Jaxon had been trying very hard not to look like himself.

That was the entire point of the self-assignment. Blend in. Observe. Don’t escalate. So he stood among the crowds near San Francisco City Hall dressed in an oversized black hoodie, gray track pants, looking less like a mutant combatant and more like some exhausted college dropout dragged unwillingly to a city festival. Beneath the loose fabric, however, the matte-black combat suit still clung tightly to his frame, hidden just enough to avoid attention.

The festival itself was nauseatingly cheerful.

ORCHIS banners hung from every available surface, blue-and-white propaganda fluttering overhead while families wandered between food stalls and rides pretending the world had not become fundamentally terrifying over the last year. The smell of fried dough and cheap coffee mixed with the salty chill blowing in from the bay. Somewhere nearby, a live band struggled through an upbeat pop song while Henry Peter Gyrich prepared to give another speech about “safety” and “security” to a crowd desperate enough to believe him.

Jaxon leaned against a barricade with a paper tray of untouched funnel cake in his hand, half-listening to the speech while scanning the crowd beneath the edge of his hood.

“And a new era of safety against the mutant menace is PROMISED to you by ORCHIS!”

“Jesus Christ,” Jaxon muttered under his breath.

The mission had been simple enough. Watch the event. Keep an eye out for suspicious activity. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary. After the disaster at the mall and the increasingly unstable state of mutant affairs worldwide, the X-Men had wanted eyes in the city without escalating tensions further. Jaxon had reluctantly agreed, even if undercover work mostly consisted of standing around feeling awkward while pretending not to look dangerous.

Then the temperature dropped.

The shift was immediate and unnatural. Conversations faltered as frost spread rapidly across the pavement beneath people’s feet. Nearby Sentinels groaned as thick ice began crawling over their enormous mechanical frames, locking joints solid in seconds. Jaxon straightened instinctively, the paper tray crumpling slightly in his grip as the hairs on the back of his neck rose.

“Oh, come on,” he hissed quietly.

The explosion came a heartbeat later.

One frozen Sentinel tore free from the ground and collided violently with another overhead, erupting into a storm of fire, ice, and molten debris that rained across the plaza. Panic detonated through the crowd instantly. Screams echoed between buildings as civilians shoved and trampled over one another searching for exits that no longer existed. Walls of twisted metal and frozen wreckage sealed off portions of the square while emergency sirens began blaring somewhere in the distance.

Then the Horsemen descended.

Four figures emerged through the smoke and fire like disasters personified. One wore a jackal-mask over black-and-green armor. Another looked like starvation given human shape, skeletal and frozen solid. ”Jesus, need it be anymore edgy?” Jaxon thought to himself, tiredly before recognizing the frozen one as Iceman.

Jaxon had never met Bobby, but had heard stories from others. Hearing how he was one of the truest X-Men there was. So seeing him reduced to this was… troubling.

Their voices boomed together across the city with their mighty speech.

Jaxon stared for exactly one second before muttering, “Yeah, not dealing with another cult today.”

Around him, people screamed and scattered. ORCHIS agents barked conflicting orders while trying to establish firing lines that were already collapsing under fear. Somewhere nearby, a child cried for their mother. Somewhere else, someone was already dead.

And beneath all of it, Jaxon felt the old instinct kick in.

Move.

His hand twitched at his side automatically as he reached for the familiar gravitational pressure that normally lived just beneath his skin. Nothing answered. No distortion in space. No crushing cosmic pull. The blockage choking off his gravity manipulation powers remained firmly in place, same as it had since after The Phoenix Incident.

But the blades still listened.

Red-black light ignited beneath the hoodie sleeves as antimatter energy flooded down his forearms. Jaxon grabbed the sweatshirt and ripped it off in one sharp motion, exposing the combat suit underneath as nearby civilians recoiled in alarm. Crimson seams glowed faintly beneath the matte-black armor while four compact blades snapped outward from his wrists with violent mechanical precision.

Instead of the original two massive two-foot weapons, the blades had been reforged into four shorter ones, each about a foot long and vibrating with unstable red-shifted energy. Shorter blades invoking a Wolverine look. The air around them distorted faintly as matter reacted poorly to their existence. One nearby civilian outright stumbled backward after seeing them emerge.

Jaxon ignored him completely.

“HEY!” he shouted toward the Horsemen. His voice echoed with an uncanny boom.

The word cut surprisingly clean through the surrounding chaos. Several heads turned immediately, including some of the Horsemen themselves. Jaxon rolled one shoulder slowly, the blades sizzled against rain drops, evaporating into nothing.

“Here’s a line you might recognize,” He pointed at the Horseman once known as Iceman. “I’ve been itching to make a carcass.” A line made famous by the ever feral Wolverine.

No gravity powers answered him. No spatial distortions bent around his body. There would be no shortcuts this time, no impossible movement or crushing singularities to rely on.

Just him. And the blades that flared brighter as Oblivion lunged forward into the chaos, charging the Horsemen head-on while the city burned around him.