2012-12-01 Of Pointless Endeavours

Deep beneath Castle Doom, located somewhere in the middle of the mountain that the structure sits upon, lies a a dungeon. For days, one by one, the conspirators of the Siege of Latveria have met with Doom, and so far, none have made it out unscathed. Now, it's Psylocke's turn.

The sedatives that have been keeping her under slowly fade from her system, leaving her able to awake again. When she does, she'll find herself locked into a chair, wrists and ankles kept securely in place by rings of titanium, and another around her forehead. In front of her, is a wall of TV screens, and in her arm is a sophisticated IV. Something is keeping her from using her powers, a fog in the brain, it'll feel like. Everytime she tries to access them... they'll just slip through her fingers like water. A drug, most likely.

And then the screens turn on, and one-by-one they start to show the battle. Each one seems dedicated to one individual, and as each is taken out, the screen freezes for a second, and begins to loop, over and over. Showing the 'deaths' of her friends non stop.

What would be the point?

It's a question Psylocke asked in her final wakeful moments, as she watched in a state of near-paralysis, observing with a vast emotional weight and a nigh-improbable dawning distance as one of her newest but dearest friends fell in a dazzling ray of light, only for the next to consume her. With the bloodied, barely unbroken Kwabena seemingly meeting his final rest, Domino but a scanty blip of life clinging to its last tendrils upon the outer vestiges of her telepathic senses, Blink vanished... and even the mighty Ms. Marvel, a far older and deeply-trusted friend in her own right, falling before Doom... the answer should be simple.

The kunoichi watches with wide violet eyes from the moment she awakens now, coming to with nary a gasp or twitch of the astonished body. Because she's not astonished. She's not surprised. The honed form of Kwannon alerts her with immediacy to its living, pulsing state, and the wages of tiredness do nothing to remove the keenness of her perceptions. Powers or no, Betsy has become far more than just a young, lost British tomboy stumbled into a terrifyingly brave new world. She's a warrior. A warrior who now has no more reason to fight, no reason to strain against the display unfolding before her. If it's already happened, she can't stop it. Can't change it.

"Turn it off."

She's only surprised by the muddiness of her words as she speaks. Pain seeps through them - to be sure, she feels guilt and shame at what she's allowed to happen, and an agonizing, deep form of embarassment at her capture - there will be further consequences to come, and she knows it. But the drugs in her system, slowing her and controlling her, they inhibit her motions without more than anything else. In the straightforward command is the echo of a dawning realization; even if she fights now, physically, she's scant more than a housecat, declawed. This changes nothing-- as with her friends, if she's lost this already, then why dwell upon it?

"You think I don't remember? You think I wouldn't play this back in my dreams...?"

Her tone gains volume and confidence as she keeps speaking, straining to see beyond the veil.

"I want you to see what you caused. A warrior like you must feel regret for leading your friends to their death..."

Doom's voice sounds from everywhere, and no where, speakers embedded into the walls of the room carry his words with perfect clarity, as well as the cries of pain, defeat, or more usually, defiance that play from the screens.

"I wonder how much it would hurt to see what happened to them afterwards. That's right... they survived. All of them... For a time."

The images shift, first up, is Domino. The portray the repeated applications of electrocution, even into unconsciousness. Then an execution chamber, where she awakens, completely stripped with a the stands filled by leering soldiers. The screens show her valiant but costly fight against a trio of wolves, where she comes out victorious, only for Doom to step down and fight her, bereft of his armor. Finally, after mostly being tossed around by the far larger Doom, she manages to reveal his face, which is hidden from view on the cameras. She celebrates a moment of victory, only to instantly be dragged through the air into his waiting hand, strangled, then electrocuted... Until she dies.

"She was by far, the most stubborn. Though of course, even she fell to Doom in the end."

Doom's very first reward is a flinch at the emergent chords of his voice. It's not a reaction to the man himself, or his words, but the delivery system; those speakers deploy sound in a manner almost akin to telepathy, seeming to penetrate her brain from every possible angle. Close, intimate; something she shares only with those whose nature she has sensed, who she either trusts or at least possesses a keen, super-natural awareness of. And it would be a lie indeed to say that the words themselves do not reach her, pry at the feelings in her breast, threatening to unhinge them-- were she any lesser, it would work. But in some brutal, cruel fashion she made her peace as they stood before the tyrant outside his besieged palace...

"I told you, stone would be a mercy," this time her tone is low, resonant with those emotions she's otherwise suppressing, allowing him the honour to hear that she does, indeed feel. Because she also possesses the self-awareness to realize she cannot point a finger at this man and declare him wholly evil. He defends his country, and his people. "And their deaths..."

She allows that to trail away beneath the reverberations of Doom's continued speech, closing her eyes momentarily as she draws in a calming breath. Willpower is a gift, for certain; but not one maintained without great effort. Tethered beside her, the fingers of one hand flex slowly, powerfully into a fist, pulling against the titanium ring holding her otherwise fast.

"That would have been a kindness."

Her tone gains greater distance, as Betsy wets over-dry lips, flesh cracking along the dessicated slab of her tongue. At full majesty, she's a composed, beautiful creature - she can admit as much without giving in to the temptations of an ego - but she feels weak, fragile and ugly right now. She feels something else, too, perhaps unplanned on the tyrant's part; and while watching Domino's tribulations stir the bitterness and heartache of an imperiled friendship - of trust she has, in a sense, betrayed - they also cause a surge of unrelenting warrior's pride.

"But," she lets the syllable fall into place as she lifts violet eyes from the screen, tilting for no particular reason a dark, penetrating stare into the upper left corner of the unseen chamber beyond. "She fought you. She stood up to you. A woman like Domino - who's sold herself to the highest bidder her entire life, battled only where it benefitted her - she threw it all away for a craven traitor like me. For a woman who led her to her death. Yes, Victor Von Doom, I feel shame and regret, and a guilt that seeks to *crush* me... but I'm not the one who should be examining myself. Am I supposed to believe you wouldn't offer somebody like her a deal? A way out? She's a powerful asset. For my sins, I knew that. But she wouldn't stand with you."

Drawing and releasing a breath, Psylocke finishes without anger in her tone. Unaccusing.

"She stood with me. For me. I'm not the only person who has to live with that now."

At Psylocke's words, the images halt, and Doom answers her steadily. "On the contrary, you /should/ know that I offered her a way out. To stand beside me, as it were. She denied me. Again, she was quite resiliant."

"However, she was also a fool... Unlike a few of your other companions."

Now the images show Blink, allowed a more comfortable cell, with books, even. As she awakes on screen, Doom's voice sounds in the room again.

"I could tell you had used her. Twisted her. She came here seeking aid, help to defeat the evil that reigns in her shattered world, and instead, you used her as a puppet in your petty scheme. I could see this, and I offered her what she most wanted..."

Doom's voice can be heard again, but this time, it's clearly a recording, one that matches up with the screens. "While you stay here, you will be treated and act as a citizen of Latveria... is that understood." Blink, now dressed in her gear, even armed with her quiver of javelins, nods, saying, "As you wish, My Lord. I will not try your patience anymore. I need you..."

"Domino is many things," comes the immediate murmur as Psylocke observes the latest image, already grown weary of sitting and watching. The tension in her words is telling. She's built for action; Kwannon's body is an adrenaline-drenched, perfectly-toned killing machine that pleads to be used at every opportunity. Always energetic and active, Betsy has grown almost impatiently so, by habit, since leaving her original shell behind. "But she's not a fool."

Her fingers unfurl from around that titanium ring, dancing and twitching as much to strive and throw off the effects of Doom's insidious doping as to gesture said impatience. But then they stiffen, folding inward halfway, her knuckles and joints bulging as Latveria's armoured dictator announces - as though to her very brain - that she somehow misled and abused this poor, mauve-skinned girl before her. There's no hiding the nigh-maternal instinct she feels toward Blink, even while acknowledging the apocaylptic survivor's unbelievable strength and willpower. Her teeth clench, the first sign of composure truly being lost. This is already cruel...

It may be deserved, but it is. Cold. Calculating. Why does he also have to *lie*?

"I never used her, you ignorant bloody *sod*," she spits, the otherwise tame expletives sounding positively virulent in that crisp, clear tone. Even weighted by the drugs pirouetting lethargically through her veins. "What she wants is to free this world from the future she's seen; and to return to her own, to make it a better, safer place. One she gives selflessly, the other..." She pauses, her tone trembling as she seeks to quell the anger. The doubt, too. Has she used Blink? By any reckoning? If she's used Domino, if she used Kwabena in the most vicious fashion - even for the best purpose... then she must have used them all. She won't accept it. "The other I have pledged her in return for her help. Unasked. Undemanded. She could walk away from me at any moment; I'm not *like* you, Von Doom. I don't demand titles, or any more respect than that which passes between warriors. I led because they believed in me..."

She shakes her head, wild, bruising her skull against the unyielding surface behind, further dishevelling purple hair lank and sweaty from her drugged fever-sleep. She doesn't care for the pain or for the vanity. This matters to her, even if it's 'pointless'.

"And I never lied to them." That comes out hard, cold. Biting. "Why do you lie to me?"

"Oh, yes... I'm quite sure she could. She would also have to live with the fact that she let you go to your deaths without perhaps the only reason you made it so far. Her teleporting. Regardless, you do not need to tell me why she is here. I already know. You see, unlike you, I have agreed to help her, rather then twist her emotions in order to get what I want."

Images flash up of Doom and Blink working together to create some... Device. It's huge, looking very much like a platform, and while he uses magic, tech, and his own hands to complete it, she apparently answers questions he has about her time, supposedly to track it down specifically.

"I do not lie to you, for a lie would only make you cling to the hope that there is a chance that you didn't trick them, use them, perhaps unwittingly, but honestly... Did any of them show the slightest interest in me before you met them? I doubt it, certainly I was never attacked by any of them. How foolish to lead them here, when even your government is afraid to tread on Latverian soil unbidden. What could possibly have possessed you, unless... You knew you had a protector? Kwabena, perhaps."

Suddenly, the images of Kwabena start popping up, displaying him strapped to a medical table. He watches something in anguish, and appears visibly distraught. He even seems to try to break out of his restraints once, before he goes limp. Relaxed. It takes only minutes for the image of Kwabena and Psylocke to come up, and he drives his foot into her face, before trying to shoot himself in the chin. He screams as Doom 'saves' his life, and is forced back into the table, only for it to skip ahead again, and this time, Shift puts a bullet in Psylocke's head, before looking to Doom with a pitiful, needful look.

"He looks much better off with you in his life, doesn't he."

What Doom describes, this trade-off of emotional comeuppance versus the 'genuine' traits of loyalty, it runs deft parallel to considerations that Betsy herself has made - in the fullness of time, throughout her later youth and into the assorted pitfalls of adulthood. It forms spreading wings beneath the plummet of Psylocke's doubts now, actually assisting her, in some twisted fashion of its own, in reaching the conclusion her striving, inhibited mind needs. Violet eyes scan the device and its construction with suspicious distraction, the kunoichi not sold on accepting any of this as fact - not when he's already misled her twice.

Not when his psychological ruse has unfolded before the all important eye of her mind. Psylocke is not a genius - far from it, she's but a couple of steps above 'average' in so many regards bar that raised by her mutation - but she's wise. She has wisdom.

"It's not hope, you pompous blowhard."

She barely gets the words out over the blossom of flinching pain that even letting her thoughts alight on Kwabena brings. That kiss they shared - it could have meant a thousand things, but the truth of it was a simple exchange of trust, friendship, and love. People read so much into love, ascribe much to it that's untrue or massively, needlessly exaggerated from a simple, beautiful truth. One of the many concepts that mankind has ruined. Along with charity. And hope.

"If you want to put it in foul, cynical terms, then yes." Her words are openly dripping with venom now, her lower lip curling and face straining instinctively away as she watches the Ghanaian's trials unfold. She still can't accept it as gospel, but... just seeing this, it tears at her heart. It fosters sadness, yet more guilt, and also hate. For Doom. "I tricked them. I manipulated their emotions. That's how *human beings* operate, when we're not stowed away behind ineffable metal masks and ridiculous epiphets. Friendship is manipulation. Loyalty. Trust. Honour. Love. It's all a means to the ends we seek; we're all, inherently, selfish."

Suddenly she's thrusting against her bonds, a singularly violent motion, a perfect union of her powerful body and her overpowering resolve. Kwannon's muscles bunch, her tendons rear as one, and it sends a shockwave of numb agony through Psylocke's blisslessly numbed form.

"IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR, YOU BASTARD?" She's suddenly yelling, mouth a fierce rictus, violet eyes blazing with electric fire; wings of purplish flare spreading about her countenance as the most latent and potent form of her mutagenic power surfaces in spite of the safeguards. For a moment she's nigh as powerful as the likes of Jean Grey and Professor Xavier, pushing the boundaries of all that's human. But it's horribly suppressed. In reality, a helpless flutter. A lioness bound and caged, the kunoichi, but still she strives in that instant. It exhausts her.

"You've claimed to be the good man in all of this," she drops to a near-whisper, head hanging, breath inflating her breast in heaves. "The protector forced to act as his people are laid stricken and screaming at his feet. You know what?" A smile touches her lips, a bitter twist of a thing almost lost between breaths. "I believed that. Still do. We trespassed, and we deserved to pay. But this charade, this questioning, this torture - these illusions? Petty, cruel efforts by a pathetic mind unable to accept accountability for what it *is*. Do you want to know everything about me, Victor Von Doom, before you reduce me to nothing? Before you return me to the earth? I have no secrets from myself, or from the enemy who takes my life. My meaningless life-- a life I threw away when I chose to come here, no matter my purpose..."

Words now more empowered, she swallows and lifts her head. Eyes finding that corner again.

"Release my mind, give me back my powers, and I'll share everything with you. What I think, what I feel, every last agony this operation has subjected me to. Everything that makes me human, and you no more than an unfeeling machine. You call my friends my tools? Your people are no better. Do they know you're a criminal in the world beyond? Framing others for your crimes? Release me, Victor Von Doom; we already know I can't kill you. So let's cease this fool's dance and share all that we are for one instant before I flap my wings and fall to my eternal sleep."

Despite the poetry of her words, they're coldly vitriolic, passionate only in their scalding intensity.

"Are you man enough for that? Warrior enough? Or are parlour tricks and taunts all that you have?"

Psylocke's outburst is allowed to run its course until she silences, and then a door clangs open and Doom steps into the room from the side. "You are truly the height of all arrogance. You think I want answers from you? You think I want you to admit something to me? Something I, Doctor Doom, don't already know? Do you, deep in your heart, honestly believe that you are worthy of my attention seperate from the pain you have caused in my country? Were you not to have come here, you would have been ignored like the rest of the filth you crawl around in. You think yourself special in some way? Here, look into my soul, look into my mind and know what I want, know what the world needs. Cower in your own insignificance as you realize you have dared to draw the ire of a god."

With that, Doom reaches up and removes his mask, his face shadowed in his cloak, as he presses his cold, titanium gauntlet to Psylocke's forehead, and instantly the fog is lifted, enabling her to look into his mind as he requested.

Arrogance, perhaps, is part of being human too. Betsy Braddock cannot be unwound through any statement of her own flaws - she's been through them a hundred thousand times, endlessly turning each one over and examining it. Ensuring her convictions remain true to who she is, ensuring that who she *is* is someone she can maintain any manner of respect for. Destroyed and remade several times over, figuratively and literally, she possesses a strength beneath all the heated passion that is almost unassailable, in mortal terms. At least by any but her.

When that portal opens loudly, it takes a moment for Psylocke's roving eyes to adjust to the sudden penetration of nuance, of shape and form beyond the flickering screens. Strong in spite of - perhaps even, in some way, because of - the perilous situation she finds herself, the kunoichi watches levelly through the countering speech, lips gently parted as she keeps up the steadily inhalation and exhalation of charged air. He approaches, and she prepares.

For what, she can't be sure, until it strikes her. Unlike her patch-eyed hireling, she doesn't strive to see the scarred tissue of that face within the cowl - she can see far, far deeper if the man should acquiesce to her telepathic sight. And he does. She's ready to leap like a predator from the tall grass, her consciousness exploding from the astral to collide against the outer barriers of his mind, penetrating them like a hammer through slate. She's not a subtle, delicate telepath; save when she chooses to be with the utmost care, and even then-- she's a blunt instrument. A bullet with butterfly wings. It's an offensive power, lacking entirely in shielding of her own, as though she grabbed a double armful of the man's thoughts, feelings and innermost emotions, tossing them about frivolously like plastic balls in a pit.

What she finds she couldn't have prepared for, save in the coldest annals of logic. Victor Von Doom claims to be a god - and there's so much power here, that much is true, but it's - as ever - the unrelenting humanity that blindsides her. A chronology of pain and anguish, loss and resentment, ambition and drive the like of which only the inner child can ever bring so utterly to bear. She doesn't find herself wishing to bow before a god, but almost overcome with the urge to sob, to comfort this metal creature-- if not for what follows. If not for the cruelty that grows, that he has demonstrated here. A necessary evil, perhaps, but an evil akin to those she too has performed. In some ways, they're alike. In others he surpasses her, flooding the extremes and rattling the cage of mortality. He may not be a god, but as she hits the electrical pulsation of the magic wound innately through his being, she knows...

Victor Von Doom might well be, one day. She's felt so few minds like this. It's astounding enough in the totality that she recoils from the astral, abandoning the intended plan to simply retreat expediently-- though it's far from simple, wound up in honour and pity and even still the lingering hatred. But respect now, too. That he's allowed her to take this step. She doesn't even try to give in turn; if he wanted it, he'd have announced it. Which leaves the mystery of what he does want. She can't elicit the most specific things, but she has informed theories.

"Special?" She draws shudderingly once she's back in her body, gaze swimming and forced to swallow back a mouthful of bile-sick saliva. "No. You've missed the point. That's exactly what I'm *not*. But look at the attention you've been forced to spare me. The lengths you go to undo me, to prove something to... whom, Von Doom? Yourself? Nobody else can see this. If you truly believe everything you say about me, even those of my friends you've left alive - kept in captivity for this moment..." Pausing, her breath diminished, she clears her throat with a hoarse cough, shaking her head, forcing herself to remain aright against the titanium frame. "They won't care either. Compared to you, I am insignificant. But not only that."

Her eyes narrow, blazing with something approaching defiance. The defiance of a wise cockroach.

"I'm insignificant compared to this world. To this universe. Where does your ambition end?"

As Pisslocke delves into his mind, Doom is unflinching. He hides nothing, and it becomes evident that he honestly doesn't care enough to withhold information from her. To do so, would awknowledge her as a threat. When she withdraws, the mask is placed back over his face, and his hand removed, the fog settling back over Betsy's mind.

"You still don't understand. You still think yourself worthy of me, still think that I go to these lengths to prove something. You are a side-project. A test subject. You are nothing more then fate delivering a toy to my hands. A distraction from my true goals. You still think this is about breaking you? About turning your friends to my cause? There are things in motion in this world that you can only see the faintest fraction of, you struggle to keep your head above water, while Doom himself controls the tides. Remember that, while you watch your friend's pain."

With this he turns, and begins to leave the room, but not before the screens flicker back into life, showing every horrible moment that has occured to Domino, Kwabena, Blink, Carol, and Psylocke herself, and as he walks out, the images begin to shift. Slowly, but surely, their faces are replaced with the faces of hundred of humans, mutants, creatures, places. Cameras hidden in locations unimaginable, the Pentagon, the White House, A smoke-filled club where elegant men and women walk about, paying respect to two men, and two women in particular, an office that overlooks Metropolis from the highest point, the Baxter building from multiple angles inside and out. An African nation that seems more high-tech then it should be, a city that is populated, seeminly, only by gorillas, a base on some barren, otherworldly landscape. Green light, bats, a streak of red and gold, a mansion, an institute of learning.