Chapter 58: Cataclysm

ELEANOR

According to Sue, the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel had barely understood the cube when they’d proposed this use for it. The whole project only existed because S.H.I.E.L.D. was spending hundreds of millions securely housing the cube and thus had received a memo from on high to find a use for it.

As a result, instead of there being a bunch of supercomputers clustered around, there was a single, rather small monitor designed with the same sleek white look as everything else that came out of the Baxter Building.

Right now, Sue was typing commands into the monitor, completely inured to the wondrous glow of the floating bit of reality-altering tech a few feet away. As the monitor flashed red with dissent, she became increasingly indelicate with it. Eleanor focused on the cube. She had to put her helmet on if she wanted to stare directly at it. She guessed it was sort of like a miniature sun then, with how much light it produced.

Inside of it, she could see little geometric symbols inside the cube, glinting and pulsing, folding and stretching, and bouncing and spinning around its center. It was like a mesmerizing screen saver made 3-D.

And it was speaking to her. She didn’t understand the words, but she could hear them, dancing through her head. It was how she imagined angels sounding. It was like a thousand wind chimes.

“Eleanor…don’t get too close to the cube. It reacts differently to every organism that triggers it.”

Eleanor barely heard her, over the song of the cube. She stepped closer to it, in the hope that its caresses would grow stronger.

As she did, she felt a heat on the back of her neck. With every passing second it grew more intolerable. She whirled round to face and screamed.

It was Jack-of-Hearts. His corpse crawled right out of the grave and blackened with the burning liquid dripping from his eyes and running down his bones. His mouth was open in a silent scream as flames spouted from his eyes.

Eleanor pressed the button on her belt to warp her size. But nothing happened. She pressed it again and again as she backed away from the burning horror, but she remained the same, pitiful size.

Her back touched the railing surrounding the pit over which the cube levitated. “Sue! Sue, do something my suits not working.”

She looked over to where the monitor was. But it wasn’t Sue Storm there, it was her mother, Margaret. And she was standing there, in her blue polo and her pink apron shaking her head as thousands of ants swarmed up her legs.

“I told you this superhero business would get you in trouble, young lady. But noooo…you had to turn out just like your father. A thief. Now you’re going to die like him too.”

As the ants began to cover her abdomen, she reached down and plucked one out of the mix. A single black ant, its legs thrashing and twitching.

“I should have done this a long time ago,” Margaret said before lifting the ant above her head and opening her mouth.

“No! Ellie-bear! It’s me! Your dad!” The ant called. Its voice, despite its tinny squeak, was unmistakably her father’s. “Don’t let her eat me!!”

Eleanor moved to intercede but two burning arms grasped her.

“Sorry kiddo…” Jack said, as his skeletal hands clasped around her. “First rule of being a hero. Ya can’t save everybody…”

DIANA

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re telling us…that after all this…M’gann isn’t even here? She’s in some kind of magical prison you’ve created and now you can’t get her out because the prison is out of your control?”

The agent cowering in her shadow nodded.

Diana grabbed him by the collar and lifted him to eye level. “Give me one good reason not to lay waste to this place.”

“Diana…I…ugh…” Zatanna’s voice didn’t contain the normal level of motherly chiding. Instead, it was pained.

Diana turned to face her. Zatanna was swaying atop her heels and she had one hand on her head, massaging her temples.

“Ah…ah…what? …puppets?” Zatanna said, her face creased with concentration. Then she screamed as a flare of bright red smoke burst forth from her mouth and eyes, swirling up into the air and coalescing into a bulbous, tumorous dragon. Its screech was more terrible than the harpies. Then it retreated back inside Zatanna, sucked back in before any of them could react to the sight.

“Z!” Dinah ran over and propped Zatanna up with both hands.

Zatanna groaned. “Magic…dark magic…I can feel it…aaah!” She let out another scream and twisted and twitched in Dinah’s arms as pink electricity crackled across her prone body.

“We have to get her back to the watchtower,” Jessica said.

“How’s that going to help?” Kendra asked. “You heard her. She’s cursed or possessed or something with dark magic. No hospital on or off the planet could cure her.”

There were two more screams, as identical magic coursed out of Djinn and Raven, driving each to seize and collapse into the arms of their fellow Young Justice members. Xiomara in particular seemed disturbed by Djinn’s possession.

Diana marched over, sweeping Zatanna out of Dinah’s hands and looking at her tenderly for a moment. Then her expression hardened and she wrapped her writhing form in her golden lasso. When Zatanna’s struggle had slowed from the effect of the lasso, Diana looked up to address the troops. “We have to find the source of this corruption. And soon. If it takes control of her, she’ll be unstoppable.”

GERRY

I paced back and forth, in the back of the jet taking me, Maria, Peggy, the Superbot, and a dozen of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best agents to Pleasant Hill.

“So, let me get this straight…you didn’t kill Scarlet Witch when she went nuts and brainwashed an entire town. You locked her up. And the way you locked her up, was that you brainwashed her with a reality-altering weapon from another dimension. Except it didn’t work, and now she’s using M’gann’s telepathy powers to drive all your personnel on sight stark raving mad and based on her previous track record she’s probably going to do the same to the whole world…”

“And she’ll be after the Cosmic Cube, hoping to expand her power,” Peggy said, with a dirty look toward Maria.

“We uh…we were instructed that her powers could be useful. We were…”

“Just following orders.” I finished. “Nice to know the kind of people making these big, reality-altering decisions. I turned to the woman flying our jet, the agent I’d been introduced to earlier as Melinda May. “How much longer till we get there?”

“Fifteen minutes,” May called back, her eyes on the skies ahead.

“Wonderful.” I marched to the bathroom at the back of the plane, threw it open, and stepped inside. As soon as the door was closed, I grabbed the sink to steady myself and took a deep breath. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It had been a long time since I’d experienced those.

Not since I left home…

I felt like I was going to vomit. After narrowly avoiding one disaster, I was now headed straight toward another. All of us were heading towards absolutely the last place I wanted to be, a crazy magic town controlled by a crazy magic witch intent on remaking the planet. And I didn’t have Kara to protect me.

Of course, I could try to contact her. But I wasn’t about to show weakness, not in front of Peggy and all these S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who didn’t trust me anyway. I was starting to understand what every day must have been like for Maria.

I pulled out my phone and checked the app, just to give myself something else to focus on.

Congratulations! You reached 1800 SP, unlocking the following trait for yourself:

ULTIMATE SENSORS: The range for this app to sense subjects is increased from 200 meters to 400 meters and you can now check the Statistics of a subject on the app while they are within sensor range and the subject trait you will get when you bring them to +100 SP. Additionally, you will be able to sense their approach mentally rather than needing to look at the App.

Well, that wouldn’t be helpful against a homicidal reality-warping witch at all.

I sank against the toilet and nursed my growing headache. This was a bad idea. But I had just rendered the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. so traumatized that if I left her alone there was a good chance she’d break down. And what was happening at Pleasant Hill would affect the world. Either I was there with Peggy to try to fix things, or I’d be left to pick up the pieces.

Who knew? If the Scarlet Witch changed things even just a little, the App might disappear from my phone. Come to think of it, I might disappear.

And just when things were getting interesting.

I re-opened my phone and clicked away from the App’s first alert. It was followed by a trait I’d unlocked for Bobbi, although that wasn’t likely to be of much help either.

Congratulations! You unlocked a new trait for Elizabeth Bishop!

ONLY GOOD FOR ONE THING

ROUTE A - CUCKQUEAN or "HITS THE SPOT": When the subject performs oral sex on a person, that person will enjoy subsequent sexual activities twice as much for the next hour, provided they are with someone other than the subject.

_ROUTE B - _REGRESSION or "ORAL FIXATION": The subject will instinctively feel the need to put something in their mouth every ten minutes or so. The feeling will disappear for ten times as long if that thing is part of someone’s body.

Both of the traits unlocked for Elizabeth looked fun. The second would probably help humiliate her further. Maybe enough to get to +100 SP. But the first could maybe help me seduce more ladies, provided I could convince them to let Elizabeth fluff them pre-coitus.

So short-term vs long-term. Of course, thanks to the ultimate sensors trait I’d unlock, I could now check Elizabeth’s trait when I saw her again, which meant that I’d know how beneficial getting her to +100 SP would be. Below that was another alert.

Congratulations! You unlocked a new trait for Bobbi Morse!

ASK ME ABOUT MY FEMINIST AGENDA

ROUTE A - LUST or "SEPARATIST FEMINIST": The subject will lose all attraction toward men, finding interactions with women half as humiliating as normal and interactions with men twice as humiliating as normal.

ROUTE B - OBSESSION or "INTERSECTIONAL IMPERIALIST": The subject’s might is doubled when aiding the user in restraining non-white subjects.

I was slightly surprised by that. I figured the traits that showed up for her would have something to do with the dunce cap I’d gotten her or me forcing her to re-live her trauma on stage. The traits I’d unlocked for Elizabeth appeared to be directly related to the pacifier I’d made her wear and the gloryhole I’d made her use. It was impossible to tell what would or would not trigger a trait to show up for my girls, but it seemed like each trait was connected to their personal history somehow.

It was another case where one would help me reach my goal of getting her to +100 SP while the other would make it easier to get SP from other subjects. The first would make it easy to score those last few points on her, although given that I enjoyed seeing her fuck other ladies, rather than suck off other dudes for me, it might not be as enjoyable of time for me.

The second would be useful after I’d maxed her out when I needed her to restrain other subjects. Given how strong she was already with her powers, doubling it put her among the best of them. But I was starting to get a little sick of having to tie up ladies and drag them back to the fortress for reprogramming. It just was much less convenient than worming my way into their lives, and it didn’t seem to speed up the process of mastering them either.

Plus, looking around at them, I was beginning to get the feeling that most of S.H.I.E.L.D’s agents were white.

There was another update after that one;

Congratulations! You unlocked a trait on Maria Hill!

NEW PERSPECTIVE

ROUTE A - DEBAUCHIFICATION or “TYPE D”: The subject will find relaxation from stress and negative emotions only when they are pleasing the user’s genitals. All other work will start to feel more negative and pointless.

_ROUTE B - _JUSTICE or “SEEMS FAIR”: Every time the user becomes aware of a crime the subject has committed; he's allowed to punish the subject. The subject will agree to the punishment if it fits their current submission score and the severity of the crime. NOTE: The punishment cannot be asking for knowledge about all the other crimes the subject has committed.

Now, that was a difficult choice. Both of those seemed extremely powerful. The first one would put a hard time limit on how long Maria could remain director of S.H.I.E.L.D. And considering what had occurred under her tenure, that was probably a good thing. If I could just figure out a way to dissolve S.H.I.E.L.D. without starting some kind of international shadow war, it’d be amazing.

The second trait would let me punish Maria but punishing her wouldn’t necessarily gain me submission points. I knew so little about her. I realized then I didn’t even really know what would punish her. I’d turned off my only trait on her, the one that turned her into a clumsy bimbo until I was sure that her incompetence wouldn’t undermine my authority.

I’d have to quiz her soon, find out what she was hiding, who she really was. She had to have some kind of worldly connections outside S.H.I.E.L.D.

Before I could consider how to isolate her and breach the subject, I felt the jet jerk beneath me. We had arrived at our destination.

LOIS

She lay on the floor of the bathroom, the pussy of a girl half her age, that she’d never met before today, in her mouth. Lois wondered what Cat would say if she could see her now.

At least her coital compatriot seemed to be enjoying herself. Lois had never particularly enjoyed the feeling of a dick in her mouth. But she could imagine there was some thrill to it if the owner of the dick was anonymous.

She still remembered the time that Lex had wanted her to suck him off in his office. That fight, and not his shady business dealings, utter lack of moral fiber, and blatant narcissism was the main reason they’d broken up. But of course, she had been less idealistic before she met Clark.

She thought now that it wouldn’t have been so bad to be Lex’s lapdog, even if he had been an evil, perverse bastard. At least she would have retained some semblance of dignity instead of being reduced to a tool to get her fellow sex slaves off.

There was a vibration in her purse and, with her mouth still firmly devoted to torturing Elizabeth’s sensitive spots, she reached out a trembling hand and grabbed the phone. She hoped it was Manheim. Maybe he’d have a new command for her and Elizabeth, preferably one that gave her jaw a rest.

It wasn’t of course. It was her sister, Lucy. Lana had probably asked her to give Lois a call when Lois had never reported back after her “interview” with Manheim. Lois squirmed at the memory of being humiliated and manipulated so easily. She really was a stupid bitch.

It was okay though. Soon, she’d find the clue that tied this all together and then she’d earn herself a nice Pulitzer for her trouble. She’d prove that she was right all along.

At the moment though, she was too busy to hold a conversation, so she hung up the call and refocused her efforts on teasing Elizabeth’s succulent cunt.

BOBBI

After the delirium of being passed around between strippers, Bobbi slid into her Black Canary costume (which was oddly reminiscent of her old costume with the fishnet stockings) and was shoved on stage. The costume came with a domino mask, which thankfully, gave her the slightest bit of anonymity.

There was a tall blonde waiting for her in black leather assless chaps, with silver, sequin-studded boots, a bright white cowboy hat and nipple tassels. It was the same girl from earlier, the blonde who’d taken charge when she was kissing all those feet. She was sporting a big white grin and a massive red strap-on.

“There you are, sweetheart.” The cowgirl said in an awful John Wayne impression. Then she stepped up to her, pressing the strap-on into the inside of her thigh. And she leaned over, her breasts pressing to Bobbi’s. “You know you’ve been a naughty gal, don’tchya?”

Sensibility returned to Bobbi along with the realization of what Manheim had done. He was going to make her replay her ****, on stage, for a cheering audience.

She tried to jerk away, but she was frozen solid. There was nowhere to run. No one coming to save her. Her rectum puckered at the memory of the Super-bot wrecking her. If he found out that she’d disobeyed him…

“What ya need is discipline…a good hard spankin’ on yer fanny.” With that, she grabbed Bobbi by the hair, turned her over her knee, and began to bring her hand down on her rump.

Bobbi jumped a little at the first hit but barely reacted to the pain. She was too paralyzed with fright and indecision to do anything. To scream, to struggle or even to cry for help. The pain was nothing in fact, compared to the mortification of what was about to happen.

She could feel the warmth of the girl’s hand tanning her ass and squeezing her thighs. She was as randy and ready to have the strap-on inside Bobbi as the audience.

Bobbi began to tremble beneath the strikes. She was going to be ****. She was going to do nothing but take it because she had already given so much to Manheim it was ludicrous to draw the line here.

She’d sacrificed her intelligence, her career, and her dignity. Now she was going to relive the worst night of her life.

Then the hand holding her hair released it and ran down her spine, in slow, soothing strokes. She felt the fingers of the girl’s other hand cup her sex through the black panties riding up her crotch. Then she felt the girl’s hot breath on the back of her neck as she leaned down to whisper to her.

“Simmer down, sally. This isn’t my first rodeo.” She said, in her actual voice, breathy and heavy.

Bobbi’s legs twitched with arousal. Maybe…maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she could just shut off her mind like she had before, with the girls backstage and with the dunce cap. Maybe it would be healing, to do it again, but to choose to do it this time.

She tightened her legs around the girl’s hand, then she slid her bare stomach across the bulge of the girl’s strap-on. She couldn’t see her face, but she could feel her smiling. She was ready. Ready to submit. (BOBBI: +2 SP)(+92 SP)

JESSICA

They found Dr. Fate, Dr. Strange, and Lady Shazam were waiting for them when they arrived at the epicenter of the dark magic which was, according to Ice back at the Watchtower, affecting mystics all over the world.

They were both floating, something that magic users as a whole seemed to enjoy a little too much in Jessica’s opinion. Jonni Thunder was there too, leaning against the metallic dome that contained S.H.I.E.L.D.’s super prison with a toothpick between her teeth.

Diana, still carrying Zatanna glared at them. “What happened?”

Lady Shazam spoke first, turning to face her reflection in the dome. “The Scarlet Witch. We believed her to be dead as well, but it would appear her continued existence was merely concealed from us.”

“She has used M’gann’s gift for telepathy to entrap all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and all prisoners inside this dome in a nightmare of their own making,” Clea stated. “We believe she seeks to do likewise to the entire world.”

“We were both fortunate to be in the Shadow Realms when she struck, or else we would have suffered a similar fate to Zatanna,” Inza stated. “We protected our minds before we came here. But we believe she intends to turn all the magic users on this plane into her thralls so that she might use their power to destroy the universe…and remake it in her image.”

“Can you cure her?” Diana asked, casting a glance down at the still twitching and struggling Zatanna.

Clea narrowed her eyes. “It is possible. But I suspect our energies would be better spent finding and incapacitating Wanda before she grows in power.”

“Once Zatanna is awake, she will be of vital aid.” Diana insisted. “Besides…the witch draws power from those around her. If the two of you were to enter this prison, she might well draw the magic from you both.”

Clea and Inza shared a look. It was Jonni who spoke first.

“You’ll need three casters to banish the witch.” She said, taking the toothpick out of her mouth and shrugging. “Rule of threes.”

Inza sighed. “Very well, Diana. We will trust in your plan. Lady Shazam and Jonni will accompany you in our place.”

“But understand that you and all your teammates will be distractions,” Clea stated, floating over to Diana. “Grist for the mill. Meat thrown to the wolves.” She looked away from Diana to Jessica and the others. “Are you prepared to sacrifice all your lives…and your sanity…for hers?” She pointed a gloved hand to the feverish form of Zatanna.

They all nodded. But deep inside, Jessica could feel the old terror stirring. She could only hazard a guess as to what Wanda would conjure to destroy her. But she was sure the truth would be worse.

EMMA

Krakoa was in chaos. On an island full of empaths, telepaths, and precogs, it was difficult to hide anything, let alone the awakening of one of the most powerful mutants on Earth. Currently, Emma was meditating in her room with Hope, trying to place a field of psychic protection over the entire island.

It would be a lot easier without the distraction of folks yelling and shouting outside.

They had almost sealed off the island from the wave of nightmares that Wanda was spreading across the globe when they felt a presence appear in their periphery.

“Oh no…” Emma said aloud as the sound of a jet descending to the ground outside.

Hope just sighed.

Emma turned and raised the nearby window, sticking her head out and glaring down at the figures emerging from the landed Blackbird. “Miss Grey, I believe you and your self-professed X-women were banished from Krakoa under penalty of execution.”

Jean Grey floated up to the window, leaving half a dozen rag-tag mutants in her wake. “If what I have sensed is true, we are dealing with exceptional circumstances. However, once we have prevented Scarlet Witch from destroying reality and brought her here to face the consequences of her actions, you are welcome to attempt to ‘execute’ me and my students as much as you want.”

Hope appeared beside Emma. “Mother, you would wish to bring one of the world’s foremost absorbers of energy here, to Krakoa.”

Jean leaned down toward her. “When you founded Krakoa, you declared yourselves as the ruling body of mutants across the planet. Are you renouncing that duty and all it implies, daughter?”

Hope didn’t flinch, but her eyes gleamed and Emma sensed the two telepathically screaming at each other. Then she looked away.

“Don’t do this, mother. The last thing the world needs is two alpha-level mutants duking it out. The world beyond lied to us about Wanda’s ****. Let them deal with the consequences. Stay here and help protect your own.”

“I am protecting my own. All of them.” Jean said, her eyes glowing brightly. “Now, are you two going to sit here and wait for the problem to come to your door? Or are you going to help me end this matter once and for all?”

“And what permanent solution have you come up with, oh enlightened one?” Emma asked, folding her hands beneath her chin. “The Scarlet Witch is an avatar of entropy. A constant **** for chaos and destruction. Even Hope’s…unique powers find little purchase on her form. She’s also proven to hate both mutant-kind and humanity. She is an apocalyptic threat that we are ill-prepared to fight.” Emma yawned. “I say we let her do what she will to the world. We can hide Krakoa from her influence until she grows bored of this reality and moves on to the next.”

“Wanda is as intelligent as she is dangerous,” Jean said, leaning down to look Emma in the eyes. “As soon as she’s torn through the Avengers, she is coming here to finish both of you off. She hated Magneto, she hated Charles and she hated Apocalypse. I can guarantee she will hate every member of your little council and she will go to any lengths to ensure you don’t oppose her. If you are lucky, she’ll just kill you.”

Emma narrowed her eyes.

“We cannot bring the witch here without endangering our subjects...” Hope said.

“I never said we’d bring her here alive," Jean revealed.

Before any of them could retort, the panic below quieted. Slowly, Jean turned and all three of them watched as a fissure sliced through the air and a single figure, wrapped in roiling coils of black and purple energy emerged, her eyes glowing brightly with a familiar haematic light.

It was Illyana, better known as “Magik”. Immediately, all three of them sensed the alien presence clinging to her mind, tugging at her limbs like a toy.

She grinned, not the glittering grin that they’d come to expect from her, but the twisted crinkled sneer that haunted all their dreams.

Wanda shifted Illyana’s arms and as she did, the sky above Krakoa tore open. Soon it was peppered with portals. And from each one, incoherent hordes of infinite grotesqueness poured forth, chittering and screeching with hunger and rage.

Emma sighed. She had not interacted with Wanda very often, but she was coming to hate her, purely on the basis that she was forcing her to fight alongside Jean.

M’GANN

Mrs. Maximoff’s was floating now, high above the flame-stricken streets of Pleasant Hill. Objects inside the house were floating too, except in direct proximity to Mrs. Maximoff. All sense of night and day had been lost when the sun stopped moving in the sky and began turning blood red.

M’gann sat on the floor and Mrs. Maximoff sat behind her on a rocking chair, running a comb through her hair and humming an Eastern European lullaby. After minutes of spasming between forms, M’gann had settled on her human one. It seemed to be how Mrs. Maximoff wanted her to appear, and that was the only thing that was important anymore.

“You make for such a pretty girl.” Mrs. Maximoff said. “Would you like to be like this always…would you like to be human, when I remake the world?”

M’gann considered the offer, then nodded.

“Ah, but there are struggles to being human too, aren’t there?” Mrs. Maximoff asked. “My brother and I grew up with the gypsies. Do you know how they treated us, back in Serbia? They treated us like thieves, so that is what we became. My brother learned how to pickpocket when he was five. He could do it so fast that no one knew it was him. But they knew they had been robbed. When we were six, they came to raze our camp. That’s when my powers first manifested…I turned their fire back on them. Do you think my mother was happy about that? No…she turned me and my brother over to the government, so they could find out what was wrong with us. Do you know what they did to us? Do you have any idea the kinds of things that they do to children and then call it progress? The truth, child, is that the Nazis never left. They just stopped fighting each other. First, they hated us because we were gypsies…then they hated us because we were mutants, and then they hated us because we fought back. If we were Jewish or Bosnian, they would have hated us for that instead. They will always find an excuse to hate you child…it is in their nature to destroy their own and in doing so, destroy themselves. Where was I with my story? Oh, yes…the human experimentation. I got used to the pain, and I learned that life and pain were not so different…but when I saw what they had done to my brother I was enraged. My mother said my powers were black magic…that if I used them again, I would doom my soul to hell. Well, I said if I was going to go to hell, then I had better get it over with. I would rather spend an eternity being punished, than go to heaven and live forever, knowing that I had let the men of this world hurt my brother. You should have seen it…all those scientists…all those soldiers…I made them feel what they had been doing to me and my twin. I made them do it to themselves…I made sure…they were aware that they didn’t want to though, when they did it. You know what is funny? When men in uniforms butcher children, they are being patriotic to their country. But when it is the men in uniforms being butchered, you are a murderer for defending your own life. All your heroes, they would rather have let my brother and me suffer, than assume action. You see, I learned then, that all law is a lie…it is a veneer of hypocrisy and bigotry created to shield the ignorant and perverse. Those men had no idea that they would turn me into this monster…perhaps if they had thought a little bit more about me, and a little bit less about their careers or their status…they would be alive today.”

She leaned down. “That’s when father came. I only realized it later, but he only ever took interest in me and my brother because we were mutants...and because we were powerful. He didn't care that we were blood. He didn't care who we were or how we had suffered. He wanted to use us, to destroy his enemies, to upset the status quo. My brother would do anything for him, anything to earn his love. He died for nothing, fighting one of my father’s stupid wars. That was another thing I learned, child. The firebrands and the visionaries are just as cruel and immoral as those they overthrow. And they will march atop the bodies of as many little boys and girls as it takes to put them in power. There is no hope. There is no such thing as reform. There is only pain…and madness. I showed that to my father after he took my brother away from me. I showed him how idiotic his movement was. I crippled him so that he could do naught but watch as I tore his army apart and ruined all he held dear. Then, and only then, when he had gone mad with despair, did I grant him the mercy of ****.”

Patting M’gann’s shoulder, she got her to turn around to face her. “You see, humans are wretched apes condemned by the limitations of their intelligence. And mutants are ape freaks...doomed to butcher their brothers and supersede their fellow man only in arrogance. That is why I became the Scarlet Witch. That is why I chose to be more…I am going to remake this universe. It is the only moral thing to do…I have the power to change reality, I have the responsibility to change it. You see, I learned about ethics from my late husband. He said that if there is a creator, we have a moral obligation to be his superior. Well, I will be the next creator and my creation will be superior to this farce. In my world there will be no more pain…because there will be no more bodies. There will be no more ****…because there will be no more time. And there will be no more madness…because there will be no more thought. We will be one, a shapeless and mindless collective floating in an infinite void. Forever. Now won’t that be nice? And I will be the greatest hero of all, for curing the universe of all its ills. I think I deserve a medal for that…don’t you?”

M’gann nodded. She didn’t want to nod. She wanted to scream. To transform into something immense and crush this witch before she could go through with her plan.

She nodded anyway.

Due to a change in my financial situation, I will no longer be able to continue this story on a monthly basis as I was doing previously. As a result, the Patreon is on hiatus until further notice. I may return to add to this story at some point, but I won't be charging for it if I do.