Memories
Discomfort
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"Ms Circen. Ms Circen, will you look at me?"
Tora's head jerked up, staring She-Hulk right in the eyes.
"Yes?"
"Can you answer my question? What do you remember?"
"I… I remember… I remember channelling the Phoenix…"
"And why were you doing that, Ms Circen?"
"To stop it hurting Hope."
"And why would it hurt Hope, Ms Circen?"
"Because it is Fire, and Life Incarnate. It will hurt so I took the hurt from her."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because she is a child who needs protecting and I could take the pain for her."
"She needs protecting, but you were prepared to expose her to the Phoenix?"
"The Phoenix protects its avatars. Hope was being attacked from all sides. She needed something to defend herself."
"Why couldn't you protect her?"
"I cannot be everywhere at once. None of us can. Eventually, we would be worn down, or someone would slip through, and she would be killed. Men attempted to kill her before she was an hour old, because of what she is."
"What is she, Ms Circen?"
"The first mutant born after the Decimation."
"Do you know what they call her, Ms Circen?"
"They call her the Mutant Messiah."
"Why?"
"Because she would save our kind from extinction."
"From what I've heard, she wasn't alone. You were implicated in the Regeneration of the X-Gene."
"Neither of us could do it alone. You cannot have Phoenix without Dragon. Without the Phoenix, I was helpless to prevent the Decimation. The Phoenix could not burn away the 'No more mutants' spell without the Dragon."
"Ms Circen, do you hate the US Government for what it did to you?"
"What thing? My childhood? No. I cannot hate them. I cannot feel anything from then but numbness. For the Sentinels? I cannot hate for that, only pity those so afraid that they seek to wipe us out. But for letting the mutant children die on Genosha? For letting children burn because of what they were? I can find hate in my heart for that."
"So you hate the Government?"
"No. I hate the cowardice of those who stood by and let our children die."
"Ms Circen, will you talk about your childhood?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because if I talk about it, I can be prosecuted under another thirty laws for revealing state secrets."
"Ms Circen, what can you tell us about your childhood?"
Tora blinked then sighed.
"I had no childhood. Only training."
"What else can you tell us?"
"I was two when I was taken to a military research facility. I was about fourteen when I had adamantium implanted in my bones."
"Ms Walters, I do not see…"
"Your Honour, please let me continue. This gives the jury an idea of the defendant's behaviour. Ms Circen, how do you implant adamantium into the bones?"
"I… I'm not sure of the process…"
"Ms Circen, what did they do to you?"
She choked, gestured for water. Coughed, glanced, tried to look anywhere but at She-Hulk.
"Needles. They…form the adamantium…keep it hot…about 100 degrees above the melting point, just to be on the safe side… They… They implant the needles, into the bone… Then inject the liquid adamantium. It sets in the shape of the bone."
"How large a needle?"
She shrugged.
"Two inches for the smaller bones –fingers, wrists, feet. Closer to five for the arm and leg bones. Two three inch needles for the skull."
"And how hot is the adamantium?"
"Five thousand degrees Celsius. About nine thousand degrees Fahrenheit."
"How old were you, exactly, Ms Circen?"
"I… I'm not entirely sure…"
"Why not?"
"I… I tried to keep count but… There were weeks when the days all blended together… I… I think about fourteen…"
"Isn't your skeleton still growing then, Ms Circen?"
"Yes."
"Why did they do that?"
She shrugged.
"Ms Circen?"
"They didn't want too. But the man told them to."
"Which man, Ms Circen?"
"The… The US agent…"
The room exploded into uproar. Her head hung down and she did her best to ignore the shouts for silence. Then Jen spoke and the whole court fell silent.
"How did you know he was a US agent?"
"Because I found the funders for the project and the internal documentation made it clear the US Government had been the one to push the adamantium bonding process forward."
"Thank you, Ms Circen. And now, can we go onto why you became an X-Man?"
"They saved me."
"And that's it?"
"I had nowhere to go."
"Why not?"
"I didn't exist. I had no name, other than X-ii. I was not 'official'. I had no money, nothing to prove who I was."
"How did you find out who you were?"
"An accident."
"What sort of accident?"
"My… My family… saw me… thought I was… They said… I ran…"
She looked away.
"Ms Circen, can you look at me? Thank you. So you worked with the X-Men. What can you tell me about the Phoenix Force."
Tora raised her head and spoke clearly.
"The Phoenix Force is a cosmic entity. An anthropomorphic personification if you wish. A being whose sole purpose is to oversee a function that is a part of the natural order of things. In the Phoenix's case, Thought. It is made up of pure psionic energy and takes its power from the life force of future generations. It also represents change. Its purpose is to burn away what is stagnant. It gets rid of what no longer evolves. It can restart evolution or burn a planet to nothing. It is neither malevolent nor benevolent. It just is."
"What of the Dark Phoenix incident of nine years ago? When the Phoenix Force destroyed an entire solar system. A populated solar system."
"The Phoenix Force had tricked itself into thinking it was human. It could no longer control itself –humanity has something cosmic beings have not. Emotions. And then Mastermind started playing with its mind, thinking it was Jean Grey. He drove it insane. And then he pushed it too far and…it lost control… It attempted to kill itself rather than destroy anything else."
"Attempted?"
"Sort of managed it. But you can't kill something like that. You can weaken it. You can damage it. But you can't kill it."
"And can you tell me about the Dragon and how you ended up changing from Tigress to Dragon?"
"I was…hurt… Dragon came… It too was hurt. It could heal me, I could heal it-"
"How?"
"It was shattered through the multiverse. I can connect to those. It's a part of my mutation. It gave it a bridge. And when it was healed…it sort of stayed."
"What is the Dragon?"
"Like the Phoenix. But… Different. Old life, instead of new. Preservation instead of progression. It heals what is dying before it should. And instead of thought, it represents knowledge. It is the archivist. Its duty is to watch and record."
"Yet you use it to fight?"
"I barely used any of its potential. In return, it…it learnt."
"Learnt what?"
"What living feels like."
"And… Ms Circen? Ms Circen, are you alright?"
Tora was shaking, her eyes glowing silver and then her mouth opened.
"I speak as the Dragon Song, She Who Rides the Waves of Time. I am the Librarian of Reality and Darkchilde. I am Water. I am the Order-Bringer, the Child of the One-Above-All. I am more than you can understand. I am Perpetuity. I am the Universal Tick. I am the whole of reality. I am the smallest one-dimensional object. I exist in all times, all places. I exist only inside this frail body. I work in an infinite number of dimensions yet I see the smallest detail. I am the Dragon Song and this is my Voice."
And Tora was shaking, her arms wrapping around her shoulders as she tried to make herself as small as possible, clutching at her head, whispering under her breath.
"Ms Circen, are you alright?"
"Someone…walked over my grave…"
She shivered and shook her head. Multiple Man had stood up.
"My client is badly shaken. Permission to adjourn requested."
The judge nodded weakly.
"Pe…Permission granted…"
Tora was hustled out and allowed to sit. She was shivering, and greedily gulped down the drink Madrox offered.
"Are you okay?"
She shook her head.
"You know, you're coming across as frightened and alone."
"I… I don't mean to. It's just… She's asking stuff I didn't think she would. I hoped she wouldn't."
"We've not got long. Do you need another drink?"
She shook her head again.
"I… I think I'll be fine. Just as long as Dragon doesn't take me over again."
"How do we stop it from doing that?"
"You can't. It does what it wants. If it wanted, it could shove me into a dark little corner and be in control all the time. But it doesn't. It's like the Phoenix. Not malevolent. Not benevolent. Just…is."
"Pretty good description for her."
"What? She was smarter than people gave her credit for."