"The signs are obvious—your memory's been tampered with. But my psychic power isn't strong enough. Let me take you to someone who knows what they're doing."
Daisy had run her check, and all she could tell was that something about Viper's memory was wrong. It was as if a great deal had been added out of nowhere. Where any of it had come from, or what the original had looked like—that, she couldn't begin to untangle.
Lucky for her, their faction now had a dedicated psychic specialist on the roster. No time like the present to put that resource to work.
The trouble was, the meeting between Viper and the White Queen didn't promise to be a pleasant one.
"Well, well, if it isn't the Baroness. Whose man are you off seducing today?" Emma Frost was getting a facial at her villa when the two of them walked in through the front doors. She waved the beautician away.
Viper wasn't thrilled either. She turned to Daisy. "This is the help you promised me? This tramp? Last time, in Mozambique, she screwed me over!"
Emma shot to her feet. "Liar. You were the one going for the kill. Your appetite got too greedy, that's all—you brought everyone's wrath down on yourself."
"You dare say you didn't use your psychic powers to manipulate them?"
"You dare say you didn't poison them and threaten their families?"
Daisy hadn't gotten a word in before the two of them were already at each other's throats. From their methods to their fashion sense, they tore into each other, each convinced the other was a degenerate of low character and ill intent—while she herself was a paragon of virtue without equal.
Mid-argument, Viper drew her long whip, and Emma's eyes lit up, primed to launch a psychic blast.
This wasn't their first clash, and each had reason to be wary of the other. Emma feared Viper might leave her half-paralyzed with venom; Viper, in turn, dreaded that psychic blast. Their eyes drifted, almost involuntarily, to Director Johnson, who stood off to the side with her arms crossed, enjoying the show.
The two of them traded glances, hoping she'd put a stop to the fight.
Daisy smiled faintly. Not bad—this was the one thing she liked about villains. They were realists. Everything came down to interests. Swap this scene out for a roomful of heroes who disagreed on principle, and the punches would already be flying.
A single laugh to wash away old grudges? Not happening. But sitting down to talk business—Daisy figured she still had enough clout to make that happen.
"Emma, Ophelia's memories seem to have been altered. Take a look for her, would you?" She spoke as if she hadn't noticed the friction between them at all, her tone even, unhurried.
"And she'd actually let me in there?" Emma cocked her chin to one side, dripping with disdain.
Viper, in fact, didn't dare. What if this gaudy little tramp went rummaging around inside her skull?
"I'll be the third party. You look at her through me." Daisy was running out of patience. She'd racked her brain to come up with this arrangement.
Only then did the two of them relax. One settled a hand on her left shoulder, the other on her right, and the three of them slowly linked their minds.
Together, as psychic projections, they entered Daisy's mindscape—this way, neither of them could pull anything.
But the moment they saw Daisy's mindscape, the two of them couldn't hold back their laughter.
Just like the corrupted Jean Grey had when she'd first glimpsed it, they too saw the enormous desk piled with spreadsheets, the assortment of calculators, abacuses, and ballpoint pens. From a distance, the place looked for all the world like an accounting room.
"Quit laughing your asses off and get to work!" Other people's mindscapes were sprawling cities or towering mountain ranges. Staring at her own "accounting room," Daisy couldn't make sense of how hers had ended up like this either. She snapped at the two of them to focus. With her as the relay, the three minds began connecting on a deeper level.
"For all the years you've lived, your psychic power is all but nonexistent. Your willpower, though—that just barely passes." In her own field of expertise, Emma delivered her verdict on Viper. Daisy paid no mind to their little squabbles and pretended not to see.
Done with the jab, Emma turned serious and got down to her examination. Like a surgeon, she laid out Viper's mental structure diagram in Daisy's mindscape.
"Here—this black, hair-like mass is clearly a foreign addition."
"Here—this mental branch has no human characteristics whatsoever. Was one of your direct ancestors some kind of animal?"
"And this one's hilarious. The main trunk of your psyche has been tied into a knot. Did you think your thoughts ran too fast, so you tied off your own psyche?"
Emma was thoroughly pleased with herself, lobbing a mocking remark for every couple of glances she took, right up until Daisy made a show of clearing her throat. Only then did she rein it in a little—though the scorn never left her eyes.
For all her trash talk, her hands were anything but slow. She cut what needed cutting, patched what needed patching. Viper's psyche shook violently under the strain, and she hurriedly shut her eyes, focusing on the treatment.
Emma grew more and more cautious. Only Daisy had nothing to do. Like a model student, she watched Emma gesture at empty air. All that talk of trunks and branches looked pretty much the same to Daisy.
"What's this mass of hers? It looks deeply entangled." Emma roused the nearly-dozing Daisy, pointing at a great clump of black matter buried at the very bottom, where the layers of the psyche had been peeled away one by one.
"How does an ordinary person end up with an essence this dark?" She glanced at Viper as she said it—Viper had long since passed out. "If this woman could learn to harness this mass of psychic energy, her attainment wouldn't fall short of Azazel's."
It was no small assessment. Unless born with formidable psychic power, an ordinary person—even a talented one who lived an exceptionally long life—would top out around Azazel's level: able to use words to beguile in everyday situations, able to unleash two or three psychic blasts in a fight, and nothing more. And that was the result of two thousand years of practice on Azazel's part.
Viper was no younger than Captain America, but ninety years at the most. She wasn't even a fraction of Azazel's age, so naturally she'd never possess that kind of power.
Seeing Daisy hesitate, on the verge of speaking, Emma wisely dropped the matter. "This stubborn thing—I can't clear it out. It isn't purely a matter of psychic energy. It involves a field I don't understand. Force it out, and this nasty woman will turn into an idiot."
"And if you don't remove it?"
"Then, of course, everything reverts to how it was. Watch." Emma restored Viper's psyche to its original position. As the layers stacked back up, the black mass vanished from view. The outer projection, while not as crystalline as that of a psychic-gifted person like themselves, looked as though it had been rinsed clean by rainwater.
The two of them watched, helpless, as countless black threads surfaced from the depths of her psyche, attempting once more to taint the projection.
"Thanks for the help. I'll have a talk with Ophelia in a bit."
"Suit yourself." Emma offered neither approval nor objection, and the two of them withdrew from the psychic world.
Viper remained unconscious, and Daisy couldn't very well just walk out. So she took up residence at Emma's villa.
The next morning, the lovely serpent finally came to, slowly, rubbing her head.
"You're sure that pervert didn't mess around inside my head?" That was the first thing she said the moment she saw Daisy.
It took round after round of reassurance to put her suspicions to rest. Then their conversation naturally circled back to Viper's condition.
"Still think Miss Jessica Drew is your daughter?" Daisy asked, with no small amount of interest.