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Adventures of Shandra and Jacen
As dubbed by Eps

There was a moment, one beath of a moment where Shandra felt like the world was spinning too quickly. Kind of like the feeling people get when they themselves just finished spinning around in circles only to come to a stop. The head spinning, sense confusing moment in time when you loose your balance and your stomach lurches upwards to greet your throat. The only problem was that she had been standing still. With a knife in her hand...but still.

Shandra gripped onto the counter for a moment as she road out the dizzy, flustering wave. Her eyes closed as her mind tried to put together any clue as to what that feeling was for. But nothing came - or at least nothing rational came to mind. The only one that approached even near a possibility was that the Earth between the two different dimensions spun differently and she hadn't noticed until returning. Like the feeling of wrongness she'd gotten in the last dimension. Only that wouldn't make much sense. Wouldn't she have felt it before? After all she'd been back for about two months. And wouldn't different rotations between the two dimensions affect other noticeable things? Like the way water moved...the cycle of the day...

She was just going to put it down to her not having eaten in 16 hours since that seemed the easiest way to go.

Jacen moved through the kitchen door, yawning as he went. He frowned at the sight of Shandra, head down and gripping the counter like she was seasick. "Hey Red, you're looking a little green around the gills there," the curly haired X-student said, worried, but not letting her position affect his usual cheeriness. "What's wrong, you accidentally eat some processed food or something?"

"No," she told him honestly.

If she had she would have thrown it back up by now. And it wasn't like she made that public knowledge either, and reminding him about that fact wasn't high on her to do list. Actually saying things on that subject was high on her not-to-do list. Only just above on that list was telling people she had a not-to-do list.

"Sleep well?" Was the first question out of her mouth as she forced her hands to let go of the counter.

"Eh, not particularly."

Shandra peered up at the clock in the kitchen. It's neon lights flashed what some people might consider an arbitrary number; 4:00 am. Very early...at least for most people. Jacen had always been a toss up on the subject. He was a diligent but at the same time very laid back. Still, she didn't usually see him down in the kitchens until at least the normal breakfast time.

"What woke you?"

"I had this wierd dream, only I can't remember what it was about..." Jacen hated that feeling. Normally when he woke up he could goover the dream in his head to solidify the memory, but the last couple nights he'd woken up with nothing but the remembering of a dream. "Not to mention I shot outta bed pretty quick from that last one," He meant it literally of course, as he'd jumped to the ceiling, "Whatever happened in it, I don't think I liked it..."

"There are plenty of teas that would help with that," Shandra mentioned idly.

He moved over to the cabinet, pulling open the door and reaching in for some cereal and bowl. "So why are you up then?" Jacen asked deftly hopping up to sit on the counter, bowl of dry Frosted Flakes in hand. He knew Shandra kept rather unique patterns, as in he wasn't sure if she slept, but she didn't normally spend her nights in the kitchen.

"I got hungry," was her reply, a wry smile on her face as she nodded towards the assorted foods she'd already chopped up.

Plus the kitchen was, quite possibly, her domain in the entire academy. Where as the lounge was usually dominated by another omega and the cafeteria by the latest alpha transfer, the kitchen and the indoor pool on the lower levels were hers. At least for the times she was using them. And while Jacen was an aquatic person she was pretty sure he preferred natural waters (thus the lake out back) over the chlorinated substance that public pools ended up being.

"What about you? Did you want to eat cereal or did you want some of the stirfry I'm about to cook?" Shandra asked as she pulled out the organic oil and a pan.

"Now come on Red, how could I possibly turn down food from our resident master chef?" Jacen said, smacking his lips in that oh-so uncouth way he went about things. As she cooked, he ate his cereal, tipping the bowl to let the final crumbs of sugary flakes onto his tongue.

Cooking it took minutes and by the time it was done, there was plenty enough to fill two bowls. That was something she'd gotten used to which was probably why no one complained at her dominance over the kitchen - she always made plenty of extras. As she picked at her food, Shandra looked back over to Jacen from across the island counter.

He set his bowl down right as Shandra was scooping the finished product into two new bowls.

"After all the time you've spent here...do you still feel like one of the high school students? Or do you feel like an X-men?" Shandra asked what may have seemed like a random question, but it really was something she'd been thinking about for most of the night.

The mutant looked up as Shandra asked her question, a quizical look on his face before he shrugged. "I... Hm. I don't really know." He paused to think as he reached for his bowl. "I guess I don't feel like a high-schooler. but then again I haven't ever really had a baseline to judge my schooling experience on." He'd been on Toatani during what would have been his freshman year, Muir Island his Sophomore and some of his Junior year, and the Academy since that. Not the most conventional of schooling. "I definitely don't feel like an X-man though. The things we get into just don't seem nearly as big as what the senior X-men handle..."

It was silly, borderline stupid to express desire to be an X-man. Especially with what the Junior Teams knew about them. Younger students may see the glamour of it, but the older ones knew that there was not nearly as much glitz as one might think comes with the rank. Still though, Jacen could understand the desire for it. The call to adventure...

"Why do you ask?" He replied, looking Shandra in the eye, "Not feeling like you're reaching your potential?" Jacen knew that Shandra's power levels were among the highest in their 'class', anybody could see that. If anybody deserved to feel like they could be doing more it was her.

Shandra shrugged at the later part of his question. It wasn't that she didn't feel like she was doing enough for the x-men. In fact it almost felt like they picked up the slack that the x-men were too busy to handle - or too lazy to in some cases. Hell, they'd even faced down the brotherhood with very little "adult" assistance (though most of them had been over the age of eighteen when that happened). So no, it wasn't the work load that bothered her.

"Just...antsy I guess," Shandra replied as she brought a thin piece of meat up to eat.

She savored the play of onions and herbs that lightly seasoned the meat for a moment. Her eyes, glowing in the dim lighting of the kitchen (she never turned on all the lights at once), stared down into her food bowl. There was the ever present feeling of something knawing in the back of her mind, like she should recognize something but just wasn't getting it. Almost like the tip-of-the-tongue sensation when you'd never searched for a word to begin with. Unbidden, forboding, and very distracting.

"This place is wonderful. It's a heaven and a fresh start. But the teachers never really stop treating you like teenagers do they?" Shandra asked as she lightly moved her fork in the air. "I mean, not in the traditional sense but the sentimentality behind it. Curfews...answering to someone else if you disregard a public law...abiding by the same school laws."

For the year that she prolonged returning, though none of that time had paced for Jacen or any others in this dimension, she hadn't been a student to most of the other's eyes. Well, with the exception of that world's Beast but she was pretty sure he didn't count. She'd witnessed Angel mistaking her for some crazy girl who'd jumped out of an airplane that needed to be saved. (That had been more amusing remembering than experiencing it.) But she hadn't experienced the same "you're just a kid" mentality in the other dimension as the people seemed to have here.

"Staying here - I mean, I know you were raised with different exceptions and experiences but does their treatment of us feel like they still view us as adolescence or like adults to you?"

Jacen grinned, feeling as though she understood what she meant. "Hah, yes, everybody in the states does have this weird idea that we need protecting." He knew that other countries were far more lax when it came to child-care, nobody in Tanzania had cared a bit when his 16 year old self was trekking to Muir Island without the parental units. Germany had been a little less understanding.

"Well, you've been to Toatani Shandra. None of our elders really keep tabs on us..." Not necessarily that that was the best way to go about things, considering the number of times Jacen has been trapped in a cave. Or a coral reef.

Shandra nodded lightly as she sat down her utensil. The dizzy feeling sprung back up on her as thoughts about other places floated around in her head. Toatani, California, the other Dimension, Limbo, Honeycut...the memories seemed to blur all together in her head. And It was like a choatic mass of electricity had fired down through her head as she stood there, gripping the counters so tightly her fingers went white. And for a second as she seemed to flicker in and out of existance (in a way that was not caused by her powers, as Jacen probably would be able to realize) the universe seemed to explode into her mind.

Jacen shrugged as she nodded, looking back down at his bowl as he scooped up the last of the stir fry. Now that Shandra had brought it up, Jacen felt te need for some healthy rebellion. Maybe they should go explore the restricted levels of the mansi-

His thoughts stopped as he felt the oh-so-subtle vibrations of Shandra gripping the counter. He looked up, seeing his teammate blink in and out of reality, and wondered for a second if she was losing control of her powers. In less than a second, he had smoothly vaulted and slid himself over the counter dividing them, reaching a cautious hand out to touch Shandra's shoulder. "Red?"

Shandra started to open her mouth as she tried to look at Jacen. She could feel his hand on her shoulder, the heat a byproduct of the production of energy. A necessity to human life. So why then did it feel like it was slipping away? And why couldn't she see...well anything? A rush filled all her senses. And then suddenly nothing. It was like floating in a big batch of water without the sensation of being wet or having any sort of temperature change. Vaguely she could feel another conciousness in this nothingness (which was really everything in disguise) with her...Jacen, is what she registered it as. But as soon as the name rolled around what she was pretty sure were her thoughts, everything started to snap back into place.

Shandra breathed out heavily as she felt her hands and knees touch the warm earth, which she'd think about later because right now she was too busy trempling with sensations she couldn't name and ideas that she'd never had but were slipping away anyways. When she finally managed to look around to spot her blond haired companion a few things registered. One - this place was warm and they'd left during winter. Two - there were sentinals headed straight for them.

Great. Another dimensional jump. Hadn't that been fixed?

Jacen’s eyes widened as Shandra tried to look at him. He was on the verge of opening his mouth to ask what was wrong when he was abruptly cut off. For a second he thought Shandra was using her powers to make him invisible, but that was quickly dismissed as an option. Her powers normally buzzed him with adrenaline, whatever this was was only making him queasy.

When Jacen finally felt the vibrations surrounding him it was a bit painful. He always had stimuli wherever he was, one of the reasons he had slept in water, but the nothingness they had passed through to get to this place hadn’t had anything, and now his body was overcompensating. Once he realized he had the ability to speak he opened his mouth, “since when can you teleport…?” He asked rolling up to sit on the balls of his feet, on hand on the ground to balance him, still a bit disoriented.

He didn’t notice change in seasons. What he did notice was the giant machines moving towards them. His vision was slowly clearing up and focusing, but he could recognize those robots no matter how blurry they were.

“Shandra, run!” He said, moving over to her, they were sitting ducks out here. Granted, they didn’t have much a chance if they ran, but that was better than dying sitting down.

For one of the first times in a long time, Shandra had a difficult time moving. Her whole body still felt like it had recieved an electrical shock. Which was interesting considering that she'd never been shocked. Still, she figured that the sentiment fit. Her mind seemed to scramble with the idea that she should be fighting back and not running. Her body however didn't seem to get the memo that she actually had the power to fight them. It was like being a new recruit all over again. Narcissa might have killed her if she were there...

The area seemed to stretch on forever. The wasteland oddly placed it would seem, but there was a feeling of death about. Of wars too great to number.

"Hault mutants!" The sentinal's voice boomed out as it landed infront of them.

So much for being quick...she supposed jets beet feet for everyone but Quicksilver anyways.

The sentinels were upon them in no time. He supposed it was to much to hope that these were the ‘capture and imprison’ model as opposed to the ‘gun down anything with the x-gene’ model. “Shandra, what is going on?” He asked as his eyes finally focused, his enhanced vision taking in every detail of their surroundings. “Where are we?” He asked warily putting up his hands.

“And if you could make us disappear right now, that’d be great.”

Nodding lightly to herself, and as a responce to Jacen's request, Shandra moved forward. This of course wasn't the best of ideas to be able to complete the request because her movement seemed to trigger the machines. A line of red energy, scary similar to Cyclops' in a way, shot out from the palm of the outstretched arm. If it had been a solid object the gravity acting upon it would have been intense - these things were so much taller than she remembered them.

Shandra dodged towards the side as she shot her powers back out towards them. The unseen force pushed back the blast to hit the machine. Only there was this...glow to them as the energy hit as it reabsorbed. Great, energy eating models with a type of self heal.

As one Sentinel shot at Shandra, the other one seemed to appraise that since Jacen was with the hostile red-head, he two should be dealt with.

“Crap.” Jacen flipped back as a laser scorched the earth at his feet. His mind raced as he thought of options, and before he had landed he’d run through numerous ideas. He turned camo, shorts and shirt still visible, but at least now a headshot would be harder for the robot to pull off.

He moved towards the robot, running towards it as opposed to away. Shandra looked like she was busy with the Sentinel taking her on, his only chance was to hold it off until she could bring down the hammer on these guys.

As Shandra used the Sentinals own leg as a spinning point, she was oddly greatful that her hair was still damp. Her feet touched back down onto the ground and she darted to the direction she landed. The sentinel however wasn't easily fooled and as she moved behind the towering machine, she heard the gears of a machine turning ever so quietly. Whipping her head up, Shandra could practically feel the computerized programming trying to run a learning program on her movements. But machines didn't have the same number and speed of connection that an organic brain did. They didn't have the breaks in synaps that allowed for "creativity". Which was about to be it's downfall...literally.

Her body bent as her hand stretched out, narrowly avoiding the grasping hand of the sentinal by means of a one handed front flip. She twisted on her palm, tearing the skin, before pushing upwards and down with her powers. Her body seemeed to jump into the air as if someone had kicked her in the stomach. But she landed just where she wanted to - and that was on the sentinal itself. But only after she'd sent it spiralling down into a crater it made when it's body collided with the ground. She could feel it twitch as much as any inorganic thing could as it's system tried to repair itself.

Peeping out of a whole she'd made from the forced contact with the ground was a fairly bright light from the power source no doubt. She stood up and forced down the instant resistance to the idea that had budded up in her mind. This...was probably going to hurt but it had to be done.
Jacen moved back and forth, dodging laser fire in his typical acrobatic fashion. So, remember training: Sentinel weakpoints are at the joints where the wires are exposed. Stuff like that. But he didn't have anything to cut through it's armor...

He moved up, flipping onto the leg of the sentinel, grimacing in concentration as he pulled his fist back. This was gonna hurt.

With a grunt, Jacen shot his fist into the cables that comprised the sentinels knee, superior strength had it's advantages as he gripped hod of the center wires. With some strain, he pulled, twisting the sparking cables out. The leg shorted, sputtering as the robot started to tumble, jet firing to try and realign itself... Right into the crater Shandra was in.

Her attention whipped over to the incoming sentinal that Jacen had inadvertedly sent her way. The heat of the jet seemed to be one of the most pressing things. In fact one of the flairs as it was trying to correct itself lapped out too far and neared her skin. Shandra fell backwards and craddled the burn on her arm as her powers shot out to stop herself from being burn to a crisp. But like before the robot seemed to absorb it and used it to speed up the healing process. She rolled off of the fallen sentinal, still craddling her damaged arm, and let herh powers fall. The jets burned right through the opening in the other sentinal...destroying the power supply. The seemed to shut down the thing - machanical healing and all.

One down, one to go.

As soon as the last active sentinal seemed to realize what had occured, it grounded itself. Enough of the wires had bonded back together for it to stand but Jacen had done enough damage for there still to be a weak point in the joint. One which Shandra intended to use against it, if she could. She knew this could either be a very bad situation to use her powers...or a very food one. It just depended if she could overload the machine's absorption rate or not. She didn't have the time to warn Jacen, nor did she trust her voice to speak up without yelling in pain, but she hoped he knew her style well enough by now for this not to kill him.

Shaking her shoulders a little, Shandra let go of the concentration she normally used and just exploded out in front of her. The effects were almost instantanious. Like a stampede through the savana, her powers rushed at the machine. Only nothing was absorbed...and the sentinal seemed to be turned into nothing more than a crushed can as it was flung far...far away from them. She could faintly see the power supply fritz out in the distance. And then the machine exploded. Scrap metal littered the barren land far enough away from them that they didn't have to worry about it.

Shandra clenched her jaw as she instinctively held her hand over the burn. What she wouldn't do for a few aloe plants...

He would have called out a warning, but the sentinel managed to slap him on its way down into the crater. The gigantic robot hand managing to catch his entire right side and send him skidding back, plenty far enough from Shandra as she did her sentinel crushing trick. He was limping his way over to her side when the crumpled robot blew up, blinking as his eyes readjusted to the light.

"Well that was-" He paused to pop his shoulder back in place, grimacing, "fun."

He looked over to the red-head, noticing the hand she had placed on her arm. "Oh gosh, did it hurt you?" He asked, totally one to talk, "Are you alright?" He really couldn't help feeling a bit responsible for any injury she received. You know, from the malfunctioning sentinel he had thrown at her.

"You," Shandra said tightly as she licked her lips as a nervous habit when suffering pain, "learned from Antonio, didn't you?"

The, for lack of a better word, burning sensation caused her to clench her jaw and her hand. Which, of course did not feel good to the actual burn. With a yelp like sound that she tried so very hard to bottle in her throat, Shandra let go of her arm to reveal what was probably a heavy first, borderline second, degree burn the size of her hand. She couldn't tell really because other than the quick glance she really didn't want to look at it. Looking only made the mental imagery, and therefor the perception of pain, worse. Or at least that's what she was going to tell herself for a while.

With a light nod in the direction of the crashed sentinel (which was west if the sun was anything to go by), Shandra started to walk. Some people may have thought to go away from the trashed and exploded sentinel just incase it sent reinforcements. But considering the fact that they didn't know which way the sentinels would be coming from, it really didn't make a different which way they went. The only thing they would know for sure was the fact that the sun was setting, they were in what looked to be a wasteland after a huge war, and there was no other way to navigate (at least a way she knew) other than the direction of the sun.

"Sorry..." He said, looking around at the barren landscape that sorrounded them. Jacen winced as gave a pained cry, Hoping they could find some medical help somewhere. Speaking of where... "Where are we?" The events that had transpired to bring them here came rushing back to the forefront of Jacen's mind, causing him to turn towards Shandra as they walked along.

"How'd you do that? Get us here I mean?" She didn't seem all that phased with suddenly finding herself in what could be the set of an post-apocalyptic thriller. Maybe this was some sort of new training program and she was in on it.

"I don't know," Shandra said in a quiet voice.

She was trying not to pay attention to the fact that through this all, her head at least didn't feel dizzy like it had back at the academy. Nor the fact that the uneasy "wrong" sensation she'd gotten in the first few days of being in the other dimension was back. Because that would mean that a freak coincidence had been ruled out. The idea that she'd caused this, that this was just a drawback from the first time, was starting to become a hypothesis. One she had no way to test.

The night drew closer as they continued on. The further into the wasteland they got, the closer to the epicenter they seemed to reach. There were less and less ruined areas and more of just that strange brown, red, and bleached sandy debris mix. But Shandra stopped when they finally found the scraps from the exploded sentinal. She'd never thrown something that far before...she wasn't sure if that was a good or bad sign.

"We should stop here, make cover with the remains," she finally spoke up. "Besides you should rest."

Though what remained wasn't anything grand, but there did look to be enough to make a small lean to. Enough to cover them from sky searches long enough for Jacen to get some rest.

Jacen frowned as Shandra denied knowledge of their current predicament, concerned that maybe she was freaking out. He'd let the subject go for now. After all, they had a long walk ahead of them.

The mangled junk surrounding them wasn't giving way to anything more hospitable. In fact, even his superior senses weren't picking up anything. No signs of life. No movement anywhere around him, aside from the steps of Shandra's feet. His initial thoughts that they were in a junkyard were quickly falling apart. "I wonder what happened here?" He though aloud, always the curious one.

Jacen would never admit he needed rest, but he was glad for the reprieve. The fight with the sentinels had taken a lot of his strength, and as good as he was with hiking, he wouldn't be much use against another robot if he was exhausted. "We don't happen to have any water do we?" He said, half-jokingly, mostly not. With a grunt, he gripped the edge of what looked like the least crumpled part of the sentinel outer-shell and lifted it over to one of the higher scraps of debris. Both he and Shandra would be able to at least crouch underneath that. If they were going to be staying for a bit, at least there'd be cover.

"I'd say that I'll take the shift on watch so you could sleep, but I don't think either of us will be sleping..." He could already feel a chill in the air as the temperature dropped for the night. Damn, he hated the cold. He'd take The Sahara over a ski slope anyday.

"Would you like for me to knock you out?" Shandra responded in a sedated voice as she kneeled down.

Even if she wasn't going to sleep, like Jacen surmissed (not that she had in a long while), taking cover was the best course of action. Especially if those two sentinels had contacted their base or whatever it was they had. Plus having as many walls around them to conserve heat was the best thing. She didn't know where they were exactly but it almost felt like a mild desert. The day had probably been very hot but as the sun slipped the degrees did too.

“Now now, no need to get violent.” Jacen said with a half-grin. Crouching down to sit indian-style under the makeshift roof. Hopefully the sentinel metal can shield them from any infrared any of the other bots would use.

After a rather long pause, Jacen spoke up again “So… any clue where we are?” His tone was chipper, as if they were lost on a camping trip as opposed t a desolate wasteland. It struck him for a second that they may not have teleported at all, that this was all that remained of the U.S. after some sortof nuke dropped, and Shandra's powers had sheilded themm from it. That probably wasn't the case, he reasoned, but he was looking at any explanation.

"Judging by the temperature I would say either a steppe or desert enviroment," Shandra supplied as she relaxed as much as their shelter would allow. "However there were remains and signs of prior sedentary human life...so maybe a war area. Anything else about the geography I couldn't tell you because there aren't any plants to go by..."

Plants would have supplied a source of water by eating the inner most meat, which would have been another good thing to having plants around. Food source, hydration, shade and a possible clue as to where they were on the planet. But of course things couldn't be that easy.

"More likely than not, we're in another dimension," was her next sentence.

Jacen listened as Shandra explained, nodding as she went along. So at least some part was right. Boom went the previous inhabitants of this pristine real-estate. Plants would have been lovely, though judging by the surroundings he wouldn’t be surprised if any they found were poisonous or mutated or some other weird thing.

Her next suggestion caught him off guard. He tilted his head and leaned forward a bit, trying to get a good look at Shandra’s face. “Red…” He started, very confused, “I don’t think that’s possible, Remember when we went to Limbo and Dr. McCoy gave us that whole boring speech about how much machinery and data and other scienc-y stuff it took to open a gateway?” He didn’t understand the science, so he had just taken the Doctor’s word on it.

"Yes, I've had this conversation twice with Hank," Shandra said, pausing after she realized she had used his first name instead. "Machines are the most stable way to travel dimensions for beings that aren't units of the phoenix force. However, mutants have been known to travel between dimensions before. Nightcrawler does it all the time. So it's possible...unluckily for you, Darwin's law does tend to like me."

Jacen paused for a bit to let this sink in. He'd been told mutants could develop secondary powers, apparently Ms. Frost hadn't always been able to go diamond and use telepathy, but he hadn't really known anyone to develop it at the school... "So... You can jump dimensions now?" At least he hoped it was that one. From what he'd heard of the Phoenix Force, he didn't want anything to do with it.

"I have no idea," Shandra answered, much like she had earlier.

Barely thinking about it, she moved her arm to rest around her mid section as she rolled her shirt around it. Blocking some of the air did feel good, but in other ways the fabric was only more irritating. Especially every time she breathed which caused the arm to move. So she settled on not wrapping it (against her better judgement that got a kick in the pants by the fact that wrapping it up hurt).

"It's...possible...but this didn't happen until the last fight at the Academy. At least I think it was the last fight."

You really couldn't blame her for not knowing exactly since it had been more than a year for her while no time at all had seemed to pass for Jacen. Of course she hadn't exactly told him this, nor had she told anyone else in that universe that didn't already know. As far as she knew it was supposed to have just been a one time event. Something that when she managed to get back should have died away. And she was pretty sure it had since she'd gone a while without jumping back. But now this...was it her power? She didn't think so...at least it didn't feel like using her powers.

"Wait, you've done this before? Great, so you know where we are!" A different person might've said, 'so you know how to get us home,' but that was the farthest thing from his mind at the moment. "Was it not like this last time? What do you think happened." It was obvious he didn't grasp the concept of jumping dimensions very well, if at all.

"No...no it didn't look like this," Was all Shandra said and that was all she was going to say on the matter. At least for now. "Rest Jacen...who knows, maybe it will wear off."

She just wasn't going to tell him that it didn't wear off last time. And that she wasn't the one responsible for bringing herself home.

Jacen forrowed his eyebrows together, still confused as he leaned back against the more solid side of their shelter. "Huh." Was all he said after that, not necessarily because he picked up on Shandra's non-desire to keep talking about it, but because he didn't know what else to ask. Either way, he definitley wasn't going to fall asleep. He'd just rest his eyes for abit. Yea, then they'd get an early start in the morning... Figure out what was up together, because, after all, He knew as much as Shandra did...

He was alseep within seconds.

The next morning came quickly like all mornings for those who slept through the night. Normally there was a routine in the morning but there wasn't much to do as they had no supplies. And with the sun brought a renewed heat. Now it wasn't actually blistering but after been in New York for years, Shandra had gotten used to a colder climate. (She still hated snow with a fiery passion however.)

Waking up presented Jacen with a small headache, something he didn’t think much about until later during the day. When he could be caught absent-mindedly rubbing his temples for a few seconds every once in a while. It was grating but there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he soldiered on.

Walking was the only option at this point. Well there was running but with that seemed a little pointless. So they walked...and walked...and walked. Finally a city came into view.When the two travellers reached the city he couldn’t help but roll his eyes and give a silent groan. The bad thing? It was surrouned by sentinals. Of course there were more sentinels. Shandra grabbed Jacen's hand and did her little trick, activating her powers to cover the both of them until they could find a way inside. He started as Shandra took his hand before feeling that only somewhat familiar sensation of Eclipse’s powers. He wondered whether or not the sentinels were stationed to keep people out, or in.

Slowly they moved closer to the border of sentinals. The machines towered high above them, daunting no matter how you looked at them. So much metal and thought had gone into building them...and so much hate. And yet hey were so stoic as if they were mocking all of the emotions they invoked. As if all the lives they had destroyed never mattered to begin with. Which was a controdiction because they seemed to be guarded a a unique city - unique in the fact that it had high walls stretching and ending just below their elbows all the way around.

“I wonder where this is…”

"We'll find out once we're inside," Shandra told him as she kept her grip on his hand.

It took fifteen minutes of waiting but one of the gates opened up. Taking that as their chance, Shandra gripped his hand and started off in a run. While she had waited longer for access into places it didn't mean she wanted to wait around all day. The longer they used her powers the hotter it seemed to get and she knew from practice the less oxygen ratio there would be for them to breathe. After all, her powers essentially created a barrier over them where very little could get in and nothing could get out.

Once inside, Shandra found a corner that they'd just been able to squeeze into with a bit of creative manuvering and released his hand. Her powers disappeard from them both just as she had wanted them too once she figured out that no one would see them suddenly appear. Didn't want people crying witch after all.

Jacen let out a quiet sigh of relief. Whatever was in this city must be worth guarding, so he figured they were in a relatively good place. “Okay Eclipse, plan of action?” Jacen preferred to leave the big plan making to others, he was more of an in the moment problem solving type of guy. He glanced out there corner, superior eyesight picking up every detail of their surroundings within a second before he retreated back…

"Find out when we are," Shandra spoke out first after she took a nice deep breath. "Get supplies and then find out the difference between this world and the last so we're not...well...caught unaware."

And she made a memo to herself to pick up a pair of sunglasses before the sun fell again. Luminescent eyes were great for getting targeted as a mutant when the sun set.

With a bit of a hesitation in her movements, Shandra led Jacen and herself away from the tight space they'd "reappeared" in and into the main city. It was just like any other place if one could get over the boarder and what lay after them. The street wasn't quite as busy as New York City but at the same time it wasn't as isolated as a small country town. There was plenty enough garbage here and there but oddly...she couldn't find one person that looked as though they may have been homeless. Nor were there anyone who looked handicapped. Still, it wasn't the oddest thing she'd ever seen so she didn't verbally mention it as they walked.

"So, where to?" Shandra asked as she looked to the side over towards Jacen.