Chapter 14) – Part of Me

With Natalie's silent contemplation persisting, Mara decided to discuss my lacking emotional tolerance, [Elysium, although being called a derogatory name does incite anger, you need to make sure not to act on the emotion if it's not warranted. Losing control of one's emotions, especially in a fight, is a disadvantage unless said emotions are the fuel for one's strength, like the Hulk. Thankfully, you lost control for the first time with a random grunt, and not someone important to future events, like Loki. I know you're young, and your race is very defensive about your hosts, but you need to be willing to ignore slanderous remarks at the very least. We had a saying back in my universe, not sure if it's in this one, but it was 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me'. You're smart, so I don't need to breakdown what it means.]

Realising how serious she was as she used my full name, and that it could become an issue further down the line if I could not control my blossoming emotions, I had no choice but to agree with Mara's council, <I understand, Mara. Although I am used to subtly feeling your emotions, since they were mine this time, heightened a completely new degree have never felt before. How do humans adapt living with such powerful feelings?>

Mentally giggling slightly, my host replied, [Oh El, if only it were so easy. Everyone does it differently, there isn't a universal rule unfortunately. Plus, humans get a much longer time to do it compared to you. The first decade or 2 for a human is where they build their tolerances and their general behaviour. For some, you could call them all the bad names under the sun, and they wouldn't care, but for others they have a similar reaction to you in that simple name-calling is enough to make them lose control. I can, however, give you advice based on how I control my emotions and it seems to work for me… For the most part.]  

Willing to take any advice I could get, I agreed, <If you wouldn't mind, please, Mara. I will also ask others we speak to, once have been officially introduced.>

Seemingly pleased with me admitting to my mistake and subsequent willingness to change, Mara reaffirmed my decision, [That's a good idea, El. Since you can't match the time to gather experience a human is given, you may as well use your intellect to ask others and gain experience that way. Anyways, the method I use is to treat everyone that I don't know or care about like they're less than human. I wouldn't get angry at a dog for barking at me, because it doesn't know any better. You called the woman who you killed dirt. So why would you care about what dirt thinks? If that makes sense?]

As always, Mara's explanations were concise and were perfectly understandable, <Perfect sense, thank you Mara. I'll use that as a starting point and go from there.>

With our heart-to-heart over, and Natalie still in her musings, Mara decided to do her own thing while she waited, [No problem, El. While we wait for Natalie to finish her brainstorming, could you pick up all the guns lying about with your tendrils and crush them into balls please?]

Assuming that Mara just wanted the worms to be unable to use their weapons in the event they woke up from their comas, I naturally complied with the request, <Sure thing, dear.>

Extending several tendrils, I collected up all the guns and crushed them into individual balls before dropping them at Mara's feet. Evidently, however, it seemed that my host was still able to surprise me, even when I had known her my entire existence, as Mara's actual plan was something else entirely.

Bending over and picking up 3 of the rifle balls, she proceeded to use them to juggle.

[You know, El. I've always wanted to be able to juggle, but with how up and down my life was I never took the time to learn. I certainly tried when I was much younger, and still in my own universe, but my co-ordination was awful. I mean I couldn't even juggle 2 balls, and that was as easy as throw one up, swap the hand the remaining ball is in, and catch the airborne ball with the newly empty hand. But now I'm bonded with you, my strength has increased which improves my co-ordination and allows my body to do exactly what I want it to. Just look at me, I'm juggling 3 balls with such little effort!]

She was indeed using barely any effort considering she wasn't even looking at the balls. Still watching the thinking Natalie, Mara was throwing the balls in front of her face, in an X pattern. As her eyes recognised one ball coming down from its peak in her peripheral vision, she threw another ball into the air, freeing the hand used to catch the falling ball.

Appreciating Mara's child-like innocence with how happy she was over something so simple as juggling, I tried to improve her mood even further, <This 1000 is just the tip of iceberg, dear. There are deeper bonds we will make in future that juggling balls trivial. Not to mention various superhuman mutations could acquire, exponentially increasing number.>

Cracking a smile at my mental words, Mara continued to juggle the 3 balls for a few seconds longer before I felt the distinct pull I instantly recognised as her intent. She wanted an extra rifle ball to increase her juggling to 4 balls.   

Sending out a tendril from her waist, I collected the 4th ball and waited for the perfect moment to throw it into the loop. At that point, Mara had taken her eyes off Natalie's statuesque form and was focussed entirely on her juggling, ready for the soon to arrive ball. 

As Mara adjusted her timing in anticipation for it, I lightly tossed the ball, allowing it to effortlessly slip into the rhythm she had going. Both of us in perfect sync.

Building on her confidence, I felt the familiar pull from seconds before. Grabbing the last rifle ball, we followed the same process as we previously did. Just like the preceding attempt, it was also executed flawlessly.

Over the following few minutes, we continued to add the smaller pistol balls into the mix. By the time Natalie finally came out of her ruminations, we had all 10 weapons in a rhythmic loop under Mara's complete control.

Noticeably calmer this time, Natalie audibly huffed, "Haaah, can't you sit still for 5 minutes Mara?"

Immediately re-focusing on her, Mara continued juggling without missing a beat, "But you were stood there for, like, a solid 10 minutes as if you were some kind of meditating statue, what else was I meant to do? At least I didn't play with those wor- err, criminals over there."

Mara internally grumbled at me at her almost slip of the tongue, [Dammit El, you're rubbing off on me. I almost called those guys worms.] 

Fully embracing Mara's earlier philosophy of treating irrelevant persons as less than human, I questioned, <To use your own philosophy against you; since they are less than human, cannot be anything other worms as no animal I know of eats dirt. Calling them such should not pose any problems, no?> 

[When you look at it like that, I suppose it makes sense- wait why am I agreeing with you now. We'll deal with this later... Mister? Misses? You get the point.] Deciding to kick the discussion down the road, we both pivoted back to listening to Natalie.

With the benefit of such fast mental communication, neither of us missed any part of the assistant's reply to Mara's remark, "I apologise for that. I was trying to think up any alternative to you having some kind of dual personality, but as far as I'm aware, that's the only thing it could be. I also came up with some theories with regards to the possible triggers. The known cases of your blackouts seem to either be when you want to go somewhere, or I suppose do something, but don't consciously know how to go about it. Or, in the entrails situations, it's when you feel insulted. I would have thought the violent one was when you were threatened if it were not for the fact that, from what I've seen, none of the situations posed any real danger to you. The underground room- could you pay attention and put the damn balls down, please?" 

With Mara halting her arm movements at Natalie's words, the balls fell down to the ground due to the rhythm that had kept them in circulation, disappearing. Despite the fact that my host was genuinely paying 100% attention to Natalie, and I was assisting in her arm movements to keep the juggling going, it seemed that the spy was of a different mind.

Finding humour in the situation, as opposed to feeling affronted at being accused of not paying attention to Natalie's explanation, Mara laughed it off while rubbing the back of her head, "Hehe sorry about that, I completely forgot I was even doing that. I was genuinely paying attention to you though Natalie, what were you saying about the underground room?"

Realising that she had made a mistake and overreacted for no reason, Natalie swiftly apologized, "I'm sorry, Mara. I just thought that you weren't paying attention with how well you were juggling, but I should have realised that judging you off normal human standards is wrong of me."

Not feeling offended at all, as it was an easy assumption to make, Mara was more than willing to accept her apology, "Apology accepted. I know you're a bit high strung after the little… 'episode' so don't stress about it. Shit happens."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Natalie picked back up where she left off, "Phew, going back to before I snapped at you. The underground room didn't pose any danger to you as you could always turn into your suit form. But, the dumbasses that thought they could happily dice apart your body and such audacity must have made a part of you feel subconsciously insulted, resulting in the switch being flipped. The same thing basically happened here. As soon as the woman called you a bitch, and genuinely meant it… Well, I don't need to tell you what happened, do I?"   

Although Natalie had been led along by the nose, with the specific words Mara had used, it was still impressive how quickly she reached the end goal I envisioned.

One final touch was needed to be able to call the plan a success, however. Even with Natalie saying all the right things, we couldn't just immediately accept what she was saying. We had to at least offer some kind of resistance. From what I could gather of humans during my existence, they are not ones to willing accept they are crazy at the first diagnoses. Not unless they are specifically wanting to be diagnosed with something anyways. 

"But what about when Happy shouted at me when we were in Monaco? I could have been insulted deep down when he freaked out about my suit, right? Or when Tony said that my suit didn't look friendly even when I was saving his life?"

Nodding like she expected such questions, Natalie casually answered, "That's because you knew, no matter how deep down, that they didn't mean to actually insult you. With Happy you even admitted yourself after the incident, that you knew the suit wasn't relaxing to look at and could understand he was panicked about the whole situation. I wasn't present when Mr. Stark said what he did, but I think it would be safe to assume that the same thing happened; you didn't feel any malice in his words, and therefore didn't feel insulted."

Satisfied that the plan came together as envisioned, I thanked Mara for her assistance and decided to close out the theory crafting, <That was perfect, dear. She connected all the dots without too much pushing from us, so we can go along with her conclusions now and she shouldn't suspect us at all.>

Surprised, yet glad, with how flawlessly my scheme went. Mara offered me words filled with praise, [Good work El. You know the fact you're only a month old and already even trying, let alone succeeding, to trick a master manipulator like Black Widow, is equal parts as scary as it is impressive.]

Pleased at receiving recognition of my efforts from my host, <I aim to please, dear. I will only improve over time, so you always be able rely on me for whatever require. No matter the situation.>

Shifting from our mental discussion, back to the verbal one with Natalie, Mara took us over the finish line and 'reluctantly' admitted that the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had a point, "Okay, you make some good points Natalie and since I can't really dispute any part of what you're saying, I'll believe you for now. Do you think there's anything I could do to get a possible handle on the blackouts? I'm not too keen on unwillingly surrendering control of my body without being able to do anything about it."

Fully expecting Natalie to have no particular advice for such queries, Mara and I were both quite shocked when the assistant actually tried to suggest a way to interact with the 'other consciousness'. It was also one that was fairly logical, "Actually I might have an idea that could work. One of the triggers we discussed was that you want to do something but don't know how, exactly, to do it, right? Well, I was thinking it might work in this situation. If you categorically want to speak with your other self, the door may open and allow communication between you two, hypothetically. Either that or they take over completely and I can speak to them for you, or, obviously, it doesn't work, and nothing happens at all. No matter what, I don't see any glaring negative outcomes in trying."

Planning to take full advantage of the opportunity presented, I quickly began to discuss with my host about updating our plan, <Great Stan, this is perfect Mara. Natalie has unintentionally gone above and beyond what I wanted her to! If we use set-up in the right way, can justify you accidentally talking to yourself avoid awkward situations like bird fear incident from earlier.>

Obviously not wanting to repeat the incidents we both had earlier in the day, ever again, Mara enthusiastically replied, [Got it. This is gonna be a piece of cake since we can already communicate. Here's the plan El…]

With our way forward mapped out, we set to work implementing it. Mara, implicitly agreeing to Natalie's suggestion, sought 'advice' from the spy, "How exactly would I go about doing it Natalie? Do I just think that I want to speak to myself, or do I want to think of it like speaking to someone else that's trapped or hidden inside my body?"  

Appreciative that Mara was willing to give her suggestion a try, Natalie moved slightly closer to my host before she suggested, "I would guess it would be better to think of it as the latter for now. Since we're assuming they're an entirely different personality, they may as well be a completely different person but sharing your body."

Jumping up a couple of times and shaking her extremities to 'psyche herself up', Mara informed the assistant, "Okay, let's give this a go then." Before she proceeded to close her eyes, as if meditating.

[It's showtime El~]

Receiving the signal, I extended part of my form out from the jacket Mara was wearing and covered the right side of her face. This made half of her head, directly separated down the centreline of her face, completely dyed in my colours. Continuing with the process I added the features from our suit form, jagged white eyes, and sharp teeth to the half of Mara's face that was covered by my form.

Mara opened her eyes, or rather eye, since only one was visible, and asked out in mock wonder, "I can't see out of my right eye Natalie, what happened?"

As we were giving Natalie the illusion that we were talking to each other, I purposefully didn't link our mouths so that when I spoke, only the suit mouth moved, and when Mara spoke, only her mouth moved. 

Interjecting before the undercover agent could get a word out, I spoke up, 'surprising' Mara, "What happened was that you wanted to talk, so here I am. If you've got nothing to say I'll leave"

Not really expecting it to work first try, Natalie was caught a bit off guard. However, she quickly recovered when I said I would leave, "Wait! Tell us why you tortured and killed that woman. We wanted to keep them all alive to question them."

Deciding that my outward personality would be a bit on the ruder side – Mainly due to the fact that Natalie had been quite rude to my host over their time together with all the analysing and scrutinising – I narrowed my jagged eye at Natalie before I replied with, "I didn't come to talk to you."

With widened eyes and a shocked expression, Natalie recoiled back a step. Showcasing some impressive acting, Mara stuck up for the spy. Her performance even made me confused on if she was acting or was actually defending the spy in hopes she would gain her friendship, "Hey, that's not very nice. Don't be rude to Natalie, El!"

Registering what Mara had said, Natalie recovered from her shock and asked my host, "El? Have you already given them a name, Mara?" 

As we had already settled on our suited name being the same as my own, Mara's following explanation made irrefutable sense, "Err yeah. The first thing that came to mind was my made-up name so I figured calling them Elysium, or El for short, would be easiest, right?"

With my host's words being the truth – albeit the way myself and our suit form got our names was flipped – Natalie believed her with no resistance, "I suppose that does make it easy. And, since Elysium is already an alternate name for yourself it make sense, since the other personality is also an alternate version of you. Would it be alright if I spoke to them through you, please Mara? From what they said I doubt I'll get an answer out of them." 

Relieved that Natalie was going along with our plan perfectly, again, Mara readily agreed to her request, already knowing the outcome, "Absolutely! So, you wanted to know why that woman was killed right? El, mind telling us the reason?"

I wasn't sure if Natalie was assuming that I had the intelligence of a 3-year-old human, but following our scheme, I immediately shot down her ploy, "You think I would fall for that? I said that I wouldn't speak to MISS Rushman and asking through you, Mara, is the same thing. Bye."

Saying so, I pulled the mask back into the jacket it stretched out from, cutting the conversation short. Although calling Natalie by her surname was not part of the plan, I hoped that by emphasizing the 'miss' like Natalie did to Mara previously, it would motivate the spy to get closer to my host and start their friendship. As that was what my host wanted after all.

Although the wording was slightly different from the strategy Mara had intended, she still managed to adapt to the slight changes on the fly and effortlessly continued our plot, "What do you mean you didn't kill anyone? I saw the criminal blow up."

As quick-witted as always, Natalie put 2 and 2 together to realise that Mara speaking out loud to someone she couldn't hear, must have meant that I had communicated to her mentally, "Are you speaking to El now Mara? Does that mean you two can now speak internally?"

Confirm her hypothesis, Mara nodded, "Yeah, but El said they're still not speaking to you. They say you've been really rude to me and if it was up to them, you'd have already got the dirt treatment. But, since I like you, they've been holding back. Oh, dirt is what they called the woman they exploded by the way."

Shivering at what could have been, Natalie swiftly dropped the topic.

Achieving everything we wanted, and then some, Mara decided it was high time they returned to their schedule of going for lunch, "Now that everything's been dealt with, should we continue where we left off Natalie? Did I already ask what type of food you preferred?"

Not wanting to leave the worms unattended, even when they were unconscious, Natalie responded, "You did ask, but I wasn't able to reply before we were interrupted by the thieves. We can't go just yet though Mara, we should make sure these 4 get into police custody." 

Without giving a verbal response, I could feel what my host envisioned as an alternative to waiting around.

Walking up to 4 worms on the ground, Mara lifted her arms up in their direction and spread her fingers apart. I spread my form down her arms from her jacket and created long, whip-like, blades from the tips of each finger, minus her thumbs.

With the 4 Urumi blades per hand, Mara flicked her wrists and flexed her fingers like a conductor weaving a symphony through their orchestra. With perfect control of my form, alongside Mara's clear intentions, each twist and turn resulted in tendons being severed. Needless to say, the butchery didn't take long considering there were only 16 extremities and 8 blades. She could have extended the performance by starting with hands/feet then moving to elbows/knees before reaching a crescendo at the shoulders/pelvis. But, frankly, Mara was bored of the unmoving vegetables and just wanted to get some food.

Somehow the chunks of dirt lying around had made her even hungrier.

As such, she settled on just severing the main leg and elbow tendons. The Achilles and Patellar tendons were swiftly dissected, preventing the vegetables from moving. Whilst the Biceps and Triceps were severed in their arms thoroughly ensuring that the duo didn't need to hang around as the criminals would be incapable of moving even if they tried. 

Such actions were most likely unnecessary however, as the 4 unconscious bodies didn't make so much as a peep when they were slashed. Evidently, they would be out for a while regardless of what Mara did.

Pulling all the tendrils back and merging into Mara's clothing, my host turned to the assistant, "C'mon Natalie let's go already; I'm starving! I'm revoking you of your choosing privileges as well, I want Mexican food and I saw a good place on the tour map thing nearby!"

Natalie, now thoroughly acclimatised to Mara's impulsiveness, was unsurprised with what she had done. She sighed before deciding to give up and go along with it, "Haah, fine let's go. Show me the map so I know where I'm going."