Mirage, world destruction.
These two words seemingly should never be mentioned together.
Undeniably, Mirage's mutant power is indeed strong, but to think she could destroy the entire world—that seemed a bit exaggerated.
After all, this mutant was nothing more than a third-rate hero. Among the New Mutants team, probably except for Magik, few had even heard of the other mutants.
Before crossing over, Alex had seen a movie called X-Men: New Mutants, which told the story of this very team. He still remembered how badly that movie flopped.
Apart from some decent special effects, the rest hardly justified the ticket price.
"Can you be specific? About how Mirage destroyed your world. Maybe we can find some clues from it," Alex tentatively asked, noticing Wolfsbane's grim mood.
At his words, Wolfsbane first glanced at Magik. Seeing no objection from her, she slowly began to tell the story.
"Mirage's real name is Danielle. She was originally one of our team members. After we escaped from Essex Corporation's control, we all joined the X-Men together. At first, everything was fine, but..."
She took a deep breath, as if suddenly recalling something, then shook her head slightly and continued.
"The Professor said Mirage's power was strong with great potential, but she had to fully control that energy. Otherwise, her abilities would cause tremendous destruction.
When we were still under Essex's control, they had warned us about this. But at that time, we didn't take it seriously. By the time that incident happened, it was already too late."
"What happened?" Alex knew the next part would be crucial.
In fact, he was quite curious how an accident could cause something that would destroy the world.
After all, the world where Magik and others lived was a very advanced one, with nearly the entire X-Men team active and no Sentinel robot incident having occurred. Under such circumstances, the death of so many mutants was definitely not something Mirage alone could cause.
"It all started with that nightmare."
Fear and unease filled Wolfsbane's eyes. Even recalling it made her body tremble slightly. At that moment, Magik reached out and gently patted her shoulder, calming her somewhat.
"Mirage's mutant ability is manifestation. She can peer into others' hearts and manifest their fears into reality."
"I know what her power is. What I'm curious about is, if it's just nightmares, couldn't the X-Men stop it?" Alex frowned.
Magik only gave a cold smile.
"That was a special mission. Magneto assembled the Brotherhood of Mutants and the Hellfire Club to jointly attack the X-Men. The whole of New York became a battlefield, and countless lives were lost in the flames of war.
We had never faced such a massive war before. To stop Magneto, Professor X sent all the X-Men, and even joined the battle himself.
That battle was extremely fierce. No war could compare. Our team even suffered casualties. To prevent the enemy from destroying the Capitol building, Cannonball died on the spot, and Sunspot detonated his own body."
Listening quietly to Magik's narration, everyone's expression turned somber, especially Petra. In her universe, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants stood united against the Sentinel robot massacres.
But in this world, these two sides were mortal enemies locked in endless conflict, which made her feel quite conflicted.
"Later..."
Magik held Wolfsbane gently and, seeing her sorrowful face, sighed before continuing.
"To help the Professor, I teleported the rest of the team to the Manhattan Special District. That was where the Professor and Magneto fought, and also the main battlefield for the mutant forces. Countless mutants gathered there, most of them swayed by Magneto. The Professor sensed something was off early on, even suspecting there were other players behind the war."
Magik snorted coldly, a self-mocking smile on her lips.
"But you know, once war starts, it can't stop. There were signs before the war began, but no one paid attention to those details. The Professor dismissed the students and took only the X-Men into battle. He knew this time he had to choose between his ideals and his friends.
Magneto's goal was to destroy the White House, kill the President and everyone inside with his own hands, then declare mutant rule over this scorched earth. But the Professor would never allow that, so the two sides clashed in a brutal fight as soon as they met.
Everyone knew the conflict would reach its climax on this day, but we forgot—there was a bomb buried deep beside us, and its fuse had already been lit."
"It was Mirage," Alex said, his gaze sharpening.
Magik nodded slightly. "Mirage lost her family when she was very young. She's a very fragile soul. It was only after she was with Wolfsbane that she slowly became more cheerful and strong."
Hearing this, Alex casually glanced at Wolfsbane—another pair of kindred spirits.
Unnoticed by Alex, Magik continued speaking.
"Seeing her friends around her getting hurt, it put even more strain on Mirage's already unstable heart. Perhaps when Sunspot burned himself out, the bomb's fuse was already lit. But at that time, we were too busy to notice.
By the time things happened, it was already too late."
"What exactly did Mirage do?" Petra frowned, feeling that something major was about to happen—something even more despairing than what her own world had faced.
At Petra's question, Magik raised her head and her gaze flickered toward Petra.
"She manifested the deepest fears inside everyone present—more precisely, the darkness deep within Professor X and Magneto's hearts. This caused her to unleash an Onslaught."
"Onslaught!?"
Alex's brows shot up in disbelief as he looked at Magik.
It was a terrifying spiritual entity, an unspeakable existence from the world of darkness.
Onslaught originated from Professor X's dark personality. After repeated setbacks in promoting peaceful coexistence between mutants and humans, the negative emotions and pessimistic thoughts in Professor X's mind gradually coalesced into an extremely repressed 'being.'
At first, it was just a hidden personality deep inside Professor X, even he was unaware of it. But when Charles invaded Magneto's mind out of anger and absorbed Magneto's fury, sorrow, and desire for revenge, this personality was fully awakened.
Onslaught's destructive desire was extremely strong. He possessed the top-level Grade 4 mutant abilities of both Professor X and Magneto simultaneously. On top of that, he had the power to absorb other mutants' abilities, which made him an incredibly terrifying threat.
With Professor X's intelligence and Magneto's control over power, Onslaught could utilize the absorbed mutant abilities to a state far stronger than the original owners.
Alex never expected that Mirage would accidentally create such a horrifying existence.
Fortunately, their universe did not have Franklin Richards or Nate Grey. Otherwise, if Onslaught absorbed the powers of these two, he would completely ascend to a multiverse-level threat, even endangering the safety of other worlds.
It's important to know that, in the comics, the original Onslaught's power alone was enough to suppress an entire world. Neither the X-Men nor the Avengers, nor even super-powered beings like Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey, Doom, or the Red Hulk could do anything against him.
After absorbing Franklin's power, Onslaught's strength even surpassed that of the planet-devouring Galactus.
But Onslaught could only absorb mutant powers. Attacks from non-mutants could affect his core, which gave the heroes their chance to turn the tide. In the end, at the cost of all heroes except the X-Men being wiped out, they finally destroyed this near-invincible being.
Now Alex understood the meaning behind Wolfsbane's words, "Mirage destroyed the world."
In a world inhabited only by mutants, summoning such a being—even without Franklin and Nate—Onslaught's unleashed combat power was unstoppable by anyone else.
It wasn't just mutants who faced disaster; the humans in that world were also doomed.
After a moment of silence, Alex shifted his gaze to Magik. "So, can you tell me how you all came to this world?"
"The situation was dire at the time. That monster's power was beyond what we could resist. Professor X called for a retreat while he and Magneto held the enemy off, but their attacks had no effect.
I wanted to protect Wolfsbane's safety, so I tried to open a Hell Rift to hide by the border of Hell, but before I knew it—"
Magik shrugged.
"When we came to, we were here and had met Dagger and Cloak."
"I see," Alex nodded thoughtfully.
So it was because of some world-destroying crisis and teleportation ability that they accidentally arrived in this world. That was the first time he had encountered such a thing.
Perhaps it also proved that the space barriers of this universe were already damaged, allowing beings from surrounding timelines to accidentally slip through.
In some ways, this was connected to when Red Hood and Black Canary crossed into the Wasteland Universe just before they died.
But…
Deep down, Alex still felt something was off.
...
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