Simulacrum Ten flicked up a vial out of nowhere, and then stuck an AS into the middle of the Purple Man’s forehead. It rapidly turned purple itself, which ran down the card and into the vial. His skin color rapidly paled, draining down into the vial, until he looked like a sickly pale smug bastard drooling there, and I had a full vial of his skin oils.

“Miss Dealer?” Reed Richards asked, raising his eyebrow, as I held the vial out to him.

“I imagine a vaccine against the hypnotic powers of his pheromones would be very useful, Dr. Richards?” my Sim said with a smile.

He looked sharply at the unconscious man, and put the vial away. “I’d like a blood sample, too,” he mused dryly.

A 3D morphed into a hypodermic needle in the Image X’s hands. “Why, certainly, Dr. Richards!”

-------

Not very long later...

The room was mostly sealed. I sat in there with a small smear of purple sweat giving off pheromones.

It was poison, and I was very resistant to poisons, adapting to them and neutralizing them very quickly. If I had been in the room, he would have had control of me for maybe a couple of minutes, no more, if at all.

It was a psionic control effect, after all, and I was very good at resisting such things. I would have had to be completely unaware it was happening.

I was going to make sure that he never had the chance to get his effect magnified and even potentially working on me. Dr. Richards would be making sure there was a vaccine produced to at least give resistance against the effect. With some mind-control resistance training, it should be enough to break his control if someone was subjected to it.

Mr. Hill didn’t really need to breathe, and definitely had a physiology not subject to anything resembling normal biochemistry. Even Ben Grimm was still susceptible to the Purple Man’s pheromones and some of the psychic resonance that came with it, although he’d basically just been dazed there tonight as it messed with his head.

He’d probably stopped the magnapsium treatment. I’d have to get with him on that... maybe some ice cream to make it more palatable?...

------------

Zebediah Kilgrave smirked as he contemplated his solitary confinement prison cell once more.

He would be able to escape soon enough. There were enough other super-villains here that a rescue would be made, there would be an accident, a power outage, or something would occur. When that happened, there would be an opening here, and he would walk out, free and clear.

He was surprised when he heard the clinking of the door to his cell. Expecting to see a man in an airtight suit, he was surprised when he saw a bare hand force the door open, and then the owner entered.

Killgrave’s expression fell marvelously when The Mountain looked down at him, gray eyes flat and cold, his trenchcoated presence swelling to fill the whole cell.

Pointedly, there was no rising and falling of his chest. He didn’t need to breathe.

“I’m here to deliver a message,” The Mountain said flatly, with no inflection whatsoever. “Don’t bother screaming. There ain’t nobody near enough to hear.”

“What, what do you want?” the Purple Man squealed, backing up on his bed from the looming brute. “I haven’t done anything to you! I can’t!”

“I ain’t no hero.” The Mountain pulled out a cigar, struck a match against his own face, and lit it, giving the stogie a couple nice puffs. “You stink, by the way. I don’t appreciate the smell, but a contract is a contract.”

The Purple Man swallowed. The Mountain’s flat, rough, almost mechanical voice was as dreadful as anything he had ever heard.

“Now, I am here to duly inform you that certain very wealthy individuals do not appreciate being used like you attempted to use them. The Resort got away with no real money loss, so they don’t care much, but the patrons, well, you really pissed off some of them.

“They ain’t satisfied with solitary confinement. So, I’m to administer a little object lesson to you.

“I been told that you have some manner of self-healing ability, on account of you being purple or whatever. So, what I’ma gonna do to you is break all of your bones, and then I’m gonna set ‘em all nice and wrong for you.” Killgrave’s eyes bulged at the monotone diatribe, but his scream stuck in his throat at the cold eyes on him.

“I’m also here to inform you that there is an open contract on you, to the tune of five million Murican dollars, already funded. If you kill someone, rape someone, or drive someone to kill themselves or go crazy with your power, that contract goes into effect. You are to be executed, and your body burned to cold black ash before being dissolved in acid, then scattered over the ocean.

“I am not the only person who is aware of this contract. It will soon be known throughout most of the criminal underworld and to many members of law enforcement. So when you do something, they are gonna know, and word is gonna get out.

“Of course, I will be happy to collect a few million dollars to take out a mindbender like you.” Hill could have been reading telephone numbers for all the emotion in his words.

He puffed on his cigar a couple more times as he slapped fist into palm solidly. The impact blew Killgrave’s purple hair back, and his complexion, which hadn’t really recovered to its full purple hue, paled once again.

“Now, this is gonna hurt, so you go ahead and scream all you like. You ain’t gonna die. It’s gonna hurt, and when it all sets wrong, it’s gonna hurt all the damn time. You think of that the next time you fuck with people’s heads, you stinking rapist.”

The Mountain’s voice didn’t shift from a monotone in the slightest the entire time.

---

Zebidiah Killgrave’s screams did indeed last until his splendid voice gave out. When his guards came to check on him six hours later, word of the ‘Purple Pretzel’ spread rapidly through the prison and beyond after they saw what he had been twisted into.

Mr. Hill cashed a million-dollar payment, the necessary bribes taken care of by the influence of those who had hired him.

I didn’t say anything. The Purple Man would get exactly one more chance to make his mark, and then someone with a gas mask and a gun was going to put a bullet in his head, burn him to charcoal, slurry him, dump him in the water, and that would be the end of him.

That is, if Mr. Hill didn’t get to him promptly. I’d certainly help with that.

If Mr. Hill’s million dollars vanished into a fund for the women the bastard had raped and even had children by, I didn’t say anything, either. The Mountain had standards, and if he could be as old-school patronizing and chauvinistic as heck to women, he never, ever forced them. It took very little digging to discover that rapists in his presence tended to vanish forever, too...

=====================

Time Passes (in more ways than one)...

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But how much time between reminders?...

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She’s arrived.

The quiet words were all the warning Magnus gave me, and happened pretty much as the Red Eyes in dire warning and looking around. Then a wave of magic swept out, and the Red Eyes vanished, unable to sense the coming danger.

I smirked to myself, totally ignoring the distortion in the magic all around as her powerful magic bent it, and she closed in on me.

There’s a certain art to ignoring someone incredibly powerful and pretending you can’t see or sense them through alternate senses. It turned out Spider-Totems and their magical basis allowed us to see astral forms, which was naturally enough what Morgan Le Fey was using to escape her tower and travel through time.

I was naturally VERY curious how her time traveling was interacting with the Forsaken absoluteness of Sama and Briggs. I didn’t believe at all that she could ignore them, and was of the opinion that she could only go further forward once she hit the temporal pillars that were the Lived-Lines of the two of them, completely unable to affect the past, save returning to her own time. If she tried to do something, she’d be completely unable to enter the future at all, just going into a hollow shade of an alternate reality that would rapidly crumble around her.

It would also be blatantly clear it was an illusion, since having no Sama or Briggs would mean all the changes they’d made to the timeline wouldn’t be there.

This was like her fourth visit that I knew of, and there’d been at least two before, by her actions, what she had done likely lost when this girl ‘died’ before and she had to redo things. Magnus informed me when she came through time, the nature of his existence unable to be fooled about her being here, and I set up things for her visit each time.

My ‘Public Persona’ thoughtstream was the only one open to her, and literally had none of my mental buffs to it, which made it easier to interact with normal people. My other thoughtstreams thought in multiple languages, at higher levels, and great speed. My public one was smart, but no genius, and was definitely something Morgan le Fey thought she could work with.

She definitely had skill with enchantment magic, weaving spells into Public’s thoughtstream and dreams to prepare for inserting herself and taking me over body and soul. Naturally I had no trouble suppressing them between her visits, and adjusting things the way she wanted between visits to prepare for her next one.

Dreams of power, of magic, of desires fulfilled, ruling and manipulating others to fulfill my every whim, subtle yet very powerful.

She didn’t understand the implications of a Spider-Totem, and probably just considered my increased physical ability another prime reason to take me for herself.

The spells she’d set into my body, anchored to my bioelectric powers to sustain them, were basically complete. I watched her reach out and prod Public. I got up from where I was fine-tuning some adjustments to my Bite and doing some paperwork related to unstable molecule fibers and some E-elements and their interactions. I walked over in front of a mirror and stared into it.

She materialized behind me, staring over my shoulder into my eyes. I could feel her magic starting to infiltrate me. I didn’t have a Matrix in anything resembling a traditional format, all my magic stemming from the Underweb. Thus, the sorcerous Matrix she was building inside me was preparing me to accept her power, thrumming as it interwove with my bioelectric powers to energize and fortify itself.

My eyes stayed locked on myself, the rest of my thoughtstreams watching around the edges as her astral form approached, magic weaving cold and subtle as it infiltrated my body and Public’s thoughts, intending to swallow my soul and overwhelm it with the power and past of herself.

I stood there under her control and let it happen, grimly amused at what was about to occur.

Yes, yes, yield to me, she murmured to Public, stealing into me. I will satisfy all your dreams and desires. You will be the most powerful sorceress in the world. All men will bow before you...

I didn’t block her at all as she stole inside, and began to swallow Public, severing her own connection with her body, and building new connections with mine, preparing to jump from her body in the far past and into mine, and a new life here.

I stood there, my lips slowly spreading into a smile as she took control, and a wash of magic swept through me, and I could feel a pressure on my features to adjust to something that was closer to her own. In time, our appearances would flow together, her taking the best of mine as she reclaimed her own.

She clenched my hands, and laughed softly as she did so. She spun around once, exulting in my balance, and ran her hands through my hair.

“I must grow this longer,” she murmured, Old English falling out of her voice as she segued into modern Human. She flexed my arms, feeling my biceps with great satisfaction, and squaring herself up to stare at her new self in the mirror.