"As expected from a professionally trained agent," Ethan said, his voice calm, even with the dagger pressed against his neck. "Your ability to adapt is far superior to most. And your ability to awaken is quite impressive."
The Black Widow didn't flinch. Despite her dagger poised, she couldn't ignore the evaluation that came from Ethan, who seemed unshaken by the threat.
"Then what exactly is all this..." she started, but her words were interrupted by a sudden, inexplicable shock.
A soft, warm voice filled the air, strangely calming.
"Don't be nervous. Don't be afraid."
In an instant, everything around Natasha blurred.
She found herself floating, suspended in mid-air.
Below her, the familiar skyline of New York stretched out, but what caught her attention were the figures that appeared before her—members of the X-Men and various mutants from the Brotherhood, all watching her intently.
Ethan, standing before the group, raised his hand and tossed a glowing golden crystal into the air.
As it spiraled upward, the same calming voice echoed around them.
"My comrades, perhaps you find yourselves in a dangerous predicament. Perhaps you are confused and afraid. You've encountered enemies that seem straight out of a movie, and now, your own bodies are changing in ways you cannot understand. What I want you to know is, you are not alone."
The voice continued as the world shifted around Natasha.
She suddenly saw through the eyes of countless New Yorkers—elderly, middle-aged, men, women, and children—feeling their fear, their confusion, and their rising hope.
She saw them change, felt the stirrings of their newfound abilities.
She could almost taste their emotions.
"Do not fear the alien enemies before you," the voice urged. "Do not fear the power within you. What you are seeing is your true self. In the face of this disaster, the police cannot protect you, and the army is too far away to help. But you have the power to protect yourselves. Your abilities are your weapons. Use them to survive. Fight as long as you can."
As the voice faded, Natasha snapped back to reality.
The city was still in chaos, and the mutants around her seemed unchanged.
Her mind raced to process what she had just experienced.
"Was that...?" she murmured.
"That was Professor X," Ethan replied, his tone more serious now. "He's connecting with the minds of millions of mutants who've just awakened, trying to calm them. What you just saw was his way of comforting them. All we want is to save as many as we can."
"Turning the entire city into mutants... I have to admit, it's a crazy thing to do." Natasha turned sharply, hurling her energy dagger at a Chitauri warrior still twitching on the ground.
The blade struck true, and the alien fell silent. "But in this situation... you did well."
Ethan gave a small, knowing smile. "I'll correct you on one thing," he said, extending a finger and wagging it in front of her. "Please don't refer to ourselves as a mutant. The right term now is... 'metahuman.'"
...
"It's good news that you can understand it." As soon as Ethan finished speaking, a sudden roar shook the air.
Banner had transformed. It seemed the strange rain—tainted by X-crystal residue—had triggered his change, or maybe it was seeing Ethan again.
Hulk now stood glaring at Ethan, his eyes full of rage, like he might lunge at him any second.
"You're still looking for a fight? Now?" Ethan frowned, unimpressed.
Hulk hesitated. Despite his fury, he instinctively stepped back when he saw Ethan's narrowed eyes.
Protective as ever, he shielded the smaller Hulk below him.
Though Hulk was known for brute strength and short temper, he wasn't completely mindless.
Still, feeling humiliated by his own caution, he roared in frustration and leapt away.
Like a wild gorilla, he scaled a nearby skyscraper and launched himself into battle.
"Looks like our big green friend got impatient," Ethan said with a smirk.
"What should we do now?" Captain America asked, looking over.
Technically, he was the team's leader, but with the city in chaos and mutants awakened, it was clear Ethan now held the momentum.
"Whether you want to chase Loki or help the civilians—it's up to you," Ethan said, then shot up into the sky.
That left Steve, Natasha, and Clint exchanging confused looks.
"Wait... weren't we supposed to be the leads here?"
"Boss, let's see who can take down more of these things!" came a shout as John blazed past Ethan in mid-air.
With a flurry of fiery explosions, Chitauri warriors dropped like singed bugs.
John's powers had clearly evolved.
He used to be grounded—no flight, no full-body flame mode—but now, with the help of the advanced tech from the mutant research program Ethan brought back, he was soaring.
And he wasn't alone.
Under Apocalypse's harsh but effective training, many mutants had powered up rapidly.
John, Bobby, and a few others had ascended to new levels.
"Bobby's falling behind in kills. Poor guy can't fly," John called out with a cocky grin.
Down below, Bobby skated through the battlefield, his body encased in living ice.
A self-forming ice path unfurled in front of him with every step, and Chitauri warriors unfortunate enough to get too close exploded into icy shards.
But just as John started celebrating, dozens of razor-sharp wind blades formed on the side of the street and sliced through the air—right past him, targeting the Chitauri warriors sneaking up behind.
"This is a war zone. Next time you're that careless, I might not be around to save you," Ethan snapped, his voice sharp.
Storm was in full control of the skies.
Any Chitauri foolish enough to enter her zone were struck down by furious bolts of lightning.
The area around her was a thunderstorm of death.
Jean Grey had fully embraced her Phoenix form, becoming a burning force of destruction.
Her fiery wings tore through enemy aircraft with ease, reducing them to molten scrap.
Cyclops was calm, focused—laser blasts shooting clean through flying enemies like a turret.
Nearby, Katie a.k.a, Shadowkat was phasing through rubble, helping trapped civilians to safety.
And then there was Logan.
Instead of fighting, the grizzled warrior was hunched over a pile of Chitauri weapons, poking at them with his claws, trying to figure out if any were usable.
Not much he could do from the ground.
He couldn't fly or shoot lasers, and conventional human weapons barely scratched Chitauri tech.
Katie had asked him to help with rescues, but he couldn't bring himself to just watch the action.
Magneto had offered to team up, and Logan had almost agreed—until he saw the sheer chaos that followed wherever Magneto went.
Right now, Erik was a force of destruction.
This was his element. Chitauri fighters veered out of control around him, smashing into each other midair or getting ripped apart by their own weapons.
If it weren't for the danger of triggering the wormhole's collapse, he could've sealed the portal by himself.
No one could stop him. Not here. Not now.
Under the combined assault of the mutant team, the first wave of Chitauri invaders was in complete disarray.
"What the hell?" one of the Chitauri commanders screeched through a distorted frequency.
"This planet was supposed to be crawling with weaklings barely worth targeting! These were supposed to be experience fodder! Why are we the ones getting wiped out?!"
Their frustration was short-lived. The wormholes widened again, this time stretching hundreds of meters across.
From them, the Chitauri motherships surged into the city like massive, gliding sea creatures.
The skyline of Manhattan stood no chance—skyscrapers shattered like toy blocks beneath the massive hulls.
With each tremor-inducing impact, the ships disgorged fresh waves of Chitauri warriors, replacing their fallen soldiers tenfold.
"Fools..." Magneto scowled at the sky and launched into the air. His eyes narrowed as he locked onto one of the main ships.
He stretched out his hand, and metal screamed.
The Chitauri vessel groaned under invisible pressure, its hull warping like it had been seized by an enormous fist.
No matter how the engines flared or hull panels adjusted, it couldn't escape.
"Crush." Magneto's voice was calm, deadly.
The ship's exterior began to buckle.
Energy crackled from its core, systems overloaded—but before the final compression, a blue shimmer flickered across its surface.
A shielding field snapped into place, breaking Magneto's hold instantly.
In retaliation, twin auxiliary cannons deployed from the mothership's sides, firing two massive beams of condensed energy straight at him.
"I've got this!" Ethan shouted, stepping in front of Magneto.
The twin beams struck him dead-on—but instead of obliterating him, they reversed direction midair.
The redirected blasts smashed into the ship's own shields, rippling the barrier and staggering the behemoth.
While Ethan was stronger in raw power, it was clear that Magneto's battlefield experience and precision made him a key figure in this fight.
Ethan knew he had to protect the older mutant.
"That shield disrupts magnetic force," Ethan said, eyes locked on the mothership. "But maybe I can still punch through it. Let me try—"
Magneto raised a hand to stop him. "No. Just stay in front of me. I want to test something."
He gestured, and a smaller Chitauri aircraft floated to his side.
A strange crackling sound sparked in Magneto's palm, but Ethan sensed it—an enormous, invisible magnetic field forming around them.
"Fire," Magneto whispered.
The aircraft shot forward like a cannonball, an electromagnetic bullet so fast and bright it made the mothership's previous blasts seem like sparklers.
It punched through the mothership's shield and drilled deep into its hull before detonating.
Ethan's jaw dropped. "That move..."
"After speaking with Apocalypse, I had an idea. I created an electromagnetic framework, then accelerated the metal craft using induction principles,"
Magneto said, eyes gleaming. "I call it... the Super Electromagnetic Cannon."
Ethan looked conflicted, eyebrows raised and lips twitching.
It wasn't the sheer power of the attack—it was something else.
"That lightning dancing in your fingers just now," Ethan muttered. "Looks like you got upgraded too old man..."
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Word count: 1677
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