Difference between revisions of "Template:Featured Articles/49-2020"

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<td valign="top">[[Image:MOA Fourteen.png|left]]'''Moment of Awesome - [[Fourteen|The Stepford Cuckoos/Fourteen]]:''' ''[[Fear in the Dark|How do you defeat]] the [[Juggernaut]] when he has the power of [[Cul Bor'son and The Worthy|Thor]]? [https://xp-logs.dreamwidth.org/4081201.html#cutid1 Make him take his helmet off and let the Cuckoos do their thing].''
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<td valign="top">[[Image:MOA Fourteen.png|left]]'''Moment of Awesome - [[Fourteen|The Stepford Cuckoos/Fourteen]]:''' ''[[Time Stand Still|Upon discovering a future 'child']], Fourteen finally lets [[Emma Frost]] [https://xp-logs.dreamwidth.org/4118269.html know how she feels].''
  
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Phoebe and Celeste grimaced as one as they fell back. Fourteen understood the logic in the idea, and as much as she hated to admit it (even to herself), the Juggernaut was exactly the wrong type of foe for her particular brand of conniving. All the subtlety of a rampaging rhino and half the intelligence made it so that he was, in many ways, too stupid to be tricked and too impulsive to be manipulated. It was why she'd been more or less forced into some generic-looking body armor by Doug as they'd prepped, including a matching pair of black leather jackets with green piping and hidden armored plating that she'd bet money belonged to Marie-Ange. Contrasting brightly against the black leather were a pair of red and white "Hi, My Name Is" stickers that someone had hastily scrawled "SPORTY" and "SCARY" across in black sharpie.
 
  
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Nearby, Fourteen's remaining three bodies (decked in standard issue body armor) ran crowd control as they herded the mass of people out of the area with a judicious application of psionic precision.
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If it had been any other moment, 14 might have been able to maintain her composure. She could have swallowed her anger, schooled her expression, and kept her business to herself. She could have taken in the anger through Sophie, and vented it out through Irma or Celeste or any of the others in the privacy of her room. She could have held her composure, not given away her emotions to the others in the room.
  
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"Just get that helmet off," Celeste said, hoping at least one or two of her team could hear her, "and the real fun gets to start." And until then, Fourteen would be dreaming up new and fun ways to absolutely murder Blink for naming her after the Spice Girls.
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Give them power.
  
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The shockwave sent Alex stumbling back, and he straightened up, gaping. "My what? Uh, okay." Well, he had Kuurth's attention. Might as well take advantage of it. He clapped his hands together, arms lighting up with energy again. "Lezzgo."
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But it wasn't any other moment. It wasn't any other person. And it was like poking an old wound, one that had never been given the chance to properly heal. And 14 lost her self control.
  
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He raised his arms and fired.
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~You can't even ''say'' the word, can you? Can you?! It's <I>'Daughter'</I>. DAUGH. TER. You can't even pretend that you care, can you?~
  
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"Now this is a fight!" Kurrth's hammer was a blur, catching Alex's energy blast and glowing a brilliant eye-searing purple for a moment before it exploded in the enormous man's face. The crash was tremendous, but Kurrth never stopped swinging, or charging, even with a cracked and sparking hammer. "Clever to take advantage of this desert climate, wizard!" He spat a mouthful of sand in Alex's direction, and shook more from his face. "But you will not defeat me, no matter how much conjured grit and sand you create!"
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Emma flinched at the accusation flung at her, at the justified anger that roiled underneath it. She closed her eyes, unable to look at Sophie for a moment. ~I don't have the right,~ she said softly. ~I haven't earned the right to call you... to call any of you my daughter. My daughters.~
  
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Laurie would normally touch a target in order to both give her a link to their body but also to make sure the people around her were less affected by what she could do.
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~You didn't have to ''earn'' it! You just have to be there!~ There was a deep thrum over the psychic line, the mental equivalent of a deep and shaky breath. ~Do you have any idea how hard it is to give up on family? How much it hurts?~ A flower of grief bloomed through her mind.
  
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In this case it was impossible to get close enough to do that, and so she had to find something that would both do what they needed by also be subtle enough that she wouldn’t also incapacitate her fellow team members.
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~Do you even remember that I sent you a Christmas gift for the first three years after you found me? Or was it just another box you tossed in your closet at the end of the day?~
  
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What she settled on in the end was simply to mess with the systems that dealt with temperature control.
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~Every time I tried, I failed. Effort wasted for nothing. I give up. And eventually, I'd try again. Every time, nothing. And it hurt every time.~
  
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Deathlok continued his barrage, concentrating his fire at Kuurth's head. Between the plasma blasts, the sand and the body heat and the force of Deathlok's firing, things had to be getting uncomfortable in there for the Worthy.
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~I kept them,~ replied Emma, softly. ~All of them. I couldn’t… I didn’t open them. I didn’t dare. I was so ''angry''. At first. Not at you, at any of you. At what you were proof of. At what someone had done to me to make you. I couldn’t… And then it was too long. Too late. I was… ashamed of what I had done to you. How could you want anything to do with me after what I had done to you? At how badly I had failed you.~ For a moment, Emma’s face distorted with pain and then it smoothed out again. ~I didn’t think you could ever forgive me for that.~
  
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Sweat dripped into Kurrth's eyes, for the first time that he could remember, and when he blinked, he could feel the sharp grit under his eyelids. It did no damage - his corneas were as strong and unstoppable as the rest of him - but it impeded his vision all the same, instincts from when he was soft, stoppable, weak. His eyes watered, he spat sand and could feel it under his tongue, in his boots, ground into uncomfortable places in his armor. He could hear and feel the pounding of his heart echoing from his ears to his mind through the helmet and back around again and it was maddening, he could not stop - not destroying, not moving, and he could not stop the sand and heat and heavy thud of his blood in his ears.
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~So you ran,~ 14 sneered, letting her feelings flood through the link. There was a bit of disdain there, but mostly there was an overwhelming sense of ''hurt'' and ''loneliness''. ~You didn't know me. You didn't try to know me, but you decided you knew how I felt.~
  
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He ripped the domed helmet from his face, throwing it away so frantically that it cracked the patched concrete street. "Cease your trickery mage, or be destroyed!"
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14 hated how her hands were shaking, across all bodies. Hated how she could ''tell'' her anger was being drowned out by her sadness and hurt and all the other emotions that said 'I care. you can hurt me with this.'
  
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The moment that the helmet was off, Fourteen could feel him. That annoying fuzzy blanket that had been wrapped around what she could see but not feel had been torn away, and left in its place was the glowing beacon of a mind stripped bare. Even the natural defenses every cognizant mind created subconsciously had begun to fade, withering under the shade of an external crutch. There was no need to slip inside, as the front door had not so much been left open as kicked in, taking large chunks of the surrounding walls with it.
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~I needed you to at least try. I needed you to be my ''mother''.~
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It was nothing quite like 14 had ever seen before, and for a moment she considered preserving it just the way it was, as a monument to terrible ideas and idiocy. Two minds had begun to melt together, and even she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Were there a way, she'd almost want to study the gestalt. Psychically cut it apart just to see how it worked, and what practical applications it could be hiding.
 
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"Tch," Phoebe clicked her tongue, drawing attention her way. Kurrth slowed to pause his charge towards Alex. "You talk too much."
 
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A second later, it was over. There was nothing subtle or elegant about it. Instead, Fourteen ripped through what remained of Kurrth/Marco's natural defenses with a single focused strike, then followed it with another, and another, and another. Two dozen strikes in the span of a half second hit from all sides. And yet Kurrth still stood.
 
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"Strange," Celeste commented from her position nearby. Hands in the pockets of her jacket, she crossed the distance between herself and the Juggernaut. "That should have..." she commented, reaching out to give the comically larger man a push. Almost as if in a cartoon, he toppled over backwards and landed with a monumental crash. "Ah," Celeste tittered loftily. "There it is."
 
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She turned towards the nearby Alex, who was still on the ground where he'd been the target of Juggernaut's charge. "What can we say? You're welcome."
 
  
 
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Revision as of 18:10, 14 November 2020

MOA Fourteen.png
Moment of Awesome - The Stepford Cuckoos/Fourteen: Upon discovering a future 'child', Fourteen finally lets Emma Frost know how she feels.


If it had been any other moment, 14 might have been able to maintain her composure. She could have swallowed her anger, schooled her expression, and kept her business to herself. She could have taken in the anger through Sophie, and vented it out through Irma or Celeste or any of the others in the privacy of her room. She could have held her composure, not given away her emotions to the others in the room.

Give them power.

But it wasn't any other moment. It wasn't any other person. And it was like poking an old wound, one that had never been given the chance to properly heal. And 14 lost her self control.

~You can't even say the word, can you? Can you?! It's 'Daughter'. DAUGH. TER. You can't even pretend that you care, can you?~

Emma flinched at the accusation flung at her, at the justified anger that roiled underneath it. She closed her eyes, unable to look at Sophie for a moment. ~I don't have the right,~ she said softly. ~I haven't earned the right to call you... to call any of you my daughter. My daughters.~

~You didn't have to earn it! You just have to be there!~ There was a deep thrum over the psychic line, the mental equivalent of a deep and shaky breath. ~Do you have any idea how hard it is to give up on family? How much it hurts?~ A flower of grief bloomed through her mind.

~Do you even remember that I sent you a Christmas gift for the first three years after you found me? Or was it just another box you tossed in your closet at the end of the day?~

~Every time I tried, I failed. Effort wasted for nothing. I give up. And eventually, I'd try again. Every time, nothing. And it hurt every time.~

~I kept them,~ replied Emma, softly. ~All of them. I couldn’t… I didn’t open them. I didn’t dare. I was so angry. At first. Not at you, at any of you. At what you were proof of. At what someone had done to me to make you. I couldn’t… And then it was too long. Too late. I was… ashamed of what I had done to you. How could you want anything to do with me after what I had done to you? At how badly I had failed you.~ For a moment, Emma’s face distorted with pain and then it smoothed out again. ~I didn’t think you could ever forgive me for that.~

~So you ran,~ 14 sneered, letting her feelings flood through the link. There was a bit of disdain there, but mostly there was an overwhelming sense of hurt and loneliness. ~You didn't know me. You didn't try to know me, but you decided you knew how I felt.~

14 hated how her hands were shaking, across all bodies. Hated how she could tell her anger was being drowned out by her sadness and hurt and all the other emotions that said 'I care. you can hurt me with this.'

~I needed you to at least try. I needed you to be my mother.~

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