The air inside the tomb of En Sabah Nur, aka Apocalypse, tasted of stale, dirty old air and five thousand years of silence.
It had a "flat-lining fart" quality to it—that's how Max, now happily going by Flux (Author's note: We will also call him Flux when he's using this armor and hero persona!), had been describing the stiff smell in the tomb to Erik, the Magneto, every time they entered a different chamber, and this one was no different.
"We're going to destroy both the Celestial tech and bandages over there, then get outta this stinky hole."
Magneto stood at the edge of the floating sarcophagus lid, hand raising slightly, his cape a motionless shroud. Below him lay the First Mutant: a gaunt, ancient figure draped in the decaying finery of a pharaoh.
"Yes, it smells... dank, in here Flux, you've only mentioned it fifteen tim--"
Suddenly, the ancient threat's eyes snapped open. There was no transition from sleep to action.
Right on cue.
If this had been anyone else other than Magneto and Flux, their powers would have been flowing into the hungry Apocalypse's hands already—literally.
Flux had made sure to utilize [Destiny] as soon as he laid eyes on Apocalypse, making sure he would know when the mutant would attempt to take a swipe at Magneto.
'Even without knowing the plot, you would have to be a dope to not figure out what the floating lid might mean... Of course this old fucker knows we're here.'
Apocalypse lunged, a withered hand clawing for Magneto's throat with a speed that would have crushed a normal man's throat already. Too bad for him—he wasn't fighting normal men, or 'normal' mutants.
He was fighting two prepared masters of magnetism.
Flux and Magneto, who had been acting as the bait, moved before the ancient mutant's fingers could even clear the sarcophagus rim.
Flux's 5x peak human reflexes made the world seem to slow down.
He moved one of his custom Desert Eagles in a blur of chrome, but he didn't just pull the trigger. He seized the heavy .50 caliber round with his own magnetic power, wrapping it in a violent electromagnetic sheath.
CRACK.
The gunshot was eclipsed by the sonic boom as the round hit Mach 8. The projectile wasn't just a bullet anymore; it was a meteor released indoors.
It vaporized Apocalypse's reaching hand into a mist of grey tissue and ancient dust.
The backing-up Magneto didn't flinch.
He didn't have to.
A crackling, shimmering magenta shield flared into existence between him and the explosion of the hand, his eyes locked onto the 'Eternal One' with cold, predatory intent.
"Now, Flux!" Magneto shouted, releasing his power toward Apocalypse and giving it his all.
Together, they struck.
It wasn't a physical blow but a mental one—twisting the very electromagnetism of Apocalypse's own nervous system and mind.
The first mutant arched his back, a silent scream tearing from his throat as two masters of the fundamental force scrambled his bioelectric signature.
He couldn't shift his shape; he couldn't even think straight!
Magneto gestured, and the twelve heavy metal spheres that had been orbiting him like dark moons rushed forward. They flattened against Apocalypse's three remaining limbs and torso, binding him in a floating magnetic cage that held his mangled body in the dead air.
Max didn't let up either.
He leaned into the recoil, both hand cannons out now.
"Let's see how 'eternal' you really are," Flux gritted out while thinking to himself, "Yeah, that sounded pretty cool..."
He emptied both magazines in a rhythmic, devastating cadence while shouting, "Twin Star-Fall Attack!"
Each shot was boosted by his internal railgun acceleration, turning the tomb into a strobe-light of kinetic violence. Thirteen rounds hit with the force of a tank battalion, shredding the pharaoh's robes and the organic flesh that was desperately trying to harden.
Off to the side, Magneto's lips twitched as Flux called out his move; it was a dramatic flair lost on the master of magnetism, who had clearly never read The Legendary Mechanic—or any Shonen manga, for that matter.
With a small shake of his head, Magneto controlled some of his metal stock to turn into nearly microscopic saw blades.
The small cloud of sparking dust entered inside the already devastated Apocalypse, making matters much worse for him.
Different styles of attack were beside the point, however; both Magneto and Flux kept up the harassment of Apocalypse's nervous system. It was a hopeless struggle for him to even try to regenerate.
Dust, metal, and ancient blood filled the chamber as Flux and Magneto systematically dismantled the ancient legend before he could even utter a word—or a audible scream.
The first Mutant was being erased from the timeline early, one supersonic impact at a time. The chamber didn't ring with the sound of a struggle; it rang with the rhythmic, mechanical thunder of an execution.
Without his celestial techno-organic armor to buffer the strikes, the "Eternal One" was horrifyingly fragile. The dozen or so railgun rounds didn't just impact—they transferred their kinetic energy entirely into his chest cavity. Flesh and ancient bone, hardened by centuries of mutant evolution but still fundamentally organic, surrendered to the physics of Flux and Magneto's attacks.
Apocalypse's shredded body jerked like a marionette with its strings being snapped. His ribs shattered into a fine white powder under the relentless barrage.
Each .50 caliber slug, guided by [Domino] luck, found the softest points of his anatomy—the joints, the throat, the center of the sternum. Behind the hail of lead and the shadow of his helmet, Magneto's face was now a mask of cold iron, as it always was when performing a grim task like this one.
He could feel the bio-electric flickering of the Pharaoh's mind trying to spark a counterattack—a desperate surge of molecular control—but Flux's electromagnetic interference, coupled with Magneto's, was like a drowning weight Apocalypse's mutant abilities couldn't overcome, especially not while being suppressed like they were right now!
Every time En Sabah Nur tried to knit his cells back together, another supersonic round tore the progress away.
The spheres under Magneto's control constricted—the magnetic pressure holding Apocalypse in place, with no hope for escape.
"Is this supposed to be a god?" Magneto's voice growled, alongside the booming shots of Flux's hand cannons.
The figure in the air was barely recognizable as a man now. The pharaoh's robes were not even confetti at this point, and the "invincible" mutant was a mangled ruin held together only by the very magnetic cage still crushing him where it bound him.
His eyes, once glowing with the promise of a dark future, were wide and glazed with shock—a being who had never known pain on this scale.
Flux's hammers dropped on empty chambers with a synchronized click. The silence that followed was deafening.
Smoke poured from the barrels of his glowing Desert Eagles—the heat of the railgun acceleration had turned the steel bright orange.
Apocalypse hung there, a broken relic, his healing factor twitching uselessly against injuries that bypassed "damage" and went straight to "pulverization."
The silence that followed the "gunfire" lasted only a heartbeat.
Flux didn't bother reloading; he didn't need to. He stepped forward, his armor's boots crunching on spent brass and pulverized limestone, and raised his glowing hands toward the mangled figure suspended in the air.
Magneto's eyes flared with a cold light. "He was a relic, Flux. And like all relics, he belongs to the dust."
"I hear that... So, is it a problem if it's space dust?"
"...I like it. From the stars, back to the stars." Magneto looked at Flux, understanding what he was getting at. During their training, they had discussed how to dispose of Apocalypse if they succeeded—coming up with several ideas on where to place his remains to prevent him from coming back. Ranging from leaving him at the bottom of a sea trench to shoving his parts into active volcanoes around the globe.
Flux knew you could never be too careful when dealing with a comic book baddie!
Together, they reached out with their minds, seizing the reformed metal spheres floating beside Apocalypse and the very iron in the first mutant's remaining blood.
Under their combined magnetic mastery, the metal began to liquefy and stretch, wrapping around Apocalypse's broken form like a silver shroud. Flux felt the resistance—the "Eternal One" was still barely alive and trying to exert molecular control over his own cells—a desperate microscopic tug-of-war to keep his life.
Sadly, the ancient mutant's dying will wasn't enough to stop them at all.
"Together," Magneto hissed, his knuckles white as he clenched his fists. Max closed his hands into crushing grips too.
The metal and body imploded.
The sound was wet and horrific—the screech of metal folding in on itself, combined with the sickening crunch of a body being compressed beyond biological limits.
The magnetic pressure was absolute. The silver metal shriveled inward, smaller and smaller, collapsing the Pharaoh's torso into his spine, his skull into his chest—until the "invincible" En Sabah Nur was nothing more than a set of impossibly dense, smooth balls of gore and scrap metal around the size of a grapefruit each.
A final, violent pulse of electromagnetic energy surged through the mass, cauterizing any lingering cellular life. Magneto and Flux let their arms drop, the heavy metallic spheres hitting the stone floor with a dull, heavy thud.
They didn't bounce. They just sat there—pressurized mini tombs of meat and iron, smoking in the cold air of the chamber. The "Age of Apocalypse" had ended before it could even start.
"A fitting monument to a king of nothing."
The old Max would have been puking his guts out after a scene this gruesome, especially given the way the old mutant had died. Instead, he felt… not much. The psychological anchors of his Jumper body mod were proving their worth; while a flicker of guilt hit him for taking his first life, it vanished as quickly as it came. After all, the world was better off without one of Marvel's worst, right?
Therefore, Flux didn't even wait for the dust from the balls falling to the ground to settle. His eyes drifted to the 'Eye of Ages'—the massive, ornate machine that hummed with a low, alien frequency.
Through his [Destiny] ability, he didn't just see a golden relic he could make his own; he saw a convergence of timelines where this machine became the engine of a global nightmare.
'Yikes! Yeah, let's not do that... This thing isn't worth the trouble...' Flux thought to himself before deciding to destroy it. Plenty of other super-smart, not-so-good guys in the world of this Marvel Jump would be after this thing, and it was a hot potato in his hands.
"This machine..." Max said, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
"...as long as it stands, that asshole's ghost remains in this world. It's a beacon for every fanatic and 'rule the world' cultist from here to the stars."
Magneto looked at the towering mechanism, its celestial gears beginning to grind as if beckoning to a new master. He felt the sheer electromagnetic potential radiating from it—a power that could have reshaped the world in his image.
For a second or two, the temptation of such a tool hung in the air.
Then he looked at Flux. He had seen the grim certainty in the Jumper's eyes any time they discussed this business—the knowledge of a thousand worlds where such power only led to ash. (He hadn't known all those worlds were totally fiction—Max was really just rehashing several Marvel storylines the whole time.)
"Then let us leave nothing for them to find," Magneto reluctantly agreed, his cape whipping like a dark wing while he raised an arm toward the Eye of Ages.
Together, they turned their full, unchecked magnetic mastery on the Eye. It wasn't a clean dismantling. Flux reached into the very heart of the machine; he began to vibrate the internal components at their resonant frequency, while Magneto gripped the massive outer housing with a mountain of pressure.
The Eye of Ages began to scream.
Golden plating buckled and tore like wet paper. Circuits hissed, spitting arcs of blue and violet lightning that Flux absorbed and redirected back into the core. With a final, synchronized roar of effort, the two mutants imploded the machine.
It didn't just break—it collapsed into itself, the celestial tech crushed into a dense, useless knot of scrap metal.
Flux finished the job by surging a massive EM pulse through the wreck, frying every memory bank and data crystal within the tomb. The humming stopped. The ambient light of the tomb flickered and died, leaving them in the dim, natural shadows of the icy cave.
Flux stood over the wreckage of the first mutant and his greatest weapon. "The future just got a lot brighter. Now, about that space dust..." he muttered, his still-smoking Desert Eagles floating around him.
The two walked back out to the entrance, recounting the events and what they needed to do next involving the Sentinel issue.
Max allowed his armor to flow off himself and form into two balls again, stowing them and the guns in his backpack after throwing them in the snow first for a few seconds to finish cooling.
Moments later, several softball-sized pieces of metal shot into the sky, breaking through the atmosphere and shooting off into the far reaches of space.
Magneto and Max then flew away after collapsing the rest of the tomb, destroying any chance for anyone else to go exploring for no good reason.