[Sama in the MU] Part 13
Added 2025-03-30 04:07:31 +0000 UTCMy hand came down, and sharp edges bit into skin. The girl, about to jump out of cover, froze, not that she could go anywhere now that my palm was sticking to her.
“Go ahead and try,” I said softly, as her hands started to rise, my tone conversational. “Skin contact, I’m aware. In case you can’t feel it, my skin is already touching your head.”
My voice carried. The woman about to enter the apartment ahead of us spun around sharply. “Who’s there?”
“Carol, your home security sucks,” I called out, stepping out of cover, and lifting the brunette with the white blaze on her tiptoes along with me. Her hands did flash up to mine, I’d left one ungloved just for her, and she was hanging and clinging to my hand, and nothing was happening.
“What? Dynamo?” she asked, and looked around quickly, then at the girl in green in my hand. “Who is this?”
“This is Rogue, a mutant powers-absorber. She was about to attack you and drain your powers, to probably a very bad end for you.” I shook the hapless girl absently, as she tried to cover up the horror and fear on her face. “She was sent after you by Mystique and Destiny, who have been telling her all sorts of things about how you are going to be very, very bad for her future, an incredible danger, and so she took it upon herself to take you out before that happened.”
“A power absorber?” Carol Danvers looked wary despite herself.
“And memories. She’s very powerful, unlimited capabilities, but very little control. It’s initiated by skin contact, and she’s not disciplined enough to stop it. Needless to say, she’s got significant emotional issues messing up her head, and it makes her easily manipulated.”
“Hey!” Rogue protested, and I just shook her. She was helpless.
“Don’t get close to her. Also, could we take this inside? I already got rid of the Hydra agent spying on you from across the way, and the six bugs inside.”
She looked at me, at the apartment building opposite, and nodded slowly, opening the door. “I’m surprised you knew I was here so quickly, Dyna. I was going to contact you...”
“You needed time, I understand.” I maneuvered Rogue in effortlessly. She could kick and scrabble all she wanted to, all she was going to do was break her legs, and just a tensing of my fingers was enough to stop that nonsense before something broke. “Given how the Avengers treated you, I wasn’t going to pressure you, but when this dangerous little twit showed up, well...”
“Ah’m raht here!” Rogue protested, and I just shook her again.
“Oh, grab me a wet rag, Carol, would you?” I asked conversationally. I headed for her couch, Rogue having no choice but to go along, yelping as suddenly my hair was binding her legs and feet, and she was unceremoniously dumped on the couch next to me. It didn’t mean she was free, as a loop also slid around her neck, head, and waist.
Carol came back with a wet rag, handed it to me, and sat down in the chair opposite as I promptly rubbed it all over Rogue’s face. She started to protest, then my hair clamped her mouth shut, and she could only endure it as I washed all the damn makeup off her.
“There, now you look less like a harridan. Good lord, who taught you make-up, Bitch Queens R’ Us?” I asked, revealing the younger woman under the harpy’s makeup. “Don’t answer that, my slap reflex will urge me to go find them.” She couldn’t, she could only glare at me, watching as I licked my fingers one by one.
“You probably want to know what is going on, and how things are going to happen now? Well, let me tell you.”
She was jerked forward, nose to nose with me, her eyes wide, and I glared into them.
“That was your blood I was licking off my fingers,” I said, as she stared at my nose, and no, she wasn’t draining me. “In about ten minutes, I’m going to decipher your genetic code, and add it to my own. I’m going to have your powers.”
Her eyes got really, really wide.
“Then, I’m going to treat you to what you do to other people... and what you were going to do to Carol here. You’re going to realize exactly what it means for someone to come along and take everything you are, and not be able to do a damn thing about it.”
She started to tremble, which was a good first start.
“I’m going to learn everything about you. I’m going to take every single precious, cherished memory of you, everything that you consider makes you you, and read it like a book. You’re not going to be able to do anything about it. I’ll be everything you are, and so very much more, and you’ll only be able to whine and scream behind my eyes at how useless you are.”
“Damn,” Carol muttered after a long breath, staring at the two of us. “She was going to do that to me?”
“Yes. Suck you dry as a sponge. Given she’s never drained someone as strong as you before, the odds are she’d go right overboard and make it permanent, because she hasn’t the discipline to control herself.”
“Mmmpf mmpf!” Rogue tried to say, but her jaw wouldn’t open, her eyes desperate.
“No, you don’t get a say in this. You weren’t going to give Ms. Marvel here a say, were you? So you just sit there, and wait for it, helpless, while the only person who can touch you without any problems judges you for being a total and absolute bitch.”
She was crying now, starting to breathe hard through her teeth, and the snot was starting to flow. I let her do so, keeping her right in my face, touching me, looking in her eyes, without any compassion.
“Are... are you sure about this, Dynamo?” Carol asked softly.
“Yes. I’ll let you test it later, give you an idea of how dangerous her power is when uncontrolled. Your ability to absorb energy makes it more difficult for her to do it to you if you resist, but then she gets that power, too, and will gradually win the contest.”
“I have no idea who she is, or this Mystique or Destiny,” Carol said. “Why would they be so opposed to me?”
“Manipulation of fate, probability... and the fact that Rogue here having your powers gives them someone very powerful they could manipulate and control. Given the two of them are prolific murderers and sociopaths, it’s not surprising.”
“Mmmpf, mmmpf!”
“Oh, don’t worry, girl, I’ve seen the files on them. Tell you what, once I suck you in, I’ll even dump the details into your head, so you know the bloody history about them. Sixty long, bloody years.” She was staring at me in shock again. “Oh, yes, Mystique has definitely been around a long time, and killed a lot of people. You do know that face she’s using at the Pentagon was someone she murdered and replaced, right? No? Yes, slit her throat, burned the body to ashes in an incinerator, took her place. Clean and smooth, no muss, no fuss, right at the beginning of her career in the Pentagon. Destiny helped pick the woman out, of course. Ideal target, job fanatic, few friends, excellent record. Butchered her, took her place.
“Just like she wanted you to do with Mrs. Marvel here.”
“Mmmmmpf!”
“Suck it in, girl. You fell in with murderers who have been manipulating you from day one. You think it was an accident or a coincidence Mystique found you? Destiny sent her right to you. You know how her powers work. You think they weren’t used on you? You needed someone to help you, someone to support you, and, well, Mystique is one of the best manipulators of people on the planet. Part of being a shapechanger and so adept with body language. Read you like a book, respond accordingly. Especially a stupid kid traumatized by her own powers coming out.”
“Dyna, I don’t know, shouldn’t you be... a little more supportive, or something?” Carol had to wonder.
“She’s going to get the full-blown shock therapy. She’s been living a lie, denying who she’s been with and the consequences of her own actions. She sucks out the minds and souls of people, and thinks that’s horrible for her, completely ignoring what it does to the other person. Especially if it’s permanent.”
“Mmm mmm mmm mmm!” she tried to say in denial.
My eyes had never left hers, and she couldn’t pull back at all. “And you were going to do it to Carol here. Riiiight.” She deflated again.
“By the way, uh, six bugs?” Carol finally asked.
“Yes. I think two were from SHIELD, actually, based on the design. Just keeping tabs on their favorite ex-military super-heroine who quit their favorite super-team.”
She quirked a smile. “Don’t get along with SHIELD that well here on the West Coast?”
“We get along with them fine. We’re just a lot more open with the information we put out, more proactive in who we go after, and since we aren’t government-funded, we don’t have to toe the line like the Avengers do. It’s a liberal state, after all. We tell the people more information than they want them to know, especially about the bad shit going on.”
“I read your Power of Ten book. I know you get interviewed a lot on it, but... really? All that stuff actually works?”
I was still nose to nose with Rogue, but my hands were free. I flicked up my mindclaw. “Takes ten seconds to teach a Powered how to do this telepathically. So, yes, really.”
“So... I could learn that?”
“Are you Powered?”
“Yes...”
“Then the question answers itself, right?”
“Right...” She eyed me and Rogue. “So...”
“Yes, this girl could, too.” Carol blinked. “Oh, you want a little force-knife of your own! Sure.” A length of black hair snaked out to her forehead. “Do this. This. This. And...” Her arm mirrored mine, and there was a hum as she jerked, and a silver knife appeared in her hand. She gawked at it despite herself.
“Damn!” she murmured, staring. “Okay, I didn’t really believe it...”
“Says the half-Kree superheroine.” I rolled my eyes.
“Hey now, no discriminating against those with alien blood, right?” she shot back instantly.
“And when you join the conquering army of fascist super-soldiers from the Greater Magellanic Crowd come to enslave us into their empire, I should be happy you’re pink instead of blue?” I half-smiled.
“Exactly!” she agreed with a grin. She was still looking at her mindknife. “Uh, how good is this?”
“Now? Just manifested? Like a steel knife. It just looks nicer and makes zum-zum sounds, and if you break it, you ignore the nosebleed and just reform it.
“And if improved?”
“To Ten? It’s a two-handed sword you can chop through steel, and charge up with a really nasty jolt to the psyche, to boot. It’s not Thor’s Hammer, but that’s a divine artifact, not a wimpy little mindblade.”
“And you can throw it and stuff?”
“Weapons which are an extension of your psyche are useful for you Powered that way.”
She stared at me. “You’re sitting here, having just telepathically told me how to do this with your animated hair you are holding a girl helpless with via super-strength...”
I just wiggled my golden mindclaw at her. “Powered have blades or other weapons. Non-powered have gauntlets or claws, period. They can’t extend that far from our skin. You read the book. Go back and read the difference between Powered and non-Powered.”
“I remember the light switch...”
“Hard souls vs liquid souls?”
“Oh, right. I kind of didn’t really get that?” she winced at me.
“Well, among the many things Powered can do that we can’t is throw a mindblade. For you...” I made a thoughtful face, still not looking away from Rogue, “we couldn’t make an energy beam out of the energy you absorb, since the range would be merely inches. We’d basically have to vent it through touch. And getting the whole super-strength, flight, invulnerability kit is an exercise in learning and patience, not ‘oh I got hit by an alien energy wave and zowie! Look at my new powers!’”
She had the grace to look abashed. “You just said you are gaining this girl’s power.”
“You remember that every sentient being is effectively psionic one way or another, right?”
“I suppose so?” She didn’t seem convinced.
“My awareness extends right down to the level of DNA. I am digesting her DNA and looking at it, parsing it, taking apart the things that give her her power, and then I’m going to replicate them bodywide with adjustments to my cellular structure.
“She needs to touch people, and it’s so easy, sensitive, and powerful she doesn’t even have the control to shut it off yet. Which do you think is more convenient?”
“Uh, right...” She blinked. “You... can decode DNA?”
“Yes.”
“Uh... you’d have to be really smart to be able to do that...”
“Yes.”
She blinked at me, realized she was getting in over her head with someone who was probably a lot, lot smarter than she was.
She started to speak, and I waved my hand. “Almost done. Three, two, one...”
Anna Marie’s panicking eyes rolled up as lightning crackled over my skin, converging on my nose as the re-write went through. She watched through my eyes as she went limp, shouting in panic, and I calmly pushed her aside. Her unconscious body sprawled on the couch.
“This is what it’s like,” I said, leaning back leisurely, looking at her. “Everything you were or are is now a part of me. I can keep you in there forever, powerless, only able to sit and watch. You can’t read my mind, but I have access to all your memories, and I can cut you off from my senses anytime I want to.
“Oh, right, your ‘foster mom’. Here you go.” I dumped the memories directly into her bundle of thoughts.
While she was being revolted at what the two women she respected most in the world had done and were actually like, I looked back down at the morbidly interested Danvers.
“Are you actually going to trap her like that?” Carol had to ask.
“Nah, just letting her know what it’s like being a disembodied spirit trapped inside someone who can now do everything you did, with no privacy and no influence.” I glanced at her helpless body there. “She’s freaking nicely, especially after what I’m showing her about the women she lived with.”
“That bad?”
“Narcissist sociopath, not unexpected of a woman with an inhuman appearance who was a master shapeshifting mimic. Other people are just like clothes she takes on and off, moving through their lives as she pleases. Being so good at reading people and manipulating them only made it worse... and of course, the real her is treated like crap by most people, so she returns it in kind.
“The other could predict the future, so everyone is just puppets, and she was about seeing what strings she could pull to her benefit and desires, which is quite logical.”
“Sound like real stand-up people,” Carol murmured, and I just smiled hard. “By the way, I’m sorry I didn’t at least stop by.”
“It’s fine. We’re both busy people.” I gave her an eyebrow. “You want to test this out?”
Naturally she hesitated. “What’s the risks?”
“To you? That I suck you dry permanently, of course, like the twit here.” I flicked her unconscious body, and what could she do? “If you trust me, no risk at all. It’ll feel like you jumped into me, gave me your powers, and then I’ll put them back.”
“That is a LOT of trust,” she said.
“That is true,” I agreed, and didn’t say anything else.
I was the one and only leader of the Champions. Our static fighting force was more powerful than the Avengers, and we were more stable and long-lasting. I was a published author, one of the foremost proponents of the idea of Powered being vitally necessary for the human race, and very outspoken against any sort of human/mutant divide. I treated mutants, mutates, and genetic experiments publicly, and I taught a brand of transpsionic martial arts with literally thousands of adherents. I was one of the most prolific inventors for public usage on the planet, and my fusion plant designs had shut down every nuclear power plant on the West Coast, and were clamored after by nations around the planet.
While we and the Avengers had teamed up on occasion, our careers were often very separate. However, being in California, the entertainment home of the country and much of the world, we naturally got better press, as we did more public works projects, the Powered Enclave was the single largest gathering of civilian Powered in the world, and Rantha Technologies could go toe to toe with Stark in any arena I cared to compete in.
There was no rotating leadership in the Champions. I was in charge, and nobody tried to replace me. Secondary positions could change, but rarely so, as people were assigned to roles they enjoyed doing, and if others wanted to try them out, they were allowed to. Everybody got a shot at being team leader, so they’d know what was required, and they all had different takes and tactics they like to use. The Widow led a team very differently than Juggernaut.
If she couldn’t trust me, who could she trust?
“What do I have to do?” she asked with a sigh, but couldn’t hide her interest.
“Sit back comfortably in your chair, so you don’t look like useless meat.” I waved again at Rogue, ignoring her protests. “I will touch you. Don’t resist, this will not be painful.”
She sat back, and took a deep breath, then nodded at me. Totally calm, as if this was just another day at the beach, I got up, approached her, and put my hand on her face.
Kirillian Aura interface. Pull. Duplicate. Transfer core energy, psyche transfer as she gasped for just a second, and went limp as electricity crackled on my fingertips for a second.
“Uh, wow?” Carol said through my lips, stepping back, and blinking at herself lying there. “You... you can put me back, right?”
-Anytime,- I ,answered mentally, making sparks dance between my fingers. -You really are an alien hybrid. Interesting.-
“What?” She was flexing my arms and moving back and forth. “I got my powers in that explosion...”
-No, you didn’t. They may have activated them, but your powers are totally inherent. Can’t miss the signs. Your mother or father was Kree. Probably mom, looking at the sex-linked stuff.-
“What?” She might have fallen down, I didn’t let me, by dint of simply rising off the ground.
-You’ve got a huge Core of power, its filling out your entire suite for me, and leaving me tons to use for other things. Very nice.- I set up a huge crackling display of electricity, and then sucked it all down into the emptiness behind my navel that was there. -I should be able to constantly dump my dynamo into power storage until needed, draw it out in bigger surges. Nice.-
“You’re talking like you’re going to keep my powers?” she asked hesitantly, drifting around the room. “This feels really weird, Dynamo.”
-Like you, just more?-, I /answered calmly. -Kirillian Aura replication includes muscle reflexes. Of course I feel like you. Although there’s a lot more to me.- I took over control, and effortlessly bent backwards and put my head between my ankles, then tightened the arc up even more while I did the splits, and ended up in midair with my ass laying on my head.
“You’re like a rubber band,” she had to say, and slowly got out of the position. “Ugh, wow, so flexible, I’m dying of envy here.”
-Benefits of good living.-
“And you said one of my parents was a Kree?” She couldn’t believe it.
I just mentally dumped the markers, the changes to my physiology that resulted, and the difference between mutated add-ons and intrinsics. She kind of couldn’t refute it, it was all right there. -Your light switch got turned on, is all. Hmm. Human/Kree hybrids might have extraordinary genetic potential. I bet they know it, too, hence their interest in the planet.-
“And you’re going to keep my powers?” she hinted again.
-Just like I am hers. But I have to allocate my own Core to power them after I give yours back. It won’t be like right now, where I can maintain yours and mine together.- I flexed my arms. -I can afford Hercules level of strength combined with you. Very impressive.-
“I want to go flying as you,” she admitted, glancing at the door.
-We are not leaving two comatose bodies alone,- I /replied calmly, and she stopped drifting that way. -Sorry, maybe another time when someone can guard you.-
She smiled despite herself, and then frowned. “You could take back control at any time, couldn’t you?”
-Absolutely.-
“And I couldn’t do anything about it?”
-Try to stop my hands from moving.- I began to flow through a basic Wing Chun blocking routine, and she concentrated intensely... and then realized she wasn’t moving my face, or eyes, or anything.
“If I want to, Carol, I could kill you both, dispose of your bodies, and have your powers forever, with no one the wiser. Telepathically, I could assimilate both of your memories, basically turning you into alternate personalities I could take on and off like a set of clothes.” I put my hands on my hips and stood there in midair. “This is what Rogue was going to end up doing to you. Except probably throw you off the Golden Gate Bridge, too, while you screamed inside her and watched.”
Carol got very grim suddenly. “I’d like to go back, now...”
“Sure.” I drifted over to her, reached out my hand, set it on her face, and pushed out her psyche and her core as our Kirillian Auras intersected again. There was a pop and crackle, color returned to her face, and her blue eyes snapped open as she looked at me.
“I can... I can remember everything.” She looked me up and down as I backed away and sat back down next to Rogue. “Did you really replicate my powers?”
“I’ve got a bigger Core then you, so, yeah, I can imitate your full suite without any problem, and some extras. Your base strength is higher than mine, as is your invulnerability, and so is your flight speed. You’ve got energy absorption, and a level of precog you probably don’t control.” I pointed at her navel. “You’ve got some nasty potential in there, too.”
“What?” Her hands went to her belly.
“Your energy absorption isn’t cellular. It’s a connection to another space, one already teaming with a lot of energy. I can tell the difference when mine ‘turned on’. I’m hooked into an empty space... I can put stuff in and take it out. Yours already has something on the far side, and the pressure is keeping the hole shut. I imagine with the right pressure and power, it could crack open, and send a huge amount of energy into you. You’d probably get a quantum increase in raw power.”
“Really?!” She stared at me, hands on her stomach. I nodded calmly. “Wow! Uh, how do I do that?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to have you around and work on you with it. Find the resonance, find the amount of energy needed to open it up, what you’d need to do to keep it open.”
She had to roll her eyes. “You’re basically asking me to move to the Champions Compound, aren’t you?”
“No. You can fly there in just a minute or three anyways. But...” I looked around, “Hydra doesn’t bug the rooms there.”
She looked left, right, then up at the ceiling as she fell back in her chair. “I just moved in!” she protested.
“Please. You can hold a storage container outside the window, I could shuffle everything inside in minutes, and we could be on the way.”
“But I already paid the rent!”
“Then sweep your place every day for bugs, it’s not my pad.”
“Aargh!” She threw up her hands.
“If you don’t want to start on the team right away, I’m totally down with that. We have to get you out of that stripper outfit anyways.” She blinked at me, jaw dropping, then looked away with a frown.
“I look really good in that outfit,” she said defensively.
“Girl, you’d look real good in mud. Looking like a pole dancer isn’t necessary. If you’re going to wear skin-tights, don’t emphasize the erogenous zones for the perverts, alright? Women got a bad enough image. Superheroes don’t have to cater to the sex drive of the crowd.”
“That’s true.” She sighed again. “So, costume redesign first. Testing out uber powers second. Maybe flying around as you third?” she grinned, despite herself.
“Don’t think you are bodyjumping me, girlfriend,” I wagged a finger at her.
“What are you going to do with her?” she asked, nodding at Rogue.
I glanced at the limp body, while the one inside my head shouted things I ignored. “Well, I’m going to wipe out all her savings accounts that her foster mother gave to her. Then I’m going to drop her off at the Enclave, and give her her body back, but not her powers. She can’t control them anyways, so she doesn’t really want them, which is fine. I can get her started on developing her mindblade, and when she reaches a high enough level of discipline with it, she should be able to control it. In the meantime, she can get a job or go to school, and doesn’t have to worry about not being able to touch people.” I noticed the shouts in my head abruptly shut up. “If at some time she wants to really make something of herself, and not be just another Powered with a mindknife for emergencies and cutting steaks, she can come see me, and we can talk about giving her her powers back.
“She’s got the potential to be the most powerful woman in the world, basically. But she’s got the emotional control and discipline of a nitwit. If she can’t handle it, eh. She can be a cute young thang with a zum-zum toy for the rest of her life, no skin off my nose.”
Carol concentrated, flicked her hand, and her silvery knife hummed back into existence. She looked from it to me, and smiled. “I really want this to get better now...”
“It takes from your Core, unless you develop your Core up further... which is hardly a bad thing.”
She aarghed in protest again. “Okay, okay, where can I borrow a shipping container? I’ll move tomorrow!”
“I’ll make arrangements for one and stop by around ten AM?” I asked, and she sighed and nodded. “Good! I’ll get this little girl set up in the Enclave, and see you then.”
