บท 37: CHAPTER 36
[Somewhere In The X-Mansion]
Xavier sat on his wheel chair as he looked at the faces of the teachers present before him. He didn't know what to do about the new mutant… No that was wrong. He didn't know how to proceed with the new mutant.
From what he saw, he already had a grasp on his abilities and minus the fact that he couldn't sense any excitement to be here from their newest guest, the new mutant seemed to be on edge with him. Or maybe that was just his thought, so he decided it was crucial to learn what he could from his teachers who spent the longer half of the day with him.
"What do you think about our new guest?" He asked no one in particular.
"I don't trust him." Scott said immediately. Which if he wasn't lying, he could understand.
"He's… unstable." Ororo said. Now this was interesting.
"What do you mean by that?" Xavier asked.
"He's volatile. Although calm for most part, he looks as if he thrives in violence." That was… unsettling.
"But that could just be his ability affecting his psyche. It happens all the time doesn't it?" The silent Jean said.
"Logan you spent the most time with him, what do you think?" John asked Logan who had his back against the wall as he listened to what everyone was saying.
With the sudden call, everyone turned their attention to him.
"Depends on what you're asking?" Logan said, "Is he unstable? Most likely, yes. Is he going to dip anytime soon? Probably no. Does he need our help? Highly doubt it."
Everyone had a surprise look on their faces as they listened to what Logan had to say and had thoughts of their own. It did last however as Scott was the first to raise an objection, "But none of those are solid assurance-"
"And we need assurance for what?" Logan asked back with a bite in his tone.
"Logan what makes you think he's unstable but also won't turn to the other side?" Xavier asked and he couldn't help himself but flinch as Logan let out what could be called an 'unbelievable' sigh.
"You know he's most likely killed people before right?" Scott added his two cents which at that mention the Professor's eye tightened.
"And?" Was the only rhetorical question that came.
"What do you mean 'and'?"
"You know there's only so much hypocrisy someone can take. How many people did you kill today?" Logan asked in a rare moment of fierceness.
Everyone in the room grow silent at that.
"You might call it collateral, or the last call but it doesn't change the fact that no one's hand here in this room is not covered in blood… including you Chuck." Logan spat out as his face adopted a scowling expression.
"You know that's low coming from you, unlike you we are not enjoying it." Spat out a livid Scott.
"Scott!!"
"Scott!!"
"Scott!!" The entire room was taken aback at his direct insult to one of people in this room who likely had the most troubled past.
Increasing their shock was how Logan didn't have any kind of reaction to the sour jab.
"You know something," Logan started and with a *Shiing* three long adamantian claws extended from the gaps between his knuckles, "he told me that he spent two years been held as an experimental subject and after that he spent two weeks in hunting them killing over 500 of the people we fought today…" Everyone sucked a breath at the number of people a lone man killed in the span of 14 days but Logan didn't give them a reprieve and continued, "in other words he's done more in curbing our current problem in two weeks than anything we did in those two weeks-"
"We are better than that Logan! We don't engage in senseless killing-" Xavier tried to calm the tensing atmosphere with reason but Logan didn't even respond or acknowledge his reason and continued, "tell that to the 13 mutant children, and most probably others, we found today who had their X-gene and cerebral data harvested until they became brain-dead husks. It is killing yes, but at least it's not senseless. THAT is something worth taking revel in."
He finished and drew his claws back in and walked out of the room leaving the remaining occupants in silence.
Everyone let out a sigh at how a simple meeting quickly turned sour without them actually touching in on the real reason why the meeting was held.
"I believe we have all been triggered by the events of this meeting. Might I suggest we take the night to cool off and we'll continue tomorrow." Xavier said and with that he rolled out his wheelchair and left the teachers in the meeting room as he wheeled along the empty hallways to a location only known to the teachers of the institute.
Cerebro.
It was something that could likely be called one of the wonders of human technology.
He needed Cerebro's power to be sure.
This mutant was different. Unlike he or Eric has ever seen. Till now the only mutant who he could say surpassed this mutant in sheer potential power and peak was Jean Grey and even she didn't know. But then again Jean wasn't a scale that was to be compared to other mutants, so for only her to be able to compare, even if her potential did surpass him easily, to him was enough to make him made sure all his bases were covered.
He would forever hate himself for what he did to the young child Jean, locking away her potential because of his fear and insecurities but he would do it again since such a power, to him, could not be controlled. It was better to curb it than letting it fall into the hands of the unsavory.
He didn't know what Mr. St. Cross' full abilities entailed but he knew he couldn't leave it to chance and let him go unstable or rather letting Eric get to him, as that would spell doom for the human race.
The first time he picked up on the anomaly that was Mr. St. Cross was two years ago when a new signal went up and lit up Cerebro like a Jack O' Lantern. He tried searching for the origin of this signal but all he new was that it was in New York, but he couldn't pinpoint where exactly it was.
He tried as much as he could to subtly search for the origin of that signal in order not to draw conclusions to other interested party but he came back empty handed. So he left it to rest.
It was all fine since he couldn't find that signal and was probably chucking it up to something else when less than a year ago, Cerebro once again lit up and this time the signal was brighter than before. Something he understood but couldn't quite believe.
An increase in potential.
He was frantic when he came to that conclusion. How could someone's potential increase like that? Increasing of someone's potential was something he thought impossible.
[A/N: 😏 Looking at you, Chinese cultivators-san.]
Out of everyone he's ever seen, none of them, not a single one, was able to achieve the peak of their potential, and to find someone's potential just increasing was the height of every perceived impossibility. He was tempted to think this was another energy source but he was wrong as this signal was too unique with the one he had felt before. Too unique to even be called similar, for they were one and the same.
This time he used all he could from Cerebro's processing power to track the source of the energy signal but it wasn't in New York like before but somewhere around it. The signal kept flickering on and off for a while before he could no longer track where it originated from.
It was at that moment he knew that this was bad. A mutant with the ability to vastly increase his potential was a terrifying enemy to fight.
More terrifying than anything Magneto could conjure up. For a while he was tempted to seek out his old friend and tell him about this new mutant but he held off on the idea since knowing Eric, he could safely assume the first thing he would do was try to recruit him with the promise of freely using his abilities and never have to worry about that human laws.
He couldn't risk the idea of such a powerful mutant falling on Eric's hand.
But then came today when he felt something that almost had him shriek in fear. Something he had only seen once in his former pupil.
The energy reading of a Beyond-Omega mutant. The second of its kind, and given how this one's potential seemed to increase over the years, he was inclined to believe that it was more dangerous than Jean.
Oh if only he knew about the demon he foolishly thought he could shackle.
He felt the enormous energy of what he and Eric classified as Beyond-Omega, what they believed to be a planet ending entity, from the energy signal. Although it was nowhere as big as Jean's, it was still firmly in that category. But what was to say it wouldn't increase in the near future? Given that it had increase astronomically twice in 2 years to this level, then what about the next 5 years or 10 years? What kind of calamity would walk among the earth.
He couldn't risk it.
Not 7 billion lives on whim, no. It wasn't a risk he was willing to bet on. There were other cards to play.
What if he was too late to get to the mutant? What if Eric got to him first?
Or worse, what if someone else did?
Someone malicious, a greedy heart. Such a power in one's control was a recipe for doom.
And the worst scenario, what if the mutant himself was of the negative ilk? What if he saw the rules and regulations of the world and thought himself above them? What if he was a vain man of glory that dreamt of conquest? With such an ability in his hands, all he needed was time before he surpassed anything living on this earth.
It was all this thought that spiraled through his mind as he called the Blackbird and gave them the coordinates he could pick up from the signal to see if they could invite him over for a talk.
He wanted to know what type of person possessed such an ability.
So when Scott called him and said they found the man, he was ecstatic, when Scott said he wanted to follow them on their mission, he was inwardly giddy with joy. From the looks of it, the young man would be easy to convince or appeal to.
So when he met the man, the first thing he did was send out a psionic ripple that actually did nothing but reverberates back scattered and unprotected thoughts… but he got nothing.
He wasn't entire worried about that since it wasn't every time someone's thought were scattered.
So when he invited the young man in to talk about his ability he also sent out other waves as a form of unprotected thought detector but he got NOTHING. Not even a word.
This already formed a sinking feeling in his gut.
So when he displayed his ability and Hank said it was Chaos and Destruction manifested, Xavier wasn't entire instilled with confidence and coupled with the fact that he couldn't get any stray thought from the man, he couldn't bring himself to trust him.
So he after that fiasco, he called for the meeting to get a read on the man's character from his staff and imagine his expression when Logan said he killed 500 people in 14 days.
This was bad!
Whether or not if he was maligned or wronged, just the fact that he could kill 500 in 14 days was already a warning to Xavier.
And given as how both Scott, Logan and Ororo all agreed that he was unstable, Charles immediately knew from then on what he had to do.
They were things bigger than one man, true… but sometimes all it took was one man to get a job done.
In order to help the man face his demons and also prevent a calamity from descending upon the Earth, he steeled his resolve and wheeled into Cerebro.
He wheeled along the only pathway that led to a small podium that housed the biggest processing power on Earth.
On the small podium laid a metallic helmet with wires attached to it that connected it to the processor. For a super processor, Cerebro was built mainly for strong Psychics like him. Any other psychic without a level of power attempting to use Cerebro would only fry their brain.
He put on the helmet as he activated Cerebro.
Instead of focusing it on the outside world, he focused it on the school and locked on to the one in the room assigned to Mr. St. Cross. It was marvelous how his ability could hide itself like that of an Alpha-Level mutant, or maybe he was the one doing it purposely. It wouldn't matter after tonight.
He swore he would never use his abilities for something like this; attempting to remodel the psyche of a human.
He was ashamed of himself, but he soldiered on.
Unlike Jean's whose body housed an entity which was the core of her abilities which made it possible to seal, Mr. St. Cross's was different. Like any other mutant all he had was the X-gene, and while Xavier could always use mental blocks like with Jean, he preferred to be thorough with this.
He would only change the part that was negative and vengeful. Freeing the young man from whatever nightmares he had, making him an upright man that would use his God-given abilities for good.
It would be easy with the might of Cerebro.
With that resolve for the Greater Good, he plunged himself into the mind of the young man, and he felt as if he just broke through a glass panel.
The first thing that came to his thoughts were that the young man's mind was different.
Entirely different from any other thing he's experienced. Suppressing his wonder, he took a step with the legs he no longer had and came to the nexus of what housed his mind.
But that was where everything went wrong.
The moment he tried to exert his influence, the entire space changed to what could only be called galactic battlefield.
A wall as high as the clouds stood in front of him. Before the wall were small gates that had what could only be called spaceship weapons from Star Wars.
Gigantic blasters of different types laid atop the small gates.
Before the feeling of dread could settle in Charles, the blasters came alive and he immediately exerted his will to form a defense of any kind he could… but that turned out to be the wrong move.
Every move of his, every exertion of influence only served to multiply the gates and blasters he was facing, and if was paying attention to the wall behind the gates, then he would had seen as it grew larger and farther, becoming more sturdier while also maintaining the illusion of sitting still.
As Charles willed forth a shield made up of energy to protect himself, the blasters ALL fired at him and he felt multiple sensations at once.
Stasis, electricity, brute force, fire, slash wounds, gun wounds, cannon blasts, arrows, maces, screeching sound, vertigo, dopamine rush, old age, annihilation beams… and a magnitude of others was what he felt at once as his conjured shield popped like a bubble as the blasters assaulted him.
Charles remained rooted to his spot as his voice cried out in unbelievable agony, waking up all the residents of the mansion.
"RAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."
As Charles drowned in pained, he couldn't register another voice that shouted in pure rage as it brought fear to the inhabitants of the mansion.
"CHARRRRRRLLLLLESSSSSSSSSSS."
….
….
That night the entire mansion shook.
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I wanted to take a neutral stance with Charles since most fanfics depict him as a sort of mind raping psychic with loose morals... Keywords being 'wanted to'.
I didn't know how it happened but by the time I had finished this chapter, Charles was already on his way to Cerebro and try as I may, I couldn't stop and believe me when I say I did try.
Next chapter will be about an angry Hu... Draul facing of against the X-Men so fingers crossed and here's to hoping I can make it good.
And please remember to spoil me with your stones and reviews.
PS: Drop your questions at the end of the following chapters about what you want to know and I try to post the answers as an auxiliary by the end of the week. Ciao!
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