I admit I panicked when I returned to Frost Towers. I assumed my regular Rick Jones form when I entered, as that is how I was known to the management and its security cameras. Self consciously clutching my collection of bath stuff and scented candles. I may have overspent, but it was hard not to when you only had hundreds and fifties in your wallet. I mean, at that point any sort of BOGO is a no brainer. I can carry a lot, so saying no to a five for the cost of three is just stupid!
I also got so worked up by the scents that I went back for desert about five times. Mind Flayers are lucky that they eat the brains of sentient beings, because those tentacles are about twenty times better chemical sensors than drug sniffing dogs. I can’t go near a cheap perfume stand, but really good quality all natural scented oils and candles got me so hungry I ate about six pounds of fudge and ice cream after spending a mind boggling amount on super high end scented candles (some with real wood inserts instead of cloth wicks. Nothing like infused maple wood in a naturally scented maple syrup candle to make you run straight cross mall to the maple fudge at the chocolatiers and descend on it like a starving shark at a crippled seal convention.
I was finally relaxed out of my SHIELD and Skrull induced panic, and in a near food coma when I came through the revolving doors of the Frost Towers to find myself face to face with a Mind Flayer, a huge bare-chested barbarian with a claw necklace with odd living leaf shoulder guards, a green skinned woman in shining silver plate with a sword on her back that clawed at the edges of my psychic awareness,
The reflex to reach out to another Mind Flayer was automatic, and I had acted at the speed of reflex not consciousness to do so before I could think. I did not meet a mind flayer mind, but one whose defenses were strange, powerful, and subtle in ways that my own were not.
Alarmed that I had given myself away, my hand flashed down to my blaster by pure Kree reflex even as my mind uncoiled to lance out at the fake Mindflayer.
There is something about being a hybrid of two world enslaving races, coming from two racial supremacist lineages that absolutely agree their are biologically destined to rule over every lesser species in the universe by divine right of their own awesomeness; reality can be full of humiliating surprises.
My mind was hit with a memory flash of being caught in the Hydra medical chamber, except this time the straps were upgraded to withstand my Kree strength, and I was at the focus of three large generators which produced a strange energy that made it impossible for my Illithid nerves to shape coherent energy for either my telepathy or telkinesis. I watched in slow horror as the Hydra scientists took a bone saw and slowly cut open my skull to dig his questing probes into my brain to figure out how I worked. That is not how it happened! That was a half remembered nightmare I had for a fraction of a second when I awakened, but it never happened.
A half second is all it took to force the alien thought projection out of my brain. The first “Mind Flayer” dropped her illusion to stand as a Native American woman of late teenage years. It was her mind that forced the paralyzing illusion into me using something similar yet different to my own telepathy. The green skinned girl in the glowing platemail had dropped her illusion to be a Slavic looking blonde teenager who really ought to be wearing more than her plate mail covered, but the sword she drew burned with a cold white fire that clawed at my psychic senses with the scream of a soul in torment. I feared it on an instinctive level.
The Native American male who had been dressed as the half naked barbarian with the green leaf shoulder guards did not have any illusions covering him, but he moved faster than my Kree boosted reflexes could move, but not faster than I could track. He got a hand on my gun hand and a second on my left wrist and his hands were stronger than any hydraulic press I had ever seen. He had the strength in his hands you would expect to find in major construction machinery. I was used to being superhumanly strong and fast, but against this angry looking Native American teenager, I was like a normal human in my own grip.
The burning sword swept through me like a whip of agony and my mental defense and physical illusions fell. I felt the blade cut through my flesh, and fully expected to die, yet when she pulled the blade from my chest, the pain went with it. No physical damage was done, yet I felt as if my soul itself had been violated on a fundamental level.
I had tentacles wrapped around the man who gripped me’s neck, but had not started to strangle him as I did not want to escalate a fight I would pretty sure I would lose.
The Native American woman who had shocked me with the mental projection shouted now.
“Warpath, Magik, stand down. I think he just panicked when he saw me.”
The Russian sounding girl patted the burning hell-blade in her hand and smirked slightly.
“Yes Mirage, I can see coming in the hotel lobby and seeing a tentacle faced horror like a Mind Flayer might make anyone panic. Don’t think I didn’t catch that little mind touch squid boy, I am used to telepaths fucking with my head, but if you try it again, Calamari will be on the menu!”
Helpfully, she mentally projected the image of her cutting my tentacles into chunks, dipping them in batter, deep frying them, serving them with chopped onions with a side of tzatziki to form the classic Greek appetizer calamari. She was not a psychic, but had worked with enough of them to form clear subvocolized images clear enough for coherent reading by any passive telepath. Who the hell were these people.
“Release the tentacles, and I will let go your arms, intact.” The rather angry looking Native man holding me said. Since I wasn’t sure I could strangle anyone that much stronger than me, and I knew he was one squeeze away from leaving me without working arms, I let go.
“So cool. Plus, he looks like those little Smurfs that Pitor used to buy for me when he came to America. Only all grown up and buff. I can think of a few uses for those tentacles.” The blonde referred to as Magik said, but a small grey dragon descended from where he had been circling above me waiting to strike to land on her shoulder, and blast a short tongue of actual flame at me in clear warning that any attempted touching of Magik by said tentacle equipped Smurf would result in Mind Flayer flambe, one relatively small burn at a time considering the dragon was about the size of a corgi.
Mirage, the American Indian woman massaged her forehead and muttered.
“This is why the Professor doesn’t want you wandering around unsupervised Magik. What you got used to in Limbo is not okay, okay?” Mirage said, sounding more like a middle aged mother than another teen.
“What, you get muscle boyfriend with his buns of steel and stamina, and I have to play the nun? Mirage, you know that neither you or Warpath are anything like quiet and that whole super strength thing means the headboard actually knocks things off my wall on the other side. Why do you think I have been playing Baldur’s gate all night every night. If it wasn’t for the headphones set on loud, I couldn’t tune you two out at all.”
Warpath no longer looked angry, now he looked smug as hell, and Mirage was blushing furiously.
“Not in front of strangers, Magik. In fact, not in front of anyone okay?” Mirage begged.
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“Let’s move this to the lounge and grab a drink. That way we stop blocking traffic and get someplace you can use your illusions to mask our conversation. I don’t think we want to let casual convention goers overhear us.” Warpath said, nodding his head towards the coffee bar in the lobby.
Magik shrugged. “This is Galactacon. Being a Mind Flayer in a convention where two events and three panels are on Baldur’s Gate 3 is so normal Mirage was using her illusions to cosplay one. Talking about Mind Flayers here is so normal you could put it over the PA and no one would care. Hell, last year Silver Surfer showed up in person and lost to someone cosplaying him at the Cosplay challenge.”
It was a lot to take in. These people were humans, were aware that I was some kind of alien, that I was a telepath, armed, and superhuman, and none of them cared. Worse, they were so familiar with Silver Surfer, former Herald of Galactus the World Eater, that they could tell the real from the fake at a glance. Who the hell were they?
We ordered coffee. Rick Jones loved taking his triple triple, but it turns out that both Kree and Illithid superior senses really preferred their coffee black, but were super picky about the blend. I had been undercover drinking shitty coffee. They Kree didn’t just make me give up my racial heritage of superior strength and speed, give up my freedom to be their programmed sleeper agent among humanity, they forced me to drink shitty coffee. Why? What sort of fascist prick makes someone ruin good coffee just for a cover identity. Come to think of it, Rick Jones always ate an avacado toast for breakfast. I ran over the memory. They are DISGUSTING. The Kree have a lot to answer for. I mean genocide and slavery obviously are higher on the list, but the food crimes on their own sleeper agents are going on the list too!
I sat down to drink my coffee and suffer my interrogation like a not quite prisoner yet.
Magik looked at me with hooded blue eyes. “Use the tentacles.”
Mirage rolled her eyes saying “Really? Seriously?”
Warpath blew on his own coffee, black as his eyes and not a bad blend by my senses. “Don’t kink shame her, or I will tell what you asked for last night.” He smirked.
“WARPATH!” Mirage shouted, then cursed as slamming her coffee down popped the lid and burned her hand. So not invulnerable. Not that it changed the odds anyway. If we fought, I lost.
“So. Mind Flayers are real?” Mirage asked, “What do I call you anyway? Code names only, we are in public.”
“I’m only half Mind Flayer, they call themselves Illithid, but they really do like Mind Flayer, so they also use that. I don’t have a code name. I mean I did with SHIELD who I accidentally infiltrated, and with Hydra who I deliberately infiltrated for SHIELD, but neither one of those really seems to fit with....” I trailed off, gesturing to the whole blue skinned Hyrda uniformed tentacle headed horror story that was me without illusion.
Warpath nodded. “Lovecraft.” He said it simply like it was obvious.
Magik squeed like a fan girl and clapped happily. “Cthulhu, you have the tentacles and the mind violating soul corrupting thing down. Yes. Lovecraft was the author of the whole Cthulhu mythos, so its a good fit for you.”
Okay, I had played Baldur’s gate enough to know about Mind Flayers in public lore, but I had to be reminded of Lovecraft and his whole Cthulhu “Minds of Madness” horror genre. It wasn’t a flattering depiction, but it did sort of fit me.
Mirage nodded. “Right, so Lovecraft,” I guess I was stuck with it. “Spill your story. Magik will know if you lie. Don’t try using telepathy to block it. Miss Frost says that the sorcery she uses is similar to telepathy but different enough that telepathic skill will not beat soul based sorcery truth detection.”
Well, that explains the familiarity with telepaths. Miss Frost. Emma Frost. The White Queen. They were her students. She was the second most powerful telepath on earth, or third if you believed the rumours about Phoenix which SHIELD denied. Of course they denied they were infiltrated by aliens, and we all know how that is going. Still, they way they spoke of her, they were her personal students, which made them both Mutants and associated with either the X-men or the Hellfire club. Depending on which SHIELD analyst you wanted to believe Emma Frost either betrayed the Hellfire Club to the X-men, or infiltrated the X-men for the Hellfire club. Who we believed varied between departments but no one was moving on Emma Frost lightly. She had political and economic power on par with her telepathy, so moving against her was a cabinet level decision.
Honestly. I had no where to go. No allies, so very many enemies, and no idea what to do. The X-men were outsiders. Superheroes yes, but to the government mutants were a human derived race that groups like SHIELD felt needed to be controlled, and regulated. A nice way to say leashed. Too powerful to be allowed to be free, too useful to kill while other nations had some of their own.
X-Men toadied up to the government playing nice; the Uncle Tom’s of the mutant world. Heroes to many, a demonstration of the danger of mutants allowed to organize to others. Magneto rose against the governments that would control his people, like John Brown of the anti-slavery fight. A terrorist to humans, a hero to oppressed mutants. Emma Frost was neither. She was a mutant. She could work with government, but it it dared to reach out a hand to control her she would shatter that hand and enslave the mind that dared to point it at her. A sort of neutrality.
Honestly, if these mutants were Emma Frost’s own students, I wouldn’t mind their prospective on my position, saying nothing of the fact I ran to Frost Towers to hide in her very deep shadow. I began talking, and before long was lost in spilling not only everything that happened but everything I had felt, had thought, had feared. It was equal parts stupid and cathartic. They listened without judgement. For young people there were enough scars and bleeding wounds behind their eyes to qualify as hard core veterans.
When I finished, I was shaking.
Mirage looked around the table, and seriously both Magik and Warpath nodded slowly. Mirage turned to me and said simply. “I will contact Miss Frost and set up a meeting. Listen if SHIELD and maybe Hydra, not to mention the Kree and Skrull are after you, the best place for you to be safe is right here at the convention. I mean, Miss Frost set up security and there are a few other groups of mutants here that came with their own minders. At least three non mutant heroes are also here, honestly the weeb content of the superhero and villain community is not to be underrated. This is a safe space, no one is going to start anything at a convention hosted by the White Queen when we have Wolverine and Nightcrawler wandering around with one set of students, Mystique and Toad with another, Spider man usually shows up, Wong the Sorcerer puts on a show to remind people tech isn’t the only way, and Doctor Octopus if you need another tentacle buddy.”
I blinked. “Go enjoy the convention? That is your suggested plan.”
Warpath nodded. “Let your freak flag fly. A lot of the people cosplaying here are like you; mutants who take this time to walk around bare skinned, bare faced. Not hiding what they are because they can dress up a little and walk around as an anime character or movie character without people runnind and screaming ‘freaky mutant, kill it with fire!’”
Great, I had a fourth racial choice now. Mutant. Well I was a half Kree, half Mind Flayer chimera. That is a bit of a mouthful. Kree-flayer. Illith-ree? Let’s go with Kree-Flayer. That sounded bad ass. Illith-ree sounds like a bladder infection. Mutants were a subspecies of human. I thought of myself as human, but genetically I wasn’t one.
Mutant. Yes, I was very definitely a mutant. That dodged neatly the question of a mutant what. I was a Kree-Flayer mutant. I was Lovecraft.
I had the body of a Smurf sex god, and the head of a Mind Flayer at a convention where at least one third of the participants were seriously attractive young women in everything from Sailor Moon, through Princess Lea, through Dark Phoenix cosplay, with more of the cast from Baldur’s Gate, Final Fantasy, Warhammer 40K, Skyrim and Elder Scrolls than I could count.
I had decided to do what I joined SHIELD to do in the first place (fake memory, but I agreed with it) and defend humanity. Maybe it’s time I dropped my mask and met some.
Why not. A Kree-Flayer went to Galactacon.
What could go wrong?