"Why?!"
The White Queen's fury erupted like a volcano. She slammed both palms against the interrogation table hard enough to make the metal surface ring, then surged to her feet, her ice-blue eyes blazing with indignation as she glared across at Ben.
The defiance lasted exactly one second.
Ben's finger found the remote control's activation switch with casual precision. The obedience disc attached to the White Queen's carotid artery activated instantly, flooding her nervous system with neurotoxin.
Her body went rigid, back arching as every muscle locked in involuntary spasm. She collapsed back into her chair like a puppet with cut strings, convulsing violently.
"I really have got you under control," Ben said mildly, watching her with clinical detachment.
He'd set the disc to maximum intensity—the kind of overwhelming sensory overload that hijacked every nerve ending simultaneously. The White Queen's eyes rolled back in her head, her diamond-hard mental defenses utterly useless against the purely physical assault. Foam flecked her lips as her body jerked and twitched.
Several minutes dragged by. Ben counted the seconds carefully, monitoring her vital signs through the readouts on his display. Just before the neurotoxin accumulation could cause permanent neurological damage, he released the switch.
The White Queen slumped forward, gasping, sweat plastering her white-blonde hair to her skull. Her entire body trembled with aftershocks.
Ben leaned forward, his expression hard. "Why?" he repeated, his voice quiet but carrying an edge sharp enough to cut. "Let me tell you why this is unacceptable."
"You people only think about the resurgence of mutants," he continued, his tone growing colder with each word. "But have you ever—even once—stopped to consider whether those mutants actually want to become mutants?"
The White Queen lifted her head weakly, confusion cutting through her pain.
"Every awakening is accompanied by trauma," Ben said flatly. "Powers manifesting during puberty, during moments of emotional stress. Teenagers accidentally hurting or killing people they love. Families torn apart by fear. Friends backing away in horror. Being treated as monsters, as freaks, as threats to be contained or eliminated."
He stood, beginning to pace the interrogation room, his hands clasped behind his back. "The discrimination. The hatred. The constant knowledge that half the world wants you registered like a weapon or locked away like a dangerous animal. Have you ever thought about these things? About what you're actually condemning people to?"
The silence that followed was deafening.
"You haven't," Ben answered his own question. "You don't care about any of that. You only think about reviving your precious mutant population, about rebuilding what you lost. How incredibly selfish."
Even though the mutant awakening had already begun in this universe, that didn't stop Ben from delivering his condemnation. In the mere weeks since the X-gene had activated across the adolescent population, mutant-related incidents had already exceeded several hundred times the total number of superhuman incidents from the entire previous year.
Hospitals overflowing with injured teenagers who couldn't control their new abilities. Families destroyed by accidental discharges of deadly powers. Public spaces demolished. The death toll climbing daily.
All of it could potentially be traced back to these people and their obsession.
"What do you know about evolution?!" Cable suddenly roared, his cybernetic eye flaring with angry light. "This is the next step in human development! We're—"
Ben's backhand sent Cable sprawling to the floor before he could finish the sentence, the force of the blow cracking the reinforced polymer flooring where his head impacted.
"Evolution my ass!" Ben snarled.
The pieces were falling into place in his mind. The mutant resurgence seemed unstoppable, inevitable—but what if it wasn't natural at all? What if its origin could be traced directly to these very people sitting before him?
They'd raised Hope—Charmcaster—from infancy, instilling in her the belief that reviving mutants was her sacred purpose, her reason for existing. And at that time, she'd carried a spark of the Phoenix Force within her, dormant but real.
So when the actual Phoenix Force awakened and began its approach to this universe, the resonance between them could have been the trigger. The Phoenix responding to the wish embedded in its host's psyche, granting that desperate desire even before it fully arrived.
The result: X-genes activating across the entire planet, ninety-eight thousand adolescents suddenly developing powers overnight.
"No matter what you say, mutants are our people!" Magik spoke up with unusual assertiveness, her voice carrying a tremor that might have been fear or might have been conviction. "They're our responsibility!"
"And Hope is our messiah," Cable added, dragging himself upright despite the blood streaming from his broken nose. "Reviving mutants is her mission. It's her destiny!"
"That's the value of her existence!" he declared, as if this settled everything.
What none of them knew was that Charmcaster herself stood just outside the interrogation room at that precise moment.
She'd been in the training chamber, deep in meditation, attempting to control the Phoenix Force energy that Pheonix-X had awakened within her during their fusion. The Ancient One had been drilling her mercilessly on containment techniques, on channeling cosmic fire without letting it consume her completely.
Then the mental alert had reached her—Magik and the others had come, were being interrogated, had tried to rescue her. Despite the Ancient One's warnings not to interrupt her training, she'd rushed toward the interrogation wing, intending to ask Ben to release them.
They'd raised her, after all. Fed her, clothed her, protected her even when it meant risking their own lives. Surely Ben would understand, would show mercy for her sake—
Cable's words hit her like a physical blow.
"That's the value of her existence!"
Charmcaster froze mid-step, her hand already reaching for the door controls. The words echoed in her mind, each repetition driving deeper like a knife between her ribs.
Her hand dropped to her side as if the metal panel had burned her. She stood there in the corridor, lips pressed into a thin line, her expression cycling through shock, hurt, and finally settling into something cold and distant.
Is that really all she was to them? A tool? A means to an end?
The thought was almost laughable in its absurdity.
She did want to help revive the mutant population—that much was true. It was a way of repaying the White Queen and the others for years of care and protection, for treating her like family even when she'd been a helpless infant trapped in a child's body.
But that was her choice. Her decision. A debt of gratitude she'd chosen to honor.
Not some cosmic mandate. Not her "purpose" or "the value of her existence."
She wasn't a tool to be used. She wasn't a weapon to be pointed at a target and fired.
Inside the interrogation room, she heard Colossus's deep voice cut through the tension.
"Cable, you've gone too far this time."
Charmcaster leaned closer to the door, surprised. Colossus rarely contradicted Cable directly—the big Russian usually deferred to the team's tactical leader.
"Hope has her own life," Colossus continued, his tone carrying unusual firmness. "She's not a tool. We can ask for her help, yes, but she's not obligated to sacrifice everything for our goals. That's not what teammates do for each other."
Colossus had always possessed a gentlemanly nature, a reasonable core beneath his metal exterior. He believed in doing the right thing, in treating people with dignity and respect.
Cable was different. His personality mirrored his father Cyclops's intensity but twisted it into something more extreme, more obsessive. Scott Summers had always been willing to make hard choices, to sacrifice for the greater good. Cable had inherited that tendency and amplified it into something darker—a willingness to sacrifice anyone if it served his vision of the future.
"So what if I did?" Cable shot back, his organic eye blazing with conviction even as his cybernetic one whirred and adjusted its focus. "She was born carrying the Phoenix Force's spark! The cosmic entity chose her as its host! She was born to revive mutants—that's not cruelty, that's just acknowledging reality!"
The sound of the door opening cut through the argument like a gunshot.
Charmcaster stepped into the interrogation room, her footsteps echoing on the metal floor. Her expression was ice, frozen and remote, utterly unlike the warm enthusiasm she usually displayed.
Cable, oblivious to the danger signals radiating from her posture, immediately brightened. "Hope! You've come at the perfect time! Tell this tyrant to release us! We can—"
"Call me Charmcaster," she interrupted, her voice flat and cold.
Cable blinked, thrown off balance. "What?"
"My name," she said with exaggerated patience, "is Charmcaster. Not Hope. Not 'the messiah.' Not 'the Phoenix host.' Just Charmcaster." She paused, then added in a tone that could freeze liquid nitrogen, "And I'll restore the mutant population. You don't need to worry about that."
The words hung in the air, carefully chosen and deliberately distancing.
Regardless of how she felt about Cable's proclamations, Charmcaster had made a promise. She'd told them she would help revive mutants, and she wouldn't go back on her word. Her pride wouldn't allow it, and more than that, she genuinely did want to help undo the damage that her alternate-universe counterpart—the Scarlet Witch—had inflicted on their people.
But beyond fulfilling that single obligation, she wanted nothing else to do with these people. Not anymore.
The realization hurt more than she'd expected.
Charmcaster turned away from Cable's confused expression to look at Ben instead. The ice in her features thawed instantly, melting into something softer, more vulnerable. Seeing this shift, Felicia—still draped across Ben's lap like a particularly possessive cat—enthusiastically patted his other thigh in invitation, gesturing for Charmcaster to come join them.
Charmcaster ignored the gesture completely.
This woman really is like a feral cat, she thought with a mixture of amusement and irritation.
"Ben," she said quietly, using his first name with deliberate informality. "Can you please let them go?"
"No."
The refusal was immediate and uncompromising.
Charmcaster's shoulders slumped slightly, but she didn't argue. She'd expected as much, really.
"They trespassed into Plumber headquarters and launched an unprovoked assault on the chief of security," Ben continued, his tone businesslike and formal. "The only reason I didn't execute them on the spot was because no one else was injured, and because you have history with them. But I can't just overlook this."
"All right," Charmcaster said softly, accepting his judgment without protest. She understood the political realities, the need to maintain organizational authority. "So what are you planning to do with them?"
"For your sake, I won't imprison them in the Null Void Realm permanently," Ben said, his tone gentling slightly as he addressed her directly. "Instead, I'm sending them to Sakaar to fight in the arena."
He turned his attention back to the prisoners, his voice hardening again. "If you can win one hundred consecutive matches in Sakaar's Grand Arena, or complete all three championship trials, you'll earn your freedom. Those are your options."
The White Queen's face went pale. Cable's jaw clenched. Even Magik looked shaken.
Neither condition was remotely simple.
Sakaar's fighting competitions had grown exponentially in prestige and difficulty since Ben had taken control of the planet. As the Plumbers gradually extended their authority across the known universe, warriors from dozens of star systems had begun making pilgrimages to test themselves in the arena.
The competition roster now included battle-hardened veterans from multiple galactic civilizations, enhanced super-soldiers from advanced worlds, and occasionally even gods. Ben had personally witnessed Hercules of the Greek pantheon competing for the championship, as well as Ares, the God of War himself.
Both of them had been honored with champion statues by the battle-loving Sakaarian people, immortalized in stone at the moment of their greatest victories.
Setting aside the divine competitors, there were also New Kryptonian warriors who came to hone their combat skills, Plumber agents from various planetary branches seeking practical experience, and countless other deadly fighters drawn by the arena's growing reputation.
As for the championship trials—well, the third and final challenge required facing Ben himself in single combat.
Cable and his team might, with extraordinary luck, manage to avoid the strongest opponents for a hundred straight fights. But if they could actually defeat Ben in a fair fight, they wouldn't have been captured in the first place.
"Director Osborn," Ben called out, "activate the particle collider. Open a portal to Sakaar."
Norman Osborn nodded with evident satisfaction. He quite enjoyed Ben's habit of using formal titles during official business—it added a proper sense of gravitas to the proceedings.
As security teams began escorting the prisoners toward the portal chamber, Ben called out one final message. "By the way, I have some good news for all of you."
The White Queen, previously resigned to her fate, perked up immediately. A flicker of desperate hope crossed her features. "What good news?"
"The mutants have already been revived," Ben said casually, as if commenting on the weather. "Here atleast" he murmurs.
"What?!"
The White Queen lurched forward, straining against her restraints with sudden manic energy. "But the Phoenix Force hasn't even descended yet! How could—"
"You just said it yourself," Ben interrupted, his voice sharp. "The Phoenix Force hasn't arrived. Which means the idea that Hope's value lies solely in reviving mutants was complete nonsense from the very beginning."
He stood, drawing himself to his full height, his presence suddenly dominating the room. "No one is born to accomplish a predetermined task. No one exists purely as a tool for someone else's agenda."
His eyes found Cable's, holding the other man's gaze with unwavering intensity. "Hope is Hope. She has her own thoughts, her own dreams, her own will. She is not your instrument to command."
The portal irised open, revealing the red dust and alien skies of Sakaar beyond. Security teams ushered the prisoners through, Cable still protesting weakly, the White Queen staring back in shocked silence.
When the portal sealed shut and the interrogation room fell quiet, Ben looked up to find Charmcaster staring at him with glistening eyes, her entire body trembling with barely contained emotion.
What's this about? he thought with mild alarm.
"Ben," she breathed, her voice thick with feeling. "I'm so moved!"
She launched herself at him with surprising speed, clearly intending to wrap her arms around him in a fierce hug.
Ben caught her mid-leap with practiced ease, holding her at arm's length like one might restrain an overly enthusiastic puppy.
"Don't get carried away here," he said dryly.
Felicia nodded enthusiastically from her position in Ben's lap, though her smile carried a distinctly mischievous edge. "Exactly! The team isn't even all here yet, and you want to play alone?"
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