatever stupid feel-good heart-to-heart nonsense the teacher had come up with this week. With an excuse! ...kinda! Candy was coming over once she was finished with work tonight so they could practice for summer internship interviews. Which meant Emma was putting away her groceries and prepping to make an utterly ridiculously large amount of tacos.

Look, she and Candy were growing girls. And they were not going to give in to the self-hate of the American media and body-image magazines. Because tacos. They were not just necessary to live, but to deal with the stupidity of the human race and their male counterparts who were jostling for the same jobs and complaining about how it was 'unfair' that the girls had the 'advantage' of being female.

No, Emma hadn't been experimenting to see if she'd suddenly developed psychokinesis last week in class, why did you ask? Really. Setting someone on fire with her brain, while potentially therapeutic, wasn't actually helpful.

Yet.

[OOC: Open for calls, texts, you know the drill.]

Emma Frost was bored, desperately needed a study break, and had beat all the levels of Angry Birds on her phone.

No, let's back that up and tell the truth: Emma Frost was lonely, drunk - she'd stolen a bottle of 151 from the store since she couldn't afford to buy it - and bored. She'd finished her homework for the week, and her readings, and there weren't any grad students doing experiments going on at the psych labs to watch.

...what? You had your entertainments, and Emma had hers. And she didn't have a television.

Which was why she was currently drunk-calling/texting people while cutting out the articles from the various society pages about the Thankful Virtues event. Especially the ones that mentioned her.

[OOC: Open post! If you think she called or texted you, she did.]

Emma had another two weeks of winter break from ESU, so she'd been staying with Hank, helping the scientist with both his projects and some telepathic therapy to recover his memories. Bit-by-bit they were getting there, but whatever trauma Hank had undergone had been monstrous, and while Emma had been mastering her powers in leaps and bounds over the last three years, there was still much she had to learn.

She'd been fast asleep on the couch in her 'room' down in the tunnels when she started awake, the newspaper she'd been reading falling to the floor as she barely managed not to follow it. That same vague sense of wrongness was back, but different. Like there was something missing, and Emma reflexively reached out to check the telepathic links she had to her friends before remembering she was a world and years away; there was no way she'd get an accurate response from any of them at this distance.

Fuck. There was no reason she should be awake at this hour if it did not contain some vice or another. Or fucking statistics homework.

She went fumbling for her coat and boots - it was January in New York, after all - so that she could head up to the surface. First, check the early edition, and make sure it wasn't some disaster here. Second, find a Western Union or something. Third, wait until a semi-decent hour, and casually text a few people.

The last time this had happened, people had vanished. And Emma still couldn't get through to Peter's cell - but she brushed that fear aside. She was a Frost, and she did not curl up and fret. She was, however, possibly going to start kicking people in the shins.

[OOC: In response to this. Open for calls/texts/telegrams/etc that are not set in the pre-dawn hours. :)]

Emma couldn't face the idea of staying another moment in Massachusetts, and they couldn't get a portal back to the island until morning.

Besides, Rhode Island was probably the last place anyone would think to look for them, and therefore safest. The hotel was also almost completely empty, so the manager was willing to cut them a deal to get two rooms for the night.

Emma just wanted a hot shower and a bed. And for someone to explain to her why she'd waken up on the lawn of the Clinic.


[OOC: Wrap-up and relaxation for the rescue rangers. NFB due to distance.]

( Emma's parents had always politely referred to it as 'The Clinic.' The Snow Valley Pavilion for the Mentally Disturbed. )

[OOC: Cut for violence, NPC abuse, disturbing images, etc. Preplayed with my fantastic cast, who helped me bring Emma's original origin from Generation X #24 into Fandom High canon. Oh, and shamelessly rip off a little bit of Endsong for the end. I feel no guilt. NFI, NFB, OOC = OK.]

( Emma no longer knew what day it was, or even if it was morning or afternoon. All she knew is that she was exhausted. )

[OOC: Establishy! NFB, NFI, OOC = OK. CUT FOR EVERY SINGLE REASON THAT SOMETHING SHOULD BE CUT.]

It was another dream that had startled Emma awake with a jerk, her iron control the only thing that kept her from screaming as she did so. It took a moment to regain her bearings, and then she slipped out of bed, quietly making her way to the kitchen for a glass of water to take back upstairs with her.

She was as quiet as possible as she put the drink on the nightstand and climbed back into bed, one of her trashy mystery novels in-hand. Emma didn't want to wake Jack, but it was unlikely she was going to be falling back asleep anytime soon.

[OOC: For that one, please!]

It was a perfectly lovely morning, and so Emma had decided to walk into town and treat herself to some ridiculously fancy beverage that pretended to be coffee while she made a few calls. First to her stockbroker, to leave a few messages. Then another call, mostly because Emma just liked being annoying and wanted gossip. "Pick up, Karla," she complained, frowning when she got voicemail. Again.

She frowned at her phone thoughtfully before calling one more number. Hopefully he'd be able to figure out how to answer.


( It took three rings before the connection clicked open. )


[OOC: And so it begins! NFI, totes for broadcast, preplayed with the always-cool make_the_shot. Continued here!]

The sweep of the island had turned out negative, confirming the suspicion that Emma had moved to somewhere off-island. And so the group of searchers moved out across the causeway and to the mainland, with the reasoning that if she were looking for Hank, she'd probably head to the city.

( Random traces of unseasonal ice and physic scents eventually led them to a shipping yard near the Causeway... )

[OOC: NFI, NFB due to distance! Timezone preplay waltz accomplished by superb team of justwantsquiet, glacial_witch, not_a_parakeet, weetinyreese, noearsyet, and icecoldfrost.]