Sue Storm huddled in the middle of a vast white room. For the first time since she had gained her powers from cosmic rays, she was truly afraid, and for the first time since the Fantastic Four had formed, she felt truly alone. She had no idea how she had gotten here or where here even was. In every direction, the floor and - ceiling? sky? - stretched off into endless whiteness. One second she had been...leaving the Baxter Building? But why? She was having trouble remembering. It couldn't have been seconds ago, could it? She felt like she'd been here forever, now that she thought about it.
Suddenly, however, she was no longer alone! Seemingly out of nowhere, a figure had appeared. A vaguely familiar one, too.
"Oh, I know you!" Sue gasped, voice still trembling, but with some hope creeping in at last. "You're one of the X-Men!"
The tiniest of sneers briefly formed on Psylocke's lips before vanishing. High and mighty Susan Storm couldn't even be bothered to remember the names of a fellow superhero? Thanks to Gambit, the Purple Man and Emma Frost, Psylocke's heroic drives had been neutered and replaced with subservience to Gambit's new criminal sex empire. And now she couldn't help but look at the astral form of The Invisible Woman and think...what a bitch.
"Yes, of course!" Psylocke beamed, molding the psychic plane around her to get Sue to trust her. "I'm here to help, after all, you're the world famous Invisible Woman!"
"But...where is here?" Sue asked, still confused by the surroundings, which were fading from a bright white to a duller gray.
"You've somehow been trapped on the astral plane, my dear, and I have been dispatched to save you. But to do so, I need full access to your mind. Quickly, if I could just..." Psylocke, or at least the astral form of her, moved closer to the still huddled projection of Sue. She had made it deep into Storm's subconscious and would be able to manipulate her on a surface level, but what Gambit wanted required total access to all of Sue's psyche, and the Invisible Woman was about ready to give her the keys to the kingdom.
"Oh, of cou-"
Before the words could leave Sue's lips, Psylocke had formed a simulcra of her psychic knife and plunged it into Sue Storm's mind, the way she had done in the real world only hours ago. This deep on the astral plane, it had the desired effect, opening Sue's mind up completely and giving up all of her secrets. Even the one buried so deeply that Sue herself seemed to not know it was there any longer. This is what she had come for.
***
Gambit sat in a chair in the back room of the porn studio where he'd taken Psylocke, Rogue and Sue after fleeing from Four Freedoms Plaza. The last place anyone would even think of looking for the beloved Invisible Woman. Before him, Psylocke was perched over Sue's body, locked into her on the astral plane. Sue had, to this point, had a completely blank expression on her face, but something had changed just a moment ago, as a thin line of drool ran out of the corner of her mouth, and suddenly her eyes showed...fear. Clearly, Psylocke had found what she was looking for.
Satisfied with her progress, he turned back to some other spoils of war he'd picked up at the Baxter Building. While the crooked cops on his payroll had easily lured Sue into Psylocke's trap, Gambit himself had used his own natural skills as one of the world's master thieves to infiltrate the Building. His time was limited, but he had managed to acquire two prizes from the Fantastic Four's vault of gadgets and weapons that they'd taken from defeated foes. The first looked like nothing more than a silly 1960s ray gun, and that's apparently what it was - it had been labeled the "H-Ray" as part of a collection of materials taken from the so-called "Hate Monger", a weapon that could supposedly bring out all of the worst qualities hidden in the darkest places of a target's mind. Gambit smirked as he looked at the goofy little gun and thought about the rumors of who the Hate Monger supposedly really was...couldn't be true, of course, but that would explain the buyer he was supposed to meet with for this little item.
The second item he'd managed to take looked, for all intents and purposes, like someone in the 1950s had tried to build an ipad. Big, bulky and gray, the device had three low rez screens on it and several buttons. This one he had less knowledge of, and the label - "Psycho Man's Control Box" - only sounded vaguely familiar. But when he flicked it on, the small screens had come to life, each with a single word on them:
"Fear" "Doubt" "Hate"
Not exactly the most useful options for Gambit's current plans, but he might be able to make that work. And maybe there was a way to switch those settings, he mused.
***
Back in Sue Storm's mind, Psylocke was nervous. In truth, though she hated to admit it, Emma was the better and more trained telepath, especially at matters as...sinister as this. Betsy had never done anything remotely similar to this before and was afraid she was out of her depth. But Gambit wanted it done now, and Betsy's lived to serve his every whim, so her she was.
Before her, the Invisible Woman knelt on the ground, her Fantastic Four uniform partly shredded. Between her and Psylocke, Betsy had gathered up images of her team, her family, everything that Sue loved about being part of the Fantastic Four, about being the Invisible Woman, about her closest friends and loved ones. And slowly, they were turning gray. Sue was in a complete panic, now terrified that this X-Woman might not be there to help her at all, but there was nothing she could do as a cage slowly formed around her, imprisoning her in bars that even her invisible fields didn't seem to be able to break. Then, from behind her, she heard a voice. A familiar voice...her own voice.
"Oh, Susie, you look like you could use some help. What if I took over, just...just for a little bit?"
Susan whirled around, looking directly into the face of...herself. Well, sort of herself. A darker version of herself, clad in a leather mockery of her own uniform, with a look of pure didsain on her face.
"No...not you? Not-"
"Say it, " the other Sue whispered. "Say our name."
"M...Malice..."
With that, the second Sue reached into the cage and forced the real Susan's head to turn back and look at Psylocke and the images of the Fantastic Four. "Look closley, Susie. Look at them. Because while you're trapped in here and I'm out there? I'm going to ruin it all. Destroy them. Pervert them. And ruin you. Everything you've built. Everything you love. Everything you are."
Psylocke had stood by this time, partly in awe and partly in fear of this new, sinister Susan Storm who she had pulled out of the darkest recesses of Sue's mind. This had worked out perfectly, and as Malice continued to lay out depraved talk of turning Sue's life upside, down, Psylocke sent out a psychic message to Gambit that things were ready. Back out in the real world, Gambit nodded and stood up, setting down the Control Box to pick up the much simpler H-Ray.
"Sure, still gonna sell dis ting," he shrugged. "But nobody said I can't get some use outta it first." He pointed the H-Ray directly at Sue, who was still staring off in the distance, eyes clouded with fear, and fired.
At that moment, back on the astral plane, Malice held Sue's gaze directly on all the images of her loved ones, just as the the "hate ray" struck. Sue - the real Sue - cried out in agony as the weapon hit her phyiscal form, its "hate ray" technology coursing through her as she gazed on everything she loved.
Used to love.
Hated.
***
Hours ago, somewhere else, though she had no idea where or when at the moment, Dazzler was sprawled across the bed of some strange hotel room. She couldn't think straight, didn't want to think straight, half remembering how horribly she'd bombed at her college party gig. It didn't help that she could swear she could still hear her own music playing. She looked up through blearly eyes and could see the man...she couldn't remember his name...did she even know it?... who had brought her back to this room setting up a camera that had a perfect view of the bed and Dazzler herself, direclty in focus.
It was him, seconds ago, who had set up an mp3 player to play Dazzler's own album in the background, and as out of it as she was - also his doing - she couldn't help but bob her head to the beat, her mutant powers half-assedly making the tiniest of light shows around her.
"Look at that, the real Dazzler experience!" he laughed, loud enough for the camera to pick up. "Now, tell me Dazzler do you want to be a star?"
Dazzler tried hard to think, remembering that she'd promised to put on a good show for Harry, her agent, who had told her he'd thrown everything he had into this comeback. "A...s-star. I wanna be a star."
"What's that Dazzler?" he asked, stripping down behind her.
"I w-wanna be a star."
"Well, look right into that camera and say it again. Tell everybody, baby!"
"I want to be a star!" she said, not terribly sure what that even meant right now, but confident as her music thumped and her own light show danced around her. "Make me a star!"
***
Back on the astral plane, Sue Storm was huddled in a ball in a psychic cage, mumbling things to herself that Psylocke couldn't fully make out. Between them stood this second, decidedly more villainous version of the Invisible Woman, the one called Malice. Psylocke still had other orders, to copy some of the memories that Rogue had absorbed from one of a dozen porn stars over to Sue's mind, but perhaps that was best left to Emma whenever she finally returned from what the Purple Man had her doing. Malice seemed to agree.
"So you, X-Woman...it seems little Susie here is going to be out of commissio for a while, so I think I might take a spin at the controls for a while. Why don't you...introduce me...to this boss of yours? I'd love to thank him for this little change in how things are run around here."