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Nightcrawler's tail drooped low, the fight gone from him. Wide-eyed, he glanced helplessly at the only other teammate still on her feet.
Jean Grey wasn't the type to scare easily—there was a reason she was an X-Man—but even she wasn't foolish enough to think she could take down a man who had just flattened nearly the entire team. Adding Kurt into the equation didn't make the odds any prettier.
She swallowed her pride and asked, "What do you want?"
Henry didn't answer right away. Instead, he tossed Cyclops' visor back toward her. "That's my question. What do you want? You lure me here, and the first thing your boss does is dig around in my head."
A thought struck him. Marvel characters had a bad habit of being inconsistent from one universe to the next—like someone kept rewriting their origin stories over morning coffee. The "multiverse" was the convenient excuse, but it meant you couldn't predict anyone based on the version you thought you knew.
Which begged the question: Which template of the X-Men was he dealing with here?
It was like wondering whether this world's Tony Stark was actually Howard Stark's son. He hadn't DNA-tested them, but judging from personalities and secondhand stories, it seemed likely. Still—assumptions got you killed.
Especially when you were up against mutants. Their powers came in all flavors, and who knew—maybe one of them could whip up a chunk of kryptonite just to ruin his day.
Jean took a step forward, clearly wrestling with the urge to make a move.
"Jean, don't." Mystique's voice cut through the tension. She didn't bark it, but there was enough steel to make Jean pause. "Check the others first."
Jean hesitated, then crouched next to Cyclops, slipping the visor back into place before helping Nightcrawler check the rest of their fallen teammates.
Raven—Mystique—was already back on her feet. Taking a direct hit from Beast would've put most people in the hospital, but her body was a finely tuned weapon—flexible, resilient, and hard to keep down.
She studied Henry with an unreadable expression, glancing over the wreckage of her team. Nobody was dead—probably not even seriously injured—but the gap in power was obvious.
And she was starting to believe him when he'd claimed he wasn't a mutant. Most mutants had a single gift they specialized in, not a grab bag of unrelated powers.
Henry met her gaze and didn't wait for her to take control of the conversation. "So tell me—what exactly have I done to deserve all this? You didn't even ask me a question before you tried rooting around in my brain."
Mystique ignored that. "Where's Charles?"
"Who?" Henry asked innocently.
"The bald idiot in the wheelchair."
Henry arched a brow. So, there was tension between the great Professor X and his people. "Relax. He's fine. Human bodies have a self-protection mode—he just overclocked his brain and blacked out. He'll wake up… eventually."
Mystique finally gave an answer. "You didn't do anything wrong. The FBI asked Charles to assist with an investigation into the miracle plane landing. He found you in the pilot's memory, and… you piqued our curiosity."
Henry's brow furrowed. "You told the FBI about me?"
"No. They were only looking for terrorist connections and to clear the crew. We told them what was relevant. Nothing more."
"Oh, really?" He gave them a look halfway between amusement and warning. The FBI got the cooperation, but the X-Men were clearly running their own side hustle. Combine that with Xavier's little mental break-in, and yeah—he was done with them.
He tilted his head at Mystique. "Xavier's the leader here, right? Must be fun working for a guy like that."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jean snapped, unable to hold back.
Even Mystique's yellow eyes narrowed in irritation.
"It means," Henry said, "I don't trust people who hide behind the phrase 'It's for your own good' while breaking every ethical line in the book. That's scarier than someone who admits they're the bad guy."
"You're saying we're liars," Mystique shot back.
"No," Henry corrected, "I'm saying you genuinely believe you're in the right. That's worse. You think the Crusaders ever saw themselves as the villains while slaughtering 'heretics' and looting cities? No. They thought they were the heroes."
"We're not crusaders. We're the ones being persecuted," Mystique snapped.
Henry lifted his hands in mock surrender. "Fine. Maybe that example was extreme. But ask yourself—how many things have you done in the name of 'good intentions' that you'd never admit to in public? Like, say… poking around inside a hero pilot's head without permission. That's basically stripping someone naked in a crowd and calling it an investigation."
He smirked. "Oh, I get it. The FBI ordered it, so you can blame them. And me? I'm an alien, so I don't count as a person, right? Just another 'acceptable exception.' It's like when a group that's been oppressed for centuries decides they're not the bottom of the ladder anymore, so they start kicking the people below them."
"That's enough!" Jean and Mystique snapped in unison.
Henry zipped his mouth shut with an imaginary zipper and stepped back two paces, eyes still glinting with amusement.
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