"God you’re so pathetic! You didn’t even last one fight, and it wasn’t even a real fight. What did you think you’re one of those blessed Main characters that get everything handed to them? Does baby need a system? I got a old grandpa here that can wipe your a** too. Sorry, there’s no plot armor here boy!"

I looked around and saw that I was in my mind palace (which looked like my old lab on earth by the way) but everything was greyed out. The other difference was the guy or thing sitting in my favorite chair berating me. I couldn’t tell what or who it was because it was hidden in shadows but whatever it was, it sure was pissed with me.

"You were given your greatest wish and unlimited power but as soon as things started getting just a little bit hard, what did you do? You wanted to pack up your toys and go home? I think not! You think the Chitauri or dark elves army are just going to stop just because you don’t want to play anymore? No boy, you need to find your balls and dig a whole lot deeper. You my boy are one of the few MC’s that actually has to work for what you get. That’s the trade off, you want all that op power you’re going to have to bust your butt for it. And so far, you are barely trying." It sighed and sat back. "Ayiee… I guess it’s not completely all your fault though. You were, after all thrown into the deep end… but still that’s no excuse for your weak knees and belly aching. So, I am going to give you a choice. A, you completely give up the superhero thing and I take your powers. And just to be nice I’ll set you up as a normal guy in Stark industries R & D. Or B, you totally commit to this life, this reality and give it your all instead of waiting around for the next shoe to drop. Oh, and just so you’re clear there aint no do overs or spawn points. You die and that’s it, you get shipped back to where you came from and have to deal with that afterlife."

I still couldn’t figure out who this dude was or what was going on but he was dropping some truth. I’ve been here for about 2 months it still doesn’t feel real. Sometimes I think I could just be in a coma from the truck and this could all be some really cool dream. Mostly none of this felt like it was really happening to me. Instead it felt like I was living in a fanfic I wrote about myself so the stakes never felt all that great because I figured I could change things whenever I wanted to suite my needs. Well at least that’s how it was until I met this dude. As soon as I saw him, I felt like a hallway guy at the end of Rogue One and he was Vader. This guy reeked power and it was all I needed for a wake-up call. I knew instinctually that this guy could destroy me. I think if I had been in my body, I would have peed myself but somehow, I was forced to focus on what he was saying and…he wasn’t wrong.

I really was half a**ing it. Like I said before, it felt like one super realistic dream that I could wake from at any minute. I mean come on you probably read as much fan fics as I did. Do you really think something like that could ever happen to you for real? Do you look both ways before crossing the street just in case? Do you double check your circuit breakers before you use your pc or game consoles? Do you ever think you’ll get random message from a god? Plus look at how I got here with no instructions or anything, come on that was not a standard Isekai!!!

Anyway, getting back to the point. The biggest thing was that deep down I really wasn’t sure if I even wanted to be a hero. Yeah it was a dream of mine but not a real one. Just one of those things you wish for that you know will never happen. How many kids dream about being the next Lebron or mega star and living that life, actually believe that it could happen to them. Being a super hero was just one of those things that was cool to think about but I never expected to happen. So, when I got here and was able to do it for real freaked me out and like the guy said I haven’t even been out on the streets yet. Plus, at the time I didn’t know, if I died again, did I die for good or get to go to another world? Well now I know and seeing as how those choices he gave weren’t choices really it was time to put up and shut up.

“Ok Mr. Shadow, I’m all in, I’ll fully commit to being a hero. Can you tell me what else I have been doing wrong?” “Well boy half of your problem was commitment issues and the other was that you got your powers all wrong.” He…It held up a hand before I could speak. “No one is going to tell you what or how they work, you’ll have to figure it out on your own, but the folks on Bleecker Street owe me one and they’ll give you some more training when you’re ready. But to dumb it down for you, basically you don’t believe in your powers so they don’t or only half way work.” After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I asked. “What does that even mean?” “It means you’re really lucky to even be able to do the little you can. I see you are a man of science through and through so the bit of power that you can use only works because you “believe” it follows the rules of science. Here’s your hint, what your powers really does is break all the rules, unfortunately you don’t know what the rules are. That’s something the wizards can help you with later, but until then try to be more like a Jedi and less like a mad scientist in your approach. But this is just a band-aide though, until you understand yourself and yours powers, you’ll never be that supreme op being you want to be.” It leaned back into the chair. “Well kid my time’s just about up so I will answer one more question.”

My mind was blown yet again. So, does this mean I don’t really have Psychokinesis? And what does “Jedi like” even mean? Now I had a headache to go with the bodyache trying to figure this out. But I was still on the clock and since he wouldn’t tell me how my power work maybe if I found out who sent me here, I could get a better understanding of what’s going on and where my powers came from.

“Who are you and Are you the one that sent me here?” It laughed and it wasn’t a human laugh either. “No. You can’t even begin to comprehend that guy right now. And no, I don’t know why he does anything he does. It doesn’t matter right now you just need to get ready for what you know is coming. Oh, and about that, the more you change things the less accurate your future knowledge will be. So, plan well. Speaking of I’ll give you 5min to think of something to get out the mess you’re in and if you happen to win, I’ll give you a prize.”

Next thing I knew he was gone and everything is back in color. That was a big info dump and I needed to get my head straight but that was a lot to take in. I was really hoping that who ever brought me here would lead to some clues about what’s really going on but like everything since I got here, guess I’ll just have to roll with it. As far as my new life crisis goes, now that I know for sure I only have one life I’ll start acting like it. But honestly, it’s not like I wasn’t before it was just that I wasn’t sure about anything and I didn’t want to die AGAIN for nothing. This may all be a story to you but for me it’s real life and there are a lot of people out there that want to do bad and don’t mind killing heroes while they’re at it.

So, let me get this all straight in my head first. Some really powerful ROB brought me here for a reason and I’m guessing it’s monstrously strong if other random ROBs like Mr. Shadow are scared of it. So, I’m thinking it has to be stronger than a Celestial but probably not the One above all. The great god Stan has better things to do then play around with me I hope…… We’ll comeback to this when I get some more info. Now that I know the alternative, I am ready to fully commit to being a super now. I thought about it some and realized that MC’s rarely die unless they where doing something incredible heroic or where in one of those sick stories where the author got off on killing main characters ‘Cough’ Thrones ‘Cough’. The only thing I could figure out for my powers where that maybe I was being to firm in my thinking and needed to trust my instincts more? Maybe if I used science as a start but then tried whatever felt right? Something to try out latter but I will say that I had started to notice some inconsistencies in my powers. Sometimes I would be able to do stuff but when I tried again later I couldn’t so the Shadow dude had a point. Alright enough lollygagging lets get back to it and get that prize.

Previously on X-men, I was getting my butt kicked. Storm was still choking me and I was still on my knees dealing with 4x earth’s gravity. I guess for the fun of it Iceman was also charging up a blast for me, and don’t forget Beast and Psylocke were outside the tornado just waiting. And did I mention Cyclops was on his way. This is what I came back to after my little time out. I needed to get rid of the biggest pain in my butt, big sis. So instead of throwing her at Iceman (Something I’ve been doing a lot of.) I picked him up and made sure his blast hit her full force. They didn’t see that coming and she ended up blasted through a shop and frozen to its back wall. Once she was down, I lunched Iceman at Polaris but she was ready for that and caught him. That was fine because I just needed the distraction to get out of her gravity field and lunch myself into the air. Now that Storm was finally out so they didn’t have any more real flyers at the moment which meant they were screwed. Beast was trying to gain some height by bouncing off buildings and Psylocke was trying to bring me down by throwing her daggers. (Thankfully she has gotten her teleporting powers yet.) To deal with her, I created a pit underneath her and closed it up when it got to her neck. For Beast I picked up a bunch of junk of the street with my TK and threw them at him. While he was jumping around dodging, I timed it so that during one of his dodges the gravity flipped sideways and he crashed hard head first into the side of a building, taking him out.

Polaris and Iceman weren’t just sitting around so I decided to lead them on a chase. Iceman on his slides and Polaris on a….. is that a car hood? Anyway, they both took shots at me as we raced through the streets and the ones that didn’t completely miss me my shields took care of. I didn’t have a destination in mind I just wanted to get them away from the door because I knew the rest should be coming in about now. We were about a block away from the park when I got the conformation. “Shadowcat, Marrow, and Magma now entering combat.” After 2 more blocks I figured it was good enough so I stopped and lunched a audio bomb at the duo. This bomb had the double effect of shattering Iceman’s slide and inducing vertigo on the both of them. I gave them a TK boost to their fall to make sure they would stay down this time. (Is it a good thing or bad thing that I’m the one that has to put all of us back together when this over?)

I’ll spare you the rest of this long story and tell you that I beat the last four after another hour but Cyclops made me work for it. He decided that guerrilla tactics would work best on me with the team he had left and his hit and runs worked for a good while. Eventually I got really tired and said the he*l with it since I was playing the bad guy lets do something bad and unleashed a gravity storm that leveled half the city before it crashed the Danger Room. The X-men caught the tail end of it but they still got banged up enough to be considered out. And that my friends is how I ended up sore all over and unable to move because I spent up all my power. But it was worth it. I beat the X-men and found new ways to use my powers. It was time to get ready for Big Green.