Chapter 7: The domino effect

As the saying goes, when the cat's away the mouses can play. Charles' attempt to suppress the Phoenix force only served as fuel for its anger. I was the only thing on Earth that could stop it. If I only had Kryptonian genes I would have been the one that had the highest chance of running and surviving. Thanks to my absorption ability and my mental block, I can eat it without any side effects. The absorption would only let me eat it but it could still attack my mind.

Was I going to help? Well as Consuela from Family Guy always says, No… No… No... It wasn't because of Jean cheating on me for months. It was because I spend YEARS trying to convince Jean and Charles to let her fight and gain control of the Phoenix Forces, which they did not know of its identity. I could not tell them what it was as it would give Charles the excuse to question my knowledge. He would probably say that unless I opened my mind to him, I could not stay at the school as I have knowledge that should not be known or something of the sort.

He was known as one of the most powerful mutants with his mind powers, which were many, yet he could not use Cerebro to at the very least lessen the fear of mutants or make people look for the real story instead of believing whatever they heard. This would have avoided many problems we faced like the time; people tried to kill Kitty's parents because they thought that only those that sold their souls can give birth to mutants. The ironic part was that none of them were religious, but they used this rumor as an excuse because they thought only mutants can give birth to other mutants.

I only needed to give them a few sessions of free-falling from the sky to make them never attack them again. I can not count the number of times I asked him to do it and he said it would not be the right thing to do. I would then curse at him, unbeknownst to him, at super speed. It was a good thing he could not read my mind, or he would have known about it. I think it was reasonable for me to be angry since I was constantly getting attacked after telling the world I was a mutant. Sniper shooting at me, bombs in my office, dozens of kamikazes attack a month, and let's not forget my house blew up at least once every three months until I decided to build one in a new location.

I did not take things lying down. I always found who was behind the attacks and would either throw them in the middle of the sea, the middle of the desert, on an inhabited island, or in space. That is probably how I got into the Avengers program as I only went for the ones that attacked me, it showed that I was a reasonable person. Magneto would have blown a city if he was me.

When I joined the gang Kitty was the first to hug me. She is our mascot as everyone liked her. Even the anti-social Rogue grew fond of her. I saw her as a little sister. She was happy to see me as I rarely visited even before the breakup. "LO! It's good to see you!" She spoke. I could see that she was mindful of her word as she would usually add "how have you been?"

I came inside and we talked for a bit. No one spoke about the breakup or the fact that Charles gave them my fake weakness. I told them about the Avengers program and that I bitched and slapped Loki. They all laughed when they heard it. "HAHAHA! I would've like to see that with my eye and maybe skewer the little prick." Logan popped his claws while saying that.

After a few hours, I received a message from Fury, the real one this time. It looks like Loki had escaped and the Hulk, as well as Thor, was missing. I told the gang that I had to go and left. I could hear Magneto berating Charles while I was on my way to see Fury.

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Magneto was enraged. He yelled at Charles. "Have you grown senile over the years, Charles? I know you want coexistence but what in that so-called bright mind of yours, gave you the bright idea of telling them Lo's weakness?"

Every mutant that knew me called me Lo as my moniker was Lor-Zod, but my friends called me Lo because I once said I liked to be called that. Truthfully Laurence Zekiel was not a name that would make people take me seriously.

Charles saw that everyone was agreeing with Magneto even Beast was not an exception and he hated Magneto though it was mostly because of jealousy concerning Raven, also known as Mystic. Charles sighed before speaking. "We need to be able to show trust so that they can trust us as well. Mr. Zekiel might be seen in a bright light publicly, but he is extremely feared. This was needed for us to coexist."

Logan was the one to retort Charles' statement. "That ain't happening any time soon, people like Stryker will only use this to capture lottery boy and make more super soldiers with his power. Trust me they won't need to coexist. Look, I'm all for the coexisting thing but I'm not naive enough to believe that they won't attack us when they know they can win… Hell, they tried that quite a few times already. I was getting suspicious as to why they didn't do anything lately, turns out the lottery boy threatened the president. HAHAHA. He got guts of steel."

Charles tried to rebuke saying that this would increase the fear of mutants, but everyone had seen the literal army that was ready to attack them. They could not disagree that if not for fear more of them would have stayed.

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Magneto had slowed his more radical activities a few years ago. The government thinks that it was because I stopped him one time too many and he got discouraged. Only Charles, Magneto, and I knew the true reason. Magneto had found that his children were alive. He had once loved a nonmutant woman for a brief period, but she was thought to be dead along with their first child when she was pregnant with her second child. It turned out that she had seen Magneto starting to become radical and did not want their children to be part of that. She faked her death and moved to another country. When he found out that she had remarried and died, he wanted nothing more than to kill the ones responsible. It included the nation that had fired the missile as well as Tony Stark. Charles and I managed to dissuade him telling him that if he did that people would connect the dots and his children would be a target to anyone that wanted to hurt him.

He wanted to respect the wish of their mother by not pulling their children into his world but if they ever came of their own will, he would gladly bring them under his wing. What neither Charles nor Magneto knew was that his two children were lied, to by a small group of Hydra, into believing they could be given power for their revenge against Tony Stark. Hydra was trying to awaken their mutant gene and then they would try to reproduce them. I had already hacked them and put a virus into their files. If they awaken it would stealthily delete the data of those two. The time for them to enter the stage was approaching.

I arrived and saw that Steve and Tony were gloomy. This meant that Coulson got stabbed by Loki. I knew that he would be fine as I saw the trailer for his Tv show before I died. I had to act like I knew nothing. It was odd that the Avengers plot was still going but I guessed that the change Rick mentioned would slowly take place. The reality was not going to change but it was more like a domino effect. I sat and spoke. "You look like somebody just died, what happened?"

Fury entered and threw bloodied cards at the table. He gave a little speech. Tony and Steve bought the whole thing and left. I stayed and spoke. "Quite the load of bullshit you got there. 'He looked at me asking what I was talking about.' I lived with a telepath that kept as much secret as hair he once had. I know when someone is omitting something."

He told me that the cards were not in his pocket, and I made it look like I believed him. Thirty minutes later Tony and Steve came to tell me they found where Loki was heading. I went to get Natasha and Hawkeye. I flew fast and arrived before Loki opened the portal. I was moving at super speed, no one was moving, and I took the Tesseract. I broke it and took the space stone after creating an artificial one with 6% of its original energy. The extra 1% was to consolidate the Tesseract back to its original form. I absorbed the space stone into my body. It barely took a moment for the artificial space stone to reach 50%. Space was everywhere, it was easily chargeable. Both the stone in my body were already at full percent. I still have not assimilated them since it would be too noticeable. I put the Tesseract back inside its container and flew back into the sky and reach a certain distance before going back to New York but at a slow and more noticeable speed.

I had hacked any electronics and satellites that were pointing at New York. It erased any sign of my actions, but I knew one person probably saw what I did. I could not avoid it. He probably kept his eyes on me after I met Thor.

Things happened as in the movie, Bruce came back and punched the giant worm-like thing. I was there in the Avengers' circle. I heard dozens of screams. I floated in the air and spoke. "Guys, I'll be right back gotta do a little rescue."

Tony was skeptical but Steve understood and nodded. I flew across New York City, flying any injured person, I saw, to safety. I had a similar custom then Lor-Zod except I had a red cape, and I still had the x-men logo on my chest, for now.

It took twenty minutes to find everyone that was buried in the rumbles and that was still alive. When I came back, the fight was still going. "You don't mind if I jump in the fun, right?" I said to which Tony retorted, "no we were just waiting for you to finish putting on your make-up."

I smiled and flew towards the giant worm-like ships and flew through them. Once I did that, I turned back at super speed and repeated my action until they were all riddled with holes. More of the Chitari came from the portal, I blasted them with my heat vision, then I flew at super-speed ripping the heads of the ones on the ground. I could hear Natasha, Tony, and Steve talking. Hulk was busy smashing while Thor and Clint were busy dealing with Chitari that were still in the air.

"Now you see why we told you never to talk about subject red."

"Yeah… Yeah… I see why but I thought you were exaggerating when you said he could fry my suit with his eyes. Guess I made the right choice to talk about it, seeing how he's ripping them into shreds I guess this is cathartic for him."

"Natasha, Tony, I don't know what you are talking about, but we should focus on the remaining ones. All in all, I'm happy this soldier is on our side."

I waited but even after thirty minutes, no nukes were sent. It seems that because of me they don't think we'll lose. I saw that the damage was getting out of hand, so I flew past the portal after making them see me inhaling a lot of air. Once in space, I used the mind stone to tell them. "Earth isn't yours to conquer." I then destroyed the mothership then came back just in time before the portal close behind me. Unbeknownst to me, this is what started the domino effect.

We went to see Loki that got "Puny God" by Hulk. Thor took Loki and the Tesseract with him to Asgard since I was all for it. We did go eat together before we went our separate ways. I went back home and started to spy on Jane Foster, Thor's girlfriend. She would contact the reality stone which I was not going to let happen. Since the future was not fully known I could not let it go outside Earth, I had to be the first one to obtain it.

A week went by, and my popularity soared as I had saved a lot of people. I also went to space via the space stone and assimilated the mind stone first then the space stone. It took three days to assimilate each stone and I gave myself a day of rest before starting to assimilate the space stone. I had created multiple artificial intelligence like Jarvis. They made my absence go unnoticed.