[A/N]: The First GOAL of the week is to achieve 250 Power Stones and unlock TWO more bonus chapters. Comment, share, and you know the drill 😎✨
Especially now, after Darwin's adaptation had been integrated into his biology and his body had been exposed to Franklin's reality warping, Jay could handle it. He could control it.
His fingers were just an inch away.
But his danger sense screamed.
THREAT. LETHAL. MOVE NOW.
Jay threw himself backward on pure instinct.
A portal tore through space itself where he'd been standing. A rip in reality that made his eyes hurt to look at directly.
The edges were sharp. Impossibly thin slices of folded space that cut through anything they touched like molecular-thin wire through wet tissue.
And they did.
The portal's edge bisected the crowd like a butcher's cleaver through hanging meat. Jim Jaspers stood directly in its path. The cutting edge of folded space sliced through his torso at a diagonal angle, separating his upper body from his lower half.
For a frozen moment, Jasper's face showed confusion. Then his eyes widened in dawning horror as his brain registered what had happened. His mouth opened in a soundless scream. Then the light died in his eyes as gravity took over, and the two halves of his body fell in different directions. His intestines spilled out like rope, slapping wetly against the pavement. Blood fountained from both halves, arterial spray painting the ground in arterial red.
The portal's edge didn't stop. It carved through the remaining crowd with surgical precision and indiscriminate brutality.
A woman holding an "ABOMINATIONS GO HOME" sign was caught mid-shout. The dimensional edge cut diagonally from her left shoulder to her right hip. Her torso slid apart with a wet squelch, ribs and organs exposed before she even realized she was dead. The sign clattered from her severed hand.
A man in a business suit, maybe forty, was bisected cleanly at the waist. His top half toppled forward while his legs remained standing for a surreal moment before collapsing. His tie dragged through the spreading pool of his own blood.
A teenage boy, no more than sixteen, had been recording the whole thing on his phone. The portal's edge passed through his neck like it wasn't even there. His head rolled forward off his shoulders, phone still clutched in his hand as his body crumpled. The video kept recording, capturing his own death from the ground.
An elderly couple, holding hands, were caught together. The portal cleaved through both of them simultaneously. They died still clutching each other.
Bodies fell. Some in pieces. Some whole but clearly dead from the dimensional energies that had passed through them, cooking their insides even as their skin remained intact.
Blood sprayed everywhere. Across the pavement in abstract patterns. Up the museum steps in a crimson cascade. Across the protesters' signs, turning their hate-filled slogans into macabre art. The smell hit a moment later. Copper and shit and the meaty stench of exposed organs.
The screaming started. Primal. Animalistic. The sound of people confronting their own mortality in the most visceral way possible.
People ran, trampling each other in blind desperation to escape. Some slipped in the blood and viscera coating the ground. Fell. Were crushed underfoot by the panicking mob. Bones snapped. Skulls cracked against pavement. The death toll climbed even as the portal stabilized.
Jay stood frozen. His hands clenched into fists so tight his nails drew blood from his palms. The hot copper scent of mass death filled his nostrils. Made him want to vomit.
Dozens upon Dozens of people. Cut apart and killed instantly. Their final moments captured in expressions of shock and agony frozen on severed faces.
And the power he'd been seconds from acquiring, the reality-warping ability that could have changed everything, was destroyed. Gone. Turned into chunks of meat scattered across the parking lot like discarded trash.
"Fuck," Jay whispered. His voice cracked. "Fuck. FUCK!"
The portal stabilized, its edges smoothing from cutting blades into a stable gateway.
And a woman stepped through.
Pale skin that seemed to glow with inner light, and dark hair cascading past her shoulders. Beautiful in a way that felt wrong. Like a statue come to life. Perfect but inhuman.
She wore a black dress that clung to her figure. Ancient jewellery that pulsed with power. Her eyes were pitch black, like staring into the void.
Her heels clicked against the blood-soaked pavement. She didn't even look down at the carnage she'd created. As if the dozens of corpses were beneath her notice.
Behind her came... things.
Creatures that shouldn't exist. Demons pulled from some hell dimensions. All teeth and claws and burning eyes. Their presence made the air smell of sulfur and decay. They began feeding immediately on the fresh corpses, tearing into still-warm flesh with gleeful abandon.
Selene.
The Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. An External. One of the oldest mutants alive had arrived.
Her black eyes swept the parking lot. Found Betsy immediately as Jay's powers wavered. A smile curved her lips. Cold. Predatory.
"Elizabeth Braddock. How delightful, you've saved me the trouble of hunting you down." Her voice was silk wrapped around steel. Cultured British accent that made Betsy's sound common by comparison. "I was beginning to think you'd gone to ground somewhere I couldn't reach."
She raised one hand. The demons tensed, ready to attack. Blood dripped from their maws.
Then she heard it.
A scream. Raw and filled with rage and grief.
Her head turned towards the sound.
Jay stood there, the disguise burned away by his fury. His face fully visible, eyes blazing with barely contained violence.
"You Bitch!"
His voice was cold enough to freeze nitrogen.
Selene's perfect eyebrows rose as recognition dawned. "Oh my. The Power Broker himself. How utterly unexpected." Her smile widened, predatory and amused. "I'd heard you were indisposed after your... exertions during the invasion. Quite the display that was."
She smiled wider. "And here you are. Standing in my way. How fortuitous. After all this cat and mouse chase all led to you!"
Jay's hands glowed. Black and white energy crackled between his fingers. His entire body thrummed with barely contained violence.
"You fucking killed them," Jay snarled. Each word dripping with venom. "Dozens of people. Innocent civilians. Cut them the fuck apart like they were nothing. Like they were fucking MEAT for your goddamn entrance!"
His eyes blazed brighter. Multiple colors bleeding through. Blue, white, green, red. Every stolen power responding to his rage.
" And you killed him, you killed my chance. The perfect opportunity my girlfriend gave me so lovingly!"
Selene laughed. The sound was beautiful and horrible. "Oh dear. Did I interrupt something important? How terribly clumsy of me."
She tilted her head, genuinely curious now. "What could possibly have been so valuable in this crowd of mundane sheep? They were nought but rabble. Insects screaming their hatred."
Jay pointed at her. His finger trembled with rage.
"You are dead! You old hag!"
The words hung in the air.
Selene's smile vanished as her black eyes narrowed. Power gathered around her, both Psychic and magical.
"What did you just call me, boy?"
The demons howled. Their claws scraped against pavement, ready to tear apart whoever their mistress commanded.
Domino moved to Jay's side. Her guns were already out. Luck thrummed beneath her skin. "Babe. Deep breath. I know you're pissed, but we need to be smart about this."
"She killed them," Jay repeated. His voice was shaking now. "Mad Jim Jaspers and those people. Right there. The reality warping I needed is gone. All because that old bitch decided to make a dramatic entrance."
Betsy stepped forward, her face pale but her voice steady. "Selene. Please. Where are my brothers? What have you done with Brian and Jamie?"
Selene's attention shifted to Betsy, but her voice was dismissive. Like swatting away an insect. "Your brothers serve their purpose, girl. As will you, once I've dealt with this rude young man."
She gestured, and the demons charged.
Jay's eyes blazed with every color of his stolen powers.
His voice dropped to something cold. Final and lethal.
"Wrong fucking move, you geriatric whore!"
The fight was about to begin.
And Jay was itching for violence.
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