From start to finish, Ernst's relentless advance toward Erik never faltered.
Not even Havok's plasma blasts or Beast's lunges could slow his momentum.
Faced with an opponent completely beyond his comprehension, Erik could only throw up desperate metal barriers to marginally impede Ernst's path.
It was merely a delaying tactic.
As Ernst unleashed his full, terrifying presence, Charles, Mystique, and Moira, who had been concealed in the wreckage of the X-Jet, could no longer remain passive.
They broke cover.
Moira, wielding her service pistol, took the initiative. Despite having survived her intimate encounter with Ernst back in the Las Vegas Hellfire Club, her training as a CIA operative won out.
She raised her weapon, unhesitant and ruthless.
Knowing bullets wouldn't harm Ernst, her keen instincts targeted the only vulnerability she saw: Shaw's exposed corpse.
She aimed to complete her mission and destroy the asset.
This revelation angered Ernst. He had initially sought to simply retrieve his father, but Moira's interference crossed a line.
He decided to impart a lesson.
Holding Shaw's body, Ernst smoothly swept his right arm.
A mysterious spatial distortion rippled the air as Shaw's corpse, drawn by an invisible vacuum, vanished entirely into Ernst's sleeve.
It was a flawless execution of the Traceless Extension Charm he had sewn into the fabric, a magical feat that would earn him the moniker, "The Man with a Universe in his Sleeves."
Unburdened by the body, Ernst's posture shifted to pure offense.
Observing yet another impossible ability, Erik felt a wave of exasperation. Just how many powers did this monster possess?
Aside from Azazel, everyone on the beach was utterly astounded.
Moira, undeterred, emptied her magazine. Ernst didn't even blink.
He effortlessly caught a 9mm bullet between two fingers and, with a casual flick of his thumb, redirected it back at twice its original velocity.
"Ah!" Moira crumpled to the sand, clutching her shattered shoulder.
"Moira!" Charles screamed. Harboring deep, unspoken feelings for the agent, seeing her wounded shattered his composure.
He unleashed the full, unbridled force of his telepathic abilities, driving a psychic battering ram directly into Ernst's mind.
Detecting the intrusion, Ernst snorted coldly. He didn't just block it; he condensed his own immense mental power into a psychic spike and thrust it violently backward along Charles's connection.
Boom!
Charles felt a piercing, blinding agony detonate in his skull. He collapsed, violently spewing blood onto the sand.
The trauma far surpassed the backlash he had suffered from Shaw's mental black hole.
"Charles! I've got you," Mystique cried out, dropping to her knees to support him.
It took a moment for the ringing in Charles's head to fade. As he regained a sliver of composure, the sheer magnitude of their losses sank in: first Shaw, and now Ernst.
They were completely outmatched.
While Charles's attack had momentarily stalled him, Ernst resumed his slow, inevitable pursuit of Erik.
Havok and Beast desperately tried to run interference, combining their attacks with Erik's flying shrapnel, but Ernst swatted their efforts aside like annoying insects.
He finally reached Erik, seizing him by the throat and lifting him effortlessly off the ground.
"Do you truly believe you overcame him with your own strength?" Ernst whispered, his grip tightening.
"He groomed you as a successor. He showed mercy at every turn. Otherwise..."
Mid-sentence, a jagged piece of metal shot from Erik's sleeve, attempting to replicate the exact assassination tactic he had just used on Shaw.
However, to Erik's absolute dismay, the metal shard halted abruptly, frozen in the air just five centimeters from Ernst's eye. It defied every ounce of magnetic force Erik applied.
"The same trick twice?" Ernst sneered.
"Did you really think I would fall for that?"
Ernst slammed Erik brutally into the bedrock beneath the sand, dragging him across the abrasive surface.
"Stop! Ernst Shaw, we haven't decided the winner yet!"
A commanding voice rang out over the crash of the waves. Ernst turned to see Wonder Woman's graceful figure charging toward him.
Despite her previous defeat, her divine physiology had rapidly healed her most severe injuries.
Aside from her messy hair and scuffed armor, she looked ready for war.
When Diana had seen Ernst suddenly abandon their fight, she guessed a crisis was unfolding at the submarine.
She had sprinted down the shoreline, her body knitting itself back together along the way.
Upon arriving, she saw Ernst choking the life out of Erik. Her warrior's temperament wouldn't allow her to let a helpless man be executed.
Ernst casually tossed Erik aside and turned to fully face the Amazon.
He knew he couldn't be careless with a demigod; there was no telling what hidden divine traits she might suddenly manifest.
This time, Wonder Woman didn't draw her sword. She unhooked the glowing Golden Lasso of Truth from her hip and lashed it forward with incredible speed, wrapping it tightly around Ernst's torso.
Ernst grabbed the glowing rope, planting his feet as the two began another brutal tug-of-war. However, Diana had already realized she couldn't overpower his energy absorption alone.
"Everyone!" Diana shouted to the battered mutants.
"Strike together! Concentrate your fire on him now!"
Havok reacted the fastest. He unleashed a blinding red plasma wave from his chest harness.
Unlike his previous, segmented blasts, this one was a sustained, continuous beam, forcing Ernst to actively inhale the immense thermal energy.
Beast, lacking long-range attacks, flanked the perimeter.
Banshee took to the air, opening his mouth to emit a concentrated, spatial-tearing sonic scream directly at Ernst's skull.
Erik, finally recovering his breath, joined the fray.
With a wave of his bleeding hands, the tons of scattered metal across the beach rose into the air, swirling into a localized shrapnel hurricane.
Besieged from all sides by a demigod and four Omega-level threats, Ernst finally felt the pressure.
He exerted his cosmic and physical abilities to their absolute limit, anchoring himself against the combined, devastating assault.
Watching from the sidelines, Azazel instinctively moved to help his boss.
'Stand down', Ernst's voice echoed sharply in the teleporter's mind.
'I will break them myself.'
Having no choice but to obey, Azazel used the distraction to teleport over to the heavy iron sheet pinning Riptide.
He freed his teammate and teleported them both over to Angel Salvadore, pulling the Hellfire remnants out of the blast zone.
"Enough," Ernst growled. He had absorbed enough kinetic and thermal energy to level a city.
He grabbed the glowing Lasso with both hands and yanked backward with terrifying, enhanced strength.
Wonder Woman was ripped off her feet and launched through the air like a cannonball, colliding directly with Erik. The two tangled and rolled across the sand in a heap.
Without Erik's active control, the swirling metal storm collapsed. Ernst snatched three heavy steel beams from the falling debris.
With a flick of his wrists, he launched them at supersonic speeds.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The beams slammed into Havok, Banshee, and Beast with pinpoint accuracy.
All three spat blood and collapsed, their bones fractured by the sheer impact.
Aside from Mystique, who possessed no heavy combat abilities, every single X-Man was now critically injured and incapacitated.
Looking at Ernst, a man who fought with the grace of an angel and the ruthless power of a demon, a deep sense of despair settled over the young soldiers.
The courage to continue fighting simply evaporated.
Only Wonder Woman refused to yield. Groaning, she pushed herself up from the sand and prepared to rush him again.
Ernst grew thoroughly impatient. He stretched out a hand toward the Amazon and snorted softly.
"Hundred times gravity."
Suddenly, Diana felt as if an entire mountain had been dropped onto her shoulders. The localized gravity field pinned her violently to the ground, burying her face in the sand.
No matter how much her divine muscles strained, she couldn't even push herself up to her knees.
Ernst stood amidst the carnage, the undisputed victor. The enemies were broken, his anger was vented, and he was finally ready to end this tedious farce.
However, at that exact moment, the atmosphere shifted.
Erik, bleeding and bruised on the sand, suddenly sensed something. A manic, desperate joy flickered across his face.
He turned his head sharply toward the ocean. Ernst noticed the shift in his expression and followed his gaze.
What caught his eye was a dense, terrifying swarm of contrails tearing through the sky.
The fleets of the United States and the Soviet Union hadn't just been observing the war on the shoreline.
After witnessing the terrifying, god-like powers tearing the beach apart, both governments had come to a rare, unanimous consensus: the mutants posed an existential threat to global security.
They decided to wipe them all out in one swift strike.
Dozens of heavy naval missiles were raining down on the beach.
The X-Men had fought to protect humanity, and humanity had just stabbed them in the back.
Normally, Erik would be furious, his heart filled with a desire for vengeance against mankind.
But right now, he was ecstatic. Humanity had just handed him the ultimate weapon to defeat Ernst.
Erik stretched out his right hand, his fingers splayed wide.
The entire swarm of flying missiles groaned, their guidance systems failing as the magnetic fields locked them in mid-air.
Slowly, smoothly, Erik turned all three dozen warheads around, pointing them directly at the man in the silver suit.
He closed his fist.
The missiles shot forward.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
When the first missile arrived, Ernst casually stretched out his hand to block it.
It detonated on impact with a deafening roar, completely engulfing Ernst in a massive fireball of shrapnel and high explosives.
But it wasn't over. The rest of the swarm was right behind it.
-------------
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