Shadow King - Occupation

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

Alone watching television, Cain Marko has an unseen visitor - with invisible effects



Cain trudged into the TV room and picked up the remote, leaning back into the reinforced couch. Thankfully most of the students were busy in classes and he could settle in for a day of leisure. Turning on the television, he immediately frowned as a loud punk rock video flared into life. With a scowl, he thumbed the channel button and began to watch the screen flicker.

The intangible, unknowable expanse of the Astral Plane roiled and reformed itself giving way as the ghost in the machine made its way through continuously malleable surroundings, slipping past the sparsely populated corners of the Great Plane, the flickering lights of the few minds that made their home here, their presence imprinted like the footsteps of a giant - imposing edifices, the crumbling battlements, the towering castles and the barely standing hovels. Often enough the outward appearance was worse than useless, the most decrepit of structures concealing the jaws of mind-traps and defenses that would cripple an unwary psi.

The ghost reveled in the chaos and anarchy, the ever-changing sea of the Plane. Had he but time he would have paused, losing himself in its depth - for there was always something new to find, some unexpected secret to uncover or buried treasure to unearth. If one had the curiosity to try and the skill to survive, of course.

But not today.

Pausing for a moment the entity, that liked to think of itself as the Shadow King, gathered itself. This was the culmination of its life's work after all. This was his Rubicon.

Had it a face it would have smiled then, wide and toothy, a hungry, triumphant expression of a creature that should have had tentacles.

And then the shadow slipped the border of the Plane and into the mindscape of its target, blossoming like a malignant black sun behind the eyes of an unsuspecting giant.

"Hello, Mr. Marko."

Cain Marko blinked, and somehow the world around him seemed to freeze in place, flickers of another landscape overlaying his vision like afterimages. Like scenes from a Bosch painting, the barely-visible glimpses wormed their way directly into his brain, bringing with them the emotional trails of despair, confusion, and panic.

The alien presence poured into Cain's psyche like rushing water through a riverbed, following paths and channels seemingly laid out in preparation. Because, of course, this was a mind that had spent decades becoming accustomed to another, more powerful presence just squatting in the background of Marko's subconscious. That house had been abandoned, but never demolished, and now a new occupant was taking up shop.

The Shadow King moved rapidly, knowing that time was short. The first moments were crucial as Marko's mind could offer only a scattered, haphazard, instinctual resistance to the assault. The entity had mapped out Cain's mindscape as much as it could in advance and was now trading on that preparation to sink its hooks deep into his victim's psyche. Similar to most mutants possessing regenerative abilities, Marko's mind possessed a rather unique structure, making it a more difficult target but the void left by the previous occupant left it just vulnerable enough.

Still, deep in the depths of the Marko's psyche the Shadow King could feel it - a sense of a storm building, a palpable wave of age gathering force. The entity felt a shiver of pleasure and anticipation go through it as it hastily anchored Cain's mindscape to the Astral Plane. It would be the first time it ever attempted a direct take-over and domination of someone's mind, the prospect of finally putting the dreams of decades into practice made filled it with almost overwhelming glee, making the unconscious body of Farouk twist with the echoes it, two continents away.

Years ago, Amahl's mind was attacked, almost stolen; the psychic rape beaten back only by the utmost effort of Farouk himself and the entity, hidden in the recesses of his psyche. Both were young and inexperienced then, almost defeated by what was, in retrospect, a rather amateurish attack.

Still, it was from that assault that most of the Shadow King's theories had been drawn. He'd been privy to the literature that Farouk studied on the subject and he had rifled the Astral Plane on his own, for yet more data.

But in the end nothing was as useful as those moments-stretching-into-centuries spent feverishly fighting off monsters and horrors conjured by the Hag.

For it was then that it became blindingly obvious to it, that no terror imagined by someone else's mind could compete with demons of one's own.

The 'scape of Marko's mind shifted, twisted, bent and the Shadow King smiled thinly, happily through Cain Marko's eyes, stretching the thickly muscled arms of his new psi-form and sitting with careful nonchalance behind the desk in the memory of the office that he had pulled from Cain's mind. Time sifting rapidly away he fed his tentacles deeper and deeper into the Juggernaut's undermind, gobbling up memories and fears, desires and regrets - like a shark feeding a never-ending hunger.

And closers, and closer the rage was building.

The entity ginned again, the teeth white and sharp.

"Come, Mr. Marko. Let us meet the real you."

In the real world, after what seemed like hours of sitting like a statue, the body of Cain Marko finally blinked.

Inside the mindscape, images and memory blurred into red-tinged focus. The fires of Vietnam, the unspeakable rage of Cyttorak fighting in the endless wastes of Limbo, the pain of the Ruby shattering in his chest, the contempt of his father - and through it all, the smug face laughing behind it all, watching.

Somewhere inside Marko's psyche, a small shred of consciousness held fast, asserting itself against the blitz of the Shadow King. Where every other facet of his personality yielded, this one last shard of independence stood fast. Amidst the whirling chaos, an image of Cain Marko trudged forward against what felt like a burning barrage of red-hot sand. Every temptation that had urged him to lose control, to give in to the rage and anger, all bombarded the one last bastion of identity in his mind.

But yet even with nothing but instinctual resistance, one small piece of Cain Marko would not surrender, would not kneel.

And if it would not kneel, then it would sit.

By the time Cain's body blinked again, the one last bit of independent thought in his mind was shoved away into a deep, dark corner. Imprisoned in a steel chair, its wheels locked and immobile.

Inwardly, behind cold blue eyes, Cain Marko was screaming.

Outwardly, his mouth cracked in a smile.

The smile that to a careful observer might have looked only a shade different from a deaths-head grimace.

The Juggernaut wasn't playing to the script.

Somewhere miles away Farouk was dying by inches, the clock running out on the frail body. It had been useful for so long but this moment was inevitable, ordained the moment that a faint shadow of his mind found its Self on that day of pain and fire, as young Amahl watched the lynching and subconsciously locked down his mind, creating inadvertently a guardian to keep his mutant curse away.

Not forever, but until he felt himself string enough, safe enough.

Ah, but the law of unintended consequence rules all, the Shadow King though contentedly as he flitted down the corridors of Marko's mind toward the stubborn kernel the refused to yield, refused to fight, refused to give way to the day that was years in planning.

Good years, on the balance. trying, at times, but in the end... yes. Good years.

Decades of work, of patience, of superhuman patience above all.

But then, why not - the entity was more than human, after all. Much more, it thought contentedly feeling its strength, strength gathered patiently, oh so very patiently over time, leeched drop by drop from the unsuspecting telepaths Farouk shepherded through the Alamut.

Dregs and weaklings, a harvest of cripples except for select few. But patience won out in the end. Quantity has a quality all of its own, after all. And then America, the mansion, the feeding ground it could never have hoped for!

Alas, as always, there was the price to pay.

As the stolen energy of a multitude of psis coursed through the body meant for a portion of such power, Farouk began to wither and die, his flesh unable to cope with the strain. Thankfully the search for a new host did not have to go far afield, not with the mansion full of mutants right there to be plucked at whim.

Cain's body shuddered suddenly, as if under a chilly breeze, the entity playing lightly the nerve impulses, stretching and fitting its new possession.

Oh, yes.

This would do nicely. The invulnerable powers of this hulk would allow the Shadow King to finally cast off the self-imposed shackles, to spread its wings. The energy that this engine could handle.... there would be no limits!

But that was the future. The reality was that the entity was still bound to the man kept barely alive on a slab in Madripoor. Farouk had to survive until Juggernaut surrendered. It needed a physical anchor, for not even the Shadow King could survive on the Astral Plane alone.

And all that was standing between the entity and its goal was an overmuscled moron that didn't know when he was beaten.

Its control over Marko's mindscape almost complete, the Shadow King planted itself before the image of Cain, slumped in a chair festooned with chains, his eyes distant, drool gathering in the corner of his mouth, his lips drawn back in a snarl. The entity was unseen, the big man's eyes fixed instead on the ever-changing insubstantial mirages and memories tormenting him.

Shadow King swore vilely, softly. The rage was there, simmering and boiling just under the surface. The rage and self-loathing and doubt and linked together in an explosive force that needed only to be released and channeled to shatter Marko's Self forever, beyond repair or hope.

But somehow it was held back, clamped down upon with an iron self-control of a trapped animal.

The Juggernaut could have no conception of what he was doing; he must be reacting purely on instinct. The Shadow King bared his teeth in a frustration. The time was running out and as long as this fragment of resistance continued to flicker there would be no safety, no victory...

He cursed again.

The plan was perfect, beautiful. Marko trapped in a battle with ghosts, with no clear target for his rage, only aimless despair and diffused rage.

It should have fucking worked!

To change the tactic now. The risk was incalculable, and yet there seemed to be no choice.

Kurt Marko sighed regretfully and with a flicker of his hand dismissed the cavalcade of horrors haunting his son's eyes. He crouched before him, a scornful smile twisting the handsome face.

"Fucked up, again, didn't you? Well. What else is new."? He shook his head and his had snaked out with shocking speed, the slap rocking Cain's face. "Wake up, boy! Don't you even have the guts to look at me?"

He laughed softly again, as he felt the rage growing deeper, coalescing into a towering giant of fury, so very close to breaking free now.

"I have to admit, Cain, my boy you grew up to be everything I thought you would. Jesus Christ... Even crippled Chuck is twice the man you are. At least he doesn't doesn't have to prove big he is by getting some 18 year old kid dead."

Kurt brought his face closer, almost touching his son's forehead, his voice dropping into a sibilant whisper. "How does it feel? Playing the hero with no risk? Getting the glory and risking nothing? Big, bad immortal mutant..."

Kurt's words cut off in a surprised gasp as Marko's head rose, the blood shot eyes glaring at him with sudden, surprising clarity. "Who said I was a mutant, asswipe?"

The sound of chain snapping went unheard as Kurt's nose disintegrated under impact of the head-butt, the world disappearing for a second in a welter of pain and blood as his cartilage crunched.

The mindscape lurched suddenly out of its control and Marko rose, spat blood and grinned coldly, the chain twirling lazily in his hand.

I think I made a mistake. The entity thought absently as it realized suddenly, that the rage was no longer suppressed.

"You want me mad?" Cain bellowed, the mental landscape wavering like asphalt in a summer heat wave, "You want anger? You fucking got it! You fuck with my mind, put on my old man's face like it's supposed to be some red flag in front of a bull? Whoever the hell you are, you don't know me."

Two wraps of the chain went around the throat of the Shadow King's form, still bearing the face of Kurt Marko. Cain grabbed each end of the chain and yanked, feeling a small bit of vindication - even if illusory - of having the specter of his father at his mercy.

"You want to fight me? You want to fight me?" Marko shouted into the reddening face of his tormentor. "I held the line against Hell itself, you stupid slimy son of a bitch! Who do you think you are?"

The tortured mindscape of Cain's mind shuddered yet again, as the Shadow King was driven onto the defensive by the rampaging Juggernaut. Its control, buckled and slipped, the dark room where Marko was trapped only seconds ago disappearing like a mirage swept away by the wind. The two combatants suddenly finding themselves in a small clearing amidst the jungle swamp, the fetid hot air beating down on them with an almost palpable presence.

The flies coated the suddenly sweating faces of the two men grappling with each other, as Marko continued to scream out his rage and the entity hissed back impotent and poisonous mixture of fear and disgust.

The Shadow King's astral form flickered, his surprise at Marko's attack reflecting in the sudden inability to settle on an appropriate mask. The result was a horrifying, malleable construct morphing constantly and with haphazard direction through the images and forms that the entity most recently encountered. The people it saw just moments ago in Cain's backbrain.

But its attention still fixated on the blocking of unexpected strength of Marko's attack, the forms lacked precision, blurring into ach other with bewildering speed and little definition. Charles Xavier's crippled form looked up at his brother from the broken wheelchair with the pain-filled eyes of his platoon sergeant, Remy's insolent grin looking deathly out of place on Cyttorak's face, Moira's surprisingly delicate fingers scrabbled at the chains encircling Yvette's throat and Bobby screamed piteously in Kurt Marko's voice as Juggernaut's fist crashed down again into his face.

The two minds collided, neither giving way, as the Shadow King played desperately for time, knowing that that was one commodity that he did not have to waste.

Its desperation tore at its control in a vicious circling, as Marko's unending, frenzied onslaught denied it time to collect itself, to regroup, to marshal its strength. Its fear heightened suddenly yet again as the Vietnam jungle began to change, the red tinge creeping into the underbrush, the cracks appearing in the suddenly dry earth.

He's forcing me into the template of his fight with the fucking Cyttorak, the entity thought frantically, its terror suddenly intense at the unforeseen maneuver. If Marko managed to overlay the pattern of his memory onto his mindscape, he might be able to lock his attacker into replaying that old conflict, with outcome being much the same.

The fear, however, suddenly crescendoed, transforming from blind, thought-robbing, paralyzing panic into a cold spike of coolly clocking thought, decision materializing suddenly and inevitably.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Of all the powers in the world, and I had pick the one with daddy issues that would give Freud himself the vapors.

Rage.

It was the core of the being known as the Juggernaut.

It was the root of his strength and weakness. It was his burden and his blessing.

Rage, all consuming and never idle.

Rage, held back only by constant, never-flagging control.

Rage, simmering always under the surface, waiting for the armor to crack.

Rage, mastered and unleashed in a focused, tight fury - turned into unstoppable force when still leashed, still controlled. A sullen, obedient servant, a half-tamed animal.

...but if it ever should slip the leash...

Oh, this is going to be unpleasant to the extreme.

"Mr. Marko?" Siena Blaze blinked fuzzily, the sleep still lingering in her eyes as she smiled up at Juggernaut, her expression suddenly changing into naked, shivering terror. "Wh... NO! DON'T PLEASE! I'll be good!"

The inarticulate, throat-rending roar of pure hate seemed to shake the very foundations of the mindscape and deep inside itself, despite the pain, the entity smiled.

Cain's fist paused for a second, seeing the young girl's visage suddenly overlaid with the image of her in a hospital bed, one side of her head still shaved and connected to plates and tubes. And still the echoes pleading, begging him to hold back his anger. His great regret, thrown back in his face.

"Why didn't you warn me?"

Blond hair lengthened and features sharpened, shards of ruby crystal jutting from Alison Blaire's broken body. "Why did you let me have her?" - Cyttorak's laughter echoed as Dazzler's body convulsed, bleeding out onto a medlab table as Cain stood stock-still, unable to move.

"You said you'd come back for us. You weren't strong enough."

This time it was Clarice's voice, coming from a face whose purple lips were cracked with boils, hair falling out in clumps, eyes white and sightless, surrounded by radiation burns. "Why weren't you strong enough?"

"Because you're no better than me," the low growl came from behind Cain this time. Logan leaned against a stump, hair unkempt and matted with blood, claws stained crimson. "You're just a dumb animal. Brute force without reason. You think they respect you? That's fear, boy." Kurt Marko's voice from Logan's lips. "Just like you really want."

Fear. Anger. Regret. Doubt.

"Let me help you, Cain."

The visions parted, and Charles Xavier stood before Cain, holding back the smoking, oily form of the Shadow King with one hand and reaching out the other towards his brother. "You cannot do this on your own. But I need you to let me in. Let me fight your battle for you, it's the only way," the Shadow King said in Charles' voice.

Not enough. There simply wasn't enough power, the entity knew as it continue to weave pain into its intricate patterns, the hard-won composure put to good use, the psi-constructs scorching and bleeding the battered psyche of Juggernaut, the illusions blooming in malevolent magnificence of hurt, tightly controlled, now, purposeful and flawless, best work the Shadow King has ever done.

But in the end never quite enough.

He was just stretched too damn thin.

Keeping the track on the X-Men and their pathetic twitchings toward the truth, keeping shepherding the psies who were still, preposterously unaware of his hooks planted so deeply within their minds, hovering over farouk's inert and dying husk, and watching the growing storm sweeping the Astral Plane.

If the entity had teeth it would have gritted them until they squealed.

How in the bloody, fucking hell could it have missed the fact that Cain was not a mutant? How could it have misunderstood the very basic nature of the being it so carelessly enmeshed itself with!

The host of a God.

Shadow King screamed silently inside itself, enraged at its own stupidity. No one who has made the Astral Plane could remain ignorant of the careful balance that maintained its foundation, that allowed that very dimension to exist.

His miscalculation has not gone unnoticed by the Plane. And now, it - never clam and stable in the best of time - was raging, the ripples of his fight with Juggernaut growing and gathering force into a gale of pure entropy, raining destruction and chaos in its wake, feeding on itself and growing yet more. The Plane roiling with baleful energy.

The entity has never seen the like.

It was horrifying, it was awesome in its fury and, above all, it was beautiful.

But most of all it was completely unpredictable. A result of such a small misstep - and now...

And now, the entity itself was trapped, as much as Cain himself. Too much energy was expended in its initial assault on Marko's mind. Too much of the precious reserve. Too much of it processed through the failing body of Farouk. Disengaging now and trying for another host? Impossible! No time.

Frustration exploded inside it as the entity looked pleadingly at Juggernaut, Eve Marko weeping her face battered and bleeding.

Not enough. Never enough. The web it was wrapping around Cain never quite stayed. Always a sliver of understanding that it was all only an illusion remained somewhere deep in Marko's backbrain, allowing him to tear himself free, feeding his rage yet more.


And yet the Shadow King had that power, it was waiting, begging to be used, hovering tantalizingly just at his finger teeps calling to the entity in a siren's voice. Its tendrils buried deep and sure, trembling with need inside dozens of telepaths around the world, waiting to send him power enough to swamp this thug's mind.

So near and so useless!

Farouk's body would never cope with sudden influx of so much extra energy. Already the Shadow King was forced to limit itself to minute amounts for months, blocking even Farouk's own powers, and even that had not been enough to stop his physical frame from failing.

And now he was trapped here, shackled to the mind so unexpectedly well protected by the seemingly endless reserves of fury, the rage swirling like a tornado of fire.

His greatest strength and his Achilles' heel. For rage consumed as well as protected. Burning out the very self that Marko was trying to protect.

And when the last embers cooled, only an emptiness would remain. A barren wasteland prime for molding.

Shadow King shuddered under yet more blows but laughed.

A roll of the dice, all or nothing.

Who would be left standing in the end - will it be Marko, the entity crushed and stomped into the ground or the Shadow King inheriting the charred remnants of his mind?

It laughed again, mockingly into Cain's face. The two giants still locked together, neither giving an inch, trading blow for blow with no retreat imaginable for either.

And around them the Astral Plane was burning. ________________________________________