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Chapter 11 - Book 2: Absolute Mutant Chapter 1: Xavier's Blunder. .

The second fic in the Absolute Series. Check out My [email protected]/Saintbarbido for Accompanied Art.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN any of the copyrighted marvel characters.

(General POV)

There were 8,043,761,421,306 humans alive.

Mathew Malloy didn't guess that number. He knew it. As intimately and precisely as his own heartbeat. The number lived behind his eyes, shifting every time a new child cried their way into the world or an old man slipped into silence. It didn't tick. It pulsed. A living counter, constantly rewriting itself.

Sometimes, he sensed the shift before it happened. Like reality reached forward and tugged on his awareness, warning him that someone, somewhere, was about to leave. Or arrive.

That was the first clue.

The second was the taste of the air.

It wasn't chemical. Not pollution. Not decay. It was more like—imitation. As if someone had tried to recreate Earth's atmosphere from memory. They got the broad strokes right, but missed the details. Oxygen was there. Nitrogen, sure. But the flavor was off. Like it had been built in a lab and released too soon.

Mathew sat on a weathered bench beside a still lake in a New York park, surrounded by ducks and distant children's laughter. The sky overhead was a pleasant gray-blue, clouds trailing like slow ships across a glass sea. Trees rustled in rhythm. Everything looked right.

But everything felt wrong.

Too precise. Too symmetrical. Like someone had hit 'reset' and stitched the world back together from memory.

And space—space felt thin. He couldn't explain it, but the air had depth, and something about that depth had become shallow. Like if he reached out too fast, his hand might break through the whole illusion.

He didn't remember how he got there.

There had been nothing—and then there was now. Him, sitting upright on the bench. Wind brushing his face. That number in his head.

He looked down. Brown canvas jacket. Torn jeans. Boots that had seen more than one winter. His fingertips were calloused. His palms bore scars.

He reached into his back pocket. A wallet. New York license. MATHEW MALLOY.

It didn't feel wrong. It didn't feel right either.

It just felt given.

He tried to think back. Who he was. Where he came from. And the moment he did, pain lanced through his skull. A sharp, merciless spike. Like a migraine carved with surgical precision.

His head jerked forward. The bench groaned. Wood snapped.

A fine web of cracks exploded outward through space itself. Not the bench—reality. It fractured.

Then came the implosion. Splinters, air, motion.

The bench detonated beneath him, blown apart into fragments that hung briefly in the air before tumbling down. Ducks flapped and scattered. The air collapsed inward in a brief vacuum, and then—

Nothing.

Silence. Stillness.

No one noticed.

Joggers kept jogging. Children kept laughing. People passed by as if the event had never occurred. As if the world had selectively refused to register the moment.

Mathew sat up in the wreckage.

Confused. But not afraid.

Somewhere, deep in his bones, he understood what had happened.

The world was soft to him.

Not weak. Not fragile. Soft like clay. Moldable. Mutable.

He focused on the broken pieces of the bench. Didn't move a muscle.

The splinters vibrated. Lifted. Time slipped backward—but only for the wood. It reassembled itself in perfect sequence. Nails bent back into shape. Grain smoothed out. Boards fused.

In seconds, the bench was whole again.

He stared at it.

Not with horror.

With wonder.

He had done that. No words. No gestures. No spells. Just intent.

He could feel the atoms obey. Feel the fabric of cause and effect rewrite itself around his will. The world wasn't asking him to follow the rules. It was asking him what he wanted the rules to be.

And he had no idea who he was.

He stood slowly, boots crunching against gravel. The lake rippled, and he could see the math behind the movement. Wind patterns. Friction. Pressure. All of it lay open to him like an instruction manual. He could change it. Still the water. Shift the current. Reverse it.

He didn't.

Not yet.

Because something was coming.

He felt it before it broke through the clouds. A vibration in his ribs. A hum building to resonance.

He turned his eyes skyward.

A jet emerged from the clouds. Sleek, silver, silent. Cutting through the air with practiced grace. It descended in a slow arc, casting a growing shadow across the grass.

It wasn't trying to belong here. It was announcing itself.

It touched down without fanfare. A ramp unfolded.

Figures emerged.

The X-Men.

He recognized them. The way one recognizes names from a dream. Familiar, yet distant.

They walked with purpose. Some in uniform. Others in plain clothes. But at their head: a man in a wheelchair, eyes sharp, calm, calculating.

Charles Xavier.

Beside him, armored in dark metal and menace, cape sweeping behind him:

Magneto.

They hadn't arrived in conflict. They'd arrived together.

Mathew didn't move.

Didn't flinch.

He watched.

The ramp extended and the leaders descended. Xavier glided. Magneto walked, slow and deliberate. Behind them: Jean Grey, Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine.

The old guard.

Even they looked uneasy.

Magneto leaned toward Xavier, voice barely above the wind.

"You do remember it's his choice. He may hear you out, Charles, but he belongs with me."

Xavier didn't look away from Mathew.

"He doesn't belong to anyone, Erik. And we don't know if he'll listen to either of us."

Mathew heard it all. Their voices didn't need to reach him. His awareness now spread across the city like radar. Every conversation, every scream, every whisper of life and death. They passed through him like weather.

He spoke without rising.

"I'm not interested."

They stopped several feet away.

Xavier tilted his head. "In what?"

"Your dream. Your war. Your tired debate about harmony or dominance. It's too small. People are suffering—mutant, human, doesn't matter. I see all of it. I feel all of it. Every moment."

Magneto said nothing. Xavier's expression darkened.

Mathew kept going.

"I think I could stop it. Every war. Every famine. Every lie. Just erase it. But then I ask myself..." He looked up. "What's the point?"

Jean whispered, "He's not well."

Storm murmured, "He's grieving. Maybe everything."

Xavier rolled closer. "Whatever your power is, it's extraordinary. Think of all the good you could do with it."

Mathew let out a tired, bitter laugh. "Great. Power without identity. Thanks, Charles."

Magneto stepped forward. "Then forge a new one. With me. Let this moment be your birthright."

Xavier countered, firm: "Or let me help you recover what was stolen."

Mathew raised an eyebrow. "So I get to choose which messiah to follow?"

They didn't reply. The silence between them said enough.

Behind them, tension built. Cyclops' fingers hovered near the trigger on his visor. Wolverine's claws flexed but didn't extend.

Mathew saw it all.

With a simple gesture, he silenced the world. Xavier and Magneto's mouths moved, but no sound came.

"I think you should leave," Mathew said. "I was here first."

Xavier frowned. His mind reached gently, brushing Mathew's consciousness.

It was a mistake.

Pain lanced through Mathew's skull. He screamed. The ground split. The bench disintegrated again. A shockwave blasted outward in concentric rings.

Xavier's chair flipped. Magneto stumbled. Jean flew backward. Cyclops hit the grass hard. Wolverine vanished into a spray of dirt.

When the dust cleared, Mathew knelt in a crater, gasping.

Magneto stood first.

"He's too dangerous."

Xavier groaned. "Erik, don't—"

But it was already happening.

Metal lifted from every direction—rebar, screws, fragments of lamp posts. They streaked through the air and impaled Mathew to the ground. Arms. Chest. Thighs. Pinned like a butterfly in a collector's case.

Blood spread beneath him.

He didn't scream.

He just went still.

Then—he twitched.

The blood flowed back.

The wounds closed.

The metal trembled.

Mathew's eyes opened.

Green. Glowing.

"I remember everything," he said.

Jean stepped back. "He's not Omega-level, Professor."

Storm whispered, "He's beyond."

Magneto growled. "No such thing."

He reached again.

But nothing answered him.

The metal inside Mathew lifted, twisted into serpents, slithering forward like sentient chains.

"Fight or die!" Magneto roared.

Cyclops fired twin concussive beams from his visor—a thunderous crack of red energy.

Storm hurled a bolt of lightning from above.

Wolverine lunged with a feral scream.

It was useless.

Each attack bent. Reversed. Redirected.

Mathew advanced.

Jean flared bright, her mind striking his.

He let her in.

And she froze.

Tears filled her eyes.

Behind her, the jet locked on. Beast inside, fingers flying over controls.

The weapons fired.

Trees exploded. Earth cratered. Mathew staggered.

Then his voice rang out.

"Enough."

It wasn't a word. It was an event.

A soundless pulse spread outward.

The park vanished.

So did the jet.

So did New York.

When the world stopped shaking, only Mathew remained, standing in a smoking crater.

His skin charred. His clothes gone. He stood in the silence, trembling.

He looked around.

Opened his mouth.

And said nothing.

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