ic Feel It In My Bones

[Avenger Assembled]

"I have spent an eternity in this place!" the figure howled, the black and white hologram clearly recognizable as a powerfully-built, African-featured man in European-style dress. "With only the fractured pieces of my soul for company." The shimmering form moved closer, advancing in whipcord flashes of light that moved from one robot to another, until it was as close as possible to Terrifica, and seemed to grow more rational from the transition. "I don't know you. Are you South African?" he hazarded. "One of those miners the Boers treat as bad as the blacks?" He looked around wildly. "I have no quarrel with you...but I must get out of this place. I must find those who did this to me, and I must have my vengeance for the unceasing decades of bodiless torment!" 

[Electra]

"The people who hurt you are long gone, Joseph," Gina told him soothingly. "They left years ago, they can't get at you anymore, even if any of them are still alive. Nobody is going to hurt you, nobody wants to trap you anymore. I'm very good with computers, and I have colleagues who are also very good at any number of amazing things. We'll find a way to help you. I promise, we won't leave you trapped here any longer." Gina generally had no trouble with small enclosed spaces, rather the opposite really, but the idea of living in this dark and tangled prison, cut off from the world, was enough to trigger claustrophobia in a shudder down her imaginary spine. "Can you affect the architecture in here, Joseph?" she asked him. "Can you let me in?" 

[EternalPhoenix]

An amused smirk escaped onto Terrifica’s lips. “No. I am neither South African nor miner. I am American and a professional superhero.” Interesting. He appears to have no real concept of just how much time has passed. She continued, speaking as mildly as possible. “Has anyone ever told you that taking vengeance was actually a bad thing? I understand that you’re angry. I would be angry too, in your place. That said, there is a line that mustn’t be crossed. If you want justice for what was done to you, I will do everything I can to help you achieve that goal. However, if you insist on vengeance-on blood-then I’m afraid I can’t help you at all. In fact, I would be obligated to stop you. It’s a superhero thing, unfortunately.” She plucked an imaginary piece of lint from her longcoat. “Ah, and another thing. It’s been almost 70 years. Are you sure any of the people who did this to you are still alive?”

[Avenger Assembled]

"But the hurting has gone on," said Joseph, his voice burning with fierce protest. "I have felt it, again and again and again, in the streets and world above. Surely you must have felt it too," he added, his all-too-human voice ringing through the ancient architecture of the primitive computer. "The millions dead! This nation in flames, again and again and again! I broke at the feel of it, and hid here deep below. They must still be there. Who else could have done these horrors?! Surely you must have felt them too," he demanded of her. "Only the dead have spoken to me in this place!" Gradually, a face then a body, seemed to form as if out of the cobwebs themselves- not so much inside the system as super-imposed on it, a handsome man of African features, his form washed out of color like an old black and white photograph. "What manner of being _are_ you?" it demanded of her. As he did so, Gina realized the last time she'd met a being with energy patterns like this - a being that had come to her office to ask after the fate of Sharl Tulink.

- 

"The Liberty League. Ah, yes. They fought Nazis and Communists in the great war, leaving us to writhe beneath the Belgian boot," sneered Joseph. "My vengeance is not so great. For the bullet in my brain, for the nation above left to burn, I shall demand no more than an eye for an eye." The robots faced Terrifica, their cold metal faces suddenly looking far more unfriendly - not that they'd looked very friendly in the first place. "If they are dead, then I will extract my vengeance from their nation - and the blood soaked in the soil above will be repaid!" 

[EternalPhoenix]

Terrifica sighed lightly. “So that’s your plan, then? Escape this place and attack people who have no idea who you are? Who, even if you told them who you were, wouldn’t understand why you were killing them? The only thing they will understand is that they’re afraid and dying.” Her voice hardened. “Tell me, how exactly does this make you any better than the ones that did this to you? How does taking bloody revenge on people innocent of any direct crime against you not make you a monster? How, pray tell, if you have decided to be a monster, can you be anything other than what they made you?” She paused for just a moment to deliver the last verbal blow, softening her voice again. “Are you the monster they tried to make you into? Or are you still a decent man, despite all the changes forced on you?”

[Electra]

Gina did a double-take as she studied the patterns of energy unfolding in the computer. This wasn't electrical energy at all, she realized, it was the sort of necrotic psychic energy present in entities like Ghost Girl and Dead Head. This Joseph was neither AI nor programmed relic, he was some kind of literal ghost in the machine. "I'm a programmer," she told him carefully, "and a technopath. I have the power to enter computers with my mind and interact with them directly. My colleague Terrifica and I were called in to help figure out why your computer system has been behaving so strangely. Until we got here and dug into the records, we didn't know about you, or understand what had been done to you. Do you know what's keeping you trapped in here? Why can't you leave?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"I don't know what most of those words mean," admitted the ghost, "but I know that you come as a friend...and there have been precious few of those as it is. I cannot leave this place because of what lies outside it - and I cannot sleep because of HIM!" Joseph declared, and suddenly Miss Americana looked up to see (via the now-active link on the Archetech laptop) the other Joseph menacing Terrifica; the cold mechanical rage to the all-too-human spectre with whom she was bandying words. 

"Foolish woman," the projection was now sneering, "I am not a man! I am the machine they built from my corpse, a monster of steel and dead flesh, far more powerful than either could have been on their own! And when I rise to the surface, the monster they created will DESTROY them!" Suddenly, Terrifica became aware of a giant mechanical form behind her as arms as thick as a man's waist closed around her! 

[EternalPhoenix]

Oh, joy. A megalomaniacal program with killer robots. My day is complete. Now would be an excellent time for you to do something, Miss Americana. Terrifica was held fast in the arms, and more than a little irritated with this friggin’ thing. She might be able to get free, but she wanted to give this self proclaimed monster one last chance to-“Don’t be an idiot.” Her tone was sharp and vicious, a thing that felt more like a sword on the ears than sound. Yet…there a note of compassion remained, if one cared to listen more carefully. In short, it was Terrifica at her most Terrifica.

 

“One’s humanity isn’t something that can be casually thrown away. You are a man. You were murdered and then enslaved, in this, of all continents. You rebelled against those twin injustices, and they locked you away in this hellhole. They did their best to make you the monster you claim to be. But you still have the choice. You can still be better than them. You can defy them one last time. So I am asking you, one last time. Do not do this.” Left unsaid was Miss Americana’s presence, and the inevitably destructive result of a super battle with this person and his minions. Terrifica could tolerate many things, but she could not and would not stomach anyone or anything thinking her a coward or a weakling.

[Electra]

"That's definitely not good," Gina agreed with a little gulp, looking out at the struggle. "Let me see if I can get hold of him, try and calm things down a little. You're definitely not a computer program, but I suspect he is, and I'm real good with computer programs." Withdrawing most of her attention from her Cyberknife avatar, she regrouped and sent herself through the laptop's wifi connection and her own power, reaching out for the malignant program in its robotic shell. When she found it, she began to wrap herself around it, tendril by tendril, just as it was wrapped around Terrifica, and insinuated herself inside it, murmuring, "go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep" as she attempted to shut down the program from the inside.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I grow weary of your taunts, foolish woman! Perhaps I will simply crush your head and then-argh!" Joseph met Terrifica's challenge by pressing his hands to his temple and declaring suddenly, "What? No! Impossible! Someone...inside my wires...inside my magnificent brain! Noooo!" The robots all around her collapsed as well, clutching their heads in seeming sympathy with their master. Until at last all was quiet inside the darkened basement; the machines all around her as still and silent as the very grave. 

It was quite a struggle between Gina's vast brain and the surprising resilience of the old wetware program that thought it was the late Joseph Otetshima - but gradually she was able to throw the switches mentally that deactivated the program, leaving it unconscious but not deactivated inside the vacuum tube and transistor-wrapped shell deep in the complex. "He is quiet now," said the ghost who was her companion. "For the first time in..." She felt that spectral intelligence studying her. "If your friend had not engaged him, he might have tunneled his way straight to the surface and killed innocents above. Was she right? Is there another chance?" He cast around, and she realized he couldn't quite perceive her as things stood. 

"ARE YOU THERE?" 

The ghostly voice shouted both in the darkened basement and in the computer. 

[EternalPhoenix]

Well. That takes care of that. A bit late, but better than not at all. Terrifica straightened out her longcoat, it having been a touch wrinkled by her temporary restraining. The abrupt shout startled her with its sudden loudness. Please, don’t let have been inept. It would be a black mark on geniuses everywhere, especially the super ones. “Where on earth would I have gone so quickly? And why would I leave, when there is a troubled young mind in need of help? I see you have…spoken…with my colleague. Has she changed your mind about vengeance? Or have my words still fallen on deaf ears?”

Edited July 5, 2015 by EternalPhoenix