Whoosh—
Boom—Boom—Boom—Boom.
Whoosh—whoosh.
A silhouette moved through the darkness, it had something like a mace gripped tight in one hand, the figure was weaving beneath the moonlight in what looked like a dance for its life. Thick, serpentine shapes tore toward the figure at impossible speeds, vine-like things that cracked through the air like living whips, but each time the figure twisted its body clear at the very last instant, sometimes with room to spare, other times so close the trailing edges hissed past and grazed the very hem of its clothes.
It flipped backward, sometimes forward, other times sideways, over and over, the motion so fluid it seemed less learned than simply born into the body performing it. And every so often, when the vines came too thick and fast to slip past any longer, the mace swept around in one wide, violent arc, and whatever stood in its path exploded outward into a spray of splinters and dust.
Boom—
---
Moonlight spread across the vast landscape; the sky was crowded with stars without so much as a wisp of cloud to soften their brilliance. Late as the hour was, the night sky still gave off enough light to keep the world below clearly visible.
Actually, Maverick simply forgot about the time difference before coming all the way here crossing the Atlantic. But was he going to admit it?
An hour after that, Sarah lay sprawled across the ground, arms and legs thrown wide, chest heaving as she stared up at the sky above her. Nearby, Maverick sat cross-legged, watching her somewhat amusedly.
The area around them, meanwhile, looked all kinds of messed up. Not exactly ruined, but more like someone had gotten a little too enthusiastic with their… gardening.
Tree trunks were jutting out at every angle, some rising straight toward the sky while others were twisting low across the ground like enormous, half-buried snakes. Thick vines smothered the whole clearing, tangling together with thinner ones in a chaotic mess while broken chunks of bark were scattered everywhere. The ground was cracked and torn open in places, with more than a few small craters suggesting that something, or several somethings, had come crashing down with considerable force.
But the scene was only confined to a small radius, a modest scar against the otherwise sprawling rock and grass of the island around it.
"Professor X apparently thinks I could reach your level someday…" Sarah complained, pushing herself up into a sitting position as well. "I really want to know what gave him that idea…"
Maverick rested an elbow on his knee and leaned his chin into his palm. He chuckled, "it certainly wasn't me."
"You're supposed to say something encouraging…"
Maverick chuckled again, then stretched his arms behind him and leaning back. He looked around at the mess his sister, actually, the two of them had made, a smile still tugging at his lips.
Her potential was indeed not bad, although Charles might have exaggerated it somewhat. Maverick placed her on par with, or very nearly edging into Alpha-level mutant territory now, with every sign suggesting Omega-level might not be far off down the line.
To think that a year ago all she was able to manage was coaxing existing plant life to grow a little faster than it should, and now she could put those same powers to genuine use in combat.
She could now grow trees at astonishing speeds and command their roots and vines as though they were extensions of her own limbs. She could send wooden tendrils lashing out to attack of their own accord, use roots and creeping vines for crowd control, raise entire walls of solid wood from newly grown trees for defence. Basically, give her enough space and she could turn her surroundings into a personal playground.
It reminded him of Hashirama Senju's Wood Style, albeit a heavily watered-down version, just limited to manipulating trees and vines. It wasn't as though she could conjure wooden clones of herself, or summon some towering wooden Buddha, but then again, that too may not be entirely out of the question should she one day reach Omega territory, or beyond.
Wood Style! Thousand-Armed Buddha!
A stupid grin crept onto his face at the thought, his sister, perched high atop some colossal wooden golem in the middle of the Battle of New York, raining absolute havoc down on the Chitauri army.
Maverick had no idea, of course, just how much of that particular fantasy was destined to come true.
"What's so funny…"
"Cough, cough… anyways, this is seriously impressive... I'm curious how Charles went about developing your abilities…"
"It wasn't really Professor X," said Sarah, propping her chin on one hand. "It was Uncle Logan and Auntie Ororo. The professor just gave me ideas."
Hmm…
Kishimoto's masterpiece wouldn't come out until 1999, so Maverick couldn't help but wonder where exactly Charles had drawn his inspiration from. Regardless, the man was doing a fine job, leaving Sarah's development in the hands of that bald genius was the right call.
"Come on, let's head home."
Sarah got to her feet after him, brushing the dirt from her clothes. She glanced around hesitantly at the mess, "are we going to do something about this? I don't want Uncle Ed scolding me for messing up his island."
Maverick picked up the weapon that was long as his own arm, then swung it easily over one shoulder. It was a spiked, all metal mace, because why not. In fact, he hadn't used a single spell throughout that whole exercise, relying purely on agility and raw strength instead.
"Leave it." He was genuinely curious, "I want to see what happens over time."
There wasn't anything unusual about the trees and vines, at least as far as his magical sense could tell. They felt no different from naturally grown plant life.
"Besides, anyone who wants to scold you is going to have to taste this first." He grinned, then swung the mace once more, sending it spinning into the air. It flipped end over end a couple of times before dropping neatly back into his hand.
---
An hour later, a similar portal opened in the middle of their living room, and Maverick stepped through, with his sister following behind. The mace was put away, of course. Otherwise, his mother would have had a few things to say about it.
Thankfully, she wasn't home, Isabella had probably picked her up.
Sarah meanwhile ran straight to her room to take a shower, that ugly suit must have been unbearable by now.
Once again, he made a mental note to put together some proper gear for her. He dropped her off at the X-Mansion later, then disappearing off himself to meet with another acquaintance.
But first, he took a quick turn around the city, then across a handful of other major capitals to get a proper sense of everything that had changed over the past two weeks. He wanted to see it for himself. Seeing was believing, after all.
At a glance, nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. Life carried on much as it always had, London in particular, things seemed to have settled back into their usual rhythm. People in suits moved briskly between offices, pedestrians wandered the pavements shopping or simply going about their business, and the city hummed along the way it always did.
Only upon closer inspection and listening in on a few passing conversations, he saw the changes.
Basically, two out of every three conversations touched on the current state of things; magic, the sweeping historical changes still unearthing, and of course, not forgetting aliens. More than once, he caught his name also drifting out of some stranger's mouth, people musing over whatever they had read or watched on the news.
He spotted a few of witches and wizards here and there as well, wands holstered openly at their sides, a few even dressed in full wizarding robes, which stood out rather starkly against everyone else's ordinary clothing. They drew curious glances wherever they went, and more than a few passersby wandered over, curious to ask questions or get a photograph with them.
Selfies, he mused. Were those a thing already?
On the other hand, he didn't encounter any serious hostility that actually turned into confrontation. Perhaps that was simply London, its people were after all more used to magic than anywhere else, having been saved in one small way or another during the whole drama with Voldemort and Grindelwald, and everything that had followed after.
Witches and wizards were permitted now to walk freely through the Muggle world with their wands visible, though the question of using magic openly in public remained under discussion still, and likely would stay that way for a good while yet. Still, this alone was more than enough for now. Seeing the magical world mingling so openly with the Muggles, in time, it would simply become an ordinary sight, unremarkable and expected. That was the whole point.
In the other major cities he passed through also, the scenes were much the same. Fewer witches and wizards to be seen, certainly, but a scattering here and there all the same, if anything, the curiosity they drew ran even higher outside London.
Distant relatives were discovering that a cousin or second cousin had been a witch or wizard all along. Friends were confessing the truth to friends, watching nervously for the reaction that followed.
Maverick came across a few such moments during his stroll in the sky across cities, snippets of conversation caught in passing. Some people took the news with wide-eyed surprise. Others seemed almost thrilled by it, eager to see a demonstration, or to be taken across to the magical side of the world and shown around properly. He heard every kind of reaction wandering as he did from capital to capital.
Of course, not everywhere, and not everyone, was receiving such news quite so warmly. Here and there, he caught something colder beneath the surface, jealousy in places, fear in others. Once or twice, something closer to open disgust as well.
There wasn't any violent confrontations, not yet, not that he had seen, though it would be foolish to assume there never would be, not once the initial shock wore off and people's private feelings began to win out over their better judgment.
For now, nearly every nation across the globe was sitting under something close to unofficial martial law, quietly watching its own citizens for any sign of unrest, particularly the kind of gathering that could turn into something else entirely.
Around two in the afternoon London time Maverick then decided to cut his stroll short and returned back to England, it was to a small town called Cokeworth, tucked somewhere in the country's Midlands.
He Apparated in front of a weathered brick house that stood quietly at the end of a narrow street.
He recalled the address given to him by the new "friend" he had made, then looked at the house itself.
Even in broad daylight, the place looked as though it had never heard of the concept of cheerfulness.
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