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*****
Earth's troubles were, of course, unknown to Mike.
Right now, he was pouring his whole heart into building the planet.
According to his and Jor-El's plan, reshaping Ego into their envisioned world would take quite some time.
Fully seizing control of the core alone would require one week; only after that would the first step of their planetary project be considered complete.
Still, once that first step was taken, progress would accelerate.
Day after day slipped by. While Mike busied himself on Ego, the heroes on Earth were anything but idle.
They were fighting Ultron.
Ultron proved even harder to deal with than they had imagined.
If they hadn't poured tremendous effort into guarding the nuclear launch codes, Earth would already have been scoured by nuclear fire.
Ultron created a body for himself, but at the final moment of data transfer, that body—embedded with the Mind Stone—was seized by the heroes. Then the ever-bold Tony and Bruce, those two mad scientists, uploaded JARVIS's core program into it.
Because of that, the heroes clashed yet again.
Fortunately, this time the madness had a good outcome: based on JARVIS and upgraded beyond, a new consciousness emerged.
This new AI, named Vision, stood on their side—and possessed power no less than Ultron's.
Through the network, Vision tracked Ultron and discovered his plan to artificially manufacture a meteor to replicate the dinosaurs' extinction and wipe out the human race. With Vision's help, the heroes located Ultron and waged a massive battle.
In the end, Vision sealed Ultron's access to the net. Unable to escape, every Ultron body was destroyed by the combined might of the X-Men and the Avengers.
On the surface, the whole process had barely diverged from the original plot.
Yet just as the heroes breathed a sigh of relief over their victory, a data bomb Ultron had pre-planted on the network detonated the moment he vanished—more precisely, it blasted out to every person's inbox or phone at the same instant.
The Kent Family's Secret.
Members of the Kent household:
Father: Mike Kent (abilities unknown; has displayed multiple powers)
Children: Clark Kent (Superman)
Erik Kent (Magneto)
Charles Kent (Professor X)
Gwen Kent (abilities unknown)
At first glance, people stared blankly at the headline.
What "Kent Family Secret"? What did that have to do with them?
But when they saw the list of family members, a suffocating feeling crept into their chests.
Mike Kent and Gwen Kent they could shrug at—they had no impression of them at all. But the suffixes to those three names…
Superman? Magneto? Professor X?
Those three… were brothers?
It felt like their worldview had just taken a direct hit.
The first reaction: this was nonsense. Something this absurd had to be fake!
But following those names were a variety of "proofs."
And with those proofs, the balance in people's hearts began to tilt.
Superman and Professor X as brothers—fine, that might be acceptable. But to add Magneto to that? What was going on?
One had to remember: Magneto had been the leader of the Brotherhood, a mutant organization that attacked one military base and research facility after another. Even if civilians hadn't been harmed, in many eyes they were still terrorists.
Yes, documents had come to light exposing the cruel experiments conducted in those facilities, showing that the Brotherhood's destruction of those sites was prompted by inhumane abuses of mutants. But the destruction itself was fact, and the many soldiers who died at the Brotherhood's hands were also fact.
Thus, for many, "Magneto" equaled "terror chieftain."
And now, to learn that Professor X and Superman were brothers with that "terror chieftain"?
Did that imply… these two heroes had done something terrifying as well?
Were the three brothers entangled in some grand conspiracy?
As doubts spread, and fear began to take root, people kept reading.
Magneto and Professor X, the message said, were two sides of the same coin. For the sake of mutants, they had chosen different paths.
One built a school. One built the Brotherhood. Though they seemed to be enemies, they were actually striving toward a single goal—
—to quietly strengthen mutants, then lead them to exterminate humanity.
As for Superman, he was their secret weapon.
This family was allegedly advancing a plot of unimaginable scale.
What followed was another chain of "evidence."
If the earlier materials proving the Kent family's relationships were coherent and truly persuasive, this batch was thirty percent truth, seventy percent fabrication.
But forged by Ultron, these exhibits were nearly impossible for ordinary people to tell apart from the real thing.
Worse, after being stunned by the revelation of Clark, Charles, and Erik's relationship, many were already suspicious—or even convinced—that the Kents were hiding a conspiracy. In that frame of mind, how many would question the authenticity of such "proofs"?
Now, for the majority who saw these messages, what they felt was distrust of Magneto, suspicion of Professor X and Clark, fear of the Kent family—indeed, fear of the entire mutant community.
The delicate thaw between mutants and human society—won through the efforts of Charles and Erik—instantly crashed back to freezing point.
Though the information was fresh and the evidence still needed verification, the atmosphere, beyond doubt, had already become tense.
And as time fermented these rumors, if the problem wasn't resolved, it would ultimately become a war.
If hostilities broke out, neither side would escape devastation. It would be a catastrophe for the entire world.
"Provoke a war, let humans and mutants destroy each other—that may well be Ultron's goal," Steve murmured, rubbing his temples with a weary sigh.
Staring at the flood of incendiary headlines, the Avengers felt their nerves tighten.
"We should have been more careful with Ultron," Natasha said helplessly.
Tony's face was drawn. He looked at the others and spoke slowly. "I'm sorry. This is all on me."
If not for him, there would have been no Ultron—and none of this.
"And on me," Bruce added, patting Tony's shoulder with the same bitter smile.
"No—you came at my invitation. I—" Tony began, voice low, clearly trying to shoulder the blame alone—but Bruce shook his head and stopped him.
"Ultron…" Barton said evenly. "While combing the net and digging into information on the heroes, he must have pieced together the Kent family's secret—Charles and Erik's connection—and then crafted this plan."
He drew a shallow breath. "He's terrifying."
While he set the meteor scheme to annihilate humanity, this other plot was quietly unfolding. When the meteor plan failed, this one silently activated.
"What are the Department of Defense, the federal government, the public, and other countries saying about this?" Steve asked calmly.
Tony flicked his hand, projecting a virtual screen that expanded over the center of the conference table.
Faces darkened as everyone scanned the feeds.
The DoD was already making preparations. While the federal government soothed public panic, it also demanded that X-School and Future Technologies submit to investigation.
And the number of people who believed the Kents were conspiring kept climbing.
What infuriated them most was how many bottom-feeding outlets were eagerly smearing the Kents, spewing "exclusive proofs" and "inside scoops," ratcheting tensions dangerously higher.
All of it pointed in the same direction: things were getting worse.
"Would wiping this off the net still help now?" Pietro asked, lips pressed tight.
He and Wanda had stayed at the X-School when times were hard. They didn't believe these so-called proofs for a second.
"It's already too late," said the Winter Soldier, Bucky, recently added to the team, in a low voice.
Thor slammed his fist on the table. "I don't care what anyone else thinks. If they dare move against the Kent family, I, and Asgard, will not stand idly by!"
The others could only sigh.
They were close to the Kents, and they knew perfectly well that a "Kent conspiracy" was impossible. But belief alone couldn't solve what was now in motion.
Bucky hesitated. "The question is—would they really dare start a war? Magneto, Professor X… mutants aren't that easy to handle—"
"No—you're forgetting something," Tony cut in, voice gone cold. "The purification serum. It's the perfect weapon against mutants."
"Damn! I actually forgot that," Bruce muttered.
"If that thing is in play, it's a massive counter to mutants," Steve said, frowning as another thought struck him; his face grew even darker. "Worse—because it exists, the hardliners on the mutant question will seize this chance to push for all-out war."
If so, the odds of war were greater than they'd feared—and the timetable, much shorter.
As symbols of the mutant community—and as the fuse for this crisis—X-School and Future Technologies would surely be attacked first.
"We have to warn them," Wanda said anxiously.
"Wait. I have a question." Vision—also newly joined and instrumental in the fight against Ultron—regarded them with puzzled candor. "Why are you so certain the Kents are not plotting anything?"
Tony smiled and shook his head. "Because they don't need to. If they wanted to act against this world—against humanity—they would have done it long ago. They wouldn't wait around for some 'secret' to be exposed."
He paused, voice turning quiet. "The power to destroy the world—to annihilate humanity—has been in their family's hands for a long time."
Those closest to the Kents nodded. Thor, face alight with pride, declared even more firmly, "I can vouch for that."
Good grief—was he counting himself as part of the Kent household now?
(End of Chapter)