xp_logs | Keep The Faith: Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate...

After a sleepless night, Forge's ordeal continues

"Ytterbium... lutetium... hafnium? Right. Stupid lanthanides." Forge kept mumbling to himself, repeating the periodic table to himself like a mantra, trying to defocus from the situation. His friends were alive, he was alive - for the moment. But there was still no way to tell what the Brotherhood had planned. Inevitably, they'd realize that none of their four captives had the information they sought, and once that happened, they were all expendable.

The sound of the door behind him broke his concentration, and sent a chill up his spine at the thought that the moment of expendability was possibly imminent.

"Have you had some time to think?" came the almost lazy-sounding question. Nimrod seemed almost relaxed as he came around the chair from behind, allthough the look he gave Forge was too intent for the picture of control to be perfect. "I really don't want this to turn unpleasant. I know a great deal about you, Forge. I know how close you came to playing an important role in the course of events."

"Sure, whatever," Forge said in an exhausted voice, not meeting the Hungarian powerhouse's gaze. "What important role now?"

"Your natural inventiveness could have been extremely useful," Nimrod said, pacing the boundaries of the room slowly. "It nearly was. But you used your machine on Polaris, didn't you?"

Forge visibly flinched. "The Neutralizer," he whispered, obviously chastened. "You've got another thing coming if you think I'm building anything for you. Especially an abomination like that. You don't have enough leverage. Hell, there's not enough leverage in the world." He summoned up the willpower to look at Nimrod through red-rimmed eyes. "So if that's what you came in here to try and deal with, Joe, you can go to hell."

Nimrod snorted, murmuring something soft in Hungarian under his breath as he shook his head. The leisurely pacing continued, around and around the chair. "I find this happens often," he said, almost conversationally. "When your mutation is physical, those whose mutations lie here-" He reached out a finger as he passed, tapping Forge's forehead. "-tend to believe you can't be anything but blunt. I could try and menace you into creating a Neutralizer... if that had been my intention. I merely raise it as an example. Once upon a time, John Henry Forge, you gave in to that little voice inside you. The one that says that you are special, that you are more than the flatscan herd, than mutants who fail to see the world and themselves clearly. You very nearly followed through. Do you know, I don't think he blames you, for... flinching? You were young. Uncertain. Sometimes it takes us a while longer to learn."

"Us?" Forge flinched away from Nimrod, standing up as much as he was able and pulling away as far as the chains would let him. "Let's get something straight here. You haven't earned the right to think of yourself as anything close to my league, you half-witted amateur. Magneto came to me because he knew - he knows what I'm capable of. He spoke to me like an equal, because he recognized that in me when everyone else looked past me. You?" He looked at Nimrod with something like scorn. "You're a charity case. You're a blunt instrument, a crowbar. A simpleton. I know a little about you as well, Jozsef Veres. They kicked you out of the Army for being batshit crazy, didn't they? You know all about those little voices inside you, don't you? But hey, at least schizophrenia means you're never alone, right?"

As he spat the mocking words out, Forge slowly circled, gauging the distance between himself and Nimrod. "You're right. I was young and uncertain. For a time, I let doubt in, and I let other people push me where they thought I should go. Now, I know who I am. And when it's time to - act!"

Shouting the last word, Forge pivoted on his right foot like Garrison had shown him so many times in practice, lashing out forcefully with the full strength of the gears and pistons in his mechanical leg, aimed like a jackhammer right for Nimrod's knee.

The kick didn't have the chance to connect; Nimrod's hand lashed out, faster than a striking cobra, and closed around Forge's ankle. He yanked, hard, and Forge crashed awkwardly onto the floor, on his back.

"I am the simpleton?" Nimrod asked, almost calmly. "I see reality, Forge. I respect your talents - as does Magneto. But unlike you, it would seem, I know their limitations." He was still holding onto Forge's ankle with one hand. He placed his other hand on Forge's calf - and began to squeeze. Slowly. The sound of protesting metal was very loud.

"It would please a part of you, if I reminded you that I could end your life right now, wouldn't it?" Nimrod asked steadily. Still squeezing. Not blinking as he met Forge's eyes. "Ease your guilt, about your youthful indiscretions. If you die at the hands of this blunt instrument, this... crazy man, you no longer need to doubt. No longer need to fear a day when your weakness means the death of someone you care about. I think about my comrades, the ones I killed, nearly every day. I reflect on how I failed them. I see them when I close my eyes." There was a flare of something ugly in Nimrod's eyes for the first time in the conversation. "I know what I am. I am aware. You - you play a role, to hide the fear."

Wincing in pain, Forge felt the metal struts and gears of his leg give way, crushed under Nimrod's grip. While his power gave him an incredible insight into machines, the design of his prosthetics meant he felt every strain of metal, every burned-out servo, every torn cable as if it were flesh and blood. When Veres finally dropped him, Forge curled into a small ball, hands restrained in the manacles and unable to grip his crushed leg. "You..." he managed to gasp out, teeth gritted in a mix of agony and anguish. "I'm nothing like you. You kill, you give in to it. I'm not like that. I can change. I have changed. I won't-"

He tried to stand, but his leg buckled under him and he fell, colliding with the folding metal chair and sending it skidding across the floor. "I'm not one of you," he said sharply, but without any force or conviction behind the words. "I'm not. I'm not."

Forge kept silently repeating the words to himself, crawling on the floor to the extent of the chain, trying to keep as far away from the Brotherhood's powerhouse as possible. "You can't make me doubt myself. I believe. I have faith."

But the words rang hollow.

Nimrod watched him, eyes slightly narrowed, expression... mildly curious, for lack of a better description. "Death is very... easy, after you've seen enough of it," he said. Calmly. The imperturable mask was back. "Is the best answer to the world we live in truly to be more humane than the flatscans, Forge? Why do they deserve that? Deep down, you haven't forgotten what it's like to feel the need to lash out at the herd for their crimes. Don't delude yourself into thinking that you ever will."

He turned away from the prone Forge, strode across the room to the door. "The next time you see me," he said, almost conversationally, "I will require cooperation. Before they... kicked me out of the Army, I worked counterterrorism, Forge. I know very well that even the most committed fanatic can be broken. And your faith is nowhere near that strong." He left without another word, the noise of the door echoing in the silence.

Meanwhile, Kyle awakens to find that sanity is a tenuous concept to keep a grasp on.

The splash of cold water was a completely different shock than the pain of Senyaka's psionic whips, but it served its purpose, jolting Kyle into quick and sudden alertness. Before him, Senyaka had shed the long buttoned tunic he'd worn earlier, a striking network of pale scars showing over his dusky skin. His face, however, was still concealed behind the red scarf, only his dark eyes glaring out at Kyle.

"You must be alert for this," he insisted, holding his hands up in front of his face, the flickering energy tendrils creeping forward and writhing in the air. "Your mind must be clear, your thoughts pure, yes? This way, we will cooperate; I will give you pain, and you will give me the information I seek. Now, we shall begin again, from the top. The remote access codes to Cerebro, please."

The 'please' was accompanied by a double lashing of the whips down Kyle's chest, the sizzling sound a counterpoint to the symphony of agony their touch produced.

Once Kyle had finished grunting - he'd decided he wasn't going to give this guy any more jerk-off material by screaming or howling, he swallowed the blood in his mouth - he'd bitten through his lip, he realized - and opened one eye. "Oh, sure, dude. You just had to ask nice. It's eight six seven five three oh go eat shit and die." He even sang it to the tune of the song, right up until the insult.

Senyaka blinked, his jaw visibly dropping behind the concealing fabric. "You are trying to anger me. This is a cunning trick. But tell me, what do you think it proves?" He drew the whips back again, then paused. Slowly, he let his arms drop to his sides, the tendrils of psionic energy retreating back into his hands. Calmly, he reached up and tugged the crimson cloth away from his face, moving close and looking into Kyle's eyes.

"What is in there, I wonder?" he mused quietly. "The rational, thinking mind of a man? Or simply the innate cunning of an animal? Loyalty, pack mentality, they are very similar, yes? There is a saying, he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. Is that what you are doing here? Withstanding the pain by retreating into the beast?"

A smooth fingertip pressed against Kyle's forehead, wiping away a drop of sweat. Slowly, almost reverently, Senyaka touched his finger to the tip of his tongue, humming lightly. "Remarkable. Which is real, do you think? Are you a man who cannot control the beast, or merely a beast that has been told it is a man?"

"I am so giving you the finger in my head." Kyle growled. "I'm more human then you are. I don't torture people, I don't threaten to kill anyone." ~I am human. I am human. I AM human.~ He repeated in his head over and over. "This whole 'beast' shit is getting pretty old, try something else. I think I'm bored." He was also running out of ways to talk back to this guy, and the pauses between sentences were getting longer and longer. "I don't get off on anyone else's pain. I have normal sex, I don't need fucked up pain kinks to get my rocks off."

"Ah, yes. Now you raise the question. You say that it is what you do not do that defines you as human," Senyaka replied. "But in your mind, can you say that you have never reveled in the violence that is a part of your chosen life? The drawing of blood, the breaking of bone, the purity of pain? Ah - there it is!" He stopped in front of Kyle, pausing his pacing to drag the back of his hand down the feral's cheek, the crackle of the psionic pain-whip arcing between the two of them, drawing a wince from Senyaka as well.

"There it is," he repeated. "You have doubts. But I am here for you. I understand you. I know what it is like to feel that primal wildness, the desire to shed the pretenses that civilization calls 'man'. I know your beast, Kyle. You deny it all you like, but we are the same."

He stepped back, looking over Kyle some more, before tugging his scarf back up to hide his face. The sympathetic visage was gone, replaced by the faceless mask of the torturer. A sigh came from behind the crimson cowl, and Senyaka's head shook as he produced the glowing whips again. "But despite my sympathies, I have a duty. I will get what I need from you. Soon, you will not be able to resist, and either I will have what I need - or there will be only the beast left."

In rapid, rhythmic succession, the lashings began again.

Despite his earlier promise to himself not to yell anymore, punctuating every strike of the psionic whips on his skin, Kyle yelled. At first, it was every obscenity he could think of, everything he'd heard from classmates, from teammates, in jail. The roaring and pounding in his ears grew louder then the noises he was making, until although he was screaming "NO" over and over but he could barely hear his own voice. Behind tightly shut eyes, his vision pulsed with every lash, every heartbeat, the red and white giving way to black more by the second.

The one sound that could get through the screams, cruel and harsh, was Senyaka's laughter. "Good!" he crowed, sounding almost proud. "You are accepting it! Give yourself over to this. You will not break, I know this now. Let me give you this enlightenment, then. You will not break, because to do so would be a choice. And an animal cannot make that choice."

There was no answer. Kyle was too exhausted to say anything, even to grunt. He lay there as limply as the restraints would allow and waited for the fire in his nerves to stop. Under the dull thud of his pulse in his ears, and the rumble of his stomach and the leather restraints and muzzle creaking, he heard Senyaka repeating himself, over and over. "You will not break. An animal cannot choose."

The anger at his confinment surged, and he thrashed against the table again, snarling and growling until he was again too exhausted to move and fell back.

"Calm yourself."

He heard the voice, and it wasn't Senyaka's.

"He's lying. You know this."

Kyle opened one eye, and would have shut it again in disbelief if the man sitting on the table hadn't shaken his head at him.

"You heard me. He's lying. I know this because you know this."

At the far end of the room, Kyle saw.. Kyle, clean-shaven, hair covered in a black bandanna, claws trimmed and neat, not left bloody and torn off by scraping against a metal table, and seated on the edge of the metal table, bare feet and black fatigue-pants clad legs crossed indian-style. ~I have gone totally batshit insane. Well, this fucking sucks.~

"You aren't insane. You are in shock. I know that because you know that. Clarice was in shock when you rescued her and Angelo from Toad. Marius was in shock when he teleported and almost died. You are in shock now." The other Kyle hopped down from the table smoothly, pushing himself up and unfolding his legs before he even reached the top of the upward arc. He walked around Senyaka, ignoring Kyle's tormenter as he put the long tunic back on and folded the red cloth he had worn, and stood with bare arms crossed over a black tanktop.

"He's lying. You're in shock. Listen to me and I will get you out of here."