john.mainer

  Conventions are awesome, the volunteers are heroes, and you will never meet such a creative and diverse community in your lives.  I don't care what stream of the convention gets you in the door, from the panels the gaming tables or the merchants floor, it is all worth experiencing.

I went to enter Galactacon, Mirage and Warchief were part of the organization team so they handed me off to minions, actual fellow geeks as opposed to the armed normal human thugs you get used to thinking of as minions in the trade, who happily babbled a stream of eagerness and welcome at me when they realized I was a con virgin.

A rather portly woman named Marge whose ground speed seemed to defy her visible weight when she was excited grabbed me by the arm when she realized I was a con virgin and was babbling at me happily about the secret.

“Do you know the big secret of conventions that no one in the normal community understands? Why conventions are better than sex?”

I was watching The Watcher, the giant alien who observed events on earth for preservation in eternity when this universe collapsed into singularity stride past in purple Galactus armour with a great big green nametag hanging around his neck that read “The Watcher, Convention Staff” and felt his alien consciousness, protected from telepathy not with shields but simply by the cosmic vastness of a consciousness that contained eternity in perfect storage, and blinked. Shocked by seeing a being that had observed the rise of the Kree, the civil war between the Skrull and the Dire Wraiths that cast the latter into the negative zone of Anhillus, that saw the rise and fall of the titans, the gods, the casting out and binding of Dormamu, and the birth of an insignificant species of hominids used for experimentation by the Kree that would eventually describe itself as humans, and confuse themselves for the most advanced life form in the galaxy, I had to run her question back through the one mind that had been paying attention (the Kree was all about situational awareness and ignored The Watcher as a mere observer of conflict) and asked the desired question.

“No, what is the big secret of conventions?” I asked.

Marge beamed as she spun to face me, and her mind was so open that I couldn’t help but read her thoughts, following the words she spoke through the subvocalizations and into the associated memories and emotions. What hit me was a tidal wave of memories so in contrast to my own bitter solitude, the cold control, deception and murder that spanned all three of my, probably false, personalities and consciousnesses that she was more alien to me at that moment than The Watcher.

“Lovecraft, the secret is losing your con virginity is actually fun, and gets even better when done in a group!” Marge said the last in a voice way to loud for any discussion of virginity.

“HAIL THE VIRGIN!” blasted into my mind and rumbled almost subsonically from The Watcher as he raised his purple gauntleted hand, The Watcher cosplaying Galactus at Galactacon was still something all three of my minds were having trouble processing, but the convention staff manning the check in, and the old time convention goers chatting with the staff at the enterance all turned to face Marge escorting the declared virgin and shouted, “HAIL THE VIRGIN!”

Kree cannot blush, but Mind Flayers can flush to the tentacles and I went from cyan to almost purple as the welcoming bloom of a dozen minds reached out to embrace me with zero skill or power, but a collective harmony at odds to the Illithid over-mind, the Elder Brain that was the source of the Illithid programming and collective memory was itself too utterly and ruthlessly selfish and sociopathic to hold a percentage of the warmth of this pathetic emotional gestalt, this attempt at a hive mind based on a community of acceptance and wonder. If I could have cried, I think I would have. Luckily no one could see or interpret the curling of my tentacles as the equivalent gesture to human tears as I felt the welcome of the convention community embrace me. For a being without a race, without a planet of his own, a soldier without a flag, that welcome hit me harder than a Kree blaster. I was Lovecraft, and I was welcomed.

We walked under a great arch of blinking lights made to resemble Galactus great World Devouring engine pillars, and whoever did the tech, I am assuming Frost Industries, did such an amazing job that the psychic power radiating off those arches could well be mistaken for the great necropiles that devoured the living soul and life energy of a world and all its species to serve Galactus the World Eater. I was so distracted by the wash of power off the arch that I missed when its technology, created by the most powerful telepath who produced technology for government and corporate use, disrupted my psychically crafted cloak and revealed me at the arch as, well, a big blue tentacle headed six foot eight muscle bound Kree-Flayer in a Hydra uniform.

Marge gasped, two actual minions, armed but discrete plain clothes Frost Force security produced silenced 9mm Sig P226 and zeroed in on me even as Marge gasped in shock. Magik who had been leaning back against the pillar as if waiting for this drew a sword of burning white fire and pointed it at me.

“It’s okay. Squid boy is with me.”

Marge withdrew her hands and looked at me with betrayal, and the gap between me and the local community I thought I had found opened wide.

“Tell me it isn’t true, tell me you are not one of them!” She demanded, and the edge of old half healed wounds, the howling pain of loss and the rage of ancient wrong rose up in her.

I bowed slightly, accepting the rejection of the human only I thought I was, or at least, once pretended to be.

“Yes. I am alien. I am born Kree, and reborn Mind Flayer. I guess you could call me a Kree-Flayer, two world conquering races of slave-makers.”

Marges mind flared in, oddly, annoyance, as she made shooing motions with her hands as if brushing aside irrelevancies.

“No, no. Mind Flayers are central to both the gaming stream of the convention with Baldur’s Gate 3 and the Dungeons and Dragons table top tournament, although I didn’t know they were real. Kree are totally famous since Captain Marvel came out both as a half Kree and a lesbian, so a real symbol of inclusion and again totally welcome. Tell me you are not one of those murdering racist nazi fucking HYDRA!”

Marge was poking the symbol on my chest with a finger that she probably dislocated considering the density and weight difference between our flesh, and the force she was putting behind it.

I read her memories, her watching the film helplessly as Hydra agents stormed her father’s lab, forced his staff to kneel, forced him to surrender all of his technological secrets as they executed each of the “undermench” or sub humans of his staff, all the people of colour one by one at any trace of his resistance. Then, when he had given up all his secrets, the secrets of revolutionary stealth material for aircraft, they executed him and the rest of his staff for daring to stand in the way of the rise of Hydra. She had wanted to work with SHIELD and the FBI to help to bring down Hydra, but her very motivation made her suspect, too close to fanatiscm to be trusted. Instead, she was a teacher, abandoning a promising potential in research, and a community that let her father be sacrificed and simply covered it up.

I raised my hands, my tentacles stiffening outward in denial (not that you would understand that if you didn’t know Mind Flayer body language).

“I am not! I stole the uniform from Hydra I killed and robbed when I was being experimented on by them, it’s how I ended up half Mind Flayer!” I swore, again, too loud for such admissions.

“You swear?” Marge said, eyes full of tears already spilling and snot already flowing, her mental wounds already leaking puss of pain, shame and rage.
“Da, da. When we met him his soul was dripping in the death torments of at least a dozen Hydra, the pain and fear of their deaths hung off him like a cloak. I swear it made my demons want to come out and play. He killed them, and they died screaming.” Magic offered as she dismissed her sword and hugged Marge gently.

Marge slammed into me and hugged me in a way that might have threatened my breathing if I couldn’t take a charging free safety in full blitz without noticing. She buried her head in my chest and sobbed for a few awkward minutes. Frost Security goons evaporated, to be replaced by an equally inconspicuous pair since the first two had to reveal themselves.

I patted her back as my tentacles settled about her shoulders and stroked her cheeks as my Kree and human instincts used Mind Flayer parts for bits they racially were not ever intended for.

Taking out a hankerchief, blowing her nose like a small furious duck call, she wiped her face and pasted on a smile that was growing to be more genuine by the second. She stopped in wonder and touched my tentacles.

“These are real?” Marge asked.

“All me, all real.” I admitted.

Marge’s mind was whirling almost too fast to follow. I decided to do something about the awkward crowd around us and began emitting a “don’t notice me” passive telepathic field, but it was not fully effective so close to Frost’s disruptive security pillars. Still the casuals began to wander off, even if the convention staff was still watching us.

“Can you do the rest of it, the telepathy and telekinesis?” She asked.

Here it comes, the rejection as a monster part 2. I used my telekinesis to lift her away, and spoke softly into her mind, while projecting the image of herself floating in mid-air to make it clear to her that she was really hearing my voice in her mind.

“Yes, your thoughts are bare to me. Your mind is open to me, and the world around me is mine to manipulate” I projected into her, waiting for the rejection to flower. “Do not worry, I am here as a guest, I only ever wish to protect humanity. I will conceal myself again once I am out of the pillar’s power.”

Marge’s mind began whirling again and her hand shot into the air.

“NO! No illusions. No hiding. This is Galactacon, here we can walk without shame. You don’t need illusions, you need Destiny!” Marge said, but what was in her head was the image of a short black rail thin woman with a hot glue gun.

Magik clapped and bounced up and down like a n excited five year old, not a serious PTSD case with more kills behind her than some of the wet work teams at SHIELD.
“Oh yes, yes! I want to watch!” Magik’s ice blue eyes held a hunger that was deeply unnatural and made me fear for what was to come. Marge, having been set down, grabbed my arm, and Magik grabbed the other, and together, dragged me down into a set of rooms labelled only as “Cosplay Track Work Room 3”

Marge and Magik’s “Staff” badge got us past the gate keepers and into a room filled with wonders and horrors. Superheroes and heroines, aliens, mythological creatures, and things I had only seen in video games all were in various states of becoming as fevered cosplayers, often in teams worked to make the deep magic of cosplay happen.

A werewolf was checking itself in the mirror, looming seven feet on what must be stilt legs, beside the werewolf was a small woman doing something exotic with closures at the neck of the lycanthrope.

“Destiny, we need your help!” Marge yelled as we walked in.

Turning to face me, the room saw the worlds first and only Kree-Flayer, and waved casually. My minds, all three of them, reeled under the total lack of impact.

Destiny frowned at the Hyrda uniform.

“Questionable taste, but the work is good. The tentacles have really excellent articulation and really natural movement, you must tell me how you manage it.” Destiny said as she patted the werewolf on the back.

“All fixed Clive. You just need to be careful when you stow it, if its under pressure the edges start to roll and they just won’t mate seemlessly after that without stays that impare the movement.” Destiny addressed the werewolf who burbled happily from deep inside the impressive head piece in an odd back country English accent.

“Thanks luv, you are a life saver.” Stalking past me with practiced gait in the odd werewolf leg extensions, he nodded and flashed a clawed thumbs up at me. “Nice tentacles.” and went back out into the convention hall.

Destiny looked at me frowning, walking all the way around as Marge gripped Magik’s arm with ill concealed anticipation. Destiny walked around a second time, and frowned.

“It is perfect. I mean, Hyrda is kind of a tacky choice, and doesn’t really fit with the Mind Flayer vibe, but they did Red Skull so tasteless is a bit on point for them. The workmanship is perfect. It looks like the real thing. The blue skin and tentacles are some of the best makeup work I have seent today. Top twelve anyway. So what do you need me for.”

Marge and Magik both giggled.

“That isn’t cosplay. He is a Mind Flayer who killed some Hyrda scum and stole the uniform. I need you to make an actual cosplay for him.” Marge burst out, watching for Destiny’s reaction.

I reached out with my mind, and lifted her off the ground to hover at eye level before me. I reached out with my tentacles to brush both her hands and cheeks as I whispered a slight correction into her mind.

“Kree-Flayer, I’m only half Mind Flayer, and I eat Kim-Chi and hot dogs more often than brains. Call me Lovecraft. Can you help me with a costume?”

I set her down, but braced her with telepathy as her knees went weak. Marge and Magik collapsed laughing, and Destiny shot them an obscene gesture that seemed to bring her brain back online.

Turning to me, she reached out and touched the tentacles, then poked my, very blue, very dense chest, and muttered to herself.

“Beefcake with a side of calamari. This, this I can work with.” She turned to me, and for the first time I felt fear. She looked at me not like prey, but like an ingredient already on the cutting board for food preparation.

“Now, the uniform has got to go. We aren’t going to minimize anything. No. We are going to max it out. We aren’t going to settle for anything less than PODIUM!” Destiny snarled, bright ambition blazing in her mind. I opened my mouth to question, but three excited females told me to shut up and obey.

I had three sets of survival instincts. I shut up and obeyed. Kipling wrote of the Afghan wars, never let the women get you. Kipling was right a lot of the time. This was one. I fell into the clutches of creative cosplay women with surgers, fabrics, hot glue guns, and Frost Towers staff tailors to call upon for support. I was in hell, and they were in heaven.

On the other hand, no less than four kill teams were even now looking for me in the city outside, so my fate could indeed be worse no more than five hundred yards in any direction.

I was a tentacle headed Barbie doll. Or Ken I suppose.

Pity me.

I wasn’t totally out of the loop. When it became clear what they were trying to do, there was little choice but to project into their minds the images of a Mind Flayer Controller, the black high collared uniform with the flaring black and scarlet frill framing the head, and the matching black and scarlet gloves, the flaring split skirt and high adorned boots.

What was supposed to be a body covering space rated suit (their ships were living and healing vessels that sealed breaches quickly and had powerful telepathic shields, but their weapons were crap and if they encountered any other space faring race, did poorly ship to ship. The vacuum rated suits were necessary as they had to survive long enough to run away.

I was a tentacled Ken doll, I did not get vacuum rated. I got sexy BDSM version.

The high flaring collar that looked like black and scarlet flames behind my head stayed, as did the projecting shoulder pads designed to make the rail thin frail little parasites seem impressive, on someone built like bodybuilder Smurf, a Kree warrior, I looked like a space stripper.

I kept the black and scarlet gloves, but oddly only as wrist guards, to better display my long blue fingers and their living sapphire claws. I kept the boots, and you could say I kept the long split skirt, except there was only enough to frame the frankly bare legs to the knee high boots, showing off my thighs entirely and framing a red jeweled black, I wouldn’t even really call it a bathing suit as there wasn’t enough of it, that covered, in the sense that it outlined anatomically perfectly, my genitals. I would have to walk slowly or the fact that it was a thong in the back would be exposed as there were only tree dangling strips of skirt in the back.

I was a space stripper.

Two races wanted to die in shame. My human self had been programed, not quite as conservative as Agent Coulson, but close. Definitely full on geek with “cough” extremely limited dating experience. My Mind Flayer brain was asexual. They reproduced by implanting a seed into a victim’s brain. Sex was abhorrent to them, they didn’t even have genitals.

Kree on the other hand were fuckboys. They were hedonists whose culture had adapted millennia ago to the utter technological separation between sex and reproduction, so they were so deeply into the philosophy that “if it feels good do it” combined with an obsession of physical improvement that meshed with their obscene natural regeneration to produce a “pain is gain” philosophy that naturally pushed the “if it feels good, do it” so far into the realms of deeply wrong in earth terms that German BDSM Dungeons would bow down and worship at the sight of one of our basic sexual education courses.

You have to understand, this part of my being had been locked down under the sleeper agent coding to the point that my own endocrine system had been starved to a degree that threatened my mental health, and my restoration to not simply normal levels, but what ought to be normal levels without the strange limiters to Kree natural physical and mental abilities put in by our condition by the Supreme Intelligence that my body was in a fuckboy overdrive that I had zero experience, mental or emotional bandwith to deal with.

Two thirds of my mind was screaming, cover up, get dressed, OMG, they are looking at me, run away, run away.

The other third of me was making me test the design integrity of my junk containment as a Mind Flayer with the virginal insecurity of a novice nun paraded naked before a conquering army dealt with the surface thoughts of everyone looking at me. One third of me was strutting like the stud bull of the supreme race, the Kree stallion loose upon a world of fertile humanity yearning for his blue elixir of racial improvement. One third of me was wondering who exactly I could seek therapy for this with.

Makgik had added one piece of equipment to my costume. A black studdend leather collar with a long silver chain. It stank of sulphur and odd emotional flashes of pleasure, pain, despair and desperate mindless desire flooded it, which raised the question of how a barely legal girl who wasn’t allowed to date had possession of such a device, with such imbued memories.

She used her magic to again don the githyanki person of Lae’zel, the green skinned spotted and very deadly swordswoman from Baldur’s Gate 3 video game who was captured by the very Mind Flayers she warred against, and implanted with one of their transforming seeds.

As a very visible cosplaying pair of Baldur’s Gate 3 characters, she led me on a leash, with her shining sword in hand, out into the cosplay “Public” floor where it was expected and permitted to allow guests to take pictures.

Honestly, it took my own Mind Flayer powers to make sure I was not in a gathering of aliens, as the level of cosplay was so far beyond the crappy CGI Hollywood turned out these days, that I honestly thought I was on a more advanced cosmopolital world where aliens and extra dimensional humanoids like the Asgardians, rubbed shoulders without any problems.

There were actual aliens. Two Atlanteans, an Inhuman, at least a dozen mutant humans, The Watcher, a Shi’ar, an actual demon, and a living humanoid tree with her dryad, the latter asked us to stop and take a picture, both with her, and with her walking tree.

We spent an hour on the floor, enjoying the, and being the, show. Magik was so relaxed I settled on reading her mind to control my own thoughts. As Rick Jones, secret agent, I thought I was cool but this was way to beyond my comfort zone. As a Mind Flayer, I was on the edge of a mental breakdown. I was being objectified by men, women, and those that self identified in ways that made that dichotomy irrelevant. For an asexual predator, being looked at as a piece of meat they wanted to baste, taste, and nibbled on was deeply humiliating. My Kree on the other hand was like a horn dog 18 year old jock asked to naked pose for a female college art class. If the Kree physiology wasn’t so finely balanced, I would be in danger of poisoning from their testosterone equivalent.

I had passed into a realm of simply rolling with it. Mind Flayer brain rocking quietly in a corner wrapped in tentacles and denial, my human secret agent brain watching in somewhat embarassed awe as my Kree body in Mind Flayer cosplay freely levitated and bound with tentacles happy photographic subjects, posed in what were authentic to the game, if not required for actual Illithid combat, poses against cosplayers of every possible character and NPC from Baldur’s gate, as well as two Kratos, a Link, two Master Chief and even a Luigi from utterly unrelated video games, and an amazing Ellen Ripley from Aliens whose walker had been cosplay adapted to look like the power freight handling machine at the end of the Aliens movie.

When Magik thought we had done enough to satisfy her own amusement, and her belly and dragon both started to suggest feeding her was a priority not to be put off, we left the public photography gallery and returned to the convention hallways in search of the food court.

I felt the let down one generally gets leaving active combat and on the extraction vehicle, even though all I faced were camera flashes, not gunfire, but I was mentally and physically exhausted. My Kree brain was smug like a cat that got the canary, all the treats, petting, and robbed a Doberman of his own foot at claw point before passing out on your keyboard just before you could save your work.

It was in that fog of generally relaxed defenses that I noticed the weakened mind of the girl in the Karlach cosplay, red skin showing through video game girl armour that was more framing than protection. She was being guided, or half dragged by a man in Gale cosplay, his wide open smiling bearded face hiding a predatory hunger that was unlike what I had been dealing with on the photography floor. The girl’s mind was confused, unfocused. She was struggling desperately to orient herself, not able to connect time, place, or who was with her. She wasn’t able to focus enough to give a coherent alarm or objection but a deep undertone of fear laced through her confusion.

Magik grunted as the chain on my leash came taut and she almost fell over. I had stopped and she turned in annoyance.

“Hey, squidboy, I’m hungry. What is the hold up.” She began, but seeing me drop into a combat pose and pivot, she turned and her eyes lanced over the dozens of people in the hallway and caught the pair I was looking at.

She was beside me in two steps, her eyes suddenly slitted and cold. Her voice no longer teasing, but flat and hard.

“The girl, she isn’t moving right. What’s her deal?” Magik demanded.

“She is confused, disoriented. The man is surface calm, but something deeply predatory is right underneath. I don’t think she knows who he is, or what is going on, but he seems to be aware of who she is, and is totally aware of her condition. I can’t read deeper with all these minds around without using enough power to set off Frost Towers alarms I think.” I beam into her mind softly, sharing my raw impressions for her independent evaluation.

“Fucking rufies. He is a freaking rapist who rufied her. Probably caught her not paying attention to her drinking bottle or cup and slipped it in while she was distracted. Follow them, I will call Miss Frost’s assistant and get some discrete backup. Don’t stop him until he gets her whereever he is taking her. He won’t do anything in public, but if its private enough to rape her, its private enough to take him down.” Her mental projection was so coherent, the familiarity she had with working with telepaths was impossible to miss.

I followed the pair of them, projecting a directional “do not notice me” field between us. It was a little awkward in the elevators to the nineth floor, but when a Mind Flayer tells you not to notice them, you do not notice them. Ambush predators in a way that this rapist would only dream of, he was about to learn his place in the food chain.

Room 902, he swiped his card, dragged her inside and shut the door. I stood back and prepared to do dynamic entry when Magik grabbed my left arm.

“Boys and booting things. You are worse than my steel for brains brother. No. I will put us inside the room. Be ready to act.” Magik said, and a white disk appeared beneath our feet. We fell into it.

My mind felt a fundamental violation, as we tore through two layers of reality, passing into Limbo, a plane of existence that Mind Flayer and Kree FTL drives shielded to avoid for reasons of wanting to keep our bodies and souls intact during transit through the warp. Magik apparently used it as her private playground, which proably expalined half her PTSD. Limbo was in the mythology of a hundred worlds as their local version of hell for a reason.

We came out into the room as if rising from the floor at the same rate we fell into it outside the room. The alteration of vector was honestly the least of the concerns.

The rapist “Gale” cosplayer had the cosplaying Karlach girl posed on the bed between two video cameras, and he was holding her in place with a fist knotted in her hair as he stripped her fake metal chest plate off to reveal her teenage chest.

Some things my Kree reflexes are good for. Nick Fury may joke about the noble warrior hero description of the Kree indoctrination, but his own SHIELD indoctrination was no different. Two thirds of my mind saw a rapist busy recording the rape of a teenage girl so that not only could he violate her, but he would be able to relive, and probably share her humiliation with other perverts while she struggled to live with the physical trauma and confusion of memories warped by drugs so deeply she could not even testify against her attacker.

I was on him in a second, slammed his back against the wall, and drove my hand into him below the chest.

It was over before I could process it. I had driven my hand deep into this rapist bastard’s chest, wrapped my claws around his heart, and ripped it out of his chest.

My Mind Flayer brain was gibbering in the background about killing a human on two different video recorders that might well be live streaming the event, and its telkinesis reached out to catch the blood in a bubble both around the heart and open hole.

Magik, rather than looking horrified gave a slow golf clap.

“Handy. Makes cleanup so much easier. Here, let me open a little portal. I have a feed bowl under it for some of my more bloodthirsty little minions. Let’s keep the body until Miss Frost’s assistant gets down her for direction on how to proceed.”

She sat down on the bed with the confused girl and helped her put her clothes back on. She walked over and shut off the two cameras. Turning to me she muttered quietly.

“This is Frost Towers, there is nothing that gets out of here without her say so. Anything he recorded is on the machines themselves, and hasn’t gotten anywhere. Even Professor X can’t call out of here without setting off every alarm and brute forcing down her defenses.”

Ten minutes later, a cool looking woman who looked like a younger copy of Emma Frost walked in. Without speaking, she walked over to the girl, cupped her hands around her face and reached into her mind.

She cut my own scans off with a crisp and somewhat cold precision that eclipsed my own control like a brain surgeon eclipses a Walmart meat cutter. I probably had her by raw power, but her precision was so good that I could not even passively detect what she was doing.

“I have blanked the record of the events from her mind, and implanted a false memory of a fainting spell. There should be no trauma.” The cool blonde woman in the business suit said, moving to the dead man in my hands. She reached up and touched him, ripping a raw data dump from his degrading mind. I had done the same before it started to break down. There wasn’t much to know. He managed an appliance store, and liked to rape teenage girls using Rohypnol tablets (rufies), he was a registered Republican and decon of his church, active on lots of fandoms and vidoe game forums where he could meet girls like his latest victim seemingly naturally.

The woman removed his phone, his wallet and cut off one finger. She then gestured to Magik and broadcast to both of us telepathically.

“Miss Frost asks that you dispose of the body. She will make sure he has a clean record of leaving here. I will stay with the victim as hotel staff until she recovers. Our people will deal with the cameras and his belongings. Miss Frost will want to interview your friend. Remain at the convention. Miss Frost will come for you.”

Her eyes blazed when she said the last, and the command was underlined clearly.

I sent a quiet tendril of thought as Magik and I passed through another one of her disks into her own hotel room on another floor.

“Who the hell was that?” I asked.

“Stepford cuckoo. One of five clones of Miss Frost the Hellfire club had made to control her. She took them out, took them in, and now has adopted them. They are pretty disturbing as a group, but individually just a little bit anal and rule bound, but so is my brother, so it isnt’ really just a clone thing.” Magik said, as we exited her room and headed, once again, for the food court.

“What did she mean when she said Emma Frost would come for me.” I asked.

Magik laughed out loud, grabbed my arm and hugged it happily.

“Oh no squid boy. Emma Frost isn’t coming for you. The White Queen comes for Lovecraft, and her coming will be somewhere north of epic. Better eat up. The condemned are supposed to eat hearty after all.”

Magik’s words were full of the sort of gallows humour only those who have been condemned to actual death can use so naturally. I was, well, terrified.

My Kree was hungry, my Mind Flayer was almost catatonic, and my SHIELD agent training told me that waiting in the food court as concealment was better done while visibly consuming food.

Galactacon had an awesome food court. I ate a Kree-flayer feast in five courses. Magik just grazed from each of my plates like a gourmand of convention food attempting to rate everything offered.

Then Destiny tracked us down, it was time for the cosplay track judging, and we had to hurry. She had entered me as her best work and since the White Queen herself was judging, we had best not be late.

Oh fuck me.

The White Queen was coming for me in the middle of the convention cosplay event, as the sitting judge? As a secret agent, on three different levels, this violated my need for concealment on a level that made my soul want to scurry into the nearest dark corner and hide.

Magik grabbed the leash, handed it to Destiny, and smacked me on the ass.

“Good knowing you squid boy. Don’t pee yourself when you meet her. It will ruin your costume.”

john.mainer

Yes, we killed a rapist.  Honestly the human race can use a lot few of them, and I don't care if he got geeked by an alien and fed to demons, as long as there will be no further victims I call it a win.