Rai_jin
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#34 VCM
🕑 Added 2025-03-28 16:00:16 +0000 UTC"Professor's with the others, Mr. Logan, he needs you, just go to where we came in." Ethan said,
"What about him?" Logan asked, gesturing at Stryker, already cornered.
"Well, I assure you, he won't be going anywhere with me here," Ethan assured with a confident look.
Wolvering looked conflicted for a few seconds, but thinking about his friend Charles and his students needing him, he scoffed and looked at Ethan in the eyes.
"Make sure you don't let him get away, bub." With that, he immediately, with claws out, preparing to strike whichever soldies comes in his way.
Inside the room, Raven, Magneto, Jason, and Ethan cornered Magneto.
“Colonel Stryker, we meet again.” Magneto crouched down, a sly smile tugging at his lips as he studied the defeated man before him.
“But I assure you, this time will be our last.”
“Wait.” Ethan stepped forward, stopping Magneto before he could finish the job. “We can’t just kill him that easily.”
Stryker tensed at Ethan’s approach, his instincts screaming that something worse was coming.
He knew what he had done to mutants—what they had every reason to do to him in return.
“What do you want?” he demanded, trying to mask the fear creeping into his voice.
Ethan crouched down, leveling a calm but chilling stare at him. “Oh, it’s simple. You’re going to work for us.”
Stryker scoffed, his lip curling in disgust.
“You must be insane if you think I’d ever serve a bunch of mutant freaks!” he spat.
“I’ve spent my life fighting to wipe your kind out. You think I’d betray everything I stand for just to save my own skin?”
Ethan chuckled, shaking his head. “You misunderstand, Colonel. We don’t need you. We need your mind—your knowledge, your expertise.”
He leaned in, his voice turning soft, almost amused.
“Tell me, what sounds better? A man devoted to radical human evolution? Or a man whose wife and daughter—both mutants
—were tragically murdered by the very humans he once stood beside? A man who then dedicated his life to ensuring that humanity evolves as mutants, no longer divided, but all as one?”
Stryker’s breath hitched, his eyes widening with horror. “No… no, you wouldn’t—”
Ethan smirked. “You think we won’t rewrite you, reshape you into something useful? I promise, when I’m done, you won’t even remember that you were once William Stryker.”
Ethan looked at Raven and nodded. Raven nodded back, still disguised as Stryker, she ordered Jason, and Jason, who looked at his father on the ground grew confused for a second,
Ethan, seeing his confusion, punched Stryker hard on the ground, and now with his back turned against his son, Jason was now able to access Stryker's mind, delete everything in it, and program his mind through Raven's command.
He could endure death, but the thought of being erased, of being turned into something he hated—it was worse than any execution.
Ethan simply watched him with an air of satisfaction.
It was over.
With the unconscious Stryker in tow, the group exited the room in haste.
Just then, they heard a group of hurried steps, and from its source were Katie and the others, along with Professor X.
Ethan looked at Katie, she has a laptop on her person, typing something on it.
“Did you get it?” Ethan asked, glancing toward her.
“Five more minutes,” Katie responded, eyes fixed on the screen.
This place held a treasure trove of information—decades of mutant research.
Destroying it without first salvaging what they could would be a waste.
Magneto, however, was growing impatient.
The walls trembled, the distant groan of shifting structures echoing through the facility.
A damp chill filled the air.
“Five minutes is too long,” he warned.
“This dam is on borrowed time. If we don’t move now, we’ll be buried along with it.”
“We have time.” Ethan walked up to the nearest wall, running his fingers along the surface as if searching for something,
“Ethan, sometimes we have to make sacrifices,” Magneto said, shaking his head.
He assumed Ethan’s resistance was just youthful defiance—something expected from someone still full of fire.
Setbacks were a natural part of life.
But then, Magneto realized Ethan wasn’t just talking.
The young mutant planted his feet firmly, clenched his fist, and without hesitation, drove it into the wall.
Boom!
A thunderous crack echoed as a gaping hole, at least three meters wide and ten meters deep, split open in the structure.
Beyond it, blue skies, white clouds, and the sprawling forest came into view.
“Well, now we have time,” Ethan said, turning back with a smirk. “Sorry, I prefer taking the direct route.”
Magneto blinked at the unexpected display. “Uh… I suppose that works.”
Professor X, however, frowned.
“Are you certain that won’t compromise the dam’s overall structure?”
He cast a wary glance at the already weakened walls.
“The dam is barely holding as it is.”
Ethan waved off the concern. “Relax. I controlled the force to move in one direction rather than dispersing through the entire dam. The damage is minimal.”
Professor X exhaled, glancing toward the evacuation zone where Storm and Jean were already guiding people to safety.
With that concern settled, he allowed himself to ease up.
“Alright, then. Let’s wait a little longer.”
Boom! Bang!
Loud, earth-shaking groans filled the air as the dam buckled under immense pressure.
The massive hydropower station, a relic from Roosevelt’s New Deal, was reaching its final moments after standing for nearly 80 years.
Downstream, flocks of birds took to the skies in panic, and animals fled wildly, their instincts warning them of impending doom.
Then, with one final, deafening roar, the dam surrendered.
A colossal wall of water—nearly 40 billion cubic meters—burst free, carving through the landscape like a merciless beast finally unleashed after decades of restraint.
A land tsunami swallowed everything in its path, uprooting entire forests and tearing through the remains of the facility with horrifying force.
Even if the dam had still been standing at that moment, it would have been obliterated in seconds by the sheer, unstoppable power of nature.
Amidst the devastation, a jagged, broken steel platform hovered in midair, kept afloat by Magneto’s mastery over metal.
Standing atop it were Ethan, Magneto, Professor X, and the rest of their team, watching the floodwaters rage below.
“Damn, that was close,” Ethan exhaled, glancing at Katie, who clutched a small USB drive in her hand.
Relief washed over him. “At least we got the research data.”
With those files, the foundation for a new mutant research facility was secured.
A major victory.
“Next, we need to rendezvous with Storm and the others—” Ethan’s voice cut off abruptly, his eyes widening in alarm.
A surge of immense energy rippled through the chaotic waters.
His instincts flared as he turned his gaze toward the flood, where something impossible was happening.
The monstrous current, strong enough to tear apart steel and stone, was suddenly split down the middle.
A force even more powerful had carved a massive gap in the raging tide.
And in that opening, standing between the water’s wrath and a plane still struggling to take off, was a woman engulfed in fiery red energy.
“They’re way too slow,” Ethan muttered, his expression tightening.
Without hesitation, he leaped off the platform, heading straight for the plane.
Magneto smirked as he watched him go.
“That boy has no patience.” He moved to guide the steel platform forward, intending to follow—
But then, Professor X suddenly grabbed his arm. “No,” Charles said, his voice unusually tense. “We can’t go just yet.”
Magneto immediately noticed the slight tremor in his old friend’s hand.
Years of familiarity told him one thing—Charles was deeply unsettled.
His expression was more solemn than ever before.
And that was enough to make even Magneto hesitate.
...
"Storm, open the hatch, now!" Cyclops shouted, his voice laced with urgency. Outside, Jean Grey stood at the brink of destruction, her powers barely holding back the raging flood that threatened to consume them all.
"I'm not controlling it!" Storm's voice was tense as she stepped away from the cockpit.
The controls flickered and moved on their own, as if manipulated by an unseen force.
In truth, that wasn’t far from reality.
Jean had taken full control of the plane.
She knew Cyclops and Storm would never abandon her, but if she didn’t take a stand, they’d all perish.
The aircraft wouldn’t withstand the relentless force of the flood—it would be torn apart in an instant.
And deep down, Jean could feel it.
The raw, surging power within her wasn’t stopping—it was growing. This was the only way.
Just as she braced herself to act, a dark figure dropped from the sky, landing right in front of her.
"Ethan!" Jean gasped, her eyes wide with shock. But the moment of surprise quickly turned to panic. "Get out of here! You’ll die!"
Ethan didn’t so much as flinch. He stood firm, gazing up at the towering wall of water—five, maybe six stories high. His expression was unusually serious.
Though the flood had dispersed slightly from its initial impact, its force had only multiplied after cascading down nearly ninety meters. The X-Jet wouldn’t last a second if the full brunt of it struck. Everyone inside would be lost.
And that was something Ethan refused to let happen. Taking a deep breath, he clenched his fists and stepped forward.
"You shall not pass!"
The roar of the flood surged in response, as if nature itself had accepted the challenge.
The water churned violently, detonating like a hundred torpedoes at once. A vortex hundreds of meters wide spiraled into existence, revealing something massive beneath the surface.
The ground trembled—a quake unlike any other. The waters surged higher, rising by over ten meters in mere seconds. And yet, as Jean fought to keep control, she sensed something shifting.
The flood's power was fading.
Then, from within the vortex, the truth was revealed—a massive landmass was rising, forcing the flood to split apart. It was an entire hill, nearly the size of two football fields, erupting from the depths.
At the last possible moment, Ethan had altered the terrain itself, forcing the water to divert. The flood, once unstoppable, now crashed harmlessly against the newly formed ridge.
Jean collapsed to her knees, exhaustion overtaking her. She stared at the towering hill that had saved them, disbelief flickering in her tired eyes. "Is it... over?"
"Yeah, we’re good now," Ethan assured her, glancing back.
Then he smirked. "By the way, what were you yelling about earlier? Kinda hard to hear over all that water."
Jean didn’t answer. Her breathing was uneven, her gaze distant. And then—
The air around her crackled. A dark energy pulsed outward. Ethan's smirk faded as he took a cautious step toward her.
"Jean? You okay?"
In an instant, her hand shot out, gripping his wrist.
Ethan’s eyes widened.
From within hers, a searing, golden fire blazed with unfathomable fury.
"You’re mistaken," she said, her voice cold, detached. "I am not Jean."
A deafening silence fell between them.
"I am—Phoenix."
The power within her, once barely restrained, had finally shattered its chains.
The moment Jean unleashed her attack, whatever remained of her humanity was crushed beneath the overwhelming force of the Phoenix.
A piercing scream tore through the sky—the haunting cry of the Phoenix itself.
In the midst of the raging flood, a colossal fiery apparition took shape.
The spectral wings of the Phoenix unfurled, and flames surged outward, painting the water’s surface a searing red.
Boom!
A deafening explosion shattered the phantom image, and from its core, a streak of burning light shot forth like a flaming meteor.
Jean—now fully consumed by the Phoenix Force—cut through the flood at terrifying speed, leaving a blazing trail in her wake that briefly split the raging waters apart.
"Ugh—" Ethan coughed as he steadied himself at the epicenter of the blast.
The Phoenix's ambush hadn’t harmed him, but the sudden eruption of flames had devoured much of the oxygen in the air.
The suffocating heat left his lungs gasping for breath.
Of course, such an inconvenience was hardly enough to weaken him.
Crack!
A sharp sound snapped Ethan’s attention elsewhere.
He turned and saw that the massive hill he had conjured was now riddled with fractures, splitting apart under the sheer force of Phoenix’s unleashed power.
The flood took full advantage of the weakening structure, roaring as it carved through the breaking terrain, threatening to bring the entire hill crumbling down.
"Damn it," Ethan muttered, his gaze darting toward the X-Jet where Storm, Cyclops, and the others were still aboard.
Though the aircraft hadn’t been caught in the initial blast, the sheer magnitude of the energy waves had left it completely disabled.
Above them, Magneto hovered, watching the chaos unfold.
Ethan made a split-second decision, racing toward the plane.
Without hesitation, he reached beneath it, muscles tensing as he lifted it off the failing ground.
"Magneto! Take it!" With a forceful heave, Ethan launched the X-Jet into the sky as if it were nothing more than a paper airplane.
Just as he did, the flood shattered what remained of the hill, swallowing Ethan whole in a surge of destruction.
"Stop!" Seeing the jet hurtling toward him, Magneto instantly extended his hands.
His powers surged, catching the aircraft in midair.
Steeling himself, he stabilized it and swiftly guided it away from the danger zone.
From his vantage point, he could see it—Jean, or rather, the Phoenix.
She stood motionless amidst the flood, yet the water within ten meters of her was eerily still, like a flawless mirror reflecting the inferno above.
Behind her, the Phoenix’s spectral form loomed, its wings spanning tens of meters.
Fiery feathers drifted from its form, each one detonating upon contact with the water, spreading waves of flame across the surface.
What was once a flood had transformed into a sea of fire.
"Ethan…" Katie’s voice was laced with worry as she watched the flood engulf him.
"Relax," Magneto said, though his gaze remained fixed on the scene. "You've seen his power. This won’t be enough to stop him."
As if on cue, the water below churned violently, spiraling into a massive vortex.
From its center, a towering column of water rose, and atop it, completely unharmed, stood Ethan.
He exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders.
"Huh. I figured you’d run the second you had the chance," he remarked coolly, eyes locked onto the Phoenix.
"You know fighting me isn’t worth the trouble."
Jean—no, the Phoenix—met his gaze, her expression devoid of warmth.
Her red lips parted, and she spoke with a voice like crackling embers.
"You... will die."
