Author's note: ALL ART COMMISSION OFFERS FOR THIS STORY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY DECLINED
...
Scott and Ororo stuck close together as they came across the scene of utter devastation in District X. They saw dead and injured everywhere. The battle that had taken place must have been absolutely horrific. The normally stoic Scott could barely contain a slowly building fury and outrage at what he saw around him. It made his face tighten into an almost Man-With-No-Name-type grimace where it was normally placid, making humans and mutants back away from him on instinct.
They were immediately led to the site of the decapitated Sentinel. Mutants and Humans had lights and scans already around the site, most of its body pinned to the ground still by the absolutely gigantic statue of Jesus that Kurt had teleported on top of it, carefully being excavated from the base of the statue as quickly as possible. Charles immediately went to examine the head, grabbing a datapad that had early scan results on it. Danger immediately ran her own scans.
"Outer layer is solid Carbonadium...Interior main computer casing and motor systems are solid Vibranium. This thing was able to withstand an absolutely unholy level of punishment..." Danger noted, frowning as she got closer.
"Still not as bad as a Nimrod unit...not even close." she said a very quiet voice.
"Howitzer-grade Railgun weapons. Plasma Launchers. Oh no..." Xavier trailed as he read the report on what the surviving forensics teams in District X had uncovered.
"This thing has some kind of primitive scanner that can detect Mutant DNA!" he exclaimed to the others. "I reckon it's about forty years ahead of every other military automaton currently being fielded. It even had some kind of optical cannon with biological components...cloned eye tissue..."
Xavier stood up, still reading the report, a feeling of cold dread washing over him.
They had made Cyclops' biology part of their weapon systems, whoever was behind this vicious, unprovoked attack.
"Danger..." he trailed, quaking quietly with outrage at the realization. "I want you to do your scavenging thing and rip any useful systems you can out of it and incorporate it into yourself, if possible."
"I thought you were worried about making me too powerful." Danger replied wryly.
Scott forced away the smile that threatened to cross his face as he overheard Xavier's response.
"That was before they sent a murder bot to shoot up innocent people," Xavier replied coldly. "Nothing's off the table in our response at this point, including making mad science stuff to screw with the ones that sent this wretched thing."
"As you wish..." Danger replied, body splitting open everywhere revealing futuristic mechanical devices within that were reconfiguring, extending, telescoping, the other teams getting back at Xavier's gesture as Danger began to expertly disassemble the destroyed Sentinel, breaking down and integrating choice parts and materials into herself, her skin turning a reflective metallic pink as more and more upgrades were rapidly applied, her eyeballs turning a slick metallic gold. Most of her earlier internal weapons were either completely broken down and replaced or seamlessly blended with the pilfered technology, skeletal frame now virtually indestructible as her body resealed.
"Upgrade process complete. Shall I level an airbase for you?" she asked politely.
"When we find one the enemy owns, I'll let you go crazy on it," Xavier promised. "Let's get a move on..."
Xavier was still clearly furious as he came across the corpse of one of the visor-wearers, being examined by surviving Mutants and Humans.
"Is this one of them?" Xavier asked them calmly but curtly. They nodded and he bid Scott to come over.
"Cyclops, you said Essex had experimented on you..." Xavier stated, gesturing to the body, examining it like a hawk. "Did she ever mention anything like this?"
"I've...I've been recovering fragments. Like I said, her Mind Editor was starting to fail." Scott answered. "She mentioned stuff like this, in a memory. A dream I had back when all this started..." (SEE: TOTAL X-MEN #3)
Xavier knelt down and ripped the visor off. They stared at the cyclopean features.
"Gene Graft..." Xavier identified immediately. "Fairly recent, no more than six months by my guess, too...here, Danger, see if this Visor works...and if it's safe for Cyclops to use..."
"Gladly!" Danger said, taking a look at it and scanning it.
"Fifteen countermeasures detected..."
Her arms split open and tiny metal wires snaked out, calmly worming their way into the interior, undoing certain fastenings, disabling each immensely lethal countermeasure either wirelessly or by careful physical contact, breaking down the technology and absorbing it into her system to upgrade herself, analyzing each facet of the device for any hidden security device she might have missed before carefully re-assembling it.
"Mass produced. Sixty percent purified Carbonadium, twenty percent Vibranium A, twenty percent Titanium. Modified double layer Ruby-Quartz Interior Casing and Lens Array..." Danger said. "It should be bio-compatible with Cyclops."
"We know the Ruby Quartz must be from Egypt. But where are they getting the Vibranium?" Scott asked as he removed his sunglasses that Hank had created, revealing his eyes with the tiny pinpoints of gold light at the center, ever churning with the power of an atomic blast wave as he handed his shield and shotgun to Blob and Toad.
Danger took a step back, looking almost startled.
"Your eyes...you can control the beams?" Danger asked in a very quiet voice.
"Yeah. Why?" Scott asked, raising an eyebrow at her reaction.
"What the hell is up with this reality?" she asked herself in a whisper as Scott examined it.
"Where's the button? How do I fire it?" he asked, testing the dial on the side and fighting it didn't depress like his own visor.
Danger scanned the corpse, her still exposed wires removing the intact, circuitry laced gloves, disabling their security countermeasures before reassembling them and handing them to Scott.
"You fire this weapon by making contact with the tips of your two middle fingers on the bottom of your palm...it's safety is your own nervous system. You must not only do this but consciously choose to fire as you do." Danger instructed.
"Hmmm..." he grunted, putting on the gloves first, which tightened against his skin on contact, and then he put on the visor.
"BIO-METRIC DATA REGISTERED. WELCOME, NEW USER. WARNING: WEAPON SYSTEM NOT RATED FOR USER'S OUTPUT. LENS ARRAY MAY PROCESS ENERGY DISCHARGE IN A NON-STANDARD MANNER. EXERCISE CAUTION." came the internal voice in the visor system that startled him because it sounded like Essex.
Scott saw the red Hud display light up along with the targeting system, registering everyone in front of him. He turned to a nearby rock face and fired a low output blast.
It discharged from the lens array as a fast-moving ball of red energy that exploded on impact with a heavy blast that erupted in an almost mush-room cloud of red energy with a deafening boom, the mild shockwave of the impact knocking everyone to the ground except Scott.
Scott did not react to the cursing from others and shouting. He simply turned.
"Acceptable." was all Scott said.
"There's a secondary feature. My sensors listed it as a Scatter Mode." Danger said as the others hesitantly rose, Mutant or Human, and huddled next to each other behind cover in absolute fear of Scott, for the low strength blast that had just come out of his pilfered visor was twice the strength of the energy blasts of the Sentinel that had been destroyed for attacking them. "Adjust the dial on the side."
Scott adjusted the dial and stared at the rock face of the mountain interior District X was located in and fired again, this time the lens discharged his energy as an expanding red ring of destructive energy that turned whatever the ring edge passed through to molten slag and the center utterly disintegrated, before the energy dispersed after about three meters. The ring radius was about five meters before it broke down.
"Well, we know it will work at least," Scott said.
"Wait..." Danger interrupted, having needed to observe the discharge patterns before trying to make any modifications. She gestured for the visor, and he removed it.
Her internal wires snaked over it, disassembling it in certain places on the monocle section, modifying the internals, grafting new vibranium circuitry into the lens array through laser injection from her fingertips before handing it back.
"I've added additional firing settings that should give you performance you are more used to..." Danger said, showing him the additional positions on his new visor's adjustment dial.
"It should allow you to fire a more standardized optical beam then that overpowered blast or that death ring, though I have made sure those discharge properties are retained..." she explained as he put it back on, squeezed his finger tips to his palm and fired a powerful continuous beam focused like a laser at a nearby crater, that was filtered red by the visor. It had the thickness of a pencil, but the ground shuddered underneath everyone's feet at its terrible power as it struck bare earth before he shut off the discharge.
"Now this second setting doesn't release a continuous beam, but an interrupted stream of bolts, giving it properties akin to a machinegun..." she said, adjusting it for him. He fired again, and this time tiny but powerful red bolts raced out of the monocle, each bolt impacting an empty crater with the force of an armor piercing seventy caliber round.
"I LIKE that!" Scott whispered with dark enthusiasm, not really noticing the deformed Mutants watching his casual yet still immense display of power. He had barely been here five minutes, and he was one of the most powerful mutants they had ever seen. And not only that, but THE Charles Xavier was with him and apparently supporting him
"Now we need a plan. Where's Mystique?" Scott asked.
"She's at the post office!" one deformed Mutant called out, overhearing his question.
"Thanks." Scott called back before signaling Xavier and the others they had been gathering to follow him.
"It's Essex. I'm sure of it." Scott said to all of them quietly at close range. He kept staring at the utter carnage that had been inflicted, removing the bulky visor while Danger stripped and repaired the chest body-armor of the Cycloptic Corpse she had scavenged from, listening intently. Despite his aloof attitude, he was as outraged as Xavier was by the slaughter.
"She's an Avengers-Level Threat," Xavier admitted to the teenagers and deadly living weapons with a frown. Cyclops could still see the fury on his face. "Vast resources. Possibly rivaling my own."
Xavier turned to him.
"Cyclops, I've done my absolute best to give you your space on this matter. But this woman is forcing my hand AND yours, now. I need to know what you know about her. You were under her watch for a decade. I need insight into the kind of psychopath we're dealing with."
"What, your toy village getting scorched not enough of an insight?" Scott asked in a quiet, scathing tone.
"Anybody can kill with soldiers and mechanized equipment. I saw enough of it in countless jungles and other places. You of all people should appreciate that after experiencing it yourself." Xavier replied tersely, refusing to let the young man's attitude get in the way. "What I need is to understand the reasoning why she would suddenly go this far. What does she gain by attacking these people? They were no threat to her-"
"There is another Infinity Stone present..." Power Princess said.
Everyone wheeled on the scantily clad Asgardian Construct.
"What?!" Xavier snapped.
"I can feel it. I felt it before the Sentinel hit us. I'm certain the Infinity Stone was why this was such a massive assault. Whole Alien races have waged war against each other to obtain just one of them." Power Princess explained. "An Infinity Stone would be a massive motivator for anyone to come out into the open with such destructive intent, provided they knew what it was."
Scott looked around.
"This attack served multiple purposes..." Scott realized as he surveyed the damage.
"It was a test run for her new toys. She's shaking the cobwebs out of her design. She brought in, from the looks of it, about two thirds less than what she would have needed to completely rout this place just on the ratio of Visor-Wearing Soldiers slain compared to the defenders that I'm seeing bought it..." Scott muttered casually. "As for this Sentinel...if she really wanted to kill all of you, she would have brought in two or three of those, sent them in for aerial saturation from outside and just cave the whole place in on you from above. She wanted to see the level of organization and defenses you had. She wanted to see if you could put up a good fight. If you could adapt. And if Princess is right, it also serves to keep your forces from reinforcing wherever this other Infinity Stone is."
"That's tactics, Cyclops, I'm talking about motive," Xavier said with a dismissive shake of his head. "What drives her?"
Scott frowned. "She wishes to explore the limits of science. Genetics in particular. She believes Mutants are the next phase of humanity, and that anyone standing in the way of a new and glorious age of Mutants and, by extension, the advancement of science has to be removed for the sake of civilizational progress."
"Then why slaughter a bunch of Mutants, with tech specifically designed to kill Mutants?" Storm asked, folding her arms.
"By Mutantkind, she means Mutants like Cyclops and you, Ororo..." Toad muttered grimly. "Mutants like me are considered mere steppingstones or pests."
"You shoulda seen the way Essex singled Cyclops out," Blob said to everyone present. "It was genuinely creepy. With us, she was eyeing us over like we were the contents of a petri dish. With Cyke? Essex...it's really weird. The way it came off to me was that she treated him almost like they were old friends that had suffered some sort of falling out..."
"She's a Eugenicist taking her philosophy to its logical extreme..." Cyclops added, glaring as he thought of all the tests she had subjected him to, painful removal of tissue with special lasers. But Blob's perception of how Essex had interacted with him greatly disturbed him, though he didn't voice it. He hadn't perceived it that way back then.
Xavier rubbed his chin as they headed to the office. "Give me an example, of how she would interact with you, Cyclops..."
Scott stared at Xavier and then started to speak...
...
Scott Summers, Age Sixteen.
"Mister Summers, please come in..."
Scott Summers, wearing the angular red sunglasses she had provided him that would eventually be converted into his first visor when he eventually escaped a year later, entered her study and went still. He always did around her. Studying her.
Natalie Essex spun around in the office chair behind her desk with a smile. Scott knew in an instant that she had bad news, and that she was going to enjoy delivering it.
He refused to change expression from his normally placid visage. The one satisfaction he still had was that she could never get a rise out of him.
And if there was one thing he had come to understand about Natalie Essex, it was that his placidness always got under her skin.
He stepped forward, fresh from outside playing basketball with the other mutant children in the orphanage. It was a state-of-the-art facility. The best furnishings an orphanage had. It was still a prison, essentially.
He walked forward, movement slow, almost like that of a raptor that had spotted a mouse. He walked past a solid gold bust of Charles Darwin, Natalie's personal hero, and countless genetic diagrams.
He was certain she was a mutant, the longer he thought about it. He would never accuse her directly, of course...even he knew he would not like the results of going down 'that' rabbit hole.
Essex was dressed in an unusually dark blue dress that went down to her ankles. It was loose-fitting but couldn't hide her hourglass figure, any more than her thick frame glasses could hide the carved beauty of her face. A red diamond-shaped ruby brooch hung prominently from her neck. Always so prim and proper. Always so immaculate. It made him hate and fear her. She was too well composed. Too in control. Always trying to instill that same uptight sensibility in him.
"What's the occasion, Professor Essex?" Scott asked dryly, bracing himself.
Essex's faint smile grew slightly wider. "I regret to inform you the latest adoption candidates have chosen to forgo taking you into their home. I'm very sorry, Mister Summers. It seems you shall remain a ward of the state."
"How terribly unfortunate," he replied soullessly, watching her eye twitch slightly at his tone of dismissal.
"Yes, I suppose it is, isn't it?" she asked quietly, all the while continuing to smile. Scott's loathing of her deepened with each passing day.
He knew it was her sabotaging all his attempts to finally leave this place. To leave her sight. He was too scared of her though, to try running away just yet. That would come later. When his memories of her experiments upon him started to come back.
"Does it bother you, Summers? Does it ever bother you that the only one who sees your potential is the one you hate the most in this world?" she asked, tone bordering on openly taunting but having just enough academic curiosity to restrict it to her usual sociopathy rather than just straightforward bullying.
"That says more about you then it does about me, Professor Essex." Scott replied, refusing to let even his tone change from its current tepid measure.
"Tell me, Professor Essex, when they cut you open..." he asked, voice dropping a slight amount in pitch. "Do you think they'll find the exact part of your brain that lets you enjoy tormenting me?"
"I 'only' enjoy tormenting my enemies. But tormenting you? Whatever do you mean?" she asked playfully. "I'm a caretaker, Scott!"
"And I. am. Iron Man..." Scott replied with the tone of creaking wood about to split from pressure.
"Ah, Ozzy..." she said wistfully in reply. "I used to think no one could top the Ninth Symphony. And then I listened to 'Over The Mountain'...magical song..."
"Fitting you, of all people, would enjoy an excerpt from the Diary of a Madman..." Scott said calmly, the red lenses reflecting her now grinning face.
Essex leaned forward.
"Well, as long we're making labored music references, what do you view as The Ultimate Sin, Scott Summers...talking too much?" she asked with a grin that was genuinely nasty, enjoying the back and forth. She liked that Scott fought her, even if it was purely with words. "Sinking ships with loose lips..."
"When it comes to sinking ships, we both know it's not my lips you should be worrying about, Professor Essex." Scott replied with typical placidness, watching with pleasure as her eye twitched again even as she maintained that infuriating smile. "Now, do you have something more important than reporting how you have seen to it once more, that yet another family will not adopt me?"
"Well, to be honest, I'm bored."
"Buy a sportscar like every other loser with a mid-life crisis." Scott replied.
"I have several already. If you've driven one Alfa Romeo, you've driven them all..." Essex replied casually. "I was actually thinking we might test our mutual wits with a friendly chess match! We haven't had those in a while, I so miss them."
"You called me here for a chess match?"
"Well, I called you here mainly to taunt you over the fact that I successfully thwarted your adoption yet again, but yes, I called you here also for a chess match." Essex replied with that ever prim and proper English contralto, giving a dark chuckle as she said it, amber eyes fixed on Scott.
Essex hit a switch on her desk and the floor behind Scott parted and up rose an elaborate set of thrones made of glass facing each other, with a large glass rest and custom glass chess board resting on it. There were no visible chess pieces.
"Well, now we know where the funds for new heaters in our rooms went." Scott commented, refusing to even let his face twitch. Though his statement could be interpreted as a very dark joke, partly one at his own expense, there was no humor in his voice at all as he said it, leaving it ambiguous as to whether he truly intended to make a joke. Essex still chuckled at it.
"Oh, come now, don't feel pity for those weaklings who can't take a little nighttime chill. You're built different. Better. You lack the need to keep warm, you sustain yourself on hatred! Sure, it is mostly hatred directed at yourself, but truly amazing examples of severe psychosis start from often much less..." she gushed. "And besides, the angrier you get the stronger you become..."
"What do you get from trying to torment me beyond that?" he asked, mainly out of a clinical, academic curiosity than taking any real offense at her statement.
Essex gestured to the glass thrones. "Have a seat. I'd be happy to discuss my curriculum."
When Scott still hesitated, Essex sighed and reached into her pocket.
"Fine, Scott, we'll make this interesting..."
She pulled out a scratched scuffed wristwatch. The sight of this object made Scott almost flinch. It had a simple watch face with roman numerals in place of the regular numbers.
"I do believe this belonged to your older brother, Gabriel, didn't it?" Essex asked, watching Scott's upper lip tremble. "I was going to wait until the next round of tests to present this to you, but I like to make the experiment interesting. If you can beat me, it's yours."
"If I lose?"
"Then I smash it in front of you and toss it in the trash."
"If I say no to the game?"
"Oh, you 'might' still get it by the next round of tests...but who knows what evil things I'll have put inside of it by then?"
Scott stared at the calmly smiling Essex. He took off his glasses. She tensed almost imperceptibly...
...and her eyes widened very slightly as he blasted apart the watch with a microsecond gold beam burst from his eye-and then calmly went over to one of the glass chess thrones and sat down.
"Now get over here so I can properly humiliate you. Again." Scott called out dispassionately, glancing at his nails for a moment before focusing on the chess board. She would not control him fully. He would not permit it.
Essex rose slowly, gave a small bow, and sat opposite him. Holographic Chess Pieces flickered into existence. White pieces for Essex, Black Pieces for Scott.
"I propose new conditions." Scott said icily.
"I'm all ears, Mister Summers." Essex replied, wondering where he was going with this.
"I have never asked about your personal life because, frankly, I never cared how you got to be what you are. The point is you chose it every step of the way..." Scott began. "Since you wanted to hold the past over me, I figure 'Why not run with that'?"
"Go on," she said, intrigued.
"If I win..." he said slowly. "You have to tell me why you hate me."
"And if I win?" Essex asked very politely, still smiling.
Scott leaned forward in his throne slowly and mechanically.
"I'll tell you a secret." Scott answered in a hiss.
Essex considered it but a moment.
"Deal." she said, smile growing slightly wider. "White Pawn to E4."
Her piece moved two spaces on the board.
"Black Pawn to C5," Scott grumbled. "I always despised this game."
"A pity. You play it so well," Essex said casually in response as she ordered the next move. "I believe you were voicing complaints about my curriculum."
"Your teaching motive is without sense," Scott replied after announcing his next move. "You keep us miserable. You're cruel without purpose."
"I resent that accusation." Essex replied casually as she announced her next move in response immediately after. Scott was tricky, and dangerous at the board. The same technique never worked twice on him. "To be cruel without purpose is against the very fundamentals of good science. Mutant Stress Testing is in its infancy. A general average must be established for typical mutants physical and psychological breaking point."
"To whose benefit?" Scott asked coldly. "Is that all you care about? Questions no one wants or needs to know the answers to?"
"I see you've been keeping up on your Najdorf." Essex shot back as her white knight captured his pawn, the cat-like smile never leaving her face. "And Science is driven by questions no one else thought to ask. Do you think the world will not change overnight when the existence of Mutants is revealed? New technology. New Medicine. New laws. Made by stuffy, greedy, fearful old fools with no appreciation or understanding of the situation that will arise beyond doing whatever it takes to stay in power. Even if it means pandering to the paranoid and the racist, to consign the future of humanity to the ashpile. Or to make a quick buck. The scientific epoch of the millennium in the hands of a power drunk and backward oligarchy that's only ever appreciated when and how to pander."
"I'm sensing some past frustration. I bet you were considered the quack." Scott sneered, as he announced moves, each drawing blood on the board, setting up his pawns for a trap with each move. "Lemme guess...you played show and tell in front of your peers once. An experiment that wasn't as well received as you hoped it would be."
Scott knew he had struck a nerve, because the smile melted away.
"Tell me, Summers, did your mother use religion to justify plunging a plane that had her entire family on it into the ground?" she asked in a quiet, yet knife-like tone.
"Were you laughed out of their presence?" Scott replied with genuine acid in his tone.
"Stryker Ministries, U.S.A." Essex replied, no sign of mirth anywhere on her face, just a pure focus on emotional torment. "Your Mother was notoriously religious. Single biggest donator to William Stryker's Church of The Purifier. She made your family go there every Sunday to listen to him preach, right in the front row. I'm curious...did you memorize the text?"
"Text?" Scott repeated, face remaining impassive, knowing it enraged her deep down.
"Of the King James Bible. Did you memorize the text?" Essex repeated tersely. "Don't be thick, Scott."
"You know full well that I had Eidetic Memory, even at age three."
"You recited it in front of her once, didn't you?"
Scott remained silent at the question. Essex's smile returned as she smelled blood.
"You were trying to impress her, weren't you?" Essex sneered. "Did it impress her? Or was that the incident that first stoked her suspicions that you were more than you seemed?"
Scott remained silent.
"I bet it wasn't the first sign." Essex taunted quietly. "You once told me Gabriel was special too...what was his slip-up, I wonder...?"
"It's like poker, you four-eyed shrew; everybody's got a tell..." Scott replied coldly as he managed to take her queen on the board.
"Ah...a Poisoned Pawn Strategy..." Essex noted of the chess board, clasping her fingers together in quiet contemplation. "I'm sure your brothers all demonstrated precursors to manifestation. I'm betting neither you or your brothers could ever recall getting sick..."
Scott was dead silent.
Essex leaned forward.
"Did she call for doctors, I wonder?" Essex asked with a smile. "Did she start to ask your husband questions? Questions about why all her children had such perfect memory? Why could she never recall him or her picture-perfect Flag Waving Lutheran-Protestant Family getting sick? When did your father discover his mutation, I wonder? Before or after he was married?"
"How defective was your child, when it was born?" Scott asked, tone like a sheet of ice, going for the throat. Her pupils narrowed to pinpoints.
"Did it cough? Did it rasp? Was one leg longer than the other?" he asked in a hiss leaning forward slightly, her stoic face perfectly reflected in the crimson lenses, his expression as placid as it had been when it had started. "Did it make you wonder if your DNA was deleterious? Or perhaps your husband's blueprint conveyance was simply bad?"
Essex was silent once more, staring at him intently. Scott knew he was in truly dangerous territory. He hadn't watched her face go that dead in a long time. He kept going anyway, knowing it would cost him. He was merely guessing, based on past comments.
"It must drive you crazy, knowing that even though all of the people in this place are freaks scared to wander in broad daylight, they're still healthier and more genetically viable then your own natural progeny turned out to be. And you've been taking it out on Mutant children ever since...using science as a shield to hide behind your pathological need to compensate for the fact your womb couldn't and doesn't make anything but lemons."
In reply, Essex reached into her pocket...and pulled out what appeared to be a copy of Gabriel's watch. Scott's eyes locked onto it.
"You are no doubt wondering...is this the real watch of Gabriel Summers? Or simply a copy?" She asked in an all too polite tone.
Essex crushed it long and slow in front of Scott, knowing Scott would swear revenge at all cost and not caring.
Essex dumped its now dust like fragments on the glass chess table.
"I'll never tell..." Essex sneered quietly before smiling again. "But know this; I am a system. Even when you rebel, it's all part of the system."
Essex rose. "Now, as to why I hate you..." she added as an afterthought, pacing around the table, tone academic "I hate you because you refuse to admit what I know to be true, and what you know to be true despite clearly only barely clinging to the concept of being a part of a functioning society as a functioning citizen...I hate you because you won't embrace the fact you are no longer human."
Essex leaned down next to his ear as he quaked with silent, unreadable fury.
"I hate you because you refuse to recognize that you are turning into a God..." she whispered bitterly, though her expression was as composed as his. "But more than that, I hate you for the fact that even if you did recognize you were becoming a God, that you would still think such individuals, with the power to crack mountains should be willing to fall on their sword to preserve this rathole those old fools have made of the world around us..."
Essex slowly clutched him by the hair and pulled his head back just as slowly.
"I hate you because you are willing to throw away your dignity to walk amongst a devolving society, increasingly reliant, and enslaved, to technology and slogans and bubble-thinking to preserve their sense of self." she hissed, and he could really see the crazy in her eyes as she said this to him. "A society that buries their children in foreign jungles and deserts to avoid them getting numerous enough to vote out the serpents who would send them there. They barely know what to do with The Avengers. Do you really think the world is going to waste its already depleted energy and resources trying to integrate Mutants? Gimme a break..." Essex scoffed, letting go of his hair.
"It'll be easier to scapegoat Mutants for the past twenty years of foreign or domestic policy failures, HYDRA plots, The Soviets, and hot-button religion topics than it will be for them to try integration. And the rats of the world will eat it up, because having someone to blame is their cheddar. And without the cheddar, you can't make the rats do tricks." Essex finished, stepping back.
"In short, Scott, I hate you because for all your potential, you would be happy to simply be a rat with some cheddar." Essex stated clinically. "You disappoint me."
Essex left the room.
"Oh, and by the way, victory for me in eight moves..." she said as she stepped out.
Scott looked at the chess table, the parts of the watch she had crushed making the holographic chess pieces flicker.
She was right.
Scott angrily swiped the broken watch pieces off the board, scattering them around the room, teeth gritted in frustration.
...
"Dear God, a Chess Match between two mortal enemies..." Charles groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose as he listened to Scott (Who had only gone over her mannerisms and reasoning rather than the specifics of what they had talked about during the chess game). "This Essex, in addition to being a sociopath, also seems unbearably pretentious. I'm more of a checkers fella or a skeet shooter, myself..."
"I could never understand that whole bit," Scott agreed with a snort, even as he recalled he had never told Essex the secret he had promised if she won. Strangely, Essex had never demanded it. "I mean, what does playing chess prove?"
"It proves she thinks herself a sophisticated intellectual..." Danger snorted as she finished scavenging and repairing the armor. "But it also proves she was attempting to mold you in her image."
Scott didn't say anything to that. For then he would start wondering whether or not she had partly succeeded.
"She must be a Mutant. It's the only thing that makes sense. But what are her powers?" Toad pondered. "She wouldn't be nearly so straightforward if she didn't have the muscle to back it up."
"Honestly Cyclops, I'm surprised you didn't blast her..." Charles said in sympathy. "No one would have blamed you if you had..."
"Where would I go?" Scott asked in a very quiet voice rhetorically. "You don't understand. I only ran finally because I realized I might end my life on one of her gurneys. But there really was nowhere to run until Callisto showed."
Ororo, who was listening, had grown silently horrified as he recounted his conversation. Essex had been a creep, but Storm had never had to endure her every day for a decade like Scott had. She had seemed to take a special pleasure in breaking him down, isolating him, weaving a toxic dependency towards her, with the threat of being killed as a monster by ordinary people should he flee or rebel. No wondered he seemed so frozen, so tightly wound and cynical and mistrustful, with Blob and Toad seemingly the only people he was truly close to. He had barely just started warming up to Ororo.
Charles, Beast, Mystique, Zarda, Danger and herself? They were probably the first friendly faces besides Toad and Blob that he had seen in years, and they were all in their own way as messed up as he was...
Ororo found herself battling thoughts of wanting to reach for him. To tell him it would be alright. That he had friends now...but she knew it was not the time. She wasn't even sure how Scott would react if she made a genuine attempt to get closer. It had taken them nearly being murdered by the Psionic Ghost of Mother Righteous before he had even told her his name.
And what a name. Scott Summers. Static charged sharply between her fingers just thinking his name...
Tragic Backstory? Check. Classically Handsome? Check. Tough, No-Nonsense Anti-Hero Schtick? Check. Calm voice in the darkness that screams mystery? CHECK. Storm thought nervously.
Oh no. I'm falling for the Bad Boy...she realized silently. Her father had always warned her about falling for bad boys, and she had always respected his warnings.
But it was one thing to beware the ideal...
...and another to meet the reality...
She knew it was irrational. He was damaged goods. Damaged goods that had been flung into a street of fast-moving cars from the top of a skyscraper...
The golden points of light at the center of his eyes made them look like jewels and were the most beautiful things she had ever seen up close.
His stare had melted her on the inside the first time she looked into his eyes.
Storm's heart pounded fast as she realized she was attracted to Scott. She heard the skies above the mountain crack with thunder. They all looked up.
"Storm? Is that your doing?" Scott asked.
"I don't know..." she confessed, heart pounding faster as she recalled the golden light at the center of brown irises...
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! He's complete train wreck! But those gorgeous eyes...
The thunder cracked above the mountain so loud it sounded almost like an explosion overhead. Everyone, mutant, or human, instinctively flinched and almost ducked.
"...sorry..." Storm said, getting her feelings back under control. It had taken her months to get control of her anger before running into Scott. She was not prepared to try dealing with feelings for a boy. Even a boy as handsome, as brave-
-and as broken as Scott Summers.
Zarda, powered by the Love Stone, turned her head slowly to Ororo, sensing the conflict. The confusion. She wanted to help her, but this simply wasn't the time. Natalie Essex's very presence had cast a shadow over all their doings since they had first assembled. She sensed anger and confusion in Scott as well. Things were about to cross a threshold from which there was no going back for any of them. Up to now, they had been trying to get their bearings, scrambling to adjust to the deadly weight they had all been saddled with, some dealing with their own personal objectives that had led them way off course and created new problems. But not today. Today, Essex's actions had all somehow forced them back together. And Scott would have to face the terrible monster that had ruled him without the disguise, either for her OR him.
Cyclops turned to Danger as she handed him the scavenged, repurposed chest armor of the visor soldiers.
"Sub-Adamantium Resin-infused Kevlar." Danger elaborated. "It appears to contain pockets holding spare lenses for your visor."
"Visor..." Scott trailed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the slimmer visor with its rectangular green lens taken from Tomi Shishido.
"A man with powers similar to my own attempted to kill me and Storm when we tried to head back to Doctor McCoy's mansion." Scott told her as he gave it to her. (SEE: TOTAL X-MEN #14)
Danger examined it, wires snaking out of her split open wrist.
"Eighteen countermeasures. Disabling..." she said idly. "Very thorough. Well placed."
She tilted her head as she scanned it.
"Frame is solid Adamantium. Lens appears to be an attempt at synthesizing the properties of Ruby Quartz in order to contain and release a different type of energy. Radiation with effects similar to that of petrification." she explained. "Its lens array is designed to widen the beam on maximum setting."
"Could it withstand my optic blasts?" Scott asked.
"Unknown. Gamma Radiation was used to create this lens array system. Molecularly speaking, it is very similar to Ruby Quartz. It might contain your energy. But there is no telling how the energy would filter through it..." Danger answered.
"This man that tried to kill you. Who was he?" Xavier asked.
"Tomi Shishido. Bastard would have had my number AND Storm's number if Fred hadn't come in on the clutch..." Scott answered. "His eyebeams turn everything they hit into stone. And he can't turn them off. He has to wear the visor, or he fires constantly."
"Was he working with Essex?" Zarda asked.
"No. Some other group of psychos called the Dawn of The White Light. He's working against her interests, and he thinks killing me will disrupt Essex's plans." Scott said, grim-faced as he recalled the experience. How many had died today just because he wanted to feel a little sunshine and listen to the birds chirp?
How many were now dead or maimed because Scott had wanted to experience humanity?
His heart skipped a beat when he realized he had almost lost Ororo...
It pounded faster as he recalled riding Hank's motorcycle with her arms around his waist...
...and faster still as he recalled staring into those haunting glowing red eyes of hers.
Scott put on the green lensed visor, went to the crater of an energy weapon blast, and released energy from his eyes into the lens array without discharging it. Nothing.
"Well, we know it will hold your beams..." Storm noted.
"But how will it filter them is the real question..." Scott replied, ears perking slightly at her voice, which traveled into his brain and stayed there the more he heard her talk.
Scott stared at the crater and pressed the discharge button.
A mint-green beam of energy shot out at the crater, blasting fragments into the air...which then rapidly slowed down and came to a complete stop.
Danger scanned one of the suspended fragments of stone, which seemed to be surrounded by a blurry, heatwave-like effect.
"Unusual..." Danger noted. "My sensors are indicating the materials affected have had their personal space-time disrupted. In light of turning people to stone, it seems Cyclops' blast contains mild chronokinetic properties when filtered through Gamma Quartz."
The fragments remained perfectly fixed and non-moving...and then promptly fell to the ground.
"Is the energy lethal to living tissue?" Scott wondered.
Danger shrugged. "Unknown. Only way to know is to use it and find out. But keep in mind, you are disrupting someone's personal space-time. I'd be shocked if there wasn't any really horrible side effects from doing that."
Scott frowned, but nodded and put the other, bulkier visor back on, putting the visor back in his pocket.
"Let's go find Mystique."
They all eventually reached the Post Office, each slowly becoming more horrified by the level of damage they observed. Human and Mutant Volunteers were working together to remove debris and bodies and Scott's eyebrow raised as he beheld a youthful looking Mystique and a furry blue teenage boy in strange red and black jumpsuit with demonic features, and a teenager seemingly composed of solid, gleaming steel in shredded civilian clothes as they entered the remains of the office.
"TOAD! Blob! Herr Zyklop!" Mystique exclaimed as she put down a leather-bound book, going over to Toad in particular, who looked much more haunted then when she had last seen them. (SEE: TOTAL X-MEN # 11-12). Blob, for his part, remained poker-faced, content only to remain observing, but looking like he had experienced something distressing also.
"Heya Wrinkles. Still busy at the art of Lovecrafting, I see..." Toad said of her new, much younger appearance.
Mystique leaned into his ear quickly.
"I told Kurt the truth. I'm sorry." she whispered.
Toad frowned. "Whatever..." he muttered bitterly but pushing it aside for the sake of making sure everyone came back from this alive if at all possible. He could chew her out later. All that for nothing. All that for Kurt to be told the only creature that wanted to be his mother was a potential threat to humanity.
"You look different, what the hell happened?" Blob asked.
"I had to absorb some Mutant's DNA to stop that damn robot. But what about you two? I've been so worried since Berlin!" Mystique exclaimed. "I'm so sorry I lost track of you two-"
"It wasn't your fault. Couldn't be avoided..." Blob replied ominously.
Mystique then turned to Scott and the others, human and mutant medics putting bodies in long black bags and carrying them out, her short, slicked back hair the same blue-black tone as that of Kurt. It was still clearly still the same person he had first yet, but vastly younger and far more...voluptuous looking even with her crimson skinned barbie-doll anatomy, Scott noted with extreme discomfort. He could see every other Mutant and Human volunteer in the remains of the Post office of District X subtly terrified of Mystique, afraid to get too close to her, doing everything possible to give her, Kurt and Colossus a wide berth.
"Mystique..." Scott said simply, her Atomic Signature utterly alien and terrifying to him at this point with her new enhancements but refusing to react to it. She grew more powerful with each battle, it seemed. Ororo took a step back unconsciously. She could control lightning, and Mystique still terrified her.
"I'm so relieved to see you all again!" The Shapeshifter exclaimed, her East German accent poking through. "Things went absolutely pear-shaped after we got separated..."
Mystique looked at Danger. "Who is that?" she asked as Kurt behind her took one look at Danger in her rather revealing costume and shiny pink metallic skin and immediately made the sign of the Cross.
"Hyper-Lethal Android that calls herself Danger...and seems to know more than she lets on..." Xavier answered dryly.
"I've been programmed to follow your orders unswervingly," Danger assured her. "And I see you don't even bother with a sexy costume!"
"Shapeshifting allows a ton of red tape to be bypassed..." Mystique replied confidently before turning to Charles.
"We have a problem, Charles..."
"Indeed. Tell me everything that happened."
Mystique recounted the entire incident, Charles frown growing more severe as she got to the part about there being a Lost Mutant City underneath Austin, Texas.
"...and then Kurt here informed me they had him recover a containment system for The Phoenix Stone..." Mystique explained at the end.
"The Phoenix Stone..." Zarda trailed, folding her arms. "That's...that's very bad, everyone. That stone contains one of the most powerful entities in the universe..."
"Entity?" Kurt asked, frowning.
"Like the pink stone you handled, young man," she explained. "Both contain extremely powerful...lifeforms, if you will. The Phoenix was altered into its current state by an Alien Species called the Shi'ar. They used forbidden technology from outside this reality to pull it off, trying to harness the Phoenix as a form of unlimited energy. But the Phoenix is a fundamental part of the universe. Its primary mission cannot be denied forever."
"What is its primary mission?" Scott asked.
"To promote evolution in life forms across the universe. To burn away that which harms life and evolutionary processes in addition to the natural order of things...and sometimes to make a cosmic omelette...it means cracking a few galaxy-sized eggs..." Zarda explained.
"What happened to the Shi'ar? I can't imagine something like that would be too happy getting turned into a marble..." Toad pondered.
"It destroyed their entire empire, nearly wiped out their entire species in the process in retaliation. It's a universal scale threat but now the stone must be infused into a host to achieve such power levels. It WILL eventually find another host. It just needs one of suitable strength..." Zarda answered grimly to the dawning terror of the others present.
"...and unfortunately, Cyclops, Blob, Ororo, Mystique, Piotr, Toad, and Kurt are all extremely viable hosts...they're all Omega Level..." Zarda insisted, which caused Charles' mouth to fall open slightly.
All Omegas?! Danger thought. How is that possible? Even Kurt?! Even SCOTT?! EVEN THE BLOODY TOAD?!
"Omega? I'll tell you what I said to that Ghost in Carter Slade's tomb: There is no such thing as Omega-Level Mutants! It's a myth! An urban legend dreamt up by Mutants as propaganda amongst themselves! Scare tactics!" Storm insisted angrily. "That nonsense cropped up decades back in Egypt and spread from there like a virus..."
"Ororo, after what that Brain Jar showed us, are you really so sure?" Scott asked skeptically.
"Omega's are supposedly capable of affecting the whole planet! No mutant can possibly be that powerful, not even you, Cyclops!" Storm replied, frustrated and in denial. She didn't need this. All she had really wanted was taking down Essex...and now she was starting to REALLY understand Scott's apprehension at being a Mutant.
She didn't want to be a walking doomsday...
Danger, for her part, was in total shock, though she hid it well. In this strange, almost completely rewritten reality, not only was Scott Summers in control of his beams, not only was there seemingly no Jean Grey around to affect his judgement (But as a consequence, he seemed even colder and less human in demeanor than was usual for versions of him in the Multiverse), but he was also an Omega to boot. She pitied him on that last bit. Her database from her old reality was very clear; There wasn't an Omega Level born yet who truly enjoyed being one. They all had horrible lives filled with cosmic insanity and galactic scale violence that ended nastily when their mortal minds literally crumbled under the weight of being responsible with such nigh-unfathomable power.
"Kurt?" Scott said, having finally remembered reading the name in a letter he found at the site of Loki's death thirty thousand years from now. (Author's note: SEE TOTAL X-MEN #7 for details.)
"Yeah. That would be me." Kurt said, still in shock at the scale of death and destruction, not to mention the info bomb Zarda had just dropped. "You must be Zyklop."
"Yeah," Scott replied. "Got a Mutant name?"
"Eh, I'm going with Nightcrawler, at the moment..." Kurt answered. "Why are you wearing the enemy's visor technology?"
"The people who attacked you..." Scott trailed. "My genes were grafted onto them giving them my abilities. My beams are much more...powerful..."
"You were born a death cannon?!" Kurt sputtered. "I take it back. I'd rather have my mutation..."
"Positive thoughts, Kurt..." Scott said dryly.
Piotr was also grim-faced, distressed that all he could do was survive the robotic monstrosity, but not truly triumph over it on his own. He cared little for the whole Omega business, as it was mostly gibberish to his sensibilities.
"Better to be indestructible than a gun that can never be made truly safe..." Piotr said in Russian.
"I'd rather have yours too, trust me," Scott muttered back a surprised Piotr in perfect, non-accented Russian (His display of bilingualism caused Storm to bite her lower lip in intrigue and no minor amount of lust, thunder cracking overhead very faintly above the mountain) before turning to Mystique. "What's the slow way into Threshold?"
Mystique's hands went to her now very well-formed hips as she paced a bit.
"A special rail cart for emergency access to other Morlock tunnels in this area. That was how they stumbled onto Threshold." Mystique said. "The enemy is almost certain to have it covered-"
"Then I'll clear it. We don't know what Essex is capable of. If we all rush in, we could all risk getting flattened if her Mutant abilities are as overpowered and broken as most of ours are. Or we could risk killing each other by accident. We got lucky in Egypt against Clan Akkaba. Essex is almost certain to know we're coming. She'd be a fool not to anticipate some sort of attempt at retaliation." Scott replied in a humorless and unfeeling tone. "Danger, I need you to accompany me into the tunnels. The rest of you will hang back until I radio you. If Essex is too much for us, you can attempt a rescue or ambush, whichever works."
"I didn't come here to twiddle my thumbs, Cyclops. I'm going with you. No arguments." Xavier asserted, stepping forward.
"Your funeral, Charles," Scott replied quietly. But he liked that the now-increasingly shady Mutant Rights Activist wasn't afraid of throwing down.
"Why don't you want any of us with you?" Storm asked, deeply skeptical and questioning.
"Essex specializes in Mutant Genetics, Ororo. I imagine she has developed certain countermeasures. She already knows me, Toad, and Fred. She definitely knows you and any other Mutant she doesn't know here, she is certain to have a nasty trick up her sleeve to deal with. If Kurt can teleport people like you say he can, he can hang back and pull us all out if worse comes to worse. Danger is a robot of foreign design, Charles is Human. Those two are the only true variables among us that Essex may have no frame of reference for. Mystique may be our only way to escape from Essex if she proves too much, and with as powerful as Mystique is getting it would be extremely dangerous for Essex to get her hands on her genetics. As for Zarda, it's bad enough Essex is near just one Infinity Stone. Do we really want to put this nutjob within striking distance of two, and compound what is already a long list of failures that have occurred today?" Scott asked dryly, pitilessly, leaning slightly onto a table with his hands, his bulky, monocle-type visor weapon giving him an almost inhuman profile. "We need to know what and who we are dealing with when it comes to Natalie Essex. A probing attack with a limited force is best."
"He's a rookie, but I concur," Xavier said. "We are barely starting to understand how your powers can collectively best function together. If we go all dirty dozen when we're already probably all exhausted from the hell we've been put through today and yesterday, it will likely just result in a slaughter. Limiting Essex's exposure to your collective capabilities preserves some modicum of tactical advantage."
"My recording capability will be excellent for gathering tactical data on whatever power Essex has and how she uses it." Danger pointed out.
"And me being human means she will underestimate me..." Xavier added.
"But while we are taking the long route to Threshold, Mystique needs to get ready for extraction procedures..." Scott mentioned. "Does this place have tracking devices?"
The Medic, Stephen, clothes still wet with Blink's blood from failing to stop her internal hemorrhaging nodded.
"The excavation teams kept trackers with them while making new tunnels. Made it easier to locate them in case there was a cave in. Should be some near the emergency tunnel. They'll display your exact coordinates," he explained, having overheard all the horrifying revelations and now as deeply terrified of the rest of them as he was of Mystique. He wasn't alone. Alot of the more deformed Mutants still trying to get the place barricaded were quietly scared of the group of ultra-powerful mutants in their midst. Their presence meant something extremely bad was about to happen. Even worse than the Sentinel attack.
"Mystique, I need you to eyeball the equipment monitoring those devices. We'll be on radio. If you can generate portals, then I want Storm to send in a heavy burst of her lightning bolts before Toad and Blob go through first, Piotr here second after hanging back a bit, THEN Storm and then you and especially Zarda only as last resorts..." Scott told her. "And if you go through, make sure Nightcrawler here is on standby..."
"Ja, Herr Zyklop..." Mystique confirmed.
"Aye-Aye, One-Eye!" Kurt joked.
Kurt's quip actually prompted a rare bit of praise from Scott.
"Masterful pun, Kurt." Scott complimented, though he didn't smile. Nor did his tone imply anything but raw, clinical, academic observation.
"Ten minutes and then we try and gauge this psycho..." Xavier muttered.
...
As everyone took their ten minutes to mentally prepare, Mystique found Scott spray painting something onto his body armor, tracing an X at the center of the shape he had made with a can of industrial paint he had found. It was imperfect as it dried quickly, fat drips of red sliding down from the symbol as he worked at a cleared-out table in the ruins outside the post office, having scavenged a large combat knife made of solid Carbonadium from one of the other Mutant relief workers in the disaster area. His visor was off, his Captain America Shield and his shotgun next to him.
Mystique could not help but privately marvel at how Cyclops, in that moment, seemed to be some sort of weird science fiction equivalent to a hero from the old Greek myths...preparing for battle against a figure of equal renown from those ancient stories.
"Funny, you didn't strike me as the type who went for psychological warfare, Herr Zyklop." she mentioned as he approached.
"Live the profession." Scott said soullessly.
"I...I am SO sorry for what you and Ororo had to go through after I left with the others. Fred and Mortimer told me everything that happened at the mansion..except how they got back to Texas apart from the rest of us. And Mortimer...something horrifying happened to him. I just know it. He's not the same boy he was when we got separated. It's like he went through an even worse trash fire than Berlin..." Mystique said. "If I hadn't left...I could have helped Doctor McCoy...and gone out to get you after you were attacked."
"You wanted to save Kurt..." Scott trailed, inspecting the chest armor.
"He's not my blood. But he's the closest thing to it. I'd have done almost anything to reach him..." Mystique said ruefully, approaching. "Do you...have any family, Herr Zyklop?"
"Once," he answered icily.
"Did you...love them...?" she asked.
Scott stopped working. The silence hung in the air for about fifteen seconds.
"Yes..." he said softly, but Mystique swooned slightly, unconsciously sensing the phenomenal level of psionic pain attached to his answer.
He finally turned to face her.
"So don't think I don't understand..." he said, frowning.
Mystique went forward.
"You don't have to be alone anymore, Herr Zyklop..." she said gently, clasping his shoulder. "You're among your own kind. You're among friends..."
"If I die here tonight, that all ends fairly quick..." Scott replied icily, pulling away.
"Best to not get too attached..." he finished.
"Would you at least let me do one small thing for you, Herr Zyklop, before you go into battle against your Odysseus?" Mystique requested. "Would you permit me to increase the capability of your primary mutation as I did before?" (SEE: TOTAL X-MEN #6)
Scott's eyebrow raised.
"Have you tried to upgrade anyone else in our group? Or just me?" Scott asked.
"Ororo flat out refused when I made the offer a few minutes before I came here. And Toad and Blob didn't seem keen on it either..." she replied. "I do not understand their apprehension. It's a perfectly safe process..."
"Yeah, I can tell you're gonna have to learn to Human a lot..." Scott muttered dryly.
Scott STILL seemed to consider it. "What do you seek to do?"
"Well..." Mystique explained slowly. "After prior experience with your genome, I think I can alter it to allow you to perform ricochet shots."
Scott took about a minute to think, though he was immediately intrigued. "How?" he finally asked.
"Herr Zyklop, you are only just starting to understand what your mutation can do...I have every reason to believe after prior contact with your DNA that eventually you could actively control the direction of your beams psionically. What I propose to perform is a half-way measure, to get your brain use to it early. You'll be able to focus a psionic lensing effect in a very limited area on a specific surface you are staring at and redirect the beam once you strike that lens in any direction you want on a linear path." she explained.
"Alright..." he replied finally. But he paused, thought of something else.
"What if I wanted you to give me a secondary mutation?" he inquired.
Mystique folded her arms. "That is a much more genetically invasive process. It couldn't be done with a direct linking to your nervous system. I would see thoughts. Memories at that point, whether I grafted one of my active mutations onto you through skin contact or whether I flicked a switch that was already there in your cells. What I am proposing to do here is minor alterations to a part of your DNA that is already active. Whose results can be somewhat predictable..."
Scott only nodded. "No-Can-Do, then...fine, Mystique, work your magic..."
"Close your eyes..." she instructed, palm touching his forehead.
Every vein in his body glowed red for a split second as he staggered back from Mystique, dizzy. The shapeshifter caught him.
"Herr Zyklop! Speak to me, are you alright?" she asked, worry crossing her crimson features.
"I'll live..." he muttered, righting himself. He forced his sense of balance to return.
"Give it a few practice shots..." she encouraged.
Scott saw an empty, broken flowerpot on a nearby wall. He stared at it, concentrating.
He let off a quarter second burst from his golden beams, destroying it. He frowned.
"Dammit..." he snorted.
"Don't give up..." she encouraged. "Try again..."
Scott failed a few more times, making the ground beneath them rumble with each micro-burst impacting the earth.
Finally, he succeeded, deflecting a set of beams off the ground into a rock face, shattering it. He repeated it two more times just to be sure.
"Wunderbar!" Mystique congratulated, patting him on the back.
Scott closed his eyes...and then something strange happened.
Suddenly he could see from the perspective of staring up at the ceiling...and Mystique's eyes widened in surprise and delight as a strange golden energy trailed from Scott's feet, going a few meters outward, before the ground formed a glowing red eyeball composed of red energy and rock.
"I can see from the ground up..." he whispered, staring at the world through the eyeball he had formed in the earth.
"Mein Gott...it seems...that activating an additional alteration to your primary mutation caused another sequence to turn on at random. Your Genome is trickier than I thought..." she admitted. "It seems you have acquired a form of matter-based remote viewing...you can channel your energy to convert material into a sort of psionic camera feed..."
She stared at him in wonder. "What a remarkable Mutant..." she whispered. "It's tragic you cannot accept yourself..."
"I accept that it was my fault." he said in a barely audible hiss.
"Pardon?" she asked.
"Nothing." he replied.
She grasped his shoulder. "Be careful, Cyclops. Don't gaze at more than you can stare down. Even with your new alterations, sometimes it is better to flee."
"Cowards die many deaths..." Scott replied.
"And the Brave can die once but senselessly..." she warned. "Good luck."
"Thank you, Mystique..." Scott said tonelessly.
"Anytime, Herr Zyklop..." Mystique assured sweetly before departing.
Scott put on the body armor, made final checks on his equipment...
...
People gave him a wide berth as he walked past, red drip lines running down the red shape he had drawn at the center of his armor...
A Red Eye with an 'X' at the center of its pupil.
It strangely evoked among some the sensation of something terrible staring at you from the shadows of your closet. Unblinking. Patient.
He had been on the defensive. Constantly on the backfoot since all this started. Now, for the first time, he would be going on the offensive. Taking the initiative.
But this could not be done by Scott Summers.
This could only be done by Cyclops.
Cyclops adjusted his monocle-visor to its 'machine-gun' setting, approaching the tunnel entrance, which had had rubble rapidly cleared away. They all stopped when they got a look at him.
When Toad saw him that was when it finally clicked for him, the kind of person Scott was. Scott was a friend, of course, but Toad had always struggled to properly classify him.
Scott was a soldier in need of a purpose and didn't know it. He looked more natural in his pilfered sci fi military gear than he did as a civilian. Toad realized with a slight wince that even if Scott's power could be removed, he could never have fit with normal people. He'd been fried too hard, too fast to ever be normal.
He saw Xavier putting on a bulky red gauntlet with glowing pink energy nodes on the back of its hand out of a steel case he had retrieved. The local mutants and humans were inspecting the trackers that were mounted on Velcro armbands, stopping as Cyclops got near.
"Another ace up your sleeve, Xavier?" Cyclops asked, noting the gauntlet.
"A little something I stored away for emergencies. Psionic Load Lifter." Xavier said, staring at the eye on Cyclops' armor. "Getting into theming, I see."
"Might as well look cool if I'm about to die." Cyclops replied. "You ready?"
Xavier nodded. "We'll be taking an electrically powered rail cart into the Threshold complex. We'll be in total communication at all times with the other team.
"Cyke, you SURE you don't want anyone else amongst us following you three?" Blob inquired.
"This is a coal mine. We're canaries." Cyclops replied. "We'll save you for the heavy hitting. Because I am sure this is going to go very badly. I know the penny is about to drop with Essex. I just don't know what form that penny is going to take when it hits the floor. And as long as I don't know that I'm not comfortable placing ANY of you in her proximity if I don't have to..."
"Be careful Cyke. I mean it. After what I've seen here...if you see the chance to put Essex down, take it..." Toad advised.
Cyclops nodded, then he and danger climbed onto the rail cart (A kind of mini trolley with multiple seats in the cabin) and Xavier began operating the controls after he, Cyclops, and Danger put on their tracking devices...
As they moved Xavier turned to the silent, stoic Cyclops.
"By the way, Cyclops, I can't tell you how relieved I was to find you alive in the desert."
"Then why mention it?" Cyclops replied coldly.
"I know its not an ideal situation, this Absolute Point business..." Xavier said, ignoring the barb. "But you're adapting remarkably quickly all the same. And I want to apologize."
"For what?" Scott asked with VERY understated surprise.
"For how greatly I underestimated the danger...and for not listening to your earlier criticisms..." Xavier said as the cart picked up speed. "It's clear opening up a school to train Mutants carries with it a hoard of perils I had never considered until I finally had a large group of young Mutants to train and examine on a more long-term basis than as a mere Mutant Physician under one roof. Young, angry Mutants that were afraid of or hated their own mutations, all of which had a background in violence to some degree..."
Xavier sighed. "And now I am learning about Threshold. They hid Threshold from me. As long as I have been friends with the Morlocks, they still hid it..."
"You're thinking of shutting your school program down?" Cyclops asked.
Xavier nodded, frowning. "How can I operate a school under these conditions? Constantly placing young innocent lives in danger just by being in proximity to me. I wanted to help, Cyclops. That's all I ever wanted to do. And when I finally got the chance to prove it, I lost track of the entire student body in less than a day after they arrived at my supposed safe haven."
Cyclops was silent a moment, considering his next words.
"Don't give up." Cyclops replied, though his tone was still formal and icy.
Charles turned to him with an expression of mild surprise.
"Don't you see?" Cyclops asked, not looking at him, hands clasped together in contemplation. "District X is proof that Mutantkind needs programs like yours. It took three powerful Mutants, and an Asgardian Construct to do what an army of them armed with AR-10's could not. Imagine how many more lives might have been saved had they been trained to function together from the start?"
Xavier seemed to contemplate Cyclops' words as the cart moved deeper into the darkness of the tunnel...