Rogue: Magnolia Crusader by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Rogue-Magnolia-Crusader-1260245873

Rogue: Magnolia Crusader ANIMATION

The Cartographer of Ghosts

The silence in the War Room had teeth. Not the blunt molars of a sleeping mansion, but the incisors of something that had just fed. Professor Charles Xavier sat in his wheelchair, his hands folded on the mahogany table as if in prayer, but his eyes were hollow—two burned-out galaxies where a mind once burned.

“He doesn’t remember us,” Storm whispered, her voice a cracked bell. “He doesn’t remember himself.”

Rogue stood in the doorway, the leather of her suit creaking like old skin. She had not slept in seventy-two hours. Her hair, that famous white streak now faded to the color of old bone, hung limp against her cheek. She looked at the Professor—the man who had saved her from herself—and felt the cold mathematics of what had to be done.

Three weeks ago, the first case appeared in Brazil: a young telepath named Belo who woke up screaming, not because he was in pain, but because he had forgotten how to scream. The virus—if it was a virus—moved through the psychic ether, leaping from mind to mind like a whisper in a library. It did not kill. It hollowed. Mutants forgot their first loves, their first kills, the smell of rain on asphalt. Some forgot how to breathe. Their bodies continued, autonomic and obedient, but the self—that fragile narrative—simply dissolved.

“We’ve tried everything,” said Beast, his blue fur matted with anxious sweat. He held a data slate that flickered with incomprehensible waveforms. “Cerebro cannot filter it. Forge’s dampeners fail. The moment a mind reaches out telepathically, even in defense, the virus… edits it.”

“Edits?” Rogue’s Southern drawl was flat, dangerous.

“Like a corrupted file,” Beast said. “It identifies the most emotionally salient memories—the ones that define identity—and deletes them. Systematically. With surgical precision. And then it replicates.”

Jean Grey was not there. She had been the second victim. Cyclops sat in the corner, his ruby quartz visor dark, his hands trembling. He had not spoken since Jean forgot his name.

Rogue stepped forward. Her boots made no sound on the floor. She laid a gloved hand on the Professor’s shoulder. He looked up—a flicker, a match in a tomb.

“Rogue?” he said. It was a question. He wasn’t sure.

“Yeah, sugar,” she said softly. “It’s me.”

She turned to the others. “I have an idea you’re gonna hate.”

The idea was obscene. It was also the only one left.

Rogue’s power was a curse she had worn like a hair shirt for years. One touch, and she absorbed the psyche of another—their memories, their skills, their passions, their pain. For a time, they lived inside her like ghosts in a boarding house. Most faded. Some stayed. Over the years, she had accumulated a library of souls: Carol Danvers’s combat instincts, a dozen minor mutants’ forgotten dreams, even fragments of Mystique’s serpentine love. Her own identity had once been a thin raft over a sea of others.

Now that raft would become an ark.

“I’ll let the virus in,” she said.

The room went colder. Wolverine, who had been sharpening his claws in the corner with the sound of a dying cat, stopped. “No.”

“Listen,” Rogue said, holding up a hand. “The virus hunts memories. It deletes the ones that matter most. But it has to read them first. That’s the transmission vector—telepathic contact. So I’ll open myself. I’ll let it taste every mind I’ve ever carried. Every last one.”

“It will erase you,” Storm said, her white eyes flashing with lightning.

“Maybe,” Rogue admitted. “But I’ve got hundreds of minds in here, sugah. Hundreds. The virus will gorge itself. And while it’s busy eating, I’ll do something it didn’t expect.”

She smiled. It was not a kind smile.

“I’ll write a map.”

The process required a kiss. Not romance—necessity. She would touch Professor Xavier’s temple, skin to skin, and let the virus jump from his dying mind into her own. But Xavier was a class-five telepath. Even hollowed, his unconscious defenses might lash out. The only way to keep him calm was to let him feel something he still remembered.

Rogue knelt before him. She took his face in her hands—bare hands, gloves discarded on the floor like shed snakeskin. His skin was papery and warm.

“I need you to hold on to me, Professor,” she whispered. “Just for a second. Just the shape of me.”

She kissed his forehead.

The world inverted.

Rogue fell
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)