The path opened by Uatu the Watcher stretched like a fractured corridor through layered realities.
Each step the Langa clone took crossed thousands of branching probabilities.
He felt them.
Worlds dying. Timelines collapsing. Histories repeating.
Eventually, he slowed.
One timeline pulled harder than the rest... unstable, violent, and saturated with despair.
He stepped through.
The sky was gray.
Not storm clouds... ash. The atmosphere carried the faint metallic scent of burned technology.
Ruined cities stretched across the horizon, their structures crushed and melted into jagged silhouettes.
Above, massive machines patrolled.
Sentinels.
This was one of the darkest branches connected to the X-Men, a future where mutants and humans alike were hunted to near extinction.
The clone floated silently, observing.
He sensed scattered life signatures:
Underground resistance pockets
Mutant survivors hiding
Small human enclaves
Sentinel factories still operating
He muttered softly:
"…Classic dystopia vibes.. ."
A Sentinel scanned him instantly.
"Unknown entity detected. Threat level: unclassified."
It fired.
The beam struck him and dissipated harmlessly.
The clone didn't even look at it. The machine tried adapting, morphing its weapon systems.
Before it could complete the transformation, he casually waved a hand.
The Sentinel folded inward and collapsed into scrap.
He sighed.
"These things are gonna be annoying ."
Deep underground, a group of surviving mutants felt something change.
Their psychic sensors picked up a presence, not hostile, not oppressive… just overwhelmingly vast.
One survivor whispered:
"…What is that?"
They had lived their entire lives in fear. Any new power meant danger.
The clone descended slowly through the ruins, walking calmly across the shattered street. More Sentinels detected him and swarmed.
He stopped.
"…Alright."
He released a tiny fraction of power.
A silent pulse spread across the planet.
Every Sentinel froze.
Then shut down.
Globally.
Factories stopped. Hunter drones dropped from the sky. Orbiting Sentinel stations powered off.
The resistance members watched their monitors go blank.
"…They're… all offline…"
But the clone frowned slightly.
This timeline was worse than it looked. Even with Sentinels disabled, the world itself was fragile.
Wars, population collapse, ecological ruin.. the future had already spiraled.
He glanced upward.
"…So this is why he called it low priority."
From beyond the sky, faint observational presence lingered, the Watchers still monitoring.
He smirked.
"Don't worry. I won't rewrite everything."
Instead, he began subtle adjustments:
Restoring atmospheric balance
Reactivating dormant ecosystems
Stabilizing tectonic stress
Repairing radiation zones
He wasn't rebuilding civilization.
He was giving it a chance.
Mutants cautiously emerged from hiding. Humans followed. They stared at the silent machines littering the world.
No one understood what had happened.
The clone remained distant, unseen.
He preferred it that way.
"…Let them think it's luck," he murmured.
Suddenly, he sensed something else.. a temporal ripple deeper in the timeline.
This branch had been tampered with before, creating paradox layers.
He recognized the structure.
This future was connected to time-travel attempts, branching from events similar to the X-Men: Days of Future Past timeline logic.
He tilted his head.
"…this timeline is Messy."
But interesting.
Instead of fixing it completely, he stepped back.
This timeline needed struggle to rebuild.
He turned toward another fractured branch, following the path Uatu had shown.
Before leaving, he glanced once more at the slowly waking world.
"…You'll do."
Then he vanished... moving deeper into the broken cluster of mutant timelines, searching for the next one.
Far away, the Watchers observed silently.
Even they admitted:
This anomaly… was stabilizing disasters without dominating them.
And that made him… unpredictable.
Elsewhere
The Langa clone moved carefully now.
No rushing.
No sweeping fixes.
The next timeline he entered felt… different. Not ruined.. but tense. Alive. Fragile. The air buzzed with active conflict, not aftermath.
He appeared above a dense forest in upstate New York.
Below him, he sensed dozens of powerful mutant signatures. Some disciplined. Some chaotic. Some… ancient.
He immediately recognized the location.
The grounds of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
He didn't land.
Instead, he observed from a few meters above reality itself... phase-shifted like a ghost between tangible space... Students trained below. Telekinetic bursts. Ice formations. controlled optic blasts. The clone watched silently.
"…This timeline still has hope... ."
But the calm shattered.
An alarm blared across the campus.
Professor-level psychic waves erupted outward... strong enough to be felt across continents.
The clone narrowed his eyes.
Someone powerful had arrived.
Moments later, a telepathic probe reached him.
Gentle. Careful. Curious.
He allowed it,but only on the surface...
The voice of Charles Xavier echoed in his mind:
"Whoever you are… you're not hostile. But your presence is… immense."
The clone answered calmly.
"I'm Just a piece of something passing through and helping where I can.. ."
There was a pause.
"You're watching us."
"Yeah... , Ive been watching since I showed up.. ."
Another pause.
"…you mentioned that you'd help if needed?"
The clone didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he descended slowly... appearing at the edge of the training grounds. Students froze. Some instinctively stepped back.
One of them.. claws extending, moved forward. Wolverine sniffed the air.
"You ain't human bub ."
The clone shrugged.
"Neither are most of you... Old man ."
Wolverine smirked slightly.
" that's Fair."
Before introductions could continue, the sky tore open.
A portal.
It wasn't magic based... Rather it was technological. Advanced. Adaptive.
And from this portal...
Sentinels emerged.
But these weren't standard models.
These were Prime Adaptive Sentinels, stronger, faster, capable of copying powers.
The clone felt interest spark.
"…hmm.. Something that might push me further ."
The first Sentinel fired at the school. The clone didn't intervene immediately. He watched.
The mutants responded:
Telekinesis redirected beams
Ice barriers formed
Storm clouds gathered under the control of Storm herself...
Optic blasts from Cyclops shattered incoming drones
The clone nodded.
"They're better than I expected ."
But then a larger Sentinel landed.
It adapted instantly... copying powers it observed. Ice, lightning, optic energy, all reflected back.
Students were pushed back and formations scattered...
This timeline… was dangerous.
He finally moved.
The ground beneath him stabilized. Energy distortion settled.
The Sentinel scanned him.
"Unknown mutant. Copying ability."
It attempted replication.
Nothing happened.
The machine paused.
"ERROR: ability undefined."
The clone tilted his head.
"haha sadly for you scrap face... You'll need to try harder."
It launched a full assault.
He let the first blow land.
The force cracked the ground.. but he didn't move.
Then he countered.
Not with raw power like the original , but precision. He compressed space around the Sentinel's joints. The machine froze mid-motion, then crushed by localized gravity distortions.
Students stared.
Wolverine muttered:
"…Yeah. He ain't normal."
But enemies didn't stop...
More Sentinels emerged, dozens.
This time the clone allowed the fight to escalate. He deliberately limited himself, letting attacks connect, adapting, testing the timeline's upper limits.
Storm noticed.
"He's still holding back."
Cyclops nodded.
"He's studying them, just look at they way he attacked the last one.. He didn't brute force his way through, instead he made moves targeting machanical weaknesses ."
The clone let one Sentinel copy partial energy manipulation. It fired a distorted version back at him. He smiled slightly.
The clone smirked "… You learn quickly for a flying tin can.. ."
Then he increased pressure.
Now he moved faster... weaving through machines, redirecting beams, collapsing their adaptive cores. But he still didn't annihilate them instantly.
This was… training.
For himself.
Then the sky fractured again.
A massive Sentinel descended — far larger than the others. Its power signature dwarfed everything else.
This one had already copied abilities across multiple battlefields.
Even the clone's expression sharpened.
"…Finally, this guy seems much more dangerous than the others.. ." he looks behind him at the students and other mutant near by... Then he shifted to face the sentinel head on...
It fired a multidimensional beam, tearing small holes in local space.
The clone raised a hand.
The beam pushed him back.
For the first time in this timeline… he slid back roughly... .
Students gasped.
One girl with green vine like hair with a nature affinity pointed at the clones damaged hand "it's attack actually hurt the new guy..."
Wolverine grinned.
"Now that's more like it."
The clone's eyes glowed faintly.
"... So... You can push me back a little huh.. ." as glanced at his rapidly healing hand..
Then...
He released slightly more power.
Reality tightened around him.
The fight became faster.... too fast for most mutants to follow.
Shockwaves bent trees. Clouds spiraled. Space flickered.
He dodged. Countered. Adapted in real time...
This timeline… was actually forcing him to evolve.
And he enjoyed it more than he honestly expected...