Illyana "Magik" Rasputin

I am so sorry for being gone so long! (You know how when you put something off for a while, it just becomes harder and harder to go back to it, even though you know that waiting longer will just keep making it harder? Yeah…) Anyway the computer issues are cleared-up now (cross your fingers I didn’t just jinx it all lol) and I have pulled myself off my arse, and I am back and ready to rp!

It’s going to take me a while to catch up on everything, of course – but I’m here and I’m working on it again! THIS should be up to date with all my threads; if it’s not please let me know what responses I’ve missed! Thank you!

Any new followers or important updates in your own lives or blogs, please take pity and send me a message or link or something because there is no way I can do through my dash for everything that happened while I was gone!

She’d put a lot of hope on this girl being able to help her with the situation, but she supposes that even some things are too much to hope for. Mayday puts the device away, frowning as she notices the girl’s reaction to it. It’s almost as though she had some kind of repulsion for it. She decides she won’t look too much into it, especially when there’s still a shot that this girl can explain things to her about where they are.

When they are. 

You’d think that after all of Mayday’s initial time travelling adventures, she’d have gotten used to thinking like that by now.

“If you can get us out of here, and back to.. when you’re from, then I’ll be able to show them what I need help fixing.” She promises, hoping that the girl’s from a time where the technology she needs exists. If she goes right back to where she’d just come from?? Well, that would be ironic, wouldn’t it. She zips up her pocket, nervous that it may fall out. Mayday pulls her backpack onto her back, then returns her attention to the girl, frowning when she sees a horse drawn cart approaching behind her.

“I’d say right here is the early 1900s, given that they haven’t got many skyscrapers in New York yet, but I wasn’t great at history.” She jokes, watching as the cart turns down another path. They’re uninterrupted again. That was good. Mayday liked it that way. “My name’s May, May Parker. My nickname’s Mayday, and… well, I think it suits me quite well right now.” She jokes biting her bottom lip hard. “I’m from the year 2055.”

Illyana cocks her head curiously. “You want to go to my home?” she asks. “You don’t even know when that is -- or where. Are you sure about that? It might be worse than here.” She waves her free hand vaguely in a general sweeping gesture around the park and everything beyond it. Illyana didn’t think that her current home-dimension was all that bad, but she’d been to several worlds and time periods that were practically hellscapes even without demons. It was very trusting of this girl to be so ready to go home with Illyana without so much as a word about where or when or what that was -- trusting, or suspicious. Not that this girl seemed like a trap, but...

The approaching cart has Illyana shifting her weight in preparation for a sword-thrust or a stepping disc summoning, blue eyes narrow with suspicion as she looks away from the girl and toward the new threat (a perfect chance for the girl to attack her, if she’s going to -- not that it’s as easy to jump a teleporter as it is most people, which is what Illyana’s counting on) but it clatters past them without even taking note of the two strangely dressed girls by the bench. Illyana ought to do something about that if they’re going to stick around here, she decides...

“Early 1900s,” she agrees easily, “sure, sounds good to me. I never was all that good at figuring out things by year.” Time for Illyana has always been more of a feeling than a number. Probably comes from growing up in a place where time isn’t linear and dates are irrelevant nonsense -- also from her lack of general education, of course. While her time with the New Mutants involved a lot of remedial classes to teach her basic things that Limbo never had, there were still a lot of gaps, Illyana knew. It didn’t much bother her; she was well versed in the areas that mattered to her.

“Hi, Mayday. Cool name. I’m Illyana. You’re from a little farther along than my present day, I guess--” not that Illyana could remember exactly what year she had left from “--but I’m closer to you than I am to 1900. Just a couple of decades off, that’s no big deal.” She tries a reassuring smile. “I’m not sure taking you straight to my home is a good idea,” Illyana continues gently, “not until we make sure that there isn’t anything then that can hurt you or your device, or vice versa.” She could take her to Limbo, but she doesn’t think the girl -- Mayday -- will enjoy that. So few people do.

Julie, however, was unsettled when someone just gripped her arm. At first she thought it was Katie who wanted to show her something but then a voice next to her ear rattled away. That voice rattled a mile a minute and it almost made her dizzy. Almost, but not quite. 

Then the girl asked who she was and dark eyes already looked around to check if people weren’t listening in on their conversation. “Um, yes I do, so I’m not going to tell you that name. Instead, I’ll give you my regular one. I’m Julie. Julie Power. I think our friends fought together because I can’t—-hang on, did you just say that you died?! Seriously?!”

The blonde looked about her own age. Julie’s heart ached. 

Clearing her throat, the heroine known as Lightspeed said: “So, Illyana, what brings you to the mall on this fine afternoon?” Consider this impromptu improv lessons, Power!

“Julie,” Illyana repeated, rolling the name around on her tongue like an unfamiliar word (and after so long in Limbo where names like Julie were the furthest thing from normal, it was an unfamiliar word), “Julie Power. Power.” That set bells ringing in Illyana’s head. “Power...as in Pack,” she said, breaking into a grin as the connections clicked. “Yes, yes I knew I knew you...well, knew I knew people who knew you.” Was she speaking too loudly? Illyana didn’t think she was, didn’t think that over the babble of far too many mortals in far too cramped a space anyone would be able to hear them let alone care enough to listen, but she dropped her voice anyway. “Did I ever meet you myself? It gets so hard to keep track...but Kitty did. She helped save you from the Morlocks, I remember that, her and Wolvie...”

The Morlocks immediately led to old memories of Kitty trapped in phase, her molecules drifting slowly ever farther apart, death by dissemination looming as the inevitable result of the energy weapon that had struck Kitty down in those tunnels when Illyana hadn’t been allowed to come help. Shaking her head to shake those thoughts off -- Kitty hadn’t died, she’d recovered in time to be well again when Illyana was the one who died -- she gave Julie Power a shrug and said, “It’s a mission. I guess. To re-acclimatize to ‘normal’ life. Whatever that means for people like me -- us.” Or was Julie Power comfortable with normal? She certainly looked at her ease here -- or she had, before Illyana had come leaping at her out of nowhere looking for a life-raft. Oops.

Terrible First Meeting Starters (ACCEPTING)

Mayday takes a deep breath in, and another breath out. Okay, calm down.  D o n ’ t  panic. You’re not the only one stuck here, remember?? This girl is too. But from the looks of it, she might be able to get you out. Just don’t freak out. In recent weeks, she’d noticed that her nerves were getting to her more and more frequently, which isn’t the best thing if you spend your spare time fighting crime. It’s even less great if you’ve accidentally traveled back in time to what could be at least a century before you were born. 

Don’t think about it.

She puts a smile on her face, nodding as the girl begins to speak to her, correcting her word usage to ‘when’ instead of where. She’s speaking about it as if it were normal, which it most definitely wasn’t, but May gets the feeling that for her, it might be. Breathe.

“I was messing about with something I shouldn’t have been messing with. I didn’t think it would be something that would make me travel through time, I just thought it- well, I don’t know what I thought it would do. I thought we were years off of time travel.” Turns out Norman Obsorn had a penchant for more than just cloning his enemy’s kid. Who knew. 

“The device is broken now, so I can’t get back, but I’ve been trying to figure out how to solve the equation all morning. My only fear is the parts for it won’t be invented for another hundred years.” She explains, unzipping her backpack and pulling the device out for the other girl to look at. “Maybe you can figure out how to get it working again.” She says hopefully.

Illyana let out a loud snort and shook her head, grinning at the ludicrousness of the idea that she could fix some kind of science device. She held her free hand up as though to ward the thing away before it burned her. “Not a chance in hell,” she said, chuckling. “And I mean that literally. I don’t even have a computer.” Between Kitty and Doug there was no reason why she needed one; whatever she wanted done on a computer, either of them would be able to do a thousand times better and faster anyway. And if they were ever unavailable and she, for some unfathomable reason, actually needed something from a computer, there were dozens of hapless young teach-savvy mutants floating around the periphery of the X-Men at all times whom she could terrify cajole into helping her.

“But I do I know lots of people who are very good at science-type...stuff,” Illyana added quickly, not wanting to make the lost girl in front of her any more distressed than she already was. She reminded herself how it felt to be lost in the wrong time and place with fears that there might never be a way home, and offered the girl a gentler smile than she usually would have and a handshake.

(A convenient side-effect of being left-handed in a world that prioritized the opposite was that she didn’t have to take her dominant hand off her sword-hilt to make the appropriate social gesture -- not that this girl seemed like a threat, but it rarely hurt to be cautious. Genuine though she appeared, she might still be a trap.)

“My name’s Illyana,” she said. “I’ve dealt with this time-lost stuff before and while I’m not going to deny that sometimes it sucks, you don’t need to start panicking yet.” Offering details of her own time-crossing escapades probably wouldn’t help, especially if she started with the whole “spent seven years growing up in a hell-dimension and lost more than half my soul in the process” story -- but she could still offer general reassurance, surely.

For breaking the ice in the worst possible way, featuring themes including: kidnapping, murder, stalking, injury, monsters, and just general meanness. [Brackets] indicate spaces to include your own words to personalize your ask!

Illyana is the best there is at what she does, and what she does is take the blame Storytellers: Marc Guggenheim & Pere Pérez Source: X-Men Gold #32

She’s been sitting on a bench in Central Park, flipping through her notebook. The scribbles were giving her a migraine. No matter how hard Mayday worked on trying to find a way home, she couldn’t manage it. She closes it, and puts it carefully back in her backpack, ensuring that prying eyes can’t use it for themselves. If anyone knew… May shudders at the thought. Stop focusing on the negatives. 

The only thing that she dreads is when the day comes, in case she runs into someone she knows from the future, like her father. Talk about one messed up timeline. She leans back, shutting her eyes and beginning to relax, her arms wrapped tightly around her backpack as she attempts to enjoy the peace and quiet that came with being here so early. 

Just then, she feels her spider sense begin to go crazy. May’s eyes snap open, and she gets to her feet, moving away from the bench, watching in disbelief as a girl jumps out of a hole in the air that hadn’t been there, and disappears just as soon as the girl sets foot on the ground.

Her heart’s pounding, has she broken some universal law?? Is she about to be punished for something that wasn’t even entirely her fault?? Mayday clutches tighter onto her backpack, observing the girl’s actions. It’s then that she realises; I haven’t seen anyone else around here yet. As the sun comes up, it’s finally easy for her to properly see the New York skyline, and a chill runs up May’s spine; none of this looks anything like I would have expected. That can mean only one thing. I went a bit further back than I thought I did. 

“I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t even know where I am.” She admits hesitantly. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

It took her a moment to realize -- she was too focused on the girl to be paying enough attention to her surroundings; Cat would have been furious with her -- but the girl wasn’t the only thing wrong. Illyana looked around, eyes narrowed in suspicion, but when the answer struck her it came through her nose instead: the world smelled wrong.

It was an easy progression from there to figure out why: they were no longer in what Illyana thought of as the “present day” (a vague and ambiguous term for her anyway) but sometime many years in the past. The smells of soot and manure had replaced the oily stink of too many cars and the enticing nasal cacophony of a thousand different nationalities cooking their favorite dishes. “Goblin teeth,” she sword under her breath, then looked up at the girl again. Whoever she was, she wasn’t dressed for this era and from the look on her face she was every bit as bewildered by her being here -- now -- as was Illyana.

Illyana herself was less surprised than she should have been, probably -- but this wasn’t the first time she had experienced someone getting scattered through time unintentionally. Of course, every time she had experienced before it had been happening to her, not to some stranger -- but she recognized the symptoms.

It was familiar enough to kindle her sparse empathy, at least briefly.

“I believe you,” Illyana said, forcing her lips to curl in what she hoped was more of a reassuring smile than a threatening sneer. At least she didn’t have fangs right now; that should help. “And I think the word you’re looking for is when -- when you are, not where. That’s the important thing right now. What’d you do to end up now?” She swung the Soulsword down so that it was digging point-first into the ground and propped one hand on the hilt, resting her weight there like it was a cane instead of an arcane magical weapon. “I’m not going to hurt you for it,” she added. “I have some experience landing in times I didn’t aim for. Sometimes these things just happen.”

That was another question that required a long moment of silence. She definitely wanted to go. To get out of there. To be anywhere else. But, in that desire, she had to think about where it was that she actually wanted to go.

“Well,” she finally offered with a faint smile and a shrug, “I do have a honeymoon in New Zealand and Australia all ready and paid for. We could go, if you wanted?” she shrugged. “Like, just to be… So it doesn’t go to waste?”

She liked this idea. It sounded fun.

“But we can go somewhere else, if you’d rather.”

For a moment, Illyana just stared. Then she burst out laughing. “Why not?” she said, slinging her arm off of Kitty’s shoulders so she could plant her hands on her hips and grin at her friend from a more comfortable, less in-your-face distance. “It’s not like you even have to change the name on the tour sign-up lists or whatever it is you’ve got arranged -- although maybe call ‘em up and cancel the rose petals and chocolates.” She paused. “Or maybe not. Chocolates are good regardless, and I don’t have anything against rose petals...”

Illyana had no idea what details Kitty had actually arranged for this honeymoon, but she’d watched enough bad movies with her and Dani over the years that she felt like she could make jokes about the stereotypical trappings.

Rachel was the one who had helped Kitty plan most of the honeymoon trip, while Illyana had focused on the wedding itself (they had split bachlorette party duties). Rachel had claimed that it was because it would be “too weird” for Illyana to plan anything that involved the potential of “sexy times” with her own brother, but Illyana had a feeling it had mostly been because Kitty and Rachel didn’t think Illyana would be of much use in planning any trip that didn’t involve stepping discs, time travel, and fighting monsters or criminals or mad scientists or god-like beings.

Illyana had pretended to agree with the first part so as not to have to agree with the second -- but really, what did she know about trips that didn’t involve one or all of the above? Better to let Rachel do it...but there was nothing that said she couldn’t learn how to travel without those things.

Kitty was silent for a long, long while. She stared out over the edge of the cliff, wondering how exactly to respond to Illyana. The truth was the she was certain that a lot of what she was feeling or thinking didn’t make any real sense. She was still struggling with everything. Poor Illyana was just trying to keep up.

Illyana was right about one thing, though. She and Piotr really did take their turns destroying each other. And, come to think of it, it really was her turn this time. Although, she probably didn’t have to do it quite so spectacularly. Like… forgetting his birthday once probably would have been sufficient.

“You know what?” she asked, sighing so heavily that it probably should have hurt, “I think that I’d like to not talk about this anymore right now. I think that I would like to not think about it, either. What do you think of that?”

“I think that sounds totally fine,” Illyana said, and she meant it wholeheartedly. She gave Kitty’s shoulder a squeeze that she hoped was reassuring. Once upon a time she’d been good at this whole comforting-through-touch thing, at least with Kitty -- or at least she’d thought she’d been good at it. But that had been one lost-and-regained soul ago. Casual touch didn’t seem to work as effortlessly as it once had, and she’d never been as touchy-feely as the rest of the New Mutants to begin with. But a hug was a hug, and if she could still hug anyone properly it was Kitty -- she hoped.