"Ph...Phoenix..."
A look of disbelief spread across Onslaught's face. He had no idea what it was. All he knew was that there was a powerful force inside Jean. He had tried again and again to draw it out, but had never succeeded.
Who would have thought that just when he had the upper hand, the Phoenix would suddenly awaken?
From the time he was born, every move Onslaught made had been a gamble with his life. With all the preparation he had done ahead of time, he had indeed grown stronger than ever before. But even so, he never truly tapped into his limitless potential.
Finally, faced with the awakened Phoenix, he was defeated cleanly.
"Reid!"
Just then, Logan emerged from the water. His body was shriveled and weak. It was clear that, to awaken the Phoenix, he had sacrificed nearly all his life energy to help Jean recover.
"It's done now, right?"
Reid gave a slight nod. He understood what Logan meant.
"No problem."
With that, he tightened his grip on Onslaught's head. Taking advantage of his moment of weakness, he poured a blast of psychic force directly into the mutant's mind.
* * *
Inside the mental space, Onslaught's consciousness trembled violently. At last, it shattered completely, splitting into two: Professor X and Magneto.
"Erik." Charles's mental form looked weak and worn. "We've lost control of the body."
Above them, an immense mental force pressed down without pause.
With their physical body gone, both he and Magneto's consciousnesses were like water without a source. They had no chance of resisting the flood of Reid's psychic power.
"Yeah, old friend," Magneto replied. "Looks like our final resistance... still ended in failure."
He stared up at the sky, his eyes bloodshot. But eventually, he sighed and slowly sat down.
"Do you remember the first time we met? You tried to convince me in the water to let go temporarily. In the end, we defeated Sebastian together and erased all traces of the mutants' existence."
"I do," Charles responded. "But more than that incident, I just wish we could play another game of chess."
Hearing that, Magneto gave a faint smile. His thoughts drifted to his three children.
"Do you think... Pietro and the others will seek revenge for me?"
His eyes were now filled with uncertainty. Only in this final moment could he let go of his identity as the leader of the mutants and simply think like a man about the future.
His children... After he and Charles were gone, how would they survive in a world ruled by humans?
"If only there were a chessboard here now... that'd be nice."
As the overwhelming mental pressure came crashing down, the last remnants of consciousness from the two men, now without their bodies, were completely wiped away.
When everything faded into nothingness, Reid's psychic form emerged in the mental space. At the same time, specks of starlight gathered, and from deep within the mind, suppressed for so long, the consciousness that belonged to Rogue slowly appeared.
"Where... am I?"
The girl could vaguely sense the world outside, but the sudden shift into the mental space still startled her.
"You're Rogue, right?"
"That's me. And you are...?"
No matter who Reid was, Rogue knew one thing for sure—this was someone she absolutely could not afford to provoke.
"Logan misses you a lot. And I have some news for you. Because those two old men took over your body, your powers have gone through a secondary mutation. Now, with some training, you should be able to fully control your mutant abilities."
"Really?"
Rogue nearly jumped in excitement.
Not being able to touch anyone—that had always been the root of her resentment toward her own powers.
The next second, the mental space faded.
* * *
As Reid withdrew his psychic energy from Rogue's mind, her eyes slowly cleared. She could finally see everything around her again.
She saw Logan, weak and pale, still anxiously watching her.
"Logan!"
Overcome with emotion, she leapt forward and threw her arms around him in a tight hug.
"Thank you, Logan!"
Unlike the warmth between Logan and Rogue, the conflict surrounding the mutants wasn't over just because Onslaught was dead.
Above the lake, Reid and Jean hovered face to face in the sky.
"Do we really need to keep playing this out? Jean, you were never under the Phoenix's control, were you?"
Jean looked surprised at first. Then the orange flames swirling around her slowly faded and vanished.
"So you saw through me. I was planning to use the Phoenix persona to take you away directly."
Reid raised an eyebrow. He hadn't sensed any true killing intent from Jean. She had no intention of actually harming him. But now, her current behavior was even more difficult to deal with than a straight-up threat.
Her cheeks were slightly flushed. It was obvious that the memories once sealed by Charles had all resurfaced with the reawakening of the Phoenix.
Reid didn't know exactly what Jean had imagined over the years while under the influence of the Joker Infection. But judging by her expression now, they were definitely not safe for children.
"Could you please stop thinking about those inappropriate things? Or at least block me from your thoughts."
"Why would I do that?"
Having awakened the power of the Phoenix, Jean was undoubtedly the most powerful psychic in the universe. Even Reid, with the powers of the Martian Manhunter, couldn't read her thoughts without her permission.
But clearly, she had no intention of hiding anything. She wasn't defending her mind at all, which made it almost impossible for him not to accidentally pick up on her increasingly dangerous thoughts.
"You know I can't be the way you imagined me to be. You also know that there's never been anything between us. All of that was just your fantasy."
"So what if it was?"
Jean floated closer to Reid. Invisible energy locked his body in place.
It wasn't that he couldn't fight back. The mutant hadn't used overwhelming force. The problem was that if things escalated into a real conflict, even with the Martian Manhunter's power, it would be extremely difficult to match the Phoenix Force.
In the Justice League, probably only the Son of Krypton could reliably take on a power of that level.
"I have the power to turn fantasies into reality, don't I?"
She gently brushed her fingers against Reid's cheek as she spoke.
"I won't stop you from doing what you need to do. I will even help you. But I want you to stay by my side."
Reid didn't want to keep arguing. Jean had clearly gone off the deep end, emboldened by her immense power. And the worst part? He had no way to subdue her right now.
'System, get to work.'
With no other cards left to play, Reid called out in his mind for the system he hadn't used in a long time.
**
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