Coffee Break

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I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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27th September 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

I sighed contently as I took a sip of my coffee. I had decided to go walk around the city today to keep my mind off Erebus. Things have been spiraling out of control lately, which is something that I hadn't experienced for a very long time. So, I decided to spend some time alone in New York, and ended up sitting at my favorite table in one of my favorite cafes in the city.

The coffee was great, but what really sets this place apart was the fact that the owners have a 'private' table which is surrounded by a garden, up on the roof. It was a beautiful place, one that allowed me some privacy, and yet still let me see and hear the city around me.

As I kept drinking my coffee, I refused to think about Erebus, and instead started thinking about my new powers. I didn't experiment with Death's powers too much, in fear of losing even more of my humanity and accelerating my ascension, but I did try to use my magic with the cosmic energy core.

It was both easier and harder than it used to be. Somehow, Cosmic Energy was even more chaotic than Magic, and it was very dangerous for someone to experiment with, but it was also far denser than magic. It seemed to excel in Matter manipulation in general. I could transfigure and transmute anything without a second thought. There was also a sense of permanence in everything I did with it. For example, conjurations, which are supposed to be energy projections made with magic and hence disappeared after a certain time, required far more energy to create, now, but also whatever I conjured was real, meaning that it was made of real matter and thus, was permanent. It was something that I had never considered to be possible. Magic obeyed the laws of conservation of mass and energy, but it seemed like Cosmic Energy was in a league of its own.

Luckily, Runes acted the same and so did alchemy. Elemental magic, especially my darkness element, could be used with nary a thought. In the end, almost all my magic had stayed relatively the same, except for charms and enchanting, which seemed to require far more focus and control than before, something that I could manage without too many problems.

What I did notice though, was the psionic magic, which is especially the mind arts and telekinesis, had changed somewhat. They weren't stronger, per se, just different. My telepathy was more instinctual, not in penetrating minds that is, but I had a bigger urge to communicate telepathically. It was like words and the spoken language felt lacking sometimes, and that it was easier to communicate an idea, or an emotion with telepathy rather than talk about it. As for my telekinesis, it had always felt like some external phantom limb that I shaped to do what I wanted, but now, I felt like I could actually control matter, each atom individually. Previously, when I disintegrated something, I held it in place with my telekinesis and used my darkness element to destroy it, but now, I could just do it using my telekinesis. It even felt natural to do it, as I could use the shredded molecules to build something else.

It was no wonder that celestials felt like Gods. They could reshape the world as they wished. Believe me, I was thousands of times weaker than even Ego, who is without a doubt the weakest celestial out there. I could imagine the cosmic energy in my soul being an endless well of power, and how I could use it to create star systems and even galaxies without a thought. The creation and destruction part of a celestial's powers were instinctive, and it became obvious to me how powerful even a newborn celestial could be with that kind of instinctive control over its basic abilities.

It also highlighted how disappointing Ego really was, in the end. He had so much power at his disposal, and while going for the organic route was slightly odd – compared to other celestials that chose to create mechanical bodies and infrastructures – he was able to create an entire planet, filled with its own ecosystem and wildlife. But outside of this, he did absolutely nothing. He put his brain in the middle of the core of the planet and limited his mobility to just using energy projections. Ego had so much power, so much potential, and yet he did nothing with it. He didn't create, he didn't destroy, he just had a mad plan of killing off the entire galaxy for reasons I didn't quite understand.

Back to my changes, It wasn't just my powers that were different. I was different. As the days passed, I started to notice how much the ritual had changed me and it scared me to see how I could have ended up without Erebus' interference. In short, I felt detached from the world. It felt odd, like they were just characters of a book I was reading all the time, or a movie that doesn't ever end. The only people that seemed to be spared from this were my family and friends, few as they may be. But the billions of strangers all around the world, just felt different, they felt less.

It was an odd thing to describe, and it was something that my human half was fighting as hard as it could. I knew that this was the beginning of the end; it would be slow, but I would stop caring about the world, and one day, I fear that I might even stop caring about my family. One day, I would stop caring about Wanda, about Jean, about Rose, and maybe I'd even stop caring about Selene. Would I still love her? Would I be capable of love at all? If I really stop caring about them, if I stop loving them, my anchors to whatever remains of my humanity, I don't know if I could survive with the guilt. It would break my heart and the sad part is that I might not even have a heart to break in the end.

This was what I was afraid of, why I tried to find any other way to survive Death's imprint without ascending and finding nothing. It was also why I risked going through with a ritual that would have either resulted in my death or me staying alive with my humanity intact.

I was now going through the motions, pretending and acting as if nothing had changed, while everything had changed. It was exhausting, especially since I had to do it at home. I loved my family, I really did, but I also felt like there was something missing, and I didn't quite understand what.

Honestly, Selene immediately understood that I needed some space and went back to work as if nothing happened, although I could feel her worrying gaze on me whenever she thought that I wasn't looking. Rose, Jean, and Wanda, on the other hand, didn't even seem to care whether or not I caught them fretting over me. I appreciated their concern, I really did, but it was slowly becoming overbearing, and I had to get out of there and take a breather.

I took another sip from my coffee mug and sighed. This was a very good blend. I think it was a new one; I'll have to ask the owner if he had more of it for me to take home. The waitress, who basically only waited on me as the person who booked the private table, came over and asked, "Is there anything I could help you with, Miss?"

I nodded, "Could you please get me a carrot cake?"

She nodded and went to get me the cake. And as I waited, I started thinking about the SHIELD situation.

While it was horrible that an organization with so much potential was probably going to be dismantled, it was the only way to make sure that Hydra wouldn't return in any way. They had tied themselves to SHIELD so tightly that at the smallest chance of the peace keeping organization staying afloat, they would return like an infestation, and everything would return to square one. It was cruel, especially since something like SHIELD could have really changed the world for the better by slowly mending the boundaries between the Earth's nations and protecting the world from foreign and domestic threats, there was the problem of oversight regarding the organization.

Little oversight meant that the Higher Ups got too much power, which would eventually lead to corruption, which is what happened in SHIELD's case, but too much oversight would lead to the organization becoming ineffectual, since every country would try to put their interests first, which would lead to endless debates with nothing getting done.

It was the hard truth, and it seemed that so far, no one could find that delicate balance between too much oversight and too little oversight. In the end, SHIELD was always going to fall, either by Hydra's hand, or by a decision from the UN. At least, I made sure that what they worked for wasn't immediately erased by Hydra.

If I was honest with myself, I never really cared about SHIELD too much. Outside of the creation of the Avengers, a team of superheroes that would inspire thousands if not millions of super powered individuals, especially teenagers, into pursuing heroism as well, and not try to use their abilities to commit crimes. And as the Avengers slowly grew, the team would start pulling their own weight, and it could actually become the main response team against alien threats to the planet.

But that was all speculation and predictions, not facts. As for now, I was just waiting for the shoe to drop, and for Fury to make a desperate move in an attempt to save SHIELD somehow. The way he's been going hard on recruiting mutants, and targeted every single possible threat on the planet, had caused pretty much all of organized crime to hide and wait for the UN's eventual elimination of the organization before continuing their illegal activities without anyone opposing them.

Honestly, Fury's targeting of mutants in the last few months, pretty much caused a very significant rise in the number of mutants in Genosha. Not that it changed much for the UN who were already on their way to create a superhuman registration act that should technically force mutants or super humans in general to register themselves with their superpowers, sort of like an ID. It wasn't that unreasonable, especially if the governments are going to slowly start to include superpowers in the everyday life of their citizens. But what was worrying was the talks of tracking bracelets, restricting the access to certain resources to mutants and a lot of human rights violations.

It was horrible, degrading, disgusting, and yet it was so human. It was a power-hungry move, where the governments banded together to create an entire act just to take control over the enhanced individuals in their countries. The main problem was that the general population would actually agree with them, not understanding that at any second, any one of them could get powers of their own. People weren't as afraid with a decrease in the number of mutant incidents in the last few years, but the idea that a trigger-happy teenager could destroy an entire city was very disturbing.

Still, I wasn't going to involve myself in this. This was an impactful decision for the human race to make, and not one I should decide for them. Instead, I will continue to plan for the fight with Entropy, and for now, Ego's inevitable visit to Earth.

I took another sip of coffee and felt the door behind me open. I expected to see the waitress, and instead found myself in front of a very angry and smug Nick Fury who was pointing a gun at me, "Jasmine Sayre, you're under arrest."

I raised an eyebrow and took another sip of coffee. Well, things were about to get interesting.