[A/N]: Alright, that's it. All the setup is officially done and this arc is now in full swing. Things are about to go from "oh that's interesting" to "what the hell just happened" real fast. The Patreon folks already went absolutely feral over what's coming, so I'm very excited (and a little scared) to unleash it here too.
If you're enjoying this, do me a favor and drop a comment, throw a stone, scream your theories, or share it with someone who likes chaos. The more love I see, the faster I can push updates. Let's ride.
The First goal for this week is 200 PowerStones for TWO bonus chapters.
Back on Earth, golden motes of light fell from the sky like snow that refused to touch ground, each one floating toward the massacre happening below where swarms of Sentinels detained mutants for their so-called re-education and superheroes across the world fought exhausted, injured, dying by inches.
Jay, hovering above the Atlantic before launching his attack on FURY, spoke the spell Gaea had taught him with words that came from somewhere ancient, somewhere that predated language itself and touched the foundation of existence.
"ॐ ह्रीं श्रीं क्लीं वसुधारायै स्वाहा"
(You are the sensory object, You are Earth, You are Aditi (limitless mother). You are the producer of the universe, the supporter of all existence. Control the Earth, firmly establish the Earth, do not harm the Earth.)
The words resonated through dimensions, through the fabric of reality itself, and somewhere deep in her domain Gaea heard her son's call and answered with everything she had.
The golden motes multiplied exponentially, spreading across every continents and seeking those with the will to protect others.
New York City, Lower Manhattan
Max, just fourteen with his whole life ahead of him, watched the Sentinel drag his sister away while his father lay bleeding on the cracked pavement with a gash across his forehead leaking red that pooled on concrete. Max's whole world had compressed into a single thought, a single desperate prayer that consumed everything else: SAVE! SAVE!! SAVE!!!!!!!
A golden speck stopped its descent and floated toward him, pulsing with warmth that made his skin tingle.
"Max Steel." The voice was sweet and maternal, like every mother in every language speaking at once in perfect harmony. "Your will to save is worthy. Will you accept what I offer?"
Max's brain hadn't caught up to what was happening as his mouth worked with no sound coming out at first, his thoughts fragmenting. "Wha... who... can you... my sister..."
The Sentinel kept walking with his sister trapped in its metal arms, and something in Max broke like glass shattering.
The golden mote hung in the air between them with infinite patience, waiting for his choice.
"Child, I cannot interfere directly, but I can give you the means. Be brave. Speak your answer."
Max reached out with shaking hands and closed his fist around the light that felt warm and alive. "Yes! Please, yes! Whatever it takes!"
The transformation hit him like lightning channeled through his spine.
Golden aura exploded from his skin, and Max felt his body change and felt power flood through him like electricity through copper wire as his skin turned metallic gold, his hair blazed with inner light, and a red suit materialized over his body with a big M emblazoned over his heart. The sensation was overwhelming in its intensity: every nerve ending on fire with purpose, every muscle suddenly capable of impossible things, his mind expanding to encompass senses he'd never known existed or thought possible.
He could feel danger like a physical pressure against his skin, sense his father's fading heartbeat growing weaker by the second and his sister's terror spiking with each step the Sentinel took even the Sentinel's cold mechanical awareness calculating probabilities.
His body moved without his permission as Danger Detection Response seized control, and Max found himself running toward his father on legs that shouldn't be able to move that fast and covered distance in impossible strides.
"Dad?" His voice came out wrong, deeper and resonating with power. "Dad, it's me! Can you hear me?"
Nothing as his father's eyes stayed closed with blood still seeping from the wound, staining pavement darker.
Panic seized Max's chest in a crushing grip, but then his hands glowed green specked with gold and moved of their own accord without conscious thought, pressing against his father's wound while Max watched in awe and terror as the gash closed like time running backward, as internal damage repaired itself cell by cell, finally his father's breathing steadied and color returned to his face.
Before Max could process what he'd done or understand the miracle in his hands, his body pulled away, no longer his to control and charged at the Sentinel with speed that left afterimages, his golden fist punching straight through the robot's head with a sound like thunder.
Metal shrieked as sparks flew and the Sentinel collapsed in a heap of smoking components.
"How..." Max stared at his hand, at the dent his fist had made in reinforced plating designed to withstand tank rounds. "Sis!"
But he didn't care about the impossibility as his sister was all that mattered in the world, and she had minor cuts across her arms from being grabbed and passed out but breathing while his hands produced that green energy again, healing her injuries with touches that felt instinctive and natural, like he'd been doing this his whole life.
Then he heard them with heavy footsteps and multiple signatures as his danger sense screamed warnings that made his head pound.
A swarm of Sentinels converged on his position, drawn by the destruction of their drone like sharks to blood.
Max's heart hammered against his ribs. "No no no, too many, I can't fight all of them..."
But his body responded before fear could take root as Lifeguard's Situational Biomorphic Adaptation seized control and assessed the threat in microseconds, and golden wings erupted from Max's back with their wingspan more than six feet and each feather gleaming like molten metal, sharp and deadly.
One flap and he was airborne with his sister and father gathered in arms, and the Sentinels reached for him with grasping metal claws but he was already gone, moving faster than them through air that parted before him.
Minutes Later, Roosevelt Hospital
Max landed in the ambulance bay with wings folding back into his shoulder blades as he set his family down gently on concrete, and paramedics rushed forward with practiced ease while, for the first time since the transformation, Max felt his body return to his control.
He stretched, testing limbs that had moved without permission like a puppet, and grinned despite everything because that had been incredible.
The Sentinels found him in a nearby park with six of them advancing in formation, their optical sensors locked on his position.
Max waved with teenage bravado. "Here! I'm here!" His voice cracked with enthusiasm and terror in equal measure. "Took me by surprise before, but I got it now. I'm a real superhero! Like on TV!"
He slapped his palm against his fist, felt the power respond as his wings spread and hardened with each feather sharpening, and his skin took on a metallic sheen. "My sis and dad are safe. So now let's try this for real!"
Max let go, stopped fighting the power and submitted to it completely.
His body moved like a dancer performing a routine perfected over years, and the Sentinels tried to corner him with coordinated tactics, adapt to his patterns and predict his movements, but adaptation required time and Max didn't give it to them. His wings cut through metal plating like scissors through paper and his fists found weak points in armor that shouldn't exist as his danger sense kept him three steps ahead of every strike.
More Sentinels swarmed with dozens now converging on the park.
Max's wings spread wide, and individual feathers fired like missiles in a 360-degree attack that turned the park into a scrap yard as metal bodies fell in pieces around him.
Then the golden aura flickered and dimmed.
Max felt the power slipping away like water through his fingers. "Wait, no, not yet! I'm just getting started!"
The mote of light extracted itself from his chest, and Max collapsed to normal, gasping with his body suddenly weak and cold and so horribly empty like someone had scooped out his insides.
"You have done well, Max Steel. The danger has passed. The power must return now to help others."
"Stop!" Max reached for the light desperately, but it seeped into the ground like water into sand. "But I didn't even hit a cool pose yet! I had like five planned!"
Iron Fist landed beside him moments later, taking in the destroyed Sentinels scattered across the park like toys. "Kid, what the hell happened here?"
Max sat there, banging his fists against the pavement with tears of frustration streaming down his face, not from fear or pain but from loss as he'd touched something incredible and now it was gone forever.
"I was a hero," Max whispered, staring at his normal hands that looked so small now. "Just for a minute, but it was real. It was actually real."
Tokyo, Shibuya Crossing
A schoolteacher named Tanaka Yuki, twenty-eight and never brave, grabbed students and pulled them toward shelter as a Sentinel advanced through the crowd, the poor girls mutation let her see emotions as colors which was beautiful but useless in combat.
The Sentinel's weapon charged with rising energy. "MUTANT IDENTIFIED. CEASE RESISTANCE."
Golden light touched her shoulder like a gentle hand.
"Tanaka Yuki. Your students need protection. Will you become their shield?"
Yuki's hands trembled as she'd never been brave and never been strong, just a teacher who loved children. "Watashi wa... I'm just a teacher. I can't fight robots..."
"You can. If you speak the right answer."
A student screamed behind her, a little girl, six years old crying for her mother, who wasn't there.
Yuki's fear crystallized into something harder "Hai. Onegaishimasu."
The transformation felt like being unmade and remade in the same instant as golden light wrapped her body and rewrote her very structure, and suddenly Yuki could feel the structural integrity of the building around her, could sense which supports were weakening and which walls would collapse, even predict falling debris before it fell. Multiple arms erupted from her torso, six in total, like Asura from the old stories, and each one moved independently to brace crumbling concrete, snatch falling debris mid-air and pull her students from danger simultaneously.
She didn't control the movements and couldn't have if she tried, but she felt every sensation, like the rightness of protecting these children and the purpose filling the hole where fear had lived her entire life.
Twelve students were safe and the Sentinel was destroyed by fists that had punched through its chest cavity.
Then the light faded, and Yuki collapsed, normal again, with her students crying and hugging her legs.
Sunfire landed nearby, his nuclear aura still blazing hot enough to distort the air. "Oi, sensei. You alright? That was brilliant."
"I... I had six arms." Yuki looked at her normal hands, flexed her normal fingers. The emptiness where power had been felt like grief, like losing a part of herself. "It's gone now."
"Yeah. Saw it happen to a salaryman in Shinjuku, too. Guy grew dragon wings and breathed fire hot enough to melt steel." Sunfire helped her stand with surprising gentleness. "Whatever the hell this is, it's happenin' everywhere across the city."
Mumbai, Dharavi Slums
Priya, sixteen and thin from poverty, ran after the Sentinel that carried her little brother. "Arjun! Bhaiya, please!"
Her brother's mutation let him hear animals, which was useless for anything except asking them to bring stolen Rotis, but deadly in the eyes of these machines that killed for genetic differences.
A golden speck descended.
"Priya Sharma. Your love burns bright. What do you say?"
"Anything! Just give him back to me! Please!"
The transformation was violent as her thin frame exploded with muscle that rippled under golden skin, bones cracking and reforming as she grew to seven feet with her hands becoming claws that could rend metal, her teeth sharp as daggers, and suddenly she could sense every living thing around her in a radius of blocks, feel their fear like physical pressure against her expanded consciousness.
Her body moved with predatory grace, ripped through metal like tissue paper, freed her brother and healed his scrapes with green energy that felt like safety given form, like her mother's hands when Priya was small.
Ten more Sentinels converged on her position.
Crystalline wings erupted from Priya's back like stained glass made flesh, refracting light into rainbow patterns that dazzled and disoriented the machines' optical sensors, and she took flight with Arjun clutched against her chest, her body adapting to each new threat with precision she couldn't comprehend. The Sentinels fired, and her skin hardened to diamond. They tried to grab and her body became intangible. If they adapted, she adapted faster.
Then, mid-landing a dozen feet up, the light withdrew.
The fall was terrifying as Priya screamed, and then two arms caught them both with impossible gentleness.
Krish set them down gently on solid earth. "Easy now, beta(Kid). You're safe. Both of you."
Priya stared at her normal hands, at her brother crying in her arms with relief. "I had wings and i could fly. I saved him."
"You did." Krish smiled with genuine warmth. "You were magnificent, beta(Kid)."
But the loss hollowed her a but as the power had felt like becoming who she was always meant to be, and now she was just Priya again, ordinary and poor.
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