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Emma came back to find her face pressed into the airbag. She pushed it aside with both hands and forced the door open. She stepped out and stumbled, holding the frame to stay standing.
Her vision swam everywhere and turned red as warm blood trickled down past her eyes.
The rear compartment's windows exploded. Sharon came through in her humanoid beast form, holding Roulette and Empath by their waists. She set them against the base of a tree with care. Both of them were bleeding but still breathing.
Emma moved toward the compartment and smashed her elbow against what remained of the window. Her strength wasn't enough.
Sharon returned and yanked the door itself before she brought Tarot and Jetstream to the same tree. All of them were covered in cuts from glass and injuries from the impact itself.
Everything happened too fast; they could've reacted if they were veterans. Unfortunately, they had very little experience in these situations.
About twenty of those giant robots descended in a formation and the ground shook under them. On the shoulder of the nearest one, sitting comfortably was Trevor Fitzroy.
"Trevor." Emma gritted her teeth. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Oh poor White Queen. I was hoping you'd stay at the club so I can beat your kids up with my future sentinels." He shot a glance at the Hellions beginning to stir and reorient. "You being here honestly turned out better."
Either Trevor had gone rogue or…
"Selene set this up."
"Bingo." Trevor grinned, revealing the delight of a man who had been waiting to gloat. "Your prize is a front-row seat to watching your students die!"
A shadow dashed past Emma, too fast for any of their eyes to track. The frontmost sentinel fell to its knees and collapsed with sparks and smoke coming out from where it had been. Sharon stood on its back, holding its severed head.
Black, smoke-like flames had enveloped Sharon and deepened her fur from lavender to pitch black. Emma had seen that aura before. It was Dante's death aura.
'How is she?'
Sharon let the sentinel's head drop. "You hurt Catseye's friends. Catseye will break all of your steel cans."
Every word was filled with a terrifying bloodlust.
Trevor's smile developed a crack in it. "Take care of her."
The sentinels activated the boosters under their metal boots and flew at Sharon while a few shot out energy blasts from their palms.
Sharon dodged everything.
She was a sight to behold as she moved through units that broke the sentinels' coordination, and ripped their heads out.
Three more of them fell before a stray energy blast found Sharon's back and slammed her into the tree. Her legs trembled as she tried to stand up. She let out a roar that scattered the birds in the area and dashed.
Emma, meanwhile, used her telepathy on Trevor. Another telepath's psionic waves interrupted her attempt and protected Trevor's mind. She couldn't break through in her current messed-up state.
"You think I would bring these sentinels without preparations?" Trevor tapped his temple, looking genuinely pleased with the results. "Sentinels, stop playing around. Focus on the animal. All units."
"No!" Emma yelled. "Catseye, take everyone and run. Trevor, this is between you and me. Let the children go."
Sharon could carry all of them on her back. Trevor's objective was Emma. The students had no value as corpses.
"Nuh uh. I want all of them, starting with the cat."
The fourteen sentinels moved together to attack the injured Sharon. She fought with everything she had.
Emma took a step forward. Her leg buckled, but she caught herself on the car frame. She could only watch Sharon fight, unable to stop what was happening.
Sharon took a beam to the chest and another to the back, which knocked her to the ground. The death aura dissipated, leaving her with charred lavender fur.
She still glared at Trevor, still trying to rise.
A sentinel grabbed her by the fur on her back and dragged her toward Trevor. He hopped down from his perch.
"Let them go, please," Emma pleaded. "Trevor, she is innocent."
Trevor turned a blind eye to Emma. A greenish-blue energy gathered in his palm, the drain ability that made him one of the most feared members of Selene's crew.
He put his hand on Sharon's stomach, and she let out whimpers.
Emma clutched her head and focused everything to break the block around Trevor's mind. It was unyielding. She couldn't break past the first wall, much less the hundred others.
She let out a scream full of frustration. "Stop this, Trevor."
Sharon's roars became less coherent, more animal-like, before completely stopping.
The sentinel dropped her.
"Sharon!"
Emma took a few stumbling steps towards Sharon and fell in the grass. She looked at Sharon not breathing on the ground and tears filled her eyes.
"Sharon…"
She remembered the night she had found her in the gap between two dumpsters in a Hell's Kitchen alley, surrounded by three stray cats. Emma had crouched there and held out her hand. Sharon had looked at her with those amber eyes for a very long time before deciding to lick her hand.
That adorable girl was gone. Forever. And took a piece of Emma with her.
"So much fuel," Trevor said, opening his arms, "for very large portals."
Emma dug her fingers into the soil and gritted her teeth. "Trevor."
Trevor hummed and turned to Manuel. The energy drained Manuel. He didn't make a sound when he fell.
Manuel, who never trusted anyone, not even his parents, had been working hard after the symbiotes attack. He had been mingling with his fellow Hellions rather than manipulating their feelings. He directed cruelty at Roulette because he didn't know any other language to get her attention.
He was what Emma had become under the cruelty of her trash father.
Marie-Ange Colbert, who was still unconscious. Perhaps a mercy. The good-natured girl with a passion for the occult reminded Emma of everything good about the world.
Jetstream tried to fly and scream, but the sentinel held him down tight. He, who loved flight more than anything, was bound at the moment of his death.
His screams didn't help, but they awoke Roulette.
Jennifer Starvos looked at her fallen friends and saw Emma helpless. The tears she shed broke Emma's heart all over.
"Miss Frost—argh!"
Trevor gripped her face and drained her like the others.
As Jennifer fell, Emma's chest became too small to contain her feelings. The woman, who had learned to be ruthless and unforgivable, couldn't breathe through her grief.
It was a torment far worse than killing her.
Suddenly, a loud shattering sound echoed inside her ears. A sound like glasses under pressure finally giving away—she felt it resonate in her soul.
Then everything went quiet. The grief vanished so did every other feeling in her chest.
A light shone at her fingerprint like a brilliant, prismatic refraction of a diamond. It spread up her hands. She felt everything in her body harden. The dizziness of blood loss disappeared in entirety.
By the time it reached her face, she was already back to her feet.
In this form, she couldn't access her telepathic powers. She didn't need to either as the raw power in her body felt boundless.
At the same time, her expression became devoid of any human warmth. She seemed completely detached from the person who had watched her dear students die.
***
"W-What is—how are you—"
His composure recovered on instinct as he felt the presence of future sentinels. He had survived a hellish future and the Club's internal politics. A mutant power awakening in Emma Frost wasn't enough to scare him.
He pointed at Emma. "Take her down."
Every unit fired simultaneously. The energy impact generated a dust cloud that swallowed the area around Emma.
Trevor was stunned.
"You idiots." He kicked the nearest unit's leg. "I wanted her alive. Who the hell would fuck a corpse?"
A bright shadow dashed through the smoke. Emma grabbed a sentinel's arm at the elbow joint and ripped it clean with a mechanical shriek. She punched through the unit's abdominal casing and yanked her hand up and out from its head.
The unit was utterly destroyed.
Trevor stepped back in horror. "What the fuck?"
The consensus in the Club had always been that Emma Frost was manageable if you could suppress her telepathy. Brilliant, powerful in her own domain, but physically unexceptional. The vulnerability every telepath had in common. A bullet from sufficient distance would end her. Or anyone resistant to her telepathy could close the distance and kill her.
As a woman, Emma was inherently weaker, and she didn't put any effort in training to overcome her weakness.
The thing dismantling his sentinels one by one was not a telepath with a physical vulnerability. It was a monster made of diamond. The concussive blasts had completely blasted her clothes, but every part of her was still shining.
She shredded through the units one by one.
"I need to leave."
It disheartened him to retreat after coming so close. He had taken the kids down and nearly killed Emma from her despair.
The tables turned in an instant.
He dashed behind a tree and focused his energy to open a portal. The familiar green light of spatial rift began to form.
As he was about to step inside the portal, a hand gripped his shoulder and held him from taking any step.
"Where do you think you're going?"
He shivered at the cold voice. That voice had been stuck in his head since he had been spending too much time in front of a television recently.
Trevor slowly turned around and saw him—Dante—without his mask. The expression, or rather, the lack of it, made Trevor shudder. The man before him was filled with silent anger, the worst kind.
Trevor said the only word available to him.
"Shit."
Dante tossed him toward Emma, making him roll through grass.
Emma crushed a sentinel's head under her diamond foot and walked toward him without any hurry.
Trevor scrambled, rolled, and got back to his feet. He had only run three steps when a hand caught him again and threw him back at Emma's feet.
"He's yours."
She pulled him up by his collar. Her eyes were without warmth or the satisfaction of revenge.
"Emma, stop," Trevor said with what was left of his confidence. "If anything happens to me, Selene won't let you go."
Emma put a hand around his throat. "Selene will follow you to Hell."
The diamond fingers squeezed around the flesh.
The story of Trevor Fitzroy ended there.
***
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