[OP: "Ready, Aim, Fire."-- Imagine Dragons]

Morph did not do a good job explaining to everyone what he'd learned.

Somehow, he couldn't make it coherent.

"So...the dimensions are mixin' up?" Rogue said, puzzled. "Like a batter mix-up? Or like...they'e fightin'?"

"No, no, combining," Morph said.

"So like...an equation?" Hank asked.

"No, listen, why would you even think that?" Morph said.

"Because we don't understand any of this stuff!" Scott was losing his cool fast.

Emma winced.

"Sorry," Scott said. "I didn't mean to shout, but...it's hard to know what any of this means, Morph."

"Yeah could mean any fool thing, da way ya talk," Gambit said.

"Okay, start over," Storm said. "Someone has switched things up, and if we all continue to talk to each other the world is going to end?"

"No, no..." Morph was close to snapping.

Shine walked in.

"How's it going?" She asked.

"Terribly," Wally said bluntly. "I can't understand what the heck he's saying...Dimensional merging and stuff.  But I don't get how it's connecting people. It sounds freaky."

"Oh, it is," Mystique followed Shine, and regarded everyone coolly, and she didn't make eye contact with Morph at all.

"Momma..." Rogue said. "Where'd you go? I couldn't find ya."

"Nevermind," Mystique said. "The Time Broker...whoever he is, said that we have maybe 2 months to solve this. He didn't know who was behind it, or he wouldn't say. He also said all of us have to work on it together, in order to establish balance, or something like that. He was extremely and agonizingly vague about it. But I trust, it will make sense to the DJs." With a pointed look at them.

"At least that made some amount of sense" Scott said. "But still not that much..."

Shine thought. "I need a zipper," she said.

"What?" Logan said.

"It just came to me, I have a way to explain this," Shine said. "I need a zipper, an unattached one...Jean sews sometimes right?"

"I got it," Wally would have gotten Shine anything she needed right about then, he could tell she'd been upset.

He ran out of the room and came back in 5 seconds later with one of the stitch on zippers that you can buy at craft stores.

[My mom used to make us clothes for a hobby, not bad ones either. Zippers are better than buttons, you only have to sew them on in a straight line, button take forever. Fun facts, right?]

"I'm not sure Jean ever even uses those," Rogue said.

"Probably just came with some kit or something," Shine dismissed it. "She won't care if I break it then, right?"

"Break it?" Scott said nervously. "What are you doing?"

"Illustration," Shine said.

"Ah, Shine has all these illustrations for dimension stuff," Wally bragged. "It all makes no sense and then it kind of does eventually. Like the river of time, I love that one."

"I liked the orange slice one," Morph offered. "For how we have parallel dimensions."

"Let's just hope this one is more clear," Emma said crisply. "Because you have to explain what dimensional merging can possibly mean, and why it'd kill us."

"First, Morph, what was the rest of what the Time Broker said?" Shine asked resolutely.

"It was a lot to take in," Morph said. "So...uh, the Time Broker said that the reason we couldn't use the Talis link was because the connection to this dimension is fading, basically the merging already started."

"Ah, that makes sense," Shine said. "It's like we have an address, and it's getting blurry. If we had GPS's in this timeline I could explain this easier...but I guess a map is the same. "

"Right...so...the address, sure," Morph said. "And...so, uh..." he looked overwhelmed.

"So it's going to continue if it's not stopped directly by finding the person behind it," Mystique said it like it was a school recital. "Even if it slows down before then. Keeping Frost and the other fools away from the culprit might slow it down, he said, but not stop it."

"So...that's why we have months and not days?" Shine said.

"I suppose," Mystique said, like she didn't care.

"And the Time Broker is losing the ability to see our timeline clearly," Morph said. "Because of the corruption...usually the corruption just starts at one point, and then it goes from there, and you get the alternate time line, right? But because it's being caused by people switching places...somehow that makes it worse."

"Of course it does," Shine said. "People bring a little of their atmosphere with them. That's why we change things whenever we world travel, and so do you...But we do it it so small it would only affect a few things, and that's normal. Getting visions of the future has happened to humans all throughout history. That's not so bad...But when you bring the past and the future together like this...Well, you might handle one or two people like that, but if it was dozens of them--"

"That's what he said," Morph cut in. "Yeah, wow, you know your stuff."

"You said that before," Mystique said clipped. "Like she wouldn't know her stuff. This is her job. Focus."

"I am!" Morph said. "Gee, I'm just trying to put a nicer spin on this, do you mind?"

"Yes, actually, I do mind, we're wasting time," Mystique crossed her arms.

"Would you guys want to step outside?" Emma asked dryly. "Or can we continue with this horrid news you're giving us?"

"Fine," Morph said more irritated now. "So like Shine is saying, the more people, the more of a problem."

"Hold on," Logan insisted. "Why is only a few people okay?"

"For lack of a better metaphor, did you know that a small amount of cyanide is actually good for you?" Shine said. "In seeds...if it's in a tiny amount, it actually kills cancer cells. Vitamin B 17...But in large amounts, it kills you. Consider dimensional interference like that. It's dangerous, but in small amounts it can kill other problems, so to speak. But if you exceed that tiny amount, like more than a few peach pits or something, at a time, it is bad for you. And the world. A lot of things are like that, low exposure isn't bad, but high exposure is."

"Fair enough, she's right," Hank said. "Most medicine is bad for you in larger doses than prescribed."

"And in can depend on the world," Shine added. "Just like the person. My grandmother could barely take a child's dose of medicine, she was so sensitive to it, but her husband could take obscene amounts and not seem any the worse for it. Some worlds can handle more interference than others just because of how they function. Good news: This one is not hyper sensitive. You've had this problem a few times now, and you're not much the worse for it. But you have a limit."

"So what is that limit?" Storm asked.

"That, only God would know," Shine gestured. "It is not for us to know. But when we approach it, you'll know. This happened to Batman and GL once, people began to cease to exist, to remember, to change personality. That was a polluted time line. This...we're not likely to forget, I think. Or ceasing to exist entirely. But side effects would start to appear. One possible? Events of one world will start to become events in another one. I think...that may already have started."

She stared at Logan.

Everyone suddenly looked a him.

"What do you mean?" Logan said.

"Oh my..." Emma gasped, covering her mouth.

"Wait.." Logan said. "Are you saying that the reason I found that place was...that because she's here, she made it...that's crazy. It had to have been there for decades."

"Indeed," Shine said. "It had to have...now."

"No!" Emma stood up. "Just talking about it, I couldn't have made it happen."

She shook her head. "I have no power like that."

"All right calm down," Shine said. "The fact of the matter is: that's such a difficult thing to predict. It's possible that it was already like that. But you don't understand. All this will begin as heavily symbolic coincidences, that's how it works. Dimensions deal in metaphors, that's how we understand them. This will be hard to follow, but try: What has been, and what is now, as soon as Emma entered this world, might have come into existence. And even if she went home now, those events still stand. There is no going back, only going forward. Time travel is a joke, in a way. You can change things sure, but there is always some part of the past that was the other way. The dimensions are linked already. Just as Morph's life history became part of this world's as soon as he entered it. Just as Wally and I's history has become a part of it. In some ways, this is very simple. You live in a foreign country for a short time, you lived there, you ate there, you did things there. You were a part of it, whether you're a citizen or not. But if you break the laws of said country...well, you are still a criminal. And if you come in with a sledge hammer instead, like an invading army, you can still destroy it. It's no different for worlds. We're like tourists, or people on a work visa. But those who would tamper with it are like invading armies."

"That metaphor makes perfect sense," Hank said. "And it is terrifying."

"Yeah..." Rogue swallowed. "I don't feel so good."

"So I did shape reality?" Emma said faintly.

"If only that you gave us a lead," Shine said. "Sure. The event might have been basically the same here...but we don't actually know that...and the thing is...now we never will."

Emma sank back down like all the strength had gone out of her limbs.

"So...can we stop this?" Scott said.

"Oh no," Shine said, like it was nothing. "You'd have to die for that...even that wouldn't do it, probably. It's done. We can't undo it."

"Oh no..." Rogue also sank down.

Gambit put a hand around her.

"But the good news is," Shine said. "None of this would be a problem on its own. You know this, Morph? Right? There are changes that are okay to make. They won't hurt people."

"Yeah, yeah, she's right," Morph hastened to say. "None of what you guys have done is bad."

"Well...good." Scott said uncertainly.

"We're talking if it got bigger," Shine gestured widely. "I can't say what the magic number is, but I know that more than three people is already pushing it. Three or four is usually the maximum number of world travelers per mission that one world can handle. Five, maybe. 6 or 7 if the universe is extremely open, like Wally's. If you exceed 8 or 9, usually bad stuff goes down. But we're talking more than that. Once we get into the 20+ numbers, things might get so confused even we can't keep up anymore. But that wouldn't merge the dimensions, that's not enough people, it might just change the timeline permanently."

"Oh, only that," Emma said, so stressed you could see it radiating off of her.

"I'd say it's have to be 100 or more to merge completely," Shine said.

"There's a catch isn't there?" Morph said. "Like that sounds like it would take ages at the rate we're going, longer than months."

"No," Shine said. "Dimension change has a snowball effect, you must know that by now Morph. Yes, a few people, and it will be slow. But the more there are, the wider the tear between the world will get, allowing more to spill through. This will grow exponentially. Even the 2 months is too long I think. Your friends is assuming we can slow this down. We might, if we do, we may have that long. If we can't, I'd say we have weeks. Tops."

"And that was not what I needed to hear right now..." Rogue said.

Mystique glanced at Shine with grudging respect. "Not bad," she admitted. "That about catches us up. But there's one more thing. Another side effect of the Merging will be on the people. Apparently a lot of us have doubles in the other dimension...you said they aren't the same, sure, but they're close enough...and there can't be two, you said that, there can't be two Scott Summers...so if the dimensions merge, the reality will merge, and there still cannot be two. I believe Archimedes' law of space applies here, the water in the tub has to go somewhere."

"Oh...you're aware of that?" Hank said.

"I'm not completely stupid," Mystique glared at him. "I know basic science, yes. Displacement or whatever you call it. It seems Dimensions work more with souls than bodies, however. So, according to the Broker, both people's souls are likely to fuse into the same body."

"Like Steven Universe..." Morph muttered.

"Oh, that show is weird," Wally said.

"Like Ozpin," Shine looked at Wally.

"Oh...crap," Wally said.

"Or even like Rogue and Ms. Marvel," Shine gestured at Rogue. "And let me guess...one soul has to control."

"Yes, eventually," Mystique said. "And then the other will be snuffed out."

"Oh..." Emma gasped again.

"So which would it be?" Gambit asked, sounding scared. "Us or dem?"

"Does it matter?" Rogue said. "I ain't dying because of that, not twice!"

"No telling which it would be," Shine said. "But the process is not immediate, you can't just snuff out a soul like that. It would be slowly driven out, or absorbed...I suppose. Depends on how the bonding works. We knew z kid like this...in the end he was separated from it, though, and saved. Just as Rogue was. We told that story, I think. And another time, we knew people who were in danger of becoming different versions of themselves based on timelines, but not two different worlds. Sightly different. I've not heard of it like this. But if the merge happened to so many people, the liberating of them all...you know..."

"He did say it maybe could be possible if both bodies were close together," Morph said. "But not if they get separated by dimensions...so does that mean the souls could merge before other dimensions fully do?"

"That is a possibility," Shine said. "You have to throw out all the laws of physics when you talk about this stuff."

"Okay...so...could this get worse?" Scott said.

"Yes, it could be happening already and we'd not know," Shine said. "So that we do is already better than that. You have to be thankful for some things, or you'll lose it hearing about this. In fact, normal people are never supposed to hear this stuff. I hate that we have to explain it, but since it could endanger all of you first, I guess we had no choice."

She sighed and started fidgeting. "What a crisis...This is a new level..."

"Well...I think you caught up with the Time Broker," Morph said. "He did say, you two might be able to help...you might be the only ones who can, actually. My power as a time traveler isn't enough to stop this...I just tweak little things...I can't stop dimension tears...but you can?"

"At some level..." Shine said. 

"But to stop this we have to find it before it gets so big even we couldn't," Wally said. "It sounded like it, anyway...so we'd have to find it before that deadline. No pressure, right?" he laughed nervously. "I mean, I've saved the world in way less time than 2 months...so in a way, it's a long time."

"Oh sure," Shine said. "I mean...at least it's not 2 hours..."

"Great, you found a bright side," Mystique said.

"So what's the zipper for?" Scott asked.

"Oh, just to show you how this merging this is going to work," Shine said.

"By all means, show us," Xavier said.

"You really want to know after all that?" Shine asked.

"Yeah, I want to know all I can," Scott said. "I still don't get it. These two parallel dimensions...events...how does it make sense? And why are they in different times, but have the same people?"

"Well, that is actually what this was for," Shine held it up and stood up. "Okay...so the zipper you see here has two serrated sides right?"

She unzipped it. "Pretty much identical right? But one side is just a little higher up? And that is how they get together. That is how parallel dimensions are. They are alike but there's one slight difference, one is a little ahead, shaped a little odd, or it's reversed, and then you get the evil and good versions of people."

"Like the crime syndicate," Wally said.

"Yes," Shine nodded. "And as long as you keep these two sides lined up this way, they fit." She zipped the zipper. "Perfectly. Because they are different, but similar enough to go together. That's our ideal. The way it's supposed to work. And this little thing that held them at this point? The pull? You could say that's the forces outside both, DJs, Time Travelers, God, whatever you prefer, they keep it straight and smooth running. Because they touch both sides, but they don't belong to either exactly."

She unzipped it again. "But, if someone messed with this, pulled one event back, or forward,--"

She ripped the zipper and made it pop out of place.

"You make it too similar," she said, lining up the two sides so that the little hooks touched tips instead of interlocking. "And now, it no longer works. And then, even if you could fasten it again,"

She put it together, but a few hooks too high on one side. "There's this bunch of it that sticks out, like a hole. And so it never really works, and it's going to come undone again sooner or later."

[It's harder than you'd think to find a good picture for this.]

"And that's the tear," Morph said. "Right? How people will slip through."

"Yes," Shine said. "This is what would happen if just one change happened like this and kept growing...but say we go a step further? Suppose the jackasses doing this want to unravel the timeline entirely, so they can be in both. Make it no longer exist?"

She ripped the zipper apart so that it was now a line, sort of. And held it out end to end. "Now, it doesn't work at all. Nothing will fit. Nothing will exist."

"Oh, that makes so much sense, actually," Scott said, with more enthusiasm than really seemed appropriate.

Everyone looked at him oddly.

"Uh...I mean, it's horrifying," he said quickly. "Just...nice to be keeping up, that's all."

"I feel ya," Wally said.

"A wasteland," Morph returned to the subject. "That's what he said would happen, too."

"Because in the end, if you completely merge two dimensions, it turns out that you really don't get anything," Shine said. "They were meant to be separate. Think of it this way: You have two realities. Both are reality. We can conceive of them separately, but, mashed together it's still reality. It's like how two negatives cancel each other out, except that instead of a positive number...we get nothing."

"Or like when two forces meet at the exact same speed, and it stops them," Hank said. "And they both fall back."

"Or are destroyed, yes," Shine said. "See you can break all this down to observable laws, if you want to. That's why I said it's all symbolic. But when it all happens, those laws are not going to make sense anymore."

She sat down and looked somber. "It's so overwhelmingly awful.... If I even try to picture it, I'll break down...so I'm not going to. I suggest you all don't either. We just have to solve it."

"Try not imaginin' it?" Rogue said. "But...we'd all...be gone? Just like that? Snuffed out?"

"Or fade into the Ultimate," Mystique recalled the Time Broker's words. "But the world as we know it would no longer exist."

"Well..." Gambit said, "any more bad news?"

"No," Shine said. "I think that's it."

"Well, good, we got somethin', den." Ganbit's gallows humor was about the last shred of his composure, from the sound of it.

"How...how do you expect us to cope with this?" Storm asked. "I don't see how anyone could handle this pressure."

"The worst of it is, we don't know who could be next," Logan said. "Any one of us could be."

"Well...not me," Shine said. "Not Wally. We have no counterparts.... Probably not Morph either...so there's that."

"Okay...great, three people are safe," Rogue said. "I can't...I can't do this." She covered her head.

"It...does seem like far more than we're able to handle..." Xavier said.

"I think that's the most humble thing I've heard you say," Shine said.

"Are you two mad?" Gambit said. "I mean...you toy with dis stuff on a regular basis? How can you?"

"Because of madmen like this!" Shine jumped up, now losing her cool. "Don't you get it? It'd be nice if well enough was left alone, but these crackpots who do this stuff won't let well enough alone, will they? Someone has to go and prevent it. Sure, the best part of this job is getting to meet people and help them, and if that's all of what we do, great. But we always will have to be on the look out for this type of threat, just in case. And we have to stop it. That's what we do. Someone has to do that. We didn't ask for this, Remy, it just fell into our hands. That's all that ever happens."

"Okay, Shine, easy." Wally grabbed her arms. "Easy... He didn't mean it like that."

"I'm sorry." Shine leaned on him. "I just...snapped, I guess."

"Fine, fine." Gambit backed off. "Gambit understand...but if dat is true, why you not have more idea where dey is? Don't you got any clues?"

"Maybe not the time to ask that," Wally said. "Look...this kind of thing is hard on her, okay?"

"I'm okay," Shine said.

"No, you're not," Wally said. "I know, you went through hell the last time we dealt with this, and I really don't want you to have to do that again. But it's happening whether we like it or not, so at least, don't say you're okay. You're not okay."

Shine shook her head.

"If even y'all are freakin' out, we're dead..." Rogue muttered.

"Oh, quiet, Rogue," Mystique said coldly. "They'll get over it. It's a lot to take in at first. But all of us will get over it."

"How do ya know?" Rogue asked.

"Because we have no choice," Mystique said, still coldly. "If we had time to lose our heads, maybe we would. But it seems to me there is no time. And no time to think about it. We need action, now. That's the trouble with you people--you're always thinking." She folded her arms again. "Thinking about what's right, and what's not, and what's fair, and what isn't? Well, things aren't fair. But you do what you have to. If you want to survive, you'll get a grip. And do what you know to do. Starting with the plan that Morph and his stupid friend so clumsily came up with, remember?"

"Oh...right...we did have one idea," Morph said.

"Really?" Storm looked pathetically relieved. "What?"

"We thought we might be able to catch the culprit if we figure out who they'll go after next," Morph said. "The Time Broker couldn't tell us about Jean and why she's not here...but she's actually not in the other dimension either, he said. So...they're somewhere else too...I don't understand how. They couldn't be anywhere but these dimensions."

"No," Emma said. "Not necessarily.... What about the Astral Plane?"

"Physical beings can't enter that," Xavier said. "Unless it is in that odd place the telepaths were once kept.... I'm not sure that was the Plane itself."

 "A pocket dimension," Shine spoke in a low voice. "That's what it was... The time palace, our hallway, those are both pocket dimensions...between worlds.... They are not in it, exactly, just connected to it. Like the storage spaces of the universe. Yes...you could hold humans there...for a short time. Eventually they would die, I think, or just sleep...forever."

"Jean?" Rogue said.

"Just until you get them out," Wally said. "So...we just have to find her, that's all."

"The good news, if you can call it that," Morph said, "is that Mimic and I both know a girl or two who they might go after...also, Xavier... It seems, if the theme is people who could help affect dimensions, then there's kind of just two kinds of powers that they'd use, right? Telepathy or teleportation...and there's two people we know of who live here who can teleport, other than Kurt, but he's not the right kind. He just takes himself--we're talking about people who can open doors and stuff."

"And ya know people like that?" Logan said.

"Not personally," Morph said. "But we know about them... Like I said, there's two... Also Psylocke, she might be a target."

"I'd be happy to hear that if it wasn't this situation," Emma said. "She's an upstart."

"I don't think we should be happy about anyone being a target," Scott said.

Emma sighed.

Shine sat up. "It's true." She rubbed her face. "If we find all of them first, then the hunters will have to come to us directly. Which is risky, but it was bound to happen sooner or later, but this way we can sort of prepare...as much as one can prepare for this. Possibly we can catch them. For lack of a better term, we get the pieces on our side of the board, and we force their hand... It might slow them down."

"So...we do have a plan, then?" Morph said.

"It's better than no plan," Storm said. "It is something we can do.... And we find the culprit, and you stop them?"

"That is the idea," Wally said.

"I believe we had better take Mystique's advice for once." Storm stood up. "We cannot afford to think hard about how precarious this is. We can only act. So we had better act as soon as possible and not allow ourselves time to panic. Morph...who are the people?"

Morph drew a deep breath. "The ones we know about, one is Magik--here she's not Magik yet, but...Illyeanna, Colossus' younger sister.... Small world, right? Another is named Blink."

"Blink," Emma said. "She lives in Genosha in my dimension... I just had a thought. Will all this matter? The doubles for these people can just be snatched from my world instead?"

"We will have to assume they need both," Shine said. "Since Jean is gone, I think that's likely. We can also hope that...if Scott is there, he remembers enough of what we told him to at least know to explain that they could be in danger. Beyond that, it's out of our bounds, and I prefer not to think about it."

"What if that Scott doesn't remember who he is either?" Rogue worried. "Oh..."

"Don't think about it, Chere," Gambit said. "Dat is all we can do."

Rogue buried her face on his shoulder.

Gambit wasn't that much more composed than she was, but he tried.

"Well...this is turning into the worst day ever..." Morph said, trying to laugh and not succeeding. "But at least it can only go uphill from here."

"Well...there's no time to lose," Storm said.

"Yeah, where can we find this kid?" Logan said.

"Where she's been, at Colossus' house," Shine said. "But before we charge into this...we should take some time to calm down. Think, not about how bad it is--that will only drive us mad--but think carefully about how to proceed with this idea. Failure to use common sense is what ruins ideas at times like these. And we will have to let Colossus know what is going on, to some degree. It's only fair."

"Great," Logan said. "He'll be thrilled to hear this."