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"Mutant? What's that?"
(PS: They're the Deviants from the Eternals Movie, they just don't know them that well!)
"According to the High Priestess, it's a creature of absolute terror—something called 'Despair.' Their entire bodies are covered in rough, black chitinous armor, riddled with cracks and fissures. Dark golden light shines through the gaps, almost like they have magma flowing inside them. They have asymmetrical limbs—some with multiple arms, others with multiple tentacles."
"But that's not even the worst part."
"The High Priestess said these horrifying mutants possess incredible evolutionary abilities."
Felicia recalled how the Iwi High Priestess had described the creature in the tribe's temple—with a tone so vivid it felt like she was reliving the nightmare herself. Even now, retelling the story made Felicia shiver involuntarily.
Hawk's eyes flickered with recognition.
"Evolution?"
"Yes."
"The High Priestess said the Iwi people weren't always this weak. They're descended from the Gods. They were born with immense power. But these mutants could kill one of their people and absorb their abilities."
"After a mutant devoured a fire-breathing Iwi, it gained the ability to breathe fire too."
"That's how the Iwi were driven back, step by step, until they were finally forced to flee their ancestral homeland."
"Damn."
Hawk looked down, silent.
Peter, who had been listening to Felicia's account, sucked in a sharp breath. "Devour and evolve? Creatures like that actually exist? If one of those things ate Hawk, then..."
Hawk snapped out of his thoughts, raised an eyebrow, and gave Peter an exasperated look.
"Hey. Could you not jinx me?"
"Sorry!"
Peter, realizing he'd said something stupid, immediately apologized.
But his mind couldn't help imagining what would happen if the mutant Felicia had described gained Hawk's abilities.
Good lord.
That would be the apocalypse.
Peter couldn't stop the thought from running through his head.
Hawk ignored Peter and turned to Felicia. "Is there a picture of this thing? A drawing or something?"
Felicia nodded.
"There's a mural of it on the temple walls."
"Let's go take a look."
"Okay."
Felicia watched Hawk stand up and got to her feet as well.
Peter, sitting nearby, shook his head to clear the apocalyptic images from his mind and stood up too.
Night had fallen.
In the Iwi village, tribespeople gathered around bonfires, chanting mysterious but hauntingly beautiful songs.
Inside the temple, torches burned brightly along the walls.
According to the Iwi, as long as the temple fires remained lit, the souls of their people could follow the flames and find their way home.
Hawk stood in the temple now, looking up at the colorful mural illuminated by the firelight. It was vivid, almost alive.
A creature—exactly as Felicia had described—snarled from the wall, looking as if it were about to leap right off the mural.
Peter glanced around at the other murals. "I'm still curious how these paintings have stayed this vibrant for so long. The colors haven't faded at all."
Felicia said, "The High Priestess said these murals were painted by the first group of people who escaped. In her words, they were descendants of the Gods."
Peter shrugged.
"I'm skeptical about that claim."
"They might not actually be lying."
Hawk, hearing Peter's comment, turned around and looked at him. "They're probably not descendants of Gods. But there's a good chance they're descendants of the Eternals."
He stared at the so-called mutant in the mural, and it finally clicked. He knew what this thing probably was.
Not a mutant. The official name in the comics was Abnormals. In the movies, they were called Deviants.
Setting aside the comic origins for a moment—
In the movies, Deviants were unique, nearly immortal life forms created by the Celestials through genetic engineering.
The Celestials originally used Deviants to clear apex predators from life-bearing planets, ensuring that life could develop and flourish.
But even the Celestials probably didn't anticipate that the Deviants would evolve through predation—shifting from targeting only apex predators to hunting and exterminating all life.
That threw a wrench in the Celestials' plans.
They'd used the Deviants to ensure life could continue so they could complete what they called the "Emergence."
But if the Deviants ate all the life on a planet, how were the Celestials supposed to birth new members of their race?
So—
The Celestials created the Eternals—a species specifically designed to hunt Deviants. After completing their mission—facilitating the Emergence—the Eternals would be mind-wiped and sent to the next life-bearing planet to continue hunting Deviants and ensuring life could thrive until the next successful Emergence.
Over and over again.
Until the Eternals—after being mind-wiped too many times, their minds overloaded with corrupted data—eventually turned into vegetables.
At that point, the Celestials would discard them without a second thought and create a new batch of Eternals to continue the mission.
Now that Hawk knew the mutant was probably a Deviant, and that the Iwi people were likely descendants of Eternals, everything suddenly made sense.
Because if that was the case, then the metal that looked like Adamantium earlier was probably genuine Adamantium.
No other explanation.
The new Celestial gestating inside Earth—Tiamut—possessed massive quantities of Adamantium.
Or rather—
Tiamut was Adamantium.
That was mentioned in Captain America 4.
It also explained why, when Hawk had first arrived on Skull Island, he'd felt the oppressive presence of a higher being weighing down on his power.
If his guess was right, that divine pressure had come from Tiamut—the dormant Celestial still growing inside the Earth.
And Tiamut hadn't even woken up yet. This was just the unconscious pressure radiating from his slumbering form. If it was already this terrifying, what would the fully awakened Celestials be like?
No...
He had to get his hands on the Mind Stone as soon as he got back.
For some reason, whenever he thought about the Celestials, his Sixth Sense flared with a warning—a sense of danger.
The feeling was faint.
But his instincts were screaming at him that when he eventually came face-to-face with the Celestials, they would be enemies, not allies.
Hawk's expression darkened.
...
Meanwhile, Peter and Felicia—having just heard Hawk mention "Eternals"—exchanged confused glances, both clearly lost.
Felicia spoke up.
"Hawk, what are the Eternals...?"
"A pitiful race that the Celestials use as tools."
Hawk snapped out of his thoughts and gave a brief, blunt explanation of what the Eternals were.
That was the truth.
He wasn't exaggerating.
Peter looked at the terrifying creature in the mural.
"What about this mutant thing?"
"Deviant."
Hawk pulled his gaze away from the mural. "They're also a race the Celestials created to use as tools. But they refused to stay tools. They rebelled. That's why the Celestials made the Eternals—specifically to hunt them down."
Peter blinked.
"What's wrong with these Celestials? They create two races just to fight each other for fun? Fine, whatever—but why the hell did they dump them on Earth?"
"Not just Earth."
"What?"
"Every life-bearing planet in the universe has these two races."
"..."
Peter's mouth opened and closed. Finally, he came to a conclusion.
"These Celestials are insane. Completely insane."
"Haha."
Hawk laughed and looked at Peter, who clearly had no idea what he was dealing with. "When one of them eventually shows up on Earth, you can tell him that to his face."
Peter froze.
"Shows up on Earth? One of them's coming here?"
"Of course."
Hawk shrugged. "But that's not for a few more years."
Bad news.
He was almost certain that when he met the Celestials, they'd be enemies, not friends.
Good news.
It would be years before the Celestials showed up. Thanos hadn't even snapped his fingers yet. Which meant Arishem—the leader of the Celestials—hadn't turned his attention toward Earth. Hawk still had several years to grow stronger.
Even with the Seventh Sense and a Gold Saint's Cosmo, he probably couldn't beat one of them.
Not yet, anyway.
Fortunately—
He still had time.
Hawk's thoughts raced. He took a deep breath, then smiled at Peter and Felicia. "Alright, you two should head back and get some sleep. When you wake up, we'll go home."
Peter and Felicia's faces lit up with joy.
The next second, Felicia seemed to realize something. She looked at Hawk. "What about you tonight...?"
Hawk smiled faintly. "I'm going to check out the underground tunnel."
Now that he'd confirmed there was Adamantium down there—
What was the next step?
Simple. Start mining.
Sleep?
Once he could punt the One-Above-All and punch the abstract entities in the face, he'd have plenty of time to sleep.
Right now—
This was the time to grind.
If you didn't hustle when you were supposed to hustle, then when Arishem the Celestial showed up to collect you, you wouldn't even have the luxury of crying about it.
First, stockpile Adamantium. Then get his hands on Uru metal. Finally, find a material compatible with Gammanium, and he could forge the true Golden Phoenix Cloth—infused with the power of both the Sun and the Phoenix.
Hawk's mind was already racing ahead. After telling Peter and Felicia not to worry, he turned—and in an instant, vanished from their sight.
Peter and Felicia blinked at the spot where Hawk had just been standing.
Peter was already used to it. He turned to Felicia. "Come on. Let's head back."
Felicia snapped out of her daze, nodded, and walked with Peter toward the temple entrance. After a moment, she asked quietly, "Is Hawk... a god?"
Peter shook his head.
"He said he isn't."
"He said that?"
"Yeah. Back in London, some ugly guy trying to destroy the city asked Hawk if he was a god. Hawk said he wasn't. Not yet."
"Not yet..."
"Yeah. That's what he said."
"..."
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~# 70 Advanced Chapters Available on my Patreon!
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(Just remove the hyphen to access Patreon normally.)
~# Bonus Chapter every 300PS