Marvel: Death Dealer-Chapter 131: Wrong Choice

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Charles

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Jean

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Scott

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Ororo

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Bobby and Warren

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Dante would’ve already killed Selene if it wasn’t for the Externals. Their psychic connection to each other complicated things. He had to take care of the Externals to avoid any future trouble.

Tendrils erupted from under his coat and wove together over his arms.

“Shhow them weee aaare the apeex.”

Venom had finally awakened after digesting thousands of symbiotes. And the first thing it wanted to do was to exert its dominance over everyone in the room. In simple terms, it had grown cocky in Dante’s company.

‘Little guy.’

He allowed himself to be covered under the dense symbiote armor. It was worth seeing how powerful Venom had become after absorbing thousands of symbiote fragments, which were all complete symbiotes in their own rights.

He tilted his neck and rolled his shoulders. The power boost was small. Hyperion’s Resonance Link already offered more than he needed most of the time. His defense seemed sturdier, but that might just be the extra layer of hardened symbiote.

Dante shifted his attention to Emma. “What about you? Are you stopping me too?”

Emma dropped her diamond form. She smoothed the front of her white jacket with one unhurried hand and smiled.

“Emma Frost is many things,” she said, almost philosophically, as if narrating for an audience. “Calculating. Self-interested. Ruthless. Manipulative. Her morals adapt to any situation for maximum profit. But one thing she is not is ungrateful.”

He shook his head. “You don’t have to be. I owed you two favors.”

Besides, he would’ve resurrected the Hellions just for Sharon.

“Shut up.” She chuckled. “I’ll stand with you even if I die.”

He gave her a round of applause for that unyielding determination. He always knew Emma had this in her. She only needed a catalyst to dig this out.

“But I don’t think you’ll let me.” Emma put a hand on her chest, right where her heart was. “That’s just the type of man you are. The type of man I fell…”

Seeing her pause there, he showed an amused smile. “Fell in love with?”

In the heat of emotions, she had almost dropped a love confession. He wasn’t impervious to the signs she had been giving him. He wasn’t that dense.

The moment Emma Frost understood what she had just said in front of everyone, deep red rose to her cheeks. The White Queen’s face had gone pink in embarrassment.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Slow footsteps arrived just as he got the chance to tease her.

Sipping a dark drink through a straw planted in a glass, Psylocke strolled in with her left hand resting comfortably on the hilt of her katana. It seemed she had taken a detour on the way to enjoy herself in the Club. Reasonable considering the problem had been for the X-Men, not her.

Psylocke noticed the way two sides stood and unapologetically walked past the X-Men to stand beside Emma.

“I should’ve known Dante started this,” she thought out loud. The look on her face was something along the lines of “Damn Dante is behind all the troubles in this city”.

Under the mask, Dante smiled fondly. The ninja lady would get one hell of a beating in their next spar. He had already scheduled that for some time next week.

Xavier leaned slightly forward in his wheelchair, elbows resting on the armrests. His fingers laced beneath his chin. The stillness of the pose gave him an almost immovable presence.

“What has Selene done to you and Emma?”

Dante glanced at Emma and tilted his chin toward Xavier, asking her to explain this.

Emma took a deep breath. A glance at Selene’s face was all it took to flush away her embarrassment and get back into the violent mindset.

“Selene had Trevor Fitzroy kill my students.” Her icy tone conveyed every bit of hatred she had for Selene. “I was forced to watch them being slaughtered one by one before my very eyes.”

Xavier and the X-Men were shaken to know the truth.

Emma’s breathing grew heavier as her grip on Selene’s hair tightened. Just recalling that day had made her emotions run rampant. “She’ll die for this.”

The truth stunned Xavier and the X-Men.

The chandelier swayed on the ceiling. Small lightning bolts crashed down and furious winds howled through the chambers. The temperature dropped to a freezing level.

Ororo’s mood had completely switched after learning Selene’s sin of killing Emma’s students.

“Charles, I told you to stop this monster. I had a feeling she has been feeding on others to stay alive, and yet you never listen to me,” she spoke calmly, but anyone could sense the anger being restrained under that. She pointed to Selene with an open hand before clenching her fist. “Now, she has devoured young kids who had barely begun their lives. Their death is on us as much as it is on her.”

Out of all X-Men, Jean and Ororo had spent the most time with the Hellions. They knew the Hellions had flaws and also that they were not pure evil. They were just misguided teens trying to navigate a dangerous world without their families.

“This…” Xavier was at a loss for words. “Ororo, I didn’t know it would lead—”

The sound of glass shattering pulled away their attention. Psylocke tossed her glass on the floor and unsheathed her katana.

She rested the blade against Selene’s neck and looked at Emma, asking for her permission.

Psylocke might have a distant relationship with the Hellions, but the connection was there. She cherished every one of them because she had watched them grow alongside Emma.

Emma shook her head. “She won’t die like this.”

“Xavier!” Selene twisted and wrenched back control to tilt her head. Emma, without her diamond form, was simply overpowered by Selene. “Dante has already resurrected her students. They want to kill me for nothing?!”

Every face turned toward Dante, looking at him as if they were meeting him for the first time. The X-Men knew him to be capable but not capable enough to reverse someone’s death.

Emma returned to her diamond form and slammed Selene’s head on the ground. Her expensive left heel settled on the back of Selene’s skull. “Why does that matter? She killed them. We’re going to kill her.”

Psylocke’s anger dissipated a little. She stepped beside Selene’s right and placed the katana back on the Witch’s neck. “Emma is right.”

Ororo’s features eased to know the kids were fine. And the weather returned to calm. “You’re a man of miracles.”

Dante didn’t know how to accept that sincere compliment. So he just nodded.

“Then this matter is over.” Scott called for the matter to be concluded before Xavier. “You’ve already punished Selene enough.”

Psylocke glared at Scott. “No.”

One word without elaboration. She spoke less the more furious she became.

Dante put a hand on Psylocke’s shoulder and regarded Scott calmly. “Help me understand something. If I killed your professor brutally and brought him back, you wouldn’t be mad at me, right?”

Scott had no argument against Dante. Agreeing to Dante would make Xavier’s life seem trivial, straining his relationship with everyone in the X-Men mansion. Refusing would make him look like a hypocrite.

“Stupid kid.” Dante turned away from him and found Jean Grey on Scott’s side. She had been hesitating on the side for a while now, taking no sides between her friends and her new boss. “Jean, are you going to stay with them?”

She hung her head at his question. Her fists clenched, a small reminder of her inner struggle.

After a few moments, she met Dante’s gaze with a determined look. “Thanks for everything, Professor and… everyone. I’m leaving the academy and… the X-Men.”

She walked past Scott, toward a new future.

***

The past two days at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters had been full of heaviness. Xavier saw every little change Jean had gone through. She laughed a little louder and expressed her happiness freely. Jean had been having fun with everyone, spreading love to everyone. The taste of using her powers for good and the taste of freedom had changed her.

Nobody took that positively when she had opened up about saying goodbye in two days. She hadn’t hidden anything about following Dante.

Scott hadn’t said a word about it, but he was clearly depressed to see his childhood friend leaving his side.

But now, as Jean walked away from his side, Scott reached out and grabbed her hand.

“Don’t go.”

The two days of brewing emotions forced him to make a choice.

Jean shut her eyes forcefully and took a deep breath before exhaling. “Scott, let go.”

“Jean, you know how I feel about you. Don’t leave—”

She jerked her hand free from his grasp and whirled around. The furious look on her face stopped him cold. That look also stopped Bobby and Warren from trying anything.

“Scott, I told you I don’t want a romantic relationship.”

“You rejected me because of SHIELD. But I don’t think they’ll attack us for no reason.”

She grabbed Scott’s collar with both hands and glared up at him. “I don’t want to live in a world where I have to shrink myself to be safe. I’m going to use my powers to help people and prove to SHIELD that mutants aren’t a threat.”

Jean had been holding back, trying to do a peaceful departure. However, Scott’s insistence had cracked the lid off it, making her emotions explode at once.

“You can stay and live safely in the mansion.”

She released Scott’s collar, turned, and walked. By the time he tried to reach out again, she had already reached Dante’s side. Scott stood there with his head down and his fists tight at his sides.

“I don’t support killing, but Selene needs to go.” Jean raised her voice so the whole room could hear her. She looked toward Selene, who was still pinned under Emma’s heel. “Imagine how many we would save from suffering by not taking action. Which is something the X-Men always do.”

The shift in Xavier’s expression conveyed how hard that landed on his chest.

Ororo, still hovering just above his wheelchair, looked down at him. “Dante has worked tirelessly to save New York. I will not fight him to shield a monster like Selene.”

She stated her stance with complete transparency and flew back through the door.

The X-Men had lost its unity in one night. Dante, who was responsible for it, felt like laughing. He had never liked Charles Xavier’s idealism, which had caused countless mutants to suffer throughout multiple comics, yet the Charles before him was somehow even worse in comparison.

Warren, who had been quiet this whole time, uncrossed his arms. “Professor… maybe we let this one go.”

“Yeah!” Bobby said. “The world will be better off without an evil mutant.”

Charles Xavier slowly wheeled forward and stopped a few feet from Emma. He looked at Selene’s face pressed beneath Emma’s heel. His eyes were heavy with a burden.

“Those children suffered because I chose hope over sense,” Xavier spoke in an apologetic voice. “I thought SHIELD’s oppression would give you a chance to learn restraint. How did you become worse?”

He had hoped, somewhat naively, that Selene would improve and become better.

“I did not,” Selene said, gritting her teeth. “I only took life-force from the irredeemable scum. Why do you think I built a faction around rich and influential people? They are the worst.”

“And the children? You would call them irredeemable?”

“No!” Selene struggled to lift her head, but Emma’s diamond foot held her firm. “I invited Emma to give her hope that I can resurrect them… I wanted her to stop playing around and show her loyalty to the Club.”

Emma’s foot pressed down harder on Selene’s skull. “Charles, don’t you dare ask me to spare this trash.”

Xavier knew Emma still had restraint. Rather than asking Dante to overpower them, she chose to convince Xavier to leave.

“Emma—”

“Enough, Charles. I know the speech by heart.” Her voice became cold. “You’ll tell me to be better than the people who hurt us. Here’s my advice: step into the outside world and see how much your naive ideals are worth.”

Xavier’s expression tightened. “I’m only saying killing her won’t stop the cycle. We, mutants, must prove to Nick Fury that mutants can be better. We can rise above hatred, vengeance, and cruelty.”

Emma chuckled coldly. “I don’t care. I want her gone so my students and I can stop looking over our shoulders every single second of the day.”

Xavier gazed at Emma for a few seconds and turned to Dante. “You have done remarkable things by saving countless lives. Without you, Emma would’ve broken down in grief.”

Dante tilted his head and pointed at his own masked face. “You’re talking to me?”

“Allowing vengeance to rule you and you’ll become exactly what you’re punishing her for,” Xavier continued. “Let me imprison Selene. She won’t see daylight again.”

Dante clicked his tongue. “If you want to convince me, use violence. That’s the only language I understand.”

Xavier clenched his fists. His telepathy was useless against Dante. Otherwise, he would have already controlled Dante. Without Ororo, his X-Men lacked the power to stop Dante.

He glanced at Scott, the only mutant who could possibly defeat Dante at this moment.

“X-Men, rescue Selene.”

The order left everyone stunned into silence. Even Jean stared at him, surprised that Xavier would push this far for a child-murderer like Selene.

Scott pressed two fingers against his visor, and a wide red beam was released. A concentrated wave of concussive force slammed into Dante’s chest. The force could’ve easily destroyed a freight train and ripped a hole through a mountain.

It did nothing.

“Scott, stop!”

Scott ignored Jean. He roared and unleashed a wider, continuous concussive blast.

Dante just put up a hand and absorbed the impact like it was nothing. He turned his head slowly toward Xavier, his burning eyes conveying “You made the wrong choice.”