Evie Frye + Victor Vale Victor tests his pain inflictitudeness pre and post-serum on Evie
PG | COMPLETE
Contrary to what some of his detractors might claim, Victor Vale had no unhealthy interest or fixation on causing pain. Prior to becoming an EO, he hadn’t harmed a fly, save maybe a scathing insult let loose in a late-night lab once in a blue moon. His powers had manifested in their current form due to the violent, unrelenting shock of electricity that had killed him - not because he had been predisposed to certain deviant behaviors.
Still, cultivating that as a reputation had his uses. Victor had managed to set up a private side-room as his own research station, and Medical generally left him alone after he’d gone through the villain protocol required by Atlantis. The room had a table, a few chairs, and a First Aid kit that was strictly for appearances only (what was antibacterial spray and a bandaid going to do for someone wracked with nerve manipulation?). It wasn’t particularly a soothing space, but it was what he’d cobbled together, and besides, this experiment wasn’t going to take too long. Marina had offered her assistance and that cut down on a lot of the paperwork for him.
He was expecting Dame Evie Frye at any moment. Victor suspected she was the sort of person who was nearly always right on time - she had that self-sufficient, brisk air about her. She had so far been asking intelligent questions and her origin in the Victorian era was a curiosity; her brains and her background combined to incline Victor to like her, in a neutral sort of way. Given that he generally tolerated people, it made for a nice change.
Evie was, as expected, right on time. She had not been raised to waste other people’s time any more than her own, and it apparently was something of a cultural mark to boot. But above all, Evie was too polite and diligent to ever be late. She took an offer to help seriously, did all she could from the moment her help was accepted. Plus, she was curious and a bit anxious which only meant that if she had not stopped herself she would have been downright early. Arriving in medical, she was easily guided to where Victor had designated his own experiment area, and upon walking in Evie gave the man a smile and a greeting. “Hello Victor, I hope you are having a good day.”
“Evie. Thank you for coming.” Never one to spend much time in small-talk, Victor gestured to the seat by the door, and gave a nod to Marina. “The process is this: I take your pain threshold at three separate levels to gauge your pain tolerance, followed by the reverse of removing feeling, and gauging that. Then, I take a bit of the serum I collected from Evil Doctor McDirethreat back home and repeat the same test. The purpose is to see whether or not the serum dampens my abilities to the point of nullifying them completely, and to give me a better idea of what I might be able to expect of it as a potentially life-saving option. My powers overload. It’s a catastrophic pain in the ass.” He smiled, briefly; it did not reach his eyes. Victor was grateful for her participation, yes, but the thought of having to go powerless in order to stay alive didn’t appeal to him in the least. “If at any time you wish to stop, please tell me so. Before we get started, do you have any questions for me?”
Nodding, Evie listened to the man who was clearly eager to get on with things. She couldn’t blame him. She was nervous, undeniably, but her heart-rate was even as ever thanks to her ability to slow it down. It helped keep a clear mind, thankfully. All the same Evie had chosen to wear comfortable clothes so as not to make it all worse, and because she would prefer not to sweat through her good ones. She sat down where instructed, smiling at Marina, then listened some more, only reacting with a snicker at how Victor referred to the man he had gotten the serum from. As expected, Victor's condition was rather serious, a threat to himself and those around him to be mitigated as soon and as efficiently as possible. Evie was glad to do her part, though it was rather curious that nothing more serious than an unexpectedly involved conversation had even landed Victor in her peripheral vision. Evie considered all this for a bit before replying.
“I see. So it is a matter of life and death. A situation to be rectified with the utmost care as to how it becomes so.” She observed, thankful that she could lend aid. As a force of habit she pulled back her sleeves. “I believe you have told me all that is pertinent for me to know, for now. May I ask later if questions occur to me? Oh, and I have acquired a few more injuries as of recently, if you would rather start with those.”
“Ask away.” Victor could multitask. He was already reaching out with this power, getting an idea of where to concentrate it - injuries were the obvious place, and given her stuffed animal battles over the last few days, Evie had a few more bruises and scrapes than usual.
“Please give me a reading from one to ten, with one being minor aches and pain, and ten being excruciating, of the following.” He aimed for about a four; there was a scratch on her arm that functioned nicely. The dial in his head turned up and up and stopped, hovering in place. If he had timed things right, it would feel like the throbbing sting of a freshly-made wound, but not be all-consuming. He started out on the highest setting of the experiment to get it over with quickly - people wouldn’t be as likely to back out if the worst was over. Not that he expected the collected Evie to back out.
It was an annoying sort of pain, but not at all immobilizing or even the kind that interrupted her functions much. Still, Evie hissed, nostrils flaring, and felt the urge to blow on the wound to make it burn less. Urgent at first, her body’s normal alert to a new wound, but then it dulled some and hovered on annoying yet mostly ignorable. She judged its place on the scale as seen by her, and hoped she would do this categorization correctly. “It’s a, I suppose, a three or a four? Begins stronger than it remains overall.”
He nodded to Marina, who was busily scribbling along, and turned down the imaginary dial to what was generally a 2. “And this one?” From his own experience with it, it was that fresh cut, crusted over and on its way to healing. You might not want to poke at it, but it certainly didn’t qualify as an injury to be concerned with.
A little wrinkle appeared between Evie’s eyebrows as she tried to quantify this sensation. “It’s… it itches more than it hurts. I’d say a one.” She scratched at her arm, then shrugged. “Yes, the telltale itch of a healing wound. Out of curiosity, one’s pain tolerance varies depending on their exposure to pain, does it not?”
Victor nodded. “Yes. Many would have classified that as higher than a one. It’s one reason why I wanted to do this trial once without the serum - we need a control group on something as variable as human perception.”
He turned the dial down to its lowest setting yet - still producing pain, but nothing specific. “This is a trick I learned in prison,” he said as easily as one might discuss the weather. The feeling of discomfort wasn’t quite pain - it was too low for that. But it bothered one’s senses, and gave off a sense of unease. It worked nicely when he wanted to be alone, without fireworks or people crumpling onto the floor. “What would you rate it?”
It did not disturb Evie to hear Victor had been in prison. Everybody had a past. Even he had mentioned his friend, Mitch. Evie could only be grateful she or Jacob hadn’t ended up there too, for the penalty for some of their crimes would have been a lot harsher than just incarceration. She shrugged at the sensation Victor had announced he was producing, being a very mild annoyance that Evie would probably not have noticed had he not mentioned it.
“I… I barely feel anything. Like perhaps my body is fighting something, but I’m only alerted to this by that sense of self many if not all people possess?” She explained. “We know our bodies therefore we know what constitutes change but it isn’t more than that. I don’t know. Certainly have carried on feeling much worse. If a zero isn’t possible then a one.”
“Thank you,” Victor said, and turned off the pain. The next set of rounds was regarding numbness, and it went by more quickly than the pain tests. Turning the dial back further to induce a lack of feeling was a less exact science to him, in part because there wasn’t an upper limit of “I can’t take this anymore” such as with pain. The first test had her completely numb, with no sensation whatsoever, and the second and third gradually reintroduced feeling into her arm.
Her reactions recorded, Victor passed over a box loaded with pastries that had been earlier provided by Sydney. “Care for some while I take the serum?” he offered.
The numbness test was somehow stranger to Evie than the pain; she was used to the feeling of it, scrapes and bruised, sometimes worse. No feeling at all was completely different, obviously, and unusual.
Glad that it was done, Evie rearranged her position on the chair and flexed her arm, hand and fingers. When she was offered the pastry, Evie smiled up at Victor and nodded before taking the box. She was careful not to make too many crumbs or dirty herself as she ate, while patiently awaiting Victor’s return.
It didn’t take long - Victor was an old hat at injections, and having no fear of needles, he was able to inject the serum he’d stolen without much fanfare at all. Flexing his fingers, he noted on a sheet of paper exactly how much he had used - this was the real crux of the experiment, here. How much serum would be enough to keep his powers? How much serum until the inevitable build up of his powers would overwhelm him? He didn’t know - but hopefully these trials would lend some clarity to the possibilities.
Returning to Evie, he glanced over to see that she had finished with her pastries. “Round two?” he enquired politely, his voice calm despite the realization that he couldn’t see her nerve endings with this amount of serum. It wasn’t supposed to affect him this much - this was the minimum necessary to stave off any degree of buildup.
Evie, curious to see what the experiment would truly reveal although she was only hopeful she might be privy to the results but not certain she would, nodded and smiled at Victor’s inquiry.
“Ready when you are, Victor.” So far the experiment was far less jarring than she had been expecting and so Evie was a lot more at ease this time around. She even crossed her legs leisurely as she waited for it to begin.
She’d have to wait a while - Victor’s face went from calm to annoyed in a few moments. Ordinarily it was so simple, almost graceful: he could perceive the dial in front of him, but it was as if it were beyond a glass door or a sea of cotton balls. He couldn’t access it, nor manipulate it, not if he tried for a small influence or a massive one.
It was only a minute or so later that he stopped trying, a frown on his face, although his question was cooly posed: “I assume you felt nothing from any of that? Am I incorrect?”
As Victor’s face journey happened, so did Evie’s - she went from placid to frowning as she perceived his annoyance, and then ill-at-ease when no pain followed his obvious concentrated efforts. “Ah-” Evie slumped against the seat, looking away. She felt a thing or two (awkward chagrin, embarrassment) but none of them were physical and he didn’t need to know of them. “No. Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“Well,” Victor said a moment later, “thank you for your time, anyway.”
Flexing his hand, he once again tried to exert something - numbness, sharpness - onto himself. Nothing, not even the tell-tale buzz of his influence. He could feel the serum dampening the effects of his overload, but it was temporary. The serum was a bust, it appeared, on this level of usage.
“You can have another doughnut if you want,” he added a moment later, and grabbed one off the top. Was this stress-eating? Lovely.
Frowning, Evie hesitated to move as she saw how upset Victor looked. “I take it the serum does not both prevent your demise and maintain your power as it was?”
She finally got up from her chair and approached Victor, a look of sympathy on her face. She took a donut for good measure, as it seemed like the sympathetic thing to do, oddly enough. Something about sharing in food and drink furthered one’s bond with someone in bad circumstances. “I’m terribly sorry there seem to have been no satisfying results, Victor. If I can help again in any way please do not hesitate to ask.”
And that encapsulated what Victor instinctively liked about Evie Frye - she didn’t linger in some misguided attempt to make everything better. She knew her limits while still sending sympathy his way. It made things phenomenally easier, not having to make another person feel useful.
“Thank you. For your time.” Victor smiled, and if it didn’t reach his eyes he could hardly be blamed, given the circumstances. “I’ll see you around. Or-- well, given where I work, hopefully I won’t.”
“Or, given where we are, perhaps you will and we will both be somewhere unlikely and unsettling.” Evie replied wryly. She waved at Marina and thanked her before starting to walk away. “Oh, please extend my thanks to Sydney for providing us with these marvellous pastries. And my lunch. Until next time, Victor.”