The falling sphere of purple imaginary mass violently tore through space, instantaneously erasing the entire White House from existence!
The absolute political epicenter of the United States, a national symbol with centuries of history, completely vanished in the blink of an eye. Aside from a perfectly smooth, bottomless crater, absolutely nothing remained to indicate the building had ever existed.
The moment the catastrophic event occurred, the surviving top brass of the military, scattered across various deeply hidden black sites, received the encrypted telemetry data.
Through the eyes of their spy satellites, they watched the entire, horrifying sequence unfold:
The White Demon materializing on the lawn. The thick, suffocating mist of blood lingering over the plaza. The completely one-sided, utterly hopeless battle against the X-Men. The apocalyptic wave of spatial repulsion that effortlessly flattened everything within thousands of meters.
And finally, the White Demon casually swatting aside the prototype Sentinels, strolling into the Oval Office, ignoring the President's pleas, and erasing the nation's capital with that terrifying purple singularity—all while flashing a brilliant, mocking smile directly at their orbital cameras.
The generals were furious, of course. This was the ultimate, most humiliating provocation against the sovereignty of the United States!
But beneath their fury lay an absolute, paralyzing terror.
The White Demon had evolved to the point where he could shrug off a point-blank tactical nuclear warhead. They officially possessed absolutely zero military assets capable of scratching him!
Worse still, the White Demon had actively begun his retaliation. He had extracted their personal dossiers and secure operational data directly from the Oval Office. Given his omniscient sensory abilities and absolute mobility, it was an absolute certainty that he would hunt them down, one by one, and slaughter them!
"No! The Annihilation Protocol must be re-initiated!" one general shouted, his voice trembling with sheer panic during an encrypted emergency video conference. "We have crossed the point of no return! He is never going to let us live!"
Another general nodded, his face deathly pale. Recalling the apocalyptic slaughter at the White House, and remembering the chilling feeling that the White Demon had been looking down on their orbital satellite, his very soul shuddered.
"We must divert all black budget funding to Colonel Stryker's research immediately! He possesses the most profound understanding of the mutant genome. The Sentinel program—especially the units capable of field-testing multiple mutant abilities simultaneously—has immense developmental potential! In the future, it is entirely possible that a fully actualized Sentinel could rival the White Demon!"
"But... didn't the preliminary combat data already unequivocally prove that the Sentinels are completely useless against him?" another general argued, sounding completely defeated.
The general advocating for Stryker immediately fired back.
"No! The current Sentinels are merely rudimentary prototypes! The theoretical final stage of the Sentinel Program envisions automatons capable of instantaneously replicating any mutant ability they encounter, storing that genetic data, and immediately transmitting it across the entire Sentinel network!
"Furthermore, they will be capable of dynamically combining different X-Genes to generate hard-counters against specific threats!"
"But the White Demon's raw power cannot be overwhelmed by sheer numbers or parlor tricks anymore," another general countered bitterly. "His abilities possess absolutely zero blind spots! Whether it's long-range bombardment, close-quarters combat, absolute defense, or instantaneous regeneration... he has fundamentally peaked the mutant evolutionary tree!
"Even if the Sentinels assimilated every single mutant ability on Earth, and even if we built ten million of them, they still couldn't pose the slightest threat to him! He could effortlessly erase the entire armada with a single wave of that repulsive force!"
"You're not thinking big enough!" the supporting general retorted vehemently. "The ultimate vision for the Sentinel Program includes the theoretical capacity to artificially elevate the conceptual limits of a mutant ability!
"If we can artificially amplify the spatial-severing attacks, we can finally breach his invincible defense! If we can artificially amplify metallic skin to true invulnerability, our units can withstand his attacks!
"Furthermore, Stryker has acquired a highly unique mutant asset. This mutant possesses the ability to completely nullify all mutant powers within a certain radius. Even if his current range is too weak to affect the White Demon, if we can mechanically elevate the absolute limits of that nullification field, it will absolutely cripple him!"
"But that is all purely theoretical!" the dissenting generals argued. "Given our current technological capabilities, achieving that level of artificial genetic ascension is functionally impossible!"
The general supporting Stryker offered a mysterious, deeply confident smile. He clapped his hands twice.
The heavy doors to his secure bunker swung open, and two men walked into the room.
One was a rugged, heavily tattooed man who looked like a hardened Russian mobster. The other was an incredibly bizarre sight: a man with sickly green skin and a disproportionately massive, bulbous cranium.
The generals vaguely recognized the first man. He was the terrorist who had recently ambushed Tony Stark at the Monaco Grand Prix. His name was Ivan Vanko.
They did not recognize the second man at all.
Seeing the questioning looks from the council, the supporting general grinned.
"Trust me, gentlemen. Dr. Samuel Sterns and Dr. Vanko will absolutely not disappoint you!"
...
Outside the conference room, Colonel William Stryker commanded Mastermind—a mutant telepath capable of casting incredibly potent, realistic illusions—to drop his control over the supporting general's mind.
A deeply sinister, genuinely psychotic smile stretched across Stryker's face.
White Demon... just you wait.
...
Meanwhile, deep within the subterranean laboratories of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
Jean Grey, utilizing the fraction of the Phoenix Force she had finally managed to properly grasp, was actively accelerating the cellular regeneration of Cyclops' mangled body.
During the apocalyptic clash with the White Demon, she had been effortlessly overwhelmed. Just as she was about to be obliterated by that terrifying black-red singularity, a primal survival instinct had forced her to tap into the true power of the Phoenix, allowing her to barely survive the impact.
Immediately afterward, Quicksilver had swept through the ruins, desperate to evacuate them. But even at supersonic speeds, he couldn't completely shield them from the catastrophic shockwaves of the Shinra Tensei.
Aside from Wolverine—whose Adamantium skeleton and extreme healing factor allowed him to emerge relatively unscathed—every single X-Man had suffered catastrophic injuries!
More than half of Cyclops' torso had been completely pulverized by the spatial repulsion. If Jean hadn't instantaneously used the Phoenix Force to aggressively bind his cells together and force them to regenerate, Scott would have died on the spot.
The other members were similarly missing limbs or suffering from ruptured organs. However, under the miraculous, life-giving flames of the Phoenix, they were all rapidly recovering.
Jean even used her telekinetic molecular reconstruction to fully restore Professor X's lower half.
Finally, the team was physically whole again.
Yet, there was absolutely no joy or relief in the laboratory. A heavy, suffocating atmosphere of pure despair hung over the X-Men. The White Demon was an impenetrable, apocalyptic storm cloud pressing down on their chests, making it impossible to even breathe!
Suddenly, Cyclops punched the pristine white wall of the lab. A sickening crunch echoed, and bright red blood began to smear across the pristine surface.
"Havok is dead," Cyclops spat, his voice trembling with sheer rage and grief. "Darwin is dead. Hundreds of innocent civilians are dead! The Mutant Emancipation Act is completely buried! Everything we have bled and sacrificed for over the past decade... it was all rendered into a sick joke by him!
"We have to kill him! We absolutely have to kill him!"
This time, even Professor X didn't interject with a lecture about peace.
The X-Men were consumed by absolute, unadulterated hatred for the White Demon. He was no longer just a mass murderer; he was the ultimate, insurmountable obstacle preventing the peaceful coexistence of mutants and humanity!
But the furious shouting quickly faded into defeated silence.
Given the White Demon's absolute, god-like power... how could they possibly hope to kill him?
Slowly, every single pair of eyes in the room turned toward Jean Grey.
Having successfully harnessed a fragment of the entity inside her, she was now theoretically capable of fully mastering the Phoenix Force. Furthermore, it was highly probable she could attract and assimilate even more fragments of the cosmic entity!
She was their sole, desperate hope.
_______
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