Chapter 111: Chapter 111: Dimension of Deciet
Would Daken use a nuke?
Did Daken have a Nuke?
He was old— tired, radicalized by a life of oppression and government backed misdeeds... ancestral misdeeds, even. But he was also smart. Cunning.
Would he?
"I don't know…."
The Shield Agents and their Director didn't like that answer. Neither did Bronte, to put it lightly.
As a result, he was left wondering something he never even considered before meeting Director Nicholas Fury. Left wondering why the eye-patch wearing espionage enthusiast would even inject such an idea into his mind.
Thoughts of something beyond simple war….
Thoughts of something globally ground breaking. Something that could shatter earths current existence in a series of initiative and reactive explosions to rival all explosions.
Nuclear fallout.
"No. Hell no."
Bronte wasn't sure if he was wishing or making an educated guess. Suddenly he so desperately missed Laura's guidance as leader. More than before. More than ever maybe…
"Now that WE have considered it, WE can stop it, Unc. WE…. Can save the world… HAHAH! This will be great for us, don't be so grim." Mend replied as they headed down a dark hallway miles beneath the earths surface. The carpet was hard and hilariously outdated. It very well could've been a bunker. For you know what…
"If I wasn't grim, I'd be insane. Like Fury and Yelena said." Bronte replied.
"I don't trust them, so I don't listen. Selective hearing is an ability unique to the Klyntar." Mend said.
"Somehow that makes perfect sense." Bronte said, "Now I just hope this spy mission can do the same before I bug out."
"And if it doesn't?" Mend almost sounded like he was smiling.
"Let's just keep off that selective hearing from this point on, you feel me?"
"Haha!— I do, Unc."
When they arrived in the next phase room Bronte was met by the X-Men, Midnight Suns and a number of armed SHIELD Agents facing a projector screen conveying images of map layouts, weaponry and team line ups. Wanda stood out alone with her elven ears and piercing red eyes. Even so…
He felt like he was back with his siblings preparing to take down Anti-Mutant Special Forces Groups. He missed his cabin.
Department H was a fever dream compared to Chernobyl, Land of the Vampires.
Even if he didn't know where Nightcrawler, Yelena and the Shield operatives were going from the jump, their kits told a very obvious story.
Blade shuffled around the room handing them wooden Bowie knives, crosses, soaking wet black rags to wrap around their hands and batons along with special cartridges he used in his own handguns. Aside from that SHIELD seemed to be in the game of replication. Their agents also had Solar Repulsor Gauntlets. Pop-Shields and crossbows. The Avengers may have been gone but their work was not.
Hell, Nightcrawler even wore preachers get up. He seemed to notice the stares as he sheathed his blades.
"We're facing a dark-gods magic and influence. I would like to empower myself with my own." Nightcrawler replied.
"Heard you." Bronte replied passively as he continued looking around the room.
"Since the beginning of man, we've tried a myriad of ways to prepare ourselves for combat through tribal ritual and sacrifice….. to varying degrees of success. Dressing in catholic robes isn't nearly as intense as say…. severing the heads of three lambs." Beast looked over the top of his glasses at Nightcrawler.
"Fine by me as long as you don't expect us to start calling you Cardinal and adopt a policy of pacifism." Dir Fury added as he entered the room with Yelena behind Bronte.
Nightcrawler shrugged, "You cannot kill what is already dead." His shoulder length black hair shuffled from behind his pointed ears, casting his face in shadow.
"But you can bring the dead back to life." Jean added.
"And we will." Brother Voodoo stepped in through a sparking orange portal of fire and arcane sigils.
"Why can everyone teleport but me?!" Robbie questioned beside Gabbie and Jack.
"So much for secrecy." Dir Fury sighed and stood beside the projector screen at the front of the small room. "So much for intelligence as well." He added while throwing his hands up. "Jean, would you mind explaining what you meant in more detail. I don't think me and mine heard you right."
"Easy, Fury." Cyclops visor steamed.
Jean calmed him and sat up.
Bronte felt his insides tense at the way Dir Fury suddenly regarded everyone differently. Combined with Professor X's silence, the essence of the room became shakier. Different.
Jean continued regardless, "We can bring the dead back to life. StormWolf and the Midnight Suns have the Montesi Formula. So in essence, they're only temporarily dead. Like the people here on US soil." Jean explained.
"Oh…. So you want to engage in a war without killing… anyone?" Dir Fury sarcastically questioned.
"The hell are we doing espionage for if not to avoid the war?"
"The generals." Bronte, Ilyana and Blade answered.
"So we're aiming to locate them. To put a face and name on this unfinished list." Cyclops surmised after looking over the projector screen that showed a picture of Chernobyl and a number of familiar faces to varying people.
"Correct." Agent Coulson replied. "Back on Krakoa, Nightcrawler and StormWolf took down the first and only general we have—"
"WE have. Not you and yours." Blade corrected.
Agent Coulson continued, "Azazel was incapacitated along with his horde of Vampiric Neyaphem. Still we have many more to target that are little more than nameless shadows now. I don't like shadows."
"So, that brings us to our current goal." Dir Fury took over as he pointed to the edge of the Black Sea where it connected to Romania on his projector screen map. "Thanks to Yelena we've got a private Russian Mercenary group in subs—"
"They're dead." Bronte and Gabbie said in unison.
"What?" Dir Fury questioned with a clear look of irritation.
"You guys are green as hell…" Gabbie mumbled.
"Do you have communications set up with them?" Bronte asked.
"Can't risk that since we're already breaking about fourteen laws with the UN." Agent Coulson replied.
"They're dead." Bronte repeated. "Daken was a general of Lupine armies at my age. He played top-view war games when we weren't literally at war with Romulus. He lives this. There's no way he let y'all get that close. He taught me not to."
"Talocan and its people were decimated, though… so what do you thinks in the water?" Dir Fury questioned.
"Stragglers. Something else…. I don't know."
"Well god dammit! Do you know anything?"
Bronte covered his anger in an icy exterior as he thought aloud, "I know I don't trust you. I know we can't travel like humans. You're already having Nightcrawler lead this mission. Do it his way. Daken still has Neyaphem forces even if Azazel's dead. He wouldn't want Azazel to waste them all on Krakoa…. We were too stacked and he just wanted the Telepaths. We basically have access to their back door already if we move with the Neyaphem Azazel left behind."
"Hmmm… that's quite clever, StormWolf, but what do you mean…. With them?" Beast questioned.
Brontë shrugged, "Just a guess, but I think Daken's got forces more mobile than any we've seen. If he has teleporters he's going to use them. They'll be moving in and out of Chernobyl. Move with them."
Emma side eyed Bronte, "Two doors opening at the same time in different areas is less conspicuous than two doors opening hours apart. Harder to catch. Not bad."
"I suppose a better analogy would be two doors at the same time instead of one door and someone else flying in by plane." Beast added.
"Haha…. Only one problem, everyone." Nightcrawler's white teeth beamed in contrast with his dark blue skin.
"Please no. We have enough of those." Dir Fury raised an eyebrow.
"I can't open a portal for this many people, though…" Nightcrawler looked around the room.
"I can." Bronte's suit accents went red as its interior picked up on his rise in heat.
"No." Wanda spoke for the first time.
"I can as well. I will." Storm added.
Brontë looked to them across the table from him, "What are y'all on?"
"My father— Magneto, lives on Krakoa. He sees the future it holds for us. But he is not the islands savior, .... it's king." Wanda aimed her chaotic red eyes at him with a determination that almost burned to face. Which was saying many things in context.
"You're a trump card— not a first act." Storm added, "Being that this is war, we can't risk losing you at our first play. I can't. Not again."
Bronte fought off a flinch at her last words in the silence.
"It's quite obvious, Varkis— Daken's, spent quite a while thinking about how to incapacitate you. He knows you're strong. You're one of less than ten Omega level mutants. That means something. That's our advantage." Cyclops added from beside him.
Bronte looked around the room. You would've thought they had their own meeting without him in all their unanimous agreement.
"Your abilities aren't tailored for stealth." Cyclops added.
"And I'm more experienced with Wind-Rider magic." Storm piled on, "I know you're invested in this more than anyone… but before the strongest storms, there is always calmness."
Bronte sat back in his chair. Gabbie gripped his hand beneath the table.
"Nothing about this is calm." His blood ran like lava. The rhythm of his thoughts and emotions played like deafening white noise and cymbal crashes. Everytime he blinked he stepped into unpleasant memories accentuated by sounds of a similar tune until suddenly.
Silence.
Revelation didn't have a musical score, even for him.
"This….. is a repeat…"
Everything was going as it always did. It was a parallel so on the nose it was nauseating.
All the same….
Endless preparation. Meeting the Midnight Suns. Full of magical savants and inner turmoil joined by strife. Just like Wakanda.
Learning from Blade. An obvious stand in for Remus for better or worse.
Finding someone special. Someone full of magic and vibrance. Someone brilliant. Even now, she watched him from across the table with eyes he could stare into forever as they walked aimlessly at midnight.
Facing trials and tribulations handed down to him from some mad king. All while they waited. Prepared. Endlessly.
Just for Romulus— Daken- Varkis, to get the drop on them anyway. To get the drop on him. As he waited, like an obedient mutant. Like a soldier. Like a wolf on a leash…
The enemy would come in a blaze of glory further emphasized by some fiery explosion of defiance— of entrance, and he'd be left to pick up the pieces. He'd be left to be saved.
And he'd be down another loved one, of which he had so frighteningly little.
Too little.
He held Gabbie's hand in a vice grip. His ears rang as everyone in the room continued going over their new mission details. He couldn't hear them. It felt as if they couldn't see him. They could only see what they planned for him. They couldn't see his mind reaching a whitehot boiling point. They couldn't see how he saw the future as he sat in silence.
Then, he saw her.
She saw him.
Wanda's eyes saw everything it seemed.
As she stared, she licked her finger and held it out in the stale air of the room as if she was checking for some atmospheric change. Everyone else was too busy to notice.
Brontë noticed— remembered, something else.
She said he was a king.
Emma said something similar. So did Raze….
The elders of Wakanda and Bast and so many anti Mutant bigots said the opposite.
Both were right. To a degree….
"It's all about the decision. It's all about right now. I could be obedient. I could sit on what I know….. I could ignore my experience. I could let history repeat itself while I stay down. Or I could get active….. move on what I know. I could fix this. I can fix thi—"
"Alright!" Dir Fury clapped his hands.
Bronte was back in the real world.
"We've got our team. Brother Voodoo, Mystique, Magik, Nightcrawler, Storm, White Widow and a few of my Fiend-Hunter Unit. You'll be the first to enter Chernobyl. Locate the remaining generals. Confirm the ones Blade suspects, take some out if you can but prioritize Intel. Bank on the fact that you'll run into Varkis. Let's play this like we're looking for peace. He'll play it the same if he wants more information. And that I'm sure he does, as we know, he's taken a loss recently and he'll be looking to rectify that any way he can."
Everyone was up and readying themselves. Simply waiting. Storm walked by,
gripping his shoulders in understanding. It made the lump in his throat expand until Cyclops called her over. Brontë remained in his seat as Ilyana came over and sat beside him.
"Tell me what you're thinking…"
"I'm thinking this could go sideways."
Ilyana nodded. Her eyebrow length bangs shimmied against her skin, "As anything can. But this team is mobile, and I'm experienced. I've been dealing with Vampires as long as anyone in here. Longer than most."
Bronte almost smiled, "Oh trust me, I know. I'm not worried about you, Magik."
Ilyana chewed on her black glossed lips before speaking, "Well. I'm worried about you."
"What?— Im gonna be sitting here, waiting for y'all to come back."
Ilyana side eyed him. If she wasn't staring so deeply at him he would've continued to look over her latex stealth suit. But now wasn't the time. His mind wouldn't have let him anyway. His focuses were elsewhere.
"I see you, you know?" Ilyana pushed his arm. They both ignored the arcane sparks that popped off from where their skin touched.
"What do you mean?" Bronte watched one of the SHIELD Agents shuffle about as he stood with his other operatives. He stood out because they hadn't been moving much until now.
"I don't know." Ilyana replied. "But I see you. You're planning something. You don't look like your usual self."
"You saying I don't plan things?"
Ilyana looked away in thought, "If I had your powers, I wouldn't."
"Word."
"Whatever it is, be careful. Magic requires a certain state of mind…. the same goes for making good decisions. Check yourself, yes?"
"Only if you agree to do the same. We got stuff to figure out after this, right?" Bronte looked over at her.
Ilyana leaned over her seat until their foreheads almost touched and she held out her hand, "You are correct."
Brontë smiled and shook up with her. She smelled like vanilla and brimstone.
Suddenly, Bronte's ear twitched as one of the SHIELD Agents up and moved, "Excuse me I have to use the restroom."
Mend chuckled and made a joke about selective hearing.
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_Avatar0FFury_ Hello, thank you all for your patience this past week. I’ve got six chapters stocked up and can most likely close out this volume by tonight. I hope it’s something you all can enjoy. as always, lmk what ya think and thanks for reading!
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