"Aeon."
The moment I stepped out of the portal, Jean's voice reached me, sharp with relief.
My gaze shifted toward the group on my right where she stood, and at the same time my Focus device activated, a faint pulse of light flickering across my vision as it began scanning everything in front of me.
Information layered itself seamlessly over reality, identities, physiological readings—everything flowing together without interrupting my natural perception.
At the front stood the X-Men.
Scottie, standing firm as always at the center.
Professor Xavier just ahead of them in his chair.
Logan, standing tense, claws already out.
Storm, composed but alert.
Jean, eyes locked on me.
Kitty and Marie, both ready, both watching me closely.
There was relief there. Not just from Jean—most of them showed it in different ways. Subtle shifts in posture, lowered shoulders, a fraction less tension in their stance.
Behind them stood another group.
Katrin. Jubilee. Bobby. Sam. Piotr. Roberto. Rahne. Tabitha… and Dinah.
Most of them were unfamiliar faces, but that didn't last long.
D.A.I.S.Y. was already feeding me everything—names, ages, addresses, fragments pulled from scattered government records and stitched together in real time.
Their reactions to me were mixed.
Some of them looked surprised, almost stunned.
Some curious.
A few guarded.
And some… didn't react at all.
I could immediately guess that those were the ones who didn't recognize me at all.
Which, honestly, made sense, as my debut was quite recent.
My attention paused—just briefly—on Dinah.
There was a flicker of recognition there because of her similarity with the DC heroine with the same name, followed by a dozen different lines of thought branching out at once. Questions. Possibilities. Connections.
I cut those thoughts off immediately.
I didn't have time for that right now.
Because on my left side was a very threatening looking group.
The moment my gaze moved toward them, my Focus device adjusted seamlessly, running a second scan in parallel. Normally, D.A.I.S.Y. would pull clean identification data from a mix of public and classified government databases, stitching together a complete profile in an instant. This time, that process hit a wall almost immediately.
A red alert flickered at the edge of my vision.
[Cross-referencing: Restricted Files]
[Source: S.H.I.E.L.D. Database]
[Source: Personal Priority Threat List]
That alone told me everything I needed to know about the level of threat I was dealing with. Standard data wasn't enough — she had to dig into buried records, blacklisted archives… even my own curated threat index.
Their identities resolved one by one as the data aligned.
Blob. Pyro. Sabretooth. Toad. Avalanche. Pietro Maximoff. Wanda Maximoff.
I had already encountered some of them before. It was during the incident where Marie had gone rogue — the same encounter that had led to my first real interaction with the X-Men. That brief clash had been enough to tell me what kind of group this was: aggressive, coordinated, and completely unconcerned with collateral damage.
Then there was Lance.
The same kid I had run into at Kitty's school — the one I had mentally tagged as Avalanche after seeing his abilities firsthand. I had lost track of him after that attack, but I hadn't expected him to resurface like this, already embedded within Magneto's ranks.
Still, even that only held my attention for a moment.
Because standing among them were two figures I had been actively searching for.
Wanda.
And Pietro.
I had hoped—perhaps unrealistically—that they hadn't fallen in with Magneto yet. That I might find them before someone like him did.
Clearly, I had been too optimistic.
Now they stood there, fully aligned with him, watching me just like the rest.
Every single one of them was focused on me.
Not moving. Not attacking.
Just observing.
Evaluating.
Some of them looked eager, like they were waiting for an excuse. Others were more measured, cautious, taking in details before committing. A few were impatient, their body language already leaning toward action.
But despite those differences, one thing was consistent across all of them.
They were ready.
Ready to move the second they were told.
And the only reason they hadn't—
was because of him.
Hovering above them, effortlessly holding their aggression in check, was the most dangerous presence on the field.
Magneto.
Magneto… Erik Lehnsherr… Max Eisenhardt.
The names surfaced almost instantly, layered one over the other as D.A.I.S.Y. pulled from multiple classified sources. In the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, he was flagged as an Alpha-level severe threat, a designation reserved for individuals capable of destabilizing entire regions if left unchecked.
The file didn't just stop at labels.
There was a long list of incidents attached to him—terror attacks, targeted strikes, disappearances of many private facilities. Most of these incidents had been buried, redacted, or quietly erased from public record, but the threat he posed was clear enough.
In fact every major intelligence network in the world had him marked the same way:
Extremely dangerous. Uncontainable.
And now… I was standing face to face with him.
For a brief moment, I couldn't help fanboying a bit. The part of me that still remembered another life, another world, where Magneto had been a character on a screen or a page was happy to meet him.
As he was one of the most iconic villains in X-Men lore. One of my favourites, even. Complex, terrifying, charismatic.
But that thought lasted less than a second before I shut it down.
This wasn't fiction.
This wasn't a controlled narrative where things played out according to plot.
This was the real world — and the man in front of me was not a "villain" in the safe, distant sense of the word. He was a living, breathing, extremely dangerous individual who had already taken multiple human lives without remorse.
Still… his presence here raised some doubts in my mind.
His arrival, right in the middle of an active mutant rescue operation, was too precise to dismiss as coincidence. The timing, the location, the fact that he had come prepared with his entire group — all of it pointed towards intent.
My logical reasoning skill was already aligning toward one conclusion: this wasn't random.
Somehow, intentionally or not, the X-Men and I had drawn him here.
A troubling thought — but not one that changed the immediate reality.
Because regardless of how he got here…
He was here now.
And the threat he posed wasn't theoretical anymore.
I had already seen enough of his abilities to form a baseline assessment. The way he had arrived alone was enough — casually lifting and transporting a rusted cruiser through the air and water as if it were weightless. That level of control over mass and metal wasn't just impressive, it was absurdly efficient.
Then there was the moment underground.
When he had exerted his power through the facility, I had felt it even from below — the sudden distortion, the violent twisting of reinforced structures, the way the environment itself seemed to respond to his will. It hadn't just been force… it had been control on a scale that was hard to quantify without direct measurement.
And I had also witnessed, through the visual feed from the others' Focus devices earlier — how he had casually redirected Scottie's optic blast as if it were nothing more than an inconvenience…
All of it pointed to the same conclusion.
This version of Magneto was powerful.
Very powerful.
Maybe not at the absolute, reality-breaking extremes I remembered from certain comic arcs… but easily comparable to, if not beyond, the strongest cinematic portrayals.
Getting a precise read would require him to actually go all out — something I wasn't exactly eager to provoke right now.
Because power scaling curiosity wasn't the priority here.
Survival was.
And Magneto wasn't the only problem.
Arrayed before him was the Brotherhood of so-called "Evil" Mutants — and from everything I could see, they were far from background support. Each one of them carried themselves with a kind of confidence that only came from experience… or brutality. Power signatures, posture, micro-reactions — everything pointed to the same conclusion.
They were all dangerous in their own right.
Which was exactly why I didn't want this turning into a direct clash.
Because from the very beginning of this mission, I had already taken a calculated risk by bringing the X-Men along — especially when most of them were still this young, still this untested. It hadn't just been a tactical decision or a matter of manpower.
It had been because of something I couldn't ignore.
A dream.
Not just a random fragment of imagination, but something far more structured — a prophetic vision that carried weight, clarity… inevitability.
I had seen it vividly.
A brutal battlefield — the X-Men clashing against the Brotherhood led by Magneto. The scale of that fight had been far greater than what stood before me now. There had been more X-Men, and they had looked older, more refined, more battle-hardened. The scale of that conflict had felt distant, like something waiting further down the timeline.
Something I needed to prepare for.
That assumption had shaped everything that followed.
I had pushed their training harder, focusing not just on raw power but coordination, adaptability, survival under pressure. And when this mission presented itself, I chose to bring them along despite the risks, believing that controlled exposure to danger would help bridge the gap between where they were… and where they needed to be.
I knew it was possible that the clash I had seen wasn't a singular event — that it could have been one of many encounters between the two sides.
But I had hoped — perhaps a little too optimistically — that their first true confrontation wouldn't come this soon.
That they would have more time.
Looking at the two groups now, standing just a few dozen meters apart…
That hope felt misplaced.
Because the Brotherhood in front of me — powerful, aggressive, and already battle-hardened — going up against a team of X-Men who were still in the middle of their growth…
That wasn't a fair fight.
That was a setup for casualties.
My Clairvoyance didn't help ease that concern either. The moment I focused on them properly, I could feel it — the weight of their presence, the sharp, predatory edges in their aura. And beneath that, faint but unmistakable, there was something else.
Another presence.
Hidden.
Somewhere within the ship.
Which meant the situation was even worse than it appeared on the surface.
Given all of that, rushing into a fight right now would be reckless.
The battle hadn't started yet, which meant there was still a narrow window where things could be influenced before everything spiraled out of control.
The most immediate move available to me was simple — attempt dialogue. It wasn't something I expected to succeed, especially not with someone like Magneto, but even a few seconds of delay or disruption could change how the opening moments of the fight played out.
And those moments would matter.
Because behind the X-men were the group of rescued mutants — exhausted, unstable, and in no condition to survive a battlefield like this. Their safety had to take priority over everything else.
If talking failed — and realistically, it probably would — then the situation would have to shift immediately. I would need to take control of the battlefield myself, apply pressure fast enough to disrupt the Brotherhood's coordination, and neutralize as many of their key members as possible before they could overwhelm the X-Men.
I had already run through multiple projections of how this could unfold, branching outcomes and counter-responses layering over each other in rapid succession.
None of them were clean. None of them were guaranteed. Which meant I'd have to adapt in real time — read the field, respond to shifts, and do whatever was necessary to give us a genuine chance of getting through this without casualties.
All of these thoughts, calculations, and contingencies ran through my mind in the brief span of just seconds since I stepped out of the portal.
"Aeon…" Magneto's voice cut through my thoughts, measured, observant. "So you are one of these so-called 'heroes' people have been speaking of."
His gaze moved over me with open scrutiny.
"And you really are a mutant, no less."
The shift in his tone was noticeable. The earlier aggression hadn't disappeared entirely, but it had been redirected… focused into something far more controlled. He wasn't attacking.
He was engaging.
I had already planned to open a dialogue myself, but it seemed Magneto had reached the same conclusion first. That caught me off guard for a moment, but I didn't let it show. If he wanted to talk, then there was no reason not to play along — at least for now.
Understanding his intentions was just as important as stopping him.
"I've never denied that," I replied, letting my abilities flow naturally. My voice carried a faint resonance, a spark — subtle, but enough to project authority.
I remained hovering at his level, sustained by a controlled electromagnetic field — not identical to his method, but close enough in function to make the parallel obvious.
His eyes lingered on me for a moment longer.
"You possess a remarkable gift," he said, a note of genuine interest entering his voice. "The ability to manipulate time itself… a rare and extraordinary expression of what a Homo superior is capable of becoming."
That assumption didn't surprise me. Between the Stark Company incident and the Moloid fight, enough footage had circulated for the public — and by extension, people like him — to associate me primarily with temporal abilities.
"But even with such power," he continued, his expression tightening, "you choose to serve them. To protect those who fear you… to wear their symbols… to become their 'hero.'" His hand curled slowly into a fist, restrained frustration bleeding into his voice.
"And yet… you stand at a crossroads."
He extended his hand toward me.
"Join me, Aeon. Join the Brotherhood."
His voice deepened, conviction hardening every word.
"Be a hero to your own kind. Protect those who truly need protection. Punish those who deserve to be punished."
"Choose the right path."
For a moment, I just looked at him, slightly stunned.
So that was it.
The reason he hadn't attacked the moment I appeared… the reason he chose to talk first—
Magneto… wanted to recruit me.