Chapter 159: Meeting

Genosha Island, the mutant refugee homeland. For the man in charge, Erik, it was somewhat speechless to see the X-Men's X-jet—the Blackbird—land on this island twice in such a short time.

But he couldn't just pick up the jet and throw it into the sea. So Erik could only lead a squad again, lining up to 'welcome' the X-Men. If words failed, they would simply send them on their way.

The Brotherhood of Mutants and the X-Men's love-hate relationship had historical roots.

Only this time, the one stepping off the plane wasn't that arrogant young man from last time, but an old friend, Hank McCoy.

"Erik." Hank stepped forward, extending his hand in greeting.

Erik ultimately didn't let his old friend lose face, returning the handshake and saying, "You should know our place is under US military surveillance. X-jets landing here every other day is not a good thing for us."

Hank smiled helplessly and said, "No choice, this matter is quite urgent. Raven sent me over."

Another old friend's name; Erik's mouth twitched. He said, "What did Raven say?"

Quickly recounting the cause and effect and producing the photo as proof, Hank finally said, "Raven hopes you can also send people to help. Relying on the X-Men with only half their current strength, we may not be able to deal with an alien warship."

"We can't deal with it at all, okay," Erik said, pointing at the silhouette of the artificial object in the photo. "Discovering something like this, shouldn't the US military be the ones to act?"

"Even an Omega-level mutant is at best a foot soldier; you can't expect every one of us to have the ability to shoot down planes. Let alone a spaceship flying outside the atmosphere."

"Regardless of whether it is a warship, my power cannot reach that far or play any role. Unless you have a plan to send us up to directly invade the interior, otherwise we are like apes roaring at the sky with stones in hand."

Finally, someone with their IQ online raised a very realistic question.

Expecting aliens not to use their spaceship, not to bombard with warship cannons, but to send troops ashore for hand-to-hand combat—what kind of wildly imaginative tactical thinking is that?

For such a person to become a commander on an alien warship, does it mean there are also Bai Chi among the aliens who rose to power through nepotism? Unless there is another purpose.

To this doubt, Hank could only show a helpless bitter smile and said, "This photo is our only evidence. Afterwards, I contacted many observatories and other units capable of observing space."

"No one could find other evidence proving an alien warship is lingering in Earth's orbit. Even Dr. Richards, who cooperated with me to develop this photo, is the same; he also couldn't find more compelling evidence."

What Hank didn't know was that Reed Richards did spend time looking for the existence of this spaceship, wanting to see it with his own eyes.

But it probably took only half an hour. After getting no result, he turned back to study the energy data of cosmic radiation.

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

"Without evidence, we have no way to convince the US government to order the US military to deploy. But I fear that by the time we have concrete evidence, it will be too late. So we need your power."

Facing such an unreasonable request, Erik instinctively wanted to refuse. Foot soldiers fighting a cosmic warship? Even if all were Omega-level mutants, they couldn't do this.

If the enemy had weapons at the planet-destroying cannon level found in science fiction novels, they would shatter the Earth, let alone mutants. So just hearing about such a thing feels magical.

Hank was very familiar with this old friend's little gestures. Just seeing Erik pull at his mouth and bare his teeth, he knew he was about to refuse. He hurriedly said, "Raven said this is something you owe him."

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

"That incident in '73," Hank hinted obscurely.

Erik made a face of headache and said, "That was nearly twenty years ago; does he still hold a grudge?"

"Women, once you owe them, it's a lifetime thing," Hank shrugged helplessly and said, "And you do owe her an apology, unless you said it somewhere I don't know about. But judging by her attitude of never bringing it up, you know."

This made his teeth ache too.

Erik didn't even remember if he had apologized for that incident. Anyway, whenever they met afterwards, they tacitly agreed not to mention it, thinking that matter had passed.

In fact, if it hadn't been brought up again today, he would have forgotten such a thing existed. It seems the matter didn't pass, but was temporarily owed, to be brought out when needed...

"Alright, I will help," compromised Erik said, "But you must also know, I cannot bring an army back to the US mainland. So I will only take a small elite combat squad of a few people."

"A direct conflict with an alien army is impossible. I can only achieve two goals: proving the existence of aliens and rescuing Jean. As for how to fight that big ship, that is the military's business, nothing to do with me."

"No problem, as long as you are willing to help. Our main goal is also to rescue Jean," Hank replied.

Erik immediately named names: "Pyro, Selene, you two go prepare, come with me to the US to save people."

Two people who looked quite normal, one male and one female. If there was anything special about them, it was that the woman had a purple three-point haircut, while the man had a braid reaching his waist, as if turned upside down.

"Only two people?" Hank asked in surprise.

Erik said, "These two are much more powerful than the young people you trained. Besides, I will be going too. Just my stepping onto US soil will make a bunch of people uneasy, right? How can you expect me to bring more people?"

"Alright." Hank compromised and nodded. Suddenly he said, "Oh, we still have to wait for one more person."

"Who?"

"An out... 'Ah ha, everyone. I'm here.'"

Hank's answer was unexpectedly interrupted. Everyone turned to look at the source of the sound and saw a guy in strange clothes walking out of the woods.

He wore a rose-red suit, a goose-yellow vest, paired with a dark green shirt, and a pair of brown tap shoes.

He had a grass-green pompadour, and his face was powdered whiter than a ghost. A red nose plus red eyebrows, eyes painted with black cross-star eyeshadow, and a smiling face with red lips painted all the way to the cheeks.

The newcomer saw him step and shake his hips, saying while doing so, "Knock knock."

"Who's out there?"

"Soup (pronounced Sup)."

"Soup what?"

"Super Joker! Hahahaha." The person who appeared laughed in self-entertainment.

(End of Chapter)