"Ew."
"Stay away from me."
As Pyro came flying at him, Fenris might not have feared the flames, but he still looked thoroughly disgusted as he sidestepped, making John miss completely.
"You think the lab is a place for you to play with fire?"
Fenris grabbed Pyro by the back of the neck and tossed him straight out of the lab. "Go find somewhere to get used to your powers first. Those Sentinels are going to be a nightmare for you soon enough."
"Got it. I'm on it."
John was not offended in the slightest. Grinning from ear to ear, he picked up his lighter and ran off.
Watching the young X-Men's mutant abilities undergo such dramatic leaps after taking the Heart-Shaped Herb, Magneto finally could not sit still anymore.
He quietly moved over beside Fenris. "Fenris, this Heart-Shaped Herb can strengthen mutant abilities too?"
"What? Feeling tempted now, old man?"
Fenris instantly understood what Magneto was thinking and gave him an amused look.
"A little, yes."
Caught by Fenris's teasing eyes, Magneto coughed lightly and looked away with some embarrassment.
After all, he had just declared in front of Fenris that he would never rely on external power like this.
"It can, yes, but the effect on you would probably be limited."
Fenris did not have the heart to keep pressing an old man's pride. "Normally, the Heart-Shaped Herb doesn't do this. But..."
"But what?" Magneto asked immediately.
"Jean and I just had a very friendly discussion with the god Wakanda worships. After a full exchange of views, the Panther Goddess agreed to give us a little special consideration."
As he said that, Fenris spread his hands with complete confidence. "But the stronger the ability, the harder it is to enhance."
"For someone like Pyro, making him able to create fire isn't difficult for a god. But once your power is fully developed, you might not end up much weaker than the Panther Goddess herself, so..."
Fenris gave Magneto a mildly regretful shrug. "You get it."
"So in the end, I still have to rely on myself."
Magneto was too sharp not to catch the meaning underneath Fenris's words.
While the two were talking, several more mutants nearby woke up one after another.
Just as Fenris had said, as X-Men, they were already the elite among the elite. Each of their powers ranked near the top even among mutants.
Because of that, most of their abilities did not change very much.
Take Bobby, for example. Other than his physical strength becoming a bit stronger, there was nothing especially unusual about him.
Beast, on the other hand, gained the ability to freely control his own form.
But he was no longer the young man he had once been, obsessively concerned about his appearance, so after a brief moment of excitement, he threw himself right back into work.
Magneto took in all of these changes, and the facts proved that Fenris had been completely right.
"I knew it. In the end, everything still depends on yourself. Not even a god can change that."
Without hesitation, Magneto put away the Heart-Shaped Herb he had just taken out. "I'll save it instead. For my son."
"Hah!"
Seeing Magneto go back on his word so quickly, Fenris laughed out loud.
Magneto had many daughters, but only one son.
The only question was whether he knew about Quicksilver yet.
And if this Quicksilver still could not outrun a bullet, then maybe he really did need a Heart-Shaped Herb.
The two of them kept chatting off and on like that, and by the time the conversation drifted to a pause, all the X-Men had already awakened.
The sudden surge in power left them thrilled beyond words. After coming over to talk with Fenris for a bit, every last one of them rushed off to the training grounds.
"Who would've thought Tony, the only ordinary human here, would be the slowest?"
At this point, Tony Stark was the only one left on an operating table.
And his expression was unbelievably complicated, as if he had just suffered some enormous emotional blow.
"Fenris, are you there?"
Who knew how much time had passed? Fenris was reclining lazily in a lounge chair, one Arc Reactor in each hand, when Tony's voice suddenly came from nearby, soft as a mosquito's buzz.
"I'm here."
Fenris answered lazily, but did not get up.
"Fenris, do me a favor."
With Jean's help, Tony shakily undid the metal restraints around his body.
No one knew what exactly he had said to Howard Stark, but Tony had completely lost the longing and anticipation for superhuman power he had shown before. His face was pale, drained of all color.
How could taking the Heart-Shaped Herb leave someone in this kind of state?
As Tony staggered toward him, trembling all over, Fenris quickly stood up and caught him. "What happened to you?"
"I saw my father. And my mother."
Tony's nose stung, and his eyes turned wet almost instantly. His voice broke as he said, "Just now... my father told me that I was his greatest invention."
Tony's hand gripped Fenris's shoulder, all ten fingers trembling faintly.
His emotions were on the verge of collapse. The pride that had once been carved into his bones had been shattered by a single ordinary sentence from Howard.
"..."
Fenris fell silent at once.
To anyone else, those words might have sounded perfectly ordinary.
But for Tony, who had spent his whole life wanting to prove himself in front of his father, hearing those words directly from Howard after so many decades, and finally receiving his father's acknowledgment, carried an unbearable weight.
"Tony, you should be happy."
Fenris patted him on the shoulder, hoping to steady his emotions as quickly as possible.
"My father left behind a set of research materials for me. The technology of his era wasn't advanced enough to make the idea real, but now I already have the ability to bring it into existence."
Tony also realized how badly he had lost control and kept taking deep breaths to steady himself. "But those materials are still in SHIELD's possession. I want to bring them back."
"I'm going to help my father make that dream real."
As he spoke, Tony's eyes began to go hollow again.
Even though he had spent a long time preparing himself mentally before taking the Heart-Shaped Herb, the moment he truly saw his parents again, he still lost control with shocking ease.
"Tony, I may not be able to help you with that."
Only after Tony's trembling had finally eased did Fenris speak. "Mr. Stark's technology is something only you can bring to life. You know that. This isn't my area."
"No. You can!"
The moment Fenris finished speaking, Tony's expression changed abruptly. The joy and sorrow in his eyes both twisted into an unprecedented savagery.
"I know the truth about what happened back then now!"
"My father had already reverse-engineered a new generation of Super-Soldier Serum. But when he and my mother drove away, they were deliberately murdered, and the serum was stolen!"
"It was James Barnes. It was Captain America Steve Rogers's best friend. He killed them!"
"I'm going to take revenge on him. I'm going to kill him with my own hands!"
(End of Chapter)
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