#soi starter

she stepped away from the now bustling and crowded city, away from the prying eyes of locals that knew who she was and others that were now finding out. lorna had decided that after she ensured dawn was cared for and watched, that she’d need quiet and distance to test a few theories.

her powers had been growing, or perhaps it was just that she was exercising them more now than she ever had before. she’d used them to hold up again thanos in the soul stone, help crush the gauntlet made of alien metal, took down a building after pulling a bunker out from underneath, and most recently – she felt the metallic elements in the earth’s surface enough to shift the ground. she was always sensitive to metal and the electromagnetic spectrum, but to feel the specific elements mixed in the ground was new. 

lorna stood at the border of the city and ridgeback mountains, curious if she could recreate the moment it’d happened or if her powers were only situationally based. she held up her hands, swirls of green magnetic energy flowing around her fingers as she tried to search out the elements again. “come on, come on –” she muttered to herself, caught off guard as she could feel someone approaching and immediately let go of whatever grip she had over it. “shit – sorry. i was just.. working on something.”

With a gentle knock, the blonde alien pushed open the door to the Sanctum. Stephen and his group had kept her safe while they were trapped in that realm when she discovered her powers couldn’t work there without the proper solar energy the world would normally provided her. From this, she remembered where it was said she could find them if she were in the area on the outside. Hopefully they’d meant that, because Karolina had been on the streets in New York in the meantime and a real bed was seeming incredibly inviting. 

“Hello? Anyone home?” She called out, shifting a bag of belongings she’d accumulated over her shoulder and waiting for a response.

Tony had been to many places - visited every continent on the planet and even gone to space, but he’d never set foot in a city of metal before.

And he had to say - he really quite liked it. Erik’s city was cleaner than New York, and the towering skyscrapers lent a distinctly high tech feel to it, even if it sometimes almost felt like something out of an evil dictator’s scrapbook. But so far, Erik had been kind to them. Really, the only person he’d actually threatened to yeet off the island was him.

Tony really didn’t understand why Erik disliked him. It probably had something to do with being Iron Man and not having a lot of iron on him.

Either way, he found himself enjoying a relaxing stroll by the water, killing time while waiting for Stephen to finish whatever complex ritual he was working on. Bored, he opted to strike up conversation with the nearest passerby. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” he said, gesturing at the sunset. “Quiet, peaceful. Easy to forget that we’re trapped in a reality bubble that could collapse at any time. But then again, you could get hit by a car crossing the road, so I suppose we live dangerously all the time.” He smiled. “How’re you finding Genosha?”

there is no i, esme,                         there’s only we.                                             you’re nothing.

it wasn’t her sisters fault. they were stuck in that place too, and perhaps they were just better weapons than she was. esme still loved them. they were her sisters, they were all she really had in this world. and they didn’t abandon her in that forsaken jungle when she’d been poisoned, that had to count for something.

she needed distance from them to separate her thoughts from theirs. it didn’t come as a surprise to her that it hadn’t taken long for someone to establish a bar on genosha, as she slid into a seat, esme ordered herself a martini and leaned away from the bar, careful not to touch the surface. it’s sticky.

“i guess bars are the same no matter what part of the planet you’re stuck on.”

Peggy had been walking down a familiar street in Red Hook, Jarvis trailing nervously behind her. She’d ducked her head to step carefully over a sewer grate, and when she’d looked back up she’d found open skies, a singular (somewhat ugly) gray building, and swathes of lush green grass beneath her feet. She couldn’t help but draw in a sharp, stunned breath, turning on her heel to review the sudden change with Jarvis, though a quick scan of her radius informed her he was nowhere in sight. Panic flooded her stomach, quick and cold.

Peggy reached for her gun -- a belated reaction, but a due one just the same. There was no one in her immediate surroundings, but years of espionage had taught her that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone watching. She didn’t feel capable of doing much, besides just staring at the giant building in front of her like a ridiculous, gaping fish. Even setting aside the feelings of displacement brought by such a sudden change, Peggy was struck with the overwhelming notion that something about the scene before her wasn’t quite right. Like she didn’t belong. 

Letting out a slightly quivering breath, she kept her gun in front of her and turned her back to the building, trying to make something out of the rest of her surroundings. The strangeness of it felt like a lingering dream, but even as the thought crossed her mind, Peggy knew it held no merit. She could feel goosebumps rising on her collar, grass tickling her ankles, and cold air pulling through her lungs. As impossible as it seemed, whatever was happening had to be real.

At the slightest sound of rustling grass behind her, Peggy tensed, grip tightening on her gun. There was nowhere to run to, really, and the approaching figure could already have their weapon drawn, for all she knew.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” she said, proud that her voice didn’t shake. She ducked her head, trying to catch a glance at the stranger’s shoes without fully turning. “Or - at least I don’t think I do. I’ve had a bloody weird morning. Everything feels a bit topsy turvy at the moment.”

One moment he’d been sleeping, the Milano on course back towards Earth, and the next moment --

He was here, and he was..

a fucking humie.

Standing, he promptly smashed his head against an overhanging beam and stumbled blindly around before he managed to find his balance. That was when he realised that he was also naked. And that, since he didn’t have fur... “Huh,” he said, checking out his anatomy, before shrugging. He still had all his gear, and a spare pair of Quill’s pants that he had been using as a bedsheet, so he pulled those on. “Hey!” he yelled out at the nearest person. “Any idea where the hell this is?”

He had wandered aimlessly throughout the city, listless. He was not dressed for the cold, but it barely nipped at him. He was numb to it- numb to a lot, lately. 

What did one do when they had no purpose?

His purpose had been to build New Asgard, and that had been completed. Now what would he do?

Charles’ refuge had been destroyed. And although Erik had had his differences with his old friend, seeing Charles’ life work destroy had filled him with rage and a level of panic that he wouldn’t admit to. And as loathe as he had been to open up his sanctuary to all and sundry, his desire to protect all of mutantkind had won out.

Erik stared at the glowing portal that had been opened by Doctor Strange in his sanctum, before glancing around at those who had gathered under the sorcerer’s roof for sanctuary. “Come,” he said, gesturing at them to follow, as he led the way, stepping back to a home that he hadn’t seen since before the Snap.

As he stepped across the threshold, the hardwood floor gave way to paved metal. The city rose before him, metal spires towering and gleaming in the evening light. It had fallen into partial disrepair in his absence, but since it was almost entirely made of metal, fixing it would hardly be a hardship. 

“This is Genosha,” he said to those who had followed. “This is where mutantkind will rebuild its home. There is where we will claim our place in the world.” 

Genosha: