Mutants

My world was pain. Strucker walked over to me as I lay in my back, bent in agony. The Hydra leader looked confused. "Now… what could be causing this?"

"-AHHHHHHHH!"

God. I wish I could speak. I could feel it. This pain. It wasn't just familiar. I'd felt it at the corner of my mind for weeks. No. Months. Always showing up at the worst times. But now it was building. The Ethereal part of me knew what this was. Not just a psychic attack, but one that was built on a mental block that had been put on my mind long ago. Like building a ramp to allow a tank to smash its way into a building.

I had to fight it. I had to…

"RAAAAGH!" I spun to my knees and looked out at the city. I could see it in the distance. A massive, ten-mile gash in the sky and sea, a hole in the reality I'd made. Beyond that, a kaleidoscope spun. I could feel it there. Someone pressing against my mind. Something so powerful. It wasn't as strong as the Mind Stone. But it was stronger than Strucker, by a wide margin.

I reached out to the horizon. Strucker watched, curiosity in his eyes, as a storm of violet energy smashed into the ground around me. I focused my mind past the pain. I had to remember one thing. That horizon. The city. They were mine. Parts of my mind. This presence was trying to break me with a block they'd placed. So I needed to find it. The root of it.

The Avengers Tower began to shatter. Strucker and I stood on separate platforms of telekinetic power, the multi-story building turning to ash. My room shone out to me, the image of Jen, Thor, Nat, and I talking peacefully shattering apart. Symbols, right? If the Avengers Tower was a place I thought of as home in my mind, the center of my universe, then it was the best place to find the 'roots' of my psyche.

And when the Avengers Tower broke down, at the very bottom, where Tony had once shown me the power of an Arc Reactor flowing into the building, I could see it.

A cancerous growth. That's what it reminded me of. A giant glowing set of ugly crystals, pulsing along veins of red flesh. It might have been beautiful once. Just a simple thing. But repeated attacks on my mind had made it grow, fed the cancer until it had become a horrific mass of stone and flesh.

I reached for that cancer. And I burned it. The heat wasn't real, but the fire I made felt like a cleansing one. The smell of the smoke was the same as when I'd been young.

I'd been with my father, in a campground a million miles away. We'd been the only ones awake, sat side by side as we watched an ocean of stars above us, the rest of our family sleeping peacefully in tents nearby. He'd smiled at me, his salt and pepper beard shifting. The fire smelled good, a pine and cedar smell. That fire scorched the cancer away.

New York City turned to ash and dust in turn as I released the construct. I felt like a nail was slowly being pulled from my mind, leaving an empty hole that began to fill with blood. Painful. But somehow, a release.

Strucker and I watched the city fade away. And soon, another construct came to life. He looked around curiously.

"So. What memory is this?" he asked.

We stood in a white room, a study of some sort. The floors were smooth marble. The piano was painted with some sort of oil that gave it the same pearl sheen as the walls. There was a polar bear rug on the floor. Outside, snow fell behind smooth paned glass.

"It's not his," a female voice said.

Strucker and I faced the direction it came from. She was leaning back against a desk. Ice-blue eyes gazed upon us, snapping between us. Sapphire painted lips smiled lazily. She was wearing a white corset that held up her breasts for display, much the same way her leather pants were tight enough to show the form of her legs, all the way to her high-heeled boots. A white-furred hood lay across her shoulder, white-blonde hair laying across it.

"Emma Frost."

She didn't seem surprised I knew. She only smiled. "Well. Seems you've fought through that little mental block of yours."

"...Mutants," I said softly. "You created a block on my mind. Maybe on dozens of people's minds. To remove all memory of them."

"In truth, I wanted to be subtle about it at first," she said without a hint of shame. "But you kept remembering things. Kept trying to fight it off."

"Does that include me?" Strucker asked. He sounded haunted. Worried.

"Oh no, you pathetic little man," she said with a laugh. "You never fought it a day of your life. In some ways, it's your fault," her calm faded. The chill in her eyes became a burning cold, dry ice against the skin as she stepped forward. "Hydra. SHIELD was surprised to know you survived.WEwere not. We knew you were kidnapping us,killing us!"

She calmed herself, sighing. "And now, you two know the truth. I was going to try and wipe your mind. Turn you into a blank state, drooling in a hospital bed somewhere," she said as casually as though she was talking about an errant stain that had discolored a favorite shirt.

"Especially before any of the others could intrude," the snow outside briefly parted. Beyond, Strucker and I could see them. Shadows in the snow. Other telepaths gazing upon us. Held at bay only by the strength of our minds. It was unnerving, seeing some of the strongest minds on Earth as shadows beyond a snowstorm…

"But this form of yours is stronger than I would have believed. I suppose, now, that I'll have to face you more openly."

The smugness in her voice. That confidence. She walked up to me, placing a finger on my alien chin, looking into my four eyes.

I stared at her. Emma Frost. Telepath. Super-villainess… Absolute bitch.

"When this war is over. I'm going to find you, Frost. And you'll learn to fear me."

She laughed, shaking her head. "I doubt that."

"That's good," I raised my hands. My two right ones. The Ethereal power within me flexed, then pushed outwards. Emma had a moment of surprise as her immense psychic presence pressed against mine. But I'd struck her off balance. The room around us blew apart into waves of snow and ice. She seemed ready to fight it, but relaxed after a moment. We met eyes as her boots began to change to flakes of frost, fading in the wind.

"See you after this," I said softly.

Her pale lips quirked, and something a bit warm entered her eyes. "If it's any consolation… I hope you kill him."

Emma Frost gave Strucker a final hateful gaze. Then she faded into the storm.