Chapter 52
***
God damn it, Eric! His faith in me is too strong!
It played a cruel joke on us when Apocalypse, carrying Xavier's body and that white-haired girl, barged into his house alongside me.
I stayed silent. I tried my hardest to maintain a "glassy" stare, my entire demeanor literally screaming that something was wrong here. That this was a trick, an ambush, a setup...
But Apocalypse just said, "Come, I will make you stronger." Eric looked at me and, without any questions, objections, or clarifications, just went along with him.
I swear, if we make it out of this shithole alive, I'm going to chew him out so badly he won't be able to sit down for a week!
Although, looking at it from another angle: Old Man Nur wouldn't have just let him go anyway. And a battle between an External and an omega-level mutant inside his own home, in the presence of his wife and two kids—not to mention Xavier hanging over my shoulder like a limp sack—wasn't exactly the best idea either.
So maybe he wasn't entirely wrong in his decision not to kick up a fuss?
We teleported into a pyramid. En Sabah Nur gestured for me to lay Xavier's body on a table in the center of the room. I complied, but in the process, I dragged a claw across one of the thick lines leading to the head of the table. I scored it good and proper, cutting about three centimeters deep.
I wasn't sure if it would actually help, but the urge to do something nasty to this arrogant, grandiose snob with blue lips was already unbearable.
The External threw open a niche in the wall for Eric, just as he did for the white-haired girl.
Eric, that bastard, stepped inside without hesitation, not doubting for a single second. No one even asked the girl—Old Man Nur just picked her up by the scruff of the neck like a kitten and placed her in the niche. The "doors" closed.
En Sabah Nur placed his hand against one of the stripes on the wall, and a "control panel" rose from the floor, just as strange as everything else around here. But functionally, that pedestal simply couldn't be anything else. The External began performing some kind of manipulations. The lighting in the room started to flicker slightly, as if the "generator" couldn't keep up with the increased load.
And then the pyramid shuddered. Once, twice, three times. The External pulled away from the console in bewilderment and irritation.
The pyramid shook again, and En Sabah Nur, frowning, headed for the exit.
Meanwhile, I quickly stepped over to Charles and slapped him a couple of times. Not hard, just enough to start waking him up. It was about time; enough minutes had passed since his stupid mental attack on the uninvited guest. Xavier groaned, and I hurried back to my spot, resuming my impression of a pillar of salt.
Right then, the External returned. In the company of my wife. My very irritated wife.
*I am a pillar, I am a pillar, I am a pillar. A dumb, silent pillar.*
"You are crossing the line, En Sabah Nur!" she said, walking beside the master of the pyramid. She didn't look particularly imposing while doing so.
"In what way, Sorcerer?" he replied impassively. "I have not violated the Treaty. There is not a single mage here. No magical artifacts, active pentagrams, or spellbooks. How am I 'crossing the line'?"
"By the fact that my husband is here!" Suo retorted.
"Husband?" the External scoffed. "First and foremost, he is a mutant, which means his presence here does not violate the Treaty. Furthermore, he came here voluntarily, so I see no grounds for your complaints, Sorcerer."
"Let's assume you are technically right, External," Suo frowned. "But you are currently risking making a personal enemy out of me, because you used MY husband for your dubious experiments."
"He came here himself," the External repeated. "Besides, it is too late. He has already undergone the transformation... unsuccessfully."
"What do you mean, 'unsuccessfully'?" Suo frowned even deeper.
"His brain died. His mind is destroyed. His heart stopped. He was dead for over two hours. That is no longer your husband, but an empty shell with the mere beginnings of a mind. An animal."
"Do you realize what you just said?" Suo's face smoothed out, her voice becoming level, calm, and quiet. "Did you just say that you killed my husband in your... experiments? Even though you knew he was my husband? Did I understand that correctly?"
"Absolutely," the External nodded. "And now, get out, Sorcerer! The Treaty has not been broken. You can do nothing to me, and if you try, you yourself will become the violator of the Treaty!"
"You will regret living to see this day, En Sabah Nur," Suo said slowly and calmly. "Your death will be agonizing and v-e-e-e-ry long."
With that, she turned her back on him and walked out of the room.
"Aren't you afraid?" asked Xavier, slipping off the "chopping block." "I think she was quite serious about her threats."
"It doesn't matter," En Sabah Nur replied. "She is the Sorcerer Supreme. The Treaty binds her hand and foot. And she has no one to pass her title to. If she makes even a single move, it will start a war."
"No one right now. That doesn't mean she won't find someone in the future. Then nothing will stop her from carrying out her threat."
"She won't have the strength. Time is working against her. Very soon, I will become invincible. And you are going to help me with that. But first, I will fulfill a promise I made." The External moved toward Charles.
"What promise?" Xavier tensed and backed away, sensing something was wrong.
"I promised the man he used to be," Apocalypse nodded at me. "That I would show him how the 'little humans' would be left without their weapons. And I will keep that promise."
"But you just said he was dead?" Charles continued to back up.
"You are right, he is dead," the External nodded calmly, stepping closer. "But long-livers have a thing about promises. A reputation is built over centuries, but it can crumble in an instant."
"What are you going to do?" Charles backed into the wall, pressing against it.
"Speak," En Sabah Nur answered. "With everyone," he added.
The wall behind Xavier abruptly vanished. He tumbled backward and collapsed into a chair that immediately paralyzed him, stripping away his ability to move.
En Sabah Nur nodded in satisfaction and returned to the "console" he had left behind. He spent about twenty minutes making some adjustments, the lights flickering again, before two niches opened. Eric and, most likely, Storm stepped out of them. I vaguely remembered her being called Ororo in the comics, but I hadn't had a chance to properly meet her here yet.
"Let us begin," the External said, nodding to himself again as he cast a satisfied look over them. Then he walked up to Xavier and leaned in so that his eyes were exactly level with the telepath's. "You have power. That power is immense. You can be everywhere. All at once. Speak to everyone, decide for everyone..."
"I can't," Charles tried to protest. "Without Cerebro, I'm not that strong. I can't..."
"Nonsense," the External replied calmly. "Cerebro... Crutches. Useless crutches with which you limit yourself." He cupped the telepath's head in his hands. "You don't need crutches when you have me..."
Xavier thrashed in his grip. It looked absurd, considering only his head could move while the rest of his body was paralyzed. A few seconds of struggle, and he went completely still, his gaze turning glassy. The External remained standing in front of him, holding his head, which began to rapidly bald. Hair fell away in entire clumps.
"Incredible power..." Apocalypse murmured. "Thank you for letting me in, Charles..."
At that moment, I felt something try to brush against my mind. I immediately imitated the Beast—which, by the way, I still couldn't actually feel. The imitation must have been convincing, because the pressure practically vanished. At the very least, they stopped trying to invade my consciousness. Instead, it was as if they were opening a small channel for me to something larger, like letting me connect to the Internet through a router.
I saw it...
"Oh... Everything is as it always was..." the External spoke, while I saw thousands upon thousands of military personnel flashing by in rapid succession. "But no! No more stones for you... No more spears... No more bows... No more systems... No more superpowers..."
En Sabah Nur truly was grandiose. He was keeping his promise: people all over the world were destroying their weapons. Launching missiles, blowing up tanks, ruining airplanes, helicopters, ships... It was spectacular...
"No!" Charles's desperate but powerful voice suddenly echoed across the "network."
The next second, the "network" collapsed. The External released Xavier and shook his head. The telepath showed no signs of life. Wait, no. I looked closer: his chest was rising, he was breathing, albeit weakly, his heart was beating, and he didn't smell like death. Apparently, he had just passed out from the immense strain, or knocked himself out on purpose to stop what was happening.
By the way, I was somewhat lost: how much time had all of this actually taken? Definitely more than a minute. Prepping a nuclear missile for launch, even if it's constantly aimed at a target, isn't an instantaneous process. Not to mention the fact that they had to be retargeted. And that was happening all over the globe. So this whole ordeal must have lasted at least a couple of hours, but the feeling of being involved, of being connected to what was happening, completely threw off my sense of time.
The External straightened up and stepped away from the telepath. He began tinkering with the tables in the center of the room, adjusting things, preparing and calibrating. Again, more than just a minute or two passed while he was busy with that.
Suddenly, the pyramid shook. Then again. Apocalypse's cheek twitched in irritation, and he marched briskly outside.
Eric, the girl, and I followed him. I hadn't seen this place from the outside yet. It really was a pyramid. Not massive, but definitely about the height of a five-story building. Its facets gleamed in the sun, and behind it stood a statue easily three times its size: Apocalypse sitting on a throne in his armor, majestic, grandiose... Hmm, that kind of megalomania sparked certain thoughts about compensating for certain complexes. Was his... dignity... on the small side?
But that was a minor detail... Man, I was getting sidetracked. The main issue lay elsewhere: about four hundred meters away from the pyramid, that strange X-Men flying contraption—which I couldn't bring myself to call an airplane—hovered in the air. The Summers brothers were standing on top of it, shooting at the pyramid. Taking turns. As if they were competing with each other. Sitting next to them in a folding chair was Logan, smoking a cigar and sipping a beer from a bottle.
Off to the other side, sitting calmly on a beautiful, soft-looking carpet that hovered in the air through inexplicable means, was Suo, holding a mug of tea. Next to her sat Mystique with a video camera. Behind them, at a distance of about fifty meters, people of varying ages and genders sat on similar carpets, wearing typical mage attire. Also present on those carpets were people in completely different clothing styles—specifically, an assortment of outfits belonging to various nations and even eras. I recognized two of them: Selene and Candra. Presumably, the rest were Externals as well.
A group of Observers, no doubt. Suo had worked fast.
Cyclops's optic blasts... He was actually a pretty powerful guy when he let go of his control a bit. He was hammering it so hard that the pyramid was shaking, and cracks were starting to snake across its surface. His little brother was clearly weaker, but still no walk in the park.
En Sabah Nur thrust his hand toward the X-Jet (oh, I remembered what it was called), and his eyes glowed blue. Only, instead of the X-Men's flying toy crumbling, the head of En Sabah Nur's statue fell apart.
"Witch," he hissed through his teeth. "Shoot them down!" he ordered Eric.
The X-Jet instantly plummeted to the ground as if it had been swatted by a giant slipper. The mutants on it, however, were completely unharmed. They dusted off the sand and dirt and resumed their interrupted activity.
"She's mocking me!" En Sabah Nur roared, but he didn't dare attack Suo. Meanwhile, the pyramid was cracking heavily under the Summers' onslaught. "Destroy them!" the External commanded Eric and Storm.
They obediently shot up into the air, but space warped so bizarrely that both of them ended up right in front of Suo. She swiftly slapped her palms onto their foreheads, and Eric and the girl collapsed onto the sand like limp dolls.
The External ground his teeth in impotence and rage. He couldn't attack the Sorcerer Supreme right in front of the Observers without breaking the Treaty, and he couldn't destroy the enemies wrecking his home because of her interference. And judging by the complete lack of reaction from the Observers, she was providing that interference without violating the Treaty.
En Sabah Nur clenched his fists. The next moment, he and I teleported directly onto the X-Men's flattened craft in the sand. And this time, he hadn't even touched me.
The expected panic, however, didn't happen. Neither did any kind of commotion. The Summers brothers stopped what they were doing and looked at us with interest. Logan got up from his chair and walked right up to us. He burped, unzipped his fly, and proceeded to take a leak right on Apocalypse's boot.
Even I was stunned for a moment. Never mind the super-powerful mutant who had kept entire nations in fear for centuries. But I managed to pull myself together faster than the External could adequately react to the situation. And I kept my face stone-cold. I was a dumb animal, after all.
*Hmm... A dumb animal, huh?*
Under the dumbfounded gazes of both the External and the Summers brothers, Logan finished his business, shook it off, zipped up his fly, and took another swig of beer. While Apocalypse was boiling over, I ostentatiously flared my nostrils, drawing in the air as if sniffing it. That successfully shifted everyone's attention to me, whereupon I unzipped my own fly and replicated Howlett's feat.
Well, why not? It fit the persona perfectly, and was very much in the spirit of the Lupines.
The next second, everyone was in pain. Except for me and En Sabah Nur himself. Or maybe they weren't? The X-Men's flying craft, along with the Summers brothers and Logan, simply vanished instantly as if they had never been there. I landed softly on the sand and straightened up. The External descended slowly and grandiosely in front of me, utilizing his flight abilities.
He stared at me. Once again, if I had Gamer abilities, I would have leveled up my "Stone Face" skill by another forty levels over those long seconds.
I don't know what he would have decided to do with me, because he got distracted. The X-Jet reappeared right where it had been. (I managed to jump out of the way right as it started materializing, and only because I was already on edge and expecting a dirty trick, but the pompous External didn't react in time). Apocalypse ended up trapped inside that hulking piece of metal. On top of it, the Summers brothers sat down exactly where they had been standing, while Logan strolled over to his chair, took a sip of beer, and stared thoughtfully up at the sky. Apparently, the thoughts running through his head at that moment were of the utmost philosophical nature.
Then the X-Jet was ripped to shreds, and Apocalypse flew out, mad as hell. He glared at Suo, who was ostentatiously and calmly lowering her shiny green trinket.
The Eye of Agamotto, I recalled the name of that piece of jewelry with an Infinity Stone tucked inside, having read about it during my recent "journey to my roots."
En Sabah Nur wasn't saying anything anymore. He just growled and bared his teeth as he looked at her, but he made no attempt to attack. He was holding back. That Treaty of theirs must really be serious business.
I flared my nostrils; it felt like the air had suddenly grown humid and the breeze had turned chilly. Then I jumped about ten meters straight up into the air. Not out of danger this time, but out of sheer surprise. Try not jumping when a lightning bolt strikes the ground just five meters away from you!
Ah, no, not the ground, I realized as a slightly scorched External landed next to me, looking even angrier than before. I looked up. A massive, black thundercloud already covered half the sky. Hovering somewhere near its center with her arms spread wide was Storm in all her glory and power, her hair whipping in the wind, her eyes glowing white and sparking with electricity.
A loud crack and a rumble echoed from the direction of the pyramid. Everyone turned to look with interest. There, the pyramid was leisurely tearing itself out of the earth and ascending into the sky. All of it at once. Along with its entire underground section, which was about three times larger than the part above ground.
The structure rose a hundred meters off the ground and began to "crumple" in mid-air, folding in on itself. As it did, the stone crumbled away into fine gravel, exposing the metallic framework underneath.
It was an incredible spectacle. The sheer scale of it staggered the imagination. It was obvious to me that Eric had just joined the game of "piss off the External." However, Magneto himself was nowhere to be seen, which was incredibly smart—his World War II experience was showing. The tactic of "first dig yourself in as deep as possible, and only then hammer the bastards" had been thoroughly drilled into the boy then known as Max by both me and the Germans. So, he had dug himself in. Try digging him out now. Or rather, try finding him.
Distracted by the gravel cascading from the great ruler's former citadel, I forgot about Storm again. Big mistake. Because the thundercloud now covered the entire sky, and Storm definitely hadn't forgotten about Apocalypse. The next lightning strike made me jump almost higher than the last one.
The second lightning bolt was followed by a third, then a fourth.
En Sabah Nur thrust a hand toward Storm and utilized his power, completely disintegrating his own statue in the process until not a trace of it remained.
The External unleashed a loud roar and turned toward Suo. She ostentatiously opened a large, colorful umbrella over herself and her companion. The moment she did, the rain poured down. A heavy downpour. Accompanied by massive lightning bolts that struck the exact same spot over and over, as if tethered to it.
Meanwhile, all the stone had crumbled off the pyramid into fine dust, leaving nothing but metal behind. And there was a hell of a lot of metal left. All of that metal abruptly compacted into one dense sphere. Something exploded violently inside it (probably around four or five kilotons' worth), but the force suspending it in the air was so immense that the sphere didn't blow apart; it just "bulged." Meaning, it expanded sharply and instantly contracted back down, refusing to let any fire, shockwave, or shrapnel escape. It looked completely badass. Then, long, sharp "icicles" began protruding from the fully formed sphere, launching themselves at En Sabah Nur with the speed of a machine gun.
He unleashed his power at maximum capacity to defend against the barrage, disintegrating the projectiles before they could even hit him. It created a sort of impenetrable sphere with the External standing dead center. A very angry External.
A fragile dynamic equilibrium was established. And then my "freeze-frame" kicked in.
Without overthinking it, I "jumped" inside the External's defenses and slashed all his armor to ribbons with strikes from my katana. And slashed him to ribbons while I was at it. Then I "jumped" back to my spot and "released" the freeze-frame. And I did it voluntarily. It shocked me so much, plunging me so deep into my own thoughts, that a terrifying scream from Apocalypse made me flinch.
I jerked my gaze back to him: his armor was falling apart, an arm had dropped to the ground, and horrific wounds covered his entire body. His head, unfortunately, stayed attached, and he didn't collapse into a pile of minced meat like I had hoped—that's a reinforced healing factor for you. But it didn't save him. The split second he was distracted by the pain proved fatal: he was impaled by Eric's metal spikes while simultaneously being fried by Storm's lightning, which his armor could no longer deflect. Then the Summers brothers joined in, hammering the agonizing External with blasts of an energy nature I didn't quite understand.
*Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes,* I sighed, looking at what was left of the fearsome Apocalypse. Or rather, at the absolute nothingness. Not a single molecule of him remained. Just a crater in the sand.
Then I shifted my gaze to Suo and Mystique, who were calmly drinking tea. Mystique had set her video camera aside, shivering involuntarily. Looking at their faces, I understood Eric with all my soul—he was in absolutely no rush to dig himself out, even though the massive metal sphere had already lowered to the ground. Even the rain was starting to let up...
And I still have to explain myself to my wife today... Maybe I should go bury myself somewhere too?
***
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