Freedom’s Lady pulled out of LaGrange Station, heading back to the future of another timeline. It left behind one man free of his Fate, and had three new others on board.
Why Primus and Callie were coming along wasn’t as much to help as for their own reasons, but the Guardians didn’t mind. Whatever help they got out of them would be appreciated, and we could easily make our own way home.
I watched the ship track for the sun, locking into its gravity field and using it to power up the temporal dilation needed to get them back where they came from.
It wasn’t hard to use some magic to lock into their arrival course and help the ship follow it back, evading any shenanigans on the way. My Cosmic Awareness could clearly sense the travel path as we slingshotted around the sun, and guiding the ship along that course towards their home was not difficult.
It also made sure we went to the right timeline, and arrived only a day or two after the Guardians had left.
When I returned back to my place on Terra, the temporospatial lock would be in, and this future would be tied to our ‘present’, making it a planar shift instead of a time jump to travel between our worlds. It would also force the time-jumps to stay inside the alternity, although I was sure it was twitches in the Underweb that had sent the Guardians and Korvac to our world and time.
Reality gathered in around us, and Earth-2790 settled into place as we materialized.
I expanded my Cosmic Awareness to the local space, and it worked basically the same as my home dimension, unfettered.
I could sense the weight of a thousand more years on the system, those years full of conflict and war, and it took little effort to shift back short decades and see those responsible and what they had done. I could sense where life managed to endure through the system, and where it had been viciously wiped out.
Yeah, the wars had killed billions of humans, both Terrans and the other subraces.
The Guardians were making sure local space was clear, while I was looking out and beyond. “Anything?” Primus asked me in a low voice.
“Doom is seizing power on Terra. He has transferred his brain into an adamantium endo-skeleton covered in his armor.” Everyone on the bridge turned to look at me.
“Dr. Doom is still alive?” blurted out Vance Astro, shocked at the fact. He had been born in the 20th century, so he knew who Doom was back then, on another world. The fact he was still alive after a thousand years was as impressive as his own survival, if not more so.
“He’s a cockroach. Hard to kill. You learned how to Heat Metal, right?” I replied.
He blinked, then smiled hard. “I did, indeed.”
“Cook his skull from the inside out. Make sure you overwhelm his coolant systems and block his teleporting.” I pointed down at the planet below. “If everyone is ready to go, I know right where to put us...”
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“The mutants of Haven. It is surprising Doom managed to work with them,” Martinex spoke up, looking at the six people being confined by Aleta’s light-shackles.
Major Astro rose from the smoking, sparking set of metal bones and rent power armor that had been Doctor Doom. Vivic flames whispered around the adamantium skull, making sure the Doombots with replicated thought patterns, computers storing copies of his psyche and memories, and six clones in different places were all consumed with him through the power of True Death.
He had even tried transferring his mind out to one of the humans he’d had enslaved with his karioshi program, but I’d been watching for it, and stopped it adamantly, as I had his hidden attempts at Casting, not that he had much magical power with a robotic body.
A snarl of amusement arose to the side as the feral woman who was the leader of the Six laughed at us with pointed teeth, her arms currently bound behind her to her feet and unable to do more than kneel. “Hah, so you killed the fool who dared steal my ancestor’s skeleton?” she sneered at us. I glanced at the extruded wrist-claws from Doom’s armor, five of them, and the identical claw that had been made into a rough knife stuck in the wall over there. “Good riddance to him!” Her stare said she would most happily send us to follow them if she could.
I hadn’t had to do more than set up some Interdictions and Stillflight Zones, and this fight had been over fairly quickly. The Guardians were fully trained, and had mowed through the combat droids and uncertain troops before engaging Doom and his six mercenary mutants.
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The mutants were basically one-trick wonders who folded as soon as their powers didn’t do the job, and there was nothing of Interdictions or Stillflight Zones here to warn them of what was coming.
Doom was the only challenge, but Vance had tanked his energy bolts, broken his force field with some TK Force Mastery, torn his armor open telekinetically as the cyborg reeled from the feedback, and proceeded to heat his unmelting skull to thousands of degrees, destroying all the software and non-adamantium hardware inside, as well as the brain they were supposed to protect and support at the same time. Driving his now-enchanted Shield into it to set it on vivic fire had just been a finishing move.
Primus and Callie had basically made sure none of Doom’s more powerful bots and cannons had been able to make it to the fight... surgically. The things could still be useful in defense in the future.
I let my eyes wander across the Six, and my frown only grew deeper.
“Dynamo?” Primus asked quietly, standing on the air and following my gaze, his eyes cold.
“Jet, amethyst, oil, obsidian, coal, and green,” I reported, spitting it out. “The leader has slaughtered hundreds personally just for her own amusement, and murdered her own sire to seize power, total might-is-right. The big one is a pure supremacist, killed his own father for going against mutant-kind. The shadow one is a stalker and throat-slitter in the darkness when she gets bored. The winged one loves to torture and bleed the helpless, while the teleporter there enjoys pop-and-drop slaughter scenarios against surprised enemies.” I let my gaze linger on the paling telepath, slumped over and resting her massively oversized cranium on the ground. “She’s done some horrible things, but she’s been massively bullied and intimidated by the others for her physical weakness, especially by their leader. Only the fact she’s a mind-reader and could get into their heads has kept some of them from killing her... and that Rancor there finds her useful for questioning prisoners and rebels.”
All the mutants shuffled uneasily as their sins were laid bare, although Rancor looked unrepentant. “Mewling weaklings! Their lives were mine to give and take away as I wished!”
Primus’ eyes opened ever-so-slightly.
“A regenerator on par with Master Logan,” I informed him calmly.
Her eyes practically popped out. “You know my ancestor?” she screeched in alarm and delight mixed.
The corner of my mouth rose. Primus was part of the old guys network, and played cards with Master Logan every other week or so. Sama’s first student and Briggs’ most powerful one were good friends.
I held out my hand, and dragged over the still-spritzing remnants of Doom’s body, the bones made from the skeleton of Wolverine. “I think she considers the claws powerful, or something.” The knife-claw sticking in the plascrete over there tugged free and floated over in front of him.
Primus looked down at the grey, razor-sharp length of curved metal calmly, reached over to grab it, and closed his fist around it.
The creaking of the metal was as audible as the way the front and back of the claw distorted.
Primus reached down to the claws extruded from Doom’s gauntlets, and grabbed the three on the right in his hand, ignoring their sharpness.
Physics said no, but he snapped his wrist, and the claws tore free of their mounts.
Adamantium creaked again, and the claws distorted slowly in different directions as she stared in disbelief.
The remaining two claws joined the first four leisurely, and then Primus slowly and calmly grabbed them, forced them into a tighter ball and wad, and slowly closed his hands and compressed the wickedly sharp, nigh-unbreakable things into a tight ball of dimpled metal.
She stared as he dropped the former sacred adamantium claws of her forebear into a worthless ball of unusable scrap on the ground.
Particle effects flowed around Wolverine’s skeleton. Her dark eyes flashed sideways, and opened wide in horror as his bones flowed up together, adamantium moving like water, and joined together into a ball of metal floating below my palm, leaving the hardware and some ash of a certain someone’s brain behind in the empty, shattered armor and fine particle remnants of the bone.
I dropped the smooth ball of metal down next to the lump of ex-claw. It hit with a heavy clunk.
“Does everyone know what those colors represent?” I asked calmly.
There were hisses and hums all around me, and Weapons of gold and silver, wrought of psychic force, glimmered and glowed in the hands of all of the Guardians, Primus, and Callie.
Primus’ Mindsword was notably very, very silver, the half-meter blade fairly sparkling with lethality. He wasn’t a psi; that was pure natural psi potential and Core Disciplines at work.
“Jet, Oil, Obsidian, Coal, and Amethyst...” Aleta made a face as she stared at the five mutants I’d indicated. “I don’t even want to see them for myself, Dynamo...”
A sullen green Orb swirled into being above my palm, wound around with gold, silver, and rainbow highlights and Seals. The air seemed to sigh and get heavier as the Orb grew brighter.
The five mutants staring at it went ghastly in color, even Rancor. “What is that?” she screamed in absolute revulsion, and the Chained Sacred Disintegration beam drove directly into her chest in answer.
The other four only saw the green-and-glows swallow her before the secondary beam lanced out to cover each of them in an eye-blink.
With a quiet hiss, whiffs of vapor and inert dust sprinkled to the ground. It’s damn hard to regenerate from disassociated atoms, too.
The slender kowtowing telepath with the too-large cranium just sighed as her compatriots vanished, and did not lift her oversized oblong head.
Nobody said anything about my judgement.
I walked over to the telepath, crouched down, and slowly lifted her head up. It weighed at least thrice that of a normal person, and she was less muscular than most people, not stronger. She probably used some minor TK to keep it up most of the time, and careful balance.
My finger sparked. She focused on it as I brought it down to her stomach, and poked her. She gasped despite herself.
“That is a point on the side of your Mutant Core. I want you to focus all your energy on that point, and follow my finger. Do not fail in this.”
She looked at me, sideways at the dust that remained of her teammates, and grit her teeth.