Mob vs Jean Grey

The Arena

Professor X picked up a psychic signal from another world, so strong it registered on Cerebro like a sun rising, and sent Jean Grey to find it. She expected a weapon or a monster. She found a quiet schoolboy with a bowl haircut standing alone on an empty sports field, staring at his shoes.

Shigeo Kageyama did not want to fight. He never does. But the woman in front of him was reading his mind, and that made him uncomfortable, and his emotional meter, the one that measures how close he is to losing control, began to climb. Mob: 30%.

Round One

Jean tried to talk to him telepathically. Mob felt her presence in his head like a stranger walking through his house, and pushed her out with a burst of psychic force that knocked her across the field. She landed on her feet, impressed. Few telepaths had ever done that.

She lifted a set of football goalposts with her mind and set them down gently around him, a cage, to show she meant no harm. Mob crushed the goalposts into a ball of metal without moving his hands. Mob: 60%. The air around him began to shimmer.

Jean understood then that she was not dealing with a weapon. She was dealing with a frightened boy whose power rose with his emotions.

The Turn

The more Jean tried to calm him, the more confused and frightened he became, and the meter climbed. Mob: 100%. A storm of psychic energy erupted around him, lifting the bleachers, cracking the ground, tearing trees out by their roots. His power was suddenly enormous, raw and completely out of control.

Jean was thrown back, her telekinetic shield buckling under a force greater than anything she had felt since her darkest days. Then she felt something answer inside her, an ancient fire she had sworn never to call again. The Phoenix.

The Finish

Jean did not let the Phoenix take her. She took just enough of its fire to stand firm, a corona of flame around her, and walked through Mob’s storm toward him, step by step, absorbing his power instead of fighting it.

When she reached him, she did not strike. She put her hand on his shoulder and, gently, with the full strength of the Phoenix behind her mind, reached into the storm of his emotions and calmed it. Mob’s meter fell. 80%. 40%. Zero. The storm collapsed, and he sat down on the grass, exhausted.

“You’re very strong,” Jean said, sitting beside him. Mob looked at his hands. “I don’t like being strong,” he said quietly. Jean smiled sadly. “I know exactly how you feel.” They watched the sun set together, two people who had been afraid of their own minds.