"What is it you get out of all of this, bub?" Wolverine asked as they were cruising inland toward the Canadian border.
"Do I need to get something out of doing this? I do it because it feels right to me," Eli non-explained with a shrug.
"You beat up one of the strongest mutants to ever walk the earth, manhandled and threatened all the Avengers, and came with us to kill hundreds of humans because it felt right?" Kid Omega inquired with an excited smile. "That's so wicked. Total role model material right there, dude!"
"Anya and I are on a journey. This place was our first stop. We don't really have a direction yet, so I thought we might as well," Eli answered with a shrug. Anya looked at him with narrowed eyes.
"Yeah, to be fair, Anya pointed out that we really have nothing to lose by helping you guys. Clearly, there's something big going on in the background that has all the cards stacked against you mutants. I'm not really the hero kind, but that sort of bullying is just a little too much," Eli added.
"So after this camp and this director guy, what comes after?" Magneto's green haired daughter threw in.
"I mean, you guys can go on a tour to rip out some other locations like this out of people's minds for all I care, but I'm thinking of looking who else is stirring the pot. Though, there's still some smaller bases I know of that we could go to before that. What I'm trying to say, it couldn't have just been Apocalypse that gave you guys so much bad press," Eli mused.
"We know of one person. He calls himself Sublime. All we know is that he has an agenda against mutants. Shaw and him really did a number on us with their hellfire club before Emma Frost and her faction managed to kill Shaw, but Sublime got away somehow," Dani narrated as Anya started looking up the name Sublime for some leads.
"Cool, that's a new name to me. Got anyone else in mind?" Eli looked toward the others. Moira and Wolverine spoke up at the same time. ""Essex.""
"Essex? Like the Essex Corporation?"
"No, well, that too. Dr. Nathaniel Essex. We don't know much, again, but he also goes by 'Mr Sinister', a quasi immortal mutant that has cracked the code to mutant cloning and DNA splicing. He probably runs the most illegal mutant experimentation labs on the globe," Moira explained.
"Yeah, downright sick bastard who would clone his own children and cut them open while alive for more power. I killed him at least two or three times over the years, but the cockroach always comes back with some plot," Wolverine spat.
"Sounds like a colorful character. Though killing him sounds like a bother. I didn't chase En Sabah Nur because it was bothersome, but I guess I could give it a try. Maybe obliterating his mind works. Couldn't do it with Apocalypse because of the Celestial armor and because I would need more time for a soul of his power, but maybe this Essex is different," Eli offered with a carefree smile.
"I think the professor mentioned once that he tried that and couldn't. And nobody is a better expert on such things than Charles," Wolverine said with a gruff sigh.
"Ah, well, does he know magic?" Eli asked in return.
"Like voodoo or wand waving?" Wolverine looked at Eli with a skeptical eye brow raise.
"No, real magic," Eli responded by raising his left arm, and it began shining in green with Norse runic formations beginning to form around his hands.
"Holy shit, magic is real?" Kid Omega shouted from the side, his bored look completely gone. Lorna Dane, the green haired master of electro-magnetism looked at the magic energy with shining eyes, most probably because of the pretty green color.
"Of course it is. You live in a world where people can read minds, shoot lasers out of their eyes, or turn into ice and other elements. What's so weird about magic being real?" Eli countered.
"We're close, Eli. Could you finish the spell so they don't see us coming?" Anya pointed out before anybody else could ask more questions.
In a flash of green, nothing changed for the people on the boat. But everybody on the outside who might have seen the flying vessel before suddenly lost sight of it. A few moments later, Eli applied another spell on Tuuli this time, and the bird vanished from everyone's sight.
"You know what to do, girl. Don't go clawing off... you know what? You do you. But please don't tell me about the surprise circumcisions you're dealing out anymore," Eli instructed his stormbird with a wry smile as she lifted off visible only to his eyes.
"That dude apparently is War, and he has a personal stake in this, but do the rest of you want in? I could do this myself to give you a show, but they might do something drastic before we reach their hostages," Eli explained as he pointed toward Wolverine while looking down toward a silo door next to a gigantic dam.
"I want to see everything. Take me with you," Moira immediately answered. A few others nodded, though Kid Omega and Lorna wanted to go wreak havoc on their own. Instead, they were asked to follow Logan because Eli had promised to only kill those who had killed themselves. Kid Omega was tasked to make sure, though Moira looked very conflicted, asking a teenager to look into the minds of so many 'evil' people.
When they arrived in front of the huge door that would fit three trucks driving through side by side and was fully made of metal, Lorna lifted her hand to exercise her powers. But before the metal could even creak under the stress of her powers, Eli clapped his hands. In a short green flash of light, the door turned to loose sand. Eli kept walking toward the entrance like what he did was no big deal, but the mutants all looked quite impressed, even Wolverine gave a faint nod of approval.
True to Eli's promise, two of the six guards at the entrance were spared and only left in a deep sleep. They knew nothing about what was going on inside and were just trying to earn some good money. However, it turned out that these two were the last 'innocent' souls in this base because after turning another giant metal door as thick as a wine barrel into sand with a clap, this base's evil experiments were no longer hidden from sight.
Though the glass panels were clean, all prisoners were dressed in spotless white inmate clothing and the hallways were properly lit and immaculate, too, it was plain for all to see that these prisoners were treated as subhumans. Several prisoners just at the very front were already missing chunks of flesh or full limbs. Most were moaning in pain or already fully catatonic.
"Do you have a healer among your kind?" Eli asked as he looked toward a young girl with both her legs missing.
"None who could undo that," Dani sadly muttered.
"Have you guys ever heard of extremis?" Anya asked everyone with clenched fists. No matter how powerful she was now, Anya was in a similar position not too long ago.
"That weird fire virus from A.I.M. that makes people explode?" Wolverine mused.
"Where we come from, we have someone who created a non-weaponized extremis strand that can be removed from a human's body after it ran its course. However, we don't have mutants, so I'm not sure if we can fix them without complications," Anya calmly replied, her gaze never once leaving the young legless girl.
"I could check if you have it somewhere. I might not look it, but I have a PhD in biochemistry and genetics," Moira spoke up with steely determination in her voice. Maybe if she could fully crack the code behind this extremis, it would be what she could use in her next life to even the odds.
"We could arrange that. Someone stay back to start freeing these prisoners. They have multiple remote-controlled failsafes in place that could kill or hurt them. We don't want an overzealous guard to trigger them and lose everyone," Eli ordered.
Dani and reluctantly Lorna, too, started freeing and calming the prisoners. Wolverine, Kid Omega, and Anya started moving deeper on this floor, while Moira, Mystique, and Eli moved to an elevator.
"So, where do you come from that has extremis but no mutants?" Mystique asked when the elevator door closed.
"Earth, but a different one," Eli responded with a cheeky smile.
"So an Earth that has gods of storm and fire but no mutants?" Mystique shot back with an amused smile.
"Same way this Earth has a god of thunder," Eli spoke with a wink.
"So a different reality, and you're an Asgardian that was exiled to Earth just as Thor was when he first lived a mortal life here?" Moira inquired with a pondering look.
"Thor was exiled to mortal life here, huh? But yeah, the rest is spot on. Kudos to you, I wanted to keep up the mystery a little longer. Grew up on Earth for various reasons and took Anya on a trip to gain strength before we face a formidable enemy to Asgard after our return," Eli admitted with a shrug.
"Unbelievable," Mystique whispered under her breath.
Eli accepted that whisper from the blue skinned beauty, but he raised an eyebrow when he looked to Moira. He couldn't check her surface thoughts casually and now that she immediately guessed his full backstory and didn't react all to the revelation of there being different realities, Eli wondered what her story is.
"Not the weirdest thing I heard in my life," Moira nonchalantly offered when she noticed Eli looking at her with a raised brow.
Eli could only agree. In a world with gods, regular people who can turn into the Hulk after one experiment gone wrong and mutants who can stop time because of a gene in their human DNA, his story truly wasn't too out of this world. Just new and literally out of this world, if one looked at it objectively.
"So, are you the Thor of your reality?" Mystique eventually asked before the elevator opened.
"Nope, Thor is Thor where I come from. Still god of thunder, still an original Avenger and hero. Though, their life is a little different. I haven't met this Thor yet, but I can tell, your Thor here lived a much more colorful life than ours," Eli answered as he released Shatterstar in its sword form from his hand and it flitted through rows of guards and researchers that have received some form alarm, despite Eli's countermeasures.
"You sure you're keeping your word to Captain Goody-Two-Shoes?" Mystique asked with a giggle as she watched Eli kill thirty armed guards and half as many researchers in the blink of an eye.
"All of them deserved death. Except for that one guy who is still alive. He took special care of all young boys if you catch my meaning. For people like him, I was taught the one spell my Aunty Hela ever bothered to learn. Unending nightmare," Eli chanted a short norse spell as his hands glowed, and he placed it on the head of the lone guard still alive in this room.
"Let's move along. Unless an Asgardian sorcerer on the level of Frigga comes along or he somehow makes his way to Kamar Taj and manages to convince them to help, this guy won't wake up from this," Eli coldly ordered as he moved toward a door at the end of this room full of lab equipment and computers.
After killing a few more guards and gifting two more unending nightmares to another guard and researcher, the three people of their little rescue party ended up in front of a door with more security than the others.
Two necklaces materialised in Eli's hand that he handed to Moira and Mystique. They wore them after he explained their purpose, and Mystique wore a bright grin when Eli said she could keep hers. Little did she know that these were just the latest in a long line of invisibility necklaces Eli had Eliza inscribe as part of her training.
It was an advanced application of not just invisibility to sight, but it was still only this singular runework he taught her for training purposes. Eliza didn't really like enchanting stuff anyway. It held too little action for the little ball of energy. Still, Eli had a batch of sixty of these necklaces that could probably hold their effect for a few days before breaking. Eli had her enchant gold, while pretty it was one of the sofest metals, just what Eliza needed for training. It was just that this was also the reason the runes wouldn't work as long.
Once they were hidden from all senses, Eli applied an illusion to the door and made it disappear into sand with a spell like the two giant doors at the base entrance.
"They are close and getting closer. You sent your special pet to that group on the higher floors who do you have for the freaks that are about to arrive here?" A fat white man in his late 40s pacing around worriedly asked another white, bespectacled middle-aged man sitting an imposing wooden desk.
"If forced, Sublime, I will activate the last of my projects," the man sitting at the desk responded as he pressed a button. A panel from behind him moved aside and revealed a muscular grey-ish-purple skinned man with a respirator and dreadlocks. His eyes were barely open and held no sign of life despite glowing in an ominous red.
"Meet Marius St Croix. He has almost the same pesky ability as that ex-X-man Rogue. We've been breaking his mind for months now, yet his ego and id only showed signs of erasure last week. Others have broken in mere days," the man with glasses introduced.
"This is your only contigency, Director Colcord?" the man named 'Sublime' spat.
"Of course not. One button press and every single disgusting mutant in this facility dies. They will have to escort us out of here with a red carpet," Malcolm Colcord coldly refuted.
"Yeah, I don't think so," a voice rang out as both sentient occupants in the room started to feel better about their future prospects. Suddenly, they were frozen in place.
"Wh-who are you? What have you done?" Sublime asked in panic.
"Oh, come on, don't even try. Not sure what you are, but you won't die here. Your microscopic little mind kept screaming, reassuring itself that you will be fine," Eli mockingly replied as he directed Sublime to think about things he wanted to know.
Eli's telepathy was based on the powers granted by the mind stone and was reinforced with Asgardian sorcery principles, something people of this reality, on this Earth, couldn't fully block. They were all aware of telepathy and actively took countermeasures, where possible, but all it really did was increase the concentration it took to read their surface thoughts. Well, that was true so far for everyone, but Moira.
"How is that possible!" Sublime shouted, thinking about his long life, his true form, and everything else he desperately wanted to keep a secret.
"You're a sentient puppeteering bacteria that's almost as old as Earth and hop from mind to mind? What the actual shit?" Eli whispered in disbelief at the thoughts he read in this tiny mind.
"You two, make sure the director can't do anything stupid. I'll have to concentrate on Sublime," Eli ordered Mystique and Moira as he clapped his hand to tighten the physical restraints on Director Malcolm Colcord. Another clap followed and Eli's mind was projected into the mindscape of Sublime.
The bacteria didn't notice the intrusion and kept thinking about whether or not it would simply swap places and ditch the shell he was 'wearing' right now. But moments later, the bacteria stopped thinking about the decision because a heavy pressure started descending on its mind.
No matter how old Sublime was, it wasn't proficient in magic or mind arts. It couldn't see that Eli was currently using vast amounts of his magical energies to inscribe a gigantic sacrificial ritual inside Sublime's mind space.
Getting out of its stupor, Sublime cut his connection with the puppet in the base, but the pressure didn't disappear. The bacteria was changing hosts nonstop but the pressure never moved, Sublime was starting to feel true existential dread.
While Eli was inscribing the runes, he didn't stop breaking into Sublime's memories as he stared up at the giant nucleus hanging in the bacteria's mind and even just reading parts of the last ten years made Eli's blood run cold. Sublime's capacity for evil was truly out of this world and convinced Eli to change the ritual he was about to perform. He needed something that would hurt more.
Three hours later, Eli opened his eyes in the office of the director. Malcolm Colcord was lying in his own blood, stripped of all clothing next to the desk as Moira and Mystique were sitting at his desk, busy on his computer.
"Wow, finally back with us, hotshot? You stopped talking, and this dude suddenly fell over," Mystique quipped as she pointed to 'Sublime'.
"I heard you whisper he was a sentient bacteria as old as the planet?" Moira calmly inquired, not looking up from the computer screen.
"Yeah. This was a lucky break. The bacteria can't control mutants. That's where his hate for your kind comes from. He would have never stopped his mission to eradicate the x-gene from the genepool," Eli explained as he opened his eye to look at a glowing white crystal tear the size of a walnut.
"Oh, shiny," Mystique gushed with sparkling eyes.
"It's Sublime's mind, his memories. I sacrificed his original self in an Asgardian ritual to form this repository of his mind. Someone with a lot of time and means should probably look into it at some point. Two billion years of plotting and scheming. Apparently, before the rising oxygen levels when amoebas stepped out of the primordial soup to form life, a society of mutants already existed. Seeded on this planet by the Shi'ar and Celestials? Sounds super made up, if I'm honest, but who knows. You might find some ancestors from the time of the first Asgardians in his memories. That should shut up everyone who claims you're stealing their home planet. Wait, I take that back. Every nutjob, who thinks like this, would never take such an argument at face value if it disagrees with their world view," Eli mused as he held up the crystal tear to inspect it.
The tear had small green Nordic runes inscribed on its surface and the white glow seemed to be pulsing softly. With more focus, Eli could make out soft sources of light in the glow, like stars blinking, but barely visible because it was day, not night. Eli took out a leather band and with a spell firmly bound it to the tear. He threw it over to Mystique.
"You would give that to me?" Mystique asked in wonder. Moira looked at the tear with loathing, awe and a little bit of greed. Her emotions were all over the place, even if she barely showed it.
"You remind me of my mom. Selfish beyond compare, but deep inside you want to fight for something bigger than yourself," Eli replied with a shrug.
"You read my mind? And you mom-zone me!? I've been undressing and fucking you and that Anya girl in my mind nonstop since I laid my eyes on you! Just who is your mother?" Mystique was shaken, even Moira looked at Eli in disbelief.