Interlude 3
POV: Adonai
So then, what the hell was he supposed to do about the mutant situation?
He found himself wishing, for perhaps the hundredth time, that he possessed one of those absurd genius-level intellects that seemed to be ubiquitous in this universe. Having that kind of brain would certainly make things easier. He could just sit down, think really hard for five minutes, and come up with some perfect master plan that solved mutant discrimination, prevented future tragedies, and somehow saved the world while he was at it.
…Actually. Could he just make himself smarter with Nen?
It wasn’t the dumbest idea he’d ever had. He had already messed around with his nervous system before by speeding up the signals running through his brain so his reactions got faster, though he’d always been pretty careful whenever his own head was involved.
Breaking a muscle was one thing. Accidentally turning himself into a drooling idiot because he modified something he did not fully understand was another matter entirely. The problem was that intelligence itself was a frustratingly abstract concept. What exactly would he even enhance?
Intelligence was not some conveniently labeled organ sitting in the skull waiting to be upgraded. He would need a detailed understanding of which parts of the brain controlled what functions, how neurons interacted with one another, and how all of that translated into what people casually called intelligence. Current scientific research was impressive, but he was not sure it was reliable enough for the sort of self-modification he had in mind.
Still, it would not be a bad idea to study the brain more seriously in the future. If he had truly decided to involve himself in the endless mess that was mutant affairs, then sooner or later he was going to find himself opposed to geniuses, mad scientists and assorted supervillains whose IQs probably exceeded the GDP of small nations. Keeping up with them would be difficult enough without handicapping himself.
Unfortunately for now, he was average in the intelligence department. Well, perhaps average was underselling himself a little, but the point stood. He was not Reed Richards or Tony Stark. Whatever solution he came up with would have to be produced by a relatively ordinary brain.
But he had one advantage that most people in this world lacked. He came from a world that had reached 2025, and while that did not make him a genius, it gave him access to perspectives, ideas, technologies and social developments that simply did not exist here yet. There were opportunities hidden in that knowledge, advantages he had barely begun to explore, and perhaps solutions that people native to this universe would never even consider.
The thought made him sigh. He could already see his future filling up with responsibilities, obligations, crises, and endless requests for help. As someone who was the paradigmatic of the sin of sloth, he suspected he was going to hate every second of it.
Then again, that was a problem for Future Adonai, and Future Adonai could go fuck himself because Present Adonai had enough headaches already.
“By the way, are you still in contact with that girl from the club?” Adonai asked casually as he leaned against the railing and took another drag from his cigarette. “What was her name again? Something related to a Roman goddess, I think?”
“Minerva,” Kurt supplied easily. “She has called me a few times and ve have talked over the phone, but ve haven’t really had ze chance to meet up yet.”
“Oh, come on, you’re fumbling a generational opportunity here! Did you actually look at that woman? Fantastic ass, pretty face, and she is into occultism. I’m telling you, girls like that don’t grow on trees.”
The X-Men had insisted on throwing him a small farewell party after he announced he would be leaving the mansion. What surprised him most was how genuinely unhappy they seemed about his departure. It was not that he expected them to dislike him, but he had not exactly been around for very long. Certainly not long enough, in his opinion, to develop the kind of attachment that made people emotional when someone left.
He was not exactly the easiest person to get attached to either. Then again, this was a comic book world. People became best friends after sharing a single life-threatening experience. Entire teams formed lifelong bonds after knowing each other for a week. Compared to some of the friendships he remembered from Marvel comics, this was practically a slow burn.
After spending some time mingling with everyone, Adonai eventually sensed the atmosphere threatening to become more sentimental than he cared to endure. Before anyone could start making speeches or, God forbid, crying, he quietly slipped away with Kurt, and the two of them made their way onto the rooftop in search of fresh air.
“It’s not like I’m avoiding her or anything,” Kurt sighed, resting his arms against the ledge. “I just… haven’t really had ze time, considering… vell, you know.”
“Fair enough,” Adonai replied with a shrug. “A massacre does seem like the sort of thing that kills the mood.”
Kurt shot him a flat look.
“What?” Adonai asked. “Too soon?”
“It will always be too soon.”
“My bad.” Adonai shrugged. “What’s with the bruise on your cheek anyway? Did you get that back then?”
“No,” Kurt replied, lifting a hand to touch it almost absentmindedly. “Zat’s from training. We’ve all been spending most of our time in the Danger Room lately, trying to master our abilities. I think… maybe we weren’t taking our training as seriously as we should have before.”
Adonai wasn’t really sure what to say to that. Hell, that had basically been the mood of the entire farewell party. Every conversation somehow found its way back to the Morlocks. It didn’t matter if people started by talking about food, training, or what they were going to do next. Sooner or later someone would bring up the tunnels, and then it was the same thing all over again. We should’ve been stronger. We should’ve trained harder. We should’ve gotten there sooner.
He got it. He really did. It just wasn’t a healthy way to live. If you started blaming yourself for every bad thing that happened around you, you’d never run out of reasons to be miserable. The world was more than happy to keep handing those out for free. Still, he could tell none of them were ready to hear that, and even if they were, he doubted it would’ve changed anything.
“What are you going to do now?” Adonai asked instead.
“We’ll help the Morlocks settle in here for a while,” Kurt answered. “And ze Professor says the X-Gene has been awakening far more frequently than it used to. I imagine ve’ll spend most of our time finding newly awakened mutants and helping them before someone else does.” He turned toward Adonai, curiosity softening his expression. “What about you? What are you going to do after you leave? Do you actually have a plan?”
“Hey, what’s with that skeptical tone?” Adonai protested, placing a hand against his chest in exaggerated offense. “You make it sound like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Have a little faith in me, would you?”
“Of course not,” Kurt replied without missing a beat. “I’ve met you, after all.”
Adonai stared at him for a second before breaking into laughter. He took a long drag from his cigarette and deliberately exhaled the smoke directly into Kurt’s face.
“Please don’t do that. It’s disgusting,” Kurt said, waving a hand in front of his face in a futile attempt to disperse the smoke. “If you vant to die of a collapsed lung before forty, that is your prerogative, but don’t drag me down vith you. Smoking is a terrible vice, and it’s very bad for you.”
“All the fun things are,” Adonai replied with a smug grin. He took another leisurely drag before glancing at Kurt. “And did you just say prerogative? I sometimes forget you probably learned English from books and such. Nobody talks like that in a normal conversation. At least, nobody I’ve ever met.”
“Jean does. Scott does sometimes too,” Kurt pointed out, raising an eyebrow.
“Exactly,” Adonai said, nodding as though Kurt had just delivered the perfect piece of supporting evidence.
“And as for vices being fun, vell… zat is precisely vhy zey are called vices.” Kurt regarded Adonai with the patient expression. “Sin is rarely tempting because it looks ugly. If greed felt empty from ze beginning, no one vould chase money beyond reason. If lust left people miserable immediately, no one vould give in to it. Evil almost always promises some pleasure first, zen presents you vith ze bill afterward. That is how temptation works. Ze Devil does not fish vith an empty hook. He baits it.”
Adonai let out a quiet chuckle. “That’s actually a pretty cool line.”
“Right?” Kurt’s face brightened immediately. “I practiced it.”
“I can tell.”
“The lord forbids vice because fleeting pleasure can become a master before you even realize you are serving it. Freedom is being able to say no. If you can’t refuse your own desires, zen you are no longer truly free.”
“Very deep,” Adonai said, already sounding bored before Kurt had even finished. “But, man, I’m not trying to become Buddha or some monk who thinks happiness is sitting on a rock and suppressing every urge he has. Fuck that. I like my vices. Besides, I literally can’t get sick from this stuff. I’m built different.”
And he wasn’t even exaggerating. Any damage alcohol or cigarettes did to his body could be patched up with Nen in a matter of minutes, so as far as he was concerned, they were basically consequence free. It was honestly one of the greatest perks of his powers. He got all the fun without having to pay the bill afterward. Why the hell would he willingly give that up?
Life already came with enough unavoidable bullshit and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about those. He saw no reason to start inventing extra restrictions for himself on top of that. A cold drink after a long day, a cigarette while watching the sunset, good food, pretty women, expensive clothes, there were worse ways to spend the short amount of time people got on this planet. Half the things that made life enjoyable had been labeled sins by somebody at some point anyway. If pleasure existed, then it seemed almost rude not to enjoy it.
“You still didn’t answer my question, by ze vay,” Kurt reminded him. “What are you going to do after you leave us?”
Adonai pushed himself off the railing, brushed the dust from his pants with leisurely care, and rolled his shoulders as though preparing for the most natural undertaking in the world.
“I’m gonna become rich as fuck.”
…
He made his way back toward his dorm room to gather the last of his things. It was finally time to leave. The only reason he had stayed this long was because he needed somewhere to crash until he figured out where to live next, and now that problem had finally sorted itself out.
Along the way his thoughts drifted, almost against his will, to the night he had spent with Jean. Honestly, that had caught him completely off guard.
Sure, he flirted with the gorgeous redhead every chance he got because flirting was fun and Jean happened to be ridiculously pretty, but he never actually expected anything to come of it. If someone had asked him to bet money on which woman in the mansion was the least likely to have a one night stand, Jean Grey would’ve comfortably made the top three. Then again, people stopped behaving like themselves after going through hell. Fear, grief, relief, all of it had a funny habit of making people do things they normally wouldn’t.
He figured she had probably hoped that sleeping together would change something between them. Maybe she thought that if she finally admitted how she felt, he’d reconsider leaving, or maybe she simply wanted one memory before they went their separate ways. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t oblivious enough to pretend it hadn’t meant more to her than it had to him. People like Jean attached meaning to things like that. Losing one's virginity, first loves, romantic confessions, shared nights together. Sentimental people always seemed to believe such moments carried some deeper meaning beyond the moment itself.
They saw it as a promise, or the beginning of one. He respected people like that. He just wasn’t one of them.
He had absolutely no desire to settle down with one woman, buy a nice little house in suburbia, mow the lawn every Sunday, raise two and a half children, and spend the next fifty years pretending domestic routine was the pinnacle of human existence.
He knew that way of looking at the world would strike most people as selfish, immature, or just plain cruel, though he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care very much. The world had already drafted him into problems he never asked for. Fine. He would deal with those because nobody else seemed interested in doing it properly.
Beyond that, however, he had no intention of volunteering even more pieces of himself simply because society thought he ought to. Pretending to want a life he didn’t want would be far crueler than admitting the truth from the start.
It wasn’t as though he’d deceived anyone anyway. Jean knew. Rogue probably knew too, even if neither of them wanted to fully accept it. He cared about both of them in his own way, though caring about someone had never magically transformed him into the sort of man they secretly hoped he might become. He had been honest from the beginning. He had never promised forever, never pretended to be romantic, never hinted at a future together. If they chose to love the version of him they wished existed instead of the one standing in front of them, then there was little he could do about that.
Besides, it hardly mattered anymore. He was leaving the Xavier Institute today, and if everything went according to plan, years would probably pass before their paths crossed again. The future had a habit of scattering people in different directions, and there was no point standing around mourning roads that had already split.
He pushed open the door to his dorm, expecting to be greeted by the familiar silence of an empty room. Instead, he found two girls sprawled comfortably across his bed, deep in conversation as though they owned the place. His eyebrow arched.
“What’s this?” he asked, closing the door behind him. “Please don’t tell me you’re here to convince me buying a horse is a terrible financial decision. My mind is made up. I will not be swayed.”
“What?” Alison Blair blinked. “Why on earth would you want to buy a horse?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Adonai replied as though the answer were self-evident. As far as he was concerned, every man wanted to own a horse. The only thing standing between him and that noble aspiration was the unfortunate absence of sufficient funds.
“You ain’t nearly responsible enough to own any animal, much less a horse,” Rogue said flatly from where she lounged across his bed.
“I am surrounded by haters and fake friends. It’s tragic.” He turned toward Rogue with sudden interest. “Actually, how does your power interact with animals? Say you touched a cat. Would you suddenly become obsessed with knocking glasses off tables and screaming at three in the morning? Would you spend six hours licking yourself? Better yet, if you touched a golden retriever, would you immediately develop the overwhelming desire to chase tennis balls and greet every stranger like they’d returned from war? Hold on, this is important. We should borrow a stray dog and conduct an experiment. For science.”
Rogue and Alison stared at him with identical expressions of horrified disbelief, as though he had calmly suggested firebombing an orphanage.
“That’s awful,” Alison said, grimacing. “Why would you even want to know that?”
“Call it academic curiosity,” Adonai replied with a casual shrug. “You can’t honestly tell me nobody’s wondered before. If I had your power, the first thing I’d do is figure out exactly where its limits are. Does it work on animals? Insects? Could I absorb the instincts of an octopus? These are fascinating questions.”
A few dogs may die in the pursuit of scientific progress, he reflected privately. But it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.
“No, sugar,” Rogue said firmly, folding her arms. “We ain’t testin’ my powers on nobody’s dog. I sure as hell don’t wanna find out what happens if Ah touch an animal.”
Realizing he was losing this particular debate, Adonai abandoned it with admirable efficiency.
“So,” he said instead, gesturing toward the luggage scattered across the room, “why exactly are the two of you in my room? And why do you have luggage?”
Four suitcases stood neatly beside his bed. Two were bright pink, the other two black. He assumed the pink ones belonged to Alison and the black ones to Rogue based entirely on aesthetic instinct.
Rogue and Alison exchanged a glance. After a moment, Rogue drew a steady breath before speaking.
“We’re comin’ with ya,” she declared.
Adonai had already suspected as much the moment he’d noticed the packed luggage, but knowing the conclusion did little to explain the reasoning behind it. Rogue was one thing, but Alison? That was the part that genuinely puzzled him. Why in the world would either of them want to leave with him?
“Why?” he asked, one brow rising. “Rogue, I know I promised I’d find a permanent solution for your ability in case you ever lost control again, but you don’t have to come with me for that. I gave you my word. I’ll come back once I’ve found an answer.”
“W… what?” Rogue’s eyes widened with unmistakable hurt. “Sugar, do ya really think Ah’m only comin’ with ya because Ah wanna use ya? Is that all you think this here friendship is? Just folks tradin’ favors?”
Fuck! This conversation has wandered into deeply unfamiliar territory.
Adonai found himself strangely off balance. He had spoken without thinking, assuming the most practical explanation because it had seemed the obvious one. Rogue had lived every waking day beneath the shadow of her own mutation, terrified that a single lapse in concentration could cost someone their life.
Of course she would want to remain close to the only person who had managed to give her control over it. That explanation had felt so self evident that he had never once considered there might be another. Surely nobody could fault him for arriving at that conclusion. He certainly was not conceited enough to imagine he had somehow become indispensable to her after only a few months of acquaintance. Or… was that actually possible?
“No, of course not,” he said quickly, raising both hands in surrender. “That’s not what I meant. I just thought… well, knowing me, it would’ve been perfectly reasonable if you were worried I’d disappear the moment I walked out those doors and quietly forget the promise I made. I figured maybe that’s why you wanted to come along, so you could make sure I didn’t vanish halfway across the country before finding a solution. That seemed… like a fairly sensible assumption.”
Whether it was actually a sensible recovery or not, he had no idea. Social situations of this particular variety had always been among his weakest points. Desperate for reinforcements, he glanced toward Alison, silently pleading for assistance. She merely met his gaze, smiled sweetly, and gave him an infuriating little wink. Traitor.
“Adonai…” Rogue breathed, the frustration draining from her voice as she let out a long sigh. “Do ya have any idea how long Ah’ve lived scared that one day I might accidentally kill somebody? How many nights Ah lay awake wonderin’ if Ah’d spend the rest of my life without ever knowin’ what it feels like to hold another person? To hug somebody when they’re hurt, or scared, or just because Ah wanted to?”
He instinctively opened his mouth before immediately closing it again. Something told him these were rhetorical questions, and interrupting now would only make matters worse.
“Do ya know when I last hugged somebody without bein’ terrified of what might happen?” Rogue continued quietly. “Six years! Six whole years! That’s the last time Ah could hold another person without wonderin’ if Ah was about to ruin their life. You have no idea what that’s like, wantin’ somethin’ so simple so badly it hurts, knowin’ every instinct in your body is tellin’ ya to reach out, while the only thing stoppin’ ya is the fear that ya might kill the people ya love.” Her voice faltered, though she never looked away from him. “Then you came along… and you saved me.”
Watching her now, seeing the emotion she was no longer making any effort to conceal, Adonai realized with a faint sense of embarrassment that he might have seriously underestimated just how much it meant to her to finally have control over her powers.
“Because of you,” Rogue said softly, “Ah can hug my friends when they need comfort. Ah can put an arm around somebody just because Ah feel like it. People don’t think twice about somethin’ like that, but when it’s been taken away from you for years, it starts feelin’ like the greatest gift in the world.” She swallowed before continuing. “None of that would’ve happened without you. Now you’re headin’ off to find an answer that could change every mutant’s life, and Ah ain’t gonna sit here while ya do it alone. I wanna be there. I choose to be there with you.”
So gratitude turned into obligation. Got it, he thought at first.
…Except that wasn’t it, was it? There was something in her eyes that gratitude alone couldn’t account for, something far more irrational. She was genuinely willing to pack up her entire life, leave behind her friends, the only home she’d had in years, and follow him into a future she knew absolutely nothing about simply because she didn’t want him walking it alone.
That…
That was a completely new feeling. He had to admit, having someone care about you that much felt absurdly good. There was something intoxicating about it, something that settled warmly in his chest and quietly stroked his ego in all the right places. He could very easily get used to this. Maybe that was why people loved being loved so much. It made you feel like the center of someone’s universe, and there were few things more flattering than that.
But the thought also left a bitter taste in his mouth. What kind of asshole accepted a sacrifice like that?
Especially someone like him. He was probably the single most selfish person he knew. He valued his own freedom above almost everything else and would never ask another person to throw away their own for his sake. Hell, he’d resent anyone who expected that from him, so what right did he have to quietly accept it from someone else? It felt wrong somehow, like taking far more than he had ever intended to give back.
“Look, Rogue,” he said gently, “I think I understand where you’re coming from. I really do. But you don’t have to throw away your friends and the life you’ve built here just because you feel indebted to someone you’ve only known for a couple of months out of inane sense of gratitude.”
Rogue held his gaze for several long seconds, her light gray eyes burning with a fierce determination that made it clear she had already made up her mind. Before he could say anything else, she stepped forward, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him down into a deep kiss. When she finally drew back, her cheeks had taken on a rosy hue, though the determination in her eyes had only grown stronger.
“You still don’t get it, do ya?” Rogue said with a soft, almost breathless chuckle. “I want this. I want to be with you. Ah honestly don’t even know what name to give this feelin’. Maybe it’s love or gratitude or admiration. Maybe it’s all of ‘em tangled together. Ah’ve spent so long scared of touchin’ anybody that somewhere along the way, you became the first person who ever made me feel… safe.
“It ain’t because Ah owe ya anythin’. It ain’t because Ah expect ya to fix me or make promises ya can’t keep. Ah know exactly how ya feel about love. Ah know ya ain’t built the way most folks are, and Ah ain’t askin’ ya to pretend otherwise.” She reached forward again, gently taking hold of his hand. “Ah don’t need ya to promise forever. Ah don’t need you to say you love me back. All Ah’m askin’ is that ya let me walk beside you. Let me be there when things get hard. Let me laugh with you when they’re easy. Ah don’t care where the road goes so long as I get to share a little piece of it with ya. So… please don’t keep pushin’ away the people who choose you of their own free will.”
He could only look back into those light gray eyes without saying anything. Honestly, what the hell was he even supposed to say to that? It was one thing for someone to tell you they liked you. It was another for them to say, I know exactly who you are, I know you probably won’t ever love me the way I love you, and I’m still choosing you anyway.
“If that’s really your choice, then I’d be happy to have you,” Adonai replied with a warm smile. His eyes drifted toward Alison. “What about you? Why do you want to come with me… us?”
“Hate to disappoint you, playboy,” Alison said with a teasing grin, “but you haven’t managed to make me fall hopelessly in love with you. Give it another week and maybe you’ll have a chance.”
Adonai placed a hand over his heart. “Trust me, you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from succumbing to my charms if I tried.”
“Whatever lets you sleep at night.” Her smile softened, though the humor never entirely left her eyes. “My reasons are a little more selfish than Rogue’s. Seeing those Morlocks living beneath the city like ghosts, hiding in filthy tunnels simply because of the way they were born… seeing children who had never done anything wrong grow up believing they deserved to be hated… watching people hunted for something they never chose. I can’t get those images out of my head…I don’t want anyone to ever have to live like that again.”
“So why come with me?” Adonai asked, genuine curiosity slipping into his voice.
As he had expected, the Morlock massacre had left none of them untouched. That much he understood. What he could not understand was why Alison had chosen him of all people.
For God’s sake, when Magneto had demanded to know what kind of world he intended to create, his answer had been, I don’t know. Hardly the sort of declaration one expected to inspire followers.
“Because I want a hand in shaping whatever your dream eventually becomes,” Alison said. “I am a vain person. I like beautiful clothes, I like expensive restaurants, I like turning heads when I walk into a room, and I enjoy it when people admire me. There are girls who’ll blush and deny they enjoy attention. I’m not one of them. I want to be loved. I want history to remember my name long after I’m gone. Maybe that’s shallow and narcissistic. I honestly don’t care.
“But I also want agency. I want to decide for myself what kind of world I leave behind instead of quietly inheriting one that somebody else designed. The Professor gave all of us a home when nobody else would, and I’ll always love him for that. I owe him more than I could ever repay. But I don’t want to spend my entire life auditioning for humanity’s approval. But, I also don’t want to become like Magneto either. Living solely for revenge means letting the people who hurt you define your future forever, and I think that’s just as bad. Which leaves me with you.
“You’re the only person who seems unwilling to inherit either of those paths. I want to help you build it. I don’t know what it will look like yet, and judging by your answer to Magneto, neither do you. Oddly enough, I find that reassuring. Dreams are dangerous when they’re finished. Once people become convinced they’ve found the perfect answer, they stop asking questions. Yours is still unfinished, which means there’s still room for people like me to leave our fingerprints on it. And if we’re going to reshape the world, I’d very much like history to remember that I looked fabulous while doing it.”
That, at least, he could understand. Vanity was healthy too, provided you had something worth being vain about. There was nothing ignoble about wanting the world to know your name or about chasing a life that revolved around your own happiness.
“What about your dream of stardom?” Adonai asked.
Alison laughed softly. There was genuine amusement in the sound, though it carried the faint melancholy of someone already preparing to say goodbye to a cherished fantasy.
“I love music,” she admitted. “Always have and always will. I wanted to be like Madonna or Michael Jackson. I wanted to become so famous that when people heard the word music, they’d think of me first. But… if your… our dream means putting that childish fantasy aside, then I’m willing to do it. Some things are bigger than ourselves.”
Adonai frowned almost imperceptibly. That, he simply could not agree with.
There was something profoundly depressing about watching a person quietly bury the very dream that had made their eyes shine only moments ago because they believed duty demanded it. It felt like witnessing someone apologize for wanting to be happy. If there truly existed things greater than oneself, then they ought to serve one’s happiness, not consume it. Otherwise, what exactly was the point? Sacrifice had always struck him as one of humanity’s strangest addictions, people taking perfectly beautiful desires and laying them upon an altar simply because someone had convinced them virtue required it.
No. He refused to build anything worth having on top of someone else’s abandoned dream. Besides, making Alison Blair the biggest musical sensation of the new millennium fit neatly into his plans anyway. A global pop icon was a remarkably effective mouthpiece for shaping culture, and if she happened to achieve her childhood dream in the process, then everyone won.
“Well then,” he said with an easy smile, pushing himself away from the wall, “we should probably get moving. I’d rather not give anybody else enough time to come up with another heartfelt speech. Those things are hazardous to my health.”
…
How did one defeat bigotry?
Bigotry, by its very nature, was not rational. It rarely began with careful reasoning and evidence and then arrived at prejudice as a conclusion. More often, it worked in reverse. It was easier to invent flaws in others than to confront the possibility that one’s own emotions had no solid foundation at all.
Human beings had an impressive talent for this kind of selective perception. Once a belief was formed, the mind became an expert at collecting only the evidence that supported it, while quietly discarding anything that threatened it.
In that process, a mutant ceased to be an individual and instead became an idea, a convenient vessel into which every fear, every frustration, and every resentment could be poured without consequence. That was why sermons about tolerance so rarely changed anyone. They asked people to become better without giving them any reason to want to become better. People moved far more readily toward pleasure than they fled from guilt. The better question was how to make tolerance more desirable than hatred.
Naturally, mutants were dangerous. Anybody pretending otherwise was either an idiot or trying way too hard to prove some moral point. A kid could wake up tomorrow, sneeze at the wrong moment, and accidentally blow apart half a city block. Those things have high chances of happening. It certainly didn’t help that people like Magneto kept going around declaring mutants to be the future while treating humanity like an outdated prototype. So yeah, people being scared made perfect sense. The real question was how that fear was directed. People rarely responded to reality itself but to the story told about reality. Whoever controlled the narrative controlled how mutants were perceived.
He had not lied to Kurt when he said he wanted to be rich. That was the foundation of everything he wanted to do. He had to be rich. Billionaire rich. Because the answer to the mutant problem was something he could only come up with because he came from the future.
Social media…
Social media was the new god. It was honestly terrifying how easily billions of people could be manipulated into believing almost anything, provided the lie was delivered in the right format often enough. The future would pretend people thought for themselves while quietly outsourcing their opinions to algorithms that understood their desires better than they did.
The year was only 2000, and none of the technology or companies that would come to dominate the Information Age even existed yet. If Adonai could seize that opportunity and become the one shaping how the digital world developed, then he could shape how people saw mutants as well. The tech giants of the future would use social media to spread misinformation, keep people distracted, amplify outrage, and subtly push political narratives. Even something as abstract as affective polarization, the widening emotional gap between “us” and “them,” could be manufactured through carefully curated information until people genuinely despised complete strangers.
If people could be taught to hate an entire group through selective stories and manufactured outrage, then they could just as easily be taught to admire them. Mutants could become symbols of heroism, people the public looked at the same way they looked at Captain America or Iron Man. If everything went even better than he imagined, they might eventually be viewed the way Quirk users were in My Hero Academia, simply ordinary people who happened to possess extraordinary abilities, neither superior nor inferior to anyone else.
The key was timing, and taking hold of opportunities before anyone else even realized they existed.
AN: We’re finally moving on from the X-Men, and from here on out there will be a few time skips so we can explore more of the wider MCU/X-Men timeline.
Also, who guessed Allison would be the one to go with Adonai? I think she could be a really fun character to work with, especially since she barely appears outside the comics, so it’ll be interesting to explore her more. What do you think about Adonai’s approach to dealing with the mutant situation in Marvel?
One thing I should clarify: Sublime doesn’t exist in this fic. I’m not a fan of him, and anything involving him is out. The idea of a bacteria that makes people hate mutants just feels a bit too silly. Also, no TVA. Not doing them either. Loki was great, but I just don’t want to write TVA stuff.
In any case, there’s a plan for Adonai to recruit highly intelligent characters (mutants or otherwise) to help him build wealth and eventually become a global figure/tycoon-type presence. Feel free to suggest anyone you’d like to see included, and I’ll see what fits.