The blood-soaked battlefield instantly shattered the students' earlier bravado. Until today, these young mutants had only read about war in textbooks or seen it on television. Now, witnessing familiar classmates torn apart before their eyes, they finally understood the true weight of death.
Hatred? They didn't even have time to feel it.
They were simply grateful to still be breathing.
Amid the chaos, Marcus became their lifeline. He plunged back into the swarm of Sentinels, rescuing every student within reach while dismantling a dozen robots with ease. Bullets that shredded normal mutants bounced harmlessly off his metal-coated skin. Rockets that could level a truck moved so slowly in his eyes that he batted them aside like flies.
Compared to their feeble resistance, Marcus's seven-in-seven-out rampage through the encirclement looked like the descent of a war god. His combat mastery left every student stunned into awe—especially those he had personally dragged back from death's grasp.
But among the mostly underpowered students, there were indeed a few true Alpha-level mutants.
Including the one Marcus came here specifically to eliminate—
Kitty Pryde, the Shadowcat.
Her ability allowed her to become completely intangible—slipping through walls, attacks, and even the very laws of physics. And her powers weren't limited to physical phasing; she could phase through time itself, resetting timelines—a ridiculous ability that made her a nightmare for anyone trying to alter history.
While intangible, no projectile or explosion could harm her. And offensively, she was just as lethal. After phasing through incoming fire, Kitty charged directly at a Sentinel and plunged her "ghost" fist into its head—then instantly rematerialized.
Crack!
Her solid fist could not coexist with the machinery occupying the same space. Something had to give—and the robot's internal components burst apart, spilling metal like gore. No matter how thick the armor, anything she could pass through, she could destroy.
This was Shadowcat's terrifying combat style. Without highly specialized countermeasures, Kitty Pryde was virtually unbeatable in direct combat.
Together, Marcus and Kitty tore through the Sentinels—Marcus with raw overwhelming power, Kitty with surgical precision. Their combined presence dragged most of the robots into the school interior, giving Cyclops and the frontline X-Men precious time to retreat.
Cyclops was initially confused by the sudden drop in pressure from the Sentinel swarm—until he arrived and saw dozens of students who had recklessly charged into battle. Only then did he understand.
"Damn it! I told you all to stay in the shelter!" Cyclops roared, horrified by the carnage. Seeing the floor drenched in blood, his heart twisted with guilt. The X-Men existed so that students would never need to fight at all. Now everything was reversed… even if they won today, these losses could never be justified.
"And what did you expect them to do? Watch you die?" Marcus snapped back, decapitating several Sentinels with a single thrown shield before landing in front of Cyclops. "If this place falls, where do you expect them to go?"
Cyclops opened his mouth to argue—but fate didn't give him the chance.
A deafening chain of explosions tore through the ceiling, ripping apart the floors above. The blue sky burst into view—along with the gaping muzzles of the Helicarrier's cannons.
A storm of bullets and missiles descended instantly.
More intense, more concentrated, and far more lethal than anything before.
No one in the room had the strength left to block an attack of this magnitude. It was clear: most of the mutants here were seconds away from becoming part of the rubble that would soon bury Xavier's Institute.
Shadowcat grabbed Marcus's shoulder, phasing both of them into intangibility. It wasn't necessary for Marcus—but he still nodded politely.
"Thank you."
Just as death was about to rain down, as mutants braced to save whoever they could—
—everything stopped.
Every bullet.
Every missile.
Every shard of metal.
Frozen midair like a paused photograph.
Even the hulking Sentinels, who had relentlessly slaughtered their way through the school, hung motionless in the air—stalled as though time itself had halted.
It wasn't the X-Men.
It was the only one who could do it.
The master of magnetism.
Magneto.
Having been ordered earlier by Cyclops to avoid interfering, Magneto had watched silently from afar—until now. Finally stepping into the shattered hall, he surveyed the devastation with cold disdain. Time seemed to move only for him.
He walked straight up to Cyclops, his boots echoing sharply against the debris-strewn floor.
"You disappoint me," he said calmly.
The words were a death sentence—not for life, but for leadership. From this moment onward, Cyclops would never again stand as Magneto's equal. Whatever fragile partnership they had forged was now crushed.
Magneto raised a thin, wrinkled hand toward the sky and slowly curled his fingers inward.
At that gesture, every frozen bullet and missile whirled around, pointing back toward the Helicarrier. The moment his fingers closed—
the sky exploded.
Fireburst after fireburst blossomed across the carrier's hull. Smoke engulfed the entire vessel as its internal systems detonated one after another. Something Cyclops failed to accomplish with sustained, full-power optic blasts had been done by Magneto with a lazy flick of the wrist.
The Helicarrier plummeted like a crippled beast—yet descended softly, controlled by Magneto's magnetic grip. It landed intact on the front lawn, but its interior was completely dismantled into scrap metal, its internal systems torn apart beyond recovery.
As for the rest of the Sentinels—
A casual gesture from Magneto reduced them all to piles of twisting screws and warped iron plates. What once stood as precision-engineered war machines now looked like crumpled toys.
All in a matter of seconds.
An army that could have leveled cities was annihilated effortlessly by one elderly mutant. Even if the enemy had brought ten times this number, the result would not have changed.
_____
T/N:
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