Chapter 51: The Hidden Krakoa Tragedy

"In fact, it was an island smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Its most recent discovery? Courtesy of Nick Fury and his merry band of paranoid mortals in 1945, right in the middle of your little World War," I said, my voice as smooth as poison-tipped honey. Jean and Wanda were hanging on my every word now. Good. As it should be.

"But that's not the part that should tickle your curiosity—it's what was supposed to happen next that matters." I turned to Jean with a sly smile, ready to drop a truth bomb that would crack her image of dear, sweet Charles like an overripe melon.

"After he created Cerebro—you know, that thing you were working on a while before—Charles picked up the signal of an unidentified mutant presence on the island. Naturally, he did what any morally grey manipulator in a wheelchair would do: sent in the X-Men. His disposable mutant meat-shields. You lot."

Jean didn't blink, contrary to what one might expect, but Wanda's eyes narrowed, looking at Jean worriedly. Atta girl.

"At the time, the team was you guys—minus Hank—but with two fresh recruits. Havok, Scott's less uptight brother, and Polaris, who could manipulate magnetism. I don't have to spell out her origin, do I?"

Jean gave me a tired little smile. "She's Magneto's daughter?"

Ah, the penny drops.

I'd already explained to her the nature of mutants—how they were popping up more and more frequently, breeding like superpowered rabbits, and how future generations would only make the problem worse. Mutantdom: now with family bundles!

I nodded. "Indeed. Though her powers were... let's say Magneto Lite. Same flavor, less chaos."

I shot Wanda a glance. Technically, she was also Magneto's daughter—until Marvel's writers went on one of their infamous lore spring-cleanings. Retconned her out faster than a toxic ex.

This version of her? Pure Chaos Magic. No daddy issues involving helmets and genocide, sadly. Ah, Marvel. A world where family trees are more like a hedge maze designed by drunk editors. I think there was a version of Tony being Odin's son, Stark Odinson, aka the Iron Hammer.

Anyway.

"Back to the island," I continued, flipping the story back on track like a bored teacher with a particularly dense class. "Krakoa didn't exactly roll out the welcome mat. It ate you. Because, surprise! It feeds on psychic and genetic energy. You bunch showing up was like delivering a five-course meal to a starving cannibal in the desert. It wasn't just rude—it was volunteering."

"Which begs the question," I said, raising a brow and crossing my arms. "Why do you think I have such a charming murder island tucked away here?"

I watched her. Waiting. Curious. Surely the implications were clicking together in her mind like a morbid jigsaw puzzle?

Jean tilted her head, a little smirk forming. "Come on. You expect me to tell a five-thousand-year-old goddess what's safe or dangerous? Especially when I don't even know what your game is yet?"

Touché. I'd feel insulted by the age comment, but hey, immortality comes with baggage. Besides, she had a point.

Probably a lingering side effect of me hijacking her body earlier. Even after I left her body, bits of me—emotions, instincts, little echoes—stayed behind.

If I hadn't actively wiped most of my presence from her mind, she'd probably still be quoting me in her dreams. Brain is like storage space, after all.

I gave her a nod of approval. "You're definitely more reasonable than some of your multiverse clones. If only you knew the idiotic decisions they made. Honestly, I've seen hamsters with more strategic sense."

"Anyway," I waved my hand dismissively, "after you were all captured by Krakoa... naturally, Charles had to do something."

"He assembled a secret second team," I said, my voice like a knife wrapped in velvet. "A group of young, untested mutants trained by a certain Moira MacTaggert."

I paused then, eyes narrowing as her name drifted through my mind like the smell of something rotting. Moira… that wretched woman who thinks reincarnation makes her wise. Which iteration is she in now, I wonder? The one who created Nimrod? The one who led to the Phalanx? Or the version that spat out Proteus and Legion like evolutionary oopsies?

Once I return to Earth, we're going to have a little 'divine intervention' session. A goddess-to-mortal talk, if you will. Though, frankly, I'm torn. Do I educate her with fire—or simply kill her and be done with it?

I shrugged off the thought and continued, letting my voice glide smoothly back into the story. "These mutants were far less experienced than you, Jean. Less than children tossed into a meat grinder. But their potential… oh, it was deliciously dangerous."

"Their names were Vulcan—Scott and Alex's long-lost baby brother, how poetic—Sway, who could manipulate time in small zones, Petra, a geokinetic who could command the earth like a puppet, and Darwin, the golden boy of reactive evolution—he adapts to survive anything. Including Charles's screwups."

Jean waited for more. Poor thing, she still believed in logic.

"You're not saying… those four alone were sent?" she asked, disbelief in her tone.

I nodded solemnly, the corners of my mouth twitching. "Oh, I am. And that, Jean, was the first brick in the pyramid of tragedy. Think about it—how were they supposed to defeat the monster that you, with all your power, training, and backup, couldn't even scratch?"

"They were children sent to die. Predictably, Petra and Sway were obliterated. Darwin and Vulcan... survived, but no one knew. Charles assumed they were dead. After all, Scott was the only one Krakoa spat out like bad takeout."

"Cyclops told him the rest were gone. That should've sparked a rescue mission. A deeper search. But no. The 'Great Professor X' decided that was closure enough."

"And what did good ol' Charles do next? Why, he erased Scott's memories of the entire team. Poof. Gone. Not just the trauma, but the truth. He made him believe no other team had ever been sent. That no one else died. That there was nothing to grieve."

"A man so obsessed with unity and ethics that he'd telepathically bury his sins under a halo of righteousness."

"In truth, Darwin had survived by fusing his body and soul into Vulcan, becoming pure adaptive energy. They remained entombed in the island's remains, locked in suspended animation like a time bomb with a heartbeat."

"The moment reality shook—thanks to a certain Scarlet Witch's little meltdown, that I would tell you about later—the energy rippled across mutantkind and they woke up. But by then, Charles's lies had already been canonized."

I exhaled through my nose, not in weariness, but disgust. "And here's the cherry on the rotten sundae: some would say this was 'for Scott's own good.' That telling him his brother had died—murdered by Charles's hubris—would've been too emotionally damaging."

I snorted. "Yes. Far better to gaslight him and turn the grave of truth into a secret dungeon."

That's why I loathe Charles Xavier. And he's not alone. No—the Illuminati are just as twisted. A cabal of self-declared gods, deciding what truths the world can handle, what lies to whisper, and what disasters to manufacture in the name of the greater good.

They speak like prophets and act like butchers. If not for affecting the interest of many people and the timeline being kind of pruned, I really want to slap them out of existence.

.....

I just can't feel the pleasure reading others fic now and I'm as depressed as f*ck 😔, btw late but happy mother day I guess and don't forget to vote