Scourge X 3 - Secret of Project S -4

Part 4: The Past Revealed

      Scourge coughed weakly and opened his eyes to an orange sky. He groaned and sat up to find himself next to water. He looked around, unsure where he was. From his wet clothes, he was pretty confident someone had tried to drown him. Maybe Excel was right about his drowning problem.
He gasped as he remembered what had happened. Venom became a deadly puppet to that crazy Madam Maria. And worst, they probably had Vengeance. Scourge held his head, "Dang it! Why can't things ever just be simple?"
Then movement caught Scourge's attention. Scourge jumped to his feet and faced the person. He was surprised to see the hooded figure from the ARK step out of the shadows cast by the setting sun. Scourge groaned, "You again, huh? Just who are you?"
The figure crossed their arms, not answering. Scourge was quickly becoming annoyed, "This is starting to tick me off! Tell me who you are or I'll just assume you're with the blond manic and kick your sorry butt!"
The figure sighed and spoke in a voice Scourge was shocked to find so familiar, "I guess there's no point hiding it any longer." He pulled off his hood, making Scourge gasp.
It was Venom! Or at least, someone who looked exactly like Venom.
He was Venom's perfect reflection, except without Venom's friendliness. His red eyes were cold from behind the black shades he wore. He wore a long black coat with a turned-up collar and hood, silver chains hanging from it, slick black and red sneakers, and black gloves with silver shackles around his wrists. A couple jagged daggers were strapped to his black belt. A gold chain hung around his neck with a gold charm shaped like a hexagonal bi-pyramid. Three silver buds were in his left ear while two were in his right ear.
He crossed his arms, "Happy now?"
Scourge was so lost, "I... you're..." He groaned and rubbed his head, "Ugh! I hate trying to figure things out! Just tell me who you are!"
The Venom look-a-like sighed, "Very well. Only because you're obviously not working for Madam Maria, seeing as she had you nearly drowned." He looked at Scourge, "They call me S." He looked serious, "And I am the original Project S."
Scourge was surprised, "Wait, what? The original Project S? But what about Venom?"
S shrugged, "A copy."
Now Scourge was shocked, "Are you serious?"
S nodded, "I didn't turn out the way Madam Maria wanted, so she decided to try again. Your friend "Venom" is the result of that. He was to be my replacement."
H watched the sun set, "It was after I was completed, Madam Maria had me kill one of the more troublesome of the captured scientists. It was to test how deadly the disease was. All I had to do was give her a dose of the disease." He sighed, "But I couldn't. No matter how I tried, something held me back, and Madam Maria didn't care too much for that."
He pulled off his shades, "So, she locked me in a cell that even I couldn't break out of until I could learn obedience. I was in there for days, but it felt like weeks. No windows, no signs of passing time, no anything. Just a big empty room."
Scourge scoffed, "I would have slowly lost my mind."
S smirked, "Honestly, I did." He thought about his past, "Then Madam Maria finally came back. She had a present for me." He looked serious, "She brought the scientist I was supposed to kill. She told me to kill her and I would get my freedom. If not, I could stay in there and rot for all she cared."
Scourge smirked, "Sucked to be you, huh?"
S sat on the ground next to the water, "Of course, I was willing to do anything to get out of that wretched room. I stood over her, just as I had days before, ready to get my freedom, but..."
Scourge scoffed, "You still couldn't do it? Clearly you didn't want your freedom enough."
S shrugged, "Maybe, but it didn't really matter. In truth, how much freedom would I have gained? I would have still been nothing more than a puppet to Madam Maria." He sighed, "Though, that wasn't my thinking at the time. I was absolutely furious, and yes, I lost my mind after that."
He looked thoughtful, "Then she spoke. She'd never spoken since the first moment I laid eyes on her, but she spoke at that moment. She spoke so firmly. She told me to calm down, then she told me to sit." He smirked, "I did exactly as she told me. I didn't understand why or how, but I obeyed. I was only created to obey Madam Maria, but there I was taking orders from the person I was supposed to kill. You can imagine how confused I felt after that."
He smiled as he remembered, "We spent the next few days in that room together. She told me about herself and her life before being taken by Madam Maria." He looked happy thinking about it, "Her name was Mia. She was a young woman who had won awards for her intelligence. She wasn't married and had no family aside from her mother, who apparently died while Mia was on the ARK. She told me so many things, so many stories, so many thoughts and feelings, that they began to stick. I started thinking and feeling too. I don't know how, but over those few days, I became someone new. I was no longer just a weapon or a disease, I wasn't even Anti-Shadow anymore. I was S."
S sighed, "Sadly, every good thing comes to an end. One night, Maria returned. She was disgusted at my change. She told me that I was a failure and would have to be replaced. It would seem that over those days I spent with Mia, she had been creating a new ultimate weapon. Though, she couldn't recreate the exact same disease in the replacement. So she came up with a better idea."
He turned to Scourge, "She was going to transfer the disease in me to the new copy, which had yet to be activated. This time, she made sure to the copy would be under her full control. Though, once the transfer was complete, I would be powerless. Lifeless. If it completed, I would die. And once I was dead, she planned to use her new creation to not only kill Mia, but all the rest of the scientists too. Then the whole world was doomed if she got away with her creation."
He sighed, "So, she had me dragged to a chamber and stuffed into a capsule, one connected to a machine and a second capsule. In that second capsule, was my perfect reflection. In that capsule, was your friend Venom."
Scourge groaned, "Let me guess. This is about the time that "something happened" incident would have happened, right?"
S nodded, "It was a couple seconds into the transfer that the ARK was under attack. The commotion caused the transfer to stop. I remember Maria getting angry at her grandfather, who I think had a change of heart and had given the military a hunch to find us. She didn't like that too much, but she was more concerned with finishing the transfer. Though, she didn't expect Mia to knock her unconscious during all the commotion. The whole ARK was slowly destroying itself as the military started to destroy everything. They were evacuating the scientists as they captured Maria's men and destroyed all her work and research."
He smiled, "Mia managed to get me free and we hurried to reach the military. Mia wasn't going without me, even if we both knew the military probably weren't going to listen to her claims that I wasn't evil. You see, Mia had promised me that she would take me down to the planet below and show me her world. She was determined to keep that promise."
Scourge sighed, "Let me guess, she was going to show you her little blue house, right?"
S was surprised, "How did you..."
Scourge shrugged, "Venom mentioned a little blue house as one of the things he remembered."
S nodded, "Probably one of the few things he gained from me from the transfer. It only lasted a couple seconds, so he had to have gotten a few small things from me. From tiny memories, to a small amount of my power, to maybe even a pinch of the disease."
Scourge remembered something, "Yeah, I did see his power once. That was when he rescued me from Jinx. Later, he told me he doesn't use it often because it takes a lot of energy to do even the smallest attacks."
S sighed, "No surprise. Like I said, he had to have gotten only a little power from that transfer."
He looked at the sky, "Though, before Mia and I could escape, Maria stopped us. She was furious that her plans were being destroyed. She wasn't going to let us leave. She wasn't even going to let us live. Of course, I couldn't let her hurt Mia, so I told Mia to go without me. I told her I would find her again once I dealt with Maria. She didn't want to, but she did as I asked, swearing that she wasn't going to forget her promise."
He looked serious, "Then it was just me and Maria. I can remember it like it was yesterday. How we fought, how much my hate for her grew. I wasn't afraid of her anymore. All I wanted was to make her pay. Though, she felt the exact same way about me. We fought hard, even if I had to use weapons. My power was still weak after the transfer, so I couldn't use my ultimate power against her. Though, that only made the fight so much harder. Before I knew it, I was in bad shape. Luckily, so was she."
He sighed, "We were both ready to finish the other. Though, she managed to get the upper hand on me, about to cut me in two, when I grabbed her arm to stop her. I knew I wasn't strong enough against her, meaning I had only a couple seconds before the tip of her blade would pierce my heart and finish me once and for all. I thought about Mia and our promise. I couldn't die, not there, not like that. I couldn't let Maria win."
He looked down at his hands, "So I did the only thing I could. I released the disease into her."
Scourge could imagine, "Dang. Killed by her own creation." Then it hit him, "Hold it! But Maria's alive! How could she survive that disease?"
S sighed, "I'm not sure. All I know is that she suffered just as expected and finally collapsed. I was sure she was dead." He rubbed his chin, "Though, I've begun to come up with a theory. I know Maria was too sick to come down onto the planet, yet she's been fine ever since she arrived. I think that instead of killing her, the disease actually cured her. It would explain how she survived and how she can be here and live."
He shrugged, "As for me that day, I knew I had to escape or I would die with her. The place was falling apart, and from what I had heard, it was already starting to fall out of space. So, I hurried to the closest escape pod and shot it off into space. I floated out there in suspended animation for fifty years. And, somehow, so did Maria. She must have climbed into another pod and escaped shortly after me."
Scourge rubbed his head, "Geez, talk about a soap opera." He got to his feet, "Well, now that I'm all caught up, we... wait a sec! What about Venom? Not only should he not have survived, but how did he activate and end up outside of Vengeance's place?"
S shrugged, "The transfer probably gave him enough energy to activate. Since he was inside the capsule, one that couldn't be broken easily, it must have floated off into space. Once it finally crashed down, it must have been enough of an impact to break it, freeing a newly activated Venom. Though, because he only activated that moment, he wouldn't remember anything. What was to remember? What he did come to remember would be the scraps of thoughts or memories he got from me."
Scourge sighed, "Wonderful. Venom's gonna love hearing that."
S stood up, "Speaking of your friends, we should get going if we want to rescue them. We're quickly running out of time. Now that Maria has Venom, she'll attempt the take over with him. If you're lucky, she won't try to kill your friends right away."
Scourge was surprised, "Friends? She has more than just Vengeance?"
S nodded, "The rest of your team was caught too. The bee kid led a team to catch them."
Scourge scoffed, "Then what are we waiting here for? Let's go kick some girly butt!" He picked up S and zoomed off, much to S's fright.