I teleported to my dimension without much fanfare, my newly obtained ships following a moment later and filling the airspace of the strange dimension-slash-mental space.
The people in the backyard practically jumped when they saw the Sentinels, Rin, and me.
Bobby shot out of his lawn chair, where he'd been sunning himself with a young Widow. There was some joke about playing with fire there, but I figured Iceman was smart enough to know that.
Logan accidentally sawed through the grill he'd been cooking steaks on, along with the tongs in his hand. Beside him, Kitty briefly turned intangible before snapping back to normal.
Scott's reaction was the most satisfying of them all. He spilled his beer down the front of his loose tank top and groaned.
With a smirk playing on my lips, I apologized. "Didn't mean to scare you, Scott. Sorry about that."
I was tempted to clap him on the back, but I felt like that would be pushing it.
Scott scowled. "It's those damned robots of yours. You have no idea how unsettling they are."
Bobby and the Widow didn't need to say anything. I could tell they felt the same way.
Hmph. Nobody appreciated a little ingenuity.
Logan grunted in agreement, noticing the stares Michael and Raphael were drawing, then shrugged. "No offense."
"None taken," Azrael said. "We too find you… odd."
Logan didn't rise to the bait. He simply turned back to his grill, tossing off now useless parts, and using his bare hands to rake coals to the side that was still intact. It was a strange sight. I never quite got used to the idea that we were all essentially fireproof.
"We won, by the way," Rin said, walking past me. "The fight was bigger than you'd believe. We blew up a solar system, and the Sentinels must've taken down hundreds of thousands of ships."
"Exactly two hundred and thirty-nine thousand, five hundred and four," Uriel helpfully supplied.
That finally got a reaction out of the Widow, then Bobby, and finally Kitty.
The Widow looked up at the distant ships and then back at us. Bobby seemed stuck on the sheer number of them. Kitty, meanwhile, came at us from a different angle.
"How?"
"We came up with a predictive model beforehand based on the kinds of formations they'd used in previous battles—"
I cut Michael off before he could go into any more detail.
"Bother him about the particulars later," I said with a wave. "All that matters is that we've got the Stones now."
Logan looked up from his grill and nodded. "Saw it get added to the vault, along with that fancy new steel container. I can already tell my claws can't touch 'em."
"It was a mid-fight upgrade," I explained. "You know how that is."
He grunted and went back to cooking.
We stayed and exchanged a few more pleasantries. I even had some of Logan's steak, which was far better than mine. I stared at him like he'd suddenly grown three heads, and he explained the difference with one word.
"Experience."
"You might have all those fancy powers," he said, "but I've got something you don't."
"What?"
"Experience."
I huffed at the pronouncement, but I had to concede the point.
Michael watched our conversation with fascination, and Raphael immediately begged to train at Logan's feet so he could learn to make food fit for the gods. That earned me a few odd looks.
Things got even more ridiculous when Azrael offered to do the same, if only to prove there was no such thing as food fit for the gods.
Their little rivalry was amusing.
Rin and I went our separate ways after that. He went topside to New York to see his girlfriend, who still hated my guts, and I went to see my neglected one.
"She's at the heart of the domain, tending to the mutants you rescued from Limbo," Scott said.
He hesitated before adding, "As much as I hate to admit it, Krakoa was a good idea. I can't imagine reintegration into their home countries going well, especially with things as tense as they are."
I raised a brow. "You don't think it's taking the easy way out?"
"I'd rather they be alive and free than dead and weaponized," he said, sighing before taking a swig of his beer.
"You're starting to sound like me. Edgy, cynical, ornery. We already have too many of my sort in this little boy band of ours. No need to add more."
"Something happened yesterday," he said. "It just put things into perspective, is all. Yelena will tell you about it. And then there's the Infinity Stones. You've got four now. If you think Lauren is the only one coming after you, you underestimate how stupid people can be."
I snorted. "What do you think I have her for?"
Uriel was standing beside me.
"We already have a plan for that. We just need to handle the invasion first."
"For all our sakes, I hope your enemies wait."
With that final nugget of wisdom, he walked off.
I levitated with telekinesis and shot toward the Heart. Uriel stayed behind, anticipating my need for some one-on-one time with Jean.
I touched down at the entrance.
The Heart was a massive stronghold, constructed mostly from metal and exotic stone scavenged from the distant worlds we'd passed. It had been the first major project I'd let the Sentinels oversee after their successful construction.
Under Uriel's leadership, the runesmiths had built one of the most secure places in the universe.
At its center sat a massive rune array powered entirely by solar energy that Rin deposited by the bucketful. Theoretically, anyone with an evolved suit could replenish it, but Rin was by far the most efficient.
The Heart had high walls, massive inscribed traps, layered defenses, and spells that could be deployed by the AI linked to the structure.
But that had only ever been supposed to be temporary.
The real hope was to have a Widow stationed here semi-permanently, or perhaps a trusted third party. I was leaning toward Mordo, but he was still traumatized by the eradication of the sorcerers.
I flew through the inscribed halls, taking sharp turns and dropping down a massive shaft until I reached the chamber created specifically for the sleeping mutants.
It was enormous, large enough to hold hundreds of thousands if need be.
An entire world's worth of them.
Jean floated at the center, cross-legged and plugged into the daydreaming array I'd inscribed so that we could assess, diagnose, and help each mutant as much as possible before introducing them back to the world.
She opened her eyes when she saw me and exhaled.
"You've changed," she murmured, her voice faint but strained.
"Of course you'd notice," I said with a smile.
My recent upgrades to my Promethean body hadn't changed much physically. Maybe they'd added another inch to my biceps and trimmed my already narrow waist, but my presence was much heavier now, no matter how much I tried to hide it.
"You're upset," I observed, reading her body language.
"They… these people have endured a lot," she said slowly.
"I know," I said softly.
"You don't!" she snapped, then quickly looked away. "Sorry. We can't keep them here much longer, especially not under dilated time."
"I can talk to Magneto about bringing them to the island," I offered.
"Some of them don't want that," she said. "They want to go home."
"To their home countries?"
Right. Some of them had been snatched out of their beds and forced into slavery. It was perfectly reasonable that they wanted to see their families again.
"I'll talk to Matt. We were working on something with an international law firm—"
"No. Not Earth."
There was a deep sadness in her voice.
"Limbo."
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