Mary was twelve when she learned that being small meant being invisible. She'd be standing in line at the cafeteria only for kids to cut in front of her, not even noticing she was there to begin with.
Teachers would call on students sitting around her, yet they always managed to skip over her. Boys would bump into her and apologise to the wall. Five feet and eighty pounds, with mousy brown hair and a quiet voice.
She tried to change by speaking louder in eighth grade but got told she was too aggressive and unladylike. She tried to dress differently but got mocked for trying too hard. She got average grades because they always seemed to forget she was part of the group.
By the time she was seventeen, she accepted the truth that some people aren't meant to be noticed, and some people were like Mary. Small, weak and forgettable.
She was invisible most of her life. Nobody even remembered her name at her high school ceremony. She dropped out after a semester at community college. What was the point?
Her life continued with dead-end jobs, from retail to fast food. Places where being forgettable meant no promotions or recognition. At twenty-three, she was still invisible. Then the accident happened.
The details didn't matter. What mattered was the results. She woke up six feet tall and with two hundred pounds of muscle, with enough strength to bend steel and durability to withstand bullets.
For the first time in her life, people saw her. They couldn't miss her and couldn't ignore her. She was real.
A guy shoved past her in a bar, and for the first time, she used her strength to pick that guy up. The look on his face was everything. The fear and recognition. She became Titania and started to fight heroes to make everyone remember and acknowledge her.
It wasn't enough. She needed more. She needed to prove that she wasn't just powerful but superior in every way. Better than the people who spent years not acknowledging or even noticing her. To be better than She-Hulk.
She didn't remember when She-Hulk became the focus. Maybe she was seeing the world's attention all on her. She had everything she never had.
Sophist appeared in her cell again, his wings spread across her prison cell.
"Hello again, Mary. I come again, this time with a proposition," he said.
She attacked him immediately this time, trying to grab and throw him against the wall. Before she could, Sophist was already across the room and completely calm.
"I'm not here to fight you. I'm here to offer you what you've wanted all your life," he said.
"You don't know what I want!"
"I know you were invisible all your life until you gained this strength of yours. The only reason you challenged She-Hulk was because you just want to be acknowledged, the very thing you've never had in your life. I know everything about you," Sophist said, holographic footage appearing of her when she was weak.
Mary stared at the footage. Most of her life, replaying right in front of her.
"What do you want?"
"I want to give you a world where you are the strongest woman. So you can finally know that you are superior to She-Hulk and everyone else. You can finally be noticed," Sophist said, closing down the footage.
"I've tried that. I've already tried to beat her before..." she started to say.
"I'm not just talking about beating her physically. I'm also talking about her identity and making her doubt everything she uses to define herself, to make her know her entire life is a lie and make you the one who exposed it," Sophist interrupted.
Mary felt something shift in her chest. A chance to make Jen see her. To make everyone see her.
"How?" Mary asked.
"I know Jennifer extensively. I know her weaknesses more than anyone. I can give the method to exploit all of them and prove to everyone that she's exactly what she fears herself to be. A monster," Sophist replied.
"And what do you get from this?" questioned Mary.
"Entertainment, my dear girl! The look on her face when she comes to fully realise what she is and the looks of scorn around her. That's what I gain," Sophist replied.
"Why do you need me? From the news it seems you can do all that yourself," asked Mary.
"Because you're a mirror image. Both of you worry about how everyone sees you. You want to be noticed because all your life you've been invisible. You're obsessed with attention. Jen wants everyone to like her. She feeds off their praise. To be seen as a monster crushes her very soul. None of you know who you really are, and that makes you a useful tool," Sophist answered with a slight smile.
Tool. The word should have bothered her and made her refuse, but someone was finally seeing her clearly. He understood her more than she understood herself, and he was offering to help get what she always wanted. That was worth being a tool.
"What do I have to do?" she asked.
"For now, you wait. You are not needed at the present, but soon, very soon, you'll get what you want," Sophist replied.
"Is this all worth it? Will I finally be happy after all of this?" she asked.
"I can't predict the future, Mary, but whatever the outcome is, happy or sad, you'll come out stronger than ever before. You'll be one step closer to finding out who you really are, and that's further than most," Sophist answered, his voice gentle before the sounds of alarms blared.
Sophist looked out through the bars, towards the clouds in the sky. He recalled the gun in his hand. The sound of the shot and smell of smoke with blood painted across the wall. Then he remembered his old life, getting cramped hands from writing all his little ideas and crumpling so much paper. Two very different lives.
"I'll contact you when I need you. It seems a few uninvited guests will be coming very soon, and I'd rather not mess up my suit," he added, fading away in an instant.
The doors swung open and a squad of armed guards entered her cell, searching for Sophist, but he was long gone.