Disclaimer: The X-Men characters, and all other recognizable characters are copyright to Marvel Entertainment Group. This work of FanFiction is not meant to infringe on that copyright or defame Marvel Comics or the X-Men and related characters in any way.

Copyright: This work of FanFiction and the original characters described within are the intellectual property of K-NICE and her IRL persona. No copying, distributing or editing of this material is permitted without the express permission of the creator, K-Nice, under United States copyright law. Relax, I won't sue you. I'll just ask my Cousin Tony to choke you with his dreds.

This goes out to QueenB and Kristina for making me think about Psylocke. This is set after the Crimson Dawn and Angel's transformation.

© K-Nice 1999

Ants.

There were ants in her bed.

She could feel their little legs brushing against her skin. She had played with an ant on occasion as a child and remebered thrilling to the tickling of those little limbs. Now, she jump and twitched as they wriggled across her epidermis.

Maybe they weren't ants. They could be Nannites, or bees or little tiny aliens from the Microverse..

She kicked at the covers until her legs were free. She had to get them off.

NOOOW!

She leaped out of bed, moving in frantic, jerky movements.

First she shook her clothes, lifting her nighty away from her honey colored skin. The ants seemed to drip from her body.

A moan issued forth from her throat that made her teeth vibrate.

She ripped the clothes from her body, hands clawing at the sheer, loose silk, tearing the fabric.

Her body was covered by a writhing black mass. She set into her skin, sweeping the insects away, heedless of the scratches she left on her skin. Yet there were still more. The were crawling back up her legs as fast as she pushed them to the floor.

She rubbed her arms furiously then brushed at her legs. She tried to walk to the bathroom that way, but it gave her the appearance of a person stamping their feet to keep warm. She continued onward but made slow progress.

She could feel them at the nape of her neck, climbing into her hair. She had a quick flash of the word "Lice" and she shook her head violently. They fell from her hair like ink, trickling into her face. She smacked her own face to shake them off and gripped the sides of her hair, knotting it with her fingers.

Lice were dirty, bad, nasty, filth. Her mother had warned her about playing with a little girl they saw in town one day. 'Come, love. She might have lice.' This she recalled and in a flash had the solution.

She would cut off her hair.

She was crying, sobbing as she stumbled into the bathroom. She put a had on the wall to support herself and reached into the drawer for the scissors.

She went straight to her scalp, shearing roughly though her heavy purple hair, creating dark bloody gouges in the top of her head. She had the right side bare to a stubble when she saw the black bugs crawling out of her skin.

She now noticed that they were coming out of holes in her arms and legs. They oozed from a bright red hole around her eye.

She set loose a scream that blended terror and hatred into a fruit smoothie and served it over shards of glass.

"Warren, that sounded like it came . . ." But there was no longer anybody there to hear the alarm in Scott's voice. He caught a flash of pure white feathers as Warren bolted from the living room and flew up the stairs. Literally.

Scott wondered whether or not to persue. Warren and Betsy had made it clear that they were handling their recent changes and any issues they brought up so he was reluctant to butt in and antagonize them further.

He decided to give Warren time to find out what was going on. If it became X-Men business, Scott would be waiting.

Warren's wings, restless with trepidation, drowned out the sounds at first but as Warren pushed his way into the bathroom, he could hear the most horrible thing of all.

He sank to his knees and bellowed, "Jean, Scott, someone get in here now!! Oh God!!"

The running footsteps stop at the door. Warren looked up at them, pleading with them to say it was all a bad dream, that all he had to do was wake up . . .

Betsy sat on the floor naked, her skin flickering between Kwannon's Asian tones and the Dark of an Undercloak. One side of her hair was the same long flowing purple he had played with at dinner. The other was hacked nearly to the scalp and slick with blood. The only constants were her hands which scraped at her skin with a razor blade, causing dark blood to flow freely onto the cool bathroom tiles.

"Have to get them off of me, get them off me, get them off me, get them off of me, get them off me, get them off me . . . "

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