Logan pov
I received a report that Charles's kids had been drafted into the war. I knew exactly what this meant: this was the era where mutants were being sent off to be killed and experimented on. This was the timeline where Banshee, Angel, Emma, and Azazel were destined to die. If I didn't act now, those names would just become footnotes in a CIA folder.
I think I figured out how they managed to capture everyone: they're using an element that negates mutant powers. Even though I'm not 100% mutant anymore, if I get anywhere near that steel, my body starts aging, albeit slowly. It's called Carbonadium. Developed by the U.S.S.R. to combat their own mutants, this steel was chemically induced with a cocktail of harmful toxins. It's proved to be devastatingly effective against anyone with abilities.
While its original form was a stone, it was crushed and infused directly into the metal, which is what makes this steel so lethal. To put its danger into perspective: even someone like Sebastian Shaw could be assassinated with it. Shaw is known as the 'Absorbing Man' because he can store kinetic energy and release it in any direction he chooses. If a man like that can't survive a Carbonadium knife, then nobody can.
That's exactly why I didn't want to get drafted into this war myself. My plan is to pull all of them out, and as for the others, Raven will handle their rescue, including Alex Summers. But this is where it gets complicated. If I change the timeline here, everything could be derailed. One small shift in who survives or who is rescued could throw the entire future off course.
The timeline is going to shift. If these mutants escape, the government will realize that no one is truly safe or in control. That's when the real paranoia sets in. Once the state becomes that desperate and fearful, things will become even more troublesome. We won't just be fighting Trask; we'll be fighting a world that's decided we're too dangerous to exist.
I decided to create body doubles for Sean and Angel. Even though she eventually chooses to follow Magneto, she's still a mutant, and I'll figure out what to do with her later. As for Azazel, honestly, he's a burden I'd rather not carry, but it's still the right thing to save him too. I can't just leave them to be carved up in a lab.
I'm going to create the most lifelike bodies possible to ensure there's no suspicion. When I finally reach them, I'll inject the decoys with their own blood to simulate a perfect match. I'll wait for the pivotal moment to swap them out, making it appear as though they died right there, while I spirit the real ones away.
And then there's Erik. He got himself caught and thrown into the Pentagon. Buddy, if you wanted to save JFK that badly, you should have just pulled the guy out of the sniper's line of sight. It's not like JFK wasn't wearing anything made of steel. You should have just let the Secret Service do their jobs. But no, Erik thinks that because he's the Master of Magnetism, he can do whatever the hell he wants. Now look where it's gotten him.
And when everything goes sideways, who's the one who gets blamed? The mutants, not him. Then he has the nerve to wonder why everything around him turns to shit. This is exactly why. He makes these massive, reckless moves and then acts surprised when the world reacts with pure terror and starts hunting us down.
Self-centered arrogance never points inward, it's always someone else's fault. To Erik, it's always 'them' the enemy, never himself. And Charles was stupid enough not to say it to his face. I know they're best friends, but when things go awry, who takes the blame? Who becomes the face that the world fights against? They can't seem to see beyond their own walls, all because they've tasted a little bit of power.
So now, it falls on me to save all these children, simply because those two couldn't keep their hands to themselves and started playing at politics they don't even understand. They're so wrapped up in their own ideologies that they didn't realize they were leading these kids straight into a meat grinder. Now, I have to be the one to fix it.
If they truly cared about the mutants in their own camp, they should have started by building a shield first. As it stands, if things go south, they have absolutely nothing to fall back on. It's not like it's impossible to hide these kids from the world, but they didn't even try. The ones paying for that negligence aren't Charles or Erik, the real collateral damage in all of this is the children.
****
I saved every kid there was to save. I put them to sleep and took their place. Trask and Stryker needed an alternative, if the mutants they captured weren't enough, they were always going to come looking for more. I allowed myself to be captured in the camp by disguising myself.
When William Stryker used the machine to detect mutants, I let it find me. Now, I'm locked inside a Carbonadium cage. I've already deactivated my healing factor and left my nanites behind in storage, making myself look as vulnerable as they expect.
When they brought in the bodies of the children I had replaced, I was sent to a laboratory deep in the mountains. They tested me, pricking my skin and taking my DNA, but I made sure my self-healing gene was isolated and hidden. I even let my claws out, when they saw the wounds didn't heal, they began to view me as nothing more than a feral beast, a thing.
Stryker mentioned he had managed to procure a rare metal from South Africa during an attempt to capture a mutant there, he calls it Adamantium. His plan is to coat my skeleton in it. He told everyone that if I fail the process, he'll simply melt the metal back down and start over.
Owayodata once asked me why I do all of this, why save anyone? I told him it's because we aren't saviors, we are protectors. If we have the means to do something, why wouldn't we? That is the simple reason behind everything I'm doing right now.
When they began the experiment to coat my bones with Adamantium, even I struggled, the pain was unbearable. For a split second, my heart actually stopped, but i let my healing factor kicked in just a moment before that happened. When Stryker saw the experiment was successful, he had me caged for further testing, intending to wipe my memory. I've decided to stay here for a few years, playing the part of the feral beast, just waiting for Jean Grey to show up.
****
1973
By design, I wasn't actually with Charles in that future. That's why he had to find another way to send his consciousness back. He and Magneto managed to build a specialized helmet, a derivative of Cerebro, that acted as a dampener for Kitty Pryde's power. They used it to poke a hole through time, allowing him to project his mind back into his younger self.
Inside the prison box Stryker built for me, I made sure to always act like a beast whenever he was watching. But in reality, I was meditating. I spent every moment training my Chi. No matter how long I was trapped, even if I only had a few minutes of quiet, I would meditate. He thought he was breaking me, but I was just becoming more centered.
When Charles poked a hole through time to bring his consciousness back, I actually felt it, that was a first for me. Once I looked into it, I understood why: my connection with Owayodata had strengthened while my feral side was let loose. I actually had to split my consciousness in two, if I hadn't controlled my Chi in that moment, the sheer pressure of chi would have caused me to explode right then and there.
After all this time, Stryker was still terrified to let me loose because of my Adamantium claws. He surmised that the only way to actually kill me would be to drop a bomb on me, he had no idea about my healing power, which made the strategy to contain me is simple. He actually needed me for further testing, he wanted to see if he could graft other mutant powers into me once he captured more subjects. That's the only reason he didn't try to dispose of me.
After some time, he actually managed to capture Victor. I can feel him here in the base, and he can smell me, too. When he saw me acting feral, he knew his fate was sealed. Like me, he was experimented on, but because Stryker didn't have enough Adamantium left, he could only coat Victor's hands. They wiped Victor's mind as well, but with his healing capabilities, he's just as trapped in this cycle as I am.
After some time, Trask finally created the Sentinels, but they were different this time around. Since he only managed to secure a small sample of genetic material and Raven's blood, the Sentinels weren't as overpowered as the ones in the movies. However, sometime's in the future he also had Rogue's DNA, they could still adapt to almost anything. They weren't perfect, but they were still strong enough to push the mutant race to the very brink of extinction.
Even though I was there and in the movie, I was only the lead because I was the only one who could survive the trip, the method of travel was different here. Quicksilver was still the most prominent player in the breakout, and after that, everything played out just like it did in the movie.
After Trask was jailed, Stryker went into hiding. He wanted nothing to do with the outside world because he had just discovered something devastating: his own son was a mutant. That crazy motherfucker actually experimented on his own son. He staged an incident where his son's powers killed his wife, and then used his government connections to have his son's body brought to the lab for 'study.
While researching his own son, Stryker actually managed to extract a brainwashing fluid from his son, Jason's corpse. He replicated this compound and tested it on Victor first, completely wiping Victor's mind this time. Then, he took Victor's DNA, specifically his healing capabilities, cloned it, and grafted it onto me, hoping to double my regenerative power and ensure his control was absolute.
I managed to isolate that foreign gene, and i let it out by peeing, I flushed it right out of my system. When he tried to use the brainwashing fluid on me, I simply took a back seat and let my healing abilities run wild. He thought he had the 'Original Wolverine' now, but that just made me even harder to control. The containment box he kept me in had to get thicker and thicker every time I used my claws to try and break out. It scared the hell out of him. He's honestly the biggest coward in the Marvel Universe, he only survives because he has the military backing him up.
He eventually managed to capture other mutants, which took his mind off me for a while. Then, one day, the door to my cell was opened from the outside. Because I always kept my feral side out front while I took the back seat, Jean was able to sense that primal layer but she also felt the human underneath it. That's why she opened the door.
I stepped out and began killing everyone inside. I had been waiting for this moment for a long time. I kept slashing through the soldiers, not stopping until I was absolutely certain that every single one of them was dead.
After some time, Jean approached me. She wanted to help, to try and bring them back but I held up my hand, signaling for her to stop.
I allowed my human consciousness to resurface. Jean stood nearby, her eyes wide with the realization of what had just happened, but I kept my hand raised. I didn't want her powers to fix this.
I stood there in front of Jean, and for the first time in years, I was truly back. It had been so long since I'd driven this body on my own. I started cracking my bones, steel against steel and the sound vibrated through the hallways. Jean, Scott, and Kurt were startled as the sound of the metal grinding echoed around us.
I huffed a breath, a cloud of white vapor blooming from my mouth in the freezing air. For the first time in years, I spoke. "Ahhhhh... it's been so long. It was so hard to keep up the act in here." I looked at the three kids standing in front of me and grinned.
"You didn't get experimented on?" Jean asked, looking at me strangely. She was confused because I looked like someone who had just come back from a vacation.
"Oh, I definitely did," I replied. "What year is it now?" When they told me it was 1983, I let out a low whistle. "It's been ten years, then... ten years since I was captured. Are you guys Charles's students?"
They looked even more afraid now. How could someone like me possibly know Charles? "I taught some kids at his school once," I said. "Names were Alex Summers and Hank McCoy. Are they still alive?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
"You were the one who taught my brother how to control his power?" Scott asked, completely weirded out. His brother had always told him stories about his teacher, the one who had liberated him from his own power and taught him how to truly live with it.
I put on a surprised expression. "You're that kid's brother?" I asked with a smirk. Heh... of course, I knew exactly who he was.
Scott was completely losing it. He couldn't reconcile the image of the legendary teacher his brother had described with the man standing in front of him now, tattered clothes, bare feet, and covered in the grime of the lab. He just couldn't put the two pictures together.
"Are you the same as him, then? Didn't know how to control your own power?" I laughed out loud at that. 'Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!'
He was judging me, but I was judging him right back. Same-same. Hahaha!
"Sir, we need to go! The Professor was taken, and Alex's body is burned, there was an explosion," Jean's voice broke through the standoff between me and this punk.
I didn't say a word. I just waved my hand, and nanites started creeping across my skin. They shaved my beard and trimmed my hair instantly, and then the nanites wove themselves together to become my new cloth.
The kids were absolutely terrified when they saw a swarm of nanites pouring out of my hand. They watched in shock as the swarm began to shave me and then knit together to form a clothes right over my body.
"Go save your friends. I need to go find that kid. How could he let himself get burned when I already taught him how to defend?". With a final wave of my hand, I vanished.
"What? How did he just disappear?" Scott asked, looking absolutely incredulous. Jean was equally weirded out, and Kurt looked shaken, as if he had just seen a ghost or one of his own kind.
They didn't think too much about it, they had to save their friends. Kurt gave instructions to everyone inside the containment room, telling them to stand against the wall. Then, Scott blasted a way out for them, and they all began making their way toward Charles.
****
I arrived at Charles's school and saw the kids sprawling on the ground, just waking up from whatever Stryker had done to them.
I found Alex Summers. He was still alive, but barely. I pulled out the healing vial I carry for my agents and administered it to him. His body began to knit back together, and once he started looking more like a human and less like a charred corpse, he squinted at me. His vision was still a blur, but he managed to speak: "Teacher... you're here?"
"Hey kid, didn't I teach you how to defend? How did you let this happen?" I said to him, half-joking but with a serious edge that told him I wasn't thrilled with his performance.
He laughed. "It's a good thing I managed to put up a shield, right? Otherwise, I wouldn't be alive. Your beloved student would be gone for good."
I laughed at him. "Don't push your luck, kid."
All the kids around me were looking at me strangely. They had seen how bad Alex was before I healed him with the vial, and now he was completely fine. Of course, they probably thought I was using the Holy Grail or something.
"Alex, do you want to come with me or stay here?" I asked, pulling out my phone to call Peggy.
I waited for the call to connect. "This is Carter," she answered. Her office number still hadn't changed.
Even though she was busy, she still picked up, it was a private line that only a select few knew, so she knew it was urgent. Thanks to the stunt En Sabah Nur had pulled, she was swamped.
"Peggy dear, it's me, James," I said, waiting for her reply.
"James? Where were you? I've been looking for you at your house, you just disappeared!" She sounded shocked, I had called her out of nowhere.
"We can talk about that later. Peggy, do you know about the school for mutants?" I asked.
"Yeah, I know," she answered.
"Send your men here," I told her. "The thing that spoke just attacked, and that motherfucker Stryker showed up and kidnapped some kids. I've already resolved that, but you need to send people to look after the ones who are still here. I have an ancient mutant to kill." I said that last part specifically for Alex's benefit.
I pressed "end" on the call.
"I'm going with you, Teacher," Alex answered.
I grinned, it was payback time. "Then let's go." I opened a portal, and Alex and I stepped through, arriving at a field where swirling metal pulsed against the sky.
"Go help your brother, Alex. I've got this old relic to put down," I said, walking toward Apocalypse.
Alex ran toward a figure with metal wings. As a blast hit him, he lifted off the ground, flying upward to rescue his brother.
As I walked toward Apocalypse, I lit a cigarette. I inhaled the smoke, puffed it out, and called out to him, "Oi, you fossil! Why wake up now just to make everyone's life miserable?"
Apocalypse stopped in his tracks. My calm voice had caught his attention, and he seemed to sense that I actually knew who, and what, he was.
"You know me, child?" Apocalypse asked, his curiosity piqued.
I grinned at him. "I should have killed you all those years ago, if not for the stability of this timeline," I answered bluntly.
"You should have just died like everyone else. Why keep living if your only purpose is to make everyone miserable?"
Apocalypse simply raised his hand, his eyes turning a blinding white. I felt my body shift, my very molecules began to disintegrate but I held on. I surged my chi to negate his power, and his expression shifted. For the first time, he seemed to take my presence seriously. I just took another puff of my cigarette.
"Why? Didn't work?" My grin widened. "You thought I came here without knowing exactly who you are? Don't be delusional." I simply flipped him the bird.
He, apocalypse was furious. For the first time in eons, someone was actually able to challenge him, and he felt threatened by it. In all his time, no one had ever had the nerve to face him one-on-one. The "puny child" standing before him was the first.
He blasted an energy beam toward me. Coating my entire body in chi, I dove to the side. The beam followed my path until it hit a car, causing it to explode. I was done playing, I didn't want to drag this out any longer than necessary.
"I haven't opened my Seven Heavenly Breath in years... not since I used it against my Master," I said slowly. I brought my hand in front of me and spat out my cigarette.
"Shichiten kouhou" I screamed
"Dai-ichi Kassei!" My eyes turned a blinding white, but I wasn't finished.
"Dai-ni Kassei!" My muscles began to expand and contort, rippling with raw power.
"Dai-san Kassei!" My skin began to flush, turning a deep, burning red.
While I was opening my Seven Breaths, Erik chose that exact moment to strike. He launched his attack, raining twisted metal and fury down upon Apocalypse.
I pushed further. "Dai-yon Kassei!" Then one more: "Dai-go Kassei!" A massive shockwave erupted, blowing everything back. I wasn't done yet "Dai-roku Kassei!" The air itself began to shift and warp around me. My body, tempered by years of being bathed in Chi, was holding up, my healing factor hadn't even needed to flare up yet. But I knew the final gate would require my mind, soul, and body to be in perfect harmony. I gave one last, final push. "Dai-nana Kassei!"
Everything went silent. The air around me went completely still.
Everyone froze, Apocalypse, Erik, Jean, Scott, Alex, Kurt, Hank, and Raven. Even storm has stop whatever she was doing, and psylocke just watch as everybody else. They all stopped mid-action, their eyes locked on me.
My eyes were stark white against my deep red skin, and a single trickle of blood dripped from my nose. The battlefield hadn't gone still because they wanted to stop fighting, it went still because the very sound of the world had vanished. For the first time in eons, Apocalypse felt something he had forgotten: pure, cold dread.
I vanished. Before he could even blink, I was right in front of him. I buried my fist into his face with such force that the space around us began to shatter like glass. In that split second, I saw him, my Master. He had arrived, bringing others with him. They dispersed instantly, locking the space around the battlefield to keep reality from falling apart. I knew what he was thinking: by opening all the gates, I had become so powerful that I was a threat to existence itself. But I didn't care, I kept driving my fist forward.
I jumped, bringing my weight down as I stomped him into the earth. Apocalypse began to grow, his body expanding and surging with desperate power but I was ready. I unsheathed my claws for the first time. The steel glimmered coldly before I slashed. I could feel him coming apart, it wasn't just a physical cut. I was tearing his molecules apart, shredding his body from the inside out.
He grabbed me and hurled me away, but he didn't realize I could kick the air itself like a solid plank. Using the friction to propel myself back at him, I unleashed the Asakujaku. My claw fists moved so fast they ignited the air, creating a barrage of flaming strikes. I punched him without stopping, the sheer force carving a massive crater into the earth around us.
He tried to disintegrate, desperate to escape my reach, but I let out a roar. "Jean! Let go!" My voice vibrated with such raw power that it became the loudest sound any of them had ever heard. Everyone, friend and foe alike, clapped their hands over their ears in agony as the sound waves rippled through the air.
Jean hovered directly in the path of Apocalypse's escape. As I gave the word, she finally released it, the full, unbridled power of the Phoenix. Apocalypse was consumed by the fire, burned so completely that there wasn't even dust left for him to regenerate from.
I was huffing, gasping for air as I slowly released the breathing technique. I sheath my claw back into my arm. My body felt like it was made of lead as the gates closed one by one. While I stood there, trembling, my Master walked toward me. "Master..." I breathed, looking up at him, my vision finally beginning to clear.
From behind me, I heard Alex shout, "Teacher!" He was clearly on edge, afraid this bald monk was another enemy. I just looked back at Alex and shook my head, signaling him to stand down. Meanwhile, my body was caught in a brutal cycle, muscles breaking and repairing themselves over and over as the aftereffects of the Seventh Gate took their toll.
"So... that is what your breathing technique does, huh?" my teacher said. Even now, surrounded by the devastation, he was still curious. He looked at me with an inquisitive glint in his eyes, more interested in the mechanics of the Seventh Gate than the fact that a "god" had just been erased.
"Prick," I managed to choke out. My Master just smiled, unfazed by the insult. "Come," he said softly, "let's go home." He lifted me up, my body feeling like a shattered statue and carried me into the portal. We disappeared, followed by the silent disciples who had come to guard the gate, leaving the X-Men behind in the silence of the crater.
Everyone left on the battlefield was unsettled, struggling to process the chaos they had just witnessed. One moment I was shattering reality with my punches, the next I was let out a world-shaking shout, and then, I was gone. But Alex's confusion finally cleared when he heard my Master's words. When he said, "Let's go home," Alex knew. This wasn't just a group of monks, they were my family.
Alex stared at the spot where I had vanished, seeing stars. He had just witnessed the impossible. I had transcended human limits, pushing far beyond anything he thought a person, or a mutant, could achieve. In that moment, he finally understood: if this was what his teacher was capable of, then the "Phase Four" he had been tracking was more powerful than he had ever dared to imagine.
Erik was terrified by what he had witnessed. To him, that wasn't a mutant power, it was something else entirely, something ancient and primal. He stood trembling in the wake of the destruction, a cold resolve settling over him. He knew right then that he never wanted to be anywhere near my vicinity again.
As the group made their way back, Jean had to lift them all, carrying them home through the air. Moira MacTaggert sat among them, shaken to her core. She had seen Apocalypse, then James, and finally the Phoenix. It was too much. Her mind raced, pulling at the threads of the memories Charles had once erased.
How could she even begin the report? Her superiors expected data, logistics, and mutant classifications. How could she explain that she watched a man unmake a "a powerfull being like apocalypse"? How could she describe the way James tore through the molecular structure of a being who believed he was the apex of existence? To her bosses, it would sound like a myth, but to her, it was a terrifying new reality.
She had seen it firsthand, the way the space in the vicinity cracked like a broken mirror. Her mind struggled to grasp the physics of it. How could space itself crack? It meant one of two things: either the power James unleashed was too massive for reality to contain, or the fabric of space itself had simply surrendered to his fist. Either way, the implications were horrifying.
She knew how her superiors would react. Their first response would likely be a nuclear strike, the only "solution" they understood for a power they couldn't calculate. Just the thought of it made her scowl. If they even suggested it, she knew she would look at them with a face that shouted how incredibly stupid they were. A nuke wouldn't stop a man who could crack the foundations of the world, it would just make him angry.
She couldn't think about it anymore. The weight of the world was too heavy, and all she wanted was to go home and sleep. She decided to stay at Charles's place for the night, keeping her son close to her where she could see him. But there was one thing she couldn't let go of, she needed to talk to that kid, Alex. He had called him "Teacher," but Charles had told her his name was simply James. That was the only scrap of truth she had to hold onto.
****
I lay on my back in the grand hall of Kamar-Taj, deep in a restorative sleep. My body was still a blur of motion beneath the skin, cells relentlessly breaking and knitting back together to repair the damage of the Seventh Gate. Nearby, my Master sat at the table, sipping his honey tea as if nothing had happened. He didn't have a care in the world, the steam from his cup rising peacefully into the mountain air.
I woke up and I turned my head slightly toward the table. "Master..." I croaked, my voice still rough from the shout that had deafened the X-Men. I didn't have the strength for anything else.
My Master just looked at me and smiled, that knowing, frustratingly calm smile. "While I knew Apocalypse was formidable," he said, setting his tea down, "it seems I underestimated his tenacity. Even after you broke his body with your Seven Heavenly Breaths, he still had enough strength left to escape."
I was weirded out. I had never told anyone the name of my technique, the Seven Heavenly Breaths. I had used it, but I'd never spoken the name aloud. I narrowed my eyes at the man sipping his tea. "You looked into the future, didn't you, Master?" I asked.
My Master laughed slowly, the sound echoing softly against the stone walls of the hall. "Well," he mused, "I was curious, after all."
I let out a tired sigh and countered, "You could have just asked, Master. I would have told you." I looked at the steam rising from his tea, realizing that for all his wisdom, he still preferred to watch the "show" rather than ask.
Now that my body was repaired enough to move, I managed to sit up. I didn't try to stand yet, instead, I crossed my legs and began to meditate. I could feel the ragged edges of my energy reserves, and I needed my Chi to finish the job. I closed my eyes, pulling the scattered fragments of my power back into my core to fuel the final stage of my healing.
A week had passed before I was finally well enough to walk on my own, though my steps were heavy and slow. Fighting was out of the question, even making a fist sent a dull ache through my marrow. My Master told me the truth: my cells had been pushed to the absolute brink. It would take a full year of meditation and rest just to heal completely.
"Master, I need to be in my lab," I said, my voice steady despite the fatigue. I knew my limits, I needed my healing pod. It was the only way I could survive the year of recovery ahead, by drifting in stasis while the machines did the work my body couldn't. My Master simply nodded and opened a shimmering portal directly into the center of my lab. "Thank you, Master," I muttered, stepping through the gateway and leaving the mountains behind.
"You're welcome, Disciple," he answered. The word hung in the air, heavy and unexpected. It was the first time he had ever called me that, but before I could turn to look at him or say a word, the golden sparks of the portal vanished.
I just smirk, and said something to the air "owayodata, please protect me" before i could hear a reply, i fall into the pod that was open when i touch the button to start the healing process,
A year have pass....
to be continued -