“Her name is Dynamo!” Kitty called out, getting to her feet quickly and extending her hand, which I shook calmly. “She comes from the past I was sent to!”

“What... what have you done here?” the older Ororo Munroe gasped, asking me as she stared around herself.

“Good afternoon,” I greeted them all calmly. “You needn’t worry about the Sentinels themselves, or the majority of their key personnel. I spread a virus through their neural net, and they are energetically removing themselves and those who happily spread their creed from existence.” There were actually quite a few of the latter, and their expressions of disbelief as their robotic masters turned on them would have been quite hilarious to capture on film.

Alas, I’d have to make do with Cosmic Awareness and the mnecromonics of Function.

“It was... that simple?” an aged voice spoke up. Magnetic fields swirled as the Master of Magnetism drifted over, looking up at me from his chair, which weirdly resembled the one Charles Xavier liked to use. Great weariness, strange hope, and the awareness that he was not their Savior all radiated from him.

“Sentinel technology is, in the end, a form of inferior robotic technology and flaw-ridden Artificial Intelligence. Most of their power comes from the ability to customize attacks against a foe and both coordinate efforts and analyze appropriate battle tactics. There is a reason most advanced societies avoid reliance on robots and androids. They are simply too easy to dispose of with a little effort and pre-planning.”

They were all staring at me in some disbelief. I just arched an eyebrow, and let my eye drift over to Magneto. “That is why they took out Doom, Reed Richards, and Tony Stark. They realized technological genius was the fastest way to destroy them. I am surprised that you could not do the same, but counter-coding has never been your forte, Master Lensherr.”

“Are the Sentinels really all gone?” Logan asked urgently, his claws still out, finding it hard to believe.

“They are going, and they are taking their most ardent supporters with them,” I replied calmly, watching the whole network crumbling and vanishing, both living and mechanical. “The Nimrod and disguised LMD units are getting rid of the living mutant-hate proponents before destroying themselves. There are a couple sequestered units placed as fallbacks I will have to get rid of, but those can wait a few minutes.

“Now, are you ready to leave this place?” I asked them calmly.

“Leave?” the looming Russian all made of shiny metal, his clothing rather tattered, asked of me, looking around at the bitterly shadowed ruins of New York. “Where are we going?”

“Well, the final destination is all on you, but you’re going to have a lot of company!” I smiled cheerfully.

With sparkles of cosmic energy, they all suddenly dematerialized, teleported away to the Sanctuary Ship now in cloaked orbit above the planet after following the interdimensional beacon of the Rod in my hand.

I set my eyes on the Baxter Building here, the remnants of Cerebro there I could pull out from where they were trying to operate it with the removed brains of mutant telepaths, and noted the dead vaults where the fallback technology of the Sentinels had been sequestered in the event of some mutant uprising getting the better of them this time.

Gamma Base and Cheyenne Mountain.

Nope, none of it was going to survive, and the virus was chasing the technology into all the connected databases, being quite thorough about it.

Computer Programs driven by Nova Force energy were truly bastards. We’d gone down this particular rabbit hole because of the Phalanx, a race of technorganic beings who converted and absorbed other species. Cypher’s ability to understand their coding had led to revolutions in our own computer systems, subject only to our ability to build at that level, and transcendent coding built atop Xandaran superiority in that area had only helped matters out.

There had been exactly one Phalanx incursion on Terra. The Phalanx Magus had been annihilated down to stray atoms after being contained and studied by the High Guard. Efforts to find defenses and weapons against its species had begun immediately thereafter. As higher-end Phalanx beings were cosmic-class in power with the living technology they commanded (as long as they had enough energy), that was a good thing.

Fedora’s study of Xandaran technology and its incredible depth was quite useful in plumbing secrets even the Xandarans had forgotten they knew. While the Xandarans had never employed the sort of horrific stuff they knew of that could be used for war, they had found many defenses against such things, although such had fallen into history’s dustbin when even the Skrulls didn’t opt to use most of them.

Fedora’s research had indicated that Xandaran technology could easily rise to the level of Galactus and the Celestials themselves, or the Watchers and their peers. She had deduced that the evolution and creation of the Nova Force was a necessity, not merely a goal and achievement, as any people that rose to such a level would be a threat to cosmic Entities and thenceforth were eliminated without cosmic backing of their own. That was especially true if they engaged in conquest, which, contrary to so much of that being normal behavior for advanced species in this reality, the Xandarans never had...

Indeed, it was probably because of that and their noble nature that the Watchers themselves had aided them after the destruction of their homeworld!

Grabbing the Cerebro unit would allow Rachel to reach out to all the mutants and teleport away all those who wished to come, all around the world. Once that was done, they could move on to somewhere else, and leave humanity to the mess they’d made of the world.

The wrong kind of justice was coming to this alternity for their sins...

I sighed. And just because I was the sort of doofus I was, I couldn’t just leave them to wallow in their punishment. There were too many innocents, and the cost was just too high.

I thought of the bar of Life Gold in my Masspack, and headed to the Baxter Building.

-------

“You want to go to MY world?” I repeated archly.

The surviving X-Men had sort of been elected the new leaders after Rachel started beaming mutants aboard, first dozens, then hundreds, and now thousands of them were now crowding the windows of the cloaked Sanctuary Ship, looking out at space, hugging one another in relief, taking some very long warm showers, getting new clothes from the dispensers, or just falling asleep on soft beds in the scattered rooms about the place.

There were naturally mutants who didn’t want to leave the planet, depending on where they were, and others that simply weren’t going to be brought aboard and could go rot, given their natural inclinations. There was no way En Sabah Nur was being allowed aboard, for instance, and if his would-be mutant empire was vanishing underneath him, so be it.

I steepled my fingers thoughtfully, looking over them. These weren’t Power of Ten Class-users, so they didn’t have the additional years of youth following the paradigm given them, and certainly didn’t have the knowledge base of genetics to do the job. Magneto could probably still do so, as he’d cloned himself and bodyhopped in the comics, but whether he still had the wherewithal to do so here was a different matter.

Also, he was a dangerous radical here, not the beloved protector and champion of New Israel.

“I will say a flat ‘no’ to going to our Terra,” I told them after a moment, and a little something died in their expressions. Before they could protest, I raised a finger, “To our dimension, that I can do. How would you like to go to Venus?”

They all blinked. “Venus?” Logan repeated for everyone. “What the flaming is on Venus?” he asked warily.

“Ah, you’d probably call it a Counter-Earth now?” I hazarded. “We moved Venus out of its orbit, as well as Mercury, and put them in place as another planet opposite Terra’s orbit. We’re using it as a sanctuary world for noble species we’ve run into from across the galaxy and beyond, doing some major terraforming to make it productive. There are Xandarans there, a Galadoran colony, Whoberis, Corbinites, and a significant number of Inhumans are living there.

“Our major ship production centers are there, the five Celestial Corps are based there, and the Watchful Order of the Guardian Eye is setting up their Lantern World there in the new Korliguan colony.

“In terms of hope, energy, and good people, you won’t find a better atmosphere in the galaxy, and, well, you’re going to be living among aliens, of whom the Whoberis are green to aquamarine in color, the Korligu are red, Corbinites are brown to yellow and don’t look human, and the Inhumans can be all over the place.

“You’ll fit right in, you just need telepathic training in Interlac, which we can administer overnight once you get there.

“If you want to meet your counterparts on our world in person, that can probably be arranged.

“Most importantly, the majority of those who are living there, such as all the Corbinites and Whoberis, are refugees. They know exactly what you are going through, as does everyone else there.” My smile was somewhat lopsided. “You will be continually amazed at just how energetic Xandarans can be about their hospitality and finding everyone a job and getting them to work and be happy and enjoying life. I swear them and their Nova Force are like angels among mortals at time, just too stuffy nice to be real.”

Despite themselves, they were all smiling somewhat. “That... sounds like a very interesting sort of place to live in,” Magneto said drily. “If one cannot have a mutant paradise, a futuristic paradise should be enough, no?”

I nodded slowly. “You have a counterpart on my world, Master Lensherr.” He stared at me, unblinking. “He is the Champion of New Israel, and one of the most admired people on the whole planet, one of its staunchest defenders and most outspoken critics and proponents against racism and specism of all sorts.

“You may want to sit down and talk with him about roads not taken.”

The Mutant Master of Magnetism, one of the biggest flashpoints of tensions between humans and mutants, sighed aloud as he closed his eyes. “And what of Charles Xavier? Has he a counterpart there?”

“He’s the Consort of the Shi’ar Majestrix Lilandra.” All of their eyes popped wide. “Yes, he’s married to a galactic empress. We have some trade relations with them, although there is continual tension because of the existence of the Phoenix. We’ll just have to see where that leads...”

-------

The Sanctuary Ship had almost completed its first revolution of the planet. I sat there out in the void, looking down at the planet with a frown.

Next to me, my newest Clone, blinged up with some excess stuff the others had made up during the Seven Spheres War, eyed the planet contemplatively.

She naturally didn’t have all the excessive Templated Crap heaped on top of me, but she was still a Twenty-One, and would become a Primary as soon as I departed.

Also, she was made here, so this was her timeline and home. She could still tap the Pocket Space, and was sucking in energy to her Nova Core right now, but it would take some time to reach a full Ten, even with the enhanced draw. It was a lot of energy to intake, after all.

“Got a plan of action?” I asked her. She had fewer tools to work with than I did, but on the other hand, she didn’t need to conceal her powers here and play it low-key.

“Mystique and Destiny are still alive. Just not for long,” she replied grimly. Their idiocy had set this whole thing in motion. Countless deaths were at their feet, beyond just Xavier and MacTaggert.

“Anything else?” I asked rhetorically.

“The Sentinels were planning on using temporal mechanics to ensure they spread through all time streams. I see no reason not to use the same to go rescue the heroes they killed, right?”

I turned my head and looked in a certain direction. “I suggest you go tap the Nova Force of this dimension first. There are no living wielders of it.”

She glanced in that direction, and sighed slightly. “I really don’t want the Cosmic Awareness, but I’m going to need it. Is there a Watchful Order here?”