[Fade Rift:

[strikesthrough]

Memory 1.

[ooc: folks are welcome to either see this from Victor's side and know that he's controlling other people's pain levels around him, or have no knowledge of what's going on at all and just see the effects of his powers without context.]

---

The memory starts in a library. Not a nice library with high, grand ceiling and varnished wooden shelves, but an austere grey and white set-up covering every inch of the room--a prison library.

Victor (a few years younger and comparatively healthier than he looks now) has a book in his hand, reading and musing aloud while another, much larger man, Mitch, is busy trying to short out a security camera with a gum wrapper, a cigarette, and a small piece of wire that probably had a former life as a paperclip.

“Did you know," Victor says, "that when you take away a person’s fear of pain, you take away their fear of death? You make them, in their own eyes, immortal. Which of course they’re not, but what’s the saying? We are all immortal until proven otherwise?”

"Something like that," is Mitch's distracted reply, then shortly followed by, "Got it!"

Victor has just reached the section in the book on nerves, which feels hilariously ironic, before he claps the book shut and starts to push his powers out into the surrounding air, feeling for the presence of guards heading down the aisle outside the library.

"Shall we?" Victor asks casually, starting to use his powers to turn up the sense of pain for anyone around who isn't him or Mitch.

With a nod, Mitch says, "After you.”

Guards drop in all directions, screaming and writhing in pain from some invisible agony, as Victor and Mitch effectively stroll out like they'd been visiting a museum, with `Wrighton Federal Penitentiary` emblazoned on the front of the building as they leave.

Memory 2.

[CW: Brief reference to dog "death" but I swear the dog never stays dead, it's a rule that the dog is ALWAYS fine!]

---

It's a short memory, Victor (a few years younger and comparatively healthier than he looks now) stepping into a hotel room accompanied by a blonde girl, Sydney, wearing an over-sized red coat and rainbow tights and looking around twelve or thirteen, and even then is on the small side. A big black dog, probably a Great Dane, trots along behind them.

Adopting a casual sense of the dramatic, Victor drops a self-help book (the name VALE is printed on the spine and front cover in a Very Important-looking font) heavily onto the counter as he sweeps in.

"It’s time to send a message," he says to the large man, Mitch, who is already inside the room, "To Eli Ever."

Mitch looks up, frowns, then says, "Where the hell did that dog come from?"

"I get to keep him!" Sydney answers, helpfully.

"Is that blood?" Asks Mitch, and a back-and-forth between him and Victor while the latter is shuffling through through his papers, "I shot him,"

"Why would you do that?"

"Because he was dying."

"Then why isn’t he dead?"

"Because Sydney brought him back.”

Mitch turns to look at small blond girl in the middle of their hotel living room. "Excuse me?"

As her eyes go to the floor, she offers a quiet, "Victor named him Dol."

"It’s a measurement of pain," Victor clarifies.

Mitch frowns then says, "Well, that’s morbidly appropriate. Can we get back to the part where Sydney resurrected him? And what do you mean you’re going to send Eli a message?"

Memory 3.

[CRAU Memory | cw: vague references to building destruction, terrorist imagery, illness, and dramatic super villain silliness]

---

All around, there is a low-level thrumming sensation, an unseen engine keeping the Samodiva--a massive aircraft--floating among the clouds. It's a view that can be seen from virtually any angle on the may deck of the ship, as well as many other levels.

Victor stands at the helm, bent forward slightly over the control panel, both hands braced against the console. From the back, he looks deeply engrossed in thought, but when approached, he actually has his eyes squeezed shut and is forcing his breathing into a level rhythm. He looks sick. Very sick.

"Boss?"

The voice is from Joseph "Joey" Kavinsky, a skinny kid in his early twenties and is enough to make Victor take a deep breath in without opening his eyes.

"What is it?"

"So they're playing your broadcast over and over, calling you--" Joey mock-scowls and pushes his lower lip forward to approximate a squaring of the jaw as he lowers his voice, J. Jonah Jameson style, "'The dangerous meta terrorist Victor Vale, once a reeeeessspected member of the medical community, now turned violent meta resistance leader--!'"

Victor snorts at the newscaster impression as he brings a hand up to rub his eyes, "So they didn't like our impromptu demolition of the government communications building? I think we were doing the city skyline a favour: it was ostentatious."

Joey simply shrugs. Then goes quiet a while. Then scuffs his foot against the floor. The noise is inoffensive to most, but it grates on Victor's every nerve and shows in the way his shoulders coil upward.

"Spit it out."

"I mean, you know it, right? You're coming up to mass time."

Victor sighs, pushing himself heavily away from the console.

"Critical mass... Don't shorten it like that, it sounds like I'm going to pray."

Joey beams, clapping a hand on Victor's lower back to help steady him, despite the wince he receives from Victor, as he tips his head back to cheerfully recite scripture.

"'But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings! You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall!'"

Victor groans audibly, making some of the other metahumans on deck glance over, then shoves the younger man away from him to walk, shakily, by himself, "Fuck off, Joey!"