The Director and the Dragon, Part 6

Posted on Tue Dec 2nd, 2025 @ 5:22am by Head Mistress Absynthe "Syn" Drake & Level 10 Minamoto 源 Takashi 孝志

Mission: HYDRA: Another Head Rises
Location: Mutant Academy Near Sedona, Arizona
Timeline: Current, 2300 hours

There were countless reasons someone might choose to bond with the nano. Syn herself carried more than most. The armor shielded her from relics that had once overridden her will. Artifacts that had twisted her into an assassin under a man she still couldn’t speak of without a cold shiver. His commands had driven her to acts she’d spent lifetimes trying to atone for.

“You make judgements without full knowledge. You can read every file we have and still not know her,” Syn said softly. “Her strange innocence about the modern world. You don’t understand the control Fractal’s learned in less years than you can count on one hand. What she has overcome. Julius supports her, guides her, protects her, but he doesn’t steer her mind. The failsafes are there only for the worst-case scenario. And she wanted nothing to do with the nano at first. She’s far too headstrong. Which is probably why Julius has become so.”

Syn’s gaze drifted toward the glowing scans, her expression tightening. “When she nearly carved a scar through southern Illinois and almost killed Rook… when she barely understood she was a mutant… near death, she redirected one of those blasts rather than let it tear another gouge into the earth.” She shook her head. “That was the moment she truly realized just how dangerous she could be.”

“That irradiated crater lake in Nevada?” the administrator added, voice quiet but cutting, “The one that makes no sense in the context of her known powers? That’s also the grave of her brothers and sisters. Her mother.”

Her eyes fixed on Takashi’s, unblinking. “Her awakening annihilated the entire compound. No survivors. Not even the underground bunker where the women and children were being hidden made it. Abused women. Babies.” Her face twitched slightly. “The guilt changed her more than she’s willing to admit.”

Sparkles has trained relentlessly to master her abilities since, Director, OG stated, turning toward Takashi. And Mountain Man is no gentle master. She fights, drills, studies... anything to avoid harming an innocent. Choosing the nano wasn’t some desire for extra power. It was for restraint, to keep her from accidentally killing innocent people. It is a safeguard against a catastrophic release of energies that she, and we, still do not fully comprehend, to be perfectly frank. Not for her safety, but for the wellbeing of those around her.

“Would you rather that we actually locked her in a cage and kept her away from the countless people that she’s saved over the last few years? Until she learns better... control?” Syn asked, eyeing Takashi curiously.

“No, I would not,” Takashi admitted easily, shaking his head, his accented tone sounding somewhat hard. “And it is not a judgement. She is a mutant and must learn to control her powers or more will surely suffer. And I understand that she killed her loved ones when she awakened, but that is the price all mutants might have to pay for having the ‘X’ gene.”

While it is not their fault for being born thus, it is every mutant’s responsibility to do so. There is no room for ‘what if’s’ and ‘what could have beens’. That is the price we all must pay.”

“And please understand,” he said to the diminutive headmaster, holding the weight of her serpentine gaze. “I know exactly what she is capable of. Not because of some file, educated guesses, or some clever detective work. There is no one on Terra who knows better than I. We… share a power set.”

Syn’s brow arched at that. “What exactly is your powerset?” she asked. “Hers revolves around light, at least, everything we’ve observed. Except for the glass-crater scorch marks she leaves when her life is on the verge of ending. Those are… something else entirely.” Her arms crossed loosely. “Even if you share a powerset, that doesn’t mean you understand the person wielding it.”

Her tone wasn’t dismissive, merely edged with an old, practiced skepticism. After the war, matching abilities had become rare. Only one other powerful telepath was still known to exist, a high-level HYDRA operative, half-sister to the very woman they were discussing. Another survivor of the same network that had brutalized Bethany… and another target Bethany now hunted without mercy after HYDRA took out Rook.

Awakenings had surged in recent years. Children born directly into their powers, often violently. Not all survived the process. As if the world were trying to replace what had been slaughtered, clumsily forcing balance back into a broken system. Syn had lived long enough to know that nature was rarely tidy, and never kind.

“You say she lacks control,” Syn continued, voice calm but firm, “yet I’ve seen the opposite in the thick of combat. You speak as though she’s undisciplined. I assure you that she is not. She is a soldier.” A faint dryness touched her tone as she continued, “Every bone in her body had been broken long before we ever laid eyes on her. Awakening is traumatic for many of our kind, yes. For some, catastrophic. I would not be surprised if she still sees herself as something monstrous. At least she no longer calls herself demon-spawn aloud.”

Her reptilian gaze drifted to the readouts scrolling beside them. “You act as though her motivations are unimportant. You, of all people, should understand familial gravity. Her mother taught her kindness, what little she ever received. Taught her languages in secret. Taught her morals. To Bethany, losing control is a betrayal of that woman’s memory.”

She faced Takashi again, eyes bright and unblinking. “You speak as if she should simply know how to master something she doesn’t even realize exists. As if talent and power translate into magical visions of the future. The only time she’s glimpsed anything beyond her conscious abilities is when she’s delirious, inches from death. That terrifying potential only surfaces when the universe is trying to snuff her out.”

OG added, That means that nothing that Sparkles is doing is because she lacks discipline or control. It may be grief-driven, but it’s intentional. Tactical. Hell, she’s hiding from some of the most powerful people in the world using nothing but her wits, and nature as her playground.

When OG mentioned nature, Syn’s eyes widened a bit. “Underground passages, caves. Would that cause any interference with your scans?”

“It would depend on how deep they are,” Takashi said, turning away from Syn as he raised a gloved right hand to idly rub his chin in thought. “Our scans are effective to about… fifteen or twenty meters, also depending on which types of materials are lining the tunnels. I have deployed several satellites from The Peak with these new modifications. Maybe autonomous drones might be able to increase the power and resolution as the would be closer to the ground…” Turning abruptly back to her, he lowered his hands back to their customary rest on his daisho.

“Please,” he said, looking at her first, then to OG and back. “Do not think that I am being critical of Bethany. I do not mean to sound callous or to make light of her past or the things she has suffered. But she is undisciplined, lacks further control and refinement of her powers and what she is truly capable of. I am familiar with her light-based powers, but you must understand why I say these things.” Turning to face OG, he motioned to her with one hand.

“OG,” he said to the sentient AI. “Please bring up the chart of the full electromagnetic spectrum.” When she did so, he continued. “The electromagnetic spectrum goes from longest wavelength energy to the highest. Roughly in the middle, from 400 nanometers to 700 nanometers is the visible spectrum. Another name for visible light is photons. Photons do not emit heat, therefore cannot burn anything. That lies within the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. When she uses her light powers; abilities that only use photons, no heat or burning happens, it is only a visible effect.”

When she uses her powers and they cause damage,” the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director turned to face the ancient headmistress as he continued. “She is likely using infrared, which is slightly wider in wavelength which produces heat. Though, without actively scanning her when she uses whatever causes the ‘glass crater scorch marks’, I can only hazard a guess.” Takashi shrugged his shoulders, punctuating his comments with the motion. “But I believe she taps into the more narrow wavelengths of the spectrum.”

He raised his gloved right hand, making a pinching motion with his fingers in demonstration as he continued the explanation. “Those are where the higher charged particles lie, and they can cause significant amounts of damage. Some of those wavelengths are even without any amount of heat. I believe she is ‘glassing’ subconsciously, possibly as a trauma response”

“But,” Takashi said, taking a step closer to her, his voice becoming slightly more serious.. “She can learn to consciously use these other wavelengths if she were to learn. This is why I say she is undisciplined. There is a whole spectrum she can learn how to manipulate.”

Taking a step back from Syn, he nodded his head in concession. “And I do understand the pull and power of family, as you say. I know how powerful it is. But if she does not deal with the trauma and learns how to control her outbursts, things will get significantly worse. And we will potentially all suffer for it.” He said the last with a resounding finality that was unmistakable, his dark eyes boring into her serpentine gaze with the knowledge of experience.

“Fractal has a… penchant for finding underground lairs,” the miniature administrator remarked. “Even before her awakening, she utilized the cave systems near where she was raised to avoid detection by her father’s search parties. The habit stuck. Open campgrounds invite discovery. Natural caverns do not.”

The tiny educator listened to Takashi’s impromptu science lecture with an amused tilt of her head. When he finished, she let out a soft chuckle, warm in sound, though her eyes carried more fatigue than humor. Perhaps the Director could be persuaded to teach a seminar one day, she thought.

“That does make sense,” she admitted aloud. “Though I doubt Miss Harrison has the faintest idea about any of the physics you just described. Or the potential ramifications. She has no formal education, no way of connecting the dots. The only classroom she’s ever known was the brief time she spent with us. She arrived knowing how to read and write English, as well as biblical languages. She could count, track, fight, and shoot... and can calculate an accurate trajectory faster than most computers. But that’s the extent of it.”

Turning to OG’s flickering avatar, Syn continued, “We do have readings from the second of her bursts. We were overhead when it happened. It looked like a streak of sunfire lancing up from the earth, cutting through the supernatural blizzard of an awakening gone terribly violent. Bring the scans up.”

OG complied, summoning the multi-layered sensor data from that night. On the screens, a surge of incandescent energy tore upward through a storm front so dense it read like a wall. The blast ignited the treetops as it ascended, OG reported. It clipped an uninhabited cabin as well. Several hostiles within her personal radius appear to have been flash-fried. Well, parts of them. But she altered the vector before it could level the entire area. Redirected it skyward.

Syn exhaled slowly, the memory still sharp as she looked back at Takashi. “The measures required to save her were... exhausting. That was the last time it happened. What, three years ago, now?”

“If I may,” the Director said, looking at Syn for permission as he raised his left arm, the forearm terminal turning on with the motion. When he had her approval, Takashi reached out with his right hand and made a grasping motion, ‘grabbing’ the scan of the blast and moving the glowing ‘ball’ of the data packet to his wrist terminal, dropping it upon its virtual surface. With an audible ping, the terminal notified him that the data had been received, then with his right hand he began running his battery of analysis programs, running it through various multi spectral scans.

“As I suspected,” Takashi said, placing his hands back onto the end of his daisho. “Bethany’s uncontrolled energy emanations are of significantly more narrow wavelengths on the EM scale. They are approaching the 10 nanometer range, the equivalent of the upper ultraviolet range, bordering on X-rays. Normally we would not see UV or X-ray radiation, but from observations when powered individuals fire energy blasts of any kind, there is always some visible effect.”

Takashi had suspected that Bethany was able to produce and manipulate the energies of the EM spectrum, even though it was a considerably rare ability. There was something about the way she manipulated light that reminded him of his own powers of EM production and control. If only she would allow herself to be trained, the Director thought to himself.

While he could manipulate all the energies on the EM spectrum down to the quantum level, his powers were closer to that of the Power Cosmic, having been empowered by Uatu, one of the mysterious yet everpresent Watchers. Takashi could not wield the Power Cosmic itself, the Ultimate Power of the Universe; only the most powerful beings of all Creation could do so, such as the Watchers.

He also purposefully avoided answering her question about his own powers. He did not want to give away much information, as information was power. Once he built up some trust, learned more about this ancient, mysterious woman, maybe he would tell her more. For now, he was satisfied with all of what he had revealed.

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TBC
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Absynthe Drake
“Wyrmwood”
Headmistress - Drake Academy

Minamoto Takashi 源孝志
“Hypernova 極超新星”
Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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