Chapter 120: Out with the Old, In with the Future

The smell was just as bad as the view.

Chernobyl had become a wasteland of bodies. All factions, all sides, all life.

To an end.

Jack turned away from them and threw up.

Blade removed his glasses for the first time.

Down the street— over the mounds of bodies, Brother Voodoo, Storm, Scarlet Witch, Mystique and Emma Frost remained.

They approached. Brontë didn't even remember the walk once he reached them. The sight of them wiped his mind clean…. Or dirtied it beyond repair. He wasn't sure which.

Surrounding them were the X-Men.

Cyclops. Jean. Beast. Gambit. Rogue. Collosus. Ice-Man. Night-Crawler. Shadowcat. Fallen in the line of duty.

Beyond them— sprinkled throughout the battle field were more Mutants. The New Mutants… the old ones, the morlocks, the demons, the angels.

Cannonball. Sunspot. Moonstar.

Ilyana cried in his arms. Gabbie held his hand in a death grip— as if letting Brontë go would result in him joining them. His insides twisted like coiling snakes.

War was always…. Awful.

It took a minute for the survivors to notice them. Immediately Storm was on her feet.

"Oh god— I….."

"Yea." Bronte didn't need her to say anything as she hugged them both.

"Is he…?"

"Daken's dead." Bronte said aloud.

"Good— with all due respect." Brother Voodoo commented, "We struggled enough as it was. Your note about Dracula being in his basement was our saving grace."

"Saving…?" Mystique wiped a tear from her eye. Her face was a cruel mask of blue skin and bulging veins. "What a joke."

It was then that Bronte's sensitive ears picked up on a hushed voice. Too hushed for human ears. He was barely speaking. Just shaping his exhales into barely legible words. He was fading.

Brontë disconnected from everyone as he stepped over the dozens of bodies. Of heroes. Ones he distantly knew— some he openly disliked. Some he respected….. more than most. All dead after joining a battle to save a world that hated them.

Nightcrawler's dark lips parted as he continued to try speaking even with a missing arm and hundreds of gruesome bite wounds. His skin took on a dried tone from all the blood he'd lost. Too much. Too fast.

His raised his hand. Soaked in blood and ashen remains of a plague now erased from their universe.

Mystique shivered and Emma Frost took her into a hug.

Brontë crouched over Nightcrawler, wiping his own tears as he listened.

"H-…. Hav-….. fai—th...…. hold…. o-onto…. hope."

Brontë shook up with him.

Even in death, he stuck to his faith. He stuck to positivity.

That meant something.

He meant something. They all did.

"Rest in power, Kurt."

Kurt smiled and took his last breath. Mystique screamed in Emma's arms.

When Bronte let go of Kurt's hand, a necklace died in blood hung from his fingers. The catholic cross reflected the morning suns rays overhead. It stood out so much against the grimdark backdrop surrounding them that it almost looked like magic. Like shaped starlight and upbeat radiance given shape.

He knew magic that had such a purpose. It rode his veins like his people rode the winds. There was practically no difference in those moments.

They needed it. Desperately.

He needed it.

The winds howled with Mystique's cries for a life of sorrow and now regret. For miles, bodies lay dead— both Mutant and human.

"Daken..." Bronte growled as he peeled off his broken mask. He didn't even have the words. He barely had the strength as his dreads fell over his face. More of them were white than ever.

He looked at the sky— at the sun. A question held him as they mourned.

How could he do what Nightcrawler asked? How could anyone?

The morning sun shifted above him. It wavered and shook like lights viewed under water. It expanded and bubbled as techno-energetic brushstrokes of rainbow brilliance fell like artificial rainfall.

From the rainbow showers and bubbling lights, two shapes fell.

They landed in front of Bronte like soldiers from a different time. A different world.

The man was massive at seven feet tall in futuristic stealth fatigues and a raggedy brown cloak. Even with all the coverage of his suit, Bronte could tell he was hulking in physique. The winds blew, shuffling the cloak and revealing that his right arm was entirely metal.

No. Cybernetic. Brontë could hear the wiring and circuitry beneath the steel shell.

He looked familiar. Like a younger version of Cyclops. He had that same squared jaw and stern battle hardened face. Only he was arguably human. Metal veins ran up his neck and his eye shined like a street-light at midnight.

To his left a woman stood as plain as day. Calm. Collected. Bright. She wore matching fatigues hidden behind her cloak. Her hair was as red as fire and her skin as white as snow. Save for the freckles and gruesome scars. She looked barely eighteen. But wielded her massive rifle like it had been with her for decades.

They looked more than ready for war.

Brontë returned the energy in kind and popped his claws.

The Midnight suns and remaining Mutants joined him in their battle stances.

"Who are you?"

They lowered their weapons in perfect sync.

The woman raised a hand, "Friendlies! We're on your side. We're Mutants."

"Obviously that doesn't mean much, bitch." Mystique snarled.

"We're Krakoan Mutants. Members of the Old-Guard that you all created. My grandparents are….. right there." The woman pointed at the bodies at their feet almost awkwardly.

Brontë looked down to where she was pointing and found Cyclops and Jean laying in each others arms.

Her casualness at it all made his skin itch. Something about her was off.

"You're from the future?" Bronte questioned.

"Correct, sir."

Everyone regarded them differently in response.

"But I guess the timeline changed routes. This was supposed to be a Sentinel massacre event thanks to Stark. But this….. what happened here?"

"Vampires." Bronte replied flatly.

The woman's eyebrows raised as if she just came across a fun fact, "Wow! Those are real? And you don't mean the Bat-Virus Mr Sinister released on accident right? Well… it's Mr Sinister. There are no accidents with him, haha.."

Everyone stared at the woman in both confusion and disgust.

"…..What?"

Brontë's blood boiled, "Look around! The hell are you talking about? Your folks are in the dirt right now— HEROES all around, are dead. And you're talking like a fucking awkward new hire at an office…. What's wrong with yall?! And last time I checked, doesn't the death of parents for time travelers mean they die too? How are you here?"

The woman smiled, "That's just it. Death isn't permanent for us. Mutants became an immortal race in the late twenty-first century in my time. We can speed it up. We can bring everyone here back... but to get the materials and find The Five, it's going to take a while so we have to get to work like yesterday."

"I couldn't have heard that right….. right?" Moon-Knight said.

"A race of immortals ain't that far fetched, white." Blade replied.

"You've proven nothing to us and showcased a severe lack of emotional development. We have no reason to trust you or your muted brute right there…. In fact we have all the reason to kill you." Emma added.

The woman placed her hand on her hip and pouted. Perhaps she was younger than eighteen. "True…. I've never done this before. What would you need to believe me?"

Suddenly the sky shook. Everyone looked up just in time to see a massive missile taking flight.

A giant insignia was painted on its surface reading, "For X-Kind"

They removed the Vampire virus from the planet. But Daken's influence remained strong— rooted in the mind in a way that was stronger than even magic.

Daken's Nuke was live.

"Oh god…."

"Woahhh…. You guys still have those too?!"

"Somebody shut her up before I put a bullet in her skull!" Mystique raged.

Emma watched it rise, "If that lands, every leading power on earth is rubble in less than…. Hell I don't know. Too soon."

Bronte took Gabbie's hand and put in Ilyana's. "It won't."

"Take me— Bronte, please! I can…. I can teleport it to space!" Ilyana pleaded.

"You can barely stand. I'll be right back, don't trip."

Brontë was off in a gust of wind.

As he flew towards the nuke, he felt his nerves creep up. Doubt lacing him like exhaustion in an athletes muscles. Creeping. Burning.

"What if all China needs is to see it. What if that's all it takes? What if I'm too rough and it goes off? Talocan all over aga—"

"You look so much younger compared to the statues….and smaller."

Brontë looked to his left and found the woman flying right next to him.

Even more incredibly was the fact that she had her own Storm-State.

Her red hair was no more but her uncanny calm and youthful vigor remained….. in its bizarre entirety.

"She can mimic Mutant Powers." Storm said from his other side. "Even more importantly—"

"I'm a Telepath." She spoke into their minds before turning over and flying as if she was swimming on her backside.

"She might be as she claims." Storm said.

"I don't care about that right now. Let's focus on the nuke with our names on it." Bronte said aloud.

"Yes, sir!"

The three Wind-Riders flew beside the nuke as it continued to rise, blowing past the clouds in effortless doom and roaring flames.

Brontë called to the winds and began pushing upward currents to stop the Nuke from diving back towards its intended target below. All the while, Storm and the woman from the future circled the missile, spitting streams of ice until the steel behemoth was entirely encased. The roaring flames were swallowed up.

Suddenly all that was in his ears were the speeding winds and the woman's happy ramblings. She spoke about the X-Men and him the same way Bronte spoke about music.

When they reached space, Bronte's hammering heartbeat calmed.

Until he considered asteroids, solar flares and any other space phenomena that could've made his Nuke redirection attempt backfire.

"The moon!" The woman suggested.

He looked to Storm as they flew into space.

"The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere, the blast would hit any nearby satellites and send asteroids back to us."

"So if I contain the blast and blow back the asteroids we're good?"

"….. In theory." Storm replied, "We'll catch the shrapnel. You focus on containing the blast."

"Heard you." Bronte pushed deeper into space.

"Your mother says be safe." The woman spoke to him telepathically.

He pressed on as they hovered back into earths atmosphere.

The cold bit at his skin and nerves. The weight of the Nuke pressed against the winds and his shoulder as he hoisted it up and around the globe.

The Moon loomed in the distance. Far away from the sun he once gazed at in mourning. Nightcrawler's words echoed in his mind as he threw the nuke at the moon.

He waited in the vacuum of space as it travelled. A giant hunk of ice with a core of pure chaos.

"Come on….." Bronte thought as it continued onward.

Eventually it hit. He was surprised at how far the moon was from earth. The nuke barely looked like a car in comparison once in striking distance. He still knew the mushroom cloud would dwarf its steel casing once the ice cracked.

He waited.

It never came.

A massive cloud of dust and debris rose from the moons surface, spiraling from a giant crater.

Massive chunks of ice and steel flowed with the crumbled rock of the moons surface.

So silent. So underwhelming.

"No way….. it was a dud." Bronte pushed the rest of his winds and sent the debris out into space.

The split Nuke husk bounced along the moon calmly as Bronte fell back to earth.

In a matter of minutes, they were returning to Chernobyl.

For once, the girl from the future was silent as they landed, leaving Bronte to consider if Daken's Nuke was a fake on purpose. Possibly a symbol meant to sew chaos and highlight humanities urgency to violence? Perhaps to avoid less Mutant deaths while still sparking the end of the world. He wasn't sure. Thinking about it made his brain hurt.

The woman's silence made his back tingle.

Brontë realized why as the remaining Mutants freed from Vampirism slowly surrounded them, walking from miles away to hear her telepathic message.

There were still so many.

Many of whom faced the mind harm like Tigra. But many more had to face judgement and justice for the part they played. Even if the immediate crisis was averted.

More loomed as a siren blared in the distance.

"Is it over?" Emma questioned.

"I fear not." Scarlet Witch replied.

"By the way, what's your guys names?" Bronte asked.

The woman pointed to her mute bodyguard as her Storm-State faded, "This is my father. He goes by Cable. And I go by Hope….. Hope Summers."

Brontë could've laughed at how on the nose her name was.

"Now, we need to get out of here….. Mutant-kind depends on it."