Jovian floated in the air and slowly let out a breath.
Picking a fight with the Celestials and then immediately running for it was really fucking thrilling.
Now that he had milked the Celestials for everything he could get, his next targets were Apocalypse and the Phoenix Force.
As for whether he'd run into the Watchers again, Jovian figured it should be fine as long as he was careful. After all, in the MCU's main universe version of Eternals, he hadn't run into any Watcher interference at all.
"Head to X-Men: Apocalypse."
Jovian didn't bother going to X-Men: First Class or X-Men: Days of Future Past to keep farming more power. He went straight for X-Men: Apocalypse, the one that would help him the most. If he could kill Apocalypse, he would basically complete the full set of mutant powers. With Apocalypse's help, his combat strength could climb even higher.
Egypt…
A mysterious cult posing as archaeologists had spent years digging through this ancient land, searching for the god they worshipped.
According to their calculations, something was buried beneath this ground—a truth about the real history of Egypt, and even the real history of human civilization itself.
Everything taught in school textbooks around the world was wrong. That wasn't humanity's true history at all.
The real history of humanity was darker and far more mysterious.
In the distant past, every human being in this world had once lived beneath the rule of a single leader.
That leader was all-powerful, and under countless different identities, he had threaded his way through the whole of human history. Across endless ages, the people of this planet had called him by many names—Jehovah, God, Ra, or Apocalypse.
Hidden beneath an ordinary-looking house was a vast cavern carved deep into the earth.
At its center, cult members with triangular symbols tattooed on their arms stood in a circle around a massive golden metal device, praying at the top of their lungs.
"Grant us authority!"
"Grant us power!"
"Grant us everything!"
"O great and almighty god!"
Every believer in the cult stared at the golden structure before them with burning eyes. They were different from the ignorant masses. They were people who had seen through the truth of the world. They knew what was real. They knew their great god slept here.
As the cult kept praying, the golden mechanism beneath them began to react. Golden light started to flicker across the metal.
Then it spread along the carved patterns beneath their feet, traveling deeper and deeper into the cavern until it reached a stone slab at the very end.
In the next second, a pair of eyes suddenly opened, and the already dark cavern seemed to plunge into even deeper darkness.
Violent purple energy exploded from the owner of those eyes, blasting apart the rubble around him. The force was so terrifying that the earth itself seemed to shake.
For a moment, earthquakes of varying strength rippled across countries all over the world.
God was announcing to the world that he had awakened.
And it was time for the world to return to his rule once more.
Just a few minutes later, Apocalypse had already climbed out of the ruins that had entombed him. A green cloak hung from his body as he walked through the street, silently observing everything around him.
As he looked at the damned little insects all around him, he said nothing.
Too many.
That was Apocalypse's first thought.
There were too many of these people—too many beings with no gift, no energy in their bodies, no worth at all. Like roaches, they spread everywhere if you let them, nesting across the world and reproducing more talentless children.
Trash. Vermin. Useless things with no value whatsoever.
"Apocalypse."
Just as he was beginning to feel sick from the sheer number of worthless creatures around him, a voice called out from behind him.
Apocalypse turned at the sound and saw a powerfully built man in a black-and-white battle suit.
"Oh, my child!"
Apocalypse's eyes shook when he looked at the man. His senses told him clearly that the man standing before him possessed the same X-gene as he did. A mutant.
And as the world's first mutant, every mutant born after him was naturally his child.
"Oh, I'm your ancestor, my ass."
The man raised a brow and drove a punch straight into Apocalypse's face.
With a thunderous boom, Apocalypse was sent flying backward, smashing through four city blocks.
At once, the whole street erupted in screams. People ran in every direction, scrambling to escape the disaster that had dropped out of nowhere.
"My child, what are you doing?"
Apocalypse crashed to the ground and looked up at the man now rising into the air, utterly confused.
The answer he got was a pair of terrifying reddish-gold beams—a fusion of gold and crimson.
Apocalypse immediately threw up a purple energy shield to block them.
But the shield was blown open the instant it touched the beams.
Then the energy fell directly onto Apocalypse's body, burning into him without mercy.
"Damn you…"
Apocalypse knew that if this continued, he was dead. His eyes rolled white, and the next instant, countless bolts of lightning blasted from his hands toward the man in the sky.
What Apocalypse hadn't expected was that the lightning vanished completely the moment it touched him.
"You're like me?!"
The situation told Apocalypse everything he needed to know. This man floating in the sky was a composite power-user just like him. There was an extremely high chance that he could steal other people's abilities too.
And most importantly, he might even have a simpler way of taking powers than Apocalypse did.
Maybe all he had to do was kill.
"You want my power?"
Apocalypse looked up at the man and asked.
"Correct answer."
As he spoke, the man unleashed a mental control ability on Apocalypse—an Eternal-style mind-control power. Apocalypse's body twitched, and in the next second, the reddish-gold energy tore straight through him, ripping him cleanly in half.
"No!"
With his upper and lower body now trying to move separately, Apocalypse roared in fury, unwilling to die here like this.
"You shouldn't have called me your child."
As Apocalypse kept screaming, a pair of black boots landed on his head.
It burst apart instantly like a smashed watermelon.
"You should've used a more respectful title."
The man in the black-and-white battle suit looked down at Apocalypse's corpse and spoke coldly.
Naturally, the man who had just killed Apocalypse was Jovian.
He looked at the thoroughly dead mutant and nodded to himself, ready to leave this world.
"The traveler between timelines has come to this world, and his overwhelming power has destroyed the mighty Apocalypse…"
"Will a universe collapse because of what a time traveler has done?"
Just as Jovian was about to leave, a narrator-like voice drifted into his ears.
"Tch…"
Jovian, who had been about to slip away, suddenly felt his whole body stiffen. He slowly turned around.
Sure enough, there was a shining bald man standing there.
And that incredibly irritating narration was coming straight out of his mouth.
"Perhaps the traveler between timelines does not yet know that Apocalypse's death will draw the attention of countless powerful beings…"
"Perhaps my boss may even invite him out for tea…"
The bald man kept talking, as if he were trying to warn Jovian.
"What exactly do you want me to do?"
Jovian frowned at the bald man.
"Perhaps the traveler between timelines does not yet know that if he simply takes Apocalypse's place and walks the rest of his path, then those powerful beings will stop paying attention to this gradually collapsing world…"
The bald man still didn't answer directly, but he had basically answered already. He was just doing it in the most roundabout way possible.
"Got it. You mean I finish what Apocalypse was supposed to do, then make sure he dies at the hands of the people who were meant to kill him. Right?"
Jovian understood immediately. That made things simple.
"Oh no. It seems the traveler between timelines has figured out the secret."
Even after hearing Jovian say that, the bald man kept speaking in the same narration voice.
"I remember Apocalypse had four Horsemen…"
"Whatever. I'll just gather the Four Horsemen first."
Jovian raised a brow. He really was getting annoyed with the bald guy beside him, but cautious as ever, he had no intention of gambling on whether the bald man was bluffing.
Especially not after that line about getting invited out for tea by the bald guy's boss.
And the bald guy's boss… wasn't that the bartender Jack?
Yeah, it was still way too early to go looking for trouble with bartender Jack.
Back on the street…
After the brief outbreak of panic, people noticed that the tremors had stopped, and calm gradually returned.
"Damn it, my wallet!"
Once the fear faded, everyone went right back to whatever they had been doing before. People had to keep living. They couldn't just abandon their work.
That included thieves.
A skinny dark-skinned girl had just snatched a wallet from a fat businessman and was sprinting away as fast as she could. Behind her, several men hired by the businessman were chasing her furiously.
The girl wasn't slow, but she was still just a child—and a hungry one at that. Before long, her strength began to give out. Weak from hunger and panicked from the chase, she made the mistake of running into a dead-end alley.
A moment later, the men chasing her came in after her, each one carrying a knife.
"Well, well…"
"Where do you think you're going now?"
The men grinned viciously as they closed in on the skinny girl step by step.
The girl twisted her face into a feral glare, her eyes burning with fierce defiance as she faced the adults in front of her.
"Child, you need not be afraid."
Just as she was about to suffer a miserable fate, a raspy voice reached her ears.
She froze, then turned toward the speaker.
A handsome, powerfully built man was walking toward her.
"If you don't want to die, get the hell out of here. This doesn't concern you."
The armed thugs glared at the unexpected newcomer and spoke coldly.
The man said nothing.
He merely raised a hand.
In the next second, the thugs—and even the wealthy employer behind them—were hurled straight into the sky.
The girl stared, eyes wide with disbelief. She could hardly believe that someone had just waved a hand through empty air and sent people flying.
"Child, I am your ancestor."
The man—Jovian—imitated Apocalypse's tone as he spoke to the girl.
"Ancestor?"
The girl looked at him in confusion.
"That's right. I am the first mutant in the world, and therefore your ancestor. Child, I regret that I was unable to protect you before, but now everything is in my hands. The rest of the speech is too long, and honestly I can't remember it…"
Jovian gave up on trying to talk his way through it. He stretched out a hand toward the girl, and in an instant, he easily took control of her fragile mind.
Then her body underwent a startling transformation.
Her hair changed from black to white, and a powerful surge of lightning erupted from her body.
"Storm, Ororo Munroe. She's Omega-level, and X-Men: Apocalypse still gave her absolutely no presence."
Jovian looked at the transformed Storm and felt a little speechless.
But after thinking about it, basically every Omega-level mutant in the movies besides the Phoenix got nerfed into the ground. Iceman went from temperature control to literally just being an ice guy with ice control. Magneto went from manipulating magnetism—one of the four fundamental forces—to just controlling metal. Storm went from weather manipulation to mild wind and light rain.
Magneto at least got an upgrade eventually, from Alpha to Omega, because later editors finally figured out just how absurd control over one of the four fundamental forces really was.
"Apocalypse's Four Horsemen included two Omega-level mutants, Captain Britain's sister, and Angel, who's been around forever. So how did they even lose?"
"There's no way I lose this."
Jovian thought back to what the shiny bald guy had said.
The guy had only said he needed to walk Apocalypse's path to the end. He hadn't said he had to lose, right?
So why not keep it simple and wipe out Xavier's School in one shot?
That would save him the trouble of having to visit X-Men: Dark Phoenix later.
Yeah.
Might as well wipe them all out in one go.
Once he thought that far, this boring little bit of roleplay suddenly became at least a little more interesting again.
"Anyway, Storm's taken care of. Time to go find Psylocke, Magneto, and Angel."
Once Jovian settled on his plan, he lifted a hand, and a portal opened in front of him.
"First I'll deal with Psylocke, then I'll blow this whole world to hell. Worst case, I just never come back to any X-Men world again. If they think I'm going to work for them, they can forget it. Not in this lifetime."
Jovian decided he was going to strip this place for every last thing he could get.
And if he broke the whole universe in the process?
He could always just run.
What, they expected Freeborn—future Emperor of the multiverse—to work for them?
What a joke.
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