Next in line for the codename treatment was Armando Muñoz, who stepped forward with the absolute ease of a guy who thoroughly understood the genetic jackpot he'd won. He didn't just accept his new moniker; he wore it like a premium brand.
"Darwin," he announced, a calm, easy smile playing on his lips.
Gills in a tank? Done. Skin shifting into dense, grey granite the second a stray elbow swung too close to his face? Effortless.
I leaned back against the bar, watching him with an amused smirk while my mind did a little happy dance. Honestly, if this guy ever truly pushed the absolute limits of his kinetic adaptation, he'd probably break the local ecosystem. I found myself wondering if he even had an upper threshold before catching myself. Whoa, hold on, let's not give myself existential dread over a Darwin-induced supernova tonight. I already had enough timeline anxiety to deal with, especially with Sebastian Shaw's face flashing briefly in my mind. That was a stark, bloody reminder of the specific script notes I absolutely had to tear up. Darwin doesn't die. Not on my watch. I'd personally kick his ass before letting that happen.
"Suits you," I said aloud, giving Armando a playful little toast with my empty hand. "Simple, accurate, slightly pretentious. Very classic."
Armando raised his glass to me, matching my energy perfectly. "I try, Sarah. Or should I say, whatever it is you're calling yourself?"
"Patience, darling," I smirked, winking at him. "Save the best for last."
Sean Cassidy couldn't wait that long. He practically vibrated out of his sneakers, beaming with the hyperactive energy of a kid about to show off a dangerous firecracker at a family barbecue.
"Alright, my turn," Sean declared, stepping into the center of the polished tile floor with a grin that took up half his face. "The name's Banshee."
Fitting, considering the acoustic devastation he's capable of. Though, honestly, looking at the way his ears twitch when he's listening to the ambient hum of the bunker's fluorescent lights, 'Batboy' would have been a hilarious alternative for the echolocation alone. I kind of wanted to pitch it just to see the look on his face, but the kid's ego is already floating somewhere near the ceiling. I'd play nice. For now.
Eager to validate the title, Sean zeroed in on a heavy ceramic coffee mug sitting innocently on the edge of the card table. "Watch this," he warned, chest expanding as he took a massive, theatrical breath.
What followed wasn't a focused acoustic lance; it was a raw, directional wall of high-frequency sound unleashed with zero structural control. The ceramic mug remained entirely unscathed, but the reinforced glass window directly behind it paid the ultimate price. A sharp, violent crack rent the air, followed by the spectacular splintering of the pane into a massive, shimmering web of ruined glass.
No one spoke. Even the dust motes floating in the bunker's air vents seemed to freeze. I just stood there, eyes wide, totally delighted by the sheer chaos of it.
Alex Summers, holding his drink with a look of unbothered weariness, didn't miss a beat. "Well. Guess we know who's off dish duty permanently."
I let out a low groan, burying the lower half of my face in my palm, though I was biting back a laugh. "We are never getting our security deposit back. I can already hear the lecture on 'respecting government property' vibrating through the floorboards." I nudged Raven with my elbow, leaning in close with a wicked little grin. "You want to go ahead and morph into an insurance claims adjuster now, or should we wait for the CIA to blow a blood vessel?"
Raven just shrugged, a small, matching smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "It's just glass, Sarah. The CIA has plenty of money."
"You say that now," I muttered, playfully adjusting the collar of my yellow dress. "Wait until Moira sees it. She already looks like she survives entirely on black coffee and adrenaline. She's going to murder us."
Angel Salvadore stepped up next to break the tension, her stride fluid and dripping with the casual confidence of someone who knew exactly how striking she looked. Before she even reached the center of the room, a pair of miniature, brilliant fireballs crackled into existence across her knuckles. She juggled them effortlessly, the tiny orange flames reflecting in her dark eyes, before letting out a low buzz from the translucent, insectoid wings folded neatly against her back. She hovered an inch off the polished tile, looking less like a standard government asset and more like a dangerous creature pulled straight out of a dark, mid-century fairy tale.
"Angel," she stated, her voice smooth.
A bit on the nose, sure, but when you can spit plasma and fly, you don't really need to try that hard with the vocabulary. I gave her an appreciative little whistle. I'll let her have the classic branding.
Then the focus shifted to Hank, whose tentative, tight smile practically begged the room to look literally anywhere else but below his ankles. Alex, possessing the social grace of a runaway freight train, leaned over the back of the sofa with a sharp grin.
"Bigfoot," Alex tossed out, sparking a ripple of quick, nervous chuckles from the couch.
Hank's face dropped instantly, his shoulders hunching as he pulled his feet back under his chair. The rejection of his own anatomy was written all over his posture. Raven immediately stepped into his line of sight, her expression softening into something fiercely protective as she murmured something quiet enough to blunt the edge of Alex's comment.
Oh, poor kid. My heart twinged a little for him. He's a premier geneticist, a literal historical pioneer of mutant science, and he's currently being taken down by standard high school locker room tier chirping. I glanced at the chalkboard behind him, covered in scribbles of cellular breakdown and isolated X-gene vectors. He's probably already trying to map out a serum. Should I warn him? Pull him aside and tell him his current mathematical trajectory ends with him looking like a blue gorilla? I looked at his anxious, baseline-human face. Nah. He wouldn't believe a girl in biker boots anyway. Besides, what's the fun in a universe without the big, fluffy, good-natured version of Beast? Some things are mandatory.
"Alright, Summers," I called out, intentionally drawing the room's fire away from Hank. I gave Alex a challenging, playful look. "You're talking a lot of game for a guy who hasn't even stepped up to the plate. What's the name?"
Alex's grin turned entirely defensive. His power—unleashing volatile, red-hot rings of cosmic energy—was structurally incapable of being shown off indoors without converting the basement into a smoking crater. "I'm still working on it," he grumbled, straightening his posture and gesturing toward the heavy steel exit doors. "And if you want a demonstration, we're going outside. Unless you want the roof down on your head."
The yard of the Division X facility was crisp, dark, and bordered by thick treelines that felt entirely isolated from the rest of Langley. A weathered concrete statue of some forgotten historical bureaucrat stood near the gravel path, acting as the designated target.
Alex squared his shoulders, his chest glowing with a faint, dangerous crimson light beneath his shirt. With a sharp, sweeping motion of his arms, he unleashed a blazing disc of energy. The plasma sliced through the thick concrete with a high-pitched hum, sending the top half of the statue crashing into the dirt in a spectacular spray of pebbles and dust.
"Problem solved," Alex said smoothly, dusting his palms off as if he'd just finished a light chore.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, looking at the headless concrete torso with a grin I didn't even try to hide. "That's property damage, Alex. The government is going to have an absolute fit when they see this."
"Which leaves only one left," Armando noted from the steps, leaning back with a smirk. "Come on, Sarah. What have you got?"
I'd toyed with the standard options in my head. Aurora sounded like a vintage perfume commercial. Dawn was way too soft, like a high-end organic soap brand. I am not sunshine, and I am certainly not butterflies. If I'm going to occupy this space, I need something with actual mass. Something that sounds like a cosmic threat. Besides, if my immediate past life taught me anything, it's that you never, ever waste an opportunity to drop an absolute chuunibyou banger of a title.
I closed my eyes, letting a completely theatrical, solemn expression take over my face as I channeled my inner Spirit.
"Tempestas," I said, letting the Latin syllables roll clean and heavy in the night air. I opened one eye, giving them a sharp, enigmatic look. "The Sovereign of the Fractured Sky. The Calamity Vanguard."
Alex blinked, his brow furrowing in pure, unadulterated mid-century confusion. "...The what now?"
"Don't worry about it, Summers," I smirked, thoroughly enjoying how bewildered he looked. "It's an aesthetic."
I didn't wait for them to process it. I extended my right hand toward the dark sky, opening my palm. My profession-grade aerialist coordination kicked in, my posture locking as I pulled on the atmospheric static around the bunker.
The clouds directly above us curdled, darkening into a deep, bruised purple. A low, menacing roll of thunder vibrated through the gravel beneath our boots—a predator's growl before the strike. Then, a sharp, brilliant fork of blue-white lightning cracked down from the atmosphere, drawn directly into my open hand. The impact was instantaneous, charging the air with the sharp, clean scent of ozone. The raw energy didn't scatter; it coalesced, swirling into a dense, crackling orb of lightning the size of a beach ball, hovering just above my fingers. The electric-blue glow bathed the entire yard in a stark, cinematic light, reflecting vividly in the wide, stunned eyes of the entire First Class cast.
"Let's just say my particular brand of parlor trick isn't suited for low ceilings," I quipped, letting the orb pulse with violent energy for one more second before closing my fist.
With a sharp, casual snap of my fingers, the lightning dissipated into harmless static, leaving nothing but the smell of scorched air and dead silence.
Alex stared at the empty space above my hand, his arrogant smirk completely wiped clean. "Damn," he muttered under his breath.
"I'd say it fits," Raven said, her voice carrying a rare streak of genuine, unvarnished admiration.
Nobody argued the point. Tempestas was officially on the board, and I felt a little rush of pride.
By the time we retreated back down into the subterranean warmth of the common room, the initial military structure of the facility had completely disintegrated. Raven had somehow liberated a massive stash of potato chips, cookies, and several bottles of red wine from the officers' lounge upstairs, and the space had transformed into a showcase of contraband snacks, loud music, and terrible teenage judgment.
Before the outdoor demonstration, I'd given them a quick, creepy teaser of my secondary kit—letting dark, twisting ribbons of shadow writhe from my fingertips like live ink before dissolving them back into the floorboards. Alex had dubbed it "gothic but cool," and honestly, I'd taken the compliment with a little bow. But now, the alcohol was flowing, the record player was spinning, and the mutant tricks were getting progressively stupider.
Alex lit up the corner of the room with a low-intensity plasma pulse, intentionally burning a dark, abstract scorch mark directly onto the CIA's pristine drywall. "Modern art," he announced proudly, gesturing to the ruin.
"The CIA's blood pressure is going to read like a high-score screen," I noted, taking a sip from a paper cup filled with suspiciously cheap wine. The liquid had already claimed a victim on the beige carpet, leaving a dark crimson stain that looked like a crime scene photograph.
Despite the mounting wreckage, I found myself, dare I say it? Actually having fun. It was disarming, this reckless joy. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd been to a proper party. Well, there was that one back in my previous life—the madness with Shido and the Spirits.
If Kurumi were here, she'd probably find a way to turn this entire bunker upside down just for the chaotic thrill of it, I thought, a brief, nostalgic smirk crossing my face before I filed the memory away.
The revelry hit its absolute peak when Sean and Alex attempted a synchronized display of acoustic waves and low-output plasma discs. It went precisely as well as any unsupervised high-voltage experiment could. Half the room had to duck behind the vinyl sofa as a stray plasma ring clipped a bottle of wine mid-air, showering the immediate radius in red streaks.
The entire celebration froze as a heavy, metallic slam echoed from the hallway.
Framed perfectly by the shattered window Sean had broken earlier stood Agent Moira MacTaggart. She stood alone at the entrance, her face radiating the specific, soul-crushing exhaustion of a high-stakes intelligence officer walking into a ruined high school cafeteria.
Right. Charles and Erik are entirely out of the picture right now, currently tracking Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club halfway across the country. Moira is the only thin line between us and a court-martial.
Moira rubbed her temples, her chest heaving as she took in the scorched drywall, the stained carpet, the headless statue visible through the cracked glass, and the recruits who were suddenly deeply fascinated by the stitching on their sneakers.
"What on earth is going on in here?" Moira demanded, her voice cutting through the fading music like a siren. "I leave you all unsupervised for a few hours, and you turn a multi-million dollar government bunker into a disaster zone?"
Mutant survival instincts kicked in instantly across the room. Alex, whose chest was still literally glowing like a neon open sign, tried to casually slide behind a concrete pillar. Armando didn't even look up from the bar. "Dude, you're radiating red light. There is zero percentage in hiding."
"Shut up," Alex hissed through his teeth.
"Sean broke the window, Angel's flying around, and someone decapitated the historical monument outside!" Moira threw her hands up, exasperated. "Charles told the directors you were a specialized tactical unit. If anyone from the oversight committee walks down those stairs right now, we are all finished. Clean this up. Immediately."
She shot the room one final, withering glare before turning on her heel and marching back down the corridor, her heels clicking angrily against the concrete.
"Well," Raven muttered into the quiet, letting her shoulders drop as the door slammed shut. "Who knew a house party could trigger an existential crisis for the intelligence community?"
A collective, relieved chuckle rippled through the survivors.
A bit later, as the room settled into a quieter, post-adrenaline lull, I sat cross-legged on the counter next to Raven. Her usual confident posture was gone, her eyes darting toward the door as if she expected the CIA directors to march down with handcuffs.
I reached over, placing a steady, grounded hand on her shoulder—the classic anchor. "Don't sweat it, beautiful," I said, my voice low and warm, meant just for her. "They were just riding the high of finally being in a room where they didn't have to hide. No real damage done."
Raven turned her head, a brief, genuine flicker of gratitude breaking through her anxiety. "Thanks," she murmured, though her eyes kept drifting back to the group.
Across the floor, the CIA cleanup crew had already been called in, sweeping up the glittering remains of Sean's coffee-cup disaster with profound government annoyance. Over at the card table, Alex and Armando had officially entered a state of emotional power-down, channeling their adrenaline into a deadpan, silent game of five-card draw poker. Alex was aggressively slamming down chips, while Darwin calmly, methodically raked in the winnings with a completely unbothered smirk.
"They're just... rookies," Raven added, looking back at me. "They don't know the parameters yet."
I nodded, keeping my expression cool. I got it. The adrenaline, the dopamine of finding your own tribe—it was a volatile mix. I respected the sheer audacity of the wreckage, honestly. The timing was just atrocious.
According to my internal movie catalog, Charles and Erik are already deep in their hunting mission. They're thousands of miles away, completely unaware that their freshly minted squad is currently marinating in the quiet before the storm. Perfect timing for a Hellfire Club ambush. Azazel is going to have a field day with these concrete walls.
I leaned in a fraction closer to Raven, a slight, sharp smirk returning to my face as I nudged her. "Look at the bright side. The codename initiative was a massive success. They'll cool off eventually. Right?"
Raven perked up instantly, visibly relieved by the pivot. "You're not wrong. I mean, 'Professor X'? That is absolutely going to stick to him forever. And 'Magneto'? Iconic. Honestly, Charles and Erik owe me a branding fee when they get back."
"I didn't realize you were the creative director behind the entire mutant marketing campaign," I quipped, my smile widening as I nudged her shoulder. "But I've been meaning to ask—why the 'X'? What's the deep, genetic mystery there?"
Raven sat up straighter, the bounce returning to her voice. "It's not deep at all. What's Charles's last name?"
I squinted, playing dumb with a look of theatrical confusion, tilting my head. "Uh... Xavier? Wait. Hold on. Does Xavier start with an X?"
"Exactly!" Raven laughed, the final bits of her panic evaporating. "Professor Xavier. Professor X. It's clean, it's elegant."
I nodded, my face perfectly deadpan but my blue eyes flashing with genuine amusement. "And here I thought it stood for something profoundly philosophical. Like 'eXceptional.' Or 'eXtreme.' Maybe just 'eXistential dread.'"
"You are incredibly cynical," Raven deadpanned, though the corners of her mouth twitched upward.
"It's a lifestyle choice, darling." I leaned back against the wall, utterly satisfied with the little smile I'd managed to get out of her.
Back in my old life, I was content to just watch the films, completely detached from the background noise. But being inside the frame? Seeing the absolute behind-the-scenes nonsense that births comic book history? It gives you a weird kind of appreciation for it. Professor X is literally just short-hand because the CIA couldn't spell Xavier correctly on a regular basis. Very Charles. Very efficient.
Our dialogue drifted back into a comfortable, low tennis match of sarcastic remarks, the two of us watching the rest of the room slowly run out of steam, while the shadows stretching outside the facility grew just a little bit longer.