Entering the lab via the Elevator, Scott found Hank's massive, canine-like body hard at work on the jet. Hank smelled him.
"Why hello there, Cyclops! Just who I was fixin' to lay eyes on first chance I got!" Hank said as he put down the tools, assisted by spider-like machines.
"What an absolutely elegant choice of words, Doctor..." Scott replied tonelessly.
"Do you like the new glasses?" Hank asked as he started to walk to him.
"I figured out the settings. You've solved one problem rendering the blast non-lethal."
"One among many you no doubt are ponderin' at this here moment..." Hank said, walking over to Scott, his mass making heavy thuds that shook the very floor beneath Scott's feet, a mountain of muscle, claw, short blue fur, and a wolf like snout bearing sharp teeth. Large teeth too, and below that snout and wolflike ears crowned by a custom made white Ten Gallon hat, a bright red implant visible on the surface of his Adam's Apple. Scott had no doubt Hank could rip him apart.
"I've seen photos of you through your House. You were a literal physical giant as well as an intellectual. What...what happened?" Scott asked.
"My mutatin' started when I was youngin'," Beast answered, pinching his thumb and fingers together to emphasize. "A wee youngin'. Right out my Momma it was obvious...the Doctors had never seen a newborn with a six-pack before. 'Baby Lumberjack', is what they called me. Was walking under my own power three days later. My Daddy bribed the Honey out the Beehive to keep that Hospital quiet, yessir."
"Right. The McCoy Oil Fortune."
"Money talks. What can I say?" Beast said, folding his arms, his thick Texan accent poking through. "My Daddy probably saved my life...though it took him a long time to get used to the fact it was me, not the other way around, who was schoolin' the private tutors. Also, there was the fact that by the time I was eleven, I was taller than he was."
Beast sighed. "I miss that old man...I'd give up all my money and accomplishments for just thirty seconds more with him..."
"At least you got to grow up with him."
"How did you lose him? Your father." Beast asked delicately.
Scott broke into a cold sweat.
"Cyclops?"
"I found out he was a Mutant," Scott finally answered, a bead of sweat trailing down his right temple and part of his forehead as his hands trembled.
"I found out..." Scott repeated in a whisper, corners of his mouth twitching...
Beast literally SMELLED the severe Post Traumatic Stress and backed off immediately.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to cause you such discomfort," Beast apologized.
"I don't like to talk about it," Scott replied, barely keeping it together.
"May I ask what his power was?"
"No."
Beast took the hint, realizing it had taken a lot for Scott to open up even that much.
"As you wish. Thanks for tellin' me what little you could bring yourself to."
"What do you know of Loki?" Scott asked suddenly.
Beast sighed.
"I know that when she shows up with gifts it's time to get good and worried. " Beast said, his spider machines carrying the tools away from the Jet as he went over to his giant, custom built electron microscope, plucking Mystique's golden Uru Skull Implant from the examining base.
"Ain't no crawling out from one of her mind jobs, no sir. Charles himself tried to, only to find he played right into her hands. Once you in Loki's web, you in it 'till she cuts you loose. Damn loose," he said, eyeing the implant which was quite tiny in his massive paws.
"Take this implant she gave Mystique, for example. On the surface, it's a conformal cranial shield emitter combined with a Neuro-Muscular stimulator, but it's got plenty of more features than that. Engram Recording, Genetic Regulation and Stimulation, Subatomic Sensor and Recording Circuitry I can't even begin to guess the purpose of and a capacity to merge with organic tissue on a scale vastly greater than what is indicated, with room still for further upgrades."
"She must have known you or Professor Xavier would examine it. And she must have known you would know doubt inform me of this once I started asking."
Beast snorted. "You a sharp one, boy. You catch on right fast."
"Does she have any weaknesses?" Scott asked.
"Any form of science on the level of what she uses can harm her. And I guarantee you we don't have anything like that unless you count Zarda and this implant," Beast answered.
Scott glowered. No way out.
"This place got any vehicles?"
"I collect motorcycles. Can't ride any of them though, for obvious reasons."
"If I went out, you wouldn't mind me barrowing one, would you?"
"You ride?" Beast asked.
"Yeah."
Beast snapped his fingers and a silver spider drone crawled to a rack of keychain and plucked a particular one, which then crawled over to Scott, who plucked them from its silver arms.
"Needing air, I imagine. I don't blame you. It's a lot to take in, and you weren't prepared for any of it. But please believe that I'll be here to help you through this in any way I can. Charles is human. He'll never fully understand the toll Mutation can take on a mind, on a person's perception of themselves and others. I know you think you're cursed, boy. I felt the same for a long time. So, I been where you are..." Beast offered.
Beast gave Scott a thumbs up.
"You ever need to vent, I promise to shut up and listen, rather than give advice you don't want to hear right now."
"I...I'll consider it," Scott replied, disquieted at how he wasn't lying to Hank.
"That's all I ask. Oh, be a pal and mosey this here skull thingamajig back up to Cassandra, would you? I'm done with it. To be honest, damn thing gives me the creeps..."
"More than Mystique herself?" Scott questioned as he took it, his stoic mask slipping for a moment of genuine incredulity.
"I'm always gonna be more wary of the one holding the string than the puppet that string is workin'," Beast snorted.
"Don't take your eye off her, Doctor McCoy. She's dangerous," Scott warned. "After hearing all that Mummudrai stuff it's all I can do not to blast her myself."
"Even IF Loki IS using her...maybe you should give her a chance. Can she really help her own biological nature?"
"There is nothing about Mystique that's biologically natural," Scott affirmed. "Any more than there is me."
"But you're both in the same boat, regardless. As Franklin put it, we either hang together, or we shall all surely hang separately," Beast admonished.
"Mystique technically isn't even an actual Mutant. Nor is Zarda."
"If Mutants are to survive, they better start making friends fast, and start early," Beast countered. "Because if we cannot accept those who are truly strange in even our own midst, how can we expect the world to accept us as a whole?"
Scott had no answer to that. After all, he had accepted Cassandra's offer to "increase his range", and the fear he had made a miscalculation surfaced: He had never thought to ask just what she meant by "Range".
"Someone has to be the one to spread the first glob of mortar, lay the first brick," Beast added.
Scott glanced at all the stuff they had brought, currently being scanned and examined on a nearby table with a glowing surface, including that Clan Akkaba armor fragment.
"Depends on the foundation..." he muttered, heading into the ship and retrieving the Back Up Captain America Shield.
"And whether it's bad or not..." he added as he headed to the elevator.
...
As the elevator took him back up to the manor, he rested the Back Up Shield against the back of the elevator he stared at the Skull Implant. It felt heavy. He wondered if it drove Mystique nuts having to wear it the way the visor did.
Out of curiosity, he planted the Skull Implant on his head.
Scott blinked and he found himself in the Golden Throne Room of Loki...except it looked completely and totally shattered and ancient, and Scott darted around in alarm, noting only stars and space poking through the cracks.
"Scott..."
Scott wheeled around to face Loki, who still looked as physically perfect as ever, with her Costume just as revealing. But her long, curly hair that fell down to her back, was a bright silver white color, standing there clutching her spear.
"Loki? What's going on? What happened?" Scott said, reaching for the implant, only to for Loki to seize his arm before he could blink.
"No, Scott. Don't remove the implant," Loki cautioned. "It's the only thing anchoring you to this time period."
"Time Period?"
Loki looked up, surveying her shattered throne.
"Ragnarok..." she said. "The End of Asgard. The End of Me, Personally, as Prophecy foretells."
"I'm in THE FUTURE?!" Scott bellowed.
Loki nodded. "Never a dull moment, huh?" she joked.
"How convenient you left out this little detail of Mystique's implant," Scott snarled. "It makes me wonder what else you've left out."
"I had my reasons. It's all part of the plan, Scott, I promise."
"How far along in the future am I?"
Loki paused, wandered the broken throne room, her golden Uru Stilettos clicking on the floor as she strode her ruined domain with an expression of being lost in the past, of old friends.
"Thirty thousand years into the future," she replied with a wistful sigh. "Really puts it all into perspective, doesn't it? The struggle, the death...the suffering of Earth. It's wars, and its folly. Barely a blip technically."
"Any regrets about defending Earth? Think it was a waste of time?" Scott asked in spite of himself.
"I don't have a single regret about the lives I saved, or the vile dogs I put down in the process. Heartless monsters, the lot of them," Loki said dismissively of the latter.
Scott looked around. "What am I here for?"
Loki smiled warmly at him.
"Someone will be along to kill me shortly. There's nothing you can do to save me. I am meant to die. But if you follow my instructions precisely...you may be able to avenge my demise."
"Who's coming for you?"
"Hela. Goddess of Death," Loki answered in a stern yet strangely patient and matronly way. "I've spent thirty thousand years preparing for this moment, Scott. And I will be sorely ticked if you choke at the moment of truth."
"How is she going to kill you?" Scott asked.
Loki removed her horned Tiara.
"My Tiara contains my spirit. All that I am. Destroy it...convert it...and you destroy me..." She said, grasping it.
Scott stepped forward. "Is that what Hela will do? Convert your Tiara?"
Loki nodded. "And she will succeed. In spite of my best, most sincere efforts...she will succeed."
"Why submit?"
"Because if I can ensure a final act of good with my death, even if that act travels far into the past to work, then I can die easily. Happily."
Scott frowned. He stepped up to her.
"What do you need me to do?"
Loki smiled. "Just stay hidden. You'll know when I'm dead. THAT is when you come out of hiding from behind my throne. Hela will have her back turned to you. The Implant...I've placed an additional enchantment on it that won't work after its executed. You will only have one shot, and you will have to use that one shot at your full strength."
Scott blinked. "What am I aiming at?"
Loki smiled, gesturing to her spear.
"Good luck Scott," Loki said.
Her smile dropped and her head darted around.
"Hela. She is nearly upon us. Hide."
Scott darted to behind the throne and got down. His insides lurched as he felt reality warp and twist around him. To his shock, he looked down and saw a white envelope that looked like it had some sort of object inside. On the outer surface, was scrawled in handwriting that Scott IMMEDIATELY recognized as Mortimer's handwriting and read in all caps DO NOT OPEN UNTIL HELA IS DEAD.
Scott felt cold everywhere as the Golden throne became flooded by blood red light.
"At long last. The Trickster Goddess herself has finally run out of schemes," came a cold feminine contralto as the air grew colder and he heard pointed heels clicking on the now ancient, ruined floor.
"If you only knew, how much I have anticipated the coming of this exact moment, Loki. To see you in the crumbling throne of your father, your hair gone white, all you knew and loved as dead and, in my clutches, as you shall soon be."
"Points for consistency, if nothing else, Hela..." he heard Loki almost sneer. "Nice to know I've lived rent free in your head that long. You'll never understand how pathetic you really were, clinging to the prophecy all those years as a way to taunt me."
"I hold on to nothing but patience. See, unlike all the others, who boasted that THEY, and THEY, ALONE, would be the one to finally outsmart the great Loki..." Scott heard Hela trail, the menace, sheer hatred, and power in her voice scaring Scott to his very core even though he couldn't see her.
"...I knew the only way to beat you was to wait. Dutiful Loki, always obeying the order of the universe and her father, always fearlessly carrying on even in the face of her prophesied painful end at my hands," Hela mocked. "Look at you, still pretending to be the proud Queen even in this tired graveyard Surtur made of your home."
"It was your home once too, Hela. At long last, at this final battle between the two of us, do you not feel even the slightest bit of remorse for the part you played in its end? Or was the thought of finally getting your hands on me for Skurge all that drove you?" Scott heard Loki ask gently, seemingly trying to reach out one last time to what was obviously a very long-time enemy.
"I would have preferred Asgard stayed. But for Skurge...I'd happily watch it all get destroyed again, if I thought you would suffer even more the second time," Hela snapped.
"I have only one more question, Hela, and then we can cut right to the chase," Scott heard Loki say in resignation, as though she had expected that exact answer.
"I'm all ears," he heard Hela sneer back in pure loathing.
"When I am dead...what then? No Asgard...No Ruler...all surviving Asgardians will be forever cut off from their powers. Yourself included."
"I DO NOT CARE!" Hela shrieked in outrage. "YOU WILL BE DEAD! FINALLY! I DON'T CARE! LET ME DIE AS FAT, LEPROUS MORTAL AFTER I SLAY THEE, SO LONG AS MY SON! IS! AVENGED!"
The air cracked with deadly, reality warping powers as the terrible battle he could not see flung debris everywhere, ringing throughout the shattered remains of Queen Loki's throne room. Then the opponents clashed, the clang of their weapons ringing out. The ground shook, and the very air trembled with hidden, destructive energetic forces, debris and energy blasts flying everywhere. Then he heard Loki screaming in absolutely horrific Agony that seemed to carry on for an eternity. Scott covered his ears, genuinely disturbed and shaken that he could do nothing to help her during her final moments.
"SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTTTT!" he heard Loki shriek in a final death cry, and that was when he leaped from behind cover, his sunglasses off, scanning for Loki's spear, and he found it embedded with its tip in the ground close by to a curvy figure in an all-black, skintight scaled armor with multiple, twisted horns coming from its helm, standing in front of something he couldn't make out.
Scott did as Loki asked, and focused all his might on the spear and fired his eye beams at full strength.
A brilliant, combined cone of white light smacked into Loki's spear just as Hela started to turn around in shock and surprise.
The blast consumed his entire vision, and he was flung back HARD into a wall as the throne was utterly obliterated by the spear's destruction due to being in close range.
Scott didn't move for a few seconds. Not hurt, but simply stunned. He lay amidst the shattered, crumbled throne, trying to process his emotions at what had just happened and failing miserably.
He finally sat up and began walking to where he had last saw Hela...and was stunned at the result.
Hela's body was now a bulbous, overweight mass of leprous tumors, that covered over the shredded remains of her suit. She gurgled helplessly on the ground. Scott felt no pity, and instead observed Hela's death clinically the way he might observe a trail of ants.
"Lo...ki...curses..." Hela got out, as she realized she had been played by Loki one final time. To add insult to injury, Loki had even tricked her into announcing the very manner in which she would meet her end. And what a humiliating end it was. Scott himself was aghast at the implications of what he had just done, witnessed, heard.
"You...of course...it would be...you..." Hela got out through disfigured lips.
"We know each other?" Scott asked coldly.
Hela laughed and coughed painfully. "Yeah...Loki always had a sneaking regard for you. Never understood why," Hela chuckled bitterly, furious to the last about how Loki had humiliated her one final time.
"Y'know...me and the others? Blackheart, Dormammu? Gor? We all thought Loki might summon a champion from the past to fight for Asgard, during its fall. Someone from the past that we wouldn't be expecting..." Hela coughed. "But no. Not one showed. Ironically, that's what threw Dormammu off his game...You should have seen the look on his face when Loki killed him with such an utterly pedestrian method I myself can hardly believe that I never thought of trying it..."
"What'd she do?" Scott asked out of genuine curiosity despite Hela's bloated, dying state.
Hela coughed, starting to leak blood from her disfigured, misshapen mouth.
"I won't tell...I'm too embarrassed for him, even now," she replied ruefully, in too much pain to do more than speak. "I think Dormammu would want to be remembered for the force of universal terror he was, not the pathetic, humiliating, anti-climactic way in which Loki killed him. Don't even get me started on what she did to Blackheart, of all beings. Besides, Mortal, you know too much already."
Her diseased, dying eyes slid up to him.
"I was the one who kept alert for a hidden champion the whole way through. I never imagined she would pick a champion to fight for Asgard AFTER it had fallen, let alone that it would be an EARLY version of a champion...at the earliest point he could possibly be recruited to do her bidding. Even Odin himself couldn't have seen that one coming," Hela admitted.
"So... tell me, Hela. Was it worth it?" Scott asked with a snort.
"I could ask you the same thing."
"I'm not the one dying like washed up television star," Scott snapped.
Hela coughed. "It's been so long... I'd forgotten how much of an ice-tongued bastard you were, even at your current age."
"Perhaps the dearly departed Skurge should have been taking notes." Scott sneered at her without remorse. "A simple glance at a few of them might have helped."
Hela coughed again.
"How tragic that at the end of my life, I am forced to endure your sight-based puns and death threats one final time..."
"At least from where I'm standing, the view couldn't be better," he snapped as Hela expired.
Remembering the envelope, he ran over and tore it open, and glanced as a silver version of Mystique's skull implant fell out into his palm with a small note.
Scott opened and read it. It was Mortimer's handwriting.
"Don't give Mystique this implant until AFTER she rescues Kurt," Scott read out loud in confusion.
"Who the hell is Kurt?" he asked himself out loud. He looked around, and his attention focused back on where Loki had fallen, and he went to investigate.
The place where Loki had died was a small blast crater. He saw blackened sludge on the sides, no doubt Loki's trace remains.
In the exact center of the blast crater lay the Ebony Chalice that Scott had watched Loki give to Ororo earlier. Trembling, he took it, realizing the implications...
Scott remembered what Loki had told Ororo...the more potent the question, the more potent the toxicity of the elixir it could create. He also realized that if this was the FIRST time the chalice was getting created, that meant he could presumably ask it whatever questions he wanted, as this was a point before it could be enchanted by Loki in the past.
The trouble was what question could he possibly ask that wouldn't be deemed potent enough to kill him? Especially since he had SO MANY questions right now.
He just needed a source of water...
Scott looked around the now shattered open chamber of Loki's throne room. He saw a once great and fantastic city crumbling into the void of space and stars below him. He glanced at the silver Skull Implant, heart racing, the empty chalice in his other hand.
He looked for a way out of the now totally destroyed throne room when his eye caught a glittering, golden shard on the ground. He reached down and picked it up.
It was the absolute tip of Loki's spear, encrusted with strange runes, seemingly perfectly broken off from the rest of a spear in a gentle curve at the bottom. Scott knew it was no accident because as he picked it up, he noticed part of a wall split open perfectly, revealing itself to be a concealed doorway leading to steps that traveled downward.
Scott walked to it very hesitantly, and down its steps with the same level of trepidation. But it wasn't like he had a choice. Loki had made certain of that.
Scott beheld a grand golden chamber, with an enormous crystal tree at the heart of it...and a crack in the trunk at the base, from which bubbled forth water into an impossibly clear pool below.
Scott approached it, soon realized it was some sort of futuristic mausoleum, and began looking around, examining stuff. Since he was thirty thousand years into the future, and Loki had tricked him into being here, he figured it wouldn't hurt to take a look around. He was forcing himself to stop, look, and listen. To process everything he was seeing. Even the smallest detail would be helpful.
Just as he stepped closer to examine the reliefs, he was interrupted.
"Careful, Summers..." came Loki's voice from behind him, and he wheeled around to spot Loki, looking immaculate but still white haired.
"Too much knowledge of the future can be a dangerous thing," Loki warned.
"You're the one who brought me here," Scott pointed out.
Loki only smiled. "That I did."
"Care to tell me what this is for?" Scott asked, holding up the Silver Skull Implant. "Or why is it the absolute tip of your spear happened to be the only thing of your weapon that survived? Or why you have given what is effectively your own corpse to Ororo?"
"All VERY valid questions, Scott. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to let those questions rest for now. Just know that it's part of the plan."
"Your plan. Do we even survive Genosha? Or am I gonna get done in by a surprise attack like Hela did at the last moment?" Scott all but snidely accused in a quiet voice.
"Scott, whatever your criticisms of me aside, I AM a Superhero. I DO take the job very seriously. I don't like throwing good people like yourself to the grinder. And I never do it without a damn good reason," Loki asserted forcefully.
Scott folded his arms. "So... from when are you, exactly?"
"Ahhh, you're starting to get it now. Good!" Loki encouraged. "I'm Loki from twenty-four hours prior to my death at Hela's hands. I arrived just as Hela breathed her last...and am here just in time to push you further along to what comes next."
"And what's that?"
"To be the first to use the Ebony Chalice, of course and with water from no less than the Spring of Yggdrasil, the only water that can be transformed by the chalice that will not be toxic no matter how potent the question. But the trick is that you must prove yourself worthy of using the Spring."
"How do I do that?" Scott asked.
Loki smiled. "You must prove yourself to the Guardian of Yggdrasil. Unfortunately, you couldn't do it in the time period you just arrived from. The Spring was destroyed like the rest of Asgard."
"Huh?"
"I may be the Loki from twenty-four hours prior to my death, but that is only from MY perspective. YOU, on the other hand, were transported thirty thousand years back to a point before you and the others who came with you to Egypt first met me when you went down that staircase in the future. Approximately four hours before I first summon you and Xavier to Asgard," Loki explained.
"Oh, boy, this going to be an absolute DELIGHT trying to untangle later on," Scott muttered caustically, causing Loki to chuckle.
"It's a pain for me to keep track of sometimes, I admit," Loki said. "I feel your pain, Summers, believe me."
"So, even if I prove myself to this Guardian...what questions should I ask the Chalice?"
"Question." Loki corrected. "You only get 'one' question if you use the spring and the Chalice."
"Okay..." Scott replied with an insolent shrug. "What question?"
Loki smiled, walked up to him, and whispered this into his ear:
"Why is Charles Xavier not a Mutant?"
Scott's eyebrow raised, and he craned his head slowly to her pleasantly smiling visage.
"What an interesting question to ask..." he admitted.
Loki grinned and began to walk away, the clicking of her stilettos rhythmic on the golden floor.
"You'll have to deal with the younger me from here on out, Scott. But if all goes well, you and the Loki currently speaking to you may have one more conversation..." she said, turning around. "Good luck, Scott. I always rooted for you and the X-Men."
"X-Men...?" he asked in confusion as the aged Loki vanished in golden light.
Scott turned and approached the giant crystal tree, feeling the air charge with power the way it had when he had heard Aged Loki and Hela fight, putting the Skull Implant and the Spear Shard into his pocket as he still clutched the Chalice with a Death Grip.
"HALT, MORTAL," came a commanding, yet seductive sounding feminine contralto. "YOU WHO SEEK THE WATER OF THE SPRING MUST BE TESTED IN BATTLE WITH ME."
"Bring it. The adrenaline from not five minutes ago is almost gone," he replied in a dull tone.
"HEH," the booming voice chuckled.
"PLACE THE CHALICE IN THE WATER..."
"This is going to be just absolutely legendary..." he muttered in bitter rumination as he shoved the Chalice under the flowing spring...
The world flashed a gold color around him, and Scott's environment had changed to a strange...garden of some type, filled with many types of gigantic flowers he had never seen before.
Hovering in the center of this garden was the Guardian, a beautiful woman, of a slender, less muscled build than Loki, though no less hourglass like, wearing what was essentially a green scaled chainmail bikini, golden hair falling down long and straight in comparison again to Loki's luxurious curls. Face having sharper features with a longer jaw and thinner lips. Her eyes were not human, just two slick, wet orbs of green in her skull and her face was framed by an elaborate, engraved Tiara that partly shielded the sides of her face, her arms guarded by vambraces of a shining green metal.
Scott approached, face stone like.
"Let's get this over with. I ain't had breakfast, and I am not in a good mood," Scott said with understated menace, clenching his fists as he approached.
She smiled smugly at him.
"Brash and arrogant. The trait of many a champion...and many a pretender..." The woman spoke. "Your fight against my champion shall determine which."
"Who are you?"
"In Asgard, I am known as Amora. Some have referred to me in the past as The Enchantress..." Amora answered. "I am the mightiest Sorceress in Asgard after Loki herself."
"Who is your champion?" Scott demanded.
"A man. Tied to you across time and space..." Amora answered. "Know this, Scott Summers: Your arrival here was prophesied many eons ago as was that of the one who is to fight you. The First Use of The Ebony Chalice is an Absolute Point. And unlike you...your Opponent jumped at the chance to be here..."
"When do we start?"
Amora smiled darkly.
"You already have."
A red glow from the left corner of his vision was the only warning he got.
A blast of red energy not unlike his own smacked into him and it almost felt like he had been hit by a car as he was sent flying across the ground, skidding across magically infused soil and grass.
Scott struggled up, woozy, only to get hit with a second blast of red energy. This one sent him crashing through a tree. A rather thick one.
Pain shot through his body, yet even in his immense pain, he realized he shouldn't even be able to pull himself up the way he was suddenly doing. Going through that tree, heck, just HITTING it the way he had should have killed him instantly.
Yet he was still alive.
A chill came over Scott in spite of his pain as he realized his body, to channel such powerful, destructive energy, would naturally have immense durability.
He saw the red blast and barely evaded it, watching it destroy a row of trees behind him, and he stared into the distance, pulling off his sunglasses to get a clearer look at his opponent.
"I know that feeling..." came a rough and tumble voice of a cigar smoker walking through the cloud of dust and debris which still obscured his appearance.
"That feeling when you realize you were more than you first thought...that you had some sort of destiny you didn't understand...didn't want..."
Scott narrowed his eyes as the large body builder of a man with white hair cut in a short, squarish military style, wearing body hugging black armor, strapped with knives and a single pistol emerged from the debris. Scott made note of the left arm, which appeared to be covered in conformal, segmented metal from fingertip to shoulder, the left eye's pupil glowing with a faint red color at the center, the right eye covered by an eyepatch.
Scott then fixated on the device attached to the center of his chest, a thick ring of metal with a bulging red lens that Scott knew on instinct to be Ruby Quartz. the central device snaked all the way to the back via thick metal tubes forming a strange X on his chest, snaking out from the lens device.
"...And I know the feeling that comes after..." The large man said, the device on his chest starting to glow.
"When you realize that for all you have just learned...you still don't nearly know enough..." the man said.
"Amora says you jumped at the chance to fight me..." Scott said stoically, despite his obviously injured, damaged state. "Can I at least ask what I did to earn your ire?"
"Ire?" The man asked before chuckling.
"Nah, Scott. You got it all wrong. It's not Ire that motivates me. It's Awe."
The chest lens on the man started to glow more with power.
"I mean, how many men in the world get to say they fought THE Cyclops at the very start of his career?" The man bragged. "Once in a lifetime opportunity. Couldn't resist."
Scott's eyebrow raised.
"You got a name, Gramps?" Scott asked.
"The name is Cable..." Cable answered with a grin. "And it is my personal honor..."
Scott dodged the high-powered chest blast for the most part, only to get partly clipped in the leg and sent flying.
"To be your wakeup call..." Cable added a second later as Scott hit the ground roughly.
"If you want me to wake up, Cable..." Scott snarled as he rose, the horrifying level of power about to escape his eyes.
"YOU BETTER BRING MORE CAFFIENE THAN THAT!" Scott shouted as terrible golden beams of energy lanced out at the lowest power output he could biologically manage on his own. It would still kill any ordinary human, but he suspected Cable could handle it.
Cable expertly dodged the blast, displaying impressive acrobatics, likely superhuman from what Scott could see. He immediately started running himself, as a thin red beam of energy lanced out of Cable's left eye, thinner than any energy beam Scott himself could currently manage. It lanced right past him and exploded a strange blue tree behind him, Scott got hit in the explosion and was flung forward, tree shrapnel embedded in his shoulder.
"You haven't even begun to test the limits of your power..." Cable said as he walked forward, this time noting Scott genuinely struggle to get up. "It's more than just Unstoppable Eye Beams. More than just being tough enough to survive channeling it. Your use of it is limited. Unimaginative."
Scott fired his beams at the ground immediately in front of him, creating a massive cloud of dust and debris from the destroyed ground.
"You do catch on quickly, though, I do admit..." Cable said to himself very quietly.
Cable fired his chest blast at his right, hitting Scott who had attempted to flank him blasting him backward.
"Attempting to attack me from the side where it's harder for my eye beam to reach you without turning my head...clever...tactical...but predictable..." Cable trailed as he searched the debris cloud for where Scott should have been, only to find a shallow crater. Scott was recovering faster and faster, the more emotional and physical stress he was put through. "You have a lot to learn, Cyclops."
"What time period are you from?" he heard Scott ask.
"Many decades into your future. Where nothing is the same," Cable answered, firing his chest and eye blast at Scott.
"It's a place of interesting decisions," Cable added pointedly. "I've traveled the Multiverse, y'know. Visited far too many realities where it just doesn't work out for Mutants. Or You're dead. Or Evil. Or you're in angst over some damn redhead or another-"
"I cannot stand redheads," Scott interrupted with extremely clear disgust, throwing his voice, something he had learned from a test Essex had likely conducted that he couldn't quite remember. He watched the red chest beam lance through the debris cloud from his concealment behind a toppled tree trunk.
"Hmmm...perhaps that played more of a factor in how things turned out on my end than I thought," Cable admitted as he swept the area in front of him.
He was getting smarter, Cable realized. Waiting for the perfect moment to attack.
"So where do you fit into my future, exactly?" Scott asked, again throwing his voice as he crawled on the ground where the debris cloud was thickest, struggling to avoid coughing and giving his position away as he grabbed a rock.
"Ohhhh, no you don't. I've told you as much as I dared. You'll have to figure out the rest on your own. Let's enjoy this moment as fellow soldiers," Cable said eagerly.
Cable heard the snap of a twig on his left through the debris cloud...and then blasted his right side, suspecting Scott was trying a different tactic, by throwing a rock at some wood he had spotted close to Cable. He started firing his chest and eye beams at the ground, sweeping the area in front of him again.
"He's not there-?!" Cable exclaimed, now genuinely looking for Scott through the cloud.
"This cloud won't protect you forever..." Cable said. "You want to win this challenge, you're gonna have to take me head on..."
On instinct, cable caught the massive rock thrown at lethal speed with his metal fist, blasting with his eye beam in retaliation...and to his shock saw a thin golden beam lance into the rock he had just caught, causing it to combust and explode in his face, sending Cable stumbling back, heavily stunned.
He had learned to combust objects with his eyebeam just by watching Cable. He was becoming more dangerous.
Scott bore down on him in an angry flash, employing a vicious kickboxing method aimed at Cable's ribs and face that actually had Cable on the defensive for a few seconds before he swung with his metal arm and Scott caught it, only to be driven to one knee as he tried to keep Cable's metal hand from getting his neck in a grip.
"Always consider your opponent..." Cable lectured, baring down on Scott, the veins in Scott's arms starting to glow red through the skin as Scott started getting angrier.
In a burst of aggression, he sent Cable hurling away from him about twelve feet, but Cable turned his uncontrolled spin from the massive strength Scott had asserted for the first time ever into an elegant somersault-and got hit with a heavier than normal golden blast from one of Scott's eye's, the other an ultra-thin beam that impacted a tree that Cable was being blasted towards. Cable only had a second to admire the creativity, before he was painfully hit by the shockwave and shrapnel from the exploding tree behind him.
Cable struggled back up, coughing, and this time, got hit with an even stronger blast that skidded him across the whole of the garden violently, shredding his armor, his chest device, and breaking his organic arm. Scott stalked forward, blasting the ground ahead of him to create more debris clouds.
"THERE'S THE LEGEND!" Cable roared at Scott in enthusiasm as he rose, his broken arm dangling. To Scott's horror and bewilderment, he saw Cable's chest enclosed a giant, crimson eye that narrowed in on him, a tiny pinpoint of light at the center of its pupil that churned and bubbled.
The giant eye slipped out of his chest, not attached to any kind of muscle, glowing with power.
"But where I'm from, I'M A LEGEND TOO!" Cable yelled as destructive red waves of energy lanced out in every direction, obliterating the garden around him as well as sending a screaming Scott flying backward away, and it was by pure accident he slowed his fall by firing his beams at the ground in the last second, slowing him down just enough to avoid breaking anything himself.
The large red eye rushed him, surrounded in glowing energy, and for a horrible moment Scott was back in the plane, watching his father's right eye do something horrifically similar as Christopher Summers had tried desperately to save the plane his wife was deliberately crashing...
He froze as the red eyeball smacked into him full force, driving him into already wrecked ground each second in contact feeling like a punch to the gut, but everywhere. Only his rage and hatred towards Natalie Essex kept him from passing out, as he grasped the Eye, firing his beams with as much strength as he dared right into the center of the giant flying red eye crackling with destructive power even now out of desperation.
The resulting blast flung him into a thick tree trunk, where he impacted so hard the trunk split open on impact, and he was in pain everywhere, his now IMMENSE rage the only thing making him stand up as he staggered towards Cable, who was out cold...yet with the biggest smile on his face that Scott had ever seen on anyone. The giant eye lay nearby, floating but inactive.
"Well done..." he heard the Enchantress say as he appeared out of nowhere.
"Now finish him..." she commanded. "He is weak. Unworthy. And the only way out for the unworthy is death."
"I won..." Scott protested. "He's down. There's no need to kill him."
"Do not be weak, Summers," The Enchantress scoffed. "It is the way of the Spring. If you will show no strength, then you forfeit your right to an answer from the Chalice."
"Well then I guess I'm going home empty handed, lady..." Scott snapped at her. "Because I ain't killin' him. And if that doesn't satisfy some weird messed up Asgardian Ritual crap, tough luck."
"Then I shall kill him...the ritual must be fulfilled..." the Enchantress hissed, teleporting over Cable with a golden axe now raised.
An even heavier blast than what had finally felled Cable slammed into Amora, sending her into a tree. Distressingly, Scott noticed she didn't even seem winded as she rose.
"You want Cable? You go through me first." Scott challenged.
Amora held up her hand.
"Be at ease Scott. The real test I administer is when the prospect is over a fallen opponent...and you just passed. With flying colors, I might add. You are worthy to drink from the Spring." Amora promised.
Scott still didn't let his guard down.
"What happens to him?"
"He has received his reward..." Amora replied. "He got to fight a man that in his own time, is regarded as a larger-than-life hero. A Hero even greater than he himself is...and he got to fight said Hero right at the start of his journey. He will be returned to his own timeline."
"He needs better heroes..." Scott grunted.
"It was a noble thing to spare him...to even be willing to defend him when he was helpless from an opponent even you knew you could not defeat..." Amora assured him gently, placing her hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him about the results. "Perhaps he's a better judge of character than you think."
Scott didn't reply to this except to ask "So, can I have my drink of answer-juice?"
Amora chuckled.
"Straight to business. As you wish...but first..."
Amora waved her hands and the damage on Scott's clothes and body magically disappeared; he even felt the pain vanish.
"Follow me, Scott," Amora said as she gestured for him to follow her metal-bikini clad self to the exit of the destroyed garden, which manifested as a glowing white portal that crackled with energy.
They both exited, the world going white around him before he was back in the Yggdrasil Chamber and Scott staggered back from The Enchantress, now holding the Ebony Chalice instead of him.
"It's truly a pity that this shall technically be the only time we actually, genuinely speak to one another," Amora said wistfully. "I would have enjoyed mentoring you in the way of Sorcery, if only Loki would have allowed it, though I accepted her reasoning."
"Why? What happens after I drink this?"
Amora frowned.
"The day you arrive in the Yggdrasil chamber is the day I am prophesied to die..." she explained. "Once you drink the elixir it creates, I am to be pulled into the past."
Scott looked at her in alarm.
"For what purpose?"
Amora smiled.
"I am to be converted into that which will help fashion Loki," Amora said pleasantly to him as he backed away in surprise and shock.
"You could say I am Loki Zero," she said, chuckling at his reaction.
"Do you know everything that's about to happen to me?" Scott asked immediately.
Amora shook her head.
"That's why I am Loki Zero. Because I don't know."
Amora offered the chalice to him. "Drink Scott. It's the Prophecy."
Scott hesitantly went forward and took the Chalice out of her waiting hands.
"It's okay, Scott. Don't worry about what happens to me..." she assured with a friendly smirk. "In letting me die, you are ultimately helping Mutantkind AND Mankind."
"Toward what?" he muttered before posing his real question, the one Aged Loki had advised him to ask.
He saw the water sparkle in the black depths of the Chalice, and it caused him small discomfort of being reminded in that instant the Chalice had once been Loki.
He spoke to the Chalice, not sure exactly how it worked, making sure his lips were close to it in case it needed to hear him.
"Why is Charles Xavier not a Mutant?" he asked, watching as the sparking water turn a bright series of sparkling rainbow hues...
He couldn't describe how it tasted. There were hints of vanilla, cinnamon, sulfur, lightning, air....
The answer came to him in his head:
Because you helped Loki create an Absolute Point where he was born human.
Scott dropped the Chalice, shaking in nigh terror at how deeply he was actually weaved into all of this...
He looked at a gently, smiling Amora, who even in her last moments as her flesh started to unnaturally bubble everywhere on her perfect body, seemed to be using her smile to try and comfort him that everything would be alright. even as globules of her broke off and shot upward into a pillar of light, her gorgeous form breaking down into gray matter globs in the light, constantly breaking apart and bubbling as it shot upward continuously until Amora was gone completely.
Just then, he heard two great doors open. He turned and saw Loki, golden haired, and in the same revealing armor as always.
"I must say, Mister Summers, from my perspective, it is truly a treasure to meet you for the first time..." Loki said to him warmly with a mischievous grin as she strutted across the floor, holding out her hand and telekinetically willing the Chalice to her hand.
"I apologize if seeing Amora's demise shook you. But it all must happen according to plan," said the Loki he had met just yesterday.
"I asked it the question that the 'you' in the future advised me to ask. I gotta say Loki...I was NOT expecting the answer it gave me..."
"I wish I could tell you more Scott. I really do..." she replied regretfully. "But if you think YOU have it bad, just imagine what I am having to do to keep it all organized on my end."
"...why me?" Scott asked. "Why rope me, and what few people I trust into all this? There are probably a billion people out there who would have gladly done what you asked. A billion who were better qualified for all this, certainly."
"But none of them are you," Loki replied.
Scott's lower lip trembled.
"May I go now?" he asked quietly.
"Of course. You need but pull Mystique's implant off..."
Scott yanked for the implant and soon found himself back in the elevator at Hank's manor, shaken badly, yet refusing to hyperventilate...