A Variant of Dominant Phallus: Cyclops in the Krakoan Era

This is a Commissioned Story

PROJECT: PHOENIX, WITH BENEFITS
“The trouble with perfect resurrection is that perfection leaves no room for personal improvement.”
- Mister Sinister

The mutant nation of Krakoa had truly begun with a miracle.

When Orchis prepared to activate Mother Mold, the orbital factory being built near the Sun to create Nimrod and usher in a new generation of mutant-killing machines, Cyclops assembled a team to stop it. They succeeded, but no one came home. Jean Grey died alone inside an escape pod, hunted down after watching the minds of her teammates vanish one by one, and Scott Summers died moments later with the mission complete by the sheerest of margins.

Yet Krakoa had quietly conquered death itself. Using preserved mutant DNA, psychic backups stored by Cerebro, and the combined powers of five mutants working in perfect concert, the dead X-Men were grown new bodies and restored. Jean, Scott, and every member of their fallen team walked back into the world before a jubilant nation, revealing the Resurrection Protocols to Krakoa for the first time.

From then on, every mutant was promised the same gift: when they died, Krakoa would bring them home.

Year Two of Krakoa, Late Summer
XENO Gene-Harvesting Site, Sonoran Desert
14:07 Local Time

XENO had already begun cutting people apart by the time the X-Men reached the quarry. The abandoned copper mine had been converted into a grisly amphitheater of white tents, mobile surgical theaters, and temporary laboratories. The air smelled foul, a heavy mix of ozone, industrial bleach, and raw meat. Six transparent extraction chambers held unconscious mutants suspended in amber fluid, while a rotating assembly of spinal taps, bone saws, and thick needles descended toward their backs.

The quarry floor swarmed with a mixed security force. Half were standard human mercenaries; hard-eyed, well-paid professionals carrying heavy automatic weapons and wearing high-end tactical gear. The other half were the XENO zealots, grotesque foot soldiers carrying pale, vat-grown mutant organs stitched directly into their own flesh to mimic mutant gifts.

The X-Men emerged from Magik’s portal onto the high ridge overlooking the slaughterhouse.

Gunfire erupted instantly from the human mercenaries below. Armor reacted before anyone spoke, projecting her towering red psionic golem shell to shield the team. Tracers and armor-piercing rounds cracked against it in bright white sparks, the noise deafening in the tight space of the quarry.

"Magik, clear the center," Scott ordered. His voice cut through the din of automatic fire, calm and steady. He scanned the chaotic spread of armor, flesh, and extraction tech, processing the geometry of the battlefield in a fraction of a second. "Storm, lock down those transport trucks. Armor, secure the extraction chambers. Feral, break their perimeter."

Maria Callasantos bared her fangs. Her feline face twisted into a vicious, eager smile, her long tail lashing behind her. Once considered an enemy of the X-Men, Krakoa had welcomed her home, and Cyclops had put her on a strike team without a second thought. "With pleasure, boss," she purred. Feral launched herself off the ridge, hitting the ground on all fours. She tore into the human mercenary line, a brutal blur of orange fur, razor-sharp claws, and arterial spray.
No instructions for Nightcrawler. Kurt was already gone in a burst of violet smoke, dismantling the enemy gunners on the opposite flank in flashes of acrobatic kicks and snapping tail.

Lightning split the sky. Storm rose from the ridge, calling down a localized cyclone that swallowed the fleeing XENO transports in a blinding wall of copper dust. Armor dropped from the ridge like a falling building. Her massive red shell crushed the extraction controls and scattered the surrounding soldiers.

Scott didn't walk down the quarry slope. He stepped off the edge of the eighty-foot drop.

He plummeted toward the quarry floor, the wind tearing at his uniform. Two seconds from impact, human mercenaries tracked his fall and raised their rifles. Scott snapped his head down and released a massive, sustained optic blast directly at the bedrock below him. The sheer concussive force of the ruby beam hit the earth like a localized earthquake. The kinetic recoil caught him in midair, bleeding off his terminal velocity in a fraction of a second. He touched down on the cratered stone with a soft crunch of gravel, his boots perfectly planted, completely unharmed.
He didn't pause to let them recover from the shock.

A XENO trooper fired a bone-cannon graft. Scott shifted his weight and released a tight optic burst against the ground behind his left heel. The kinetic recoil threw him sideways into a controlled slide. His boots skimmed over the loose gravel as the bone projectile tore through the empty space where his chest had been.

Rifle fire chased him from a human mercenary flanking to his right. Scott didn't even turn his head. He fired a micro-burst over his own shoulder, banking it off the polished steel of a medical tray. The crimson beam ricocheted flawlessly and struck the mercenary square in the chest, folding him in half and sending him flying into a tent pole. He shifted his chin by inches, using short bursts against the earth to alter his trajectory faster than the surviving shooters could track.

Another hybrid soldier lunged with a grafted cartilage shield. Scott stepped inside the guard, trapped the arm, and used the man's forward momentum to throw him onto his back. He fired a pinpoint burst into the stone beside the trooper's head, cratering the ground and knocking the man unconscious through sheer concussive shock.

The extraction machine suddenly accelerated. A XENO technician had engaged the manual override. All five needle assemblies dropped toward the captives.

Scott processed the shifting variables. He saw the bent extraction tower. He tracked Magik opening a portal above an enemy gun emplacement. He noted Storm’s gale-force winds tilting the scaffolding exactly ten degrees off center.

The team had unintentionally built the perfect shot.

Scott ran, sliding beneath a final burst of rifle fire. He aimed at a steel rail to his right and fired. The crimson force ricocheted upward, entering Magik’s portal. It emerged instantly above the extraction tower, clipping the primary support pin right where Storm's wind had exposed the joint. The entire needle assembly sheared off its track and crashed uselessly into the scaffolding.

The destruction of the extraction tower triggered a frantic, desperate surge from the remaining XENO forces, but the X-Men did not give them a single moment to regroup.

Magik stepped out of a stepping disc directly into the center of a charging mercenary squad. Her massive Soulsword flared to life, casting a harsh, magical silver light across the quarry. With one effortless swing, she cleaved through a row of heavy rifles, rendering the weapons instantly useless. "Keep them busy," she commanded casually. She struck the ground with the tip of her blade, ripping open a shallow tear to Limbo. A swarm of small, vicious, goblin-like demons poured out of the sulfurous rift, shrieking and latching onto the terrified mercenaries to act as snapping, clawing fodder.

Across the quarry floor, Hisako floated serenely in the very center of her towering, translucent red psionic exoskeleton. A hybrid zealot fired a shoulder-mounted rocket directly at her chest. Armor simply caught the warhead in the palm of her giant glowing hand, letting the explosion wash harmlessly against her shields. With a sweeping backhand of her massive arm, she swatted away a dozen charging foot soldiers like flies, clearing the path before reaching down to effortlessly rip the reinforced steel doors off the remaining extraction chambers.

Overhead, the blinding cyclone of copper dust abruptly dissipated. Storm hovered in the clearing sky, her cape billowing as her eyes glowed solid white. She dropped the ambient temperature in the quarry by forty degrees in a single second. The localized flash-freeze locked up the actions on the human mercenaries' weapons and sent them shivering violently to their knees.

They didn't have time to recover. The air filled with the sharp stench of brimstone and the rapid-fire bamf of displaced hellish atmosphere. Nightcrawler flickered through their frozen ranks in a chaotic blur of indigo shadow, acrobatics, and flashing rapiers. He dismantled the remaining gunners with dizzying speed, knocking them unconscious with precise kicks and sweeps of his prehensile tail before they even realized they were under attack.

The battle ended in seconds. Feral stood atop a pile of unconscious and bleeding mercenaries, happily licking a stripe of blood from her claws, while Magik banished her surviving demons back to Limbo with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
Scott stood at the center of the shattered quarry, processing the silence. Smoke curled from the edges of his uniform and the glowing red quartz of his visor.

"Twelve extracted," Kurt reported, materializing on a ridge above the ruined camp. "All alive."

"Good," Scott said, his tone flat, offering no quarter to the devastated XENO camp. "Route them through the nearest gate to Transit. Cypher and Sage can monitor their arrival and coordinate with the healers. Once they're secure, strike team is dismissed." He adjusted his visor. "Let’s head home."

He dropped through Magik’s disc, his boots striking the ground, his knees flexing to absorb the downward momentum.