Hey guys! So with the recent increase in Marvel movies and my ultimate love for Spider-Man, Injustice and all things Marvel/DC, I've started reading comics, particularly Ultimate Marvel. When I learnt about Spider Man and Kitty Pryde, I flipped. They're awesome! That gave me the idea for this story. So let me introduce the first of a slew of planned fanfictions…X-Men: Age Of Oblivion!

This is sorta AU, but a part of it is Ultimate Marvel. And since I've not read a lot of other comics, I might make mistakes. Anyhow, hope it doesn't ruin the reading!

Prologue

Only shadows remain.

Shadows of the past, haunting the survivors.

Shadows of the present, traumatizing all.

And fear. Where darkness reigns, so does fear.

Fear of the future, and what it will bring next.

The wave had destroyed much, wiped out many, yet as always, the people rose from the ashes. Ordinary people became heroes. Heroes became villains. And villains became heroes.

The people rose up. Life was a struggle, yet they pushed on. They laughed at adversity, scoffed at pain, and ignored the struggle that is life.

Then, disaster struck. And this time, few survived to remember it.

Only shadows remain.

Shadows of the great city, a pinnacle of greatness, of beauty and of fame.

Shadows of the people, patriotic to the end, and dedicated to life.

And fear. For what motivates people better than fear?

The ruins of the city stand out along the Eastern seaboard, a stark reminder to all to fear the instigators.

Worse than the Civil War.

Worse than 9/11.

Worse, even, than the Wave.

The Wave simply redirected hope away. This utterly destroyed it.

For hope only answers to the living, not the dead.

And it is here, in this once glimmering light of the North, where the biggest necropolis has been formed, where the dead outnumber the living.

Thousands of bodies mashed under tons of rubble, their bodies crushed and smashed beyond recognition.

Tens of thousands missing, their family members in other states weeping, crying out.

Millions of lives lost in that blink of an eye, vaporized, mercifully never seeing the destruction that followed.

Just like that, just one moment in time, millions of lives were gone.

For truly, in the blink of an eye, everything changed.

Only shadows remain.

Shadows of the past, where war was dominant, and ravaged this city.

Shadows of the present, where peace, though unstable, was at the least maintained.

Shadows of the future, where peace was expected to blossom, to become stable.

And fear. For fear is everlasting.

It is potent.

And we saw just how.

For in one moment of fear, the wheels of motion were set in place, and with that, millions of lives were snuffed out like candles.

Just like that, everything changed.

Only shadows remain.

Shadows of the past, where war rampaged.

Shadows of the present, where peace won over.

And fear, for fear is omnipresent, and omnipotent.

No matter what they said, no matter what they tried, no matter what they did, it was always there, flitting in and out like an annoying fly.

And nothing we did could stop it.

That fear was never dispelled.

The results were nothing short of catastrophic.

For us, for them and for the world.

It was a scene out of a nightmare, one we could not—and had not—foreseen.

Only shadows remain.

Shadows of our kind, who once ruled the Earth.

Shadows of pain, when we lost many to war and conflict.

Shadows of consolation, when we made peace with them.

Shadows of peace, as fragile as it was.

We were one of them, but they were not us.

We lived in the shadows. They walked in the light.

And fear. For fear is rampant now, but only amongst us.

Fear for us, for we do not know what the future holds.

Fear of death, for it is very real now.

Fear of life, for every day is a risk.

For they have taken the fight to us. And they, for once, are winning.

We are broken, ravaged by centuries of war and conflict. Not just against them, but against ourselves. Our ultimate enemies have always been ourselves.

And now we are few, scattered all over like cowards, fearful of death, of torture, of the future,

For every day that passes brings us one step closer to the one thing we fear the most: extinction.

We are on the brink of annihilation.

This is not the last stand.

These are not the days of future past.

We may never recover. We may truly pass into the winds of history, ne'er a word uttered about us, except to curse their stupidity at first, then praise their comeback.

In a way, it is ironic.

We were there in the Age of Apocalypse—and we survived.

We lived through 1000 days of conflict in the Age of X—and we survived.

We made it through our greatest Civil War—and survived.

We have been into the deepest recesses of space—and survived.

We took on Thanos—and survived.

Most of all, we were so crippled, so broken, so weak after Ultimatum—and yet we came back.

Thorughout history, we have survived the greatest conflicts the world will never see or feel.

And now, we stand on the Age Of Oblivion.

And this time, we may not win.

We may be eradicated.

I am Katherine Anne Pryde. I am not one of you.

I am a mutant. I am the Shadowcat.

I am your friend. I am your enemy.

I am a mutant. I am a weapon.

I am a hunter. I am hunted.

I am a predator. I am prey.

I am Kitty Pryde. Leader of the remaining X-men.

And I will never surrender.

I will not stop until mutants have risen again.

This chapter is the hardest I have ever done. I am not a poetic person, yet I felt it appropriate to try. Let's just say after all the "only shadows remain" stuff, it got harder and harder to be creative. And a fun bit of trivia, that last bit by Kitty was adapted from Need For Speed: Rivals, where the main Racer is commenting on the police and there is a voiceover over what he says, like "I am free. You are my enemy."

Anyway, I (thankfully) won't write like this again for a long time. So this is the first chapter. Feel free to critique if necessary. Also, if you guys have any suggestions, I'll be happy to take them. Who knows, you might actually see it.

And I know some areas were screwed up, like how the mutants survived those ages, but that was deliberate.

Sayonara till next!