[A/N]: Here's your totally-not-a-bribe bonus chapter! I'm definitely not trying to butter you up for those sweet, sweet power stones. Nope. Not me. winks obviously
So anyway... drop those power stones! đ
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The laugh cut off abruptly, Jay's mask turning toward Beast with laser focus, as if he'd caught the mutant scientist's moment of recognition.
"I'm exactly who I said I am, Director," Jay said, his electronic voice steady once again. "I'm the Power Broker. And if you want to keep being Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. instead of just another corpse in a shallow grave, I suggest you back the hell off."
The threat hung in the air, but Fury wasn't a man who'd survived this long by backing down from dangerous situations. His jaw set with stubborn determination.
"I can't leave empty-handed. The Council expects results, and if I don't deliver, they'll find someone who will. Someone who might not be as... diplomatic as I've been tonight."
"Then take your results," Jay said simply. "Take the Hellfire prisoners. But understandâyou're not taking what makes them superior."
Fury's eye narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Instead of answering directly, Jay turned toward where Masque waited among the other Morlocks. The surgically scarred mutant straightened when his leader's attention focused on him, a slow grin spreading across his damaged features.
"Masque," Jay's electronic voice carried clearly, each word dropping into the silence like stones into still water, "these prisoners have hidden their true nature behind pretty faces for far too long. Why don't you... bring their real beauty to the surface? To your heart's content."
The grin on Masque's face widened into something genuinely unhinged, years of suppressed rage and creative sadism finally finding an outlet. His hatred of Hellfire Club experimentation would finally get its revenge through him as an instrument of poetic justice.
"Finally," Masque whispered, his voice carrying a sick joy that made several people step back. "Finally, I get to show them what it feels like."
"No," Storm said immediately, her powerless form still radiating moral authority. "This is too much. You cannotâ"
"Can't what?" Caliban interrupted, his pale, gaunt face turning toward the former goddess of the Morlocks with bitter accusation in every line. "Make them look like us? Make them experience what we've lived with every day of our miserable fucking lives?"
The cutting observation hit the X-Men like a physical blow to the solar plexus. Beast's enhanced intellect processed the moral trap immediatelyâhow could they argue that permanent disfigurement was too cruel a fate without implying that the Morlocks' original appearances were somehow worse than death itself?
"That's notâwe didn't meanâ" Jean Grey stammered, her powerless state making her feel more vulnerable than she had in years.
"Oh, so looking like us is worse than death?" Caliban's voice carried a bitter edge that decades of underground existence had honed to razor sharpness. "So our faces are so horrific that inflicting them on others constitutes cruel and unusual punishment? How very fucking enlightening to learn what our supposed allies really think of us."
The X-Men fell silent, the ugly implications of their moral outrage exposed like infected wounds. They could weep for beautiful people facing disfigurement while accepting the Morlocks' monstrous appearances as natural consequences. They could protect the Hellfire Club's lost perfection while ignoring the ugly ones who suffered in darkness.
Masque didn't wait for further debate. His power flowed outward like liquid creativity, targeting the Hellfire prisoners who weren't protected by X-Men intervention. Shinobi Shaw's perfect features twisted into a grotesque parody of his father's arrogance. Harold Leland's face became a reflection of the cruelty he'd shown others. Donald Pierce's remaining human features warped to match the mechanical coldness of his cybernetics.
Their screams echoed through the chamber as flesh reshaped itself according to Masque's twisted artistry, their bodies reflecting the ugliness of their souls for the first time in their pampered lives.
Only Emma Frost and Sage were sparedâthe X-Men had moved to intervene just in time, though their powerless state meant they could offer only physical protection rather than any real defense.
"Enough," Xavier said firmly, his wheelchair humming as he positioned himself between Masque and the two women. "We understand your point. The disfigurement ends here."
Jay nodded approvingly. "Acceptable. Emma can leave... but all assets under her nameâlegal and illegalâgo to the Morlocks. Consider it community improvement funding."
"You can't just stealâ" Emma started, her diamond transformation trying and failing to activate under Jay's suppression field.
"Can't I?" Jay's electronic voice carried dark amusement that made Emma's blood turn to ice water. "Director Fury, Professor Xavierâdo you guarantee this deal will be honored? Because I'd hate for Emma to discover what happens when people break their word to me."
Fury and Xavier exchanged glances, both men recognizing the political trap they'd walked into like lambs to slaughter. Emma Frost's fortune was built on decades of exploitation and illegal activities. Legally, she had few protections. Morally, they had even fewer grounds to defend her blood-soaked wealth.
"The deal will be honored," Xavier said reluctantly.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. will ensure compliance," Fury added through gritted teeth.
Jay stepped toward Emma, who instinctively backed away until she hit the stone wall behind her. Her diamond form tried desperately to activate, but the suppression field held her powers in complete check.
"What do you want?" Emma asked, her voice steadier than her expression suggested. "My body? Is that the price of keeping what's left of my face?"
"Your body?" Jay's modulated laugh echoed strangely, like broken promises and shattered illusions. "Emma, you're old enough to be my grandmother. I have standards."
Instead of the sexual assault she'd expected, Jay reached out with stolen powerâSage's enhanced mental abilities and X-gene Jump-Start, stolen during their earlier encounter and modified through his own understanding of mutant genetics. His touch was clinical, precise, reaching not for her flesh but for the genetic structures that governed her mutation and a new application of this was born.
Emma's eyes widened in shock and growing horror as she felt something fundamental shift in her. Her diamond transformation activated suddenly, her skin shifting to brilliant crystalâbut instead of the controlled shift she'd mastered over decades, the change felt different. Permanent. Locked.
"What did you do to me?" Emma's crystalline features couldn't express emotion properly, but her voice carried pure panic.
"Insurance," Jay replied simply, his electronic voice carrying the weight of absolute finality. "You'll remain in diamond form until every cent of your assets has been transferred to Morlock community funds. Try to break the deal, try to hide resources, try to welch on any part of the agreement... and you'll spend eternity as a living statue, conscious but unable to feel, unable to touch, unable to experience anything but the cold perfection of your own reflection."
Emma tried to shift back to flesh, her panic rising as the transformation refused to respond. The power that had been her greatest strength had become a beautiful prison.
"You bastard!" She lunged forward, her diamond fists aimed at Jay's mask, but stopped short when she met his gaze through the eyeholes. Even through the electronic distortion and the physical barrier, something in his eyes made her survival instincts scream warnings.
"Emma," Jay's voice carried a note of almost gentle menace, like a parent explaining consequences to a particularly slow child, "I suggest you consider your next move very carefully. I've been patient with you because you're useful alive. That patience has limits that you really don't want to test."
Emma stepped back, her diamond form reflecting the torchlight like a living sculpture of crystallized terror. The threat was implicit but unmistakableâshe could be beautiful and functional, or she could be beautiful and dead.
"The deal stands," she said finally, her voice containing decades of bitter pride swallowing itself.
Jay turned back to address the chamber as a whole, his presence dominating the underground space with casual authority that made everyone present feel small and temporary.
"Director Fury, Professor XavierâI suggest you leave. Now. Before this becomes the kind of battlefield none of us can control."
"This isn't over," Fury said, but his agents were already beginning to withdraw. The political ramifications alone would take months to sort through, and they had what they'd come forâprisoners to satisfy the Council, even if those prisoners were no longer the powerful assets they'd once been.
"It never is," Jay agreed. "But next time, rememberâsome houses are made of stronger glass than others."
The X-Men began their own tactical withdrawal, supporting Storm and helping the powerless team members navigate the tunnels. Only Beast lingered for a moment, his scientific curiosity warring with tactical necessity.
"Power Broker," Beast said quietly, his enhanced intellect still racing through patterns and possibilities that didn't quite add up, "your knowledge, your abilities, the precision of your power suppression... there's something familiar about your methodology. Something that reminds me ofâ"
Jay's mask turned toward the blue-furred genius with laser focus. "Doctor McCoy, sometimes the most brilliant minds ask the most dangerous questions. And sometimes those questions have answers that brilliant minds aren't prepared to handle."
"Indeed, they do," Beast replied softly, his scientific instincts screaming that he was missing something crucial. "Indeed, they do."
As the three factions withdrew from the underground chamber, the Morlocks remainedâunited, empowered, and now wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Their cheers echoed off stone walls as Jay stood among them, his suppression field finally dissipating as the immediate threat passed.
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