//Wasn't me,// Jono replied, after a long moment just leaning against the door, working his way back around to it in his head. Acknowledging her words, her affirmation that it hadn't been him. Knowing, at least somewhere in that head of his, that they were true. Not denying them. Not acknowledging them, either. //Given long enough, I would've done. Would've cost me my actual head. Don't need that anyway.//

Thank you, Fandom, for that horrifying look at what could have been Jono's life instead.

//Didn't get that long. What happened wasn't much better. All it took was one person with enough power saying the right phrase. All it took was No More Mutants.//

There was a weight behind those three words that words alone couldn't convey. They came with a flash of red, of fire and smoke and screaming, of disaster, of millions of lives changed in an instant. Lights across the world going out, leaving only a rare few still burning.

Those three words were an extinction event unto themselves.

//Should've died. Woke up months later in a hospital bed. Wished I hadn't.//