《The Adventures Of Nighthawk》 1. Truck-San for the win Hey, how¡¯s it going? Probably way better than me seeing as how I just died. Honestly, I should have seen it coming with all web and light novels I¡¯ve read over years and probably would have if I wasn¡¯t stressing about my job who would be my Attending this year. Today was the first day of my residency and I was freaking out. My problem was my fellow residents and some of the doctors. They thought I was a know it all suck up, just because I could answer any question the Attendings could ask and knew our textbooks forwards and backwards. What they didn¡¯t understand was that it was all book smarts. I didn¡¯t have any real practical experience to back it up. The reason was that I just happen to have eidetic memory, which helped me to finish up my bioengineering degree at the young age of 14. But it¡¯s unbelievably hard to learn how to be a doctor even with my very own cheat skill. For instance, just because I could describe the function of the heart doesn¡¯t mean I could do open heart surgery, well I am a genius so I probably could but... Also, I am 18 while the others are in their 20¡¯s so the hate was real! They would do all kinds of things to sabotage me. My labs were always late, my stuff always mysteriously went missing, no one wanted to help me with patients consults, and they would always bad mouth me to the Attendings. Thank god for nurses, they at least had my back. They made sure the patients didn¡¯t sure suffer and that things didn¡¯t go too far. Which brings me back to this morning and why I was rushing. I figured that if I got to the new Attending before everybody else gave a good impression thing could be different this year. Unfortunately, the brat on his phone ruined my plans permanently! I¡¯ll tell you it was very spooky how it all went down, kinda like I was in one of those ¡°final destination¡± movies. I was walking down the street when I saw the kid beginning to cross at the corner. At first, there weren¡¯t any cars on the street which was strange in its self, given the time of day but then Truck san appeared out of nowhere like he was auditioning for the next Fast & Furious movie. I tried calling out to the kid, but he couldn¡¯t hear me over his headphones. Everybody else in the area was either frozen in shock or not paying attention, so it was up to me to try and save the kid. As I ran to catch up to him, I remember hoping that was his favorite song he was blastin cause if I didn¡¯t reach him in time that would probably be the last thing he heard. I wasn¡¯t that worried at first because I wasn¡¯t that far and I figured I had enough time to get both of us out of the way. But then the spooky stuff I mention started. This kid who wasn¡¯t ware enough to notice the 2-ton truck bearing down on him suddenly stops to pick up some money that just happens to be in the middle of the street. Meanwhile, Truck san sped up like he was late for a date. Oh, and the wind just happened to blow a wet grocery bag under my foot in the middle on my all-out sprint. I mean COME ON this was seriously overkill, all I needed now was for a black cat to appear across the street and start laughing at me. Somebody definitely wanted one or the both of us dead. Luckily for the kid, I had enough momentum to knock him out of the away but me, thanks to a damn grocery bag I got to learn what a truck grill taste like right before me and the street became one intimately.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Like I said I¡¯m a doctor, so I knew I was a goner, there¡¯s no coming back when a third of your body is now paste. Most people in this situation would think about their loved ones and things they would miss or regret as their life flashed before my eyes. I was no different except for the fact that I really didn¡¯t have love ones, the only things I would miss are my novel, movies, and games, and I one regret is I didn¡¯t get to finish my work on Nanos. My parents didn¡¯t really understand me, nor did they have time for me either. Honestly, I think I was an accident because my parents are never home long enough to actually get together. Its always work, work and more work with them. With them being gone so much I did have the freedom to indulge in my favorite hobbies, so I got to watch a lot of movies and anime, play way too many hours of video games, and read tons of light novels and mangas. I didn¡¯t see it as lost time like they did because I didn¡¯t have any real friends, to begin with and they hardly paid attention to me anyway, so I used it to soak up time between studying. Anyway, back to my death, the kid was safe, the crowd finally got off their butts to call the EMTs. Too little too late but hey it¡¯s the thought right. Thinking about all those comics and stuff, as the lights faded my last thought on earth was ¡°damn saving that kid would have been a lot easier if I had Psychokinesis.¡± Then I heard a voice say, ¡°YOUR WISH GRANTED!!¡± 2. A Whole new world It was the feeling of falling instead of the howling wind that woke me up. I will never admit it to another soul, but after I looked around and realize what was going on, I started screaming louder than a little girl at a beaver concert. Ha¡­Ha¡­Laugh all you want but if you died then woke up, falling to your 2nd death you¡¯d be freaking out too. After a couple of mins with nothing happening, while I was falling, I shut up and realized, it''s true what they say, ¡°falling is easy part it¡¯s the landing that hurts¡±. Anyway, I was finally clammed enough to look around, and saw a big ocean on my right and a massive stretch of land on my left. Unfortunately, I couldn¡¯t make out details from this height yet. The grass and trees where green and the water and sky where blue so I couldn¡¯t tell if I was still on earth or some other planet which looked like earth but that got me to thinking about truck san and all the weird stuff before I died. It was starting to look more and more like I was an MC in a web novel so I figured either A. I¡¯ve been reincarnated, B. I¡¯ve been transported to another universe, or C. I¡¯ve been summoned. Since I wasn¡¯t in a womb or someone else¡¯s body with a sudden influx of memories that strikes out A. There were no spell circles or King/High priest to greet me, so C was out too. Looks like B is a winner, but why would some ROB go through all the trouble of transporting me just to let me fall to my new death? The ground was getting a whole lot closer, I could now make out a vast forest but this whole situation still wasn¡¯t making any sense. Where¡¯s my white room or black void. Don¡¯t you know how this is supposed to work!!! All I got was ¡®Your wish is granted?¡¯... What wish? I didn¡¯t even get to ask for anything!!! AHHHHHH!!! This is so frustrating. The closer the ground got the more panicked I became, time was running out. Even though I knew it wouldn¡¯t make a difference I scrunched up into a ball, closed my eyes and screamed ¡°I don¡¯t wanna die¡­. Again!!!¡± Just as I was about to crash into the forest a massive amount of energy burst from me and made a cocoon of energy. As it plowed into the ground it leveled the forest for about a mile. A minute or two went by and I didn¡¯t feel any pain, so I decided to open up my eyes and see what happened. I looked around and it was like a bomb went off but there was no fire just massive destruction. There I was floating 5ft off the ground in my invisible bubble. Then BAM, I wasn¡¯t. Ouch!!! I think me and the ground need to go on a break. It¡¯s just too physical for me. Anyway, I got up and dusted myself off and really took note of my surroundings. I still could tell what planet I was on this forest just looked so normal. Nothing I can do about it now so I started thinking about what just happened, looks like I definitely transmigrated with powers. Obviously, some ROB did it but why, and more importantly why me. Not to mention I didn¡¯t even make a wish. Then I remembered the last thing I thinking about before I died¡­¡­ No way!! No fracking way!!! (Que FFVII exp music) Yes, I admit it I broke out into my happy dance. You would too if you just found out some ROB just gave you Psychokinesis. Ah man, this is going to be so awesome. I will be the most OP in the history of OP¡¯ness!!! I know some of you are all like ¡®so what he¡¯s got telekinesis what¡¯s the big deal?¡¯ And you¡¯d be so so wrong. First of all, there is so much you can do with just TK that it isn¡¯t even funny but what that beautiful, wonderful, most magnificent ROB gave me was Psychokinesis.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Psychokinesis is an umbrella term for any ability that involves manipulating matter with the mind. Any abilities with the term "kinesis" after them are simply an application of psychokinesis. Just think about want that means for a minute. Basically, I automatically become the Avatar+, with Aerokinesis, Hydrokinesis, Pyrokinesis, and Terakinesis. Electrokinesis leads to Technokinesis and Static is in da house. I can think of all kinds of cool stuff I could do with Photokinesis like lasers and turning invisible. But what really has me so excited is Vitakinesis which is a technical way of saying Healing or body manipulation. Unlocking that is like unlocking GOD mode. Back on my earth, I was researching ways to control the human body on a microscopic level using Nanos and with Vitakinesis I skip the Nanos and go straight to the body manipulation. All this is just off the top of my head, I¡¯m sure it will take practice¡­, ok a lot of practice until I can get to that level but I¡¯ll get there. Ok, Nico calm down! Sure, you have a lot of potential but right now you¡¯re in the middle of a forest on an unknown planet with no food or water and you don¡¯t even know how to use all your fantastic powers. Not to mention your entrance made a lot of noise. Someone or something is bound to come looking. Even though I realized all that it doesn¡¯t help my situation much because I don¡¯t know for sure that anybody¡¯s coming and even if they do, I don¡¯t know if they¡¯re good guys or bad guys. Not to mention how long it will take for them to get here. If it¡¯s a predator I¡¯m definitely sol. I remember all those novels where the MC thinks it¡¯s a rabbit in the bushes then it turns out to be a bear or a big butt dino looking for lunch. Safety first so after looking around and thinking over my options I decided to take a middle ground approach. There is a tree covered hill/slope not too far away from my crash site. I figure I can keep a lookout for danger there for at least a day or so while I practice my powers, and see if anyone shows up. After that, if no one shows I¡¯ll head for the coast I saw on my entry and travel that for a while. On the way to the hill, I grab a couple of rocks and sticks to practice with. Something tells me lifting my body is way out my league for now and that first time was probably a freebie from the ROB since I didn¡¯t get any intro speech or an all-powerful system¡­ wait do I have a system. Menu ¡°Menu¡± Status ¡°Status¡± ¡°Skills¡± Skills. Figures!! This ROB is definitely the hands-off type. Oh well, guess it¡¯s ¡®Grind Time¡¯ for me. 3. How do you start the Training Montage? It took me a while to climb the tree because the lowest branches where at least 8ft from the ground so I ended up cutting some hand holds with a rock just to get up there. Hopefully, it¡¯ll be just as hard for any predators in the neighborhood. After resting for a bit, I figured I¡¯d start my training session with TK since all the other psychic powers flowed from that one. It¡¯s the foundation of my powers and if all those thousands of novels have taught me anything it¡¯s to always build a solid foundation. I got as comfortable as I could near the trunk and took out a pebble the size of a nickel to start with. I really had no clue of how to do any of this in real life just some vague theories. I figured the first thing I should do was to try and remember the way I was feeling when I was floating and recreate that feeling or something. Or at least get back to that state. I¡¯m not going to lie it took a while. Imagine trying to hold on to Jell-O while your hands are covered in baby oil and you wouldn¡¯t be even close. So, the first task for my grind session was just calling and releasing my power. Once I got that down I started working on getting it interact with other objects. Man was that a headache. I ended up testing a bunch of ways but the one that worked the best was imagining my power as tendril that extended from me to wrap around the pebble. Surprisingly once my power surrounded the pebble it was really easy to manipulate kinda like a third arm I never knew about. If you have ever read a Green Lantern comic you¡¯ve got a good idea of how it works. The next thing I worked on was range and power. I slowly moved the pebble away from to see how far it would go before I lost control. I think I got about 10ft before it started wobbling and I lost control. Power was just seeing how much I could lift. That ended being a rock bout the size of an coconut. Then it was on to the fun stuff, target practice. I picked up a bunch of marble size pebbles with my TK and launched them as fast and hard as I could at the tree across from me. I¡¯m not sure how fast they ended up going but I did hit what I was aiming for which was a knot in the tree and left they did leave a pretty good dent in the tree. I was thinking if anything did come after me, I could at least warn it off or aim for its soft tissues like the eyes or ears. I don¡¯t think I could kill anything yet but it was better than bare hands fighting. Now for the hard stuff. Remember when I told you Psychokinesis is manipulating matter with the mind? Well that¡¯s what I needed to do next, manipulate matter on the micro level. I wasn¡¯t sure how long I¡¯d be out here so there were a couple of things I¡¯d need if I was to survive out here by myself. Water, food, fire, a knife, and definitely some kind of shelter. Let¡¯s go with a weapon first, I know I can make a knife out of a rock, I¡¯ve seen it done many times but, I¡¯m not sure if I can make one myself. I looked around for rock that was about the size of my forearm and mostly flat. Next, I concentrated on my power trying to make it as thin and hard as I could before it could visibly disappear. Once I got the hang of that, I tried pushing my new cutting edge through the rock. It actually kinda worked, the edge started cutting into the rock but as it went deeper it started to fade out. That only meant one thing ¡°More Power¡±. I pumped as much as could into the edge and it started to glow. With a rush, I sent it back at the rock and almost cut my leg off!! I did end up slicing off a good chunk of the branch I was sitting on. Once my heart started back up and I checked my pants for pee, I examined the cut on the rock and it was mirror smooth. It was at that point while I was rubbing the mirror finish that I slap myself upside the head for being an idiot. If my TK could do that then what the hell do, I need a rock knife for. Hell, I had just made a wind blade without the wind. Alright back to the list, let''s tackle the elements water and fire. I knew I could start a fire by vibrating molecules fast enough that the friction would produce heat that would get me fire. Learning from my past mistakes, I decided to build a fire pit to test this one out in case this world had a Smokey the bear and I could put in some work with my Terakinesis. I concentrated my power into a 3ft circle then sunk it 3ft deep. I tried to pull that volume out and almost blacked out from the backlash. Yeah so that didn¡¯t work and as I laid against the branch experiencing the worst migraine ever!! While waiting for the headache to go away (Which took hours) I had a lot of time to think things over and I came to a couple of guesses. One being that the ROB has been helping me out a lot this whole time. And two the way I entered this world was not random it was loud and nosy. I¡¯m pretty sure that even if I¡¯m in some primitive world someone notice and is coming to investigate but the biggest reason for it was to show me that I have powers and that powers are a thing in this world. And then there¡¯s how fast and easy I¡¯m learning this stuff too. It¡¯s like I¡¯m in the tutorial of an MMO. I¡¯m thinking I¡¯m in noobville until someone shows up and the real game starts so I better rack up as many skills as I can before then.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. It was late afternoon by the time I started feeling better, so I figured I¡¯d better speed things up and do this Green Lantern style. I imagine my TK tendril turned into an big shovel and started digging out the pit. I¡¯d worry about learning true Terakinesis later. Doing it this way was really easy and went very quickly. I smooth out the pit with TK and finished it off with a ring of rocks. Next, I used the other half of the branch I chopped off to make some logs and filled the pit. It was time for the moment of truth. Finally, I selected a branch that was about as long as my forearm cause I was tired of almost killing myself and this was fire. This time I jammed the branch into the ground near the pit. Like I did with the first experiment, I let my TK soak the top 4th of the branch and started vibrating it as fast as possible. At first, it seemed like nothing was happening but seconds later I smelt smoke. Soon after the tip burst into flames, and I officially joined the fire nation. (yea) Now the only thing left was the really hard part that would be super easy if I had a water source nearby, but hey it was time to make lemonade or water from nothing. For those of you who have never been camping before I want to tell you, you can¡¯t just cut down any tree, rub two sticks together and bam instant fire. It doesn¡¯t work like that. Fresh cut wood is still wet and will take a super long time to catch fire if it ever does. Luckily for me that exactly what I need to be my short cut for making water. I was going to try and pull all of the water out of the wood I dump in the pit, killing two birds because I was dying of thirst and it was getting chilly as the sun went down. I¡¯ll be honest I¡¯m banking on the tutorial training wheels to help out with this one because I don¡¯t know about you but I¡¯ve never seen a hydrogen or oxygen atom without a microscope so... I started off with the standard of soaking the wood with my power. Then next I meditated on water, what it is, what it is made of, and all its different states. Finally, all I had to do was figure out how to single out all of the water in the wood and then separate them. Man was that frustrating, but after 2 hours of hard work, I was rewarded with a floating teacup size globe of greenish water. After tossing my torch in the pit and it caught fire easily and I decided to boil the water instead of trusting my weak skills with purifying the water. But before that, I wanted to add to the meager supply of water by using my original idea of pulling water out of the air now that I had a sample. Just like before, this went easier than it should have. I think it went so well because of the training from before and I now had a better understanding of water. Again, I went the lantern route and constructed a boiler with a condenser construct to boil the water. I know what you''re thinking ¡®Nico if you can pull water from the air now why are you going through all the trouble of boiling water?¡¯ The easy answer is I need the XP. I needed to test my limits; how long could I hold the construct. How long did it take me to regen? How many other things could I do at the same time and other tests like that? So far for the constructs, it seems like as long as I have a good visual of what I want to do, anything is possible or least easier than without. I figure that first try with the pit didn¡¯t work because I wasn¡¯t really clear, and was just trying to use raw force. While the water was boiling, I worked on my multitasking to make a bowl from the wood scraps to hold the water. Since this was something new it was¡­ hardish? at first but got easier over time. I almost drop the boiler a couple of times before I learn how to push keeping it steady to the back of my mind while I focused on my carving. By the time I was finished the water was done boiling so I set it the bowl to cool. But never one to waste time I figured it was a good chance to practice cryokinesis. This process went smoothly which reinforced my theories on how my powers worked. All I had to do was soak the water in my power and picture its molecules slowing down until ice bits started forming. Got to tell you Man, Best Water Ever!!! By then it was getting late but I could shake the feeling that time was running out an something was about to happen. Even though I was tired I wanted to get in as many skills as I could even if they weren¡¯t perfect at least I would have something to work from. It was going to be a really long night. 4. In A Universe Far Far Away So, for the record that was a terrible idea. I got so wrapped up in training skills that I fell asleep on the non-safe ground instead of the semi-safe tree limb. But that¡¯s a problem for later cause what woke me up was the sound of something large moving through the forest and it was coming straight for me. The hill I was on wasn¡¯t that tall but after a while, I could make out what looked like people coming. That was good and bad because I could probably chase an animal off but people would be a crap shoot. I looked around to make sure that the fruits of last night or I should say this morning¡¯s labor was still there. I had made sure to make a good amount of rocks shaped like bullets, some crude throwing blades, and a couple of cannonball size rocks for ammo. I didn¡¯t get far with TK armor but I think I can make a decent shield, who knows if it will actually work though. I was ready as could be which was good because my guest were here. When I could finally make them out to say I was shocked was an understatement. ¡°No way!¡± ¡°No Fracking Way!!!¡± Coming towards me where the fracking X-Men!!! Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus. I wanted to do a happy dance but was able to control myself at the last min. The Marvel universe is #2 on my Isekai list right behind DBZ. It¡¯s so easy to become OP in the DBZ universe it''s not even funny, at least in Marvel you had to actually work at it. As they got closer, I started to notice some strange things (lol) about them. They all looked like different versions of themselves. This Cyclops looked like James Marsden but only about my age. Same for Jean Grey except she looked like Sophie Turner, not Famke Janssen. Wolverine looked like his comic book version. Guess this universe couldn¡¯t afford Hugh Jackman. Storm looked like the actress Meagan Good but she wore her classic white costume for the 90¡¯s cartoon. Nightcrawler looked like he did in X-Men: Evolution. Big man Colossus looked like he did in the Deadpool movies. So, there I am with my gaping open trying to put my brain back together when Cyclops introduces them. ¡°Good morning we''re the X-Men and we¡¯re wondering if you know anything about that big crater of there?¡± Once brain restarted and I got my act together my first thought was Cerebro!! It must have lit up like a Christmas tree yesterday and if that¡¯s the case the professor is probably monitoring us right now. This is all kinds of bad I have zero mental shields. With all that I know about Marvel, it would be bad for anyone else to know what I know regardless of the timeline or whatever universe this actually is. Here¡¯s hoping the ROB is still looking out for me. I looked over at Jean. ¡°Good Morning all, Miss Grey I have to ask is the good professor monitoring us right now? If he is would ask that you and he not actively try reading me please.¡± Now it was their turn with WTF face. Jean recovered first but it looked like she was in deep conversation with the professor but an elbow to Scott brought him back to earth. ¡°How¡­How do you know us?¡± I chuckled. ¡°I actually know all of yo-¡° ¡°Great another time traveler.¡± Wolverine grunted. ¡°Ah no. I¡¯m not from this universe actually. Which is why I asked that the Professor and miss Grey not try to read me. In my universe¡­. You could say we have a type of technology that lets us see multiple universes and I have extensive knowledge of many versions of X-Men. Which could cause disasters if they saw something out of context. Besides even if they did, just because an event happened one way in a universe doesn¡¯t mean it will happen the same way in another.¡± Jean nodded and then asked. ¡°Mr.? . . . ¡± I grinned. ¡°My apologies. Please call me Nico.¡± ¡°Well, Nico the professor agrees with you and would like to know how you got here and what your plans are?¡± Now so far, my lying with the truth has been working but I had no clue how to explain how I got here, mainly because I didn¡¯t know for sure myself, but as for my plans, that was easy. See sometimes when I couldn¡¯t sleep, I would think of what I would do if I was the main character in my favorite novels or if some ROB every transmigrated me to my favorite universes. Huh come to think of it that¡¯s probably why this is happening to me in the first place. Well here goes nothing.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°I¡¯m not sure exactly how I got here, one min I was on my world then the next I was free diving without a parachute. I was sure I was a goner til my TK kicked in.¡± That got their attention. ¡°You have TK?¡± Jean asked excitedly. ¡°I didn¡¯t before I got here, and no I don¡¯t know how I got it either. Which brings me to my plans. I was hoping that miss Grey could train with me or at least give me some pointers until I can get some decent control of my powers?¡± I wasn¡¯t for sure but guessing by her age I¡¯m pretty sure I know more about our powers then this Jean does but that wasn¡¯t my goal for going home with them.I need the X-men for 2 very important reasons. 1st The Danger room and free room & board. 2nd Forge. I use to dream to myself that if I ever got sent to the DC or Marvel universes I would definitely find some way to become a superhero. So, the Danger room was for training and Forge to help build me a suit. ¡°Nico, call me Jean and the professors says that you would be more than welcome to stay with us while you get on feet and although I¡¯m not an expert I can definitely teach you what I know.¡± Jean said with a smile. ¡°Thanks that helps a lot. One more thing though. I was wondering if you guys could help me narrow down what universe I¡¯m actually in?¡± Scott gave a nod. ¡°What do you need?¡± ¡°How bout this. I¡¯m going to call out some names or places and if you have heard of them raise your hand, and oh Jean give yours a wave for the professor.¡± Everyone gave a round of nods. Ok, this is definitely not the Main MCU since we have X-Men and different versions of them at that but with most of them look like movie stars I need to be sure. ¡°Ok first name Tony Stark.¡± Everybody¡¯s hand went up for that one along with a wave from Jean. ¡°Ironman?¡± Same results. ¡°How long has Ironman been a thing?¡± ¡°Mr. Stark announced him being Ironman bout 7 months ago after some sort of battle at Stark Industries.¡± Storm answered that one. Well, that¡¯s pretty much what happened in the MCU so maybe I¡¯m in a modified MCU? Let¡¯s try the rest of the Avengers. ¡°The Hulk?¡± No hands this time so the battle in Harlem hasn¡¯t happened yet. ¡°Dr. Bruce Banner?¡± This time I got a wave from Jean which at least proves the possibility of a Hulk. ¡°Thor?¡± That one got me funny looks then Nightcrawler said. ¡°Like the Norse God Thor?¡± ¡°Yeah actually Gods are kinda real and if I¡¯m where I think I am you may even get to meet one soon.¡± All the guys except for Nightcrawler look at me like I was crazy he just looked thoughtful. ¡°Anyway, moving on. Captain America?¡± All hands went up. ¡°Is he MIA since WWII?¡± Wolverine looked downed but answered. ¡°His plane went down in the artic and was never found.¡± I had to do a double take. ¡°Wait, Logan do you have your memories?¡± ¡®Snick¡¯ Seeing Wolverine¡¯s claws pop out on the big screen is cool seeing it in real life is terrifying, especially when he''s coming right at you. Thankfully Colossus was able to grab him at the last second. ¡°What do you know about me bub? TELL ME!!!!¡± ¡°Friend Logan he cannot help you if you kill him.¡± Colossus was starting to struggle with keeping Logan down until Scott joined in to help. ¡°Gees man calm down. I¡¯ll tell you what I know.¡± ¡®Snick¡¯ That got him to put away his claws but he was still worked up. Oh, boy is this gonna suck. ¡°You sir have one messed up history. In just about all of the various universe out there you always have memory issues. Sometimes in your early life, in others later in life and sometimes both. Although I can¡¯t be 100% sure for this universe, I can tell you the stuff that holds true for the majority for the universes. Your name is James ¡°Logan¡± Howlett. You severed with Captain America in WWII as part of his ¡°Howling Commandos¡±. Sometime after the war, you got captured and ended up in the Weapon X program where they did a number on your memories along with some brainwashing just to be sure you¡¯d be a loyal psychopath. So, imagine their surprise when you still broke free.¡± Thinking about the Commandos got me to thinking about Fury which got me to thinking about S.H.E.I.L.D./Hydra. If Cerebro was able to pick up my entry then I know S.H.E.I.L.D. did. Jean was the first to notice my mini freak-out. ¡°Nico, what¡¯s wrong?¡± ¡°Quickly ask the professor if knows a spy by the name of Nick Fury.¡± She shrugged her shoulders but did as I asked. ¡°He says yes.¡± ¡°FRACK!!! We have to go! Now!!¡± 5. Every Mansion Should Have A Danger Room So, my mini freak out was justified because SHIELD showed up 20 mins after we left. On the upside, the ride back was very informative. After a couple of rounds of the guessing game, I figured out that was in a sort of MCU+ universe. I found out that the FF4 have been around for about two years and even managed to chase off Galactus. Which is shocking cause even the real FF4 shouldn¡¯t have been able to do that without major help (aka the silver surfer). So technically they are the first of this generation¡¯s heroes. Only Storm knew of T''Challa but only as a boy from her childhood. They all think Hydra was destroyed in WWII (This is the real reason I don¡¯t want to be found be SHEILD yet), Nobody has heard of Mister Sinister which doesn¡¯t bode for the future, (looks like I got to fight the big blue guy after the big purple guy.) Logan knew of the Mandarin but as a mid-level warlord in China. Taking all this in I had to assume that all of the main Avenger stuff would be close to the movies and shows but everybody else would be some mash-up of there comic histories. Let me just say all of the different media doesn¡¯t do the real-life X Mansion justice. It¡¯s huge!!! Kind of like widen U sitting on top of some cliffs. It did have the famous basketball court but that¡¯s not where we landed, we went through a hidden hanger door in the cliffs. As we got out everybody started going their separate ways, Logan being the fastest, he ran over Bobby. Meanwhile Jean told me the professor want to see but she¡¯d give me a quick tour on the way. I have to admit to you I started geeking out a little bit at the upcoming meeting. I mean I saw Stewart once at a Con but I was about to meet the ¡°real¡± Professor X in person. Sure, he did a lot of crappy things later in life but I blame that solely on lazy writers who couldn¡¯t come up with something interesting to do with his character so they decided to destroy him and his legacy. A fact that happens a lot in Marvel (I¡¯m looking at you Spiderman), but that¡¯s a whole other rant!!! As Jean showed me around on the way to the Professor¡¯s office, I realized something that even the comics leave out most of the time, this mansion was a real boarding school. I saw classrooms, labs, a humongous library, and the fanciest school cafeteria I¡¯ve ever seen. You only see glimpses of that stuff in the movies but being here I could see various X-men walking around just like you would see in any other high school. It was interesting to see the different versions and ages this universe picked for them. There¡¯s too many to list them individually but I can safely say there was more than enough to run the blue and gold teams and at least 2 other x-teams. Finally, we reached the professor''s office. Jean knocked and waved me in. ¡°I¡¯ll just give you guys some time alone.¡± An older McAvoy would have been interesting to meet but what I got was a younger Stewart which was cool too, it didn¡¯t matter to me both do a good job but I was excited to meet the man himself. ¡°Welcome to the Institute Nico. As I stated before won¡¯t pry into things about our universe but I¡¯m hoping you would be open to discussing yours and how you got here?¡± As I shook his hand I said. ¡°It¡¯s an honor to meet you sir and I have no problem talking about my verse.¡± I had enough time on the flight to come up with something to explain my existence here. I used a lot of truthful vagueices to describe our universal viewing portal rooms. These big rooms with stadium seating where we gather, often with refreshments like popcorn, to view segments of heroic people lives. Sometimes these segments get translated into a printed format and most often they are illustrated. Basically, I describe my universe as a better version of mine that¡¯s highly advanced technology and socially compared to theirs. As for how I got here, I went with a lab experiment gone wrong for the win. I told him we were testing multi-dimensional travel and I got sucked into a sky portal (lol). ¡°Extraordinary Nico, I can only hope that one day we too can reach your society¡¯s level of acceptance and inclusion.¡± ¡°One day professor if we all work at it.¡± He nodded in agreeance. ¡°So, Nico what are your plans going forward?¡± ¡°Well, first of all, I¡¯d like to thank you for your hospitality but even with having an x gene I don¡¯t think it would be a good idea for me to stay here full time.¡± I shook my head and sighed. ¡°I have all ways wanted to be a hero and save lives just like the people I grew up watching all my life. I¡¯ll be honest professor there are some world ending dangers coming and I plan to do everything I can to lessen the damage. Note I said lessen not stop because some of the things that are coming will take all of the X-men and all of the teams that are still to come to stop them, that¡¯s how big they are.¡± I looked him in the eye. ¡°Professor some of the things I need to do to get ready will bring attention, not necessarily bad attention but its attention this school doesn¡¯t need at this time.¡± Charles nodded his head, agreeing with me. ¡°That being said the X-men need to get a whole lot stronger. I think we have about two years before the first big event goes off.¡± ¡°Personally, I would appreciate it if you would help me develop my mental shields and see if I have any talents in telepathy?¡± At that question, Charles gave me a big smile. ¡°I would be glad to assist you Nico and I will definitely take your warnings to heart. Is there anything else you need?¡± ¡°Actually, do you still have contacts in the government?¡± Again, he nodded. ¡°If you could get me some legal ID that would be great and save me some trouble. Also, if you wouldn¡¯t mind me using the danger room in the mornings while the kids are in class?¡± He chuckled. ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be a problem, Nico, let me call Jean back and she can show you to your room.¡±This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. We spent the rest of the time before Jean came back talking about what my training would be like and bit more about my history. We worked out my schedule which would be, an early morning psychical workout followed by a danger room session to work on my offensive and defensive Psychokinesis. (From now on I¡¯m just going to call Psychokinesis PK and Telekinesis TK) Lunch was next then my afternoons would be spent with Jean and sometimes with the Professor working on fine control and new applications. Finally, I had group training with the x-men and meditation til bedtime. As me and Jean were walking across the lobby on the way to the men¡¯s wing we heard Logan called out. ¡°Hey, kid you got a min I need to thank you before I go.¡± I gave him a genuine smile while I shook his hand. ¡°Let me guess you¡¯re about to run off to Canada?¡± I hung my head for a second then looked him straight in the eye and said, ¡°Logan let me give you some advice. Forget the past, who you were is not who you are now.¡± He didn¡¯t like that a started getting pissed. I held up a hand. ¡°Nothing you do now can change what happened before. I think your biggest problem was that you did have any idea of who you were and that bugged the hell out of you, but you have bigger problems now that you don¡¯t even know about.¡± That shocked him. ¡°Tell me, Logan, when was the last time you talked to any of your kids?¡± ¡°WHAT???¡± That was both of them. ¡°Dude¡­ let''s head back to the professor cause this story is messed up and he needs to hear this too.¡± We backtracked to the professor¡¯s office and I explained to him happened and began to tell Logan¡¯s sad story. ¡°First off have any of you ever heard of a guy named Romulus?¡± That got a bunch of no¡¯s. ¡°Well he knows everything about you Logan. I¡¯m not sure why but this guy has a massive twisted man crush on you. Unfortunately, he is also responsible for just about every major bad thing that has ever happen to you. This next part is going to set him off so Jean get ready to hold him, you too professor.¡± They both gave me nods saying they were ready. Logan saw the pitting look on my face and started to growl. ¡°So, this guy Romulus is the one who really ordered Itsu¡¯s murder, he was also ultimately the one behind Weapon X, and he is definitely the one manipulating your kids to hate your guts right now.¡± Have you ever seen someone explode into a rage? Well, I did. I got to see the berserker barrage from Marvel vs Capcom in real life. Logan had turned the chair he was sitting in into confetti by the time Jean was able to put him in a TK box and Charles was able to do something to take the edge of while I finished explaining them the sad story about Daken and X-23. I told him that wasn¡¯t sure where they were exactly in this universe but I was sure SHEILD could help him track them down and that he would need help to capture them and keep them sedated until he could bring them back to the professor for help, especially Daken. I also told him everything could remember about Romulus and how hard it would be to beat him unless he was at his very best and even then, it would be a tossup. Much, much later after he calmed down him thanked me again and left for SHIELD HQ. Later as I and Jean walked to my room, she wanted to talk about our TK powers to get our minds off all the heavy stuff we just went through. To say she was shocked at my theories on how our powers could work would be a massive understatement. ¡°Nico why do you even need me as a teacher? It seems like you know what you¡¯re doing¡± She looked over with a grin and I chuckled. ¡°Most of this stuff is theory and I think it should be possible because I¡¯ve seen it done before by one of the strongest Tk user in the universe, (Ebony Maw) but that was him not me and I¡¯m not sure where to start? Plus, two heads are better than one?¡± She laughed. ¡°You sure that¡¯s the only reason you want me?¡± I gave her my killer grin. ¡°Well I¡¯m not going to lie spending a lot of time with a beautiful woman is never a bad thing in my book.¡± That got her blushing. ¡°Goodnight lover boy, I¡¯ll see you in the morning.¡± She gave me an airy wave and left. I know by now some of you are wondering why I¡¯m crushing so hard on Jean when there are so many fish in the sea, not to mention all the pervs out there that will be screaming for me try a form a harem with every girl I meet. Well, tough, this is my new life and it''s real, not a fanfic to cater to your wishes. I just met this girl and there is no way is just going to automatically fall in love with me because I think I¡¯m the MC of my story. This is the real (fantasy) world and real love just doesn¡¯t work like that. Now I¡¯ll admit I am going to try and date her because she is super-hot and I have always had a little crush on her but, honestly, I feel sorry for her and all the crap that happened in her life. I¡¯ve said it before Marvel writers have a real problem in that whenever they can¡¯t think of something interesting to do with characters, they either destroy them, kill them off, or turn them evil. In Jean¡¯s case, they did all three on top of giving her one the worst husbands ever!!! So, no dark phoenix for this universe got a plan for all that but I need to be much stronger before I can complete it and she needs to work on her triggers, plus she deserves some happiness for once. Anyway, enough of this sappiness stuff, I figure I got about three months before the big guy shows up to wreck Harlem and I need to be there, so it¡¯s time to get my grind on. 6. Practice makes perfect pt1 ¡°Ooocccccuuuhhhh¡± I am sore all over. My bruises have bruises. I think maybe my muscles went on strike an hour ago cause that would explain why I haven¡¯t been able to move for the pass hour ¡®n¡¯ half. You¡¯re probably wondering how in the world did I ended up like this huh? Well, I had the brilliant idea to test all my new found powers by going up against all the X-men royal rumble style. Yeah yeah laugh it up but it sounded good at the time and some people even placed bets on me to win. Before I get into all that though I need to talk about something that I found out about that you and I missed in all those novels and manga¡¯s we read. You remember when the MC¡¯s would go through a cultivation level breakthrough or an intense training session before a big fight? Well what you probably didn¡¯t notice or pay attention to, because I know I didn¡¯t, where those one or two sentences about the pain they went through during those breakthroughs. Well, I can attest, with only my month and a half of train that unless you¡¯re blessed with godlike recovery ALL training montages, grinds, cultivation session, or whatever you want to call it, that sh*t unbelievably hurts!!! Take the worst pain you ever felt turn it up x30 and endure it for hours then come and talk to me, I¡¯ll bring the drinks. Sometimes I get the shakes just thinking about how I first started testing my healing powers. I can¡¯t even remember how many times I used to read about how some MC experienced some pain on the way to a powerup and just brushed it off because it wasn¡¯t happening to me so no big deal. No, my friends, I am here to tell you I learned firsthand about all the blood, sweat, pain and hard work that goes into serious training. The only good thing was that now I knew the many different levels of pain and exactly how much my body can actually take. It might be wussy of me to keep going on and on about this but for reals, it hurt so bad!! Anyway, it would take forever and a day to explain all the stuff I was working on so I¡¯ll just give you this breakdown and then go into details on the important stuff. Aerokinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Hydrokinesis/Cryokinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Terakinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Pyrokinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Electrokinesis/Technokinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Vitakinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Photokinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be Telekinesis Where I¡¯m at Where I want to be So that¡¯s a pretty good overview of where I¡¯m at now. Over this past month, I helped all the active X-men by giving them either a different way to look at their powers or a glimpse at how strong I knew they really could be in the future. But there were some of the X-men I¡¯ve really gotten close to as we worked on our powers like Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Jean of course, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Storm, Kitty, Forge, and Jubilee because they have powers similar to mine. We had a give and take thing going where they would help me and I would help them. Cyclops really is a natural born leader, and he helped me with my Danger room sessions. He ran me through team missions and programmed some seriously intense street-level missions like a hostage situation gone wrong, or a shoot out at a hospital. He said that since I was determined to go it alone as a hero, he wanted me to be able to handle everything from a gas station robbery to a super villain¡¯s master plan. He also helped me get a handle on all of my various blasts and in turn with the professor''s help, we got him on the right path to really controlling his. He didn¡¯t know it at the time but he has always had a low-level psionic power but due to the trauma of the plane crash when he was younger, he never gained full control of it. It sucked that during the process I had to tell him and Alex about their dad still being alive, but that he thought that they were both dead which is why he didn¡¯t come back for them. I told them that in a few years, we would go and find him together. (I needed to grab some gems for my big phoenix plan to work anyway so I figured a stop through the Shi''ar Empire should be no problem. Yep, no flags here!!!) Predictably they were stunned and wanted to go right away but I had to remind them that a. we didn¡¯t know exactly where he was and b. we didn¡¯t have a ride. Now that I think of it that¡¯s probably also why he kept giving me all those training missions from hell.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Iceman loved all of my thoughts on what we could eventually be able to do. He was really interested in the golem idea. We really wanted to develop some AOE attacks and I wouldn¡¯t mind some DOTs while we were at it. I¡¯m trying really hard not to squee right now as I tell you guys about how Beast and me are total BFFs, we even became Medical Bros. He really helped me get a handle on how my healing powers worked and gave me some pointers on how to rewrite DNA. Just as soon as I get a little bit more power, we are going to work on increasing my brain usage percentile which is critical to boosting everything about me and my powers. I already had a good idea of how to do that but with Beast¡¯s help, I was able to fill in some blanks and make the process much safer. He is also helping me with the programming of my medical nanites and I gotta say the preliminary tests are looking good. When they¡¯re finally ready I think I will sell them to Stark since he has the infrastructure and resources to get them out to the public quickly, not to mention his ties to the military and SHEILD who should be the top buyers. I¡¯m having trouble right now getting them to run on bioelectricity so Forge is going to work with me on that. On another note, Beast is one of the few people that I actually told about his different selves out there in the multiverse. Mainly because he is one of only Marvel character to actually have multiple versions of himself running around at any given time and I wanted to save him some heartache. Even though this MCU¡¯s X-men seem like they are at the beginning of their careers I can¡¯t be completely sure so I¡¯m going to do my best to change or wipe out all together the stupid storylines that happen over the years before they can happen here. So, with that in mind, I spent a few days explaining to Beast why ¡°Self-experimentation is Bad M¡¯kay¡± and also how using time travel to fix bad life choices was an even worst idea. He took it in stride mainly because we knew we could use my nanites to rewrite/stabilize his DNA and get rid of his blue fur and more beastly features. Something that bugged every version of him. Who knew that Crawler, Kitty, and Jubes were total hardcore gamers and Otakus. Whenever we weren¡¯t training, we were gaming or bingeing the latest animes. Ah, the fights we would have over which favorite character could beat the other¡¯s, good times, good times I tell ya!! Eventually, I wanted to be able to teleport like Kurt, so me and him worked on understanding exactly how his powers worked and what his limits are. I told him about the different dimension that he goes through when he ports and to never ever try and stay in that dimension. We also had long talks about family and what actually makes up a family. I didn¡¯t tell him about Rouge or any of his other siblings but I did get him to see the X-men as a substitute for the one he thought he was missing. Kitty was a strange mix of her evolution and older comic book personality. Kind of like the coolest big sister you will ever meet. It will probably be a very long time before I¡¯m anywhere near ready to try and duplicate her powers so basically, we just worked on her being able to phase different parts of her body at the same time and also with the reverse of that by making things denser. Hopefully, she would be able to make herself invulnerable. I also told her she might want to study quantum physics but that she definitely needed to work on her mind palace and mind eye. So much has happened in her life that has been retconned that I didn¡¯t even bother to try and guide her, I just let her know that I would always be there for my big sister. I¡¯ll be honest with you all, I¡¯ve always had a little crush on Jubilee and if Jean wasn¡¯t here, I would have really would have asked her out. Oh well, at least we are really good friends and I got her to see that her powers are not as weak as she thought it was. Something that always bugged me about her was how she thought she was so weak but was actually one of the heavy hitters of the team. Since she has a fear of accidentally killing someone holding her back, we focused heavily on control and manipulation. By the end of the month, she was able to match me skill for skill in Pyrokinesis and was able to actually control when and if her plasmoids exploded. Now she wanted to work on a flying skill and making her constructs fully solid. It says something about a man when all your kids are cool with crazy. I thank Lee every day that this Polaris was the eccentric ¡°you can¡¯t possibly understand my coolness¡± crazy instead of the ¡°you need to sleep with one eye open¡± crazy she is sometimes depicted as. Once I got over her quirks of which there were many, we became good friends. She taught me a lot about how to control gravity and I taught her how to manipulate tech, something she didn¡¯t even think she could do. I gave Lorna the same family speech I gave Kurt and forced her to do a heavy focus meditation and mental fortitude. What can I say about Ororo that hasn¡¯t already been said? Put Machelle Obama, and Oprah together, and through in the diva power of Beyonc¨¦¡¯s and you¡¯d only get somewhat close to what Storm is like in real life. Once you meet her understand why they called her a Goddess. We spent most of our time just talking in her garden about any and everything. I''m telling you what she¡¯s really like but I¡¯m not doing it justice. For example, we would be talking about nothing important and then out of nowhere she would drop these knowledge bombs that made you look at the world in a completely different way. Next, she would tell a joke so funny it would have rolling on the floor, and she did all this effortlessly. She became the big sister I never knew I needed. Ro helped me a lot with my AK and I told her she should really try to learn about her mystical heritage. She made me promise to get together every other week for brunch after I leave. Last but in no way least we come to Jean. If I wasn¡¯t already in awe of her I would be worshipping her right now. This girl is a genius, and her raw talent blows me away. She is able to match everything I can do. Hell, she actually beats me in some of the stuff I taught her. Jean¡¯s philosophy surprisingly, is the same as mine so she made sure I built a solid foundation in Psychic powers. We started out with deep meditation and from there went on to building my mind palace. So far it wasn¡¯t much just a single room. It had a big desk that held the latest Alienware gaming desktop hooked up to a 60in Samsung LED. One side of the walls was filled all my favorite anime, and another was filled with mangas. The desktop was interesting to me because it had all of my memories all already filed and sorted. I¡¯m wondering if it was like that because I already had an eidetic memory or because my brain always worked like a computer. While working on my metal shields I decided to take an idea from a fanfic I read once. The trick that person used was to not have shields at all, what they did was to take an invisibility cloak and drape that around their mind palace. That way they would have nothing for the enemy to attack or for them to have to defend. It''s still a work in progress for me, I can¡¯t keep the invisibility cloak stable for long periods on time. Jean though thought this was a brilliant idea and stole it from me and was well on her way having her subconscious run it for her all the time with no problem. Oh yeah, that was another thing we were working on, mind splitting. Right now, I can only do 2 things at once and it takes me a min to really get going. Also, whatever I¡¯m doing subconsciously I¡¯m not even aware of til after I¡¯m done doing it. Eventually, I want to be able to split my mind 6 times but I¡¯m thinking it will have to wait until I¡¯m able to use a 100% of my brain. I don¡¯t know how all those cultivators did but it took me forever to learn how to develop my mind''s eye. I¡¯m glad I did though or else none of my later plans will work. I will say this, it made being a doctor a whole lot easier. I could now just look into a body and see exactly where to direct my VK. I was very popular after all the training sessions. I¡¯m a gentleman so I¡¯m not going to kiss and tell but I will say that me a Jean went on more than a few dates and leave it at that. Yes, it''s going a little fast but you got to remember that every day for a couple of hours we are in each other¡¯s mind with little to no privacy so¡­ We are really close. I might give you some details later but don¡¯t hold your breath. 7. Practice makes perfect pt2 Anyway, getting back to my epic showdown. I knew the big fight with the Hulk was coming up so I had the bright idea that if I could take on all the X-men and win, then the Hulk should be a cake walk. Yeah, it sounds stupid now when I say it out loud now but at the time, I thought it was a good idea. Realistically with all my powers, I should be able to take on anybody and win. It''s just a matter of which one of us is more powerful at the time. For instance, say me and Superman were to get into a fight. If I was at full strength, I would be able to freeze him with Tk before he could even move a muscle. As I am now, I could maybe hold him for like a second or two. Although I was not that powerful now, I figured I could make up for it by out thinking the X-men to beat them with what skills I had. ¡°Listen up people, the Hawk here has challenged the X-men to a battle royal.¡± Cyclops put his hand on my shoulder as the chuckles died down. Most of the whole team and I were in the waiting room for the Danger Room. ¡°I know, but the Professors swears he¡¯s not mentally insane so let¡¯s show him that the X-men aren¡¯t pushovers!¡± ¡°Ok here are the rules for this battle. Jean and the Professor made up a randomly drawn list of 20 of us. The first 5 on the list will start out hunting Nighthawk and if he happens to take one of you out the next person will come in to take your place.¡± Cyclops made sure everybody understood before pointing to Jean and Crawler. ¡°If you are taken out one those two will come in and take you out of the battle.¡± ¡°Alright everybody good¡­ Ok, the first 5 combatants are Moonstar, Cannonball, Jubilee, Gambit, and Rogue. Nighthawk you get to pick the stage, what will it be?¡± I only need to think about it for a second. ¡°Let¡¯s do this in a city at dusk.¡± This way I could blend in at will and they would have to protect the civilians and keep a low profile as if this was real. ¡°Ok, the list is posted so when your name is called come in and join the hunt. Oh, and to keep the Hawk from just turtling this contest will only last for 5 hours if it even takes that long. Regardless of the time, the last five players on the list will enter in 10 mins intervals just to make things interesting. Also, the people outside will get to watch all the action up to the ¡®point of contact¡¯ from Hawk then the screen will switch to someone else or go black to keep things fair.¡± The doors to the Danger Room opened to the middle of what could be any busy city street in America. I ran in and worked on turning on my camouflage, I only had a 60-second head start and I needed all of it. I got about half a block away before I found an alley that would work for me. I sat down quickly and started concentrating as hard as I could to get this illusion set up. I probably wouldn¡¯t be able to hold it long without my full concentration but it should work if they didn¡¯t look hard enough. Thankfully by the time Cannonball came rocketing by I looked like just another homeless person asking for change. My plan was going well so far. Rouge, the temp leader, had the team fan out in a search pattern and by now I was way behind there search lines so it was time for me to be the hunter. Little known fact two of my favorite game series were, Spiderman ps4 and the Arkham series. So, during my ¡®alone time¡¯ in the danger room, I tried to develop my own proto stealth takedowns. Now was time to see if they would actually work. Some people say go after the weakest link first. So, you would think out the 5 my first target would be Jubilee and you¡¯d be so so wrong. After our training sessions, that girl is unbelievably dangerous. She can now make her plasms look like a realistic butterfly that can blow up a building, so no she¡¯s next to last on my list. I¡¯m going to go after Moonstar because Gambit will be hard to take by surprise in this setting and Cannonball hardly ever stops moving. (Which reminds me gotta do something about his whole family later.) It took a couple of mins to track down Dani and when I found her, she was walking down the street watching for people¡¯s reaction to a Native American girl in a funny costume carrying a big purple neon glowing bow. It was actually a good plan to smoke me out from all the simulated people. Unfortunately for her, it gathered a crowd behind her as people stopped to gawk and take vids, so I was able to blend in with them. The monitors in the waiting room switched to someone else as I made my move. First, I silenced my steps and then I started generating enough power to Tk freeze her body and deliver a knockout blow to the back of her head. Simple I know but hey I did say proto stealth takedowns. It worked so there. By the time Dani realized she couldn¡¯t move the blow to the head was already delivered and she was out. Nightcrawler ported in with a grin, gave me a thumbs up while picked up Dani and ported out. The Danger Room doors opened again and announced the next combatant Thunderbird. I was on a clock now because the rest of the X-men knew where Dani was so they knew where I was. I expected the two flyers to get to me first so I decided to lay a gravity trap that should work for either of them. I flew/hovered up a building to get a better view of the ambush site and waited. Rouge showed up first but I could see Cannonball¡¯s fire trail not far off in the distance so this was going to be close. As Rouge zoomed in to hover over Dani¡¯s last known location, I hit her with 3 times earth¡¯s gravity and as she fell¡­HARD! I jumped after her. A simple knockout punch wasn¡¯t going to cut it with Rouge so as I was falling after her, I fired up my electricity to give Rouge the shock of her life. Rouge¡¯s landing (if you can even call it that) created a big butt crater and shattered windows for about a block. But before she could even get up and get her baring¡¯s I was on her and tasering the life out of her. She was down and Crawler ported in again to take her out but I waved him off because Cannonball was due any second. He ducked into an alley.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. I didn¡¯t have the time to concentrate on another illusion so I pretended to be one of the injured bystanders. My wait wasn¡¯t long. Cannonball came roaring in as he saw Rogue lying in the crater. I don¡¯t think he even really looked around for me. Kinda dumb of him cause anything that can take out Rogue should be a priority threat. But maybe he thought I was long gone and was more worried about her than me. At any rate, instead of hitting Sam with gravity I did Rogue I need to do the opposite for Sam because of the way his powers work. I hit him with a null gravity field quickly disoriented him and with another quick blast of electricity and he was done for. I looked over at Nightcrawler, who was hiding behind a dumpster laughing his butt off and gave him a two-finger salute before flying/hovering off. That was three down seventeen more to go. ¡°Colossus, Storm now entering combat.¡± The Danger Room doors closed once again. It was going to get harder now that big sis was in the game. She knew me better than anyone else except for Jean. This was proven when she called all the remaining players in for a strategy meeting instead of letting me pick them off one by one. I would have loved to bomb them while they were planning but I had nothing in my bag of tricks that was quick enough, to get me a big enough bang to take them all out. Like I said sis is really smart. She split the team into offense/defense pairs while she took a high enough ground that I wouldn¡¯t be able to sneak up on. Colossus and Jubes would be a hard pair to deal with, so I decided to go after Thunderbird and Gambit. There was no way I¡¯d be able to take out both those two guys at the same time so I¡¯d have to get sneaky. I was paralleling or following them on the next street over, thinking on what to do when I saw the answer to my problems. I ran ahead block till I found another one, a simple fire hydrant. I went into the shop in front of the hydrant and pretended to shop when really, I was using my Hk (Hydrokinesis) to build up water pressure. I don¡¯t think any of what I¡¯m doing today, let alone this next trick, would work if I wasn¡¯t able to split my mind to the level, I¡¯m at now. Even so, it all almost fell apart. Imagine trying to juggle with one mind while you read poems and play chess with the other. Doable for a while but not without tons of practice. What I was doing, was continuously building water pressure, keeping track of the guys, and keeping up my shopping act all at the same time. I got lucky when Gambit moved a bit ahead of John cause I was pretty sure I could take John in a heads up fight. As Gambit lined up with the fire hydrant I let loose. The water blasted him off his feet and pasted him to the wall across the street. Til the day I die, I¡¯ll never forget the look on his face as he went flying. John got clipped too which gave me a few more seconds to finish my plan. Gambit was dazed and had the breath knocked out of him when he hit the wall but he was still flailing against the water that was constantly pressing him against the wall. So I figured I¡¯d be nice and help him out by freezing him and the water. I froze Gambit to the wall but made sure to leave the top of his head free. Unfortunately, I didn¡¯t have time to admire my artwork cause Thunderbird picked that moment to try and curb stomp me into next week. Sucks for him cause I got a force field, nany nany boo boo. So instead of flying off into space, I was only pushed back a couple of feet. This was fight was on!! He came at me with a right cross which I defected with a Tk hand shield. (See the movie push for more details) I responded with a Tk left jab that rocked him for a sec. John kicked out at me to create some distance but I used that to do a Tk grab. Which pulled his leg up and away and dumped him on his butt. I tried followed through with a Tk elbow drop but John was ready for it and rolled out of the way. He got to his knees and went for a lunging tackle to try and grapple me. That would have the end for me because his super strength is stronger than my Tk right now. But I was still able to freeze him long enough to create some space. I was sure Storm had seen us by now and was on her way so I need to wrap this up quickly and get gone soonest. So it was back to my dirty tricks. I hit him with my version of a flashbang at point blank range. That really messed him up, and I¡¯m not going to lie hilarious as he was stumbling around like he had been drinking all night long. It was nothing for me to just walk up to him and taser him like everybody else. I thought about making some fog with the water coming from the hydrant to cover my escape but Storm would just blow it away. So since I couldn¡¯t go up I decided to go down. I remembered there was one of those sewer maintenance entrance in the sidewalk down from the hydrant. I didn¡¯t need it to completely cover my tracks, just needed to hide enough to get a few blocks away unseen. Storm arrived just as Crawler did. He looked at all the damaged and shooked his head. ¡°I would say he¡¯s doing better than expected eh Fr?ulein?¡± Storm chuckled. ¡°It would seem so Nightcrawler but my little brother has a ways yet to go.¡± ¡°Well if you excuse me I need to get these two to medical.¡± Storm gave a little head nod and said. ¡°And I need to regroup so we can come up with a better idea.¡± Crawler first ported Gambit out of the ice then grabbed both him and Thunderbird and left. 8. Practice makes perfect pt3 ¡°Sunfire, Havok now entering combat.¡± Instead of having everybody troop back to the door, Storm had the team meet on a rooftop that was near the center of the map, it was the highest building for this part of the city. ¡°It¡¯s time to switch things up. We¡¯re going to patrol to a block out with this building as home base. That should make Nico have come to us since there¡¯s not a lot of time left until the free for all. Colossus, Havok, and Jubilee will patrol while Sunfire covers you with air support. I¡¯ll be the eye in the sky and rapid response.¡± The group gave their confirmations then Jubilee spoke up. ¡°I don¡¯t know if this will help or not but for the last few weeks Nico¡¯s been studying everything he could find on ninjas.¡± Havok smirked. ¡°Well, that would explain things. We couldn¡¯t see much of what was happening on the monitors but even still we should have seen some idea of how he got the drop on the rest.¡± Storm took to the skies. ¡°Let¡¯s move out and keep your eyes open for anything, an out of the box thinking ninja could be anywhere.¡± Well, this sucks!! There they are all nicely clumped together and there¡¯s no way to take them all at the same time. I don¡¯t think a sneak attack would work again so soon. What to do, what to do? How bout I ¡­ No, what if I¡­. Well that might work but I¡¯m not sure if I can pull it off. What the hell I¡¯ll give it shot anyway. The problem with the direct approach is numbers, they outnumber me so I¡¯m thinking if I can make a lot of little golems, I can make up the difference or at least cause enough of a distraction to take some of them out. Seeing as how 4 of them can just blast anything away I think something small and numerous like insects are the way to go. Only problem with that is control. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll be able to control all of them and still be aware of my surroundings enough to fight at the same time. Screw it I can always jump back into the sewers and just run when it goes horribly wrong. The whole point test was just to see how good I am under pressure anyway. Once I got their patrol pattern down, I picked an ambush spot on the route farthest from Storm and out of her line of sight. Then I got started on making hundreds of flying bugs. Even though I didn¡¯t think they would be dumb enough to blast each other to get rid of them, I still made them out of fire this way they couldn¡¯t just raze their body temps and trying to melt the bugs off would take forever if it even worked. The bugs couldn¡¯t actually attack but enough of them crawling on you and in your face will definitely distract you. Hopefully long enough for me to take some of them out hard and fast. I staged the ones for Sunfire on top of a building¡¯s A/C. The rest were spread out in clumps across the whole street, under mailboxes and cars. Some even above trash cans. ¡°How long you think he¡¯s going to keep hiding?¡± Havok asked the group. They were walking down the middle of the street which was not at all congested. I think that was Jean¡¯s doing in the control booth. She rerouted traffic on their patrol route and moved most of the civilians out of the area. ¡°Comrade Nico is fighter at heart. I expect an attack at any minute.¡± ¡°The big buy has a point Nico is at his most dangerous when he¡¯s quiet.¡± Jubilee responded as she brushed a bug out of her face. ¡°I know but this is killing me, how long is he going to wait? There¡¯s not much time left until the free for all.¡± Havok to swiped at a bug. In fact, all of them had increasingly been fanning at bugs. Jubilee stopped and was waving furiously now. ¡°Where did all these bugs come from.¡± That was my queue. I released all the bugs to swarm. If I wasn¡¯t so busy trying to win, I would have been rolling on the ground laughing. They all looked so ridiculous, Colossus was actually slapping his own face trying to smash the bugs. My first attack was a flying taser kick to Jubilee¡¯s back that put her down. (I didn¡¯t want a long drawn out fight against one of my best friends.) The spinning side kick to Havok was an epic fail. He was still aware enough to dodge and fire off a blast at me. I was able to dodge that but not the blind side punch from Colossus that lunch me into a car. I am soooooo glad I practice my shields to be automatic or else I¡¯d need a hospital about now. I sat up, shook my head and took stock. Sunfire was flying in tight circles to burn the trailing bugs that couldn¡¯t keep up with him. Havok was roasting Colossus while he had his eyes closed which had little effect. And there was a Storm on the way!! (Ha Ha.) I went to deal with Colossus first because I didn¡¯t want to feel another hit like that. I went four cars up the street from the one I crashed into, picked it up with my Tk change its magnetic field to magnetize it and launched it as fast as I could at Colossus. It was his turn to by blindsided. The car leveled him and he made sparks as he was drugged down the street. When he finally stopped, he realized that he couldn¡¯t lift the car off of him no matter how hard he tried. Which was only made worse when the other three magnetized cars hit him. Even if he woke up, he wouldn¡¯t be able to move and if he switched back to human skin, he¡¯d be crushed so he was out now too. I had sent all the remaining bugs to attack Sunfire and Havok while I was dealing with Colossus so when I checked back in, I saw they were frying each other trying to get rid of the bugs but weren¡¯t having a lot of luck. My little fire bugs were absorbing their fire/heat to keep themselves going. I didn¡¯t know they could do that but boy am I glad they can. Things were looking up so of course, that was when the tornado hit me. Storm dropped one right on top of Sunfire and Havok which had the dual results of sucking up all my bugs and turning it into a fire tornado. The edge of which picked me up and threw me into a building, hard and fast. That was another thing that looks cool on tv but hurts like hell in real life. (DBZ) I got my crap together and jumped out the hole in the wall to immediately blast Havok with a TerK (Terakinesis) shotgun blast. Then grabbed Sunfire with TK and threw him into the building across the street. Before Havok could recover I picked him up too and did a mini berserker barrage. Just enough to knock him out. I didn¡¯t even get to turn around before Storm lit me up with the quickest lighting strike I ever saw. It hit me before my shield could come up so I had to deal with the full force for a few secs. Just as I was getting ready to redirect the rest back at her, Sunfire started to roast me with his fire blast. I needed to get out of there and heal, so I grabbed an SUV to use as a shield for Sunfire and sent the remaining built up charge to the gas tank. I don¡¯t know why but the explosion was bigger than it should have been and caught them off guard and gave me enough time to escape back into the sewers.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Sunfire picked himself up and looked over at Storm who was still a little dazed. ¡°How is he doing all this?¡± Storm laughed. ¡°My little brother is very smart and very powerful but the thing that should really scare you is that he is nowhere near his final limit.¡± Sunfire¡¯s black skin actually paled to grey a little as he thought about it. ¡°Psylocke, Beast, Angel now entering combat.¡± ¡°Well he¡¯s screwed now there about 30 mins until the free for all and there¡¯s still 11 of us to go.¡± ¡°See you¡¯re underestimating him again. He may not actually win the whole but I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll take some of us with him when he goes.¡± Nightcrawler popped back in to finish taking out the downed X-men. ¡°Jean started streaming this to the rest of the school and they are going crazy, they want to make this a monthly thing that anyone can try.¡± Storm shook her head. ¡°Come on Sunfire let¡¯s head back towards the door I have another plan that should work.¡± That lighting strike ended up giving me a bunch of tiny little spots, like cigarette burns and my clothes were crispy now. Nothing a healing trance couldn¡¯t cure but it would take time, and that was something I was running out of. I was starting to doubt myself and whether I could pull this off. So far most of my takedowns have been cheap shots. Screw it! I was doing good just to get where I¡¯m at. Let¡¯s just heal up and go at them straight up because it would take a miracle to beat them all the way I¡¯ve been doing it. It was the announcement of Polaris entering combat that woke me out of my healing trance. The free for all had begun and now I only had 10 mins to find the team before the next person entered. Well at least I was feeling a lot better and now had a better grasp on how to use my powers in real combat. After climbing out of the sewers, I turn off gravity for me and used Tk to push me around, it was my preferred way of flying for now. I found them 6 mins later in a park that they somehow managed to turn into a crude earthen fort. Pity, I was about to show them why they shouldn¡¯t have bothered. I flew a hundred feet above them, turned on my shields and increased my gravity to 2x earth¡¯s and dived. While falling I focused my TerK for a massive earth shock and spike attack. They saw me coming in and started taking pot shots at me but so far, my shield was able to handle Storm¡¯s lighting, Sunfire¡¯s fire, and Polaris¡¯s metal spikes. When I landed or crashed really it looked just like a fat kid doing a cannonball in a pool. The earth rippled out from me in big waves and tore down their defenses while they got tossed around. Before they could recover from that a bunch of bunt, earth spikes launched at them for extra damage. Unfortunately, the earth wave had no effect on Storm and Angel and they were able to dodge the spikes. Storm waved her hand a big gust of wind blew away the dust cloud that was covering my crater. As soon as he could see me Angel dived down at me with a double dropkick. He was really fast but I expected something like that so caught him with Tk and slammed him hard into the ground like Hulk did Loki. (Bet you didn¡¯t know he¡¯s another one with healing powers huh? Yeah, his blood can raise the dead, although he hasn¡¯t got to that point yet in this universe.) Next, I wanted to see if I could pick off any of the others that were laying around, but before I could I heard this. ¡°Iceman now entering combat.¡± ¡°Frack!!¡± Beast was the first to recover mainly because he was able to dodge the majority of the earth spikes. So, I picked him up and threw him at Storm again but this time she was ready so she caught him with wind and sent him back at me. Since it looked like he was having fun being a human tennis ball I spiked him at Psylocke who was trying to sneak up on me, and they went tumbling away. Polaris shot metal spikes at me which I stopped, and we began a little tug of war with them. Sunfire jumped backed into the fight with a fire blast and I threw up a shield to handle it. Storm did another lighting strike so I messed with the metal spikes polarity to draw the lighting in. (We really got to work on getting her some new offensive moves.) We were in a kind of stalemate but I saw Beast helping Angel to get back on his feet which meant Psylocke was out there somewhere. ¡°Alright let¡¯s clear the field!¡± I reshaped my shield to redirect Sunfire¡¯s fire at Polaris. While she was distracted, I took full control over the spikes and sent them at Storm. Sunfire had a horrified look on his face as I grab him and slung him towards me. (I don¡¯t know why he had that look, we worked hard to make sure she has shields too.) When he finally started paying attention to me, he was met with a 100 lbs. gravity and Tk reinforced right cross that put him to sleep. Meanwhile, Storm, who manage to blow most of the spikes away, and Polaris who also recovered were closing in. I charged toward Storm since she was finally on the ground for once and a pain in the butt, but I only got a couple of steps before an ice beam hit me from the back and started to rapid freeze me. Iceman had shown up to the party, Great!! While I still had some movement left, I released the biggest laser I could make and tried to split him straight down the middle. He was able to block most of it but it still knocked off his ice slide and fell hard to the ground. Meanwhile, Psylocke finally snuck up on me and went to town with her psi daggers. My shields dealt with her and I reinforced them but was still mostly frozen so I couldn¡¯t move much. Polaris decided that wasn¡¯t enough so she decided to increase my gravity as much as she could which brought me down to my knees. Storm saw that Psylocke wasn¡¯t doing much damage so she ordered her off and created a localized tornado to suck away my air and knock me out. I¡¯m not going to lie things were looking bad and I was hurting all over. Beast had declared Angel to hurt to continue so he was free to come back to the fight along with the next combatant and Iceman was getting back on his feet too. I was having trouble breathing and couldn¡¯t focus long enough to do something about it. I just wanted to give up and call it a day. I mean I think I did a pretty good job considering, how many other people can claim to have taken out 11 of the X-men at one time. Just as I was about to give up and tap out, everything seemed to stop and I was yanked into my mind palace. 9. Enough with the practice!!! "God you¡¯re so pathetic! You didn¡¯t even last one fight, and it wasn¡¯t even a real fight. What did you think you¡¯re one of those blessed Main characters that get everything handed to them? Does baby need a system? I got a old grandpa here that can wipe your a** too. Sorry, there¡¯s no plot armor here boy!" I looked around and saw that I was in my mind palace (which looked like my old lab on earth by the way) but everything was greyed out. The other difference was the guy or thing sitting in my favorite chair berating me. I couldn¡¯t tell what or who it was because it was hidden in shadows but whatever it was, it sure was pissed with me. "You were given your greatest wish and unlimited power but as soon as things started getting just a little bit hard, what did you do? You wanted to pack up your toys and go home? I think not! You think the Chitauri or dark elves army are just going to stop just because you don¡¯t want to play anymore? No boy, you need to find your balls and dig a whole lot deeper. You my boy are one of the few MC¡¯s that actually has to work for what you get. That¡¯s the trade off, you want all that op power you¡¯re going to have to bust your butt for it. And so far, you are barely trying." It sighed and sat back. "Ayiee¡­ I guess it¡¯s not completely all your fault though. You were, after all thrown into the deep end¡­ but still that¡¯s no excuse for your weak knees and belly aching. So, I am going to give you a choice. A, you completely give up the superhero thing and I take your powers. And just to be nice I¡¯ll set you up as a normal guy in Stark industries R & D. Or B, you totally commit to this life, this reality and give it your all instead of waiting around for the next shoe to drop. Oh, and just so you¡¯re clear there aint no do overs or spawn points. You die and that¡¯s it, you get shipped back to where you came from and have to deal with that afterlife." I still couldn¡¯t figure out who this dude was or what was going on but he was dropping some truth. I¡¯ve been here for about 2 months it still doesn¡¯t feel real. Sometimes I think I could just be in a coma from the truck and this could all be some really cool dream. Mostly none of this felt like it was really happening to me. Instead it felt like I was living in a fanfic I wrote about myself so the stakes never felt all that great because I figured I could change things whenever I wanted to suite my needs. Well at least that¡¯s how it was until I met this dude. As soon as I saw him, I felt like a hallway guy at the end of Rogue One and he was Vader. This guy reeked power and it was all I needed for a wake-up call. I knew instinctually that this guy could destroy me. I think if I had been in my body, I would have peed myself but somehow, I was forced to focus on what he was saying and¡­he wasn¡¯t wrong. I really was half a**ing it. Like I said before, it felt like one super realistic dream that I could wake from at any minute. I mean come on you probably read as much fan fics as I did. Do you really think something like that could ever happen to you for real? Do you look both ways before crossing the street just in case? Do you double check your circuit breakers before you use your pc or game consoles? Do you ever think you¡¯ll get random message from a god? Plus look at how I got here with no instructions or anything, come on that was not a standard Isekai!!! Anyway, getting back to the point. The biggest thing was that deep down I really wasn¡¯t sure if I even wanted to be a hero. Yeah it was a dream of mine but not a real one. Just one of those things you wish for that you know will never happen. How many kids dream about being the next Lebron or mega star and living that life, actually believe that it could happen to them. Being a super hero was just one of those things that was cool to think about but I never expected to happen. So, when I got here and was able to do it for real freaked me out and like the guy said I haven¡¯t even been out on the streets yet. Plus, at the time I didn¡¯t know, if I died again, did I die for good or get to go to another world? Well now I know and seeing as how those choices he gave weren¡¯t choices really it was time to put up and shut up. ¡°Ok Mr. Shadow, I¡¯m all in, I¡¯ll fully commit to being a hero. Can you tell me what else I have been doing wrong?¡± ¡°Well boy half of your problem was commitment issues and the other was that you got your powers all wrong.¡± He¡­It held up a hand before I could speak. ¡°No one is going to tell you what or how they work, you¡¯ll have to figure it out on your own, but the folks on Bleecker Street owe me one and they¡¯ll give you some more training when you¡¯re ready. But to dumb it down for you, basically you don¡¯t believe in your powers so they don¡¯t or only half way work.¡± After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I asked. ¡°What does that even mean?¡± ¡°It means you¡¯re really lucky to even be able to do the little you can. I see you are a man of science through and through so the bit of power that you can use only works because you ¡°believe¡± it follows the rules of science. Here¡¯s your hint, what your powers really does is break all the rules, unfortunately you don¡¯t know what the rules are. That¡¯s something the wizards can help you with later, but until then try to be more like a Jedi and less like a mad scientist in your approach. But this is just a band-aide though, until you understand yourself and yours powers, you¡¯ll never be that supreme op being you want to be.¡± It leaned back into the chair. ¡°Well kid my time¡¯s just about up so I will answer one more question.¡±If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. My mind was blown yet again. So, does this mean I don¡¯t really have Psychokinesis? And what does ¡°Jedi like¡± even mean? Now I had a headache to go with the bodyache trying to figure this out. But I was still on the clock and since he wouldn¡¯t tell me how my power work maybe if I found out who sent me here, I could get a better understanding of what¡¯s going on and where my powers came from. ¡°Who are you and Are you the one that sent me here?¡± It laughed and it wasn¡¯t a human laugh either. ¡°No. You can¡¯t even begin to comprehend that guy right now. And no, I don¡¯t know why he does anything he does. It doesn¡¯t matter right now you just need to get ready for what you know is coming. Oh, and about that, the more you change things the less accurate your future knowledge will be. So, plan well. Speaking of I¡¯ll give you 5min to think of something to get out the mess you¡¯re in and if you happen to win, I¡¯ll give you a prize.¡± Next thing I knew he was gone and everything is back in color. That was a big info dump and I needed to get my head straight but that was a lot to take in. I was really hoping that who ever brought me here would lead to some clues about what¡¯s really going on but like everything since I got here, guess I¡¯ll just have to roll with it. As far as my new life crisis goes, now that I know for sure I only have one life I¡¯ll start acting like it. But honestly, it¡¯s not like I wasn¡¯t before it was just that I wasn¡¯t sure about anything and I didn¡¯t want to die AGAIN for nothing. This may all be a story to you but for me it¡¯s real life and there are a lot of people out there that want to do bad and don¡¯t mind killing heroes while they¡¯re at it. So, let me get this all straight in my head first. Some really powerful ROB brought me here for a reason and I¡¯m guessing it¡¯s monstrously strong if other random ROBs like Mr. Shadow are scared of it. So, I¡¯m thinking it has to be stronger than a Celestial but probably not the One above all. The great god Stan has better things to do then play around with me I hope¡­¡­ We¡¯ll comeback to this when I get some more info. Now that I know the alternative, I am ready to fully commit to being a super now. I thought about it some and realized that MC¡¯s rarely die unless they where doing something incredible heroic or where in one of those sick stories where the author got off on killing main characters ¡®Cough¡¯ Thrones ¡®Cough¡¯. The only thing I could figure out for my powers where that maybe I was being to firm in my thinking and needed to trust my instincts more? Maybe if I used science as a start but then tried whatever felt right? Something to try out latter but I will say that I had started to notice some inconsistencies in my powers. Sometimes I would be able to do stuff but when I tried again later I couldn¡¯t so the Shadow dude had a point. Alright enough lollygagging lets get back to it and get that prize. Previously on X-men, I was getting my butt kicked. Storm was still choking me and I was still on my knees dealing with 4x earth¡¯s gravity. I guess for the fun of it Iceman was also charging up a blast for me, and don¡¯t forget Beast and Psylocke were outside the tornado just waiting. And did I mention Cyclops was on his way. This is what I came back to after my little time out. I needed to get rid of the biggest pain in my butt, big sis. So instead of throwing her at Iceman (Something I¡¯ve been doing a lot of.) I picked him up and made sure his blast hit her full force. They didn¡¯t see that coming and she ended up blasted through a shop and frozen to its back wall. Once she was down, I lunched Iceman at Polaris but she was ready for that and caught him. That was fine because I just needed the distraction to get out of her gravity field and lunch myself into the air. Now that Storm was finally out so they didn¡¯t have any more real flyers at the moment which meant they were screwed. Beast was trying to gain some height by bouncing off buildings and Psylocke was trying to bring me down by throwing her daggers. (Thankfully she has gotten her teleporting powers yet.) To deal with her, I created a pit underneath her and closed it up when it got to her neck. For Beast I picked up a bunch of junk of the street with my TK and threw them at him. While he was jumping around dodging, I timed it so that during one of his dodges the gravity flipped sideways and he crashed hard head first into the side of a building, taking him out. Polaris and Iceman weren¡¯t just sitting around so I decided to lead them on a chase. Iceman on his slides and Polaris on a¡­.. is that a car hood? Anyway, they both took shots at me as we raced through the streets and the ones that didn¡¯t completely miss me my shields took care of. I didn¡¯t have a destination in mind I just wanted to get them away from the door because I knew the rest should be coming in about now. We were about a block away from the park when I got the conformation. ¡°Shadowcat, Marrow, and Magma now entering combat.¡± After 2 more blocks I figured it was good enough so I stopped and lunched a audio bomb at the duo. This bomb had the double effect of shattering Iceman¡¯s slide and inducing vertigo on the both of them. I gave them a TK boost to their fall to make sure they would stay down this time. (Is it a good thing or bad thing that I¡¯m the one that has to put all of us back together when this over?) I¡¯ll spare you the rest of this long story and tell you that I beat the last four after another hour but Cyclops made me work for it. He decided that guerrilla tactics would work best on me with the team he had left and his hit and runs worked for a good while. Eventually I got really tired and said the he*l with it since I was playing the bad guy lets do something bad and unleashed a gravity storm that leveled half the city before it crashed the Danger Room. The X-men caught the tail end of it but they still got banged up enough to be considered out. And that my friends is how I ended up sore all over and unable to move because I spent up all my power. But it was worth it. I beat the X-men and found new ways to use my powers. It was time to get ready for Big Green. 10. Jumping into Phase 1 So, here¡¯s what I learned from all that. 1. The X-men are good but not great yet. 2. I could do a whole lot better but I think I¡¯m at the point where I could do street-level work now. 3. I think I figured out what Mr. Shadow was trying to tell me about my powers. I took me a while, but I figured out the catch 22 I am in. See what Mr. Shadow was saying was that I was thinking about my powers in a purely scientific way and that was limiting them but on the flip side, the only reason that they were even working is because I understood a little bit of the science behind them. This went a long way to explaining all the inconsistencies I¡¯d had with my powers. So, with nothing else to go on, I decided to just try a bunch of different stuff and see what worked without worrying about how I was doing it. This led to me being a minor OP character that didn¡¯t know if or when some of my powers would even work when I really needed them. I was essentially broken in two ways (Stupid level powers but they don¡¯t always work) but figured the training with the wizards could help me with that later on. The good news though, is that the prize Mr. Shadow gave me was a base. Well, I think it¡¯s a base. While I was healing everybody up, a present box just appeared next to me and inside was a land deed and some keys. After a search on Google Maps, the address showed up as a smallish warehouse in Chelsea. I plan on checking it out once I head to the city to start my patrols. The next thing I needed to finalize was my suit. Who knew that Professor X and Beast were already on good terms with Reed Richards so they already had a steady supply of "unstable molecules" materials to make the X-men suits, so that was one less headache to deal with. The biggest problem was Forge. This guy was never around when you needed him. Between all his government work with Homeland and SHEILD, plus all those R&D think tanks banging down his door it was hard to get a hold of him. Luckily the headpiece I wanted him to build wasn¡¯t that complicated and he was able to bang it out in an hour. Although he wasn¡¯t able to do an A.I. because he¡¯d never worked on those before. But I did give him some ideas on how to get started. I¡¯ll just have to make my own once I get situated. Ok, I¡¯m going to describe my suit but let me start by saying that this is just a prototype before you start laughing. It¡¯s a onesie!! A big all black onesie but only because I was using "unstable molecules" material. That stuff is hard to shape so to keep it simple, it needed to be a onesie. Picture the black Spiderman suit but with a midnight blue hawk on the chest instead of a white spider. I also made a midnight blue cowl cape that was deep enough in the hood that you could only see the glowing blue eyepieces of the mask. The mask was the main thing Forge worked on. It was soft like Spidey¡¯s masks are but had mostly the same kind of tech as Tony¡¯s. The only thing I was missing was an A.I. but I figured once I finished working on my brain, I should be able to bang one out myself if I even needed one at that point. The other thing he helped me out with was a utility belt that I gleefully (Stole) borrowed from Batman, again with a hawk logo instead of a bat. I won¡¯t go into the details but here are some highlights: Hawkarangs that I could throw or control with TK, Plastic handcuffs, USB hacker for doors and computers cause I¡¯m still working on my TeK, smoke bombs, first aid kit, Forensics Kit, and a rebreather/gas mask. Most of this stuff was just in case something happened to my powers and I couldn¡¯t use them or they stop working. I haven¡¯t found my Kryptonite yet but that doesn¡¯t mean it¡¯s not out there. Now for the personal stuff. Jean (who I¡¯ve been dating for almost 2 months) made it crystal clear that she was coming with me. Even though I explained to her that my life would be long periods of routine boredom followed by world-ending danger, she still insisted that somebody need to keep an eye on me and that she was perfect for the job. I may or may not have slipped up and told her that I loved her too. And no, it¡¯s not too soon, it¡¯s just that I¡¯m a bit of a private person when it comes to that stuff and I need to work up to telling all of you, every single romantic detail of our love life. I¡¯ll tell you what, I¡¯ll do a flashback special that will be dedicated to just our relationship. Anyway, moving on she became a reserve member of the X-men and transferred to ESU to finish out her Psychology degree. We going to check out my warehouse this weekend and finding someplace to stay. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. I was really going to miss my new friends especially since I¡¯d never had any before. This was all a new and good experience for me. They threw us a big going away party even though I kept telling them we were only moving to the city, not another world. Even though we were leaving we would still be dropping in on them from time to time and I hoped to get in on some of the classic missions they went on. I¡¯m guessing that it¡¯s after Iron man 2 when the Sentinel program will kick off and I have plans for those things. I also really want to put the beat down on Magneto because he¡¯s the biggest hypocrite in the world and for the way, he treats his kids. Speaking of them Polaris swears she and only child and this MCU has mutants so Age of Ultron is going to be very interesting when it comes to Pietro and Wanda. Personally, I feel for what happened to Jarvis but I love Vision, so guess I¡¯ll have to have Tony back him up some way because I really hated all the A.I. that came after. Me and the professor had a heart to heart before we left and I gave him an¡­ let''s call it an outline of things to look out for. I told him that there are aliens out there and that some of them consider themselves to be gods and actually ruled the world for a time and would try to again if they ever came back. That he really needs to relocate all of Cannonball¡¯s family to the school and maybe give his mom a job as the house mother??? I also suggested that the X-men get a PR representative and get ahead of the haters in government and fund their own lobbyist to push his agendas. But the biggest thing was that he needed to find someone he trusted that he could talk too about anything and to not let things build up inside. (I wanted no part of Onslaught but I wasn¡¯t sure how to stop him from happening.) I told Cyclops that I¡¯d be in touch and that in about a year and a half I knew where we could steal a spaceship so he just needed to wait and train the X-men well on how to stop an invasion or fight a war. 00000000000000000 The warehouse is amazing!!! The outside doesn¡¯t look like much but the sign on the door said New World Inc. which was kinda funny when you think about it. When you come inside you see and standard 3 room office with a little reception area and a small bathroom. There is a hallway that leads to the main warehouse floor that¡¯s completely empty right now. To the right, you can see stairs that lead to a pretty decent apartment loft by NYC standards. 1 bedroom, 1 full bath, living/dining room, and a medium size kitchen. Thank Stan Jean loved it because I was not looking forward to apartment hunting in Manhattan. Mr. Shadow even kicked in for the furniture. I¡¯m thinking with a little work this could be the HQ for my business. In the kitchen I found a letter address to me taped to the fridge from Mr. Shadow. He told me to go to the utility closet and flip some circuits in a specific order to get a bonus. (Who doesn¡¯t love freebies!) So, after following his instructions a section of the back wall opened up into a dark stairwell leading down to a hidden basement. Now I don¡¯t want to sound ungrateful to Mr. Shadow cause he just gave me a bunch of free stuff but would it have killed him to put in an elevator. Those stairs were extremely long, I¡¯m guessing, enough to reach a good deal under the seabed. And I was dreading going up and down, up and down all those stairs every time I wanted to get to the basement. I guess I could fly, but still¡­. All was forgiven when I got to the bottom and saw my new tricked out lair. The centerpiece was definitely the computer. I haven¡¯t really got into the guts of the thing yet but I can tell you for sure it''s not from earth. Even my TeK doesn¡¯t work on it. What I do know is that it¡¯s fast and voice-activated but it doesn¡¯t have an A.I. At least I think it doesn¡¯t. Think Siri on steroids. It is able to connect with my mask and the coms system I set up for Jean (She also wants to patrol with me and become a mainstream hero.) but I don¡¯t know how it does it yet. I¡¯m thinking this is another test from Mr. Shadow. And even If he didn¡¯t tell me so I would definitely be thinking he¡¯s preparing me for something. The last thing about this Computer is that there is no screen. It¡¯s all interactive holograms. The Lair also contains state of the art facilities such as a crime lab, specialized laboratories, mechanized workshops, personal gymnasium, a mini library, parking, docking space for various vehicles as well as separate exits for the various types. It also has a mini medical facility as well as various areas used for training exercises or practice. Mr. Shadow really saved me a whole lot of time and trouble because I¡¯m broke and I didn¡¯t want to have to keep mooching off the X-men. I did have plans to rob from the bad guys and probably will still, to keep the lights on and get my company off the ground. Right now, I¡¯m using my supercomputer to track Bruce, Tony, and Thor. It didn¡¯t seem like when the movies came out but then events of Ironman 2, Thor 1, and Hulk happened all around the same time. So, my priority is to get out there and make a name for my self so that when I show up for the big stuff people aren¡¯t like ¡°Who?¡±. Also, I want to speed up body and matter manipulation so I can finish modding my body and get started on my nanites. So till next time!!! 11. Nighthawk Begins So, this is it the first night. When it all begins. Man, I¡¯ll tell you there¡¯s nothing like it. I¡¯ve seen Toby, Andrew, Tom, and Christian do it on the big screen but nothing compares to actually taking that first leap. If fact Jean kept having to slap me upside the head for half the day because I was bouncing off the walls, I was so giddy with excitement. Speaking of it wasn¡¯t a surprise Jean insisted that she would be doing the hero gig with me, at least for the first few weeks, then later when she could. She really wants to finish her degree so she can help regular people and heroes in ways other than just using her powers. I admit this was part of my overall ¡°phoenix plan¡±, a bit of ¡®physician heal thy self¡¯, but I figured if she had to study about hoe to help people with multiple and repressed personalities it would help her deal with her own situation better. Oh, by the way, did I tell you about her suit? Since we¡¯re stuck with onesies until I finish working out the kinks with the unstable molecules, we decided to go with the look from the ¡¯90s and the show. Except replace the yellow with dark green, the blue parts with black, keep the X symbol and throw in a domino mask and you have one seriously hot crime fighter. But back to that first night. . . . It was a none stop adrenalin rush the whole night, especially since we were cheating with Jean¡¯s empathic powers to keep finding trouble so there really wasn¡¯t any downtime. We decided to start our patrols in Tribeca down by the docks and work in a counter-clockwise route for the first few days but I planned to focus on Harlem so that the people and police in the area would at least be able to recognize us when H-day arrived. We had a whole system for how takedowns went. We had cameras on our suits and two mini drones that the computer back at HQ controlled, so we would capture video of the bad guy actually doing bad things before we would come in and save the day. Which by the way was super easy against regular humans. They couldn¡¯t break out of our TK like supers could so after one quick stun they were ready for the zip ties and a call to the police. After cleaning up the scene we would leave a card for the police that had the web address of a black site where they could download footage of the crime in progress and our takedown with a temporary password. Good luck to anybody trying to trace our servers. I still have no idea exactly how our computer works. The crime rate in a comic book world is way different than in our world. I mean really, how many times can the same bank get robbed in one month? If I didn¡¯t know any better, I would swear someone was just randomly generating mobs just for us like a video game. During the weeks leading up to H-day, we dealt with everything from cats in trees to 5 alarm fires but no super fights yet it was all street-level stuff. But our heroics were steadily getting noticed, building up to the point that even J Jonah Jameson was starting to make grumblings about our identity and declaring us a menace. Unfortunately for him, he couldn¡¯t really bash us as he would later Spiderman because we had video to backup all our deeds. Plus, we were very giving to our fans. We didn¡¯t mind taking (real) pictures with our fans or giving autographs. (Selfies aren¡¯t a thing yet.) Also like I said we have a website that clearly listed who we are and what our goals are. We even answered some questions about ourselves on the message board. Which was way more than Ironman and the FF were doing, the only publicly known heroes so far. Yeah sorry, I forgot to mention the Fantastic Four to you guys. Maybe because subconsciously I was afraid, to look them up and see the fan4stic group but luckily, they were the Jessica Alba group, so now I really can¡¯t wait to see what happens when Johnny meets Cap for the first time. Anyway, Tony could care less how he looked in the press and I don¡¯t think it even occurred to Reed that they needed to have good PR. I think the fact that they were hardly even on earth most of the time probably had a lot to do with that. But I, on the other hand, had big plans that I will freely admit I stole from one of the fanfics I used to read back in my world. (Hope it¡¯s still going.) I wanted to use modern social media tactics to head off the whole mutant hating thing by rebranding them Metahumans. Hey, it worked for DC, plus it doesn¡¯t have any of the negative connotations that the name Mutant has. So far, it¡¯s going great and the news reporters are even starting to use it. We even set up a hotline on the website that Metas could call if they need help or just wanted someone to talk to. It got so much use that even after verifying the calls that we had to turn that part over to the Professor and the X-men. Another part of my plan was to work with Charles on a big PR push to announce the X-men coming out as an official/legal meta team of heroes at some point. But the real reason I doing all this so that I didn¡¯t come home one night and find a tall one-eyed black man in my living room waiting to ask me a bunch of questions. I wanted to be loud and easily trackable or at least predictable so he wouldn¡¯t think we were a big threat or hiding something. Since we are constantly seen doing good, I hoped it could buy us some time. I planned on talking to him sometime during Ironman 2 anyway. 000000000000000000000000000000 Alright, enough stalling. You just want to know what happened on H-day dont cha? Well, to be honest, we almost missed the whole thing cause Hammerhead and Tombstone decided that this particular night was just perfect for a gang fight. Their timing sucked us but I did end up taking a huge weight off my chest. To understand we gotta go back to that day¡­.. I had the computer monitoring the net and the news outlets for any strange happenings at Culver University and that mini-war went down a day ago so I knew that today would be the day. We had a good plan for taking everybody down without a lot of destruction; I would cloak myself in Dr. Sterns''s lab and protect him from Blonsky preventing him from becoming the Leader and Blonsky the Abomination in the first place. (Also, I wanted to get a sample of Bruce¡¯s blood) Meanwhile, Jean would follow Bruce and Betty back to the military base and scoop them up when they got off the helicopter. She would then explain to them what was going on while she waited for me to catch up and then we would take them to hide out at the X-mansion for a while. Simple if it goes as planned. But you know the old saying no plan survives contact with the enemy. So, by now you¡¯re probably wondering if that was the plan why we were patrolling Harlem so much before and getting the lay of the land and all that if the plan was to stop Abomination before he even started? Well, I¡¯m ashamed to say that for a while I was actually going to let things play out and let Blonsky become Abomination despite all the damage and destruction I knew he would cause. I fell for the thing most OP characters fall for eventually. I let my powers and how easy all this was going to my head and forgot that this isn¡¯t some story and my real life now and all those people that could die are real people with real lives. For a minute there I honestly saw those people as just some randos or NPCs that didn¡¯t matter because they weren¡¯t real to me the ¡°Big time MC of the universe.¡± I don¡¯t know what the Frack I was thinking the people come first always and this was not a movie no matter how it feels sometimes. The only problem is that this philosophy is really going to screw me latter if I try to keep every bad thing from ever happening. Eventually the timeline is going to get so screwed up all my information will be useless. After this I would need to come up with a compromise that didn¡¯t jeopardize my morals. I need to find the line between saving people and changing everything. So, with that drama out of the way back to the story. We spent the day hanging out on the Grayburn campus in the quad waiting for things to kick off because I wasn¡¯t sure of the exact timing of things. I just knew that the army didn¡¯t show up till around dusk. Unfortunately, like I said before all of that planning and fretting went out the window when the computer alerted us to and A.P.B. about a gang shootout between Tombstone and Hammerhead¡¯s crews. ¡°So, what do we do Nico? It sounds like the police are getting pounded.¡± Jean had a look of worry on her face. ¡°We go help and pray to Sta¡­ I mean God that we get back in time to stop Blonsky.¡± Jean still looked worried. ¡°What if we split up and one of us stays here?¡± ¡°Umm¡­ I thought about that but it would be faster if we both go. Hammerhead is not that tuff but Tombstone is like a mini Abomination himself so if our plans work on him it should work on Abomination too.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± We quickly ducked into an alley to change and took off. We arrived to a war zone. There was a three-way shootout going on between the two crews and the police. Tombstone¡¯s crew was on the left side of a four-way stop while Hammerhead was on the right. The Police were pinned down to the south and there was a big pileup blocking the north street and part of the east. Thankfully there were no fires yet but we could see people hiding and ducking for cover in the pileup. ¡°Phoenix you go for the civilians and then any runners. I¡¯ll do a shock and awe before I grab all the guns.¡± ¡°Got it.¡± Phoenix went to save the few civilians that were trapped by the crossfire while I started building up a massive fireball above everybody¡¯s head. It looked like a miniature sun suddenly appeared above their heads. Well, they thought it was real but really it was mostly just a light show to set up a distraction for Phoenix. Predictably the goons started freaking out when they saw a gigantic fireball hovering above there heads. They stop shooting and started panicking. This gave Phoenix enough time to save the few civilians that were trapped in the crossfire and for me to use electromagnetism to grab up all the goon¡¯s guns. That¡¯s when they realize they were really screwed and the smart ones started to rabbit. I threw the guns in a pile behind the police and erected a TK barrier to keep the goons for getting far. I¡¯ll tell you there is nothing funnier than seeing a grown man running full speed into an invisible wall.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Phoenix did the same on the other side and used her TK to start rounding the goons up. Once they were all grouped together, I used a low powered chain lighting to knock them all out except for¡­, you guessed it the two bosses. I think Hammerhead managed to block the lighting with his head while Tombstone didn¡¯t even feel it. ¡°Nighthawk I got Hammerhead you go take Tombstone.¡± ¡°Copy that.¡± It didn¡¯t matter to me who took down who but I was curious as to how she would do it. I ended up being in awe of how easy she made it look. Before Hammerhead could even get his supervillain, monologue going Phoenix grabbed him up with TK and started spinning him around like a top. He was so dizzy and wasted when she put him down that all he could do was lay on the ground and puke his guts out. Phoenix then TK pulled a bunch of handcuffs from the cops to hogtie him and added a mental strike just to put him out of his misery. When the cops approached, she warned them that he could easily break out of the cuffs when he woke up if they weren¡¯t careful. Most of them were grateful for the assist but some were still looking at her fearfully. My fight on hand was a little different. I knew Tombstone was light-sensitive so I started off with a flash bomb and followed up with a sonic blast that would keep him off-balance. I gotta give him some credit though, he could barely see straight let alone stand up straight but still, he threw punches, trying to take me out. As funny as it was to watch him flail and fumble around, we needed to wrap this up and get back to the school. So, I implemented the plan we had for Abomination or the Hulk if he went on a rampage. Which was really simple in explanation but hard for most in the MCU+ to do. I choked him out by forming a TK shield around his head and waited until he passed out. Simple right but the key for this to even work is to make sure that whoever you try this on is already disoriented before you start or your going to have a really bad day. Once he was down, I realized that cuffs for supers needed to be next on my to-do list but for now I just used two light poles to wrap him up for the cops. After a quick check of the scene to make sure everything was good, Phoenix and I raced back to the school. When we got there, there was a big hole gaping in the side of Dr. Sterns''s lab. We were too late. As we rushed in, we saw soldiers scattered across the lab and Dr. Stern crumpled up against a lab counter. ¡°We were too late!¡± Phoenix looked devastated as she saw the destruction that went on in the lab. ¡°Phoenix check on those guys over there and if they are still alive bring them over and I¡¯ll do what I can for them.¡± Meanwhile, I went to check on Dr. Stern. When I got over there, it looked like he was still alive and just starting to turn. So I pulled him away from Banner¡¯s blood and then checked him for injuries. He had a couple broken ribs and some bruises but he would live. ¡°Hawk here¡¯s the first one and I got two more but the rest didn¡¯t make it.¡± She was really sad. ¡°I understand. Put her down right here and were in triage mode from here on out, and we need to get a move on. You can hear him wrecking the streets from here.¡± She nodded her head and went off to get the next soldier. I looked down at my first patient and remembered this lady. She was acting as Ross¡¯s right-hand man in the movie. Boy was she a mess, fractures all over her midsection, a broken leg, and what looks like bleeding in the head. All of these injuries and still she was a lucky one judging by the condition of the ones that didn¡¯t make it. ¡°Phoenix do me a favor when you¡¯re done, grab all the blood samples labeled Mr. Green and destroy the rest and all of the computers. I don¡¯t want the government trying to play God again. You can stash the blood at the spot and then go work the crowd while I finish up here. And please don¡¯t take him on till I get there to help, just minimize the damage and help the people.¡± ¡°Got it.¡± She nodded and got back to work. I used my BioK to heal all the soldiers to the point where they would be stable until they could get to a hospital. Finally I gave the room a good look and headed out. When you¡¯re watching the movie, you see the damage been done but you don¡¯t really see the whole picture. You should thank the director for that cause if you saw what I¡¯m seeing right now you would either be throwing up or heartbroken. I¡¯m not going to go into details on all the horrors I saw but I will say that there were kids out tonight. I quickly scanned the streets and did quick heals on the critically damage and pulled out anyone that was trapped but I was in a hurry to catch up with Phoenix and stop this monster. After I was done and catching up I saw Phoenix throwing fireballs at Abomination to distract him from continuing his attack on the people but what she was doing was just pissing him off more so he picked up a truck and threw it at her. For some fracking reason, the army guys decided that this was the perfect time to ram him with there car. Well, you saw how that worked out for them. Luckily this time I was here to catch them before they went splat. I was already pissed off so after setting down the car I froze him in place with 5x earth¡¯s gravity while I charged at him. This didn¡¯t really stop him as so much slow his movements down to a crawl. As I was charging at him, I reinforced my right fist with concrete and hit him with an uppercut with the force of 4 tons. At the same time I released the gravity hold and watched as Abomination when rolling down the street. Phoenix came flying in next to me. ¡°How¡¯d you do that?¡± I gave her a quick smile. ¡°I told you needed to work on your gravity control more. That¡¯s why you always lost to me and sis when we raced. Anyway, what have you tried on him so far?¡± She shrugged while saying. ¡°Well I tried to get in his head and put him to sleep but there was nothing in there but chaos and tons of anger. I had to get out quick.¡± ¡°That¡¯s under¡­..¡± At that moment I heard something whistling above us and looked up to see Bruce doing his swan dive. Phoenix looked up also to see what I was looking at and gasped. ¡°Looks like break times over. Abomination is getting back up too so I need you to go and catch the idiot before the other guy shows up.¡± Phoenix was still pouting about my gravity comment but still flew off to catch Bruce while I took off after Abomination. He saw me coming and cocked back to punch me but when I was still 5 feet away, I hit him with a continuous sonic blast which seriously disoriented him and when I got close enough, I started laying into him with my concrete hands. He didn¡¯t stand a chance. I kept punching him until the concrete crumbled and finally, he crumpled to the ground. Now that he was down Phoenix and Bruce walked over. I dusted off my hands and held it out for Bruce. ¡°Dr. Banner, Nighthawk, I¡¯m a big fan of your work in physics and I also like how you turn into a green hulking rage monster.¡± He gave me a wan smile. ¡°Thank you for¡­¡± He points around. ¡°All of this? It could have been a lot worse.¡± ¡°Dr. you have no idea. Look I know you¡¯ve been looking for a cure and I happen to know some non-military types that can help you out. They have a lab and everything, plus I think as soon as Ross can find a land pad he¡¯ll be back to cause all kinds of trouble.¡± ¡°That sounds good. Almost too good actually. How do I know you won''t turn out Sterns did?¡± He looked at me with suspicion. While I rolled my eyes and Phoenix giggled. Now he starts to think about the consequences? ¡°Well for one my meta powers are way better than the super solider serum so I don¡¯t need it. Ok that¡¯s a little fib. Two, the place I¡¯m taking you to is full of people that would be less than thrill and high upset with the government knocking on their door.¡± ¡°Ok but what about Betty?¡± ¡°I can guarantee they are going to be watching her closely now and probably for the rest of her life in some way. So, what I can do is give her a choice of joining you at some point but it won''t be soon unless her life¡¯s in danger.¡± ¡°I¡­ I can accept that. What now though?¡± ¡°Well me and Phoenix are going to do S&R and cleanup until SHIELD gets here. You can help out where you can and I¡¯ll change the way you look gradually while you do.¡± ¡°WHAT???¡± ¡°Chill dude it¡¯s not permanent, just an illusion.¡± ¡°Oh ok.¡± I looked over to Phoenix who was trying her best not to outright laugh. ¡°Ok chuckles let¡¯s get to work.¡± She gave me a wave as she flew out still chuckling. I won¡¯t say lives weren¡¯t lost that night but at least it wasn¡¯t as bad as it could have been. I learned a lot that night about my self and the way this world works. It feels like a Saturday morning cartoon sometimes but I got to remember it¡¯s deadly real. There¡¯s no real MC pot armor to protect me and I or my loved ones could really die. Resurrections or retcons could not be a thing here. All of this has me really worried about Mr. Shadow. Not only did he know how I would have built my base eventually but the fact that he gave me so much all at once is troubling at the least. Whatever he has for me is big and coming soon I can feel it. The problem is I don¡¯t think I¡¯m ready. Things should settle down after Ironman 2 and I think after I train for a couple of months, I¡¯ll go see the Potter heads. But for now, Tony¡¯s birthday is in a few days so a trip to Cali is in order and maybe I¡¯ll swing by New Mexico on the way back. 12. Building the Foundations with Birthday Cake!! Fun Fact about this MCU+ world, the dates for events don¡¯t exactly match up to the movies so I¡¯m having to do a lot of guessing about when things actually happen. This is only going to make things harder since I don¡¯t know what the changes, I¡¯ve made so far are going to do to the timeline going forward. But I do know for a fact that Stark¡¯s birthday is not for a couple of days so, I have enough time for me to get my company off the ground. I¡¯m thinking about calling the company Next Med because it just sounds like a comic book company. Hank and I have put in a lot of hours to get most of the bugs worked out of the nanites. They are ready for humans trials but we need more time before they will work on Metas. But that¡¯s not our main problem, there is no way the FDA or the Health insurance/Drug companies are just going to let me release them without going through a lot of red tape and trouble. So, my plan is to start out with a version of ¡°Super Neosporin¡± that I made but didn¡¯t finish on my homeworld, to build up a brand name and public trust. I know for a fact that an ointment that can heal any open wound in an hour, that¡¯s completely 100% all-natural will fly through testing and isn¡¯t a big threat to Big Pharma. (Size of the wound determines the speed of healing. Ex a deep paper cut will heal in seconds.) The second product is something I¡¯ve been working on for Fury and the military. Thanks to Bruce¡¯s blood sample I¡¯ve been able to make a weak super-soldier serum. It¡¯s nowhere near Captain America levels for many obvious reasons but it should be able to double any soldier¡¯s stats. So basically, it just doubles their strength, speed, durability, agility, reflexes, senses, and mental processing. If the original Steve was to take this serum, he would probably only end up being a little better than a regular soldier. If you gave it to Usain Bolt, he would start to blur when saw he run. So nice improvements but not so earthshaking that I have other governments and evil organizations beating down my door to get it. The bonus is that I would get government backing for the future and a solid in with Fury. The only problem I have now is startup money. I¡¯m going to need at least a couple of millions to get started. My solution for this comes from an idea I got while reading one of my favorite web novels back home. The MC in that story had his system hack into bitcoin and steal all of it. I don¡¯t have a system and my hacking is not that good so I plan on robbing the bad guys to give to the poor and me. For the past few weeks I¡¯ve had my drones following the street-level drug dealers find out where all of their cash houses are so I could rob them all. I wanted them all, the street-level gangsters, Triad, Hand, Italians, Mexicans, Jamaicans, Kingpin, and even the Maggia. That way hopefully a big retaliation war won¡¯t break out between them and they would all focus on me. We haven¡¯t really been going after them before but now that we''re out in a bigger more public way, I wanted to put them on notice that their time was up and we were coming for them now. Thinking about it, that¡¯s one things that really bugged me about really powerful comic book heroes, they never really went after the street-level crime unless it was right in front of them. I mean hard would it have been for Superman to sweep up all the drug dealers in Metropolis. After doing it for a couple months they would have got the message and moved on to another city. Other than that, I mostly spent my time tweaking our suits and the base. Or working on my powers. Jean was studying for exams so she didn¡¯t patrol as much as I did but we both looked forward to our weekend trips back home to the X-mansion. 0000000000000000000 Stark Estate 9:30 pm I gotta tell you guys this is a great party but here comes the drunken Avenger to ruin it. ¡°Blast it!!¡± ¡°Blast it!!¡± ¡°Blast it!!!¡± Well, that¡¯s my cue. I release my invisibility and make my way over to Ms. Potts and Black Widow. Of course the super spy, Nat was the first to spot me. ¡°Hey, you¡¯re that guy from New York, Nighthawk, right?¡± ¡°Good evening ladies. I drop by to give Mr. Stark a birthday gift but it seems like he¡¯s not in any condition to accept it.¡± That was when Tony started taking potshots at stuff thrown by the crowd. ¡°Ms. Potts this is getting dangerous, if you could start escorting people out of here, I¡¯ll try to keep the property damage to a minimum.¡± For a second she looked like she wanted to argue with me about me butting in but Rhodey showing up in the second suit nixed that idea. Pepper started ushering people out and Natasha was about to help out too but I called out to her. ¡°Hey Nat just a sec, tell the one eye bandit that I will drop in a pay him a visit soon so we call talk, I know he¡¯s been looking for me.¡± She froze for a second and was going to call me out on how I knew about her and SHEILD but Pepper called her and she turned away to go help.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Once again there¡¯s nothing like seeing an epic action scene in person but right now there at the part where their getting ready to blow up the living room and each other so I better jump in. ¡°That¡¯s ENOUGH!!¡± I froze them both with Tk. ¡°You guys really¡­ Do you know what would have happened if you kept that up? Half the house would¡¯ve been blown-up probably.¡± Tony opened up his mask. ¡°I don¡¯t remember this being a costume party.¡± ¡°Aww, but I brought you a gift and everything. In fact here, let me give it to you now.¡± I went over to him and tap him on the forehead and he slumped over out cold. ¡°Hey guy, what did you just do to him?!¡± Rhodey was still trying to move even though his suit was frozen. ¡°Relax Colonel, I just knocked him out before he passed out drunk. The better question though is, did you know your best friend is sick and dying?¡± That shocked him. ¡°Wha..what are you talking about?¡± I shooked my head. ¡°You and Pepper are the only family he¡¯s got and both of you missed all the signs.¡± ¡°The guy was selling all his stuff and giving it away to charity, all the risky stunts he¡¯s been pulling, and the biggest sign was giving the company to Pepper. Not that she doesn¡¯t deserve it but come on, Tony Stark is the bigg¡­ (I flashed on Fury) ok, one of the biggest control freaks in the world. Do you really see him letting someone else run his company especially after what happen with Stane.¡± Rhodey was devastated, you could see it all over his face so I let him go. He walked over and stared at his best friend like it was the last time he would ever see him. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with him?¡± ¡°Well having a mini nuclear power plant in your chest is probably not the best thing for his body. Although its clean power the metal he¡¯s using to run it isn¡¯t and it''s killing him. That¡¯s why I came today to give him an alternative.¡± ¡°Will he be all right?¡± ¡°Yeah eventually, right now I¡¯m going to have Jarvis get him out of the suit and I¡¯ll tuck him in. As far as his poisoning goes, I have a better suppressant then the one he¡¯s using now that should last until the new metal materials come online.¡± He gave me a long look, then nodded and turned to go. ¡°Oh yeah, Colonel when you call in Hammer, make sure you don¡¯t let me anywhere near your operating systems and make sure you have someone go over everything he does to the suit when he¡¯s finished.¡± He frowned and got suspicious. ¡°How do you know all this?¡± ¡°Let''s just say I¡¯m not from around here and where I¡¯m from its very easy to get this kind of information. Just know I¡¯m here to help and pose no threat to America or any of her interests. He gave me another long look but eventually decided to give me a chance. After one last look at Tony then turned and blasted off through the hole in the roof. ¡°Ok, Jarvis are you online?¡± ¡°How may I be of service sir?¡± ¡°First did you hear the conversation I had with the good Colonel?¡± ¡°Yes sir. I too would like to know how you came upon all of these sensitive pieces of information?¡± ¡°All in good time my friend but first let''s get Tony out of this suit and into bed.¡± So, after putting the deed to word. ¡°Hey, Jarvis I need to know if you can do two things for me. One, have someone send the model of the old Stark fair sent here from Tony¡¯s old office and Two record a message for me. Can you do it?¡± ¡°It would be my pleasure, sir.¡± ¡°Alright let¡¯s begin the recording.¡± ¡°¡­¡± ¡°Morning Tony. Well probably not so much for you with that hangover but I can cure if you want. Take those pills on the nightstand and you should be right as rain in 2 mins tops. Now for your real birthday gift, I want to give you some help with your palladium problem. Unfortunately, I can¡¯t just give you the answer but I can give you a clue, along with the thing you need to solve the problem yourself. Alright here goes, when you get stuck and think it¡¯s all pointless, remember big things are all made up of small things, really really microscopic small things. Now for some bad news, Vanko is not really dead but is working with someone to do you some massive harm. This sucks for you cause you won¡¯t be in any condition or position to do anything about it for a while. But when he does strikes, I¡¯ll be around to help you out so for now prepare but don¡¯t freak out. That¡¯s about it on my end so why don''t you go out grab a donut or something and relax you¡¯ve got this.¡± ¡°Alright Jarvis end recording. Later after Tony watches a film of his father, you can let him know about the delivery of the model. He should be good from there but if he still doesn¡¯t get it tell him that ¡®he can see atoms are everywhere¡¯.¡± ¡°Later Jarvis.¡± 000000000000000 I didn¡¯t know it at the time but Tony did go get a donut and meet up with Fury but only after spending hours freaking out about the hangover pills and how I knew as much as I did about his life. The only major change to the restaurant scene was me. Fury wanted to know all about me and he grilled Tony for everything. He even ended up telling him what I said about Vanko being alive. Fury said that he would look into it. Other than that, things went just like they did in the movie. Fury dropped him off at home and put him on house arrest and Tony instantly figured out that the model was the key after watching the film of his dad. So now it was just a waiting game until the expo. While all that was going on, I was down in New Mexico stealing some D.N.A. samples from Thor. This was a key part of my master plan. Eventually, I should be powerful enough to be able to modify my own D.N.A. I¡¯m pretty sure that as long as I have a sample of a god¡¯s D.N.A. I should be able to modify my own to match it and become a god myself. Genius right??? And it doesn¡¯t stop there I could do this with anybody as long as I can get a sample of their D.N.A. I already have some from Logan and Tony but the people I really want are Reed, Peter, and Shuri. If you could make your self as smart as some of the top-level geniuses of this universe combined, imagine all of the things you would be able to do or create. My timing was pretty good and I was able to catch Thor before he woke up in the hospital. So, I didn¡¯t have to fear the ¡°Son of Odin¡± going medieval on my butt. A funny weird thing did happen at the hospital though, Darcy hit on me and gave me her phone number. I wasn¡¯t planning on sticking around though because Thor and his friends have handled a lot worse than Loki throwing a temper tantrum. Plus, I needed to get back and finish up work on the company and this weekend coming up was an X-men weekend so yea!! One-Shot Relationships are hard!! Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Friday 7:34 pm It¡¯s only been about a week since we left the mansion but Jean and I were on our way back because both of us were feeling a little homesick. It probably shouldn¡¯t have surprised me that I too felt that way but it did. These people were really my first experience with a real loving family. ¡°Did you feel this homesick when you left home the first time?¡± I asked Jean as we pulled up the mansion driveway. ¡°No not really, don¡¯t get me wrong, I love my parents but we¡¯re really not that close.¡± I gave her a wan smile. ¡°I can totally relate; my folks didn¡¯t really understand me or try to and after my brother came along, they never really had time for me so gave up.¡± She leaned over and gave me a kiss before she got out of the car. ¡°Well we have each other now so¡­¡± I chuckled and got out the car too. ¡°It would be so cheesy if I said ¡°you¡¯re my home now¡± right?¡± Jean rolled her eyes while we both laughed and went into the mansion. 000000000000000 Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Friday 7:34 pm After getting settled in Jean¡¯s old room I went to go have a long-overdue meeting with professor Xavier. I knocked on his door to his office. ¡°Come in.¡± Walking in I saw that he was seated next to the sofa instead of behind the desk. So, I went over and shook his hand. ¡°Charles, how you doing?¡± ¡°Quite well Nico, quite well, how did you and Jean fare this week?¡± I sighed as a sat on the couch across from him. ¡°Pretty good so far but it¡¯s still early days yet Charles but that¡¯s part of what I want to talk to you about.¡± I paused to get my thoughts in order. ¡°Please don¡¯t take offense to what I¡¯m about to tell you because most of it doesn¡¯t necessarily apply to you. But I feel you need to know what your¡­Let¡¯s call them counterparts have done in their life.¡± ¡°Throughout the history of the multiverse, you are accounted as a great man of peace. Sometimes likened to the Martin Luther King Jr of Mutant-kind. Most of you accomplish a great many things to bring Mutants and Humans together but just like everybody else you and your counterparts are still human underneath and therefore still fallible. And boy did some of you screw up royally.¡± I pause to see how he was taking all this. Which seemed to be well so far. ¡°That¡¯s understandable Nico but why are you telling me this?¡± ¡°To be completely honest I don¡¯t want to see history repeat it¡¯s self¡­especially when it comes to Jean.¡± His eyes popped open. ¡°What happens to Jean?¡± I shook my head again. ¡°Imagine the worst thing possible and you wouldn¡¯t even be close to what happens to her.¡± My eyes started glowing dark blue. ¡°I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER to make sure that doesn¡¯t happen this time around.¡± I took a deep breath and tried to settle down again. ¡°To be fair you and your counterparts didn¡¯t know what would happen but what you all did to her was messed up, thankfully I and this Jean have taken steps to prevent this but you still need to know what all happens to you and her, so here goes¡­...¡± Hours later, Charles was visibly upset. I ended up telling him about Jean, Onslaught, Legion, Cassandra and the Shi¡¯ar. So yeah, he needed a minute to process. While we wait let me explain what I found out about this universe. It is a mess is what it is. Not only do you have the MCU+ stuff but someone took the Fox movie¡¯s storylines and mashed them up with the classic X-men comics storyline. Apparently, the events of first-class happened but not exactly how the movie went and for some reason, the general public never found out about it either. This creates all kinds of problems, or maybe it doesn¡¯t I only saw up to Endgame so I don¡¯t know how the X-men were introduced to the MCU proper. But now I gotta untangle this mess to make any safe changes. Anyway, once Charles was focusing again, we started talking about things he needed to watch out for and to definitely find someone professional he could talk to so all that angst doesn¡¯t build up and help create Onslaught. Hopefully, my plans for rebranding Mutants will change people¡¯s negative opinions. ¡°Charles, don¡¯t take it to heart that wasn¡¯t really you that did those things and now that you know you can be prepared and change things for the better.¡± He gave me a wan smile. ¡°I know they weren¡¯t me but still¡­ in a way they were. I would like to think that no matter the version I¡¯m not the type of person that would do those things. At last, it¡¯s true what they say, ¡°no one''s perfect¡±.¡± I gave him a pat on the shoulder. ¡°Yep. It¡¯s late, let¡¯s pick this up later.¡± I moved to get up to go. ¡°Thank you for telling me, Nico. Goodnight.¡± ¡°Night Charles.¡± 0000000000000000 Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Saturday 6:47 am I caught up with big sis in her conservatory just as she was finishing her morning meditation. ¡°So how the married life?¡± She asked me with a Cheshire smile. ¡°Oh, whatever. Although Jean and I might get there one day that day is not today. Besides, I haven¡¯t seen you in a week and the first thing you do is start picking on me?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what big sisters are for.¡± ¡°Ha. Ha. There will be payback!¡± She laughed. ¡°You can try Lil¡¯ bro.¡± ¡°Anything exciting happened over here while we were gone?¡± She shrugged. ¡°Not really just the same old same. But I want to hear all about your new place.¡± ¡°All man that place is amazing. I couldn¡¯t have designed it better myself. It has just about everything we needed to get started¡­ which if I¡¯m being honest worries me.¡± Ro gave me a thoughtful look. ¡°You¡¯re wondering why it¡¯s so perfect, huh?¡± ¡°Exactly! To be honest with all my different powers there was no way I would have lost that fight against you guys. As long as you all didn¡¯t gang up and hit me all at once I would always be able to take you all down eventually. So, the reward he gave doesn¡¯t match the feat I did. This means that this was all planned and I bet Mr. Shadow would have found some other way to give me that building if I had lost.¡± ¡°What do you think he has planned for you, Nico?¡± I shrugged my shoulders. ¡°No clue. The only thing I can figure out is that he needs me for something but what would a being that powerful need me for?¡± You could feel the overprotection flowing from her as she said. ¡°I think it has something to do with where you come from. Maybe it¡¯s something only someone with your specific circumstances can do?¡± With a sigh, she told me. ¡°My advice to you little bro is to put it aside for now and live your new life. There¡¯s nothing you can do about it now but when you get to the level where you could actually change things¡­.¡± I chuckled. ¡°You¡¯re right Ro, I¡¯ll just keep it on the back burner for now and continue to get stronger.¡± She leaned over and gave me a hug. ¡°Just remember we''re all here for you and nobody gets to mess with you but me!!!¡± ¡°Again HA. HA. I love you too Ro! Are you going to the mall with us later?¡± ¡°Sure, why not.¡± 00000000000000000 Westchester County, New York Galleria White Plains Shopping Mall Saturday 10:57 am I have experienced hell and it is a mall crawl with a bunch of superpowered teens. It was only supposed to be a few of us going at first but once word got around half the campus ended up going with. And guess who got stuck carrying all those bags for the ladies when the guys bailed on me. On top of that, I¡¯m the type of shopper that likes to get in and get out, so long wondering trips trough multiple stores with no set objectives is worse than torture to me. Now on the Brightside, I didn¡¯t mind the personal fashion show Jean was putting on, asking how she looks in this and that, cause she¡¯s hot and all mine but¡­. Well, you¡¯ve seen the other female X-men, right? Let¡¯s just say ended up relentless using my BioTk to keep things under control down there. What, don¡¯t judge me, these ladies start on the chart as ¡°10¡¯s¡± and they all got a kick out of teasing and messing with me. (Thank you very much, Ro!!!) They even turned it into a game when Jean figured out what I was doing to keep things under control. (D*mn Telepaths!!!) She told the girls that she would pay for all of the purchases of whichever one of them could make me blush. I might as well have been in a strip club for all the skin ship they were giving me. As we were coming up on Victoria¡¯s Secret, I played sick and ran off. You could hear their laughter all the way on the other side of the mall. I spent the rest of the trip hiding out with Kurt at a GameStop picking out some new games for the mansion. 00000000000000000 The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Saturday 4:20pm I need to seriously decompress after all that so I escaped to the labs with Hank to get our science on. We were working on my nanites, trying to see if we could get them to the point where they could suppress the X-gene. If they could, it would open up so many doors like, allowing Hank to freely control the way he looks, allow Rogue to be able to touch people without draining them, allow Scott to better control his optic blast, to have a safe way to contain bad Mutants, and finally to give Mutants a choice on whether to keep their powers or not. A way that wasn¡¯t permanent or full of side effects like in the comics. So, you know, no pressure!! These nanites are also a key part of my plans with Fury and the whole Mutant hate problem. If I could show him a safe way of dealing with bad Mutants, I knew it would go a long way with him. Plus, by giving those who don¡¯t want to be a Mutant, or can¡¯t control their powers a choice it shows the norms that Mutants are not really loose cannons and dangerous to society unless they chose to be just like any other norms that goes out and choses a life of crime. I just had to make sure the government didn¡¯t see my nanites as the ultimate solution to the Mutant problem and try to wipe them all out. That¡¯s why my main goal is to rebrand them as Metas and start the PR push to get the public to see them as just the same as any other superhero. So, if they came for the Metas they would have to come for people like Captain America too. It always pissed me off the hate groups had nothing to say about the other superpowered and aliens that looked far worse than some Mutants and never went after them. But just because they where called Mutants it was open season. And the other hero groups like the Avengers did nothing but watch. ¡°You know Nico these nanites have the potential to do so much good in the world.¡± Hank said. ¡°Yes, but the opposite is just as true to Hank. That¡¯s why the security on the needs to be the best we can make it.¡± ¡°I understand and completely agree but don¡¯t you think 5 redundancies is a little overboard?¡± I sighed. ¡°Hank my friend, there are a lot of sick and evil people out there that would love nothing else than to turn my invention into a weapon of mass destruction. I want to do all I can to make sure that doesn¡¯t happen and know that if it ever did, I did everything possible to stop it.¡± After a thoughtful look, Hank said. ¡°Let¡¯s get to work!!¡± 00000000000000000 Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Saturday 8:32 pm Kurt dragged me out of the labs because it was time for our massive COD tournament. The only thing is we weren¡¯t using any video game systems we were using the Danger Room. It was going to be epic!!! Like a really high-tech version of paintball plus we couldn¡¯t use our powers so it was a leveled playing field. I had never had so much fun in my life. Especially when we opened up the armory and let people chose weapons from different games, things got crazy fun then. When we finished with that (My team beat Kurt¡¯s by the way.) we played a live version of Mario Kart that Hank and I whipped up. I¡¯m a die heart Peach fan so I¡¯m happy to say that it¡¯s her and not her cart that makes her so fast. (I came in 3rd or 4th most of the time.) After that, we all broke up into different groups. Some went to watch movies others went to play regular video games but most went to bed because it was so late. Jean and I decided to go for a late-night flight around the neighborhood before bed. 000000000000000000 Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Sunday 9:00 am Sunday was training day. It was scheduled for one on one power training with me in the morning and team challenges in the afternoon. I decided to break everyone up into groups of flyers, projectors, physicals, and manipulators. This wasn¡¯t perfect because some people overlap but it was good enough for what we were doing. I had the flyers going through an obstacle course in the air that focused on control and speed. The projectors were working on speed and accuracy first. Then they would work on modification, to see if they could make changes to their projections. Physicals worked on everything, speed, accuracy, control, modification, and power control. Manipulators worked on control and modification. I would love to go into individual detail but there are a ton of X-men and everybody on campus trains on Sunday even if they weren¡¯t going to be active members. So, what I can do is give you some highlights. I taught Iceman how to refine his armor and how to build bigger constructs. We also focused on manipulating things outside of himself. I had him trying to freeze a water balloon without busting it and when he got that down, he would try to freeze the inside of a plant without it showing on the outside. Other than that, I told him to try to replicate the ice spells from RPGs. I had Polaris working on being a true tank for the team. She was working on creating different types and shapes of force fields. I also had her working on magnetic artillery. Kinda like lobbing magnetic bombs that would either pull enemies together or blow them apart. Lastly, was her working on team transport, which was just seeing how many of the team she could carry through the obstacle course. You look at Colossus and think tank, too right? Wrong!! Colossus was born to be the ultimate DPS. So, with that in mind, I had him focusing on speed, stamina, and Krav Maga. I had him training as an Olympic track star with extra weights and I also threw in some parkour. The idea was that when the fight started, he would go in and completely destroy the enemy¡¯s formation while crushing the toughest opponent on that side. I was going to make him a mace out of vibranium later after I stole it from Klaue. I had Nightcrawler working on trying to teleport objects before working on increasing the weight he could teleport. I had Havok and Cannonball working on sort of a ping pong situation. They would fire a blast between them and see how long they could keep it going before one of them missed. I kept the RPG theme when it came to team training, I broke them up into five-man teams that were based on standard RPG teams. Which worked really well because most of us were gamers anyway and with the teams pretty well balanced, they crushed the training missions I set up. So, I told them next visit I would program some boss battles from FF7, Diablo, Gears, Halo and Chrono Trigger. (lol) The groans were loud and clear but hey like they say if it ain''t broke don¡¯t fix it. 000000000000000000 Westchester County, New York X-Mansion Sunday 8:44 pm We had just finished up the group training but I held back some of them to do some family drama damage control. In the group was Scott, Alex, Lorna, Kurt, Anna-Marie, Sam, and Jean. ¡°So, I held you all back because I want to talk to this group specifically about family. I know how much family means to this group. So, I¡¯m going to tell you guys a bit about your families across the universes and what I could gather from this one. But I have to stress that for most of you, even though your biological family has and can let you down, the family that you chose, this family (X-men) will always be there for you. (God, I sound like Vin Diesel.) Alright, so here¡¯s a little about the most common occurrences of your families so that you can be mentally prepared and not blindsided by the truth when it comes.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s start with Sam. The reason why I had the Professor bring in your whole family is due to the fact that all of your brothers and sisters carry the X-gene and it would be bad if we left them out there alone. In the other universes¡­. It doesn¡¯t go well for your family. I know your mom knows some of this but later I will sit down with you all and go over some of the lowlights of what happens to them and the pros and cons of being a Mutant or Meta as we will be soon called.¡± Understandably he looked upset and worried. ¡°Hey, and this goes for the rest of you too, the whole reason I¡¯m telling you all these things is so we can change things for the better. They are all fine now and we¡¯ll keep it that way.¡± He nodded and smiled a bit. ¡°Thanks, man this means a lot to me.¡± ¡°De nada.¡± ¡°Kurt, you want to find your mother and Anna you did everything you could to get away from yours, Right?¡± They both nodded. ¡°Well, I now pronounce you brother and sister¡­. or at least foster brother and sister.¡± Jaws were dropped for that one. ¡°You see Mystique is your real mom Kurt and Anna¡¯s foster mother. Although in some worlds she is your real mom too. But more importantly you should both know that on all the many worlds she loves you both very much and would like to be in both of your lives but circumstances always drove her to do the things she did to you.¡± Anna was thoughtful while Kurt looked like his world just got shattered, which it kinda did. ¡°Kurt you got to understand, she never wanted to give you up but¡­...she had an affair and her husband at the time was not amused. Your mother ¡°took care¡± of him to save you but there were complications. Mobs were formed and buildings were burned. You two got separated while fleeing and you know the rest.¡± Anna moved over to him and gave him a big hug after wiping his tears. ¡°Danke, Mein Freund you have taken a huge weight off my mind.¡± ¡°Anna, she knew that the double life she was living would eventually put you into harm''s way so she drove you away thinking it was for the best.¡± She was crying a bit but nodded in acception. ¡°You two can come to me any time and I¡¯ll tell you what I can.¡± ¡°Keeping with the theme of supervillain parents, Lorna brace your self because your dad has won ¡°worst dad of the year¡± ever since he first had kids. I can¡¯t go into details about your family in this universe yet because of the way it¡¯s made but don¡¯t worry I¡¯m still researching.¡± She understood but asked. ¡°Well, what can you tell me?¡± ¡°Not a lot right now but I do have some good news, you have twin half-siblings out there that I know for a fact will absolutely love to death when you finally meet.¡± That statement was met with smiles all around and a look of wonder on Lorna¡¯s face. ¡°The bad news your deadbeat dad is Magneto.¡± ¡°W-What!!¡± Another jaw-dropping moment. This was yet again another one of the many mistakes that Charles made that we talked about earlier. Although I still mostly blame the writers, the facts remain that he kept all these emotional time bombs to himself instead of sharing them ahead of time to better prepare the victims. ¡°Yeah, but if you want a piece of him for abandoning you, you better get in line, cause I¡¯m going to wipe the floor with that hypocrite when I see him.¡± ¡°Why what did he do to you?¡± Asked Alex. ¡°Nothing yet personally. But I know for a fact that as soon as he sees my proposed changes for Mutants and my stated agenda he¡¯s going to come after me.¡± Lorna looked at me and asked. ¡°But why?¡± ¡°Well I¡¯m not his BFF like Charles so he will only see me as a threat and plus I plan on making him the poster boy for bad Metas and also for his hypocrisy.¡± ¡°Is there no hope for him?¡± She again asked. I went over and took her hands in mine. ¡°Lorna this¡­. man did some really really bad things to you in the other universes, like mind rape bad. Someone who could do that to his daughter is not someone you want to get to know.¡± There was a gasp from Jean because she really understood all that phrase ¡°mind rape¡° meant. ¡°As long as it¡¯s in his own self-interest he can do some good but usually he¡¯s so wrapped up in his ego that others and especially humans don¡¯t matter to him. There was only one case of him being a good guy and that was only because he was a clone.¡± I gave her a hug. ¡°Don¡¯t sweat it though by the time I¡¯m ready to take these two to find their dad I should have located your siblings by then.¡± That brought a smile to her face. ¡°Can you tell me about them?¡± ¡°Sure, if fact, if any of you have questions, feel free to ask me.¡± With that I spent the rest of the night answering questions and reinsuring them that things will be ok. 00000000000000000000 All in all, it was a good weekend and we got a lot done but it would be a while before I could see if these little changes would cause big changes. I had one more meeting with Charles where I explained all my plans for Mutants transforming into Metas. What rolls I saw the X-men playing later on after the invasion. My hopes for the nanites and all Meta kind. I went into detail about my PR push because eventually he would have to do the same. I explain how we would have to dictate to the media and the world how we wanted to be seen before all the hate groups could. It was going to be a balancing act between seeming like regular humans but at the same time being superheroes. I figured if I make people believe that anyone at any time could become a Meta like in the manga Hero Academia our lives would be a whole lot better. Iron Man 2 the Nighthawk Cut New York, New York Stark Expo Saturday 8:06 pm So, I¡¯ve made peace with not being able to change everything in this universe, mainly for the fact that I have no idea what those changes will bring. So, from here on out I will only make ¡°nudges¡± for the better. Take tonight, for example, I¡¯m guessing that Fury and company didn¡¯t exactly believe me or they couldn¡¯t find enough evidence to shut down the expo. I could¡¯ve just called in a bomb threat or something like that myself but then we would¡¯ve ended up fighting Ivan at an unknown location and time. This way we at least know pretty much what¡¯s going to happen and can plan ahead and can keep casualties down. To help with this I invited some of my X-friends to help out secretly while Jean and I take out the drones publicly. ¡°Ok, people it¡¯s almost showtime.¡± I was on the coms giving a final briefing to the team. ¡°Remember to focus first on getting the people out of the Expo, we¡¯re on a timer here. This whole place is going to blow and I¡¯m not sure if my plan to stop that part will work, so we need to get all of the people out quickly and safely.¡± Earlier today I borrowed/stole a bunch of security jackets earlier to help us blend in and order people around when things got crazy. ¡°Don¡¯t be afraid to use your powers if you have too but try not to get identified and keep moving. We¡¯ll meet up at the RP on 3rd when it¡¯s over. Good luck out there!¡± The show was well underway and Hammer had just introduced War Machine when Iron Man showed up to crash the party. ¡°Ok, Phoenix you get the glass, I got the drones. Guys go ahead and pull the fire alarms out there and start evacuating the people.¡± Ivan had started his hack on War Machine when Iron Man showed up and started targeting him. War Machine and the rest of the drones started aiming at Iron Man. ¡°Is that you?¡± Tony asked Rhodey. ¡°That¡¯s not me...that¡¯s not me. I¡¯m lock up¡­ I can¡¯t move¡­ Go, get out of here this whole system been compromised!!¡± Iron Man wasted no time jetting off into the skies and neither did the drones when they opened fire on him. Phoenix and I took off from the back of the crowd to protect them. She made a slanted Tk shield to protect them from the falling glass while I made another one too protect them from the bullets that were flying around. While we were doing that, Ivan sent War Machine and the Air force drones off after Iron Man. I knew where the real danger was and started cutting down the army drones with laser blasts to limit the number of bombs later. ¡°Phoenix, go!! I got this.¡± She gave me a nod and took off after Iron man and his group. She was going to do her best and protect people from stray shots from the Air force drones. I made short work of the Army drones and was working of the Navy, but that pissed Ivan off so he had the rest of the drones scatter and start blowing stuff up. ¡°Guys, the clock¡¯s running. The drones are now loose, prioritize getting people to safety but if you get a shot at one, take it.¡± As I was coming out of the theater, I happen to see Black Widow getting ready to go with Happy. ¡°Hey, Nat.¡± She looked up me. ¡°Told you so!¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°I¡¯ll be by sometime tomorrow to see Fury. Good luck storming the castle!!¡± She actually got the reference and smirked. She gave a lazy wave and go into the car. Then happy asked her. ¡°You know that guy?¡± She looked thoughtful then replied with great determination. ¡°Not yet, but I will.¡± They took off for the Hammer compound. Teasing Nat was fun but a few seconds later I felt a chill go down my back for some reason. I probably should have told her that she was on a wild goose chase but those loose ends still needed to be tied up and she wasn¡¯t exactly geared up for a fight with a mech. (Something I was going to work on for her and Hawkeye.) Meanwhile Phoenix was steadily taking out the drones that were chasing after Iron Man. That and my quick destruction of the ground drones pushed up Ivan time table. He decided to come to the Expo in the Whiplash suit a lot earlier than he did in the film. Knowing what was coming I continued to take out drones while the X-men continued the evacuations. ¡°Rhodey you still locked on?¡± ¡°Yeah!?¡± ¡°Well drop your socks and grab your crocks, we¡¯re about to get wet on this ride!¡± Iron Man got tired of being chased so he plotted a course through the metal globe, hoping to take out as many as he could. ¡°Wait, Wait, Wait!!!¡± For some reason (cough Plot armor cough) all of the remaining air force drones except for War Machine got destroyed trying to go through the globe. I let them get on with the movie and their boss fight because we had other things to deal with. ¡°Nightcrawler, Polaris and Phoenix¡­. Phase 2, Go!!¡± Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. By my reckoning, we only had a few minutes at most to round up all the drone¡¯s parts scattered all across the Expo before they blew. Those three were our fastest metal movers so it was their job to collect them all. While they were doing that I was inside the theater stealing some of the knock-off Arc reactors before they blew. I didn¡¯t really have time to do it the right way so basically, I just cut them out of the drones and made sure they couldn¡¯t receive any signals. I was able to get five of them before Crawler popped back in to deliver them to the rendezvous point. ¡°Cyclops, last sweeps then bail, Storm watch over the iron duo, if you see them struggling send down a bolt or two fry Whiplash¡¯s suit. Polaris and Phoenix on me.¡± ¡°Cyclops copies.¡± ¡°Storm copies, moving now.¡± I had Cyclops and the team looking for stragglers just in case my plan doesn¡¯t work. Basically, the three of us are going to produce a massive EMP pulse which should fry all the drones in the expo and prevent them from exploding in the first place. ¡°Alright, ladies just like we practice. Start building your charges and release on my count.¡± Meanwhile on the other side of the Expo. Iron Man and War Machine were getting their butt kicked just like in the movie. Except this time because of how I change the end of the birthday party. He didn¡¯t give that lame ¡°want to be a hero¡± line, instead Iron Man threw out a ¡°cross the streams¡± ghostbuster reference. They both hit Whiplash at the same time with a beam and crushed him in his suit. Unfortunately, just like Thor, later on, they didn¡¯t aim for the head so Whiplash was able to set off the explosives. ¡°You lose!¡± Whiplash smirked. Beep¡­¡­ Beep¡­. Beep¡­ Beep.. Beep. ¡°All these drones are rigged to blow! ¡°We gotta get out of here man!!¡± War Machine screamed. ¡°Pepper!!!¡± They both took off in an instant but Iron Man went flying after Pepper. Neither noticing Storm right behind them. When the drones started beeping, I knew that was our cue. ¡°Now ladies, release!¡± A massive globe of electromagnetic energy burst away from us and as it traveled it knocked out all forms of electricity in the area. As well as doing some physical damage. Pepper who was still in front of the theater was knocked down but not badly hurt. Can¡¯t say the same for Ironman and War machine. Their suits were already badly damaged so were no match for the EMP. So, they ended up getting shut down and locked up as they started falling out of the sky. Lucky for them Storm was still following them and was able to catch them with a strong wind updraft. I saw Pepper still on the ground when I came out of the theater so I went over to help her up and also gave her a quick heal while I was at it. ¡°Ms. Potts, how do you feel?¡± She looked around at all of the destruction. ¡°Why do I have this feeling like this all would have been a lot worse if you weren¡¯t here?¡± She was staring at Tony by the end of her sentence. ¡°Because you are an incredibly smart and perceptive woman? Ah don¡¯t worry too much about him. Most of the last couple of months was him just dealing with the fact that he was dying and he ¡°the smartest man in the world¡± couldn¡¯t find a cure so his ego took a hit.¡± She raised her eyebrows at that. ¡°What? He¡¯s not dying anymore. He took his lumps and learned some things but he still has a lot of growing up to do.¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°Now that this is all over, I¡¯m sure the Tony you know and love will be back in no time.¡± Pepper chuckled. ¡°He really does believe its charming. I don¡¯t have the heart to let him down.¡± We both laughed. ¡°Well I¡¯d better go get them out those suits or they¡¯d be suck in there until SHIELD showed up.¡± Tink. Tink. Tink. I knocked on Iron Man¡¯s faceplate. ¡°See Stark this is what happens when you only listen to half the message.¡± I chuckled as I hit the hidden manual release. ¡°Funny, you can go now I¡¯m going to finish my nap.¡± I grinned at that as I did the same for War Machine. ¡°Don¡¯t mind him he¡¯s just hangry.¡± ¡°You two should be on SNL. How¡¯s Pepper doing?¡± I looked up and saw them coming our way. ¡°Not a scratch on her. She¡¯s coming over now with my better half.¡± Tony let out a sigh of relief. I gave Rhodey a hand up and he crawled out on his own as they walked up. ¡°Gentlemen I¡¯d like to introduce my partner, Phoenix. Phoenix, Tony Stark and Col. James Rhodes.¡± ¡°Hi guys, glad you¡¯re ok. Nighthawk everything inside is secure and Shield is 2 mins out, we gotta move.¡± I gave a nod of thanks. ¡°That¡¯s our cue then. Hey Stark you might want to think about some sort of emergency system, in case something like this ever happens again. Imagine if one of you had been a bit higher when you fell, you could¡¯ve broken you back or something.¡± He got a thought look while Rhodey paled a bit. I started floating away with Phoenix. ¡°Later folks, oh and don¡¯t forget to invite us to the wedding!!¡± ¡°WHAT WEDDING???¡± Both Tony and Pepper shouted! ¡°Oops!¡± You could hear our laughter long after we took off. 000000000000000000000000000 Manhattan, New York Rooftop on 3rd Saturday 9:21 pm ¡°Cyclops give me a sitrep.¡± Phoenix and I had finally caught up to the rest of the crew. ¡°Mission accomplish with no injuries and little to no exposure.¡± Needless to say, I had a very big smile. ¡°Well done guys, very well done. I know for a fact we couldn¡¯t have pulled off this save so well, without all of you out there backing us up.¡± I gave Cyclops a pat on the shoulder while looking over the team with pride. ¡°Alright party time back at our place let¡¯s celebrate!!¡± We all raced off and headed back for my HQ for a party that would last the whole night. Although this wasn¡¯t the X-Men¡¯s first mission, you couldn¡¯t tell it by the way everyone was partying and celebrating. I didn¡¯t hold it against them because we did a good thing tonight and it was good practice for what¡¯s to come. From here on out, I¡¯m going to have them practice on crowd control and fighting a mob army when outnumbered. We still have some time before the 1st Avengers movie but practice never hurt nobody. As for me I turned in early because I wanted to fresh for my meeting with Fury in the morning. Metakind had a lot riding on this meeting and I didn¡¯t want to screw it up. Whos the baddest spy in town.... Washington D.C. Triskelion 10:40 am You would think that the world¡¯s largest spy organization and not to mention Hydra¡¯s secret headquarters would have better security. I know Meta¡¯s aren¡¯t really a thing yet but this is ridiculous. I was able to make it all the way to Fury¡¯s office without anybody ever catching a whiff of me. Simple invisibility should not let waltz around SHIELD without a care. When I got to Fury¡¯s office all I had to do is wait until some aide came out and then I was able to walk right in after him. (SMH) I will give Fury his credit though. He picked up on me right away, even if he didn¡¯t show it outwardly. He kept on reading his reports pretending that nothing was wrong but all the while he was slowly reaching for his hidden gun or a panic button. ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯ll be necessary Director, after all, I do have an appointment.¡± I said as I dropped my invisibility. He eyed me for a good minute. ¡°Nighthawk, right? DO you really think it was a good idea to pull a stunt like that?¡± He leaned back in his chair while he crossed his fingers. ¡°Probably not but it will help me prove a point later.¡± I shut the door with TK and sat in the chair in front of his desk. ¡°You¡¯re a hard man to track down, Nighthawk so what did you want to talk about?¡± Fury asked. ¡°I would like to discuss a partnership with the government but more importantly one with you personally and specifically. And no, I¡¯m not talking about the boyband you¡¯re putting together. Although I¡¯ll probably end up helping out with that sometimes anyway.¡± You could tell he was curious to where I was going with this but the only outward expression he showed was an eyebrow raise. I knew his office was bugged and not just by him so I raised an EMP shield that would protect us from all monitoring devices. ¡°Before I begin explaining myself, I want you to know that we are now in a complete monitor proof bubble so anything further said between us stays between us.¡± He doubted that because he still thinks SHIELD has all the best toys. He then pulled out a little black box and pressed a couple of buttons on it. After a few seconds later, green lights lit up on the box and he was shocked for a second. He then nodded for me to go ahead. ¡°I guess I should start with me and where I come from. I was born on Earth just like you, just not this one. Yeah, but no I¡¯m not like your friends from up there in space that like to pop in from time to time, I¡¯m something different. To explain, this universe is just one out of an infinite multiverse and in the universe, in the one, I come from we have mastered the technology to view them all at our leisure. Which is how I know all your secrets and pretty much everything that¡¯s going to happen in the future.¡± His jaw dropped in surprise. Then after thinking about it, his eye narrowed and he asked me. ¡°You don¡¯t expect me to just take your word for all this do you?¡± I smirked. ¡°Nope, but it will become apparent soon enough that what I say is true. Say help me settle a bet, do you carry Carol¡¯s pager on you all the time or do you have it stashed away somewhere for emergencies?¡± He actually flinched at that. To his knowledge, only he and Carol knows about that pager. ¡°Also, where is Goose anyway?¡± Nicholas J Fury actually shivered when I asked him that. He glared at me and said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about it.¡± ¡°Hey, hey it¡¯s cool¡­¡± I waved my hands in surrender. ¡°Just wondering cuz we didn¡¯t see him pop back up in this universe after your adventure together. Anyway, getting back on topic. Your next big question is probably why, if I know everything that¡¯s going to happen, why don¡¯t I just stop all the bad things like going down a list of things to solve right? Well, it doesn¡¯t work like that, foreknowledge is a double edge sword. Every time you change something in the present you change something in the future which nulls your knowledge of said future event. Unless you¡¯re one of the few to have the tech or power to constantly see the future, which I no longer have and can¡¯t get right now. Take yesterday for example. Even though you guys couldn¡¯t or wouldn¡¯t shut down the Expo I could have still done so by calling in a bomb threat or something and got it shut down at least temporarily. But all that would have done is changed up Ivan¡¯s timing to who knows when or where putting more people in danger. History showed that a lot of people were injured and killed yesterday and the Expo was bombed into a parking lot. The reason why it doesn¡¯t anymore is that I knew exactly when and where to place my people to do the most good at the right time and you see the results.¡± I gave him a min to digest that and he eventually nodded in deep thought. ¡°So, from here on out just know that any big bad thing that happens could have or would have been a whole lot worse than what it is. Oh, and don¡¯t forget Mr. Murphy, he always gets a say.¡± Fury chuckled at the dark humor. ¡°Alright, I can see how even with those constraints your help would be extremely valuable. What is it you want exactly and how do you see this¡­ Partnership working?¡± So far so good, now¡¯s the time to show him the stick. ¡°There are several wars coming Director, I¡¯ve seen them, but most of them could be avoided or stopped if we deal with the one thing, they all have in common¡­Metahumans.¡± He set back in his chair. ¡°I¡¯ve seen your PR but don¡¯t you really mean Mutants?¡± ¡°No, they are a part of the issue but I mean all metahumans. Look I know you have standing orders to continue looking for the Capcicle passed all the way down from Stark and Agent Carter and really soon you¡¯re going to make some progress in that. But some time down the line after that, Cap and Iron man are going to come down on different sides of the Humans with powers debate and what should be done about them.¡± ¡°Due to certain events you and your¡­ counterparts? Are never there to put your two cents in and keep things steady on the right track behind the scenes. It got real bad, real quick and because the heroes were divided they didn¡¯t stand together when an even bigger threat to Earth arrived. That¡¯s not including the whole Mutant issue which hasn¡¯t blown up yet. That has the potential to become the new civil rights issue with all the included baggage if not handled carefully.¡± ¡°So, my first plan is to label all humans with powers as Metahumans regardless of where those powers came from. One of the greatest hypocrites of this universe is how the same people who hate Mutants that they have never even met or where good neighbors with for years could turn right around and love Captain America and the other non-mutant powered heroes that are going to come along. If I didn¡¯t know humans better, I would swear there was some cosmic begin out there controlling us with lines from a script.¡± He shooked his head. ¡°I agree man is smart and people are stupid, and your idea could help long term but it isn¡¯t a cure-all. What else you got?¡± ¡°Going back, the problem between Cap and Iron Man started over collateral damage and snowballed from there. Turns out people love it when heroes go about saving the day but also absolutely hate the after-effects of said save, who knew? It varies universe to universe but the kick-off event usually goes like this: A super team goes in to save a group of people and the bad guys snap do something unexpected and the whole operation goes pear shape fatally and usually on a massive scale. Afterward, there¡¯s a massive public outcry, fingers get pointed, politicians get involved, and next thing you know all Metas are beginning rounded up for camps. Whether they want to be heroes or not its ¡°for the good of the people¡±. But that¡¯s the condensed version, and hopefully, our changes will negate any of this from even happening.¡±You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. I don¡¯t think these bombshells are what he had in mind for our initial meeting but¡­. You could tell he was giving what I said some serious thought. ¡°So, this is what you really need me for huh? To pave the way with the government?¡± I chuckled and said. ¡°Yeah, not gonna lie, you will have to carry most of the water for this next part. Before the fallout, there will be an ¡°Age of Heroes¡± that will begin in a couple of years to combat the rise of supervillainy that¡¯s going to start at the same time. My main goal is to train all these future heroes and get them legal. I¡¯m thinking we open up a new branch of Homeland or the Marshals and put them there. The heroes can then be assigned to cities or regions to either patrol them or get called in like SWAT.¡± That definitely raised his eyebrows. ¡°That¡¯s not all. I also want to build an academy to train them all in the right procedures on how to go about saving the day. I figure doing this will not only put them under government scrutiny it will also put them under its shield. You and I both know that things happen out in the field at least this way when the public starts crying and fingers get to waving, we can say things were done by the book because there actually is one and not a hundred-odd different supes out there doing their own thing.¡± ¡°Not to mention that they would also get insurance, benefits, healthcare, and all that jazz. Plus, as a bonus to you, since SHIELD will be the unofficial sponsor, they will always get first pick at the personnel and tech that comes out of the academy.¡± He gave me a wry smile at my used car salesman impression. ¡°I gotta admit you have me intrigued but why should we, as in the government, go through all the trouble?¡± ¡°Well, it goes back to the feud and the stupid stuff the government did. Before the government got to the internment camps, they had the idea to force heroes to registrar under their real identities. Which rang all kinds of bells with Captain America.¡± ¡°Iron Man feeling the weight and guilt of his actions as a hero felt it would be a good thing to have all Metas registered and trained. He thought it would bring legitimacy to their works and they could come out of the shadows. Cap felt that that was a betrayal of their rights and civil liberties and that most heroes had a secret identity for a reason. Sides were chosen and running battles were fought in the middle of cities. It got bad quick. Long-standing friendships were destroyed, families were spilt, brother turn against brother, which is why this conflict is mainly called the superhero Civil War in every universe.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the hero side of things, you can just imagine how bad it was for the ¡°villains¡± if the heroes were being hunted down. Let¡¯s just say that the nice young man down the street with the way to big ears that never bothered no one suddenly became public enemy #1 and was thrown into a camp. While both sides had some good and bad points, nobody wanted to talk and work things out so everything spiraled out of control fast. So, to combat that madness I want to get out ahead of them both and give the whole process some structure. First off anyone who wants to be a hero must be registered and tested but you don¡¯t have to give your real identity if you don¡¯t want to. The price for doing that though is that you won¡¯t be a legally licensed agent and any cost and damages occurred would be applied to you instead of the government. This group wouldn¡¯t have to go to the Academy but they would be encouraged too. This group also wouldn¡¯t be called upon unless the threat was an all hands-on deck situation or they were the only hero in their town or city. On the other hand, all licensed agents must pass the Academy classes or a government-approved equivalent. All complaints, reports and disciplinary actions of any group would be under the review of a board of peers, a government liaison and at least one nomination from the community at large.¡± ¡°Those are the broad strokes, the details we can work out later, but what do you think so far?¡± Fury sat up and looked me in the eye. ¡°I must admit I¡¯m interested. A lot of your ideas have merit and I¡¯m also saddened by the fact that things got so bad on the other worlds. But, regardless of what I think, I know you don¡¯t honestly believe that the government is just going to rubber-stamp this plan just because you or I say so?¡± Eh time for the carrot, I guess. ¡°No, and that¡¯s why I come bearing gifts to help the medicine go down. A while back I happen to save this kid from a kidnapping, a real sciencey type this guy, and low and behold he just happens to have the cure for healthcare.¡± ¡°What do you mean.¡± ¡°This kid has created medical nanites that he claims can cure anything from a paper cut to end-stage cancer. Says he¡¯s at the point of human trials but he knows the FDA won¡¯t approve him with unproven tech.¡± ¡°What do you think? Is he for real?¡± ¡°I think the kid is on to something and evidently I¡¯m not the only one because the goons I saved him from worked for Raxxon. But that¡¯s not he told me something that scares the crap out of me but the government is going to love. The kid thinks he can suppress and maybe even cure Mutants.¡± Man, I wish I had $10 for every time I shocked Fury today. ¡°I know it¡¯s a game-changer and we''re going to have to be very careful with how we deal with this. Luckily we still have time because he¡¯s not even close to that part being ready but what he does have is this super healing balm that you and the military are going to love.¡± Fury was very interested in that before he said. ¡°Those are some pretty good incentives and with a strong military and intelligence backing, I think we can push most of this through and for the others, I¡¯ll just have to call in some favors. Let me ask you though, where exactly will you fit in all of this?¡± ¡°Consider me a high-level consultant. I¡¯ll be here to help set everything up and pick the right people to help run it all. I¡¯ll even be a reserve Avenger but mostly I¡¯ll be either in NY or out there in space making my nudges to help keep Earth and the universe safe.¡± ¡°What¡¯s going on in space?¡± I sighed; I think he was worried about Carol. ¡°This stays between the two of us for now but there¡¯s a big purple people eater out there that means to do the world harm. This guy is an on-going major threat so I have to be very careful in how I deal with him. There are literal ¡°Gods¡± out there and this guy gives them headaches. He has destroyed countless worlds and ours is on his list. Granted it''s near the bottom but still¡­¡± ¡°Can we stop him?¡± ¡°I can¡¯t go into details but it has been done before, but at a great and terrible cost. I¡¯m hoping that our changes will make all the difference.¡± ¡°So, what do you say Director you in?¡± He stood up and held out his hand for me to shake. ¡°First off call me Fury. I don¡¯t trust many people but something about you just rings true, plus all of your suggestions are really good ideas that can do some good. So, let¡¯s just say I¡¯m going to trust you but verify everything you said also.¡± I shooked his hand and said. ¡°Well, you wouldn¡¯t be Nick Fury if you didn¡¯t. Oh yeah quick question, hypothetically what would you do if say the 10 rings had infiltrated MI6 at all levels since the end of WWII?¡± Again, with the pop eyes. ¡°Say what now?¡± 0000000000000000000 I didn¡¯t want to spill the beans of Hydra just yet but I did want him to get him to think along those lines because I wanted to purge them from SHIELD before we got the superhero program off and running. I ended up telling him that it happened in some other universe and I was just curious as to what he would do in that situation. (More on that later.) We spent the rest on the day roughing out plans for the Superheroes program, the Academy and its courses, rules and regulations for supers, and finally what kind of situations supers would actually get called in for. I had him call in Agents Coulson, May, and Romanoff to help bounce ideas off of. Coulson was really into it and was all but begging to run the Academy before we where trough. We were still months away from finalizing anything but I considered this was a great start. Fury said that he would lean on the FDA so I could at least start human trials and we could have something to show the president and congress. I wasn¡¯t worried about that part though, once Hydra finds out about my nanites they are going to do everything in their power to push whoever they needed make sure they get their hands on it. I just had to make sure I got everything I want out of them before I take them down. 15. Next Time On Nighthawk Mr. Shadow¡¯s office Outside of time and space ¡°Sir we have a problem with the candidate.¡± Mr. shadow was communicating with his boss. ¡°Our predictions show that while he will be able to complete our task, he won¡¯t be completely under our control at that time.¡±Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°Ah, that pesky free will again, I told you this would happen. Well, you were the one to choose this candidate, I assume you have you suggestions of how to solve this problem?¡± ¡°Well we¡¯ve been working on a solution but it¡¯s going to take some time. One of the suggestions is a complete reset with better controls on the subject like a system or a mentor-type that doles out skills and powers to our benefit. Another is to find some mystical sounding reason to nerf the subject¡¯s growing powers so that he will be more malleable and grateful to us later. Regardless of what we eventually chose, the analysis of the different choices will take some time to complete.¡± ¡°So be it. Even if we weren¡¯t outside of time right now we are immortal we have the time to waste. Contact me when you have the results ready¡±