Time seemed to freeze abruptly, every movement slowed by countless beats, even the wings of birds in flight becoming traceable.
Ancient One, Emma, Steve, Azazel, and even Bucky and Gambit in the distance had long since stopped fighting. They could only watch as a blue-gray head soared high above the shattered palace walls.
Apocalypse's consciousness stalled for only an instant. His headless body still moved freely as he reached out to seize his head, only for blood-red energy arms to clamp down on him and hold him fast.
As he struggled, the muscles in his arms swelled into grotesque lumps before exploding apart with a boom!
"Trying to run?"
Using the blast of his own shattered flesh, Apocalypse forced James back several meters. His head and the torso with its rapidly regenerating arms were drawn back together by telekinesis and rejoined.
Whoosh!
Two half-molten-looking "Crimson Chains of Cyttorak" lashed out from the energy arms behind James. At the very instant Apocalypse teleported, they shot forward and wrapped around his neck. The two men burst into a cloud of deep-blue smoke and vanished completely.
"D-Dad. That ancient mutant who brought us here... the mutant who can flatten the land with a wave of his hand... can't beat that gentleman, can he? It looked like he just got... beheaded?"
Among the countless mutants watching from the royal city square in the distance, a mixed-race Asian girl tugged at her father's hand and asked blankly in a thick British accent.
Captain Braddock, Britain's strongest supernatural warrior and the man known as the "Sword of the Kingdom," held his daughter by the shoulder. Watching the two figures vanish entirely from the sky, he murmured dazedly:
"Betsy, my dear, it appears so. That gentleman... I had heard of him before, but I always thought the