Marvel: Raising — Chapter 169 - They Called Me a Superhero
"I can't die."
The lethal blow landed. Scarlet Witch's mind went blank. She went numb.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
The dizziness was normal.
She had failed again, the superhero, failing again. This time she would lose her life. This death could not be stopped.
But it could be outrun.
All things have a beginning, an end, and a process. Death is no exception.
And the Speed Force can run along the process of anything. It can even outrun the rules of death itself.
Run!
Start running!
Scarlet Witch became a streak of scarlet lightning and tore away.
If you had super vision.
Right then, you could have seen it, inside Scarlet Witch's body, the magic, the cells, coming apart.
Like a great river bursting its dam. Vast and unstoppable, surging, spectacular.
All that borrowed magic, all that borrowed power.
In this one moment, along with fate itself, it was being repaid double. Every fraction, every sliver, clearly priced. No discounts.
"Sleep for a while, Scarlet Witch," Wanda said.
"I can't die."
Scarlet Witch shook her head. She ran faster. "I am a superhero. I am the Scarlet Witch of the Avengers. I am a great hero who saves the world! I want a happy life too. I want Quicksilver, Vision, children..."
Wanda: "..."
You fool. What's so great about being a superhero?
She sighed, drifting in lazy circles behind Scarlet Witch, fingertips still sketching out magic. Like a fleeting life, a millet dream, illusions and foam.
"WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!"
Circle after circle, Scarlet Witch raced around the planet. The Speed Force threaded through time and space, defying the paradox of life and death.
Lights and shadows, countless, bright and vivid, like film scenes on a cinema screen, flashing past.
In a daze.
Scarlet Witch seemed to have made it. She had returned to her childhood, to her girlhood.
The Wundagore Mountains. Her childhood. Carefree and untroubled.
She and Quicksilver, growing up happy together.
No Stark Industries bombs. No Hydra dragging her off for experiments. And certainly no perky-assed old soldier out of World War II, shield in hand, telling her she had to become a superhero.
She slowly awakened her mutant powers and Chaos Magic.
But —
She did not become a superhero.
Instead she lived a quiet, happy little life. She used her powerful magic to farm, good weather, bumper harvests every season.
Slowly she grew into adulthood, blossoming, radiant, full of youth and beauty. A famously gorgeous woman for miles around.
...
One spring, a robot came from distant New York.
It stared at her, unblinking.
"My name is Vision. I am a robot. My body is made of vibranium. My life is a gift from the gem."
"The Mind Stone told me you are the most beautiful, the most worthy girl."
"I want to marry you."
Vision said it with complete seriousness.
"Hahaha!"
"Times really have changed — now even robots have gotten ideas!"
"Does it even know how to use a massage gun?"
Her girlfriends mocked this overreaching robot. It got shooed away, but it kept turning to look back at her.
In that moment, her heart skipped a beat.
She was curious why a robot would long for love. That curiosity pulled her in. And more than that, standing beside the cold, unfeeling Vision, she could feel her own wild Chaos Magic growing calm.
She liked that calm.
She liked a plain and simple life.
...
"Congratulations on your marriage!"
"May you have children soon!"
Scarlet Witch and Vision were married.
In their tiny house, friends and family packed every corner. Streamers hung everywhere. The kitchen was full of food. Cute throw pillows sat on the sofa.
The little TV played the weather forecast.
So nice.
"So nice."
Scarlet Witch smiled.
Time passed, she wasn't sure how much, and then she had children.
The children pointed at the scarlet battle suit. "What's this?"
"Mommy's cosplay outfit."
Scarlet Witch answered, then looked at them seriously. "Study hard. Grow up and become a doctor or a lawyer."
"Never dream of being a superhero."
"It will ruin your entire life."
The children all nodded, each one more obedient than the last.
"Don't become superheroes. America doesn't deserve superheroes."
Scarlet Witch's smile grew warmer and warmer.
But her eyes grew more and more hollow, the light fading from them. Tears ran hot down her face. "Thank you, Wanda."
"I am very satisfied with this funeral."
"A plain and happy life. It's something I could never have dreamed of, could never have woven for myself."
"Because they called me a superhero."
Layer by layer, the illusion shattered.
Wearing a contented smile, Scarlet Witch reached out and touched Wanda's face. "Keep going. You will have so, so much happiness."
"Don't learn from me..."
In that moment.
Death finally caught up to Scarlet Witch. Before farm Wanda's eyes, Scarlet Witch was like a pencil sketch, erased clean out of existence by an unseen hand.
Farm Wanda reached out.
She wanted to touch Scarlet Witch, but her hand met only air.
The feeling in her chest was beyond words.
In that moment, Wanda wanted to go home more than anything.
She had a home.
...
Meanwhile, Black Strange was still getting pounded by the Galactus father-daughter duo, the picture of complete disarray.
There was nothing to be done about it.
It wasn't that he was weak. It was that the Galactus father-daughter duo, brimming with power, had opened up full firepower and were instantly operating at the ceiling. If he hadn't picked up a boost from DC, using the Speed Force and the power of Barbatos to dodge and weave, he would have been dead already.
For dealing with types like this, Azu could show up and end it in seconds.
He grabbed Christine Palmer and dragged her straight to the battlefield. Buddy, he said, either you come out, or she's done.
And so Black Strange made his very dashing, very dramatic entrance, and promptly got clubbed over the head, knocked cold, and wrapped up in spider silk.
"A brain-dead, edgelord chuunibyou mage like this deserves to have his power stripped and spend the rest of his life juggling at a zoo."
"Acting all cool — I'll send you flying."
Azu's expression was pure disgust.
With the whole farm crew back in the picture, the Scarlet Witch crisis and the Black Strange multiverse crisis wrapped up in minutes.
The company naturally livestreamed and publicized the whole thing. The Homie descending from the heavens like a god of war, unstoppable, shattering all evil, bringing love and justice to the blue planet.
"Boss Zu, we adore you!"
"Ahhhh, he's so handsome, I love him so much, uwuwu!"
"And you, our Zu-baby, you alone are forever worthy!"
The fans went wild, every last one of them loosening up, soaking in the thrill of victory.
But Azu wasn't relaxed.
Because Scarlet Witch and Black Strange had only ever been the edges of this fight.
The real battle hadn't started yet.
With Scarlet Witch and Black Strange gone, the oppressive pressure blanketing the blue planet didn't lift. It surged.
Cold. Bone-deep. Shattering.
A force saturated with despair was spreading outward, blotting out the sky. The sun froze solid.
It was Homander.
He sat upon the sun, drinking in its light and heat. The powers of Doomsday and Bizarro had fused and risen to something greater, layered on top of every other ability he had accumulated. He had reached his peak. And then, with a single glance, he froze the star.
➤ Next: The Homie VS The Homelander