[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/MQT2m7B.png[/img][/center]
[sup][b]S1- SENSATION & WONDER[/b][right][i]X-MEN[/i] #1 - [i][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehE7dPlYr8E]Endorphinmachine[/url][/i][/right][/sup]
[sup][right]Unknown Region, Northern Atlantic Ocean[/right][/sup]
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[color=darkgray]The complex’s entrance was belied by a single skiff, bobbing helplessly in the sea. To passersby, it would appear the consequence of high seas and drunken sailors, left to die in the most treacherous waters north of the Bermuda Triangle. Here, where the torrential tides of shore gave way to oceans ruled by the machinations of hurricanes, beyond the purview of even the sea gods of Atlantis. These were Cabal waters.

Sebastian Shaw had heard it [i]called[/i] a cabal, anyway. They didn’t know the meaning of the word. By Shaw’s reckoning, his resources and cunning alone represented over half of the group’s measure. The rest were the dregs, nazi scientists, fool magicians. There was even a sallow fellow with a giant head that had not a [i]drop[/i] of sense to fill it. All this jammed into a pressurized tub shaped -- [i]infuriatingly[/i] -- like their leader’s [i]head[/i]. At least the Dominators had gotten the color wrong.

Shaw approached on a vessel of his own, a white wedge of a submersible, sealed from the elements by way of a translucent dome affixed overhead, with a smart white leather and steel interior. Nothing to brag about at the yacht club, but sufficiently traceless and comfortable for Shaw’s purposes.

[color=white]“Leland, take us down,”[/color] Shaw said, spotting the damned marker. Harold Leland was one of the few personal associates Shaw would dare allow near such enterprise. The rest of his entourage were too keen for advancement, and too sharp to miss the opportunity to throw him off balance. To bring them here tonight would be to hand them his Hellfire Club whole, and indeed, the world entire. Leland, by contrast, was as dull as he was rotund. He made a fine second, clever only the ways that were not of true threat to Shaw’s aims, limited in imagination and, against Shaw’s ability, sorely lacking in threat.

Leland gestured and the craft descended, sinking into the brine as if a stone. Wielding his mutancy, Leland could control any object’s mass, as he did now with the ship’s ballast, bringing them face to face with the sea’s grinning skull.

“Into the devil’s gullet, eh Shaw?” Leland said. They approached the base, diving to where the skull’s apparent teeth met the seabed, where Black Manta’s submersibles ferried themselves in and out of the dock.

[color=white]“Were it so dignified,”[/color] said Shaw. Their craft settled in a cylindrical chamber of slick foreign material now covered in barnacles and the vestiges of wild seaweed. The skull around them moaned like a whale as its pneumatic systems worked to purge the water in preference to the oxygen that most of the crew favored. Shaw approached his craft’s airtight entrance as water voided the space.

[color=white]“Leland,”[/color] he said, turning the door’s handle, [color=white]“wait, and be prepared to beat a hasty retreat. The locals may object to our current interests.”[/color]

Leland nodded simply, and Shaw stepped out to seize his destiny.

[center]---[/center]

The facility of today’s interest was one of the labs of Professor Ivo, a reed thin man in his sixth or seventh decade with an uncanny knack for being in two places at once, on account of his small army of robot duplicates. By this Ivo’s ten pound eye bags, and the orange scruff erupting from his chin, Shaw assumed this one was the genuine article.

Ivo worked at a gutted cyborg of an office desk, covered in oil and screws and other machine viscera. The room it inhabited had to be as large as Grand Central Station, ceiling swooping up and back down again in a flourish of alien architecture, but Ivo’s desk was almost imperceptible against the production line that whirred around it. The line was of decidedly human construction, with flat metal angles and rubberized conveyors carrying the parts of robotic homunculi that gleamed in the low light.

[color=white]“Ivo,”[/color] Shaw greeted him.

[color=orange]“Sebastian,”[/color] he responded, his soldering iron flashed in the dimness, [color=orange]“come to finally stand amongst the rest of the freaks and geeks, have you?”[/color]

[color=white]“I haven’t time for chit-chat, little man,”[/color] Shaw said, [color=white]“I’ve come for a data core.”[/color]

[color=orange]“Select one at your leisure. Though I’m afraid you will find it quite useless without the entirety of the associated android.”[/color] Ivo held his work up to the light, a squat green motherboard speckled with gold flecks of computer intelligence, dioded in accordance with Zola’s research. The corners of his mouth turned down, dissatisfied.

[color=white]“It was flagged for retrieval in your system [i]hours[/i] ago,”[/color] the edge of Shaw’s voice slipped into annoyance.

[color=orange]“[i]Aah,[/i]”[/color] Ivo said, bemusement in his tone, [color=orange]“[i]that[/i] data core. The computer could hardly distinguish it from the others. A production error.”[/color]

Ivo turned to face him, with a crooked smile returned to his face. [color=orange]“What use has a mutant businessman in such a thing?”[/color] The question was surely a trap. Shaw thought for only a moment,

[color=white]“It will make a suitable basis for the Hellfire Club’s supercomputer,”[/color] he lied, [color=white]“once we’ve stripped it of your... [i]quirks[/i].”[/color] Ivo laughed, a cruel tutting sound that quickly gave way to a pained wheeze. From the insult, or his paltry lie, Shaw could not tell.

[color=orange]“There,”[/color] Ivo gestured with his chin at the other side of the lab, [color=orange]“you’ll keep me abreast of any [i]developments[/i], I’m sure. Computers are my speciality.”[/color] His smile was coy. 

[color=white]“Mmm,”[/color] Shaw grunted in half-response, content that Ivo wouldn’t get in his way for the time being. He walked across the lab, stepping over a section of belt that converged in an ‘x’ at the room’s center, passing robotic heads and torsos between one another. The opposite bench that Ivo indicated was relatively clear, spare a splotch of machine grease and a broken socket wrench laying impotent across it. But the core was nowhere to be found.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“Cold.”[/color] A voice out of the darkness. Shaw started. He craned his neck back at Ivo, who still toiled at his desk.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“Colder,”[/color] the voice said. Shaw whirled to it, his mind reaching out for his mutant power.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“Hot,”[/color] it said, and Shaw’s eyes settled on its holder. Out of the dark was Felix Faust, another of their cabal, dressed head to toe in dream colored robes that obscured everything but the malignant ‘v’ of his brow and the poison emeralds of his eyes beneath. In a gloved hand, he held Shaw’s core. It was a tight metallic framework wreathed about an imperceptibly detailed crystal lattice. It was the only medium that could sustain the amount of data they required, and the only thing durable enough to be expected to survive in an android’s core.

[color=white]“The core is of no use to you, sorcerer,”[/color] Shaw growled.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“Perhaps,”[/color] said Faust, [COLOR=#B2CFA1]“and perhaps not. Don’t think the significance of it is lost on me, Shaw.”[/color]

Shaw rankled. Faust already knew it was no ordinary core. Ivo described it as a production error; this was true, if only partially. Shaw turned his hand over, presenting his palm to Faust.

[color=white]“Give it. I won’t ask twice,”[/color] he said.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“Were it in your power to take,”[/color] said Faust. He turned the core in his hands, [COLOR=#B2CFA1]“need I underscore its significance?”[/color]

He didn’t need to. The core, [i]this[/i] core, was a one-in-a-trillion chance, if the odds were even so favorable. The core was not a simple [i]error[/i], but a [i]mutant[/i]. The Dominators, [i]these[/i] Dominators, [i]this[/i] ship, were themselves mutants from the core line of their species, hailing from an outworld conquered by their race long ago. As they mutated, so did their technology, as production errors were accepted over years as a part of their baseline. Then, with Ivo’s mutant intelligence in command of the ship’s facilities, he had the fortune to produce [i]this[/i]: a mutant among mutants. It would be useless in Ivo’s hands, simply a broken datacore, useful for only the raw data inside. In Faust’s it was but a mystic trinket, but in Shaw’s?

[color=white]“Name your price,”[/color] Shaw relented, folding his arms. A vulture’s grin spread across Faust’s face. He opened his opposite hand and starched parchment paper materialized from the ether.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“A contract,”[/color] Faust said, [COLOR=#B2CFA1]“one you will find [i]quite[/i] unbreakable. It ensures my safety against your ends, whatever they may be.”[/color]

[color=white]“And?”[/color] Shaw didn’t need to read the fine print to know there was a catch. Faust knew his way around a treacherous bargain. 

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“It entitles me to a [i]favor[/i], of whatever kind I desire. An… ‘IOU’, if you will.”[/color] A quill materialized in the air as Faust spoke. Shaw had always avoided ‘favors’, especially those that go undefined. It was an implicit upperhand, for the holder to use the cudgel of responsibility to hammer those that owe him into whatever shape he so desires. And with Faust, such a claim would be enforced by [i]magic[/i], that Shaw’s Hellfire Club had no way of countering… But Shaw wasn’t spoiled for choice. He signed and the contract disappeared in a hellish ‘BAMF’ of sulfur and brimstone.

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“Chosen smartly, mortal,”[/color] Faust commented. His fingers waggled and the core took to the air, listing end over end as it wheeled lazily to Shaw’s grasp.

Snatching it from the air, the magical sheathe Faust used Shaw send it to him was dispelled and he held the raw weight of the object’s awesome might in his hands. Free of the sorcerer’s influence, the core melted to boiling, liquid metal, forever destroying the data within but unlocking the power inside. A mutant among mutants among mutants, a twist of fate daring to produce mutant destiny in a single object. The liquid took shape, drawing up and to a point, then fanning out as though a long arrowhead.

It resolved to the head of a broken spear in Shaw’s hands, its former texture of grayed steel replaced with gleaming gold. Shaw’s hands were upon its edge immediately, running his fingers along it until they ran red with blood and his mind erupted in newfound power.

It struck him instantly, lifting his soul out of his body and at once forcing it back inside, his new ability already burgeoning within his veins. He knew his new capabilities intuitively, the spear’s voice whispering in his ear. Spear or no, Shaw had become [i]invincible[/i]. He allowed himself a thin smile, sealing his fingers about the spear’s shaft.

Terror was plain on Faust’s face. He had miscalculated just what Shaw would gain from interface with the thing. He had expected Shaw to grow more powerful, but he could not reconcile the man before him as a simple [i]mutant[/i], he had become a [i]god[/i].

[COLOR=#B2CFA1]“You cannot harm me,”[/color] Faust said, scurrying backward like the cockroach he was. So easily squashed.

[color=white]“Aye, sorcerer,”[/color] Shaw said, [color=white]“as you cannot stop me,”[/color] he turned on his heel, [color=white]“as [i]no one[/i] can.”[/color] It was not a boast, but a statement of simple fact.

[color=white]“A new world approaches, Faust. Make ready for your new Black King.”[/color]
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