It was chaos all around me.
People turned around and called out for their children and families, and others looked around and around, pointing in awe and confusion. The dampening spell Jean had used was effective, but it wasn't absolute.
People still noticed. They still had questions. And their attention eventually turned to me. The other heroes had been teleported back to the streets they came from and were wrangling the crowd, while I remained in the sky, hovering with six wings, though I didn't technically need them to fly.
I didn't do something as tacky as proclaim that I was the reason the city was no longer in ruins, but I stayed long enough for them to put it together, and I took off in a blur of blue once I was certain that a few people had taken pictures of me.
I sat down with the members of my inner circle after the chaos in my Brownstone in New York. It'd been heavily fortified and had survived the devastation unscathed. Only the energy reserves were different. They'd dipped slightly. Somebody large and mutated must've pounded hard on the shields.
We were standing and seated in the living room, spread out across the tasteful chairs, most of us still in our liquid metal and Arcanite Armor. The widows stood in a neat row. Only three of them were left. They were Johanna, Alexa, and Vienna. I didn't know all three particularly well, but they were competent, professional, and always seemed happy enough with their positions. But I could tell that they were tense. Literally.
My senses reached that deep.
Pietro distracted himself with a sandwich, trying to gain back some of his strength after the absolute marathon he ran, trying to keep the city alive. And Wanda was the wrong color. Pale, and with runny eyes and makeup. Keeping the barrier up had worn her to the nub. But that wasn't the real reason why she was oozing dread.
Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Colleen Wing were to my right, seated in various states of undress, clearly worried. I could tell from the slight frown on Matt Murdock's lips that he too knew that I had bad news to deliver.
"They're dead, aren't they?" Wanda pronounced. "He was dead by the time you got back." She was looking at Jean, who had a somewhat vacant look. Her mind was entirely blank. I'd told her about what happened on the way to the mansion.
"No," I said quickly, stopping her spiral before it properly started. "They're not dead; they're just not in our dimension."
Pietro stopped chewing. "Our Dimension. What does that mean exactly?"
I sighed, looking at everyone. They were paying a lot more attention now. I broke into a long-winded explanation of how my powers worked. I explained the multiversal theory and even showed them memories of the Marvel universe I visited during my fight with Lauren and Shin.
Matt looked stunned and almost fascinated by the light show my orbs were putting on using light and mind runes. And Jessica seemed distracted, especially when the fighting started.
Wanda was sobbing softly, her emotional pain throbbing like an open wound. I waited for her to blame me, but she never did.
"I will find them," I said. "It doesn't matter if it takes me five or five hundred years." I produced BB5's core and pressed it onto the table. "It has a recorded message… Those are their last words to us. You should all watch it together."
"Did you make them suffer?" Vienna, the smallest of the widows. asked.
"We did," Jean spoke for me, finally looking up. "Lauren died screaming as her soul burned to ash. Her coward of a god was banished from our dimension for good. The Phoenix and Dante made sure of it."
Vienna nodded. "Then she was avenged. It will make the news of her disappearance easier on her sister."
"Oh God," Matt muttered. "I didn't think of his family?"
"Whose?" I asked.
"Peter," he said, a tinge of anger entering his voice. "Your second disciple. The one you forced out of a normal life to become this." He waved at our armors. "He should've never been a fighter, even if he chose it. Neither should Rin. You stole their youth from them. Their lives."
The old me would've lashed out at him. Pointed out that he was Peter's team leader, that he could also have told the kid to quit, but he hadn't. And Matt Murdock was grieving. They all were.
Finding them in the infinite multiverse with a vague soul compass was the longest of long shots. And if I was anyone else, I would've given up immediately, but I had no plans to.
"Don't you think I know that, Matt?" I asked, my voice calm and almost shaky. "I tell myself Rin was a thrill seeker who would've gotten himself killed or entrapped sooner rather than later, and that was why I took him in. I convinced myself that he could handle himself. And when he couldn't, I'd always be there. But the longer I've sat with this, the more I realized those are just justifications. Peter was an even bigger blunder. He would've become Spider-Man in his own time; I certainly didn't need to accelerate his development and let him fight beside me."
"Peter didn't fight any battles he didn't want to," Jessica Jones said. "He saved the world twice fighting beside you. Don't let your grief make you forget that."
"The world would've been fine without him," I said.
"That's bullshit, and you know it," Jessica huffed, and Matt opened his mouth to speak, but she shot him a glare. "And since when has there been an age limit on how old you have to be to do the right thing? Half of Fury's Thunderbolt aren't even eighteen yet, and neither were the X-Men when they started operating. Hell, you're nineteen. What happened was ugly, monstrous, and sad. But it wasn't your fault. It was Lauren's.
Her words hit me hard like a slap to the face, but it didn't absolve me of any of the guilt, even if it was the truth.
Slowly, I turned to Matt.
"I'll tell his grandparents everything personally. They deserve that much."
Matt nodded, and Wanda activated the rune-covered core I'd placed on the table, and the recording the team had made inside the dimension played. And I looked on, quietly.
The tears had stopped flowing from Wanda's eyes by the time the recording was done.
"When do we start the search?" she asked.
"Right after I make sure the earth is safe."
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If you're looking for a new story, check out Gamer in Invincible. It's pretty fresh, and a touch slower-paced than my first story.
Read up to Chapter 295 on Patreon.com/artandcreativewriting