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Meanwhile, Jean Gray was having mixed feelings watching the live broadcast in Emma Frost's luxurious room. A full-blown nightmare scenario had been contained by five people. One of whom was a mutant working for SHIELD.
It left a bitter taste in Jean's mouth.
Emma Frost put down her porcelain teacup with a smirk. "He left without an interview. How boring."
Logan, who had chosen the least luxurious armchair in the room and still looked uncomfortable in it, snorted.
"That lying punk. He said he won't use Laura. Then he drags her into a war and uses her like an errand girl." His claws came in and out as he sat with his head low. "That filthy black suit, how dare he put it—"
"Logan," Ororo interrupted him with a soft voice. "Laura wasn't being forced into killing. She was fighting to save people."
Ororo was trying to defuse Logan's anger. Nobody liked seeing someone who meant well get torn apart. And Ororo hated senseless conflict more than that.
Jean had read Logan's emotions. He was anxious the whole time Laura had been rushing back and forth on the cruise. Although he seemed to despise Skullfire, he also had a begrudging respect and goodwill towards him. At least his memories revealed Skullfire's identity. Dante, a mercenary for Silver Sable International.
One glance at Emma told her that the White Queen also knew Logan's state of mind but did nothing to dissolve his anger.
'Scheming fox.'
Logan lifted his head slowly and glared at the TV as the feed cut to yet another replay. "When did Charles get you kids?"
"A while ago," Ororo answered, still calm in the face of Logan's provocations. "Charles told us about your past. We'd be happy to have you back at the academy."
Logan clicked his tongue. "I'll go back when I feel like it." His eyes flicked to Emma, and his mouth curled into a sneer. "Don't hang out with this fox. She'll sell your heart while it's still beating."
Emma chuckled. "I admit I've had my fair share of villainy, but I'm not that terrible towards mutantkind. We are all working under the same oppression."
Logan pushed himself up out of the chair and rolled his shoulders. "Whatever you tell yourselves to sleep at night."
He headed for the door without waiting for an answer and let it slam shut behind him.
Jean exchanged a look with Ororo before saying, "Emma, I hope you can arrange a meeting with Dante."
Jean wasn't a fan of polite speech. She preferred to be direct, but this was Emma's courtyard. Getting on Emma's bad side just to prove she didn't care about etiquette would be pointless.
"Why not let him do his thing?" Emma Frost asked, puzzled. "You saw him in action yourself. He isn't stopping his fight against the symbiotes."
"I still want to tell him what we know," Jean said, maintaining eye contact. "Face to face."
It would only benefit Dante to know the utterly insane scale of Norman's operations in person.
And if possible, she wanted to meet him in person to confirm her doubts.
Regardless of his intentions, he and three of the women around him were walking around in symbiote suits. There could be a chance they were being played like a fool in Norman's grand scheme.
"I agree with Jean," Ororo said in full support. "I'm also curious to meet him."
Emma's pleasant smile went stiff on the edge. She set her cup down with a loud clink. "I'll try. But if you two try to poach him from me, I will bring your X-Men to their knees."
Jean blinked at Emma's protectiveness. Emma was known to protect her assets but never her allies. She couldn't check on Emma's mind to confirm anything either.
Ororo chuckled softly. "Listen to yourself, Emma. You sound like he's your man."
"I don't care what it sounds like," Emma snorted. "I won't let him go anywhere near Charles or Erik."
Ororo lifted her hands a little in a gesture of peace. "We're not recruiting him. We only take in mutants. He isn't a mutant as far as we know. Though…"
"Though?"
"We did pick up a new mutant signature yesterday," Ororo said. "A very powerful signature."
Jean looked between the two and knew Ororo used the information to bait Emma into lowering her guard.
Emma's eyes glistened with a naked desire. "Oh. And where, precisely, did this signature appear?"
She reached out on instinct, letting psionic waves wrap around Ororo's mind like silk threads. Jean immediately acted to sever the connection.
Emma frowned at Jean. "Stop getting in my way, little girl."
"Stop trying to dig through people's heads without asking," Jean shot back. "You're supposed to be a queen, right? Have a little dignity."
A small muscle ticked in Emma's brow. She leaned back and took a deep breath to reclaim her composure. "We'll be civilized then. What about this new mutant?"
"This is interesting," Ororo said, as if nothing had happened. "The mutant signature appeared inside Silver Sable International. The same building Dante calls home."
"It has to be Piotr Rasputin."
"The Professor has met Piotr before. This signature was nothing like Charles has seen so far."
"Then I suppose I'll have to ask my dear Dante about this little mystery."
The door swung open without a knock. A lavender-furred cat walked in silently and her eyes flicked around like she was a human. Then she made a clean jump onto Emma's lap to curl there.
Jean knew of her as one of the Hellions, Sharon Smith, codenamed Catseye.
"Where is warm human Dante?" Catseye asked with a yawn. "Death left, so Catseye is alone."
Jean didn't know any mutant who went by the codename Death. Perhaps a new member of Emma's Hellions.
Emma brushed Sharon's fur, stroking down her back. "Sharon, how was your training?"
"Cateyes trained hard. Clawed bad robots and ran around the room…"
"Good," Emma said with an approving nod. "Train a bit more. Dante will be back sooner if you keep it up."
Sharon's ears perked. "Catseye will beat up metal boxes!"
She hopped off Emma's lap and trotted back out of the room, determined to train even harder.
Jean watched her go with a sigh. Emma had a mutant girl who still thought like a cat working herself to exhaustion. It was not the worst manipulation Jean had ever seen, but it was manipulation all the same. What disgusted her most was the fact Emma would use her students to fight for power in Hellfire Club.
Emma lifted her gaze to Jean and asked lazily, "It's manipulative and evil, isn't it?"
"It very much is."
Emma laughed gently at her answer, which puzzled Jean. Her next words made everything sound reasonable.
"At least I'm doing something," Emma said. "Better than preaching about utopia while waiting for a future I'm not lifting a finger to build."
The contempt in her tone when she said utopia made Jean's fingers curl into fists against her thighs. She couldn't even say anything as Emma was speaking truth.
Emma stood and smoothed her dress. "Let me know when you're done judging me. In the meantime, I'll keep training my people to survive the world."
She walked toward the door with her usual unhurried grace and left without looking back.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the one Logan had left behind.
Ororo's hand slid gently over Jean's hand. "She's trying to use your anger to push you away from the Professor. Don't let her succeed."
Jean took a long breath in and let it out slowly. "You're right. I'll decide who I become."
"Hmmm."
"Ororo, should we wait at Silver Sable International?"
Ororo stared at her in surprise. "I know your information is important, but he deserves a few hours to breathe. And you need to cool down."
She looked at the screen one more time, then turned away from it. "You're right… We'll go there tomorrow."
***
Dante had a hard time finding Gwen, since her phone was dead and there was nothing to track. He ended up having to ask Yuri directly. The isolated address had made him suspicious.
When he arrived, the feeling only got worse. Instead of rushing in and risking being seen too early, he activated his invisibility and followed the sound cues.
He found the classroom just in time to see Gwen being unmasked and Norman pressing her emotional wounds to twist her mind. Gwen was trapped in her own guilt, carrying the kind of helplessness that makes even smart people think like idiots.
Norman had dangled a cure in front of her, and Gwen was actually teetering. Just giving her a symbiote would've turned her into a mindless puppet. Norman perhaps wanted someone capable of making their own decisions.
Dante had to step in before Gwen made a terrible choice. Well, it didn't end well for the officer under Norman's control. He might be partially responsible for not ripping the symbiote from the officer right away. Then again, he never thought the random officer on the island would be someone Gwen knew and cared about, someone Norman could use against her.
'Miles' dad.'
After that gory explosion, Gwen stood there stiffly, as if her mind had not fully accepted what her senses had just witnessed.
"Gwen."
He put away his Venom suit, removed his Death mask, and only then put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It wasn't your fault."
Norman wanted Gwen to suffer and blame Dante. The billionaire was trying to plant the idea that everything happened because he had interrupted Gwen.
Gwen shut her eyes tightly as if she could erase the last minute from her memory by force. "I could've stopped him."
"By saying yes?"
Her face was full of emotions that almost made him angry on her behalf. She was obviously still stuck on the reality that if she had accepted Norman's offer, maybe her father could have been saved, and maybe Jefferson Morales would still be alive.
She was too nice to blame him openly since she knew he had come to help, but deep down, she might just be blaming him for everything.
He picked up an unconscious officer and carried him out of the classroom, letting him lean against the hallway. "It wouldn't have worked out."
"Why?" The question came in a slightly furious voice. "You could've saved me after Norman did his side of the deal."
"That's assuming he'll try to keep his word. Well, the thing is, he has nothing to help your father." He flipped his palm and protruded a tentacle. "This is the source of every symbiote in the town. Even it can't fix that level of damage."
A small fracture or two were doable, but perhaps only Anti-Venom had the power to deal with severe injuries. That, too, because of its innate healing properties.
"Norman would've dangled that carrot to turn you into his accomplice, then used you to hurt others. Like that biker gang." He pointed at her face. "By the time you're sober, you'd be too deep into this. Left with no other choice."
Gwen went still as she imagined herself in such a scenario.
"Do you want that?" he asked in a firm voice. "Do you want to put on his leash and hurt people for a chance to help your father?"
Gwen flinched like the words hit her deep.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Her voice came out small and broken, almost like she was crying even though no tears were falling yet. "Just... just watch my father die?"
He stepped forward and hugged her. After putting her on the spot like that, he couldn't just stand there and watch the usually energetic and cheeky woman break into pieces.
"Hey," he said, holding her firmly. "I'm here, aren't I?"
She shook her head against his chest. "I don't know what to do."
She sounded lost, like someone who couldn't see a path forward. She hadn't even remembered to put her mask back on after Norman had taken it off earlier, showing exactly how psychologically scattered she was in the aftermath of witnessing Jefferson's death and confronting her own powerlessness.
He pushed her back slightly by the shoulders, not in the slightest surprised about her wet eyes.
"Hey." He pinched her cheek to get her attention and snap her out of the spiral of despair she was sinking into. "Do you think I would have interfered if I didn't have a solution?"
Gwen's eyes went wide with surprise. A fragile hope, that she was clearly afraid to believe in, sprouted. She roughly rubbed her eyes and glared at him. "Don't joke about it if you're not serious."
"I'm not fucking around," he said and turned his head slightly to whisper to his companion who was always watching. "Death, take us to her dad… and keep us hidden."
He tried very hard not to rely on Death's powers for anything since he didn't want to become dependent on her all-powerful capabilities, but some situations called for it.
The world shifted and folded. Suddenly he found himself standing in an ICU room that was filled with sterile air and the beeping of medical equipment.
George Stacy lay on the bed surrounded by the aftermath of emergency work. His condition was immediately obvious even to someone without medical training. His head was wrapped in bandages. The various monitors tracking vital signs showed his body was fighting hard just to maintain basic function. The emergency treatment team had clearly done everything within their power when he had been brought to this ward, but conventional medicine could only do so much for injuries this severe.
Gwen's dad was an aging man who was thrown at a hard wall with the speed of a vehicle. A normal human wasn't meant to survive that level of physical trauma, much less someone of his age.
"Dad…" Gwen rushed to him like she had been starving for this sight and terrified of it at the same time. She grabbed his hand in both of hers and knelt beside the bed as silent tears finally began streaming down her face.
He activated his Biokinesis to assess the full extent of the damage.
'This is a… disaster.'
There was spinal damage and head trauma. Both of which could cause permanent impairment even if the spine got fixed. Internal bleeding and inflammation in the brain, both of which would get worse with time.
Death appeared beside him. "Don't use your powers to change his fate. You'll destroy this universe."
"So this is her Canon Event."
If he hadn't arrived, Gwen would've faced Norman alone or with Felicia. Silver Sable would've been probably the first "boss" in Gwen's path. Mutants would've stayed out of this mess. And SHIELD—he didn't know what role it could've played for Gwen's story.
That story was no more.
Death hummed in agreement. "It's her destiny. Only a native can alter its trajectory."
He had seen the catastrophic effects of violating canon events in Spider-Verse. Miles Morales had saved Police Inspector Singh in a reality where that death was supposed to happen, causing the entire reality of their universe to begin unraveling. The same thing would happen here if someone from outside this universe saved George.
He frowned. The loophole showed a disconnect from the facts before him. "I'm also a native."
Death hadn't thrown him into this world. She had changed reality to put him in someone else's life. He should be able to change the event.
"Your Biokinesis power isn't," Death corrected him patiently. "It might seem yours with how easily you can access it, but that power is still something you borrow from another universe."
He exhaled through his nose in frustration. He had yet to max out Elixir's link and make the power permanent through Nexus. If he had, solving Gwen's problem would only require lifting a finger.
'Null, show the percentage.'
[Resonance Link (Elixir): 63.1% (Level 4)]
'I can't bet on maxing it.'
The process would consume time without any guarantee of success. The matters of mind were just that complicated.
"What if I used Death's resonance?"
"Same result," Death said without hesitation. "Still power from another universe."
"What if you used your power?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
Death's eyes narrowed dangerously, sending a chill down his spine. "No."
This was her response despite their relationship. She might bend the rules if it was for a normal person, but she would never yield for someone at the core of a Canon Event.
Now he was left with an ugly dilemma. He needed George Stacy healed while making it look like a native power of this world was responsible. There was the gamble of just saying "fuck it" and healing George, letting the Spider-Society take care of the aftermath.
But it was just that, a gamble.
'What other choices do I have?'
The only helpful place was Wakanda with their advanced medical technology, except they wouldn't welcome outsiders right now.
Other than that, there was the method of magic, but George had to learn it on his own and use the mystical energy to keep himself alive. He very much wasn't in a condition to open his eyes, much less dedicate his time to learn magic.
Dante had medical expertise but not good enough to create a miracle. Venom also wouldn't be able to help, not unless George shared a true symbiosis bond like him—quite impossible considering Venom's preference for strong hosts.
'Wait, I can try creating that.'
Death furrowed her brows with obvious suspicion. "Did you find another loophole in the rules?"
He smiled, and it was not a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who had just found a way to win a rigged game. "Something even better. Hmmm, let me exhaust my options first."
Getting back into his Skullfire appearance, he walked to the door while dialing Emma's number. A nurse tried to enter but stumbled back when she saw his burning face.
"Skullfire…!"
He put a finger on his mouth and gestured to her to leave. She hurriedly nodded and scurried away. He was hoping for her to inform everyone else to not interrupt him while he was here.
"Dear~," Emma teased from the other side. "Good job pissing all over Norman's army."
"I'm not shameless enough to do that live." He shook his head. "Do you know any mutants with healing powers?"
He briefed George's situation and made up an excuse that his powers weren't available at the moment.
"Not as far as I…" she fell silent for a few seconds and spoke in a completely serious tone. "Selene might be able to."
"Yeah, no."
He knew Selene better than Emma. The Moon Witch would heal George then turn him into a zombie or something worse. Right now, his own power wasn't enough to threaten Selene into obedience. The death threat just wouldn't work on the ancient witch.
"Do you know someone named Anna Marie?"
"Rogue?" Emma asked in a surprised voice. "You're talking about Raven's adopted daughter, right?"
"Yup. Any idea where she is?"
The easiest loophole was getting Rogue to steal his Biokinesis and make it her own. The problem, however, was finding her location.
"No idea," Emma replied. "Raven hasn't shown her face for years now. Her brotherhood is also staying under the radar."
"That's unfortunate." He sighed. "Thanks for trying, though."
"Don't lose hope, Dear. There has to be a way." She gave rare words of encouragement. "If nothing works, just beg Death on your knees. What kind of woman will she be if she can't help out her man?"
Death crossed her arms beside him, listening to Emma's "helpful" advice.
"I'll try. I'll talk to you later." He hung up and smiled at Death. "Don't mind her."
"The lion does not concern himself with the opinions of the sheep."
"..."
Death's eyes suddenly glimmered with anticipation—she was looking forward to seeing his last bet. "What now?"
"The door's not here. So I'm going to build my own."
***
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