Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Friday 7:34 pm

It’s only been about a week since we left the mansion but Jean and I were on our way back because both of us were feeling a little homesick. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me that I too felt that way but it did. These people were really my first experience with a real loving family. “Did you feel this homesick when you left home the first time?” I asked Jean as we pulled up the mansion driveway. “No not really, don’t get me wrong, I love my parents but we’re really not that close.” I gave her a wan smile. “I can totally relate; my folks didn’t really understand me or try to and after my brother came along, they never really had time for me so gave up.” She leaned over and gave me a kiss before she got out of the car. “Well we have each other now so…” I chuckled and got out the car too. “It would be so cheesy if I said “you’re my home now” right?” Jean rolled her eyes while we both laughed and went into the mansion.

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Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Friday 7:34 pm

After getting settled in Jean’s old room I went to go have a long-overdue meeting with professor Xavier. I knocked on his door to his office. “Come in.” Walking in I saw that he was seated next to the sofa instead of behind the desk. So, I went over and shook his hand. “Charles, how you doing?” “Quite well Nico, quite well, how did you and Jean fare this week?” I sighed as a sat on the couch across from him. “Pretty good so far but it’s still early days yet Charles but that’s part of what I want to talk to you about.” I paused to get my thoughts in order. “Please don’t take offense to what I’m about to tell you because most of it doesn’t necessarily apply to you. But I feel you need to know what your…Let’s call them counterparts have done in their life.”

“Throughout the history of the multiverse, you are accounted as a great man of peace. Sometimes likened to the Martin Luther King Jr of Mutant-kind. Most of you accomplish a great many things to bring Mutants and Humans together but just like everybody else you and your counterparts are still human underneath and therefore still fallible. And boy did some of you screw up royally.” I pause to see how he was taking all this. Which seemed to be well so far. “That’s understandable Nico but why are you telling me this?” “To be completely honest I don’t want to see history repeat it’s self…especially when it comes to Jean.” His eyes popped open. “What happens to Jean?” I shook my head again. “Imagine the worst thing possible and you wouldn’t even be close to what happens to her.” My eyes started glowing dark blue. “I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER to make sure that doesn’t happen this time around.” I took a deep breath and tried to settle down again. “To be fair you and your counterparts didn’t know what would happen but what you all did to her was messed up, thankfully I and this Jean have taken steps to prevent this but you still need to know what all happens to you and her, so here goes…...”

Hours later, Charles was visibly upset. I ended up telling him about Jean, Onslaught, Legion, Cassandra and the Shi’ar. So yeah, he needed a minute to process. While we wait let me explain what I found out about this universe. It is a mess is what it is. Not only do you have the MCU+ stuff but someone took the Fox movie’s storylines and mashed them up with the classic X-men comics storyline. Apparently, the events of first-class happened but not exactly how the movie went and for some reason, the general public never found out about it either. This creates all kinds of problems, or maybe it doesn’t I only saw up to Endgame so I don’t know how the X-men were introduced to the MCU proper. But now I gotta untangle this mess to make any safe changes.

Anyway, once Charles was focusing again, we started talking about things he needed to watch out for and to definitely find someone professional he could talk to so all that angst doesn’t build up and help create Onslaught. Hopefully, my plans for rebranding Mutants will change people’s negative opinions.

“Charles, don’t take it to heart that wasn’t really you that did those things and now that you know you can be prepared and change things for the better.” He gave me a wan smile. “I know they weren’t me but still… in a way they were. I would like to think that no matter the version I’m not the type of person that would do those things. At last, it’s true what they say, “no one's perfect”.” I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Yep. It’s late, let’s pick this up later.” I moved to get up to go. “Thank you for telling me, Nico. Goodnight.” “Night Charles.”

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Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Saturday 6:47 am

I caught up with big sis in her conservatory just as she was finishing her morning meditation. “So how the married life?” She asked me with a Cheshire smile. “Oh, whatever. Although Jean and I might get there one day that day is not today. Besides, I haven’t seen you in a week and the first thing you do is start picking on me?” “That’s what big sisters are for.” “Ha. Ha. There will be payback!” She laughed. “You can try Lil’ bro.” “Anything exciting happened over here while we were gone?” She shrugged. “Not really just the same old same. But I want to hear all about your new place.” “All man that place is amazing. I couldn’t have designed it better myself. It has just about everything we needed to get started… which if I’m being honest worries me.” Ro gave me a thoughtful look. “You’re wondering why it’s so perfect, huh?”

“Exactly! To be honest with all my different powers there was no way I would have lost that fight against you guys. As long as you all didn’t gang up and hit me all at once I would always be able to take you all down eventually. So, the reward he gave doesn’t match the feat I did. This means that this was all planned and I bet Mr. Shadow would have found some other way to give me that building if I had lost.” “What do you think he has planned for you, Nico?” I shrugged my shoulders. “No clue. The only thing I can figure out is that he needs me for something but what would a being that powerful need me for?” You could feel the overprotection flowing from her as she said. “I think it has something to do with where you come from. Maybe it’s something only someone with your specific circumstances can do?”

With a sigh, she told me. “My advice to you little bro is to put it aside for now and live your new life. There’s nothing you can do about it now but when you get to the level where you could actually change things….” I chuckled. “You’re right Ro, I’ll just keep it on the back burner for now and continue to get stronger.” She leaned over and gave me a hug. “Just remember we're all here for you and nobody gets to mess with you but me!!!” “Again HA. HA. I love you too Ro! Are you going to the mall with us later?” “Sure, why not.”

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Westchester County, New York

Galleria White Plains Shopping Mall

Saturday 10:57 am

I have experienced hell and it is a mall crawl with a bunch of superpowered teens. It was only supposed to be a few of us going at first but once word got around half the campus ended up going with. And guess who got stuck carrying all those bags for the ladies when the guys bailed on me. On top of that, I’m the type of shopper that likes to get in and get out, so long wondering trips trough multiple stores with no set objectives is worse than torture to me.

Now on the Brightside, I didn’t mind the personal fashion show Jean was putting on, asking how she looks in this and that, cause she’s hot and all mine but…. Well, you’ve seen the other female X-men, right? Let’s just say ended up relentless using my BioTk to keep things under control down there. What, don’t judge me, these ladies start on the chart as “10’s” and they all got a kick out of teasing and messing with me. (Thank you very much, Ro!!!) They even turned it into a game when Jean figured out what I was doing to keep things under control. (D*mn Telepaths!!!) She told the girls that she would pay for all of the purchases of whichever one of them could make me blush. I might as well have been in a strip club for all the skin ship they were giving me. As we were coming up on Victoria’s Secret, I played sick and ran off. You could hear their laughter all the way on the other side of the mall. I spent the rest of the trip hiding out with Kurt at a GameStop picking out some new games for the mansion.

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Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Saturday 4:20pm

I need to seriously decompress after all that so I escaped to the labs with Hank to get our science on. We were working on my nanites, trying to see if we could get them to the point where they could suppress the X-gene. If they could, it would open up so many doors like, allowing Hank to freely control the way he looks, allow Rogue to be able to touch people without draining them, allow Scott to better control his optic blast, to have a safe way to contain bad Mutants, and finally to give Mutants a choice on whether to keep their powers or not. A way that wasn’t permanent or full of side effects like in the comics. So, you know, no pressure!!

These nanites are also a key part of my plans with Fury and the whole Mutant hate problem. If I could show him a safe way of dealing with bad Mutants, I knew it would go a long way with him. Plus, by giving those who don’t want to be a Mutant, or can’t control their powers a choice it shows the norms that Mutants are not really loose cannons and dangerous to society unless they chose to be just like any other norms that goes out and choses a life of crime. I just had to make sure the government didn’t see my nanites as the ultimate solution to the Mutant problem and try to wipe them all out.

That’s why my main goal is to rebrand them as Metas and start the PR push to get the public to see them as just the same as any other superhero. So, if they came for the Metas they would have to come for people like Captain America too. It always pissed me off the hate groups had nothing to say about the other superpowered and aliens that looked far worse than some Mutants and never went after them. But just because they where called Mutants it was open season. And the other hero groups like the Avengers did nothing but watch.

“You know Nico these nanites have the potential to do so much good in the world.” Hank said. “Yes, but the opposite is just as true to Hank. That’s why the security on the needs to be the best we can make it.” “I understand and completely agree but don’t you think 5 redundancies is a little overboard?” I sighed. “Hank my friend, there are a lot of sick and evil people out there that would love nothing else than to turn my invention into a weapon of mass destruction. I want to do all I can to make sure that doesn’t happen and know that if it ever did, I did everything possible to stop it.” After a thoughtful look, Hank said. “Let’s get to work!!”

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Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Saturday 8:32 pm

Kurt dragged me out of the labs because it was time for our massive COD tournament. The only thing is we weren’t using any video game systems we were using the Danger Room. It was going to be epic!!! Like a really high-tech version of paintball plus we couldn’t use our powers so it was a leveled playing field. I had never had so much fun in my life. Especially when we opened up the armory and let people chose weapons from different games, things got crazy fun then.

When we finished with that (My team beat Kurt’s by the way.) we played a live version of Mario Kart that Hank and I whipped up. I’m a die heart Peach fan so I’m happy to say that it’s her and not her cart that makes her so fast. (I came in 3rd or 4th most of the time.) After that, we all broke up into different groups. Some went to watch movies others went to play regular video games but most went to bed because it was so late. Jean and I decided to go for a late-night flight around the neighborhood before bed.

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Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Sunday 9:00 am

Sunday was training day. It was scheduled for one on one power training with me in the morning and team challenges in the afternoon. I decided to break everyone up into groups of flyers, projectors, physicals, and manipulators. This wasn’t perfect because some people overlap but it was good enough for what we were doing. I had the flyers going through an obstacle course in the air that focused on control and speed. The projectors were working on speed and accuracy first. Then they would work on modification, to see if they could make changes to their projections. Physicals worked on everything, speed, accuracy, control, modification, and power control. Manipulators worked on control and modification. I would love to go into individual detail but there are a ton of X-men and everybody on campus trains on Sunday even if they weren’t going to be active members.

So, what I can do is give you some highlights. I taught Iceman how to refine his armor and how to build bigger constructs. We also focused on manipulating things outside of himself. I had him trying to freeze a water balloon without busting it and when he got that down, he would try to freeze the inside of a plant without it showing on the outside. Other than that, I told him to try to replicate the ice spells from RPGs.

I had Polaris working on being a true tank for the team. She was working on creating different types and shapes of force fields. I also had her working on magnetic artillery. Kinda like lobbing magnetic bombs that would either pull enemies together or blow them apart. Lastly, was her working on team transport, which was just seeing how many of the team she could carry through the obstacle course.

You look at Colossus and think tank, too right? Wrong!! Colossus was born to be the ultimate DPS. So, with that in mind, I had him focusing on speed, stamina, and Krav Maga. I had him training as an Olympic track star with extra weights and I also threw in some parkour. The idea was that when the fight started, he would go in and completely destroy the enemy’s formation while crushing the toughest opponent on that side. I was going to make him a mace out of vibranium later after I stole it from Klaue.

I had Nightcrawler working on trying to teleport objects before working on increasing the weight he could teleport. I had Havok and Cannonball working on sort of a ping pong situation. They would fire a blast between them and see how long they could keep it going before one of them missed.

I kept the RPG theme when it came to team training, I broke them up into five-man teams that were based on standard RPG teams. Which worked really well because most of us were gamers anyway and with the teams pretty well balanced, they crushed the training missions I set up. So, I told them next visit I would program some boss battles from FF7, Diablo, Gears, Halo and Chrono Trigger. (lol) The groans were loud and clear but hey like they say if it ain't broke don’t fix it.

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Westchester County, New York

X-Mansion

Sunday 8:44 pm

We had just finished up the group training but I held back some of them to do some family drama damage control. In the group was Scott, Alex, Lorna, Kurt, Anna-Marie, Sam, and Jean. “So, I held you all back because I want to talk to this group specifically about family. I know how much family means to this group. So, I’m going to tell you guys a bit about your families across the universes and what I could gather from this one. But I have to stress that for most of you, even though your biological family has and can let you down, the family that you chose, this family (X-men) will always be there for you. (God, I sound like Vin Diesel.) Alright, so here’s a little about the most common occurrences of your families so that you can be mentally prepared and not blindsided by the truth when it comes.”

“Let’s start with Sam. The reason why I had the Professor bring in your whole family is due to the fact that all of your brothers and sisters carry the X-gene and it would be bad if we left them out there alone. In the other universes…. It doesn’t go well for your family. I know your mom knows some of this but later I will sit down with you all and go over some of the lowlights of what happens to them and the pros and cons of being a Mutant or Meta as we will be soon called.” Understandably he looked upset and worried. “Hey, and this goes for the rest of you too, the whole reason I’m telling you all these things is so we can change things for the better. They are all fine now and we’ll keep it that way.” He nodded and smiled a bit. “Thanks, man this means a lot to me.” “De nada.”

“Kurt, you want to find your mother and Anna you did everything you could to get away from yours, Right?” They both nodded. “Well, I now pronounce you brother and sister…. or at least foster brother and sister.” Jaws were dropped for that one. “You see Mystique is your real mom Kurt and Anna’s foster mother. Although in some worlds she is your real mom too. But more importantly you should both know that on all the many worlds she loves you both very much and would like to be in both of your lives but circumstances always drove her to do the things she did to you.” Anna was thoughtful while Kurt looked like his world just got shattered, which it kinda did.

“Kurt you got to understand, she never wanted to give you up but…...she had an affair and her husband at the time was not amused. Your mother “took care” of him to save you but there were complications. Mobs were formed and buildings were burned. You two got separated while fleeing and you know the rest.” Anna moved over to him and gave him a big hug after wiping his tears. “Danke, Mein Freund you have taken a huge weight off my mind.” “Anna, she knew that the double life she was living would eventually put you into harm's way so she drove you away thinking it was for the best.” She was crying a bit but nodded in acception. “You two can come to me any time and I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Keeping with the theme of supervillain parents, Lorna brace your self because your dad has won “worst dad of the year” ever since he first had kids. I can’t go into details about your family in this universe yet because of the way it’s made but don’t worry I’m still researching.” She understood but asked. “Well, what can you tell me?” “Not a lot right now but I do have some good news, you have twin half-siblings out there that I know for a fact will absolutely love to death when you finally meet.” That statement was met with smiles all around and a look of wonder on Lorna’s face. “The bad news your deadbeat dad is Magneto.”

“W-What!!” Another jaw-dropping moment. This was yet again another one of the many mistakes that Charles made that we talked about earlier. Although I still mostly blame the writers, the facts remain that he kept all these emotional time bombs to himself instead of sharing them ahead of time to better prepare the victims.

“Yeah, but if you want a piece of him for abandoning you, you better get in line, cause I’m going to wipe the floor with that hypocrite when I see him.” “Why what did he do to you?” Asked Alex. “Nothing yet personally. But I know for a fact that as soon as he sees my proposed changes for Mutants and my stated agenda he’s going to come after me.” Lorna looked at me and asked. “But why?” “Well I’m not his BFF like Charles so he will only see me as a threat and plus I plan on making him the poster boy for bad Metas and also for his hypocrisy.” “Is there no hope for him?” She again asked. I went over and took her hands in mine. “Lorna this…. man did some really really bad things to you in the other universes, like mind rape bad. Someone who could do that to his daughter is not someone you want to get to know.” There was a gasp from Jean because she really understood all that phrase “mind rape“ meant.

“As long as it’s in his own self-interest he can do some good but usually he’s so wrapped up in his ego that others and especially humans don’t matter to him. There was only one case of him being a good guy and that was only because he was a clone.” I gave her a hug. “Don’t sweat it though by the time I’m ready to take these two to find their dad I should have located your siblings by then.” That brought a smile to her face. “Can you tell me about them?” “Sure, if fact, if any of you have questions, feel free to ask me.” With that I spent the rest of the night answering questions and reinsuring them that things will be ok.

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All in all, it was a good weekend and we got a lot done but it would be a while before I could see if these little changes would cause big changes. I had one more meeting with Charles where I explained all my plans for Mutants transforming into Metas. What rolls I saw the X-men playing later on after the invasion. My hopes for the nanites and all Meta kind. I went into detail about my PR push because eventually he would have to do the same. I explain how we would have to dictate to the media and the world how we wanted to be seen before all the hate groups could. It was going to be a balancing act between seeming like regular humans but at the same time being superheroes. I figured if I make people believe that anyone at any time could become a Meta like in the manga Hero Academia our lives would be a whole lot better.