Ooops

[Maxine Flannery]

THE CULLEN INSTITUTE
SATURDAY
2:00 A.M.


:: Max couldn't sleep, not so long as there was unfinished tinkering to do. As the resident techie, she was always busy tweaking programs in the danger room, keeping the blackbird tip top, or teaching classes. Pausing for a bite of donut, she looked at the odd alien device on the table in front of her. It was something she picked up during one of their early missions. She promised the Prof not to tinker with it, but how long had it been? Years, and she was so much better now. What could possibly go wrong?

Wiping the crumbs from her fingers, she reached over for it, accidently knocking over her coffee cup. There was a glow, and a spark, and a fizzle, and then ...

WHOOOOOOOOOSH

The release of energy from the device caused the space in the room to warp, and triggered the alarms. Max felt vertigo as she was bathed in a strange glow. Then there was a second rush of energy as the device imploded and vanished. Falling from her chair, she fainted.

[Dragon]

John was in the archives researching the Jericho network - he'd decided to cross-reference some intelligence reports that a school couldn't explain having access to, so that had meant a trip to the Sub-Basement to pull up the classified records. As bold as the Jericho Foundation was growing, he was beginning to reconsider the school's veil of blindness policy where the students were concerned. They needed to know what kind of threats were out there, even if he couldn't really tell them how he knew.

He'd finally found a report on the Jericho facility in Poland when the power flickered through the whole facility, and his computer terminal went dead. That's when he knew something was wrong. The Sub-Basement had independent power reserves. They didn't fail.

Then several alarms erupted, wailing out of sync with one another. He leapt up from the computer and glanced hurriedly at a nearby security monitor. The alarm had originated in one of the labs.

The door to the lab crashed open, and John rushed inside to find Max in a heap by one of the work tables. He fell by her side and checked her for a pulse. "Max! Max! Can you hear me?"

[Maxine Flannery]

:: As she rolled over onto her back, there was something noticabley different about her. She was much younger, not a day past 17, when they first met. ::

"It's alright, John ... she murmured. "... I don't want to go to class ..."

[Dragon]

John's mouth dropped open as he tried to process what he was seeing. It wasn't Max... but it was.

"What... what happened here?"

[Maxine Flannery]

"Huh? whot???"

:: Max rose up to look at john. She was still a little dizzy ::

"Why are you looking at me like that???"

:: With a surge of fear, she pulled herself up to look at herself in the nearest mirrored surface. There was a much younger self staring back at her ::

"oooops."

[Dragon]

John settled back to give Max some room, and as he did, he glanced around the lab to see if there was anything that could explain Max's transformation into a teenaged girl. Of course, he didn't even know what to look for.

"Uh... are you all right? Do you need to get to the infirmary...?"

As if Duncan had an aging pill he could give her...

[Maxine Flannery]

:: Max just stood there, looking spooked. She gave herself a once over with her hands, as if she were making sure everything was still attached. Her breasts were smaller, not that she was ever blessed. Not like Fran was. Of all the crazy things to happen to her. She wished she'd gotten bigger breasts instead of this. ::

"I ... I'm okay." she said.

She wondered how Ethan was going to react when he saw her.

[Dragon]

She was still in shock, and John couldn't really blame her, but he felt a profound need to make some sort of sense of what he was seeing before him.

"I was searching the archives, and there was some sort of power surge," he said. "Were you working on something in here? Something that might have... caused this?"

[Maxine Flannery]

:: She looked guilty as charged, and mimed nervously with her hands as she explained about the artifact ::

"Then there was a Whoooosh. I guess it was a Temporal Whoosh."

[Dragon]

That wasn't exactly technical, but it was a start.

"But you still have all your memories?" John said. "You're not younger in mind as well as body, are you?"

[Maxine Flannery]

"No. I just feel a little woozy."

[Dragon]

John still felt she ought to be examined at some point, but at least it didn't seem like a pressing concern. "What were you working on? Where is it?"

[Maxine Flannery]

:: Max moved over to the worktable, but the device was gone ::

"Oh no ..."

:: She looked at John pitifully ::

"... it's gone."

[Dragon]

"Gone? But who could've..."

John suddenly snapped on alert. There had been no time for someone to run through and abscond with the device - unless they had some sort of enhanced speed, or teleportation, or invisibility...

"We'd better lock down the Sub-Basement," he said suddenly. "We may have an intruder."

John hurried to an intercom panel by the door and punched in a code. "Ethan? Sorry to wake you, but there's a situation in lab four. You'd better get down here."

[Maxine Flannery]

"Noooo, I don't think there's a ... it was, you know ... the whoosh!!!

:: Max was talking with her hands again, more panic-stricken over Ethan seeing her than the thought of an intruder in the mansion ::

[Dragon]

The whoosh? This wasn't making much sense. John wasn't sure if that was just Max talking or if her mind really had been altered.

"Max," he said, "exactly what kind of device were you working on?"

[Ethan Daniels]

It didn't take long for Ethan to throw on a clean undershirt and robe before running down the hallway bare foot. He reached a certain bookcase and pulled out the book The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. He heard the shift in metal and gears and watched the bookcase slide away, revealing one of the access points for the sub-basement elevators.

Shaking away the sleep, his right foot tapped against the cold metal floor impatiently. Once the doors opened, Ethan has his game face on; calculating and impassive as he made his way into lab four ... and stopped so fast that it looked as if he hit an invisible wall.

"Ma ... Max?" Maybe he was still asleep and having some crazy dream. He did eat chips and salsa before bed and something so bizarre as seeing Max far younger then she should have been could be caused by a full belly.

[Maxine Flannery]

:: She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at Ethan shyly ::

"I kind of had a little accident."

:: She explained to both of them from the beginning, about that mission they were on when they averted an alien invasion. How she found a piece of precursor tech and tucked it away to tinker with it later, and how the Prof told her not to and it's been years since then and how it's kept her awake with curiosity everynight and she's been jonesing just to take it out and give it just a teeny poke "

"I know ..." she whined, frowning at the stare of disapproval. "It's a big oops and I'm sorry. No one else got zapped ... did they???"

[Dragon]

John blinked. "Wait... did you say alien invasion?"

He'd become such a fixture in the X-Men people forgot sometimes he hadn't joined until after Professor Cullen's death. He'd been vaguely aware of encounters with extraterrestrial technology, but--

Sensing a long story coming, he held up a hand and said, "I'll read up on it later. And, no, I don't think anyone else has been... um, zapped. But..." He turned toward Ethan. "If this device somehow teleported away, we need to find it. Before one of the students does."

[Ethan Daniels]

"Yes, yes we do," Ethan said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation. "Max? Calibrate the computers to pick up on that energy signature. We should still have that information stored in the archives."

[Maxine Flannery]

:: Max paid close attention to every move Ethan made with dread. She knew that sigh too well. He was not happy. Scampering over to the puters, she made the calibrations with a worried pout ::