Erik Lehnsherr floated over the subway entrance, his eyes passing over the mutants one by one, until they returned to his daughter.
"Polaris. You've grown into a beautiful young woman."
"You're looking pretty good yourself, for a dead man," Lorna said, a mix of fear and anger on her face.
"I think we both know that Death is reluctant to darken my door. I am a survivor, just as I raised you to be."
Scott seemed less affected by the reunion.
"What are you doing, Erik?"
"What I always do, Mr. Summers," the revitalized man stated plainly. "That which the X-Men lack the strength to do themselves."
"Sooo… you guys know each other?" Ant-Man asked. He suddenly felt like a third wheel.
Magneto snapped towards him.
"You. You are no mutant. I would advise you not to speak unless spoken to."
He looked at Hisako.
"You're a new face as well. But your uniform. You are a mutant. And an X-Man at that."
"And you're… Magneto," she breathed.
"So they do teach you something in that school."
"If I didn't know any better," Kurt said, "I'd think you were in on Belasco's plan to conquer the Earth. But even you wouldn't be so blindly ambitious, eh, Magneto?"
"You'd be correct, in part, Nightcrawler."
"The forces of Limbo will conquer this world. I have seen their power first-hand. But it will not be Belasco at the center of this new order."
"It will be 'the Master of Magnetism,' of course," Lorna sniped, making quotation marks with her fingers.
"Do not underestimate me, daughter. Cast into the pits of Limbo, I decided my captor's strength might have its own uses. I plumbed the depths of that place, learning what magic I could to wrest some of these thralls from Belasco's control."
It was now that he gestured to the demons who had been moving around to flank the heroes while they conversed.
"Belasco squanders precious resources combing the city for Illyana Rasputin. He has obsessed over reclaiming her ever since she and Ororo escaped. He won't be prepared for when I strike against him."
"And so Earth will have a mutant overlord, not a demonic one," Kurt scoffed.
"As it was always intended," Erik smirked through his helmet.
Cyclops' visor crackled. "That isn't going to happen."
"I'm with him," Ant-Man said. "And sorry, but better folks than you have failed to shut me up."
"Ah," Magneto crossed his arms. "Are we resorting to violence already? Skipping over the part where you stand before me and proselytize about Charles' dream?"
Scott lowered his hand from his visor.
"Charles is gone, Erik."
"His… apprentice."
The boat was moving again now, carrying the two sorcerers closer to the island. Strange looked across at the young woman with steely eyes.
"I reached… a low point," Illyana said, her voice heavy with shame.
"I thought that it was hopeless, that I would never get out. So I ran away from Storm, and that eventually led me to Belasco. He taught me to hone what Storm had originally trained me to do."
"And so did your… interests align with Belasco's?"
"The Inferno?" I didn't think it mattered, what I did or didn't want to happen. But then, once I got stronger, Belasco pulled another piece of my soul away. I couldn't take it anymore."
"And so you went back to the other X-Men," Strange rested his chin on his fingers.
"Not before I had an idea. You wanted to know how I learned of Belasco's weakness? I used my access to his library to plot against him. I poured through his books, finding rituals and spells centuries old, until eventually, I came across the right one. Barely legible anymore, but unmistakable - the ritual to store your soul outside your body. It's how he secured his power, and how he wants mine."
She smiled wistfully, nearing tears.
"Ororo… she's more than what I deserve. She took me back, no questions asked. By then she had the beginnings of a plan to escape, which I suppose you're up to speed on."
"Mm."
"You must think I'm a terrible person. Maybe I am. Maybe my soul is just too corrupted by this place."
Strange snapped his fingers.
"The river."
"The what?"
"My master told me this. You can't beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its power."
"But I'm not in a river," Illyana said, her brow furrowing. "This is more of a lake."
"It's not about -" Strange stopped himself, then tried again more gently. He visualized the Ancient One's face, its inscrutable, almost amused expression.
"This path you're on. You don't have control over it. It's like being caught in a river. But you don't have to drown in it."
"So I just… surrender to these dark powers inside me?"
"You believe this place to be evil because Belasco is evil. But you know that Belasco's power is to twist other beings to his designs. Power can be dangerous, not because it is inherently good or bad, but because of how people use it. You can use those powers as your own without being corrupted. You already are. Look at this boat."
"I suppose I did," Illyana said.
"If you fight your way upstream, you'll succumb to exhaustion, losing yourself to the demon Belasco wants you to be. But if you see where it carries you, you might just come to understand yourself better."
Illyana looked at him for a few seconds.
"That doesn't make any sense."
Strange laughed.
"What?"
"No it's just. Now I understand how she felt, a little more."
"Charles? Dead?"
"You've been gone for a long time, Dad," Lorna said, her arms folded uncomfortably. She felt a chill in the sweltering, magically charged air.
Kurt nodded.
"After you disappeared, he bought mutantkind some time by erasing the world's memory of them. No X-Men, no Brotherhood, no anyone."
Magneto grabbed at his helmet.
"Erase… all of us? How could he? Why would he?"
"Because the mutants were vulnerable without people like us to protect them from people like you," Polaris snapped. She hoped her words struck deep.
"When he died last year, the effect started to wear off. We can't let this opportunity slip past us."
"And we won't let the first mutant to reveal himself to the world be a multiversal tyrant," Cyclops finished.
Magneto regained his composure once again. The sound of nearby manhole lids rattling in place began to penetrate the silence Scott left in his wake.
"I should have known it would come to this," Erik sighed. "Had I known the scale of Charles' failures, I would have returned all the sooner. But better to set things right late than never."
He stretched out his arm and sent a lid careening up from the street at Ant-Man. He shrunk himself out of the path of danger, but Erik merely turned it at Kurt instead.
Then the metal disc bent in half mid-flight, falling unceremoniously from its arc.
"Uh uh," Lorna said as she floated up opposite him.
"This time if you're going to pick on someone, you're going to pick on someone your own size."
Elsewhere in the city, a one-eyed giant roared as tiny knives dug into the back of their foot.
"Timber!" Wolverine shouted.
With a grunt, She-Hulk launched herself through a seventh story window into the cyclops's collarbone, sending it thudding to the ground. Captain Marvel finished it off with a blinding photon blast to the face.
"There must be something I can do here," Anna Wagner called out as she and Joshua dashed out into the open to take cover behind the rubble of another building. Chris waited for them before darting off to a new hiding place.
"I feel like such dead weight."
"Nonsense," Elixir said.
"I appreciate the extra set of eyes. Our powers aren't always suited to every task. But having backup is always appreciated."
Anna blanched and screamed as a colossal demon reached a meaty hand down towards them, the young man's back turned to the beast.
Joshua pulled the glove off and, in one surprisingly swift motion, thrust his hand into the giant's finger. The effect was immediate, as the flesh grew pale and ashy, dark veins spreading up its arm. The cyclops howled and teetered over twitching a final time before all life left its body.
Anna watched its flesh sag.
"How did you-?"
"I don't like to do that," Elixir said, quickly putting his glove back on. "But I'm glad you aren't hurt. Like I said, help me keep an eye out, and I'll handle the rest."
Jen, Laura, and Carol joined them now. The jade giantess looked over the much larger corpse lying in the street with a bit of admiration.
"That's one hell of a party trick."
"Desperate times, Miss Walters. Desperate times."
He's not wrong, Carol thought. From the air she could see devastation all around her. She was getting the sinking feeling they weren't winning this battle.
"Jen, take the healers and Wolverine and go on ahead. There's a higher position to defend just that way."
"You'll catch up?"
"Be right behind."
Carol flew down to the girl.
"It's Anna, right?"
"Yeah. But you can call me Rogue."
"Carol. What do you do, Rogue?"
"If I touch someone, I can steal a bit of their power, and use it for myself."
"Do they have to be a mutant? Could you, say, borrow some of mine?"
"It could be anyone, I've accidentally done it to regular people before too. But it's dangerous. I can't quite control it yet."
Carol smiled.
"It just so happens that I'm a walking power generator. I'm sure I can handle a jumpstart. Now, have you ever flown before?"
"Never," Rogue said, though the thought immediately gave her a thrill.
"It's easy once you get the hang of it. Just think happy thoughts. Or uh, 'up,' if that works better."
"You're sure about this?"
"I'm tougher than I look. Don't worry about me."
"And… I'll be able to do what you do? Fly, shoot lasers, punch holes in solid walls?"
"I'll be there every step of the way."
Rogue nodded, building her determination.
"Okay. All it should take is brief contact. A tap."
"A tap," Carol nodded.
It would not be a tap.
As soon as their hands met, a fearsome arc of energy shot through Captain Marvel's body and into Rogue.
It's so much, Rogue thought. The sudden, alien sensation of someone else's fear stabbed through her mind. She realized it was Carol's.
"Anna!"
Rogue could hear her, but couldn't do anything. Much like an electric shock, their bodies were locked up, and neither could manage to break the connection. What neither of them realized was that when Rogue siphoned powers before, the difference was never as great as it was between the young mutant and the Infinity Stone-powered warrior. The energy was rushing into Anna's body to equalize that difference. Or as close as one of them could handle…
Straining against the forces at work, Captain Marvel dug her feet in and wrenched herself from Rogue's hands. She took two steps backwards and collapsed.
Anna ran over to where she had fallen and nudged her with her foot.
"Cap, are you okay?
She didn't move.
"Captain Marvel? Oh no, no, no! Please wake up…"