Marvel: The Enlightened One#181+182: Transmigrators Exist to Fix Regrets! Eternals, Deviants, and Adamantium

"Felicia's pregnant?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to be a dad?"

"That's right."

"Felicia..."

"That's enough..."

Hawk watched Peter—who, after Felicia left the room, had been sitting in his chair like a broken record—and decided to cut him off. He looked at Peter with genuine curiosity. "So how did you and Felicia end up together?"

Felicia had gone out to ask around the Iwi tribe about where they'd gotten what appeared to be Adamantium.

Hawk was genuinely curious about Peter and Felicia's story.

And right now, he had time to kill.

He'd considered going with Felicia, but he couldn't stand the way the Iwi people looked at him—like he was some kind of Divine ancestor. Plus, he wasn't familiar with the tribe. So he'd asked Felicia to handle it instead.

Peter heard the nosy tone in Hawk's voice, snapped out of his daze, and met Hawk's equally nosy gaze. His mouth twitched.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Fine."

Hawk's response was immediate. Then he looked at Peter again. "But when MJ calls you a cheating scumbag, don't expect Gwen to defend you."

Peter froze.

"Call me what? Why would she call me that? MJ already broke up with me over the phone."

"Right. But let me ask you—how many months pregnant is Felicia?"

"Four months."

"And how many months ago did MJ break up with you—not counting the time you spent on Skull Island?"

"Three months."

"See?"

Hawk smiled and spread his hands. "MJ broke up with you three months ago. Felicia's four months pregnant. You do the math."

Peter's pupils visibly dilated as Hawk's words sank in.

The next second—

Peter, finally catching on, immediately tried to explain. "But time moves differently on Skull Island than it does outside!"

Hawk gave Peter a strange look.

"Right. You go ahead and explain that to MJ. Let's see if she believes you."

"But it's the truth."

"Will she believe you?"

"She'll..."

Peter opened his mouth, trying to give a confident answer. But under Hawk's steady gaze, he completely deflated. He looked away and quietly began recounting how he and Felicia had gotten together.

He didn't have a choice.

MJ wasn't just his ex-girlfriend. She was also his neighbor.

So—

Peter knew MJ well.

If he tried to explain to her why Felicia was four months pregnant when they'd only been broken up for three months, MJ would absolutely tear into him, calling him a two-timing scumbag with the most absurdly creative excuse she'd ever heard.

Time dilation? Seriously??

Even though it was the truth, hearing that explanation come out of his mouth would sound completely different than hearing it from Gwen.

So, to make sure Hawk and Gwen could back him up later, Peter had no choice but to do what Hawk asked and tell the story of how he and Felicia got together.

"When I first got to the island, my powers just... stopped working."

"It felt like there was some kind of mysterious pressure on the island. But it also seemed connected to how I was feeling after MJ broke up with me. I was pretty depressed."

"I couldn't figure it out, but my powers kept cutting in and out. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't."

"Skull Island is insanely dangerous. A normal person landing here probably wouldn't survive the first night."

"On our first day, the security team protecting Felicia was completely wiped out. It was just me and her left."

"Felicia could tell something was wrong with me, but she didn't blame me. Instead, she acted like a therapist, comforting me while we tried to make our way through the jungle."

"But we still ran into trouble."

"The day before we finally made it out of the jungle, I got sick. That was the first time I'd been sick since I got my powers."

"I was shaking all over. Freezing cold."

"It was Felicia... Felicia kept me warm with her own body heat."

"And then, weirdly enough..."

"After that night, my powers came back. They stopped cutting out. And then we found the Iwi village. We've been living here ever since."

After finishing the story, Peter looked visibly relieved. He turned to Hawk, who had been listening attentively. "Now you know. You better back me up when the time comes."

Hawk, having gotten the gossip he wanted, nodded and gave Peter a firm confirmation. Then he looked at Peter with a sigh. "That's the power of love."

Love could hurt someone—like how Peter's powers had started cutting out after MJ broke up with him over the phone.

But love could also help a man pick himself back up and become stronger.

Just like Peter said—after he and Felicia had become one in that cave during the storm, his powers had returned.

Hawk thought about it, meeting Peter's gaze, and nodded again.

"It's good."

"What is?"

"Felicia."

Hawk smiled faintly at Peter. "I'm really happy you found love again. And that you're having a baby together. Seriously, man. I'm happy for you."

This was Spider-Man, after all.

The moment Hawk had seen Felicia and sensed she was carrying a little spider, his heart had skipped a beat.

Because Hawk genuinely considered Peter a friend.

Peter had always lived by the motto "with great power comes great responsibility." No matter how hard life got, he'd never abandoned that belief.

So Peter deserved a better life.

Besides—

Wasn't that the whole point of being a transmigrator?

To fix the regrets of the original timeline.

Hawk smiled at Peter.

"Congratulations, man. You're going to be a dad."

"Thanks!"

Peter finally looked like his old self again—the good-natured Spider he'd always been. He grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head as he accepted Hawk's blessing.

The next second, Hawk's eyes lit up as he remembered something. He looked at Peter.

"Oh, by the way—MJ's dating someone new. Someone you know. Flash Thompson."

"..."

Peter's goofy grin froze instantly.

Hawk's smile was radiant.

That's what real friends do.

Real friends can genuinely, wholeheartedly celebrate your happiness.

But at the same time—

Real friends will never pass up an opportunity to mess with you.

That's friendship!

Just then, Felicia walked back in from outside.

She glanced first at Hawk, who was grinning like the cat who ate the canary, then at Peter, whose expression was completely frozen. She looked curious.

"What were you two talking about?"

"Nothing."

Peter snapped out of it immediately.

He wasn't an idiot. Even if he were, he'd still know better than to talk about his ex-girlfriend in front of his current girlfriend.

That was a forbidden topic. One wrong word and his current girlfriend could turn into some kind of Lovecraftian horror—an unspeakable thing beyond comprehension.

Hawk caught Peter's desperate eye signals and smirked internally. He turned to Felicia. "So? Did you find anything out?"

Felicia gave Peter one more suspicious glance but dropped it when Hawk brought up the real reason she'd gone out. She sat back down beside Peter, let him take her hand, and began recounting what she'd learned from the Iwi tribe's High Priestess.

"The High Priestess said the metal was passed down from their ancestors."

"The Iwi people didn't always live here. According to the High Priestess, they used to live somewhere else—not on this island."

"And they weren't always this weak, either."

"Apparently, their ancestors had all kinds of mysterious abilities."

"Some could breathe fire. Some could fly."

"But after a great disaster, everything changed. There was a creature even more terrifying than the Skullcrawlers."

"They were forced to leave their ancestral homeland. And the metal they have now? They brought it with them when they left."

"...Brought it with them."

Hawk listened carefully to Felicia's explanation, catching the key phrase. He instinctively looked at her. "You're saying they came from..."

Felicia nodded. "Yes. Underground. According to the High Priestess, they climbed up through the tunnel in the canyon. But that place has been taken over by horrible monsters. So every High Priestess, before they die, passes down the story of their ancestral homeland to the next High Priestess—but they're forbidden from telling anyone else. Because they can never go back."

Peter, sitting beside her, frowned. "Why didn't the High Priestess tell us any of this when we asked before?"

He remembered asking the High Priestess about the Iwi people's origins once before.

She'd just gone silent. Like she'd entered a trance or something.

Felicia glanced at Hawk, who seemed lost in thought, then smiled at Peter.

"Can you fly?"

"No."

"Can you drag that giant swamp squid out of the lake?"

"Actually, yeah. I could do that."

Peter's eyes lit up as he looked at Felicia seriously. "I haven't tested my strength limit yet, but I'm pretty sure I could stop a speeding train."

Felicia hummed in acknowledgment. "But could you drag the giant swamp squid out of the lake while you're in mid-air?"

Peter was honest. He shook his head.

"No."

"Hawk can."

Felicia's explanation was complete. She looked at Hawk, then turned back to Peter. "The High Priestess probably figured that even if she told us, we couldn't help them reclaim their ancestral homeland. But Hawk? He could. Because to them, Hawk is a God. A god like their ancestors."

Hawk chuckled at that but didn't bother denying it.

If the Iwi people's so-called ancestral homeland really did have Adamantium, he wouldn't mind helping them take it back—in exchange for the metal, of course.

But—

Hawk frowned and looked at Felicia.

"A creature more terrifying than the Skullcrawlers. What is it? Did the High Priestess say?"

"She did. She called it a Mutant. A horrifying aberration."

"..."

<><><><><><><><>

"Mutant? What's that?"

(PS: They’re the Deviants from the Eternals Movie, they just don’t know them that well!)

"According to the High Priestess, it's a creature of absolute terror—something called 'Despair.' Their entire bodies are covered in rough, black chitinous armor, riddled with cracks and fissures. Dark golden light shines through the gaps, almost like they have magma flowing inside them. They have asymmetrical limbs—some with multiple arms, others with multiple tentacles."

"But that's not even the worst part."

"The High Priestess said these horrifying mutants possess incredible evolutionary abilities."

Felicia recalled how the Iwi High Priestess had described the creature in the tribe's temple—with a tone so vivid it felt like she was reliving the nightmare herself. Even now, retelling the story made Felicia shiver involuntarily.

Hawk's eyes flickered with recognition.

"Evolution?"

"Yes."

"The High Priestess said the Iwi people weren't always this weak. They're descended from the Gods. They were born with immense power. But these mutants could kill one of their people and absorb their abilities."

"After a mutant devoured a fire-breathing Iwi, it gained the ability to breathe fire too."

"That's how the Iwi were driven back, step by step, until they were finally forced to flee their ancestral homeland."

"Damn."

Hawk looked down, silent.

Peter, who had been listening to Felicia's account, sucked in a sharp breath. "Devour and evolve? Creatures like that actually exist? If one of those things ate Hawk, then..."

Hawk snapped out of his thoughts, raised an eyebrow, and gave Peter an exasperated look.

"Hey. Could you not jinx me?"

"Sorry!"

Peter, realizing he'd said something stupid, immediately apologized.

But his mind couldn't help imagining what would happen if the mutant Felicia had described gained Hawk's abilities.

Good lord.

That would be the apocalypse.

Peter couldn't stop the thought from running through his head.

Hawk ignored Peter and turned to Felicia. "Is there a picture of this thing? A drawing or something?"

Felicia nodded.

"There's a mural of it on the temple walls."

"Let's go take a look."

"Okay."

Felicia watched Hawk stand up and got to her feet as well.

Peter, sitting nearby, shook his head to clear the apocalyptic images from his mind and stood up too.

Night had fallen.

In the Iwi village, tribespeople gathered around bonfires, chanting mysterious but hauntingly beautiful songs.

Inside the temple, torches burned brightly along the walls.

According to the Iwi, as long as the temple fires remained lit, the souls of their people could follow the flames and find their way home.

Hawk stood in the temple now, looking up at the colorful mural illuminated by the firelight. It was vivid, almost alive.

A creature—exactly as Felicia had described—snarled from the wall, looking as if it were about to leap right off the mural.

Peter glanced around at the other murals. "I'm still curious how these paintings have stayed this vibrant for so long. The colors haven't faded at all."

Felicia said, "The High Priestess said these murals were painted by the first group of people who escaped. In her words, they were descendants of the Gods."

Peter shrugged.

"I'm skeptical about that claim."

"They might not actually be lying."

Hawk, hearing Peter's comment, turned around and looked at him. "They're probably not descendants of Gods. But there's a good chance they're descendants of the Eternals."

He stared at the so-called mutant in the mural, and it finally clicked. He knew what this thing probably was.

Not a mutant. The official name in the comics was Abnormals. In the movies, they were called Deviants.

Setting aside the comic origins for a moment—

In the movies, Deviants were unique, nearly immortal life forms created by the Celestials through genetic engineering.

The Celestials originally used Deviants to clear apex predators from life-bearing planets, ensuring that life could develop and flourish.

But even the Celestials probably didn't anticipate that the Deviants would evolve through predation—shifting from targeting only apex predators to hunting and exterminating all life.

That threw a wrench in the Celestials' plans.

They'd used the Deviants to ensure life could continue so they could complete what they called the "Emergence."

But if the Deviants ate all the life on a planet, how were the Celestials supposed to birth new members of their race?

So—

The Celestials created the Eternals—a species specifically designed to hunt Deviants. After completing their mission—facilitating the Emergence—the Eternals would be mind-wiped and sent to the next life-bearing planet to continue hunting Deviants and ensuring life could thrive until the next successful Emergence.

Over and over again.

Until the Eternals—after being mind-wiped too many times, their minds overloaded with corrupted data—eventually turned into vegetables.

At that point, the Celestials would discard them without a second thought and create a new batch of Eternals to continue the mission.

Now that Hawk knew the mutant was probably a Deviant, and that the Iwi people were likely descendants of Eternals, everything suddenly made sense.

Because if that was the case, then the metal that looked like Adamantium earlier was probably genuine Adamantium.

No other explanation.

The new Celestial gestating inside Earth—Tiamut—possessed massive quantities of Adamantium.

Or rather—

Tiamut was Adamantium.

That was mentioned in Captain America 4.

It also explained why, when Hawk had first arrived on Skull Island, he'd felt the oppressive presence of a higher being weighing down on his power.

If his guess was right, that divine pressure had come from Tiamut—the dormant Celestial still growing inside the Earth.

And Tiamut hadn't even woken up yet. This was just the unconscious pressure radiating from his slumbering form. If it was already this terrifying, what would the fully awakened Celestials be like?

No...

He had to get his hands on the Mind Stone as soon as he got back.

For some reason, whenever he thought about the Celestials, his Sixth Sense flared with a warning—a sense of danger.

The feeling was faint.

But his instincts were screaming at him that when he eventually came face-to-face with the Celestials, they would be enemies, not allies.

Hawk's expression darkened.

...

Meanwhile, Peter and Felicia—having just heard Hawk mention "Eternals"—exchanged confused glances, both clearly lost.

Felicia spoke up.

"Hawk, what are the Eternals...?"

"A pitiful race that the Celestials use as tools."

Hawk snapped out of his thoughts and gave a brief, blunt explanation of what the Eternals were.

That was the truth.

He wasn't exaggerating.

Peter looked at the terrifying creature in the mural.

"What about this mutant thing?"

"Deviant."

Hawk pulled his gaze away from the mural. "They're also a race the Celestials created to use as tools. But they refused to stay tools. They rebelled. That's why the Celestials made the Eternals—specifically to hunt them down."

Peter blinked.

"What's wrong with these Celestials? They create two races just to fight each other for fun? Fine, whatever—but why the hell did they dump them on Earth?"

"Not just Earth."

"What?"

"Every life-bearing planet in the universe has these two races."

"..."

Peter's mouth opened and closed. Finally, he came to a conclusion.

"These Celestials are insane. Completely insane."

"Haha."

Hawk laughed and looked at Peter, who clearly had no idea what he was dealing with. "When one of them eventually shows up on Earth, you can tell him that to his face."

Peter froze.

"Shows up on Earth? One of them's coming here?"

"Of course."

Hawk shrugged. "But that's not for a few more years."

Bad news.

He was almost certain that when he met the Celestials, they'd be enemies, not friends.

Good news.

It would be years before the Celestials showed up. Thanos hadn't even snapped his fingers yet. Which meant Arishem—the leader of the Celestials—hadn't turned his attention toward Earth. Hawk still had several years to grow stronger.

Even with the Seventh Sense and a Gold Saint's Cosmo, he probably couldn't beat one of them.

Not yet, anyway.

Fortunately—

He still had time.

Hawk's thoughts raced. He took a deep breath, then smiled at Peter and Felicia. "Alright, you two should head back and get some sleep. When you wake up, we'll go home."

Peter and Felicia's faces lit up with joy.

The next second, Felicia seemed to realize something. She looked at Hawk. "What about you tonight...?"

Hawk smiled faintly. "I'm going to check out the underground tunnel."

Now that he'd confirmed there was Adamantium down there—

What was the next step?

Simple. Start mining.

Sleep?

Once he could punt the One-Above-All and punch the abstract entities in the face, he'd have plenty of time to sleep.

Right now—

This was the time to grind.

If you didn't hustle when you were supposed to hustle, then when Arishem the Celestial showed up to collect you, you wouldn't even have the luxury of crying about it.

First, stockpile Adamantium. Then get his hands on Uru metal. Finally, find a material compatible with Gammanium, and he could forge the true Golden Phoenix Cloth—infused with the power of both the Sun and the Phoenix.

Hawk's mind was already racing ahead. After telling Peter and Felicia not to worry, he turned—and in an instant, vanished from their sight.

Peter and Felicia blinked at the spot where Hawk had just been standing.

Peter was already used to it. He turned to Felicia. "Come on. Let's head back."

Felicia snapped out of her daze, nodded, and walked with Peter toward the temple entrance. After a moment, she asked quietly, "Is Hawk... a god?"

Peter shook his head.

"He said he isn't."

"He said that?"

"Yeah. Back in London, some ugly guy trying to destroy the city asked Hawk if he was a god. Hawk said he wasn't. Not yet."

"Not yet..."

"Yeah. That's what he said."

"..."