Volume Two had finally come to an end.
Honestly, this had been the most exhausting stretch of plot I'd written since I started writing web novels.
Originally, I'd only planned to write a transitional arc after the end of Volume One, let the protagonist level up a bit, and bring out Mr. Sinister—who had been teased in the Fox X-Men Film Universe for ages but never had a chance to appear—to stir up some trouble. That would have been enough.
But after thinking about it, I felt... it was too bland.
Mr. Sinister might not be among the absolute strongest in the comics, but he still had his own distinctive traits: a master geneticist, a cloning maniac, narcissistic, a scheming bastard, and obsessed with scientifically breeding Cyclops and Jean Grey together...
In fact, in the comics of recent years, he had even started trending toward comic relief.
Mr. Sinister was quite different from villains like Thanos and Apocalypse, who pursued power and ideals. His actions had this vibe of, "Eh, I'm just having fun."
And then my urge to do something stupid started stirring... I had to come up with something wild!
This was fanfiction. If I just wrote some generic template villain, no one would care, so I had to do something different.
After taking inspiration from the House of X/Powers of X and Sins of Sinister comics, the idea of "four clones" came about. All that remained was to build the plot around those four scheming bastards.
And then, I started falling apart.
Just incorporating the concept of Sinister's Four Sons was already difficult enough, but Volume Two had plenty of other material to write as well.
For example, Magneto's appearance. I had decided on that from the beginning. The old bald guy had already returned to his