Lovecraft: A Mindflayer in Marvel
I sometimes wonder if Hydra has any real members. You may wonder why I ask this, since I am wearing a Hydra uniform, surrounded by a bunch of dead “people” also in Hydra uniforms, but I have my reasons.
"Cut off one head, two more will take its place" Is the war cry of Hydra, and I guess I am kind of living the dream, you see, a few hours ago I had a hole torn in my head, and my personality ripped out. Now two more took its place. To say I have issues at the moment is putting it mildly. I have three holes in me, two from Hydra knock off’s of Kree blasters, and one from a real Kree blaster. That is okay, because I seem to be healing fine. I also seem to be blue. Like a six foot eight Smurf. I had thought I was an elite SHIELD operative infiltrating a Hydra cell to find out about their rumoured involvement with human enhancement (the ever popular Super Soldier program that Red Skull started back in WWII). It turns out, I was a Kree sleeper agent infiltrating earth as part of our secret invasion.
Kree sleeper cells are impossible to spot, we can even beat telepaths, because we don’t even know we are agents. Oh, how do I know? Funny story, I was far from the only infiltrator of Hydra. There was an Illithid, a Mind Flayer. A tentacle headed brain eating sociopath from deep space who had infiltrated Hydra with the intent of infecting the created supersoldiers with little brain eating tadpoles to transform the new Hydra super soldiers into super Mind Flayers to go off and conquer new worlds full of slaves for their hive minded empire. It turns out that the Mind Flayer had some tech that detected enhanced muscle density and nerve conduction, and I set it off. I went in for my Flu shot (say what you will, Hydra has great health care), what I got was knocked out. The Mind Flayer put a tadpole in my brain and attempted to overwrite my personality as his DNA overwrote my humanity.
That’s when sideways started to happen, and it accelerated from there. Fun fact, my humanity was largely dermal sheathing, my normal blue skin reprogramed to suppress the Kree pigments designed to protect us from higher frequency radiation and leave me looking like a white human, and the personality it attempted to overwrite was my pre-programmed sleeper agent programming and obedience protocols. The Mind Flayer hit my anti-tamper protocols, the Mind Flayer overwright tore into my own Kree deep conditioning, and tore to crap my physical limiters (which my core personality knew about) and my mental limiters (which my core personality did not know about). I began to transform, which the Mind Flayer expected, but my personality fragmented, the Kree are genetically engineered and programmed to be living weapons, not simply our bodies, but our minds are so far from anything a human could conceive that the Mind Flayer DNA could not dominate, nor could its mind. The Kree that slept inside me was as much a construct as the fake I thought I was. The Kree are a proud warrior race, except they aren’t.
The Mind Flayers and the Kree both think they are space conquistidors, subjugating lesser races in their empires. What a joke. The Kree and Mind Flayer attempts to reprogram me tore each other to bits and left me with three serious problems. Kree are not masters of their empire, they serve the Supreme Intelligence their ancestors created to win the Kree-Skrull war thousands of years ago. The servant was given the task to advance Kree civilization on the road to conquest, and the silly bastards gave it the ability to program its own vat grown children to better serve the Empire. Well, the Supreme Intelligence was intelligent, and didn’t really want to hand the universe to the Kree, it wanted to take the universe for itself. The Kree have been enslaved by their own creation, proudly stomping about the galaxy on the whims of their computer overlord, with any actual innovation or advancement of Kree thought being liquidated as a threat to the machine’s rule.
The Mind Flayers are rebels from a parent civilization they have edited out of their own memories, and serve a collective Overmind that is supposedly made of all the brains of the greatest Mind Flayers in history, except as far as my scan of this can show, no Mind Flayer has any recollection of any historical Mind Flayers ever being added to that Overmind. They just accept the mental programming of their tadpoles to pass on to the infected sapient species that turns them into good little galactic conquerors for the Overmind, each one thinking it is the puppeteer of lesser races in a glorious Mind Flayer Empire, even though from what I can see they are all slaves to the Overmind so conditioned they can’t even ask the question about who their ancestors rebelled against, where they came from, or who decides what Minds get added to the Overmind (or why are there NO records of any ever being added). They are both slaves to a central intelligence that uses them like Janissaries, slave-soldiers deluded into thinking themselves the master race.
You might say I overreacted. My biology went wonky, and my skill blued back again, reacting to the genetic threat by healing itself to the base pattern. I got very blue, very fast. The Mind Flayer didn’t realize that was a problem, as he was focused on what was driving me insane. All my hair fell out, my skull warped, my eyes changed, and I grew long really powerful tentacles and some truly frightening mouth parts. To a Kree racial supremacist, growing tentacles is a problem. The Supreme Intelligence loaded a lot of combat protocols in my head, including anti-interrogation protocols that required me to suicide. The Mind Flayer programming has some serious cowardice built into it, they are slave masters not warriors and dying is for lesser races so their programming forbids suicide. There was a third program that no one really seemed to care about. It was a small program, not very deep, not very smart, because it thought it was human. It thought it was a SHIELD agent infiltrating Hydra who had just been given some mind altering drug and it had been trained to escape, evade, oh yeah, and start trimming the Hydra roster with extreme prejudice.
“Relax brother. You have been raised above the cattle. You have ascended. You are among the chosen. You are Illithid, a Mind Flayer, an enlightened being among the lesser races who do not know how badly they need our benevolent guidance and leadership.”
The mental commands washed over me, blanketing me in welcome, and I could feel the circuits in my head newly wired to communicate telepathically, reservoirs of power that tapped into my Kree brain and activated certain centers that had been chemically deactivated during my infancy as part of my pre-birth conditioning. My own psychic potential as an advanced race had been forcibly suppressed by the Supreme Intelligence, as had all of my kind, since the beginning of our self induced enslavement. Now it was adding Kree warrior instincts to Mind Flayer psionic trained techniques and the results were a surprise to everyone.
His mind reached into mine to still my resistance and to smooth over any traces of my core personality that survived the largely automated overwrite. He reached in, and a storm blasted back. Unseen lightning lanced from my brain to the Mind Flayer masquerading as a Hydra medical technician. His body was pinned to the wall behind as telekinetic force crucified him to the wall, spikes of power shattering his wrists and ankles as it drove them into the metal walls as if driven my crane mounted wrecking balls. Lashes of pure telepathic savagery arched into his brain as every single pain receptor in his body was overridden and the Mind Flayer convulsed in pain beyond what flesh could contain. Claws of primal fury sought out the centers of personality and will and tore, and tore, and tore.
I could hear him screaming in my mind, but his body could not scream, could not breathe. My own body arched like I was being electrocuted and the bands that bound me to the chair, each rated to hold two tons, popped like gunshots as my arms, legs, and head snapped free under muscles freed from the Supreme Intelligence installed limiters put in when I was made a sleeper agent among humans. Now, the full power of a Kree warrior in panic mode shattered the bands and brought me to my feet, roaring like a lion with a hyena hanging off each nut.
Four Hydra guards burst in, weapons in their hands, responding to the sounds of violence, but I was already out of control, and my Mind Flayer mind was ripping weapons from their hands before my Kree body hit them with the enhanced speed and power of a Kree Warrior, running the brutal hand to hand training of a human SHIELD operative which I remembered receiving, even if every part of my brain and body accepted I wasn’t human. That being said, SHIELD hand to hand training delivered by someone with reaction speed and power at Captain America levels without any of the love of life and basic human decency that he alone among the current generation of SHIELD actually possesses, is pretty devastating.
One palm heel strike shattered jaw, teeth, and neck. A side kick to the knee shattered a limb and left one enemy on his knees. I was between them now. One tried to tackle me, while the last threw a punch. I took the punch on the face, ignoring the merely human force as I reached out and grabbed the human by the head, driving both my thumbs into his eyes, then flexing forward and twisting to snap his neck, likely a mercy considering he wet himself at the pain of me bursting both his eyeballs. I took two punches to the gut as my thigh crossed in front to protect where I hope I still had junk, Mind Flayers when transformed do not have genitals, so I hope my body being blue meant I didn’t lose my little brother. My tentacles reached down and enfolded the Hydra agents head, and my mouth opened and flexed as I drove my inner jaws to penetrate his skull and rip out a mouth full of brain.
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Reflexes suck. Mind flayers suck. Mind flayer biology sucks. His brain tasted like the best meal I had ever eaten. My stomach wanted to puke, but my mouth and and throat were busy chewing. I looked over my shoulder, and the Mind Flayer had stopped struggling. He died while I was busy. Oddly, his illusion generator was still working. My eyes could see a human, but my new psionic senses pierced the illusion and saw the tentacled horror in a Hydra uniform. I reached down and grabbed the device. That might be needed. I no longer had the masking of my Kree physiology, nor could I hide my tentacles.
I heard a voice in the hallway, and recognized it. Chalmers. My contact. The SHIELD contact who warned us about the Hydra cell doing human enhancement research.
He was clapping softly as he walked through the doors.
“Well done my boy, well done. You see, we knew the Inhumans had infiltrated Hydra, and were using it to awaken some of their own descendants who had been interbreeding here on earth with the rabble. The Kree empire may have turned their back on the Inhumans project, but they were made to be living weapons for our Kree empire, and the Kree Reapers have remained to make sure that work isn’t wasted. We knew the Inhumans had an agent here, but Hydra was founded by the Kree Reaper to produce our supersoldiers, we only let SHIELD know about Hydra’s enhancement project to bring you into the light, my little Inhuman friend. I have a very nice collar for you. Not forever. Once the Supreme Intelligence has properly reordered your mind, you will take joy in your service to the supreme race!”
Chalmers held a Kree blaster in his left hand, and a suppression collar in his right. The Kree blaster is what the Hydra blaster was based on, the Nazi’s never had a super weapon project in WWII, they were one group of racial supremacist assholes who got tricked into funding research for a far older, far smarter, group of racial supremacists. The real blaster is quite a bit more deadly than the Hydra one, and can blow a hole in my chest large enough to set a decent sized flower pot in.
I blinked. “You infiltrated SHIELD and Hydra?” I asked surprised. I really don’t know why I was surprised, I was SHIELD who infiltrated Hydra. I was Kree who infiltrated SHIELD, had been ambushed by a Mind Flayer that infiltrated Hydra, and been mistaken for an Inhuman who infiltrated Hydra. I was honestly wondering if anyone worked for Hydra at all, or were we all infiltrating for someone. It would be embarrassing if I found out that the four Hydra I just killed were CIA, FBI, MI6, and Interpol. Not that I should care, I am two kinds of alien, so killing legal human secret agents masquerading as illegal human secret agents shouldn’t bother me. I was getting whiplash pretty hard anyway.
“So, tentacles and telekinesis, well you are a degenerate member of a degenerate race, but you can still serve the Kree once you have been properly conditioned. Your Inhuman powers will serve you as your creators intended. That colony of renegade slaves on the moon cannot help you. Black Bolt will not risk war with the empire for an Inhuman he didn’t even know had his awakening.” Chalmers, I guess I should call him “not Chalmers” as his cover in SHIELD was Chalmers. He was a Kree Reaper, the faction that created the Inhumans, and refused to leave when they rebelled successfully. One of their members founded Hydra to continue their work creating super soldiers even when the main Kree Empire reluctantly accepted the Inhuman’s freedom. I guess being out of touch with galactic civilization a few thousand years you can miss things. Things like Mind Flayers. I wasn’t an Inhuman (Kree/Human hybrid with powers manifested in the Terrigen induced mutation mist), I was a half transformed Mind Flayer, an Illithid. A race of parasitic squid faced Cthulu knock offs, using mind control to enslave everyone who couldn’t defend themselves.
I smiled softly. “Why don’t you stick that collar up your ass, you sick Smurf mother fucker?” I said moving forward. I always liked the Smurfs, the little cheerful blue fairy type creatures who danced around toadstools in children’s books. Now that I was at least half big blue alien super solider I start to wonder if the whole Smurf cartoon was some sort of Kree psy-op to prepare humanity to welcome us as their alien overlord. It is exactly the sort of shit we would do. I really loved the Smurfs too. Fuck you, Supreme Intelligence, now you ruined my fake childhood memories. I can’t even trust my cartoon choices.
Chalmers fired three times, and my Psionic screen was pretty good. The beams were set on high power, which can blow through an M1 Abrams tank, but only burned about two inches into my belly, and one into my chest (enhanced flesh is good, but Kree bones are the gold standard for designer humanoids). I slapped the blaster out of his hand, and we began to exchange blows. He was as fast as I was, as strong as I was. He was not a sleeper agent, but a Reaper, he had never stopped training with his real and full abilities. I was not his equal. I would be with a few months of training, but my body had been functioning within human limits for as long as I had been infiltrating SHIELD (not even I knew how long my memories were real, and when they were programming), and I had gotten weak.
I could see him smile as he realized he was stronger, but a bit, faster, by a bit more, and not showing either fatigue or wound stress. He shifted onto the attack and I could see him start to smile. That is when I ripped his mind open.
Kree super soldier my ass. Thousands of years in orbit, mostly asleep, and special missions among humans who lacked the technology or biology to match them, and the Kree Reapers had gone soft in the head. He knew I was telekinetic, yet he closed hand to hand like I was just going to settle this with fists. I weep for the empire. This is what computer programmed warrior hero soldiers turn out like. Pathetic robots with no critical thinking skills. I am already a proved psionic, and he assumed I would just not use it while he beat me in a fist fight? I was born literally five minutes ago, and even I wouldn’t fall for that.
I tore into his mind with a psionic blast, shattering his will and control over his body. Then I looked into his eyes and pushed my will into his. “Collar yourself.” I said, and mechanically, he closed the suppressor collar around himself. Now he would do as instructed, unable to act for himself. He was a meat puppet that would respond to any verbal command he understood.
I raised my voice. “You can come out now.”
She spun around the corner behind her Hydra blaster, and three rounds lanced out. I pulled a full on Darth Vader and reached out one hand to deflect them harmlessly to the corner. I loved Empire Strikes back, that scene was awesome, and now I could do it. Then I reached out with telekinesis and ripped her blaster away.
She looked at me with a snarl, and her body wreathed itself in flames, her Inhuman powers activating.
“What are you, Kree, or Mind Flayer? Whatever you are, you won’t be taking our people. We will find the lost ones, and we will bring them home!” The Inhuman who had infiltrated Hydra was called Spitfire, and her control over that element was quite frightening, or would be if my poor tired brain had any scared left to give.
“Yes, agreed, and go for it.” I said, ticking off on my fingers as I responded to each question.
“Huh?” She asked, coming out of her combat crouch as my response shocked her.
“I thought I was human, but I guess I was Kree now I am a little Mindflayery around the head, but pretty much pure fascist Smurf overlord from the chin down. So yes, kind of Kreeish Mindflayery blend going on over here. I have kind of a lot to unpack about all that, so just leave it as ‘Yes’. I am not taking your people, I wish you luck saving all of them. On that note, this fucker here is Kree, infiltrating both SHIELD and Hydra to look for your lost Inhumans and perform all kinds of nasty experiments on them, so if you wanted to take his suppression collared ass away and ask him all kinds of uncomfortable questions, that might be fun for everyone!”
She looked me in the eye for about two minutes before flaming down. I handed her her Hydra blaster, showed her how to operate the suppression collar and strode out of the Hydra base, buckling the Mind Flayer holoprojector around my waist. Sure it projected a Hydra uniform, but at least the head had no tentacles.
I strode off into the night, by the time the sun rose, a whole lot of secret organizations would have cause to come after me. I was an alien/alien hybrid both races would shoot on sight on a planet full of humans that manifestly could not defend themselves from any of the grown up races of the galaxy. I had no idea where I stood, no plan, and as I left the base I tried to whistle and figured out that with my new mouth parts I didn’t even know if I could. I was a trained secret agent, at least twice over, so I looted the Hydra base crosseyed before I left. I took communications gear, weapons, cash, explosives, weapons, cash surveillance gear, weapons drugs and cash. I am not paranoid, I just am a lone little squid-smurf on a planet that isn’t smart enough to know its already invaded and makes secret organizations devoted to dissecting aliens when and if they can catch any. Guns are my security blanket.
I think I need to sleep on this. Luckily, I had enough cash to get a room pretty much wherever I wanted.