The Unemployed Captain's Psychological Trauma

February in New York is exceptionally cold.

With average daytime temperatures ranging from 3 to 6 degrees Celsius, the snow brought by a winter storm was particularly striking.

Westchester County.

The elegant, ornate iron gate of Xavier 'X Academy was kicked open.

The person breathed on his hands to blow them dry before swaggering inside.

The straight-line distance from Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah to Westchester County, New York is approximately 3,340 kilometers.

Having stolen a car and driven it for over thirty hours straight, Lao Zhou circles under his eyes, especially missed his old Guardian.

If this gossipy car were still around, I could have gotten a good night's sleep during this time, sigh...

As he walked into the main house, Sing Sing sniffed.

Following the aroma of oats, I easily made my way into the Xavier family's private restaurant.

At the dining table, Professor X stood with a glass of warm water, looking exhausted.

I originally wanted to make a version with hair.

Wearing a plaid apron, Beast Hank stood in front of the stove, stirring the oatmeal porridge with a wooden spoon.

Sitting at the dining table was an incongruous middle-aged man with messy, bird's-nest-like hair.

Right now, he's engrossed in shoveling chickpeas into the plate with his spoon.

Hearing the sound of leather shoes, he suddenly looked up at the person who had entered.

Sing Sing Chow grinned and waved to him.

But the guy simply pushed his plate away, got up, and left without a word.

"Tsk, hormonal imbalance?"

Sing Sing pulled out a chair and sat down, then reached out and grabbed the last slice of toast from the long plate, stuffing it into his mouth.

"Hey Old Charles, the food standards at your college are getting worse every day."

Sing Sing chewed on the hard bread, mumbling indistinctly:

"This food doesn't even meet the standards for the inmates in our 749 Bureau. Sabretooth gets scallions with dipping sauce and two kinds of steamed buns every meal!"

"Who was that guy just now? How come I didn't notice there were other people here before?"

Charles, sitting in his wheelchair, simply shook his head with a wry smile and didn't say anything.

Beside the stove, Hank wiped his face with his large, blue-haired hand.

Cute big cat

"Stephen, stop with the sarcastic remarks. That guy who just went out... was Scott."

"Scott?"

Sing Sing paused for half a second, then his eyes lit up.

"That X-Men captain with laser beams from his eyes? 'Cyclops' Scott Summers?"

"It was him."

Upon hearing the Beast's reply, Sing Sing's professional instincts kicked in instantly.

Even though the other person had a deadpan expression just now, in Director Zhou's eyes, he was still a talent!

Holy crap...

The decadent version of Cyclops is quite handsome

Cyclops is a training instructor for people with special abilities!

X-Men Captain!

He has commanded countless battles, large and small; his command abilities are only stronger than Colossus'!

Tunnel excavation, underground engineering demolition, high-energy beam and energy technology research, laser inertial confinement fusion...

You can do anything!

"Oh dear! I was truly blind to your greatness..."

Sing Sing, beaming, exclaimed, "We have a project to complete the Qinling Mountains No. 3 Extra-Long Tunnel. The geological structure is entirely granite, and the budget for blasting detonators alone is going to burn through a lot of money every month!"

"If Comrade Scott were willing to go to China and fire a couple of shots into the mountains, how much money would that save the national treasury?"

"I wonder if this Comrade Scott would be interested in joining? Storm, Colossus, and Wolverine have all joined..."

Upon hearing the last name, Hank quickly waved his hand, interrupting his wishful thinking.

"Stephen, you'd better give up on that idea!"

"Scott now... doesn't want to use his abilities anymore. Ever since that major defeat for the X-Men, he's completely given up on himself."

Charles's eyes were filled with unconcealed sorrow as he spoke softly:

"Scott once firmly believed that we could guide Mutants towards peace."

"But in that chaotic battle, he watched as the young team members he was protecting were torn to shreds, and he also used the destructive power unleashed by his eyes to turn his compatriots, who had become puppets, into ashes."

"He carried the burden of too much unbearable bloodshed."

"Now... he utterly loathes his own eyes, preferring to spend his days rotting away in a dark corner."

A brief silence fell over the restaurant.

Sing Sing is usually shrewd and calculating, but he didn't say anything more at this moment.

There are many great principles in the world, but for a soldier whose spine has been utterly shattered in the ruins, any preaching is an offense.

Sing Sing stood up and straightened his suit and tie.

"You guys enjoy your porridge. I'm going to take a stroll around the back hill and see some old acquaintances."

The vegetation on the back hill was even more overgrown than that in the front yard.

The cold wind howled through the bare tree branches. Sing Sing, stepping on the fallen, withered leaves, stopped in front of a solitary grave.

Sing Sing stood quietly in front of the grave, took out a cigarette, tore open the seal, lit it, and stuck it into the soil.

Sing Sing squinted and muttered to himself:

"I have some good news for you today. That bastard named Tunsley, I photographed him a few days ago and turned him into a mural, the kind you can't even peel off."

"I've avenged you thoroughly. Don't get lost on your way to reincarnation. In your next life, keep your eyes open and don't be born into this wretched place again."

A gust of cold wind swept through, and the red glow of the cigarette butt flickered.

After rambling on for a long time and finishing another cigarette, Sing Sing straightened his hat, waved goodbye to the lonely grave, and returned to the main building.

Having found the professor and the Beast, Sing Sing took out a communicator engraved with the Black Swan Emblem and placed it in front of them.

"Old Charles, let's not beat around the bush."

Sing Sing rested his hands on the edge of the stage, staring at the former Mind Stone leader of Mutants, his tone devoid of any joking tone.

"Just who is this Miss Sinister with the Red Diamond mark on her head?"

Charles's wrinkles had deepened.

He had long anticipated that Sing Sing would eventually follow the clues to uncover the core issue, but he didn't expect that day to come so soon.

After a long silence, Professor Charles sighed deeply and raised his hand bitterly:

"Stephen... once some things are revealed, even I don't know how to handle the situation."

"Sigh... come with me."

The professor picked up the water glass on the table and drank it all in one gulp. He then called Sing Sing and they headed towards the X-Men command center hidden underground.

Shortly after, the professor went to the console and entered a string of commands that was as long as thirty-two bits.

A deep blue projection filled the entire space.

A familiar face suddenly appeared in the center of the screen.

"Miss Sinister... her name is Claudine Lenco."

"But her true identity is a female clone of Nathaniel Essex, the genetic madman, the 'Mr. Sinister' who died many years ago."

After speaking, the professor pulled up a top-secret experimental file:

Before his physical body perished, Mr. Sinister compiled his life's accumulated gene pool, all his research in supernatural science, and even his thought patterns into underlying code and infused it into Claudine's brain.

"She is the true controller of the Silver Peak Consortium..."

"Stephen, if you encounter her, never underestimate her."

Charles pointed to the pulsating red energy peaks on the graph.

"Claudine inherited both physical and mental superpowers from Essex."

"The diamond-shaped marks on her forehead and palms can release a decomposition shockwave powerful enough to vaporize titanium alloy, and can even invade the central nervous system of melee fighters within microseconds, inflicting permanent physical paralysis."

"But these physical methods are merely the fangs she uses as a disguise."

Charles looked up and stared intently at Sing Sing.

"Claudine possesses a rare Mind-Reversal Field."

"Within her domain, her powerful Mind Stone can directly locate the dominant X-Gene in Mutants and forcibly 'interrupt' its neural impulse commands!"

In other words... any Mutants who dares to approach her will be reduced to a defenseless mortal body!