Chapter 120: CHAPTER 118

 [Nathaniel Essex POV]

Evolution sure was a fascinating thing.

He looked at his new body, a work of art, a milestone in the direction of success he was working on.

He had spent over a century grafting and experimenting on mutant DNA. His recent success reaffirmed his belief that he was going in the right direction. If only he could crack the bio-code of that mutant.

Once upon a time he had thought Darwin was the key but even if he was fascinated by the ability of the man, Darwin turned out to be a cheap copy. 

Evolution was always behind the door of Adaptation, and Darwin couldn’t evolve, always unable to scale that grand bridge. 

He had played his cards right. 

Right now, S.H.I.E.L.D, the X-Men and that ragtag bunch would be chasing trails that ran through a maze he had set up. All the hideouts they had discovered were all places he no longer had use for, places that would never be traced back to his current identity. 

All his actions, and the diversions, were just a prelude to his most treasured prize – evolution. And finally, after so many years, it was finally in his hands. 

He needed the strength for when he would take it. Sure his body was the height of anything biologically possible, he figured that there had to be a certain criteria for the process of evolution to kick start. The mutant race was a proof of his theory, with most of them, 99% of the entire mutant-kind, having a linear progress on the evolutionary road. 

To him, the abilities that mutants displayed were the trials and failures of nature’s attempt at evolution – in other words, there had to be a criteria to be fulfilled to make evolution seamless. 

And that was where Draul St. Cross came in. 

From what he could tell, the X-gene of the man was a blank state, only changing its form when an ability was being used. It was as if he was a baseline human jumping straight to mutant every time he used his abilities. 

So was Draul St. Cross a mutant or was he a human that had achieved evolution? 

He wanted to know. He really wanted to know… and soon he will. 

But Draul St. Cross wasn’t the only one he had his sights on. He still had something in store for the children at Xavier’s. He had been wrought with agony when he thought he had missed his chance at creating the ultimate mutant when something had happened to Jean Grey but then a miracle occurred that made him change his mind. 

Why use Summers when he could use St. Cross? It was such a brilliant thought that didn’t occur to him for a while making him doubt his intellect for a moment. 

He would create the most perfect being in existence, one that was strong enough to trample ‘him’ at their feet. 

With that child, he would finally be free of his machinations. 

“Please be patient for a while longer.” He caressed the surface of a tube as he spoke in a soft fatherly voice. The surprising thing about the tube was that it had someone inside it, as still as a dead person. 

… 

[POV Change: Back to the beach] 

The group of five plus the two teachers, continued their day at the beach while ignoring their wards who took the rare opportunity to have fun away from the Mansion. 

“Hey so, you’re like living together with Draul right?” Kitty asked Yelena who joined them after leaving the company of Bucky and the others. 

“Yeah. Want to ask something?” Yelena eyed the cute petite girl who she could tell with a glance had a bubbly personality. 

“What are they like? I mean Draul and Steve Rogers with the other guy.”

Yelena wrinkled her brows in incomprehension. “I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“I think she meant to ask if they’re single. Mah name’s Rogue by the way.” Rogue interpreted for the smaller girl which made Yelena’s eyes lit up in understanding. 

“Oh yeah. Sorry but the only advice I’ll give is ending whatever crush you have on any of them.” She dashed any budding hope in the heart of any female student present. 

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to deter the young feline. “Why? They all have someone?”

“None I can think of but, Bucky, the other guy, it might just be me, but I think he’s interested in my sister. So no hopes there. We are not even talking about the baggage you’ll have to face to get him to open up. Then we have Steve who’s still hung up on his old girlfriend… for fifty years. God it hurts to even think about it. And then you have Draul… honestly I don’t know what’s his deal. The last time a girl tried to flirt with him in a bar, he just stood up, took his drink and went home. But I’ll say he’s the most approachable of the three, assuming you aren’t put off by the bluntness.” The younger assassin gave away the basic profiles of her targets as if she was a sales marketer, trying to pursue the customer to only look at the pros. 

“Wow… that’s… hot.” Not just Rogue but even Kitty reacted that way. 

“Well sorry to burst whatever dream bubble you are in but the chances of your crush progressing to anything else is nil.” These girls had to be suffering from something in the head, Yelena thought, as it would be the only reason why they seemed even more enthusiastic even after she told them that they were just fantasizing. 

‘Guess I have to shoot whatever this is, down… maybe literally.’

“Do you think you can put in ah good word for us? C’mon we all just girls here, eh sugah?” Rogue asked. 

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She refused. 

“Come on Yelena! Please!” Kitty begged as she hugged the younger assassin with puppy eyes as opposed to her feline self. 

“I can’t.”

“Why?! Aren’t we besties?” Kitty whined. 

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“I can’t, because then I’ll have to kill my only friends. I’ve been doing that for almost a decade now until recently… don’t want to go back to bad habits.” Yelena confessed. 

“…”

“…”

“Say what?!”

“You heard me.” She shrugged and left the two who stayed rooted to the same spot for a while before they finally comprehended what she said. 

“Kitty? She was jus playin’ right?”

“I-I don’t think so.”

““So cool!!”” Poor Yelena would never know that she just created a fan base by accident. Unfortunately they would never know how true what she said had been. 

…

While back at the teacher’s lounge. 

“Sounds like you’ve been having a rough time.” Ororo was seated with Draul and Natasha as the other two men decided that they’ve had enough of sitting down and tried to find something fun to do. 

“It wasn’t always like this, you know. Now everyone just feels conflicted. John’s death took us by surprise and… well most of us don't know how to react to it. On one side we have the Professor with his constant preaching of peace and justice within the law and how we are to act within the laid down rules to be accepted back into human society and on the other hand… Well you have people like me and a few others who think that maybe showing them how we feel would bring about a subtle change.” No one knew whether it was because of the glass of wine she drank or she was just looking for where to unwind the things that had been bugging her for a while but her two audiences nevertheless listened with rapt attention. 

“Isn’t that just slavery? Telling people who are above a certain type of rule to conform to your own rules before you accept them… I don’t see what it is apart from slavery.” Natasha said. 

“True. It was why Magneto was a better leader of the metahuman-kind than Charles ever was. A pity he had to resort to terrorism and was blinded by revenge. For all his wit and wealth, Charles is a failure as the leader of a group of powerful individuals. Unless he admits that fact to himself then I’m afraid all he’ll do is drive the metahumans to a corner where they’ll either have to fight for themselves or those who can’t who have to surrender themselves. But I doubt he’ll consider that, he is as stuck in his old ways as Magneto was. They really do make a complimenting pair together.” Draul could see where they were heading, the metahumans. This wasn’t like the DC universe where they learned to accept metahumans and aliens into their society with ease as almost all their protectors were either enhanced beings or aliens. The DC universe had a more hero worshipping society than Marvel which was perfectly fine and understandable because if for some reason the Flash or Superman were to turn bad… well Injustice happened for a reason. And it also didn’t help that all their fights were in view of the public. So like it or not, the public had to accept these new groups of people as a functioning part of their society. 

Marvel? 

First problem = S.H.I.E.L.D. They denied the public of any information pertaining to aliens, decreasing the chances of a changing mindset to be present in the world. 

The mutant exposure happened out of nowhere and took everyone, even the privy government by surprise. But instead of helping these people, they segregated them as a ‘virus’, a ‘plague’ that threatened to harm the ‘human’ society. And the public as the always ignorant sheep they were, gobbled everything up and helped fan the flames further by spinning all their horror tales into it to the point that just with the exposure that you were a mutant will have the police, army and even state defense on you. 

They fucked up bigtime and now they had two different people fighting for their rights to live in the planet. 

It was for all these reasons that Charles was a failure of a leader. He lacked the backbone, pun also intended, to make the hard choices that every leader was supposed to make. 

All the great men and leaders in history were all called tyrants at some point, Charles lacked that very resolve and coincidentally, it was what Magneto had in excess. 

“What are you going to do now?” He inquired from Ororo. 

“I.. I think I’ll take a page out of your book for a while.” She said. 

“Hoh? Which of the pages?” Draul seemed amused as he asked. 

Hearing the amusement in his tone, Ororo laughed. “The one where you couldn’t be bothered and just do what you want.”

“Be careful, I might sue you for piracy.” Natasha looked at the two of them with an amused smile on her face as she was sure that they had even forgotten that she was here. Not having anything else to do, she just relaxed and listened as they both got into their zone. 

“How do you do it?” 

“Do what?”

“Do whatever it is that you want. How do you make such decisions?” She really was curious. 

“This might be bad advice to some, but I usually don’t care much about people in general or how they think. All you need is an interest, either in yourself or people around you. When you find that interest, then it’s up to you to work in favor of it. For me, if the president of the State were to go against my interests in a way that seriously hurts me, then all I’ll have to do is cleave his neck off… as simple as that.. A word of precaution though, don’t try to be interested in to many things.” Draul said. 

If Natasha was surprised by what he said then she sure as hell didn’t show it, probably because she knew what he said was true… and to some lesser degree, the same with Ororo. She’d seen him kill and knew how brutal he could be, but she still asked. “Why can’t I be interested in many things?”

“Because at some point, they’ll cancel each other out and you’ll be left stranded… looking for something new to attach yourself to. Better to have a scale of preference, not too many and not too small and before you know it, you’ll find that those outside your list never mattered all that much in the first place… You can’t care for everyone, Ororo. Even God had to cast out his brightest angel.”

It was times like these that made Natasha remember why Draul was someone she looked up to. Apart from the age difference, there was something else about him that made him look as if the way he saw everything was different from anyone else. It was like he saw things as they really are, the good, bad and the ugly. Everything he said was exactly how he saw it. There was no need for him to doubt his own words or beliefs 'cause at the end of the day, he’ll say that he couldn’t be bothered to care all that much. And it wasn’t only her who thought this way, both Steve and Bucky did. 

“That’s… thanks.”

“Thank me by having fun, it’s the beach for crying out loud.”

“Hahahaha! True, it is. Very well then, since a certain someone says I can’t have fun, then why don’t you show me?” Ororo stretched out her hand in an invitation. 

Draul eyed the hand and then her before he shrugged. “Sure, I don’t see a problem with that.”

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