Chapter 135: Time

2nd March 2006, New York City

(Wanda Maximoff POV)

Wanda had never seen this vengeful side of Jasmine. She had to admit that she was terrified of her. And secretly a little happy to see how protective Jasmine was of her. She even called Wanda her daughter. The young witch couldn’t help but smile at this.

The people inside the room were actually scared shitless of her threat. The redhead visibly gulped, and Fury’s face was pale.

Suddenly, Jasmine raised her hand and caught an arrow that was about to pierce her heart. She raised an eyebrow at Fury, “This is your first and final warning. There won’t be another. Now get out; I have papers to grade.”

Visibly shaking, the intruders slowly walked out, or in Xavier’s case, rolled out of the classroom. Wanda had created an illusion to hide herself and Jean from them. As soon as they got out, Jasmine called out loud, “Wanda, Jean, it’s very rude to snoop on private conversations. Now go on, you’re late for class.”

The two teenagers looked at their watches and started to run to their classroom. They were over ten minutes late.

(Jasmine POV)

I watched as the guests left my classroom before almost bursting out laughing. I couldn’t believe that these were the so called Protectors of Humanity. Were my expectations too high? I knew that the Black Widow was barely more than an exceptional assassin and Barton, while he has an amazing aim, he wouldn’t help much when fighting against a serious threat. A part of me wonders how both of them would become so famous, symbols of strength. While skillful, both agents of SHIELD were next to useless against someone like Thor, or even Iron Man.

Perhaps it was because the age of Superhumans hasn’t started yet. Not many people know about mutants, and how to fight them properly, and there haven’t been any mutant terrorist acts, outside Magneto, that is. SHIELD still hasn’t fought against any actual threats yet. I truly wonder how they would fare. Perhaps, Hawkeye and Black Widow would get better with experience. I very much doubted they would, but who am I to judge.

Either way, messing with Fury was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. His reactions were hilarious. Spouting useless secrets in front of him like they were nothing, had him twitching and I could see an actual vein throbbing on his forehead. I didn’t actually reveal much, outside of some trivial stuff that would mess with his head. Although, it was really cute that he thought that he could actually arrest me. I would have scared the crap out of them with Magic and just removed their memories, but I sensed Wanda and Jean hiding behind an illusion so I chose to show them how powerful words actually are. It’s not like Fury could actually do something to me.

I didn’t like how he tried to use the situation with Wanda to his favor. It was a typical SHIELD move, no matter what they say, they will always use any means necessary to accomplish the mission, no matter how distasteful they are.

But still, scaring the crap out of them was really fun. I was so going to tell Selene about it later, after she’s done stabilizing Genosha that is. The woman practically jumped at the idea of being the shadow ruler of an entire country of just mutants. Huh, I never knew how much she liked ruling. I always found it troublesome; all we did all day was just sit around and listened to people complaining about useless issues that could be solved by any idiot with a sliver of common sense.

But, back to the problem at hand, I still haven’t decided whether to let SHIELD exist after the New York invasion. I needed them for precisely two reasons, one is to form the Avengers. This team was more than just a group of misfits with superpowers, it was a real symbol of hope, for the whole world. However, it was possible to create a similar team, although, it wouldn’t be the same without SHIELD’s intervention, but what was the most important thing, was the New York invasion.

No matter which way you look at it, the invasion is necessary. I know that the casualties seem high, but compared to what could have happened, it was extremely light. First of all, no matter what happened, the Red Skull had activated the Tesseract and showed Earth's location with a cosmic pulse. No matter what would happen, Earth was on Thanos’ trajectory. Letting SHIELD play with the cube for a while would allow Loki to come to Earth for his little invasion.

If a doorway wasn’t possible, then Loki, or one of Thanos’ children, would come to Earth with the fleet and massacre half the population as Thanos usually does. The fact that Loki’s plan was to use a single portal to invade the planet stopped the conflict from escalating into a world wide one. The portal was a bottleneck, that allowed only a certain amount of Chitauri to come to Earth, a race that usually relies on overwhelming their enemies with their numbers rather than actual martial prowess.

Additionally, the entire invasion served as a way to actually open people’s eyes to the possibility of alien invasions. People would realize how lucky they were in this conflict and people will start to think about the stars for the first time since Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.

The New York invasion had to happen exactly that way, as to let people have a sufficient understanding of the possible threats in space, and give them hope that they could actually deal with them. That’s not counting how much lower the number of casualties would be compared to the alternative.

Anyway, the rest of the day passed relatively quickly. I only had three classes so while I waited for Wanda to finish school, I started grading some papers. It’s sad how most of my students had neglected their historical education. Truth be told, History could be a boring subject if it was taught wrong. If all you had to do was memorize some useless facts and dates, then no wonder you would be bored. But if you started to truly understand the past, why certain events happened, how someone could have prevented them, you start to gain a small understanding of politics and of human nature.

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No wonder politicians were useless in this country, and that zealots keep getting elected by the public; the general population has no idea how dangerous such ideals could be and it all stemmed down to a lack of education in History. After all, the mistakes of the past tend to get repeated again and again; man’s dreams and goals are rarely unique. No matter when you lived, men always had the same motivations, from greed to love, I have seen everything. It does get repetitive once in a while. The only way I thought the cycle would break would be if the mistakes of the past were taught to the children of each generation. What a shame how neglectful people are to the things that matter.

As I kept insulting the human race in my head, I heard a knock on my classroom door, “Get in!”

Surprisingly, the person entering was Charles Xavier. Huh, didn’t think I’d see him for a long while after our little discussion in the morning.

I start, “Doctor Xavier, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Twice in one day? A lady would start to get ideas.”

Xavier was visibly trying to hide his dislike of me. He kinda looks constipated, to be honest. This meant that he wanted something. Huh, interesting, “I’m sorry, Ms. Sayre, but this visit isn’t a social one either.”

“Well then, enlighten me with the glorious purpose of your visit.”

The man’s eyebrow twitched before he took control of his expressions. This is so much fun. “I came here to have a better understanding of Jean’s abduction. I can infer from this morning’s meeting that you weren’t very truthful about your involvement in it. No matter our dislike of each other, I am currently Jean’s guardian, something that is her choice. I do need to know if my student is still in danger.”

The man does have a point and the matter has been dealt with. It might help him deal with Scott’s problem, “Well, from my understanding, Jean went with Scott to some Café to meet an old friend of his, Dr. Nate, I believe. Jean had asked Kitty and Wanda to watch her, because she knew of Scott’s advances and his attitude was grating on her. Imagine their surprise when Jean was hit with a tranquilizing dart, and had passed out. Scott stood there, frozen, and didn’t attack her abductor. Turns out that this Dr. Nate was very adept in telepathy and had brainwashed Scott since he was a child.”

Xavier protested, “That’s impossible; I would know if Scott was under someone’s control.”

I shook my head, “It was ingrained in his subconscious and it was before he even met you. You wouldn’t know the difference between a traumatized child, and someone that has been under this type of heavy brainwashing. Don’t forget it wasn’t a fast process, it probably took months or even years for Dr Nate to do with Scott’s mind as he wished.”

Xavier nodded solemnly, “I always knew that Scott was a troubled young man, but I never imagined that his behavior stemmed from an outside source, not the trauma of losing all his family in a single day.”

“I have to ask this; if you knew all this, then why would you choose him as your team’s leader?”

“Who else would I choose, you know what I did to young Jean’s mind, so she was even less qualified for this, especially how weary I was of her losing control. Rogue would never accept, Kurt and Evan do not have the maturity for the position and Kitty doesn’t have the resolve to make difficult decisions. I simply chose the person that I thought would benefit the most out of the position and that has enough experience to not do obviously bad decisions. I am not proud of it, but I thought that it was for the best.”

I sigh, again, I can understand his position. He tried to find the easiest solution and stick them with it. He didn’t think any of them had the temperament to become the leader so he chose one and left him to figure out what his role actually meant.

“You really should have noticed something, Xavier. You have a PHD in Psychology for god’s sake. You must have known that Scott’s behavior wasn’t normal. His subconscious programming was forcing him to try to get as close to Jean as he could, and you must have known that this wasn’t what an infatuation looked like.”

Xavier looked down in shame. Damn, now I feel bad for him, I continue, “Look, this isn’t why we’re having this meeting. Anyway, Wanda and Kitty tried to engage Jean’s abductors. The man had a team of mutants protecting him. They didn’t survive. Anyway, they ended up confronting the man, who easily defeated them by making Scott attack them by surprise. They barely managed to escape and I found them at my doorstep, unconscious. I got Kitty back to her room at the mansion and let Wanda go to sleep. She told me what happened the following morning, and we were able to track him down and defeat him. He didn’t survive our assault. After that, the girls were exhausted and I let them get some sleep. I woke them up this morning so that they could go to school.”

“Did you know who exactly Doctor Nate was and what he wanted.”

I nod, “Yes, his real name was Nathaniel Essex but you probably know him as Mr. Sinister,” Xavier’s face blanched in shock, “I see you understand who they were fighting. The man wanted to make some sort of super mutant from the union of Jean and Scott. I didn’t ask for the specifics but apparently, he was planning this for a long time.”

“I still dislike the idea of one of my students taking a life.”

“Your precious students didn’t kill anyone, Xavier; only Wanda did. As for Sinister himself, considering how outmatched the girls were, they had to go for the kill, especially considering his regeneration and body swapping.”

Xavier didn’t look like he was persuaded and glared at me, “What you’re doing, turning young Wanda into a weapon, I will not let you do it to my students.”

I sigh in exasperation, and I thought we were getting along, “This is exactly why I don’t like you, Xavier. It’s not your dream of coexistence, it’s a beautiful but unrealistic dream, it’s not your outright negligence when it comes to your students, or your judgmental nature. I don’t like you because you act as a leader to a group of young mutants who want to emulate you, your flaws included. You are indecisive, judgmental and a pacifist and so will they be as well. You are tracking down every powerful mutant and instilling these flaws in them. And with what is more likely to happen with the inevitable reveal of mutants, your students will not survive for long with that attitude. What I want is to make sure that at least Wanda is going to survive the coming storm. You should prepare your students as well, before it’s too late.”

Xavier didn’t respond to me and just rolled away. Damn that guy really was a hypocrite. I wasn’t in the mood to keep grading papers. I walk out to the parking lot to get some fresh air. But looking around, I sense something weird, something wrong. I follow its trail and find myself in front of a woman staring at me. She looked around thirty years old, with red hair. She was wearing a red leather suit with a crimson crown on her head. Her fingertips looked blackened, a form of corruption. The entire woman reeked of corruption, similar to a demon. I had to stop the instinct of attacking the woman on sight. After, all even if she looked different or older, I could recognize her anywhere.

I couldn’t help but murmur, “Wanda, what have you done?”