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Sokovia [September 2014]
–?–
She awoke with a gasp, bolting upright as her body shuddered from what she had experienced.
The tearing feeling she felt as her soul was shredded apart, with her being completely powerless to stop it. She hated that feeling, it reminded her of her…kids.
Her vision swam with red before she felt a searing pain in her chest, shocking her out of her gaze. Her hand went to her face, not finding the rough texture of her skin as her body had been irrevocably changed by the magics that she had delved deep into.
Chaos Magic had a way of leaving its imprint on the body of the practitioner, even if the practitioner was the destined user of Chaos Magic itself. She could not find the stiffness in her fingers, the heaviness in her chest, or the constant fog she felt in her mind that could only be banished by using more and more of Chaos Magic. The more she delved deeper into Chaos Magic, the more her mind was altered, feeling heavier and heavier until it became unbearable, more Chaos Magic the only available cure for it, creating a vicious cycle.
Finally, her mind cleared up enough to take a look at her surroundings. She was in some sort of prison cell, quite an advanced one at that, judging by the crude forcefield that acted as the door to her prison.
She snorted at the shoddy work on the barrier. She might not be technically oriented, not as much as Shuri or Reed, but she could recognise the limitations of the technology with a single glance. It had a single point of failure, and that was the barrier itself. Reed’s barriers were much trickier than this one.
No matter how much energy she poured into his barrier unless she tapped into one of the Darkhold's original spells, it was almost impossible to break Reed's barriers without being exhausted herself. He had apparently designed those as a counter for the Hulk himself but it ended up working on all energy oriented beings.
She sneered at the insult of someone trying to imprison the Scarlet Witch with such basic work, and was about to wave her hand, erasing this entire prison from her vision when the sharp pain in her chest stopped her hand.
“Operative Wanda, report for training,” She looked up as a soldier, covered top to bottom in armour, entered her cell and gestured to get out. She looked at her hands, her calloused, young, wrinkle free, hands, and looked at the guard before deciding to do something she had not done in a long long time.
She decided to bide her time.
It was as if the constant haze she was under, the influence of the Darkhold no doubt, was gone completely, allowing her to think rationally and make well informed decisions. She simply followed the guard, allowing her to take a look at the place where she was being kept.
The guard had addressed her as Operative, so it would be safe to assume that they knew of her being Wanda, but didn’t know of her being the Scarlet Witch, a being of immense power, capable of destroying countries on her lonesome.
Something of an impossibility because her name had spread far and wide.
She looked around the base as multiple soldiers, doctors in white coats, and more moved around the place as a scene of organised chaos entered her vision. Her gaze swiveled from side to side as her finger twitched a bit, tempted to cast a sensory spell that would allow a live 3D image to be transmitted straight to her brain. It was one of the more nifty spells, allowing her body to react at speeds that her normal eyes simply couldn’t keep up with, like Captain Marvel when they sparred with each other.
She was taken outside apparently, as a number of metal blocks were placed in front of her, with varying sizes and shapes. She could see that all of them were of varying substances, changing the density of all of them.
She looked around in confusion, not knowing what they wanted her to do. She had to assume that these guys wanted something from Wanda but she didn’t know if they expected something else. So, she did something that might help speed up the process.
“Well?” Her voice came out much smoother, much younger, than she had expected it to be, also with a very heavy accent, an accent that she had almost forgotten.
The Sokovian Accent.
“What? Don’t tell me you forgot in just a day?” The words were accompanied by a bout of mocking laughter from all the guards assembled.
“Just lift and mold the things, you bitch. Do your red mumbo jumbo,”
The words elicited a flash of rage in her mind but her last sentence cleared it all away. “Red mumbo jumbo?” She muttered to herself as Chaos Magic swirled in her arms, the effort of doing something that was once effortless to her, was very evident. Something was wrong with her body.
“Yes, that mumbo jumbo, you bitch!” The words once again brought a red hot flash of rage and she simply channeled it all into the magic convalescing in her arms. The magic began swirling faster, gaining a much deeper red color, because of the emotions she dumped into the magic. It was good to know that her mental conditioning worked perfectly at least.
It would have been quite dangerous to be an advanced wielder of Chaos Magic without having impeccable mental control, the fog of Darkhold would have swallowed her whole otherwise, as it had probably done for all the previous users of Chaos Magic.
She deliberately looked into the eyes of the bitch that cursed her and simply smirked at her, then let the magic go.
The result was fantastic. Not the metal blocks, no, that was not even worth mentioning to someone of her powers. No, the fear she could feel all around her was delicious. She simply took in a deep breath, her powers automatically absorbing the delicious fear all around her, empowering her further.
She would have simply lost herself in the sensation of growing stronger, if not for one startling thing that stood out to be very wrong for her.
Her body.
She opened her eyes, hastily dispelling the magic that was beginning to feed on all the negative emotions in the vicinity, and took in deep breaths as the magic refused to listen to her iron will, rampaging wild inside her still very weak body.
She took stock of her body and realised that this body was somehow completely new, unused to the weight of the Chaos Magic and its effects. So, that was where the wrong feeling originated from.
Her body was being, once again, altered by heavy unrestricted use of Chaos Magic, and she desperately wished to avoid that outcome this time.
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It was all clear now, she thought to herself as she looked at all the surrounding guards, the HYDRA symbol stitched on their uniforms, and her weak, younger body that was just now getting used to the Chaos Magic.
She took a long look at the gathered people and then walked back into the base, leaving pindrop silence behind her. She simply retraced her path, the people walking in front of her, without even flinching, not even afraid a little of the being that would go on to rival the Hulk in terms of destructive potential.
She turned around and reached the room of her little prison when her breath hitched, her breathing becoming heavier as she realised something.
There were two cells, not just one.
Tears gathered in her ears as she realised that he might still be alive right now, running about. The mere thought of that brought so much joy to her that it blasted through all of her carefully constructed mental shields and her powers responded in king, creating a red halo around her.
She didn't shy away from it, instead, she let her emotions feed into her magic, casting a single elementary level spell, at least an elementary level Darkhold magic. One of the strands of her magic cast a small cut on her arm, the wound sealing up soon after, as a small droplet of blood floated in the center of the vortex of Chaos Magic.
Alarms began blaring in the background as she sensed massive movement, away from her as they probably began evacuating the facility. She didn’t care about that, all she cared about was the still stabilising spell matrix in front of her.
Her control had been shot to hell as it was taking so much time to cast such an elementary spell.
Her breath hitched as the spell finally completed and the result of it was completely positive. The direct blood relative was alive and healthy, and more importantly, very close by.
Her body began feeling light as her knees gave out, this body still too weak to bear the backlash of using a Darkhold specific spell without being tethered to the book itself. She had to do it this way, otherwise, this body too might get corrupted by the Darkhold and its owner.
She didn’t care that she was going to faint in the middle of a Nazi base. She didn’t care at all because she knew, she knew her brother was alive.
The last thing she saw before darkness claimed her vision was a small blur of silver heading her way.
‘Ah, if this is a dream, let it be my last one'
_______xx_____
[October 2014]
It had been a month since she awoke in this reality. Yes, this reality because she knew she was no longer in her home universe. For one, in her reality, they were kidnapped by HYDRA and then experimented on by Daniel Whitehall because they had latent Alien genes or something, most probably something to do with the Inhumans.
In this universe, they volunteered themselves for the inhuman painful experiments that Strucker was conducting, all in hopes that they would gain enough power to gain revenge for their parents. Revenge on Tony Stark, the supposed maker of the dud missile that entered their home one day.
It was phenomenally stupid of her. She should have done something, anything was better than the choices she had made. Not just for herself but for her brother as well. Pietro might have been born 13 minutes earlier, but his mentality was that of a preschooler.
Just like now, as he messed with her hair and then simply disappeared from her vision. She shook her head in fond exasperation at his antics.
He might not have noticed but at this point, the entire facility was under her control, including the Strucker fellow.
Apparently, the Avengers had struck HYDRA a couple of months prior and had decimated most of their global operations. This, along with a handful of other isolated bases was all that HYDRA had, at least according to Baron Strucker, and he had no reason to lie to her. After all, she was the mistress of all the people present inside the facility.
She had already sent away most of the people that had been forced to work here, or only came here because they had no other option, with a healthy sum of money, from Strucker’s stash obviously.
When she had first met Pietro, she had broken down into sobs, becoming a babbling mess who couldn’t get a single coherent word out of her mouth. Pietro was so concerned.
After the first time she fell unconscious, little flashes, and visions of her life in this universe began flashing in her mind. She still didn’t have the whole set but she had enough of the memories that she could create a solid illusion.
Of course, she never really needed that with Pietro since he was family to her. Everybody else, they could fuck right off. She had her brother back, and it should only be a matter of time before she found her kids, somewhere, in the vast multiverse.
Now that the fog was lifted from her mind, she knew that just planeswalking was a very bad idea, not without taking enough precautions. She probably destroyed a couple of universes doing that.
She no longer had delusions of reuniting with her children anymore. She had Pietro back and that was more than enough for her.
She might just meet Vision as well, maybe….
In the past month, she had not left the facility yet, because she wanted to acclimatize to the new world before she began taking concrete steps.
She was in no condition, even now, to fight off the Sorcerer Supreme without being severely injured or worse, dying in the process. This space seemed safe enough for now, as she searched through the web, everything about the world.
Right out of the gate, stark differences were clear to her.
Jack Sullivan, the Green Guardian of Earth.
The green clad figure was someone who was the total center of her attention for a long time simply because of her various extraordinary deeds.
Defeating and stopping the Chitauri on his own? Repelling the Chitauri Invasion with virtually zero casualties? That was supposed to be impossible and yet he did it.
His portals were clearly the signature ones of Kamar Taj, so it was possible that he was a Master of the Mystic Arts as well.
His barriers meant that, currently, outside of the Sorcerer Supreme, he was the biggest threat to her. She didn’t know how her magic might interact with his powers but something told him that fooling him would require more than just brute force.
Finesse will be required with him, and that was infinitely harder without the Darkhold.
She began working on the computer once again, as Pietro zipped around, her magic serving as a training tool for him, creating bullet shapes in mid air that he had to dodge, otherwise, they left a nasty bruise that looked painful.
She was not going to let her speedster brother die of bullet wounds.
“Pietro?”
“Hmm?” She looked up only for a gust of wind to hit her face, strands of her long hair now in her eyes.
“What? Didn’t see me coming?” The inordinately smug voice of Pietro came from the front area. He liked to do that a lot, testing her reaction times.
She could bypass the need for her eyes entirely by casting a single spell but where was the fun in that?
Let her elder, mentally younger, brother have all the fun he wanted to have. She would take care of all the threats that might take her brother away from her once more.
She would—
A beat resounded in her entire being as she choked on thin air, her powers refusing to listen to her will, as she looked at her arms, her translucent arms.
‘Did you think there were no consequences?’ The words reverberated in her mind as the painful feeling began to spread all around her body, turning her entire body into a translucent image.
No! NO!
She roared in her mind as she flexed her not inconsiderable amount of willpower and roared at her power to work.
It worked, as an avalanche of red flooded her body, creating a small red halo around her body, rooting her body to the ground.
‘How long will you last, I wonder? You are not meant for this world, Wanda. This world is stable, sacred, not for someone tainted like you.’ The voice spoke again but she was in no place to reply. Her entire mind was working on overdrive as she processed this encounter.
Her body was now once again solid, as Pietro hugged her tightly, all the while a single word reverberated inside her mind.
Tainted.
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Word Count - 2672
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