CHAPTER 125
As Logan and Bucky started fighting, or rather Logan tried to fight a super enhanced Bucky only for him to be thrown aside and punched so hard that he went down to the floor at every hit, only for him to get up back and have the same thing repeat itself.
Colossus followed in Logan's step and rushed at Draul who just stood there with a bloodied ice sword that he used to decapitate Jean, only to find his way being barred by Steve.
Though they were confused, not as much as the X-Men, it didn't prevent them from jumping in when someone decided to attack Draul.
It was a comical sight, seeing a small Steve Rogers facing off against the behemoth Colossus, but he was holding his own with ease. Rather than the peak human strength they both had before, Draul's serum pushed them deeper into the realms of superhuman, making Steve being capable of hitting Colossus with so much force on the face that the human giant felt it and staggered back before pouncing back on Steve.
Bobby looked conflicted, the same with Sunspot, though for the latter, he didn't know who they were fighting about so he wasn't inclined to put his neck out there… and besides, he still haven't forgotten how the man in front of him threatened to kill him if they crossed paths in a bad way again, and seeing how he just lopped off the head of someone who was clearly some of his teammates friend… yeah Da Costa had enough incentive not to move from his spot.
Ororo went pale as he saw the head of her friend but despite the grief she was feeling, she kept a somewhat level head and asked with a shaky voice, "W-why did you do that?" Her voice was low as if she was afraid that if she spoke too loud, then she might cry. She already had an idea, but it still hurts, especially when it was her bestfriends' head that was just cut off.
"Sinister lost the bet. It would have been a game changer had I not had a different hand than what he expected." Though she didn't understand the analogy of what he spoke of, she nevertheless understood what he meant. They've just spent the last half an hour fighting clones that had some of their abilities to an extent.
They all saw the bodies, and Draul had even explained to them on their way here about Sinister's expertise. The man was as much as cloning metas as he was himself.
But still.. She had thought, the moment she saw Jean, that it was a miracle. Even though her mind told her that this was not how miracles work, even then, she held hope. She should have known, maybe she did, but that didn't matter as it still hurt just as much as it did that day.
"Are you sure?" A tear trickled down her cheek and she asked a question to an answer so obvious that she already knew it since the beginning. Even then…
"Yes." It still hurts. It was like ripping open a wound that had already healed and turned to a scar, but a hundred times worse. Jean was gone – that was a fact she had accepted a few months after she left, or rather her death to the Phoenix. No one could replace her, even if there was, it wouldn't be a clone made by Nathaniel Essex.
She was thankful, even though a bit resentful, that Draul did what she knew none of them had the heart to do. "Thank-"
"Save it." Draul cut her off. "It should be clear by this point that I didn't do it with your best intentions at heart. I did it because there was no way I was letting Essex make a comeback this late in the game. No resurrections this time, guess it's time to fold."
She smiled at that. The honest reply was something she appreciated about him. "I know that. Still, thank you."
"Well you'll have to hold that thought for a moment."
"Hmm, why?"
"Because-"
S-Z-ZOOOOOM! BOOOOOM!
A red optic last collided with Draul, surprising Ororo who was a few meters away.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Scott screamed in agony as he continued blasting Draul.
"Scott stop!"
Scott couldn't listen as grief momentarily blinded him and led him to take out his frustrations on Draul.
"I can see that you've been tolerated for far too long. Let's rectify that." A calm frigid voice filtered out from within the blast.
Scott was shocked, temporarily blinded by pain and rage, that he completely forgot about Draul's resistance and blasted him again with the full power of what he could emit from his eyes.
As compared to last year, Draul's resistance to temperatures had increased drastically so much so that stopping Scott's beam required no effort from him except for the movement of his hand which he used to stop and absorb the energy into his body. The energy from the blast was a spark if compared to the sun of energy inside every cell and molecules inside his body.
With a flex of Draul's finger, Scott's visor closed, rendering his ability unusable unless he took it off which quickly became a problem as it refused to come off no matter what Scott did.
With relaxed steps, Draul made his way Scott who was still trying got take the visor off and punched him in the side of his mouth, causing the young man to spit out blood. Scott, still under the influence of his anger, rushed at Draul and proceeded to receive the beating of his lifetime.
The beating was so fierce that it forced the others who were fighting to stop and watched as their teammate and friend was broken down to a bloody pulp.
Ororo wanted to step in and put a stop to it at intervals but she was stopped by Natasha who gave her a reason: "What Scott needs isn't mental therapy, but a physical one," she said.
Thud.
The sound of Scott's body hitting the floor resounded throughout the room along with his barely audible whimpers. From his head to his toes was covered in blood that someone would think that he'd die due to blood loss.
"Did you have to go that far?" Ororo looked quite uncomfortable as she saw the beaten up form of her teammate.
"Someone had to do it, and he chose me, so yes. I had to go that far. God knows he seriously needed it." Draul just waved off her concerns.
"You think that this is over with just that?" Logan scowled loudly enough to draw Draul's attention.
"Yes it is."
"How can you say that?! What if… What if she was Jean?" Logan shouted.
Draul resisted the urge to sigh at what he knew was the famous or rather, fucked up, love triangle between Jean, Scott and Logan. "If that was Jean, then I wouldn't have been able to kill her. Plain and simple."
"I think that's enough blood and gore today." Draul waved his hand and the unconscious body of the beaten villains floated to him, and then he transfigured some metals lying around into chains and bound them. All of them except Mystique.
"You're leaving her alone, why?" Natasha asked, her reason for her dislike of Mystique was still a mystery to Draul.
"She wasn't a part of this by choice. Essex held someone she holds dear as hostage since he needed her genes, so she had no choice but to work for him."
"Doesn't change the fact that she's still a bitch." Now Draul was getting curious about why Natasha seemed to hate Mystique as much as she did.
"I'll be dropping them off with Nick along with a note of their abilities." He proceeded to do what he said and after he was done, he opened a portal to one of S.H.I.E.L.D's detainment facilities and threw them into it. "Now that that's done, I think it's time to put a stop to this episode." He opened two portals, one leading to his living room, while the other leading to the X Mansion.
"I'll call you later, Draul." Ororo said and lifted up the body of Scott with her powers and walked through the portal. Sunspot followed while the others continued staring at Draul who just ignored them and made the portal swallow them back to their Mansion, before he stepped into his.
"That was… entertaining." Yelena commented as she crashed into the chair.
"Girl, you better go wash off the blood on you before you get them on my couch." Bucky's eyes were threatening as he stared down at Yelena.
"Fine… Geez, such a buzzkill." She grumbled but still got off the couch.
"I heard that." And that was her running away. It would have been a normal family scene if it wasn't for all the slaughter they just did moments ago, and also the bloodied weapons on her person.
"Guys, I'll be up in my room if you need anything." Draul said before he made his way to his room.
His mind had been digesting the information he had gotten from Sinister's mind about cultivating and grafting the X-gene into someone.
Sinister hardly kept notes about his research if it wasn't about some observations. Even then, they were still not that many which was the reason why Draul didn't bother with sweeping for any files that he might have kept since he just went for the bank of it which was Sinister's head.
The digital files he had were already being downloaded with the virus that Draul had uploaded during the fight. He had gotten all he could from Sinister and all that remained was for him to organize the information, something his brain was already working on.
He filtered through the tests and experiments that Mr. Sinister had done and went for the results and procedures, the chances of success and compatibility factor.
The amounts of abilities that Essex had stored in his body were numerous, but most of them were just mundane abilities that he couldn't grow further. A lot of them had a decrease in effectiveness after he cloned them on himself and on his clones.
He had made sure he ran hundreds of experiments during the centuries he was alive and the information he had on the X-gene was something that was at least 50-100 years what was thought possible in the present day.
It was these bits of information that Draul needed. All the compilation that Essex had made throughout his life was fully presented to Draul for his unhindered perusal.
He had left a note for Fury on information about Essex's base and other places where some of his clones were, though they were just zombies now, so he was sure that Fury would have a field day with all the findings he would unearth from those places.
Apart from his studies in magic and runic systems, which he only focused on because of his weapon and how terrific it would be to be able to summon it from anywhere, he had nothing on his plate which would enable him to fully devote his time to research.
He pulled up the downloaded data he had pillaged from Essex's database before frying the system on anything related to him and most information about metahumans in general. He was not giving Fury a lead on how to graft meta DNA into his people, and he was definitely not giving America that kind of power as it would just be a reenactment of the witch hunt and slavery all over again.
Giving any group of body the source and control of power was just creating a hegemony. He had no idea if Fury would give such information away but even if he didn't, he was sure someone else could get it, so it was better to just read the whole thing and wipe it off any digital interface on the planet.
He wasn't being a hypocrite by hoarding everything to himself as he was not interested in cultivating mutations into his body. The only reason he was interested in the research topic was so that he could do it for Yelena and the others. Superhuman physique was not going to cut it for long.
This was not a Disney story where the happily ever after came after a few hours of tribulation. It would continue on for centuries. The fight in this universe never ended and there was more than enough time travel proof of evidence to support that claim. There was no way a super soldier was going to cut it, not when he knew fully well that this wasn't the MCU, even if it was, it wasn't like the MCU had ended before he was zapped.
He needed something that he could be sure would grow with them, something that would enable them to stay in the fight for a bit longer.
Essex had a lot of research materials that Draul didn't need to go grave digging or abduct metas and he definitely was not using materials from the bodies of those dead people in Essex's lab.
All he needed was the formation of the X-gene in correspondence to the ability of the mutation and luckily he had them thanks to Essex.
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