Chapter 76: CHAPTER 74

I dropped Scott on the floor while Susan immediately came to his side to tend to the burns his face suffered.

“What the hell?!” Beast was the first one to growl out as he saw the burns and attacked me. Logan tried to tell him to stop but the angered doctor who was already in my face struck out his hand in a straight beastly jab only for it to stop against the palm of my hands with a small thud.

“Calm down.” I told him, but seeing the impassive gaze on my face angered him more so he struck out the other fist and also with a leg sweep which made his blow go low. 

I raised my legs a little with the sole of my feet facing his sweeping feet and used the outstretched palm to divert his second blow while stopping his leg sweep at the same time.

“Calm down Hank.” I told him again but this time, seeing how I could calmly take him on, relented and rested his arms with a grunt as he stared at me with clear hostility. 

I looked at Susan and found Reed by her side beside Scott. He brought out what seemed like miniature pilot goggles and gave them to Scott as Susan tended to his burns. 

“How is it?” Even I felt a little bad for hurting the kid due to my dislike for him. 

“The area on the side of his head are the only part affected. The parts around his eyes are not damaged, which is likely due to the fact that his body has some certain level of resistance to his own lasers and also because the heat from his eyes protected him from the heat of your hand.” Reed said as he stared at Steve while Susan continued her self-bound duty. 

I had almost thought that I had disfigured Scott so what Reed said did put my mind to rest at least. Not to be confused, while I didn’t like the X-Men and would kill them the day they started coming for me, starting the fight was not something I was positively inclined to do. 

Me and the rest of the X-Men continued staring at each other until someone asked the question that if Scott had asked, none of us would’ve been in this situation. 

“What’s wrong with Jean?” 

I looked at the petite girl, Kitty, who asked the question and didn’t miss the flinch she did when I looked at her for a second. 

“She just overused her powers. Should’ve gotten Hank to finish his check on her to make sure before letting Boy-Scott over there to lead the charge.” Was all I said before I started walking towards the chopper we came with.

“That’s not an apology!” Hank outright growled. 

“I wasn’t giving one.” Was all I answered with until someone else asked the question. “She is all right, right?”

“She will be. Don’t know if it’s a good one or a bad one.” I placed my hands on the ship and tried to see if I knew what was wrong with it. Knowing Doom, he was probably the one who did it. 

“What do you mean you don’t know if it is good or bad? Is there something you know that we don’t?” This time it was the silent Piotr who asked. 

“Hmm.. Let’s just say she broke free of an artificial mental shackle.” Was all I said which made the frown on their face deepened. 

I could simply just tell them about the mental blocks Charles put in her mind and also the locked memories and the little remodeling he was famous for but that would put me in the middle of the X-Men debacle and I wanted to be far away from where they were when the Phoenix decides to wake up from its nap. 

I continued searching our chopper until I found what I was looking for under it. 

It was a little device shaped like a hockey puck that was attached to the bottom of the plane. When I tried destroying it with my electricity, the small amount of electricity I created almost fizzled out immediately. 

I looked at the small device in my hand and felt the small vibrations it was making. 

“It is constantly releasing some sort of transient electromagnetic disturbance which is shutting down the engines of the jets.” Reed said beside me as he also had found another small device on theirs. 

“So an EMP?…. Doom.”

“So it seems.”

I went inside ours and turned it on and sat there on the pilot’s seat as the chopper came to life. 

I went outside to carry Clint inside but he had already woken up and was already dragging his way in. 

“You good?”

“Yeah… Nah, not really. Took an explosion from the side. I’m pretty banged up as is.” He said before he walked inside and sat on a chair and just closed his eyes. 

I walked outside of the pane and saw Steve already helping Bucky and while also carrying Stryker on his shoulders. I turned to the others for a while and then looked at Jean. 

To be honest I didn’t know what to do with her. 

Maybe just let her go be the Phoenix and be eternal until another rebirth which meant she would live for thousand of years at the minimum – that was the ideal choice and it was one I took. 

But maybe helping her a little would be paying her back. 

‘I-I sorr-ʼ

I still remembered the apology she gave so it was only right I tell her that her apology was accepted. 

‘I’m getting soft… Hahahaha. No I’m not, I'm just being sentimental.’

I shook my head and made my way to her even as everyone was wary of what I’d do. 

I wasn’t doing something spectacular or phenomenal but something to at least smoothen the process of her apotheosis. A sort of farewell. 

I knelt beside her and used one of my hands to touch her forehead and projected myself inside her subconscious. 

It was a risky move on my part as the Phoenix could just vaporize me and do everlasting damage to my psyche but I continued nonetheless. 

When I entered her mindscape, what I saw was the most beautiful of scenes I’d ever seen. 

It was a dark starry sky with different colors of flames dancing through the universe. And at the midst of it all was something that looked like the sun but cracks were all over it and it was from it that the beautiful flames seeped out. 

I spread my senses further and found a young woman in front of the burning sun. 

There was something like a liquid flame flowing into her body and merging her with the sun. It was like it was funneling the sun inside her body. 

I didn’t want to dally anymore so I projected my thoughts and let my intent flow with it all as it spread through every corner of this universe. 

All I did was send out suggestions, nothing more. It was nothing more than what I thought Charles did to her and assurance that they’ll be fine even if she left. 

If this Jean Grey only had a fragment of the Phoenix then it would have all been right but what I was seeing told me otherwise. 

Rather than have the Phoenix go all Annihilus on us, it was better for it to just focus on its revenge and zilch the fuck outta here. 

Would Charles die due to what I was doing? Most probably, yeah. 

Then again it was his fault for making the Phoenix go dark with revenge. 

I had to get out of there after I was done sending out my mental pulses since the heat there was unbearable even as I upped my imagination to the best of defenses, the heat still got to me. 

I didn’t wait to see how it would react when it got my message before I exited her mindscape. 

“What did you do to her?” She asked me with concern as she stared at the still sleeping Jean. 

“Just a small mental nudge. Nothing much.” I shrugged. 

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“Wait, you are a psychic too?” Hank asked as his furry face morphed into shock. 

“No I’m… It’s complicated.”

“Will she be alright though?”

I released a sigh at that. “It’s… complicated.”

Scott, who had been silent for a while with bandage around his head asked me but this time his tone was a notch lower. “What do you mean? Is something wrong with her?”

“… She had an old mental wipe stamp on her.” I decided to be vague about it, didn’t want to spoil the show for Charles now do I? 

“What do you mean by a mental stamp?” Ororo asked with a frown on her face. Looks like she already figured it out. 

“It means that someone did something to her mind when she was young. And I think you all know who has that kind of habit.”

“He wouldn’t!” Scott shouted. 

“Maybe he didn’t, but you’ll have to ask him yourself now wouldn’t you?” I said before walking away from them and the frown on all their faces. 

“You sure this Charles guy did it?” Bucky asked as soon as I sat on my seat while Clint was on the pilot seat waiting for take off. 

“100%”

“Any reason why?”

“She’s too strong.”

Bucky and Steve frowned at that, not understanding the scale of strength I was talking about. 

“That isn’t a good enough reason right? There are bound to be people stronger than her around, especially in the kind of world we live in.” Steve said. 

“True.. But when I said she was strong… I meant she is stronger than everyone on this planet, be they immortal or gods.” They were some specific exemptions to that claim but they didn’t need to know that. 

The looks on their faces said that they easily didn’t believe me but I just shrugged as I laid my head back to rest. 

… 

[With the X-Men back at the Mansion] 

“Why!” Scott shouted out in rage. 

Around the med bay were all the teachers and Xavier and they watched the sleeping Jean. 

It had been two days since the Sentinel mission and Scott finally decided to break out what had been eating on his mind for a while now. 

“You do not understand Scott, I was trying to help her.” Charles said with a soft voice and sad expression on his face as he caressed the face of the sleeping Jean with the look of a loving grandfather as he looked at her. 

Seeing this Scott calmed down before he asked again but this time the edge to his voice was gone and so was most of his hostility. “Why did you do it?”

“Her powers were t-” 

“You better not say they were too strong for her Charles.” Logan said threatingly. 

“It’s the truth. Her abilities were out of control from a young age and it was the only way to stop them from going out of control!” Charles tried to explain. 

“But that wasn’t the only thing you did to her was it?” Ororo asked with a barely vocal voice. 

The entire room fell silent except for the sound of the heart monitor connected to Jean that continued its rhythmic beating as everyone turned to look at Charles. 

“It was for the best.” Charles said in a low voice as regret washed over his face but Ororo wasn’t having any of it. 

“What else did you do?”

“…”

“… I locked away her potential. If I didn’t, she would’ve –” 

CRACK! 

Everyone turned to look at Logan who punched a crack into the walls. 

“So Draul was telling the truth all this while. Who knows who else in this room you might have brainwashed because you thought our abilities are dangerous.”

“I would never do something like that Logan, you have to believe me.” Charles was met with unbelievable looks from his teachers as they alternated their gazes between him and Jean which caused him to sigh. 

“You know what’s funny?” Ororo asked after finally looking at Charles. “You never once said you were sorry. Not then. Not now.”

She walked out of the room after she said that, leaving the others to think about all that had happened. 

“What about Magneto?” The silent Piotr asked. 

“What about him?”

“If you could use your abilities like this on those closest to you, why didn’t you stop Magneto from ever hurting anyone the few times he was captured.”

“I didn’t want to use my abilities like this. It would breach my own moral code.” Charles lamely defended. 

“I don’t believe this.” Logan said and walked out the room following after Ororo. 

Charles thought about where he had gone wrong. Sure his actions were morally grey, but that didn’t mean they were that wrong. The others didn’t know how high her power scales, that’s why they were questioning his actions with such impunity. 

Hers was different from all those who came before her. Her potential eclipsed the mightiest of mutants Charles has seen in his long life, said to be unmatched since the advent of the X-gene by Eric. 

But then someone else came along. 

While Charles didn’t know what Jean’s power foretold except its all-encompassing strength, he definitely saw what Draul’s promised. 

Even till now he still couldn’t describe what he saw. It was as if his brain couldn’t completely process that specific information. Anytime he opened his mouth to define it, he’d find himself staring at nothing for minutes before he would regain control of his faculties and when he tried to remember what happened, it would be as if his brain went static. 

Such thoughts scared him. 

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