Mission

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23rd February 2006, New York City

(Wanda Maximoff POV)

She wailed in pain. The emotions were simply too much and her magic responded, creating a giant pulse of magic that obliterated everything around her. Red Wanda wasn't there anymore. There was no use for her anymore. They were one and the same.

Wanda was tired, but for the first time in her life, she felt free.

The last thing she saw was her newest mother figure catching her before she fell into the ground, "You did well, Wanda. I am proud of you."

Wanda passed out smiling at that comment.

When she woke up, Wanda felt like her muscles were made of lead. She had never been so sore in her life. Even after exhausting herself while training her magic, she hadn't been this tired. She opened her eyes to find herself looking at her room's ceiling. She sighed in relief; she was home.

Wanda started to slowly remember what happened before she fell asleep. It was some kind of test in the mirror dimension. She was stripped bare from all lies, even the ones she told herself, even the lies she forgot. She remembered her mother, what truly happened, what she did to her. She remembered her father and brother, what she tried to do to them.

Tears poured from her eyes when she remembered what happened. A part of her wishes that she never knew the truth. But that part was quickly silenced with how free she feels. It was like a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders. The world was clearer and she herself felt better, outside of the soars, of course.

Truth be told, Wanda didn't want to get out of bed, overwhelmed at the emotions that were repressed by her own powers. She didn't think that it was possible, manipulating reality at such a scale when she was that young, affecting even herself.

Suddenly, the door opened. Wanda looked at the intruder and relaxed at the sight of her not so secret mother figure. The green eyed woman had her usual kind smile on her face but still looked a bit worried at Wanda. "How are you feeling? I know it couldn't have been pretty, removing the blocks that quickly."

Wanda smiled at her. She noticed that the act was a lot easier than it was previously. "I feel overwhelmed but a bit lighter. What the hell did you do? What was that?"

The older woman sighed deeply, "For months I had been training you. And to tell you the truth, you didn't make as much progress as I though you would. The telekinesis was all well and good, but the more subtle reality magic like illusions, transmutation or actual reality manipulation were so far out of reach that I was worried. I knew you were more than intelligent, talented and powerful to learn them so the problem was internal. I looked at any kind of magical bindings and found nothing. The only thing left was your mind. I used my telepathy on you and found a mess. I wasn't even trying to see any memories or thoughts; it was a deep scan of a mind's health."

"And what did you find?"

"Your mind was fractured. There were blocks everywhere, whenever you used your powers properly, you suppressed it. I thought that they might be malicious, bindings added by a telepath serving your father so I followed the trails of memories. I found them leading to two instances. One moderately powerful foreign mental block from a telepath called Mastermind who serves your father. It removed any memory of the large scale reality manipulation you did when you lived with your father and brother. And it suppressed your control and a small part of your powers so that you wouldn't escape the Vault.

The only other block was an extremely powerful one you created as a child when you first manifested your magic and accidentally killed your parents."

Wanda winced at this, "How could I make a mental block on myself?"

"You used your own powers. Your reality manipulation. When you manifested your magic, you were in distress, and it awakened explosively. It was a large surge of power and it stayed with you. You refused the truth of what happened so you created a lie. You used the surge of power to create a permanent change in reality on a small scale. You refused the fact that you were responsible for your parent's death and while you instinctively knew that you couldn't bring your parents back to life using your abilities, you chose the next best thing.

You made it as if someone else was responsible. But you didn't like the guilt to you changed your own mind to the reality you chose. But emotions are not easily transformed. Your immense guilt turned into an equally immense hatred at the one you blamed for the accident. But that's not the worst thing, in your reality you didn't have any powers, so you used your abilities to removed your own abilities. But that's impossible. So, your magic reacted by turning you into a living paradox, a true embodiment of chaos."

Wanda tilted her head curiously, "I don't follow?"

"A spell cannot alter the magic powering it. It's one of the main laws of magic. It's a paradox of cause and effect. The magic powers the spell that affects the magic that will in turn affect the spell itself and so on. Usually, either the spell fails, of the caster dies if the spell is modified not to fail. But no one tried to do it with Chaos magic before. Instead of you dying, it locked your magic under another persona that embodies everything you repressed. The so called Red Wanda was now in charge of your magic while you were living blissfully unaware. Truth be told, it's good that you were able to do it."

Wanda felt anger rise within her, "Why!" she bit out.

"Because the alternative was you hating your own magic, rejecting it, turning you into an Obscurial. An Obscurial is a young wizard or witch who had developed a dark but immensly powerful parasitical magical force that is developed when they are forced to repress their talent through physical or psychological abuse. Whenever they would experience a powerful emotion, they would lose control to the parasite who would destroy everything around them. They generally do not survive past their childhood, their own magic killing them. Although there is only one who survived past his teens, but it's considered a one in a million chance of happening. Either way, an Obscurial with an affinity for reality manipulation, and with your magical strength no less, will have caused an amount of damage and casualties on a scale that has never been seen before, until their magic killed themselves that is. And I'm not exaggerating here. You have no idea the bullet you dodged here, Wanda."

The teenager froze in fear at what could have happened. She was somewhat glad that she repressed everything. The thought of turning into a monster was frightening. Even more so, the possibility of her accidentally killing her brother when she went berserk. But the most surprising thing was her fear of death. For the first time in her life, Wanda Maximoff was dreading the possibility of dying. She thought that she had accepted it when she was in the Vault. Had her time with Jasmine change her so much?

"What about Magneto's block?" The teenager asked the older woman. She doesn't deign to call him father anymore, he doesn't deserve the title, "why did it affect me so much?"

"Well, since you were so lonely in your house with an absentee father and a brother who started to pull away, you subconsciously wanted to have a family and Red Wanda listened. She used your magic to create a loving copy of your father, it locked your brother in his own mind, turning him into the idea brother with you none the wiser. As far as you're concerned, it was always like this. But when Magneto came back, he tried to stop you and Red Wanda lashed out, almost brainwashing him. Magneto was always protective of his own mind; it's why he wears that ridiculous helmet after all. And you almost took control of him. He was scared, so he chose to erase your memory and try to bind your powers as much as possible, then locked you away and threw away the key. He might have loved you, I have no idea, but I do know for a fact that his highest priority is his dream of mutant superiority. Your powers could grant him that easily but you scared the crap out of him when you almost brainwashed him. And that fear overruled whatever love he held for you."

Wanda stood silent at Jasmine's explanation. She didn't know how to process this, "You knew. Did you know, all this time?"

Her teacher nodded, "Yes, I knew. It's why I wanted you to focus on meditation, trying to find the blocks on your own and deal with them yourself. But since you made no progress in that, I chose the brute force method of just removing the blocks and let you deal with it in the mirror dimension, a place where you can destroy anything around you without actually causing any kind of harm to anyone."

Wanda didn't respond to her teacher's words. Jasmine continued, "You know what? I once told you that we're a lot alike. I wasn't kidding. Do you want to know?"

Curious, Wanda nodded; her teacher was so secretive sometime so it was rare for her to share something personal about herself.

Jasmine continued, "I was born with a twin, like you. His name was Nathan. One day, a very terrible wizard came and tried to kill us. But our magic protected us so the wizard's spell reflected back at him. It was all well and good but the wizard had many followers that wanted to avenge their master, against my brother who was given credit for killing him. It was so stressful that our mother ended up getting a mental breakdown.

In desperation, our father found a very old spell based of the protection of family. But it was only for three individuals, so he had to choose. He chose to keep the son who was being targeted, a logical choice I'll admit, but they abandoned me to my mother's sister, a spiteful woman with a deep hatred of magic. I was treated like a slave, starved a beaten just for the sake of it, left for dead when I was a child. But I persevered, I learnt to live by myself, I taught myself magic to protect myself from the world. I lived off scraps like you did. The big difference is that you know that your parents loved you. I wasn't given the courtesy. As I said, Wanda, we're a lot alike."

Wanda stayed silent; her anger having been calmed down by her teacher's words. Their stories were so similar; both abandoned by their parents, both learnt the cruelty of the world, both estranged form their twin, both learnt to live off scraps and defending themselves from the cruelty of the world, both with a very powerful magic. She felt closer to her mother figure. The subconscious feeling of betrayal turned into a mutual understanding. Wanda wasn't alone anymore.

Wanda questioned, "Was there any other way?"

She had to ask, to confirm that her suffering in the mirror dimension was necessary.

"No," Jasmine shook her head, "you needed to deal with this yourself. I couldn't do it for you. But look at the light side, you now can properly learn how to use your magic. Your magic is an expression of your very self. You weren't whole before. But now, the sky's the limit when it comes to your potential, after all."

Wanda's face lit up at the prospect of making more progress with her magic.

"What do we get to do? Is it transmutation? I always wondered if I could be as good as you in it?"

Jasmine chuckled, "Hold your horses, kiddo. Let's first see what you can do? I have the ideal test in mind."

"What is it?"

"One of your old cellmates has escaped the Vault and is heading to the Xavier Institute. I was going to handle it myself, but it's a good opportunity to see what you can do. Don't worry, I'll be nearby in case something happens."

Wanda was curious; this must be some opponent if Jasmine was going to handle it herself. She doesn't particularly care about Xavier's little mutant school so she's interested in the attacker, "Who?"

Her teacher smiled in approval, "His name is Cain Marko, but I believe that you better know him as The Juggernaut."