Brand New Isekai (Jean Grey Self Insert)

[Koyori]

Really hoping she doesn't actually just give that away after all those lines of her envying Spider-man's physical abilities and the bit about lamenting her lack of strength. Plus, a psychic with Brute powers is amazing, looking at you Emma. I also just think that she would fit with a super serum, she doesn't hesitate to use her full strength but also pulls her punches when she feels she can. She might not be Captain America's standards, but as an actual user if the powers I think she'd fit pretty well.

More likely though it seems like she's saving it for someone else, I won't say anything about her not having already used it despite being in danger seeing as there were a bunch of possible side effects depending on which serum it is. It would feel weird if she just passed it off onto the first person that's vaguely a good person, so there's probably someone specific she's planning on giving it to, I'm guessing to study rather than use because I can't think of anyone specifically in need of those powers.

 

[Skyfyre]

Spoiler: Patreons:

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Sara Grey POV

My little sister blinked, somehow surprised by the sheer shock and awe that we had. Possibly literally, what with her being able to read our emotions and all. I hid the tiny sliver of jealousy that bubbled up at that thought far down, where she'd have no chance of seeing it; most days, even I couldn't notice it.

"When did you get that?" I asked, giving her a bit of direction and wanting to confirm my suspicions.

I saw her thinking, not literally, but in the way that one's eyes move about one's face when they're thinking, the way Jean would bite the inside of her cheek. All the little tells of hers I knew well. "After the Blip," she settled on, telling me - us, really - the truth.

"Directly after," I said, not a question but a confirmation. "All that time you told mom and I that you were 'holding off on using your powers' and 'being good'-"

"I said that I was 'not going to do anything that would reveal me,'" she corrected. "And well, I was being good. I mean, I stole it from Nazis and criminals, that's something good."

Ned was the one to ask what was on all our minds. "Stealing a super soldier serum was you 'being good'? Man, I'd hate to see you be bad." We all laughed a little at that, the mood not quite as tense. Ned Leeds, the one who hacked into Damage Control systems and found me. He seems like a good guy, if a bit overeager at times. Even if he hadn't rescued me, which I'd be forever grateful for, I liked the fact that he never seemed scared of me or Jean just because of our powers.

"Could be fun, if the people she was being bad to were anything like Metzger," Michelle-Jones commented in a manner that was likely far less joking than it sounded. She'd helped go through the files too and was still furious about what she'd seen. 'MJ' wasn't as trusting of us as her friend, but I didn't take it personally; from what I knew, she was just less trusting in general. Her (former?) boyfriend revealing he kept the truth from her for over two years probably didn't help that.

"So, why go to all that trouble to steal it and then not take it yourself? I know you like to be fit," I said lightly, not demanding to know why she apparently offered it to Spider-Man and not for me, despite having sat on that miracle drug for months before we got separated at least.

"I do, and the thought was tempting… but the potential downsides far outweighed it." At our curious expressions, she explained. "The Super Soldier Serum is said to make you 'more of yourself,' which while hard to parse, is what seemingly made Steve Rogers such a paragon, the Red Skull into a literal monster as well as a figurative one… and led to John Walker killing people who had surrendered because of buried anger. Having mood swings like that could be really bad for a psychic, and that's even if it worked perfectly with our Enhanced DNA, which I don't think is likely. That serum is carefully balanced for a different genetic structure than our own."

Johann Schmidt was awful and I've seen the old photos of what he turned into. What would that thing do to me? I blanched at the thought before letting the conversation turn to lighter topics. Even then, I felt a bit hurt. Jeanie does it for good reason, or what she thinks is 'good reason' but she still shuts me out, still hides things from me. What will it take for her to trust me? I'm not like mom!

As if spurred by that thought I found myself saying, "I wonder what mom will think when she finds out you were using your powers even more than I was back then."

The comment was joking and meant to be funny, but Jean wasn't laughing. Instead, she said seriously, "About mom…"

***

Arranging a trip out took two days. The police wanted us heavily guarded 'for our own protection, and since this was a spot that Damage Control was thought to have been in the past, they (technically) had reason to worry. It gets old, constantly hearing them pat themselves on the back for their 'good work' capturing Damage Control agents, but at the same time claiming it's far too dangerous to let us out.

Jean had far less problems than I did being forced to spend most of our time in the safe house each day, but on the other hand, that hadn't been her existence for the past two months either. Maybe she'd feel differently then.

I pushed down the bitter thought - it wasn't me. She's the one who told me I didn't have to let my anger define me. That it was a part of me, but I could choose which aspects of me I wished to let reign. Jean had mentioned that once early on in the Blip, while we sat on the set of swings in our backyard, which were just coming into view as the van pulled in by our old house.

For a second, I almost didn't recognize it. There was one broken window on the side that hadn't been there before, and the blackberry bush was different - like it had been half hacked off then the project was abandoned, with the other half left to grow voraciously. Jeanie always loved picking blackberries, she'd collect all of them every summer and drag me out to pick more once our bush had been picked clean.

The rest of the house was the same, just not matching my memories. The chipped, more grey than white picket fence didn't match my memory of the pristine, new, fence, but it hadn't been like that since I was a little kid. Same with the back porch, no longer looking smooth and well sanded, but mouldy and full of splinters, with trash piled on top of it blocking the path.

We hopped out of the van after the plainclothes had determined the area was secure. Please, I could have done it better. The cops didn't seem to know how to deal with us, not trusting our powers over their training but hesitant and flinching around us. My sister pretended not to notice, but I knew her too well to think she hadn't seen their reactions and prepared to deal with any problems that might arise from them.

When we got to the front door I fumbled around in my bag for my keys, but Jean just gently pushed it open with a finger, the old door creaking open, revealing the shattered lock. Inside there was slightly more signs of a scuffle, the couch in the living room shoved slightly to the side, and a photo (one of the few left of us as a whole family, with little baby Jean, me as a toddler, and dad still around, standing in a park with mom) moved to a different place on the wall. Jean telekinetically shifted it over slightly to show the bullet hole that had been concealed.

"Wasn't able to find any other signs of mom, and the investigation of Damage Control didn't show any sign of her, so she either ran or…" Jean finished awkwardly, grabbing some letters from the floor where they'd been shoved through the mail slot. Mostly they seemed to be bills for late payments.

"Do you think… they'll find her… body?" I asked, unsure of why I was so tentative. I didn't like mom, we always argued. I wasn't the golden child like Jeanie. As we talked, I wandered into the kitchen, which was mostly untouched. The fruit bowl was mouldy, but other than that, the place looked decent, as if mom could come bustling in at any moment.

On the fridge I saw photos of the three of us on our vacation to the Grand Canyon before the Blip, making silly faces. Jean's report card from back then was still stuck on with a magnet, straight A's, with mine nowhere to be seen. It's not even like I was ever a bad student; I got C+s and Bs for most subjects, even the occasional A. But I'm not a genius like Jean.

"I doubt it. Damage Control had a bunch of experiments they were working on, including a disintegrator. The prototype was too bulky and slow to charge to use in a fight, but the files included mention of it for 'waste disposal' and while they didn't come outright and say it, a lot of their operations coincide with the disintegrator being used. People like us might have been seen as tools to use, but people like mom weren't even recorded in their files."

Damn Damage Control. Damn Metzger. Prison is too good for him, he should be burning in hell. The man's trial was still ongoing, and while the case against him appeared airtight, I still worried every time I saw him that somehow he'd weasel out of it, and one day I'd wake up to find myself strapped to a chair and hear his calm, too friendly voice as he forced me to use my powers again and aga-

"Hmm, these bills are adding up and we don't really use the house. Maybe we should sell it and get an apartment?" She glanced up to see my shocked face and, misinterpreting the reasoning, quickly amended, "Or we could stay here. It would take a bit more work to hang out with MJ and Ned and all, but we could make it work too. Or just discuss this later, no need to rush into things."

She sounds so… calm about it all. How can she be so in control all the time now? That wasn't to say Jean was fine with what Damage Control had done; disdain dripped off her words. But there was no fire to them either, any anger long since burned out. Maybe that's it, she just sounds calm cause she's suspected this for a while.

I remembered when I needed to be the 'big sister,' the one in charge, the one she could rely on. But did I ever really need to, or was that just a role Jean let me play to act like things would be okay when everything was chaotic? She did things like this back then too, she just acted quieter about it. If there was one thing my imprisonment had changed, it was Jean's willingness to appear more decisive.

My own tumultuous emotions weren't settling down at all, being here in this house that felt far too empty, so I walked outside to the backyard. There was a tree in the back with a set of swings. No treehouse, though we'd always talked about it. But dad left us and mom wasn't as handy and money was tighter. Not that she told us that, not to start, coming up with other excuses and distractions instead.

Sitting on the swings, I said, "I'm kinda amazed that we were able to keep the house through the Blip and all."

"They had a program for that, under the one world government. You remember how Miss Donovan looked over those forms each time she came to visit?" I nodded and Jean continued. "Some of them covered the house, got us the basics dealt with. Actually would have covered us for a few more years, but all those benefits were cut off after everyone came back."

"After the United States government came back," I said derisively. "Why did we have things go back? Things felt better then."

Jean made a see-sawing motion with her hand. "Eeh, there were benefits and downsides. More than just so many people being lost affecting communication and shipping, the unified government was beginning to get a bit… controlling."

I cocked my head to the side and she continued. "A lot of the measures for 'rebuilding' started to take a bit of a suppressive attitude. Military and police groups were formed to stop dissent of any kind, fearing 'societal destabilization,' even when it fell under the general rules of protected speech. We couldn't get much news of that though because they took control of most news stations and the internet as well. Sure, things ran smoothly enough considering the global disaster and there wasn't much discrimination or issues like that, but the government was becoming increasingly totalitarian."

Huh, I hadn't noticed. Then again, Social Studies was always one of the classes that I got closer to a C+ than a B. Jean did great with it, though she'd almost always have notes attached to her report cards with notes of being 'argumentative' in class, as she'd challenge the proscribed view in the textbooks. Might be good to look into that stuff more myself, maybe I could have seen Damage Control coming. Then again, maybe not.

"You never seemed worried about it. Did you know the Blip would end?" I asked bluntly. My sister had said she'd seen 'glimpses' of the future when she got her powers before, but she kept things vague.

Today, she admitted the truth. "Yeah, I knew it would end in five years. Or was pretty sure at least; we could have been in an alternate timeline of sorts, but things lined up a bit too well for that to be likely."

"Huh." After a minute I added, "But not about Damage Control?" She's said she didn't but-

"I didn't. I promise," Jean stressed, staring me straight in the eyes. "My sight is limited around us." She joined me on the swings, kicking back and forth. Just around the corner of the house I could see one of the police officers looking out, giving us some privacy but still keeping nearby in case any threats popped up. At least these guys don't seem too bad.

Jean seemed sincere about this. While she'd been hiding stuff from me (enough to steal a whole vial of super soldier serum), I didn't believe she was tricking me here. "Are you sure mom sold me out?"

She blinked in surprise and I did too. I didn't plan on asking her that, but… I need to know. Jean frowned, thinking it over, before eventually shaking her head. "I'm not certain, it's just a possibility."

"A possibility, or likely?" I pressed, and my little sister wavered.

"... Likely. You used your powers more than me, but you weren't that obvious about it, and we kept the power usage to a minimum after she kicked me out. There was nothing in the files to suggest they had detection methods before catching you - those came after they were able to study your powers and are still pretty limited. The kind of attack at the park would likely take more than suspicions and rumors."

"Which would have meant someone to tell them. And mom was the only one that could. Damn it. Damn it!" I shouted, letting the tears I'd held back fall freely from my eyes. "How could she hate us so much, to sell us out like that?"

My question was rhetorical, and while not an answer, Jean did have a clarification. "Given that the agents only knew to go after you that day, I think she must not have told them about me."

"Why? She kicked you-" I stopped myself, but Jean wasn't upset.

"I think that's exactly it. She felt guilty about what she did, so when she started to realize these government agents were bad news, even perhaps just subconsciously, she didn't reveal my powers. She probably felt guilty about a lot."

I scoffed. "Not exactly making up for all the stuff she did just to you, and certainly not to me."

"Oh, certainly not. Guilt isn't the most rational of emotions and mom wasn't the most rational of people," Jean said, not bothering to defend our mother now that she was gone. Jean played the peacemaker between us so many times, constantly asking me to 'see things from [mom's] point of view' and the like. It was all very reasonable, which made it hard to argue with, but I wonder how much of it was done because she really believed in it and how much was just to try and keep our crumbling family together.

"What would you do, if you were in her shoes?" What would my little sister do, if she felt guilty about something?

Jean paused, frowning for a minute, before saying, "More. I'd do more. To reach out to us, to protect us."

"Even if it's not enough? What if it's never enough?"

"Even then. Especially then. It might not be enough to undo your mistakes, but just giving up on making things better… that feels like failing all over again. And even something that doesn't feel like enough at the moment might make all the difference down the line. Like-"

"Like how mom covered for you, which left you free so you could then find Spider-Man and save me," I interrupted, following her train of thought. She gave me a sheepish look and I grinned back. You're not quite as subtle as you think you are, little sis.

I still wasn't sure about how I felt about mom yet. There was still a swirl of emotions in my gut, but the feelings weren't bubbling over any more. They were calmer, and for now, I'd take it.

***

On the ride back to the safehouse, my sister dozed off, leaning against my arm in the back seat. She'd spent the past few nights busy, compiling notes, furiously researching in her journal. She was trying to be discreet about it, but I was pretty sure I knew what she was looking into; becoming a superhero. And not just because I caught a peak of her sketching costumes in one of those journals.

Jean had always loved - no, been fascinated - by superheroes as a kid. Studying how they worked, from their powers to how the Avengers were financed and operated. She's wanted to be a super hero from day one. Even before we got our powers.

Glancing over at her unassuming form, I recalled that day. The first day she used her powers, whether she knew it or not. A day that would be burned into my mind forever…

***

The world had gone mad, people screaming, the other kids in the park going crazy. People were disintegrating before our very eyes, turning to dust and fading into the air. I latched onto my sister, my first instinct to keep her safe. Even as I did so, I felt my grip weaken and saw a spiral of dust coming from beneath me. From me.

Jean saw it too, and before I could say anything, before I could do anything, she shouted, "NO!" Her eyes glowed, not green but scarlet and golden, and despite being much shorter than me, despite me staring down at her eyes, I felt in that moment as if she was towering above me. So high up I could crane my neck as far back as I could and never reach the true height she was standing at.

A flash of light and it was all gone. The strange sensation and color of her eyes… all completely disappeared. Any hint of dust or weakness was gone from me too, as if the idea I had ever been caught up in this tragedy was just a dream.

***

I didn't have the time to look into it back then, with everything in chaos and people calling for help, but I was certain now that somehow, my little sister had done what the Avengers had failed to do, and stopped a part of Thanos' Snap. A tiny part, infinitesimally small, but still. Somehow she did it. I don't know if she knows how, or even realizes what she did that day. I'll never forget it though.

Being a superhero for real, not just pretending like little kids, sounded really risky to me. There'd be guns, and aliens, and monsters, and a whole world of craziness. I wasn't sure about it for me. For my little sister, though? Jean Grey is going to change the whole world, I know it.

Spoiler: A/N:

This was an interesting one. Since we have next to no character for Sara, I was forced to make up a lot of this wholesale. Including the part about Sara getting her powers from Jean/The Phoenix. That is very headcanony on my part, but I like it as an idea to explain how similar their powers are (but also why Jean was able to break free of the restraints when pushed by Bill, but Sara could only send out a message).

I've also added a new cover image I commissioned, to celebrate the first brand new chapter of this ongoing story! I've posted a larger version of it down below as well. Let me know what you think of it here or on the Discord. And if you want to read more and have a bit of money to toss my way, I have a Patreon, subscribers to it get early access to the next two chapters of this story, and the next ten for Like No One Ever Was, my Pokemon SI story. Thank you, and I hope you're having a good day.

 

[Skyfyre]

Spoiler: Large Image

 

[readsalot]

Jean saw it too, and before I could say anything, before I could do anything, she shouted, "NO!" Her eyes glowed, not green but scarlet and golden, and despite being much shorter than me, despite me staring down at her eyes, I felt in that moment as if she was towering above me. So high up I could crane my neck as far back as I could and never reach the true height she was standing at.

A flash of light and it was all gone. The strange sensation and color of her eyes… all completely disappeared. Any hint of dust or weakness was gone from me too, as if the idea I had ever been caught up in this tragedy was just a dream.

***

I didn't have the time to look into it back then, with everything in chaos and people calling for help, but I was certain now that somehow, my little sister had done what the Avengers had failed to do, and stopped a part of Thanos' Snap. A tiny part, infinitesimally small, but still. Somehow she did it. I don't know if she knows how, or even realizes what she did that day. I'll never forget it though.

Being a superhero for real, not just pretending like little kids, sounded really risky to me. There'd be guns, and aliens, and monsters, and a whole world of craziness. I wasn't sure about it for me. For my little sister, though? Jean Grey is going to change the whole world, I know it.

Click to shrink...

Damn so Jean when Super Phoenix ‍ And prevented Sarah's from being Blip'd
She is super OP Plz no Nerf.

 

[bambache]

Oh dang!
That last bit firmly lodged the X-Men theme song in my head!

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tb-8y_0U35s

 

[Lillie Jones]

Absolute Cinema
10/10.
Continue on
Cheers!