The Game Cafe in Marvel and DC

83 – A mind best left alone

Rolling back to the elevator and soon returning to his office, Charles was left with a troubled mind after what Hank revealed to him. Charles knew that Logan was not as strong as he was in his prime, but he figured that was because of age, not metal poisoning. Hank and Charles theorized that Logan's mutation gave him an enhanced lifespan, a healing factor, and the claws he was famous for. Logan was born in the early 1880s, for goodness sake, and he fought in the Civil War, World War 1 and 2, and Vietnam. 

Logan was a veteran with PTSD, so Charles and Hank thought it was just age that was catching up with Logan, but if it really was just metal poisoning that weakened Logan, slowly killing him, how long would Logan have lived without the metal poisoning him? Logan's mutation only really started coming into effect after he became an adult, halting his aging completely. Even now, Logan still looks like an adult in his thirties, though back when he stopped aging, he looked more like a teenager to those around him, as life expectancy wasn't what it is nowadays.

Charles wondered if extracting the adamantium that coated Logan's bones would even be possible. The special metal had such a high heating point that extracting it from Loan would only serve to burn the man inside and out. Even then, they had no idea just how much adamantium covered Logan's bones, nor how exactly Major Striker and the government even managed to coat Logan's bones in the first place without killing them. Striker was hidden from Charles's mind, and for all he knew, Major Striker could be dead after all of these years. Everyone related to the project was dead, and Logan's memories of the time were...indecipherable.

Soon reaching his office, Charles wondered how to approach the subject. Should they tell Logan, giving him what very well could be false hope? No. Charles couldn't risk letting Logan know. There was nothing they could possibly do about it. If they told Logan, he'd certainly do something monumentally stupid or suicidal...or he may very accept his fate, knowing how tired Logan was of his seemingly immortal life.

Charles shook his head; they couldn't afford to lose Logan; his gifts were too important to protecting mutant-kind, and losing the adamantium may permanently put him out of commission even if it were to succeed. 

Rolling behind his desk, Charles extended his senses, his mind touching all of the minds within and around the mansion. Checking on each of his students, his mind went past his students' surface thoughts, starting with Jean Gray, whose mind responded to his touch, letting him in.

"Jean...how are you doing?" Charles asked.

"I am alright, Professor. Just have a headache," Jean answered from her room.

Nodding, Charles said, "If you need anything, all you have to do is ask."

"Thank you, Professor," Jean answered. At the same time, Charles worked over the entirety of her mind, something she did not detect due to her minimal experience with other telepaths, and examined the seals he placed on her mind so long ago. The seals he placed so long ago struggled to hold her power down. Charles's seals were unique and one of a kind. Ever since he created those seals on Jean were created, Charles managed to never make any like it again, and because of that, he could only do his best to do patchwork fixes on the seals on Jean, but as she grew up, the more repairs Charles had to make. 

Sighing, Charles moved on, scanning and examining the minds of each of his students, glancing over the dozens of students who called the manor home before finally moving on once he was done.

Following Logan's memories, Charles soon found the so-called 'Cafe' that Logan frequented so much, much to his surprise, he couldn't see anything. Frowning, he retreated his senses back to the mansion and rolled back out of his office. Soon reaching the shining achievement of Charles's, Hank's, and the CIA's work, the Cerbro. A machine capable of enhancing Charles's telepathic abilities to a planetary level, allowing him to sense every mutant and human in the world with ease, all at the same time. 

Of course, after the machine was constructed, Charles obtained it and removed or altered the memories of everyone involved with its creation before having it moved to under his mansion. He had, too. If the CIA had kept the machine, he had no doubt in his mind that the Government would have used it to discover hidden mutants within the States and the wider world.

Rolling down the bridge into the center of the spherical and hollow machine, Charles stopped before a console. Reaching out to grab a helmet connected to many cables, he slid it on, pressed a few buttons, flipped a few switches, and Cerebro began to power up in a few moments.

The many panels around the spherical chamber lit up, forming a strange 3d version of Earth where countless white and red silhouettes floated around in space. Each silhouette was a person, with white representing normal humans and red mutants. Taking a few minutes to focus his mind on the cafe, he was met with hundreds of silhouettes surrounding the store, both inside and out. That's when he noticed it: around the entire store, there were a dozen voids in space, complete blanks that the Cerebro could not even detect or see into.

Then there was the second abnormality, a strange golden...silhouette.

Reaching out to this... abnormality, Charles's mind froze at what assaulted his mind.

...

Charles found himself looking through someone else's eyes as memories flashed before him.

He was shown a world without order, a world thrown into chaos and destroyed by those who had before, a world baptized by nuclear fire.

He watched as a boy grew to be a man, and his experiences as a missionary quickly turned into a General. Charles watched as this man caused countless deaths and the loss of so much, only for this man to be baptized by fire and crawl back to his home. For hours, Charles watched every moment of this man's life, a man by the name of Joshua, a man of extreme faith and unwavering willpower. A man who... by all rights, should have been stopped but turned a new leaf, becoming better. This man was much like Magneto...Max, if even a man such as Joshua, with his hands causing entire rivers of blood to flow, then even someone like Max, so steeped in his hatred towards Humanity, could change for the better. He just had to keep trying, even if Magneto proved unwilling. 

As Charles continued viewing the memories of this man by the name of Joshua, he began feeling something. It felt as if the mind was closing in on him, yet the mind of this unknown man couldn't feel Charles's probing. The longer Charles watched, the more he felt like something was wrong, almost like he was being watched.

Then he noticed it. Deep within Joshua's mind, something strange was like an all-consuming void of nothingness at the center of his mind. That's when the void-like center began to churn and shift before splitting open. Much to Charles's horror, an eye looked back at him.

Charles felt his form peeled away by the eye as it saw through his body, mind, and soul.

Charles felt trapped, and he began actively struggling to escape from the man's mind, away from the Eldritch eye before him. That's when it started; he felt incomprehensible and maddening whispers begin speaking from the back of his mind, growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment until the whispers transformed into shouting, then yelling, then full-blown screaming.

Charles screamed in horrific agony as blood began to leak from his eyes, and his mind began to collapse.

"Charles!" A distant voice different from the others yelled inside his mind.

"Charles! Snap out it!" The voice shouted, growing louder over the other voices.

"Shit! Logan, help me get him out of it!" The voice shouted as Charles's mind began to grow foggy.

...

Shaking the slumped body of the Professor in his wheelchair, Hank looked worriedly over Xavier's bloody tears that leaked from his eyes and his vacant stare as the Cerebro went on a full-blown malfunction as what appeared to be black tentacles flowed across the screens, blackening them till nothing but an eye could be seen across the screen panels around the chamber.

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