Marvel: The Awakened One

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Everyone knew eighties America had a nickname.

The Golden Age.

But just as SHIELD looked like SHIELD but really meant HYDRA, the Golden Age was a lie.

People called it the Golden Age, but it was really the Savage Age.

Statistics showed that banks across the country were robbed about one and a half times a day. In New York City, it was even worse—about five times a day, and that was a low estimate.

So when Hawk and Wanda showed up in town on their first day and ran into a bank robbery, it was nothing unusual. Nobody would even blink.

But what happened after that was where things got interesting.

From the moment the crew walked through the bank's front doors, it took them maybe three minutes to sprint back out with two stuffed duffel bags, jump into their car, and tear down the street.

Hawk and Wanda, who had already decided to rob the robbers, exchanged a look and followed.

Mostly Wanda.

Hawk's cosmic powers weren't working at the moment, but Wanda had been trained by Agatha Harkness and remembered everything from her Universe-616 self. For her, following a getaway car was easy.

Soon enough, they tailed the car to a nondescript warehouse near the Hudson River.

Inside, five men were counting the haul.

"Nice!"

"How much?"

"About six hundred and fifty grand. A hundred and thirty each!"

"Beautiful!"

"Jesus."

Cheers erupted from the crew.

This wasn't the twenty-first century. It was the eighties, when the dollar still had real value. Even in the future, George Stacy would only make about 150,000 a year.

The five robbers stared at the stacks of green bills, already dreaming about the good life.

Then a voice cut through the celebration.

"Good work, boys... You can hand over the cash now."

"..." The crew froze and snapped their heads toward the door.

A man and a woman stood in the doorway. The man who spoke leaned against the frame, looking calm, like he had wandered into the wrong room and just decided to stay.

The five men exchanged looks, then stood.

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" Their leader, a man with a shaggy Beatles haircut, glared at Hawk.

"Phoenix," Hawk said flatly. "Hawk Phoenix. Leave the money. Walk away."

The leader looked at his crew.

They burst out laughing.

He turned back to Hawk. "Are you joking?"

"No. It's a warning. Leave the money, and you keep your lives."

Hawk's expression did not change. He didn't mind robbing criminals. Honestly, if he had unlocked his Cosmo sooner, he would have started doing this years ago.

Morals? You wanted to preach morals to a dimension hopper?

More importantly, taking from robbers wasn't a moral problem. It was more like community service. Hawk hadn't robbed the bank—he was just robbing the ones who did.

The leader chuckled and lowered his head.

When he looked up, the smile was gone.

The next second, he vanished.

He reappeared behind Hawk.

Click.

The leader locked an arm around Hawk's throat and jammed a pistol against his temple.

"Give it to you? Who the hell do you think..."

Crack.

"Argh!"

Hawk did not wait.

He didn't even flinch when the gun pressed against his head. He grabbed the arm around his neck, twisted it back until the bone snapped, then hit again, breaking the leader's gun arm.

As the pistol hit the concrete, Hawk grabbed the screaming man by the throat and lifted him off the ground.

"John!"

"Boss!"

"Shit!"

Click.

"Let him go!"

The remaining four lost their smirks and drew their weapons. One of them panicked, pulling the trigger the instant his gun cleared the holster.

Bang.

Hum.

Wanda raised her right hand. Scarlet Chaos Magic flashed around the speeding bullet and stopped it in midair.

A second later, she clenched her fist.

The other four robbers shot up into the air, held off the floor, paralyzed and gagged by red energy.

Hawk looked at the man choking in his hand. His eyes narrowed as a suspicion formed.

"Mutant?" The leader's pupils shrank.

That answered the question.

Wanda looked at Hawk, curious. "What's a mutant?"

"Genetic mutation," Hawk said.

He remembered the wolf he had seen in the dimensional tunnel, and he remembered the timeline reset.

Ever since he found out Jean was lost somewhere in the multiverse, he had a feeling. She was stuck in a mutant universe. Her name was Jean. She had Wanda's red hair and his Phoenix Force. It was almost impossible not to think of Jean Grey.

Until now, that had only been a theory.

Now, he knew it was true.

This really was a mutant universe.

The wolf he had seen in the tunnel was Wolverine, Logan.

The timeline reset had been Logan rewriting history.

Days of Future Past.

At that moment, one of the robbers suspended in Wanda's magic, a kid who looked sixteen or seventeen at most, forced out a choked whisper.

"You... you're mutants too. Mutants help mutants."

Hawk snapped back to the present.

He glanced at the kid, then at the leader he was holding. He let out a short laugh and tossed the man aside like trash.

Wanda released her magic, and the four robbers hit the floor.

The kid scrambled toward his boss and slapped both hands onto the man's shattered arms.

Clumps of the kid's hair started to fall out. At the same time, the leader's broken arms snapped back into place, healing in seconds.

Equivalent exchange.

Hair for healing.

Wanda watched the display. "He's a mutant too?"

Hawk nodded. "Yeah. Probably Delta-level. Minor side effects."

"Delta-level?"

Hawk gave her the short version.

The X-Gene.

Mutation.

Mutant powers were all over the place. Not everyone got lucky with their genes. The ranking system was shaped like a pyramid.

At the top were Omega-level mutants. They had near-infinite potential and could manipulate matter, energy, or reality at a fundamental level.

Below them were Alpha-level mutants. Powerful, stable, and in full control of their abilities. They could turn their powers on and off like flipping a switch.

Next were Beta-level mutants. They were often as strong as Alphas, but there was a catch—usually some physical mutation they couldn't hide. One look and you knew they were different. Like Mystique, with her blue skin and scales, or Beast, covered in blue fur and huge limbs.

After that came Gamma-level mutants. They were strong, but their powers were flawed or hard to control. Take Rogue, for example—if you touched her skin, she would drain your life, memories, and powers, even if she didn't mean to. Or Arclight, whose shockwaves hurt both her enemies and herself.

Then came the Deltas.

They had weak abilities—nothing special, but no major deformities either. If there were side effects, they could handle them. They looked human and could live pretty normal lives. For mutants, this was the baseline.

Just like the kid.

Healing, paid for with hair loss.

As for the leader, he was probably a Delta too. Hawk's cosmic power was offline, but his eyes still worked. The man's teleportation had limits.

There was one more tier beneath them.

Epsilon-level.

The bottom of the barrel.

If Deltas were like regular people, Epsilons were the outcasts. They had weak powers and serious physical deformities. For them, the X-Gene wasn't a gift.

It was a curse...

Wanda listened quietly, taking it all in.

Then her gaze shifted back to the kid and the clumps of hair scattered across the floor.

"Mutants in this world..." she said slowly. "It doesn't look like they have it very good, does it?"

Hawk looked at her.

Wanda went on. "If things were really okay, that kid wouldn't have said, 'mutants help mutants.' People only say that when they have to stick together."

Hawk smiled.

"People don't mind suffering." He looked at the frightened mutants on the floor. "They just hate watching everyone else win."

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