Chapter 27 - My SI Stash #27 - A Crooked Man by Stranger (Marvel) (1/2)
-I think this is the 2nd SI Marvel here? I was hesitating between this fic and The Spider but ended up with this one, it's quite crooked
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Sypnosis: ???
Rated: M
Words: 96K
Posted on: forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-crooked-man-marvel-si.759274/ (Stranger)
PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (*´ー｀*)
-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)
Chapter 1
A Crooked Man - In A Crooked House
AN: This is a rewrite of my story ”A Crooked World”, both to make it less revenge-ficy, and to switch to a first-person narrative, since it felt weird writing a self-insert in third person. Things will develop a bit different this time around, though like in the previous story, this setting is still roughly Civil War era Marvel.
You know, Genoshas beaches are really quite beautiful, I can see why this island was considered such a paradise, even if it's prosperity came at a level of exploitation of a minority group that would have made even the staunched South African apartheid enthusiast tell them to dial it back a little.
Of course, it was still one of the worst things that have ever happened, and if I ever get my hands on her, I'm sending her right into the sun. I'm pretty sure I can do that now, I haven't actually tried. Might even stick, but considering she's a psychic parasite piggybacking on Xaviers DNA, you can never be sure.
I wave my hand, the sand in front of me bulging and forming into a large pile before beginning to shape itself to the image in my mind. It quickly solidifies into a glass statue of myself, my transparent doppleganger glittering in the sunlight. The thrill of these powers, the sheer amazement of seeing whatever I can imagine take form in reality right in front of me, doesn't look to be losing it's novelty anytime soon. Even this, creating a glass sculpture out of myself just from beach sand, is little more than the equivalent of doodling in a notebook.
But I want to be used to my powers before I get started with the work I had planned.
I give another wave and the statue collapses back into sand, before I turn around and look at the twisted, marred ruins that is all that remains of Genosha, the ”mutant homeland”. Under those ruins lie the bones of 16 million mutants, who survived being enslaved and used as livestock, rose up, only to get caught up in the endless bullshit with Magneto and the X-Men, and finally they were just obliberated.
Atleast they didn't have to watch mutantkind as a whole get driven to the brink of extinction because nobody could be bothered to get Scarlet Witch a goddamn therapist.
As far as I can tell, my body is that of a mutant now, despite looking exactly as it did back in... I want to say ”the real world”, but apparently this world is also real, except all the ridiculous superhero stuff actually exists here, including mutation that gives you superpowers instead of mildly useful biological deviations if you're lucky, and turns you inside out if you're not. And for some reason, whatever quirk of fate brought me here saw fit to hand me the Straight Flush of superpowers - Reality Warping.
Which is a bit of a double edged sword, because while it's an awesome power, Marvel reality warpers tend to go looney tunes in pretty short order. Atleast I don't have omnipotence as well or I'd probably already be insane. If I start turning everything into Wonderland on cocaine like Jim Jaspers did, I'll have to cut back for a while. But for now, I have work to do.
Even without omnipotence, figuring out what's going on in the world is as easy as willing it to happen, I just have to be specific, as I found out early on when I wanted to know what was going on in New York and nearly gave myself a migraine when I got almost every single bit of news about the city dumped into my brain. After testing the limits of it a bit, I simply started to project a screen in the middle of the air and had my power show whatever information I wanted onto it. As far as I can tell, this is Marvel shortly after the godawful Civil War, Cap is dead, Tony Stark is running SHIELD, mutantkind is depowered, a bunch of my favorite heroes are on the run from the law, and the Hulk is stuck in outer space. About the only thing that didn't suck about my new reality was that I couldn't find any trace of the Skrulls hiding anywhere, Elektra, Hank Pym and Spider Woman really are who they seem to be. So no Secret Invasion then, which is atleast one problem off my plate. Of course, there's still Norman Osborn and the Illuminati to deal with, but one problem at a time.
I briefly consider doing a dramatic walk in the air back to the city ruins, but considering that everyone else here are still dead, it seems a little silly to try and show off to the seagulls. Instead, I simply will myself from one spot to the next, stepping through an invisible door to the highest remaining building on the island. The ruined husk of the skyscr_a_p_er groans in the wind, but it's stood this long, it can stand a few minutes longer.
I feel a twinge in the back of my mind, like an unused muscle flexing.
....
Half a world away, chaos erupts on the streets of the Middle East Side in New York City, formerly known as M-Town, a ghetto neighborhood for mutants, and for the past few years just a regular ghetto when most of the inhabitants lost their powers. Flames and electricity arcs over the crowds, scales and wings and strange-colored skin bursting back into existance. The same scene plays out across the world as powers thought to be gone forever suddenly reactivates. Even those who never had powers before suddenly find themselves mutants.
A few miles away from New York, Professor Charles Xavier awakens with a start in his bed, with the strange sensation that some great flaw has been corrected, though his own power can't quite put a finger on what. When his excited students burst in a few minutes later, he's already awake to meet them.
Tony Stark has a less pleasant start to his day, as he's met at his desk by hundreds of angry messages from congressmen and senators who had been assured that the ”mutant threat” had been dealt with once and for all. all demanding some variation of the same thing; make all our problems go away, that's why we had you fight your little war. Not for the first time, Stark wishes Steve was still here, that he had just listened. Maybe then he'd have someone to help share this burden, which is made all the heavier knowing that he put it on himself.
A haggered Pietro Maximoff looks out the window from the crumbling old M-Town tenament he's squatting in, and witnesses the chaos in the street. His hope dies in his heart when he finds that his own powers remain gone.
In a little village in the Wundagore mountains, a woman known to the villagers only as Wanda feels a faint stirring of...something, something vaguely familiar. But nothing else seems to happen, so she simply forgets about it and moves on with her day, her chores waiting for her.
The man once known as Magneto barely stirs from his spot on the park bench in Argentina when he hears the news on a radio in a nearby cafe. He's not surprised when his own powers make no reappearance. Perhaps this is all he deserves.
....
It's hard to describe the feeling of using my power on this scale, just changing whatever is in front of me is one thing, but this was affecting the entire planet, even if it did only involve turning the X-Gene back on for the relatively small group of people who used to have it. With three notable exceptions.