The Ruins - Cairo
Moira MacTaggert backed away from the frontline, her CIA training screaming at her to evacuate the high-value target.
"Charles, you shouldn't stay here," Moira urged.
"If you're injured, and Apocalypse seizes your body, the entire world is doomed. You must evacuate immediately."
"No!" Chris interjected sharply.
"Professor X cannot leave."
"No!" Azazel echoed, gripping his black knife.
"Charles must stay."
"No," Professor X agreed softly, his jaw set.
"I cannot retreat."
Moira stared at them, completely bewildered by the simultaneous protests. It violated every tactical protocol she knew.
Chris sighed, dragging a hand through his dusty hair.
"Mom, listen to me," Chris clarified.
"Anyone else can run. But not the Professor."
Chris pointed toward the raging elemental battle in the distance.
"The situation is clear. None of us, individually or combined, can match Apocalypse's power. And he can fold space. He can leave anytime he wants."
"But he is still here," Chris emphasized.
"He is lingering because he is arrogant, yes, but mainly because he wants the Professor's body. Charles is the bait."
"If Charles leaves, Apocalypse leaves. And if he escapes, he will hunt us down one by one. Our only chance is to kill him right now, while our collective strength is unparalleled."
Moira was stunned by her son's cold, tactical logic.
"But even with everyone here," Moira hesitated, "we can't kill him! He regenerates."
The faces of the strike team turned grim.
It was true. They had thrown mountains, heat-vision, and ancient magic at the god. Nothing left a permanent scar.
Chris frowned, his mind racing through Ernst's forbidden magical archives.
"It is not entirely impossible," Chris murmured.
"I do have a trump card. A reality-tear. If fully unleashed, it would vaporize his cellular structure."
Chris looked at the Red Devil.
"But the spell is completely uncontrollable. It could evaporate half of Cairo. Azazel, can you teleport Apocalypse into the upper atmosphere, or deep space?"
Azazel shook his head, a grimace crossing his crimson face.
"Impossible," the Red Devil conceded.
"His own spatial aura would resist the displacement. I can't move him against his will."
"Then I can't cast it," Chris swore in frustration.
Kyle stepped forward and put a heavy hand on Chris's shoulder.
"Bro, don't beat yourself up," Kyle said.
"Your bodyguard ghost has the same problem."
Kyle pointed toward the medical drone hidden in his sleeve.
"Ghost can multiply into an army of thousands. In a massive theater of war, he is an unstoppable swarm. But against a single, invincible opponent like Apocalypse? Swarming him is useless."
"I could force the thousands of soul-fragments to fuse into a single, hyper-dense entity," Kyle muttered.
"It would grant immense power for a few seconds. But the magical backlash would permanently shatter Ghost. I won't sacrifice him."
"This won't work, that won't work," Cyclops yelled, his red visor glowing with impatient fury.
"What the hell do we do? The bastard who killed Alex is right there!"
Chris surveyed the chaotic battlefield.
Phoenix was still locked in a brutal dogfight with the yellow sand serpents, but its divine flames were slowly dimming.
Apocalypse was growing bolder, adapting to the magical fire.
Meanwhile, Clark was visibly exhausting himself, forced to constantly shatter and reorganize the falling debris.
"General," Chris ordered the heavy combat synth.
"Retrieve Clark. Pull him back to the defensive line. We need to regroup."
"There is always plan B," Chris said.
"No way, no calling mom, I don't want to die," Kyle yelled.
Professor X pressed his fingers to his temples.
His telepathic mind raced through thousands of tactical permutations.
His gaze locked onto the distant, hovering figure of Magneto.
Erik was floating in the center of a massive magnetic maelstrom, ripping the iron from the Earth's crust.
"Perhaps," Xavier suggested slowly, "we can ask Erik. As the master of magnetism, he might possess the sheer power required to permanently disrupt Apocalypse's cellular matrix."
"How is that possible?" Cyclops protested bitterly.
"Magneto is one of his Horsemen! Why would he betray him?"
"Then we use force," Cyclops demanded, stepping toward the Professor.
"Apprehend Magneto and rip it directly from his mind! I know you hate invading minds, Charles, but the world is burning. Make an exception!"
Xavier hesitated.
His relationship with Erik Lehnsherr was a tragic, complex knot of brotherhood and ideological warfare.
Invading his oldest friend's mind felt like a profound betrayal.
But the fate of the human race hung in the balance.
Mystique walked over to Xavier. She rubbed her bruised, purple neck, her voice hoarse from Apocalypse's grip.
"Charles," Mystique rasped.
"Listen to the kid. It may be disloyal to Erik, but the stakes are too high."
Seeing the absolute, desperate determination in Raven's eyes, Professor X finally nodded.
"Do it," Xavier commanded.
Just then, the General arrived at Clark's location.
The synth leaped high into the air, driving its hydraulic fist into the massive sphere of rock trapping the boy.
The stone shattered, creating an opening. Clark burst free, flying back to the defensive line.
With the team regrouped, Chris took tactical command. He was intimately familiar with his brothers' bizarre abilities.
"Kyle, Azazel, Clark, and Simba," Chris pointed toward the sky.
"You are the Vanguard. Support the Phoenix. Restrain Apocalypse at all costs."
Chris looked at Kyle. "Loan me Ghost. I will capture Magneto."
"The rest of you," Chris ordered the X-Men, "form a perimeter around Professor X."
Kyle nodded. His sleeves billowed.
A dense, black magical mist erupted from his arms, swarming over Chris.
The mist solidified, transforming Chris into a terrifying, shadowy figure shrouded in dark robes.
With Ghost integrated into his magical aura, Chris launched himself into the air, flying directly toward the magnetic maelstrom.
Kyle, Red Devil, Clark, and the massive Simba launched a coordinated siege against the ancient god.
Azazel initiated the assault.
His hands glowed with blinding blue spatial energy.
He didn't attack Apocalypse directly.
Instead, Azazel cast a net of floating blue light spheres across the sky.
It was a highly theoretical, early-warning spatial matrix that Ernst had helped him design.
The spheres could sense the microscopic, sub-atomic fluctuations that occurred microseconds before a teleportation event.
It allowed Azazel to predict exactly where Apocalypse would materialize.
It was the first time Azazel had ever deployed the technique.
He had never fought another teleporter before.
Clark and the General didn't wait.
They rushed forward, leveraging their absolute, indestructible physical fitness.
They engaged Apocalypse in brutal, relentless hand-to-hand combat in the sky.
Simba flanked the god, his three massive heads springing from impossible angles, taking opportunistic, bone-crushing bites whenever Apocalypse was distracted.
With the massive Fire Phoenix acting as the primary artillery and a thermal meat shield, the Vanguard successfully, temporarily suppressed the First Mutant.
Capitalizing on the distraction, Chris and Ghost breached Magneto's airspace.
Magneto hovered inside a massive, swirling sphere of razor-sharp metal shrapnel.
Chris nodded. Ghost understood the tactical mandate.
The entity separated from Chris's aura.
Ghost shifted into its hyperspectral biological form.
Then, the mitosis began.
Ghost multiplied rapidly. Two became four. Four became eight. Eight became sixty-four.
Within seconds, a spectacular, terrifying sight unfolded.
Hundreds of identical, ethereal entities surrounded the magnetic sphere.
They hovered on dark clouds of condensed soul-matter.
"Break it down," Chris commanded.
The swarm of ghosts descended on the metal shield.
They didn't use magic. They simply began pounding their ethereal fists against the swirling shrapnel.
A deafening, chaotic symphony of ringing metal echoed across the ruins.
The hundreds of ghosts were physically dismantling the shield, piece by piece.
Magneto was taken aback.
He was initially completely confident in the absolute density of his magnetic barrier. But the shield was failing rapidly.
Erik concentrated, manipulating the razor-sharp fragments to strike the ghostly bodies.
The metal passed straight through them.
The ghosts were perfectly intangible to physical harm. They were mere phantoms.
Yet, these same intangible phantoms were generating enough kinetic force to shatter his protective cover.
It was a paradox of Ernst's bizarre bio-engineering. Ghost could shift its molecular density from intangible to hyper-dense at will.
Physical defense was futile.
Left with no other tactical option, Magneto shrank the radius of the protective cover, increasing its density to buy time.
He hoped Apocalypse would notice his plight.
Apocalypse did notice.
Previously, the ancient god would have dismissed Magneto as a highly expendable pawn.
But the opposition was proving incredibly formidable. The combination of Kryptonian muscle, divine fire, and spatial manipulation was overwhelming his defenses.
Apocalypse realized that raw strength alone might not secure victory today. He needed his Horsemen. He needed Magneto's planetary output.
Apocalypse formed a hard-light shield to block a punch from Clark.
He prepared to fold space, intending to teleport directly to Magneto's aid.
But the moment Apocalypse initiated the jump, one of Azazel's blue warning spheres flickered violently.
Azazel didn't hesitate.
He lunged forward, gripping the enchanted black knife.
He slashed the blade directly through the empty air where the warning sphere was flashing.
The black blade cut cleanly through the invisible, fluctuating spatial node.
CRACK.
The teleportation sequence was violently interrupted.
Apocalypse materialized exactly where he started, staggering backward.
It was the first time in millennia his spatial manipulation had been forcibly aborted.
He was momentarily stunned.
General and Clark didn't miss the opening.
They slammed into the god simultaneously, pinning him in a brutal crossfire of punches and heat-vision.
Seeing Apocalypse suppressed, Chris ordered the ghosts to escalate their assault.
The ghosts abandoned their physical pounding. They drove their arms directly through the magnetic shield, violently disrupting the electromagnetic fields that held the shrapnel together.
Magneto could no longer hold his ground.
The massive metal sphere finally succumbed, blowing apart with a deafening screech of tearing steel.
Magneto was completely exposed.
Chris lunged forward, dark magic swirling around his hands, preparing to apprehend the mutant master of magnetism.
Suddenly, a massive, translucent, diamond-shaped barrier slammed down from the sky, completely shielding Magneto.
Chris aborted his dive, hovering back.
He looked up.
A sleek black stealth jet hovered silently above the ruins.
Three figures leaped from the cargo bay.
The first was a woman with a peculiar, glowing tattoo across her face. She was projecting the diamond barrier.
Chris recognized the bio-signature. A high-tier psychic mutant, capable of telekinesis and flight.
The second figure was a massive, burly man with wild, unruly hair and elongated canine teeth.
Chris didn't recognize him, but Ernst's files did.
Victor Creed. Sabretooth. Wolverine's brother.
He possessed superhuman, animalistic recovery abilities, making him the absolute perfect, indestructible meat shield.
The third figure landed softly beside Magneto.
It was a highly cohesive, deeply lethal mercenary team. And they had just completely altered the battlefield.
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