บท 35: Chapter 35: Mind Dive.
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(General P.O.V)
"Swim men! Swim!"
General Ross ordered, his hands paddling the water as they approached the far off shore.
"General...at this rate, we- we'll be exhausted before we're...half way there."
One of the soldiers told him.
"Less complaining more paddling Sanchez!"
Ross barked out.
"What's that?"
One of the soldiers asked, staring at the water around her which was glowing, reflecting a light above them.
"Look up."
Sanchez told the rest.
Ross stopped, his gaze managing to capture a rainbow shrouded figure in the sky, before they disappeared into the city, leaving a blazing trail behind them.
"Great. More freaks."
The General hatefully said.
(Billy's P.O.V)
A rule of thumb for vigilantes was that the minute you finished the heroics, you bailed out.
Unless you were established heroes like the F4, Avengers or most recently Spidey's team.
Then you could stick around, chat with the authorities, answer the press's questions... that kind of thing.
As for me? Weeell, Fury was probably furious (haha) at me for bursting through the glass windows of his precious flying boat.
He would be even less thrilled that I bailed out before he could arrive on the scene to chew me out for ignoring his orders or something like that.
I chose peace of mind to that.
Besides, the day was saved. No one was hurt, except Ross and some of his crew who I saw swimming towards the shore. But the Coast guard had already spotted them so I didn't bother carrying out a rescue.
Instead, I kept on flying towards the city, in full view of everyone (which was the point).
After passing through Time Square, I flew higher, breaching past the clouds before backtracking and returning to the Raft with a mental,'notice me not' field around my body.
And that was the play. To fake out anyone watching or following after me.
Just because I didn't want to talk to Fury or Shield didn't mean I could be careless. I needed to survey the area around the Raft to ensure no Inmate had escaped after I'd left.
By visibly getting spotted flying into the city, I had ensured that no one would know I had flown back to the scene.
The 'notice me not' was a field of compulsion that effectively made someone ignore my presence. It wouldn't break as long as I didn't do anything too outstanding.
******
Fortunately, all inmates were accounted for. Or at least I didn't spot anyone swimming/ flying away from the Raft.
On the flip side, turns out there was someone watching the Raft. Or rather several someones.
They were floating in the water a few hundred meters away from the submersible prison.
I flew closer, the compulsion around my body made me practically invisible despite the glow of my TK aura.
There were six of them. And on top of looking like Attuma, the blue skin and strange garments clued me in on who they were.
Atlanteans.
I probed a few of them just to be sure.
(Race: Atlantean)
Power: Superhuman
Age:65
(Race: Atlantean)
Power: Superhuman
Age:51
(Race: Atlantean)
Power: Superhuman
Age:67
There was no longer any doubt.
Which begged the question, what were they doing so close to the Raft? Could they have been looking to rescue Attuma?
No. It didn't line up. For starters why hadn't they intervened before I arrived on the Raft? Or even when I was facing the inmates? Those were the perfect instances to mount a rescue.
'You need to read their thoughts.'
Solomon's legacy supplied me with wisdom. Not hesitating, I dove into one of their minds.
This one belonging to the one that looked like the leader.
What I found out was troubling. The Raft was always under constant watch by Namor. It was an underwater fortress housing some of the vilest surface dwellers on the planet, the strange thing would be if it wasn't under surveillance.
Leave alone the lack of disrespect for not asking him for permission, if the prisoners by any infinitesimal chance made it to Atlantis, they would cause trouble for his kingdom.
Namor viewed it as an incursion. And so, he had his people keep a close eye on the Raft.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was that they had seen the Trident of Neptune. Which meant they saw me using it. The very power to control the oceans that Namor so stingily defended.
Fuck.
Namor was not only an Atlantean which gave him immense power when in contact with water, he was also a mutant.
He could fly, which meant my aerial advantage was rendered moot and hitting him was going to be hard. He had super-strength, which meant I couldn't out-muscle him.
My only advantages were telepathy, Neptune's Trident (if it didn't find him more worthy of me and decide to leave me) and telekinesis (again, that was if I was fast enough to hit him.)
Wait.
My mind had already switched to conflict without exploring other options?
That's... concerning.
Solomon's Wisdom influenced me for sure but not to the extent of clouding my judgement.
The point is, I had other options I could use, thankfully. I could simply delete their memories of me wielding the trident.
Now...truth is, I'd never done something like this before.
It was my first time fully exercising the power over minds I had. And it was half thrilling and half scary. One wrong move and I could mentally cripple them.
Then again, it was this or Namor knows about me and comes for my ass. He wasn't exactly a reasonable guy either. Just like Doctor Doom, I had placed him in the 'annoying to deal with category, so don't'.
"Can't stall forever..."
I whispered to myself, my eyes glowing as I sent out mental feelers.
The feelers connected to their minds and all conscious action stopped. Their arms still waded in the water in a slow perpetual movement, keeping them afloat.
Their minds on the other hand, had entered into a sort of waking coma.
I flew closer to the water, brows scrunched up in concentration.
This was the deepest I'd ever gone in a sentient mind. You see memories aren't like pencil mistakes that you can just rub off with a rubber.
No, each memory was connected to other memories. One thing reminded you of this other thing, then that thing reminded you of another thing and so on and so forth.
It was actually really difficult to erase a memory as I came to find out later.
However as I was now, I was too inexperienced to erase a memory without causing side effects.
So instead, I was aiming to change the details of the memory.
The fortunate thing was that the fresher the memory, the easier it was to manipulate. It hadn't formed all these correlations with the rest of the information within a person's recollection.
'Find their latest memories and simply shift a few things around...'
I thought as I perused their minds.
Time lost meaning to me. The connection I had established with them all, allowing me to dive from one mind to another easily. This was a good thing as it meant, I wouldn't need to expend a lot of mental energy. (which I'd recently found out wasn't as infinite as I'd thought)
Not to mention, this way I could craft a universal tale. Meaning the details they would remember would all be the same.
No matter how incredulous it would seem, if the everyone believed that something in their memories actually happened, then there wouldn't be a doubt about it.
First my form, blur it out a little. My black and red costume was pretty recognizable by now. Especially with the giant lightning bolt on my chest.
So I made it seem as if I had a shroud of glowing water covering me from my head to my toes.
Speaking of which, the water I could control now glowed in blue. It hadn't done that before so something was either different with me or the Trident. I would need to look into that and a few more things later.
Then the next thing was to naturally change the shape of the Trident. I couldn't remove it from their minds as the Trident had already connected with old memories of it's tales.
It was not only a powerful weapon but a symbol of Atlantean might.
Wow, Namor wouldn't leave this alone if he got wind that I had it.
It was easy to change it from a trident to a generic Sci-fi gun like device that could launch blasts of hard water out.
This paired up with the blue water around my body ensured that even if Namor managed to find out the memories were fake, there was nothing he could do.
I carried out a few more checks just to ensure I hadn't messed up before I left their minds.
Immediately, a headache started forming on my temples.
It felt like I'd been there for hours. Only a few minutes seemed to have passed in the outside world however.
I spared one last glance at the Atlanteans before I subtly pushed their minds to leave.
For added measure, I scanned my surroundings just in case someone had creeped up on me during the mind dive.
I sighed out in relief. There wasn't any other mind around.
'Man, I feel like I just avoided a troublesome situation.'
I mused to myself.
Fortunately, I had dealt with it accordingly. It had been a good idea to backtrack.
Now all I had to do was leave for my apartment and like I usually did with exhausting days, sleep the night away. Hopefully, I wouldn't wake up to a destroyed New York. That was an actual fear by the way.
"Chances that the world ends in the next 24 hours while I sleep?"
I jokingly asked Solomon's Legacy.
The answer was unexpected and unwanted.
(87%)
Fuck.
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