The problem with killing Mr. Sinister was that all of his cells contained the entire biological code of every clone of himself. Meaning that he could form back with just a living cell at worst or a living clone at most.
Draul experienced the headache that was Mr. Sinister as he broke the man time and time again only for the man to reform himself with detached limbs and fleshly puddles.
Draul wasn't the only one having a problem. The same could be said for Mr. Sinister.
His calculations were all wrong. He realized that the moment they started fighting as Draul would easily slip through his notice, only for him to realize that he had lost a limb or sometimes even his head.
Unlike Draul who had a definite way of killing Sinister, the said man had no idea how he could go about with incapacitating Draul. He had tried some of the tricks he had used against people with psychic defense such as illusions and trying to overload his senses but the man completely acted like he had no idea what Sinister was doing. He shrugged off every psychic attack like oil to water, only for him to comprehend his folly after he lost a limb.
"Though I have all day, I'm not in mind to spend it in an underground facility, so should we wrap this up?" The lazy atmosphere around Draul disappeared, though his expression remained the same, something about him screamed danger to Sinister.
Without taking any further risk, Sinister pulled all stops on his ability and telekinetically controlled everything his influence could reach and hurtled them at Draul.
All he saw was Draul pointing a finger at him and that familiar red destructive energy before he felt some parts of his body missing.
A gigantic hole had been blasted through chest which made him relinquish the hold he had on the objects for a second but Draul was anything if not precise. The beams, scalpels and every other thing within his range of influence were already under his control. He sent them to Sinister who found his movements halted as they were all embedded into his body. What made a flash of panic appear in his face were the shining letters and symbols on the object's surface. He didn't know what they were but they were somehow restraining his body from dissolving.
"That should do it." Draul walked forward and placed his hand on the head of the restrained Mr. Sinister.
If before it was just the surprise and incomprehension of what was happening that flash through his face, now it was full blown panic as he felt his mental shield that he had erected over the centuries be forcefully reprogrammed. Normal psychics, even those with vast expertise, way of brainwashing or remodeling someone else's psyche was one that depended on them having a higher mental fortitude and experience than their target, or simply brute forcing their way through.
Draul's way, as Sinister would describe it, was a more sophisticated approach. If the normal way every psychic went about it could be likened to chess, then Draul's was complete computer programming. It didn't matter if it were a hundred years of experience being the mental defense, it stood no chance against the almost systematic approach of Draul's consciousness.
It was like an app. It didn't matter if the former was made 50 years ago and was used by the whole world as one of the best apps of the time, the moment a new app comes out with a better operating system, feature and software utilization, the old app would lose all its shine and value, maybe except for sentiment, not that the sentiment would do anything to reduce its new worthlessness.
Sinister likened Draul's consciousness to a virus. Instead of trying to break through his mental defenses, it was eating through it. Eliminating and assimilating it into his own. He had to say, if not for the current situation, that it was a beautiful approach… but not when said approach was cutting off his way to rebirth through his clones. This was bad!
Using his hive mind, Draul connected to all the other active clones and destroyed the imprint of Sinister that was present in all of them turning them to wildly thrashing zombies that just acted on impulse.
"W-wha d-di… What d-did you DO!?" The ever poised Mr. Sinister was frantic as despair started creeping into his face as he felt all his connections to his clones destroyed to the point that for him to be able to link them back, he'd have to go inside the head of each and everyone of them and connect them manually. "What have you done!?" His already pale face turned ashen, if that was even possible, as he stared at Draul. He still couldn't understand what was happening.
How did it get to this so fast? Weren't they exchanging probing blows that didn't do an ounce of damage moments ago?
What happened?
He stared at Draul, his brain unable to comprehend what was happening to him. His life's work, his masterpiece, his opus, shattered in the span of minutes.
"You! You! You! HOW DARE YOU!?!" He jumped at Draul with blinding speed fueled by rage only for Draul fists to impact his face and send him flying back like a cannonball. "Do you know what you've done? Do you?!"
"If I had to take a guess, then it would be that you're no longer immortal. So tell me, am I wrong?" The bored tone that had been in his voice since the beginning filtered into Sinister's ears as he finally realized why that tone was familiar and why it also irked him.
It was one he used when speaking with other people, people he deemed insignificant. It was a tone he used in talking to everyone he's ever said a word to.
"I see now. You are way stronger than I could have thought. But I wonder though, what do you think is your current limit? Is it enough to wipe out an entire city? Or maybe the state even?" Sinister questioned with what seemed to be genuine curiosity.
"Hmm, to be honest I don't know. Hopefully I don't find myself in a situation where I have to find that out… but given my shitty luck, fat chance of that happening." Draul breathed out as he crouched in front of Sinister. "But I bet you won't be alive to see that. Do you want to wager otherwise?" He asked with a smile that wasn't quite a smile. "No? Well, I think my time here is done." He held Sinister by the head and channeled huge amounts of destructive energy through the man's body that shredded him down to the last atom.
Sinister watched, in slow motion, as his body disintegrated as the energy wrecked through every component of his cell, shredding everything to dust and then destroying it further. He couldn't scream because the energy had already destroyed his nerve endings.
He looked at Draul as his life ended with a look of hatred and the reply he got was the same nonchalant gaze he gave him since the beginning.
How foolish. He still had a card to play, an ace up his sleeves. Since Draul had forced him to make a bet, he would go all in, his last chips on the table.
"That was tiring." Draul turned around and left, leaving behind an empty floor, no indication whatsoever that someone else had been there.
The only fights remaining were almost at their end, with only a few straggler clones left, trying to escape or just thrash around before they were put down by the others. "Well, that was easy."
"No, it was not." Bobby snarled, his body still emitting frost.
Draul just shrugged and made his way to where the others were. He stopped for a while and looked at the knocked out form of Mystique on the floor. From Sinister's memories, he knew why she had no choice but to help the man, even though she held a great distaste for what he did. Well with this, hopefully, she can just disappear from the scenes and just go live her life. First it was Xavier, the Magneto, and then against her will, Mr. Sinister. All this just reevaluated the fact that the main cast of the X-Men had fucked up lives. "Well, to each his own I suppose."
"Draul! You have to come see this." Yelena's call broke him out of his thoughts as he made his way to what looked like the basement of the underground facility.
He found the others, his group and the X-Men, huddled over something, each with disbelieving looks on their faces, with Cyclops kneeling on the ground.
He wondered what they were on about until he saw her.
Jean Grey.
Her body was held in some kind of stasis chamber that the only thing that verified that she was alive was the slow and drawn out heartbeat that only beat once or twice in a minute.
"Jean, can you hear me?" Scott was on the ground, tracing his fingers on the surface of the chamber where the sleeping Jean lay.
"Draul?" Some of the others turned to Draul to see the visible frown of annoyance on his face.
"I thought she- I thought she was gone off to somewhere far away. How come she is here?" Bobby asked skeptically.
"Draul, do you know what's happening?" Ororo turned to Draul, who was arguably the most knowledgeable person in the room about Jean and Sinister, looking for an answer.
Draul ignored her, with the frown still plastered on his face, and pushed his way through to the front of the chamber and as if on a timer, the Jean's eyes inside the chamber, fluttered opened which resulted in gasps in the background.
Draul held the chamber by the contours on the side and yanked it open, giving way for Scott to hug the awakened and confused Jean Grey.
"D-do you remember me? D-do y-you remember us?" Scott's voice cracked as he asked those questions whilst the others waited in suspense. Only a few noticing the expression on Draul's face.
"Scott? I-I don't know. Your name, I remember but…" Her words seemed inconsistent as if she was struggling to remember something important.
"That's okay. You don't have to force yourself okay? We'll get you help, I promise." Scott soothed the confused girl which only increased the frown on Draul's face.
"Draul, is something wrong?" Bucky asked, not missing the expression on Draul's face. It was one he had been able to tell given the amount of times that said particular expressions appeared on his face. It was annoyance. The type that always appeared on his face when something ruined his day.
"What makes you think so?" Yeah, the contrast of his reply and his face wasn't fooling anyone. "You look like you're about to blow your top, that's what makes me think so." Bucky answered.
Draul just hummed, not denying or acknowledging his claims but that was enough for Bucky to know that something was wrong and it took him a few moments of brainstorming to form an hypothesis that he believed was at play.
Given the way Draul had stressed about the man's ability, Nathaniel Essex that is, to create clones and have them act as each of their own individual persona and also have them act as extensions of himself… Oh.
Bucky's face became clouded as he reached that conclusion, the same expression was evident on the other's face as each of them took a subtle stance to be ready for anything.
"Draul?" Ororo called out again after seeing how those with him looked at Jean, as if they were gearing up for another confrontation. She paused the words that were about to come out of her mouth as Draul stood in front of Jean after shoving Scott to the side. She didn't know why but her heart started beating in a foreboding rhythm. Something was wrong, a sentiment that those from the X-Men were just catching up on.
"Do you know me?" Draul asked Jean who looked confused before she answered unsurely. "I think so. Sorry I don't remember your name, but I feel that you are familiar at least."
"What are you do… ing?" Scott stretched out his hands in reflex to catch the thing that was spinning towards him. "Jean? What's wrong?... Jean?" He, not only him, but everyone, had their brain short circuited as they saw Scott holding Jean's… head in his hands.
"Jean? tALk tO mE, pLEasE! JEAN!" Scott seemed to have lost it as he started understanding what he was holding while the others were still in shock, including Bucky and the company.
The room fell silent with only Scott's indecipherable words being heard as the members of the X-Men twisted their necks like machines to turn and look at Draul. They held that look for a while before someone broke it.
"Rragrh!" Logan rushed at Draul only to find himself being held down by Bucky who simply flung him aside. "Calm down, James." Bucky tried to reason with the man who seemed to have lost all reasoning but his words fell on deaf ears as Logan was in him once again.
========================
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Read up to 30 chapters ahead at pa*treon.com/Draul_TheOminous
The problem with killing Mr. Sinister was that all of his cells contained the entire biological code of every clone of himself. Meaning that he could form back with just a living cell at worst or a living clone at most.
Draul experienced the headache that was Mr. Sinister as he broke the man time and time again only for the man to reform himself with detached limbs and fleshly puddles.
Draul wasn't the only one having a problem. The same could be said for Mr. Sinister.
His calculations were all wrong. He realized that the moment they started fighting as Draul would easily slip through his notice, only for him to realize that he had lost a limb or sometimes even his head.
Unlike Draul who had a definite way of killing Sinister, the said man had no idea how he could go about with incapacitating Draul. He had tried some of the tricks he had used against people with psychic defense such as illusions and trying to overload his senses but the man completely acted like he had no idea what Sinister was doing. He shrugged off every psychic attack like oil to water, only for him to comprehend his folly after he lost a limb.
"Though I have all day, I'm not in mind to spend it in an underground facility, so should we wrap this up?" The lazy atmosphere around Draul disappeared, though his expression remained the same, something about him screamed danger to Sinister.
Without taking any further risk, Sinister pulled all stops on his ability and telekinetically controlled everything his influence could reach and hurtled them at Draul.
All he saw was Draul pointing a finger at him and that familiar red destructive energy before he felt some parts of his body missing.
A gigantic hole had been blasted through chest which made him relinquish the hold he had on the objects for a second but Draul was anything if not precise. The beams, scalpels and every other thing within his range of influence were already under his control. He sent them to Sinister who found his movements halted as they were all embedded into his body. What made a flash of panic appear in his face were the shining letters and symbols on the object's surface. He didn't know what they were but they were somehow restraining his body from dissolving.
"That should do it." Draul walked forward and placed his hand on the head of the restrained Mr. Sinister.
If before it was just the surprise and incomprehension of what was happening that flash through his face, now it was full blown panic as he felt his mental shield that he had erected over the centuries be forcefully reprogrammed. Normal psychics, even those with vast expertise, way of brainwashing or remodeling someone else's psyche was one that depended on them having a higher mental fortitude and experience than their target, or simply brute forcing their way through.
Draul's way, as Sinister would describe it, was a more sophisticated approach. If the normal way every psychic went about it could be likened to chess, then Draul's was complete computer programming. It didn't matter if it were a hundred years of experience being the mental defense, it stood no chance against the almost systematic approach of Draul's consciousness.
It was like an app. It didn't matter if the former was made 50 years ago and was used by the whole world as one of the best apps of the time, the moment a new app comes out with a better operating system, feature and software utilization, the old app would lose all its shine and value, maybe except for sentiment, not that the sentiment would do anything to reduce its new worthlessness.
Sinister likened Draul's consciousness to a virus. Instead of trying to break through his mental defenses, it was eating through it. Eliminating and assimilating it into his own. He had to say, if not for the current situation, that it was a beautiful approach… but not when said approach was cutting off his way to rebirth through his clones. This was bad!
Using his hive mind, Draul connected to all the other active clones and destroyed the imprint of Sinister that was present in all of them turning them to wildly thrashing zombies that just acted on impulse.
"W-wha d-di… What d-did you DO!?" The ever poised Mr. Sinister was frantic as despair started creeping into his face as he felt all his connections to his clones destroyed to the point that for him to be able to link them back, he'd have to go inside the head of each and everyone of them and connect them manually. "What have you done!?" His already pale face turned ashen, if that was even possible, as he stared at Draul. He still couldn't understand what was happening.
How did it get to this so fast? Weren't they exchanging probing blows that didn't do an ounce of damage moments ago?
What happened?
He stared at Draul, his brain unable to comprehend what was happening to him. His life's work, his masterpiece, his opus, shattered in the span of minutes.
"You! You! You! HOW DARE YOU!?!" He jumped at Draul with blinding speed fueled by rage only for Draul fists to impact his face and send him flying back like a cannonball. "Do you know what you've done? Do you?!"
"If I had to take a guess, then it would be that you're no longer immortal. So tell me, am I wrong?" The bored tone that had been in his voice since the beginning filtered into Sinister's ears as he finally realized why that tone was familiar and why it also irked him.
It was one he used when speaking with other people, people he deemed insignificant. It was a tone he used in talking to everyone he's ever said a word to.
"I see now. You are way stronger than I could have thought. But I wonder though, what do you think is your current limit? Is it enough to wipe out an entire city? Or maybe the state even?" Sinister questioned with what seemed to be genuine curiosity.
"Hmm, to be honest I don't know. Hopefully I don't find myself in a situation where I have to find that out… but given my shitty luck, fat chance of that happening." Draul breathed out as he crouched in front of Sinister. "But I bet you won't be alive to see that. Do you want to wager otherwise?" He asked with a smile that wasn't quite a smile. "No? Well, I think my time here is done." He held Sinister by the head and channeled huge amounts of destructive energy through the man's body that shredded him down to the last atom.
Sinister watched, in slow motion, as his body disintegrated as the energy wrecked through every component of his cell, shredding everything to dust and then destroying it further. He couldn't scream because the energy had already destroyed his nerve endings.
He looked at Draul as his life ended with a look of hatred and the reply he got was the same nonchalant gaze he gave him since the beginning.
How foolish. He still had a card to play, an ace up his sleeves. Since Draul had forced him to make a bet, he would go all in, his last chips on the table.
"That was tiring." Draul turned around and left, leaving behind an empty floor, no indication whatsoever that someone else had been there.
The only fights remaining were almost at their end, with only a few straggler clones left, trying to escape or just thrash around before they were put down by the others. "Well, that was easy."
"No, it was not." Bobby snarled, his body still emitting frost.
Draul just shrugged and made his way to where the others were. He stopped for a while and looked at the knocked out form of Mystique on the floor. From Sinister's memories, he knew why she had no choice but to help the man, even though she held a great distaste for what he did. Well with this, hopefully, she can just disappear from the scenes and just go live her life. First it was Xavier, the Magneto, and then against her will, Mr. Sinister. All this just reevaluated the fact that the main cast of the X-Men had fucked up lives. "Well, to each his own I suppose."
"Draul! You have to come see this." Yelena's call broke him out of his thoughts as he made his way to what looked like the basement of the underground facility.
He found the others, his group and the X-Men, huddled over something, each with disbelieving looks on their faces, with Cyclops kneeling on the ground.
He wondered what they were on about until he saw her.
Jean Grey.
Her body was held in some kind of stasis chamber that the only thing that verified that she was alive was the slow and drawn out heartbeat that only beat once or twice in a minute.
"Jean, can you hear me?" Scott was on the ground, tracing his fingers on the surface of the chamber where the sleeping Jean lay.
"Draul?" Some of the others turned to Draul to see the visible frown of annoyance on his face.
"I thought she- I thought she was gone off to somewhere far away. How come she is here?" Bobby asked skeptically.
"Draul, do you know what's happening?" Ororo turned to Draul, who was arguably the most knowledgeable person in the room about Jean and Sinister, looking for an answer.
Draul ignored her, with the frown still plastered on his face, and pushed his way through to the front of the chamber and as if on a timer, the Jean's eyes inside the chamber, fluttered opened which resulted in gasps in the background.
Draul held the chamber by the contours on the side and yanked it open, giving way for Scott to hug the awakened and confused Jean Grey.
"D-do you remember me? D-do y-you remember us?" Scott's voice cracked as he asked those questions whilst the others waited in suspense. Only a few noticing the expression on Draul's face.
"Scott? I-I don't know. Your name, I remember but…" Her words seemed inconsistent as if she was struggling to remember something important.
"That's okay. You don't have to force yourself okay? We'll get you help, I promise." Scott soothed the confused girl which only increased the frown on Draul's face.
"Draul, is something wrong?" Bucky asked, not missing the expression on Draul's face. It was one he had been able to tell given the amount of times that said particular expressions appeared on his face. It was annoyance. The type that always appeared on his face when something ruined his day.
"What makes you think so?" Yeah, the contrast of his reply and his face wasn't fooling anyone. "You look like you're about to blow your top, that's what makes me think so." Bucky answered.
Draul just hummed, not denying or acknowledging his claims but that was enough for Bucky to know that something was wrong and it took him a few moments of brainstorming to form an hypothesis that he believed was at play.
Given the way Draul had stressed about the man's ability, Nathaniel Essex that is, to create clones and have them act as each of their own individual persona and also have them act as extensions of himself… Oh.
Bucky's face became clouded as he reached that conclusion, the same expression was evident on the other's face as each of them took a subtle stance to be ready for anything.
"Draul?" Ororo called out again after seeing how those with him looked at Jean, as if they were gearing up for another confrontation. She paused the words that were about to come out of her mouth as Draul stood in front of Jean after shoving Scott to the side. She didn't know why but her heart started beating in a foreboding rhythm. Something was wrong, a sentiment that those from the X-Men were just catching up on.
"Do you know me?" Draul asked Jean who looked confused before she answered unsurely. "I think so. Sorry I don't remember your name, but I feel that you are familiar at least."
"What are you do… ing?" Scott stretched out his hands in reflex to catch the thing that was spinning towards him. "Jean? What's wrong?... Jean?" He, not only him, but everyone, had their brain short circuited as they saw Scott holding Jean's… head in his hands.
"Jean? tALk tO mE, pLEasE! JEAN!" Scott seemed to have lost it as he started understanding what he was holding while the others were still in shock, including Bucky and the company.
The room fell silent with only Scott's indecipherable words being heard as the members of the X-Men twisted their necks like machines to turn and look at Draul. They held that look for a while before someone broke it.
"Rragrh!" Logan rushed at Draul only to find himself being held down by Bucky who simply flung him aside. "Calm down, James." Bucky tried to reason with the man who seemed to have lost all reasoning but his words fell on deaf ears as Logan was in him once again.
========================
If you are hungry for more chaps
Read up to 30 chapters ahead at pa*treon.com/Draul_TheOminous
