Rendezvous

Genosha Island, a refugee home for Mutants. Erik, the person in charge, was somewhat speechless at seeing the X-Men's Blackbird jet land on the island twice in such a short period of time.

However, it wouldn't be appropriate to lift the fighter jet up and throw it into the sea. So Erik could only lead another team to line up and "welcome" the X-Men. If things got heated, they would simply send them on their way.

The love-hate relationship Brotherhood of Mutants and the X-Men has a long history.

This time, however, it wasn't the unruly young man from last time who got off the plane, but an old friend.

Hank McCoy.

"Erik," Hank stepped forward and extended his hand in greeting.

Erik, not wanting to embarrass his old friend, shook his hand and said, "You should know that we're being monitored by the U.S. military. X-fighters land here every few days; it's not a good thing for us."

Hank smiled helplessly and said, "There's nothing I can do, this matter is rather urgent. Raven asked me to come."

F.

It was another old friend's name. Erik's lips twitched. He said, "What did Raven say?"

After quickly recounting the events leading up to this, and presenting the photograph as evidence, Hank concluded, "Raven hopes you can send someone to help. With only half our current X-Men, we might not be able to handle a warship full of aliens."

"They're completely outmatched, okay?" Erik pointed to the outline of the man-made object in the photo and said, "Shouldn't the U.S. military be involved when they discover something like this?"

Even Omega-level Mutant is at best an infantryman; you can't expect everyone to have the ability to shoot down airplanes. Let alone a spaceship flying outside the atmosphere.

"Whether it's a warship or not, my abilities can't reach that far, so they're useless. Unless you have a plan to send us up there and directly infiltrate it, we're like monkeys yelling at the sky with rocks in our hands."

Finally, someone with common sense raised a very real question.

To expect aliens to have spaceships but not use them, to have warships and cannons but not use them, and to send people to land and fight hand-to-hand combat—what an absurdly imaginative tactical mindset!

Does the fact that someone like this could become a commander on an alien warship mean that there are also idiots among aliens who rise to power through nepotism? Unless there's another motive.

In response to this question, Hank could only give a helpless wry smile and say, "This photo is our only evidence. After that, I contacted many observatories and other institutions that can observe space."

"No one can find any other evidence to prove that an alien warship is stationed in Earth's orbit. Even Dr. Richards, who worked with me to develop this photograph, couldn't find any more compelling evidence."

What Hank didn't know was that Reed Richards had indeed spent time searching for the existence of this spaceship.

I want to see it for myself.

But after only about half an hour of that, without getting any results, he went back to studying the energy data of cosmic radiation.

After all, there was no guarantee that the spaceship was still in the same place. If he couldn't find it, his intuition was that the spaceship had left or moved to another location, not that his search method was wrong.

"Without evidence, we have no way to convince the U.S. government to order the deployment of U.S. military. But I'm afraid that by the time we have concrete evidence, it will be too late. That's why we need your help."

Faced with this unreasonable demand, Erik instinctively wanted to refuse. Infantry fighting a spaceship? Even if everyone was Omega-level Mutant, that wouldn't be the way to go.

If the other side had weapons like the planet-destroying cannons from science fiction novels, they could shred the Earth to pieces, let alone Mutants. So just hearing about this kind of thing sounds like something out of a fantasy.

Hank was very familiar with his old friend's little tricks. He watched as Erik smirked and bared his teeth.

Knowing he was going to refuse, she quickly said, "Raven said this is something you owe him."

Erik was taken aback and said, "What do I owe him?"

"It's about that incident in '73," Hank hinted cryptically.

Erik gave him a pained look and said, "It happened almost twenty years ago, and he still holds a grudge?"

"Women, once they owe you something, it's for life," Hank said helplessly, spreading his hands. "And you do owe him an apology, unless you said it somewhere I don't know. But judging from his never-mentioning attitude, you know that."

Now even my teeth are sore.

Erik couldn't recall whether he had apologized for it. Anyway, when they met afterward, they tacitly avoided bringing it up, assuming that the matter was over and done with.

In fact, if it hadn't been brought up again today, he would have completely forgotten about it. It seems the matter isn't over, but rather temporarily owed, to be used when needed. "Alright, I'll help," Erik said, giving in. "But you also need to know that I can't bring an entire army back to the United States mainland. So I'll only take a small elite combat squad."

"A direct confrontation with the alien army is impossible. I can only achieve two goals: proving the existence of aliens and rescuing Qin. As for how to fight that big Titanic, that's the military's business, not mine."

"No problem, as long as you're willing to help. Our main goal is to rescue the violin," Hank replied.

Erik then called out, "Red Lotus, Selene, you two go and prepare to come with me to United States to rescue people."

Two seemingly normal humans, a man and a woman. If there was anything unusual about them, it was that the woman had a purple, three-part hairstyle, while the man had a waist-length braid, as if they were reversed.

"Only two people?" Hank asked in surprise.

Erik said, "Those two are far more capable than the young people you've trained, and besides, I'll be going with them. Just my mere presence on United States soil will make a lot of people uneasy. How can you expect me to bring more people?"

"Alright," Hank nodded in agreement. Then he suddenly added, "Oh, we still have to wait for someone."

"Who?"

"An outsider—" "Aha, everyone. I'm here."

Hank's answer was unexpectedly interrupted, and everyone turned to look at the source of the sound, only to see a guy dressed in strange clothes walking out of the woods.

He wore a rose-red suit, a pale yellow vest, a dark green shirt, and brown tap shoes.

She had her hair slicked back in a grass-green style, and her face was so white it was practically whiter than a ghost's. She had a red nose and red eyebrows, and her eyes were painted with black cross-shaped eyeshadow. Her smiling red lips were even drawn on her cheeks.

The person who came in took a step and shook his shoulders, saying, "Knock on the door."

Who's outside?

"Soup (phonetic transliteration: Supu Soup)"

"Supp what?"

"Super Joker! Hahahaha." The person who came on stage laughed heartily.