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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 60

Chapter Sixty

“Wait--wait!”

Scott called out at Hank and Ororo as the floor swallowed them up and sent he and Jean spilling out further down the metallic hallway. The two of them scrambled to stand back up, waiting for the next contortion of their metal surroundings. It was only moments ago that there was five of them, and Jean was no about to let Magneto separate them any more. She looked around the hallways wildly and spotted the cameras. Just as the walls started to close in on them Jean reached out with her mind and yanked the cameras from their foundations, crushing them and letting them drop to the floor. The walls snapped back into place.

“There,” she said with a heavy breath. “If he can’t see us he can’t attack us.”

Scott looked around desperately, his carefully laid plan for infiltration now in tattered. The spinning red lights and sirens were making it hard to focus and he was clearly growing desperate. “Damn it all,” he said. “That’s it. Stealth is shot. Which way was Beast sending us?”

Jean pointed diagonally at one of the walls and Scott pulled off his visor, folding it in his hands as he clutched his eyes shut. “What are you doing? Don’t you think you need that?”

He faced the direction Jean was pointing. “New plan. We’re getting to Magneto as fast as possible and we’re taking him out. I’m not letting him divide us any further.”

“If you give me a second I can link up with the others, maybe if we regroup we can--

He wasn’t listening. Scott opened his eyes and a mass of crimson energy spilled out, tearing through the wall he was facing and reducing it to shreds. Scott started a steady jog forward, his eyes open all the while clearing a path in front of him. He didn’t wait for Jean to catch up on his path of destruction, even as she called out to him.

Still, she had to admit it was effective. She followed after him, stepping over the rubble he left in his wake. The stream of energy just kept pouring out of him, punctuated here and there as he blinked and then picking up again to rip through everything in their way. Eventually she caught up to him as his pace slowed. “What is it, what’s the matter?” she asked.

Energy still spilling from his eyes, denting the wall opposing him more and more, he answered “I think this is it, this must be Magneto’s chamber. Jesus, how thick are these walls?” The wall cried out as it crumpled more and more and then released a terrifying shriek as it finally gave way. Scott closed his eyes long enough to replace his visor and he and Jean stepped into the large chamber.

It was just like Cerebro. The room was spherical, with large curving panels along each wall. At the center of the room was a massive seat with wires pouring out of the ceiling into it, plugging into every angle of a helmet worn by the man they were pursuing. Magneto sat in the helmet surrounding by a soft blue glow, his fingers tented as he watched them.

“Cyclops!” Magneto let out, “I see you haven’t been neglecting your training. A pity you still need that crutch, however.” Magneto swung his hand out, but nothing happened.

Scott smiled, stepping forward as he tapped his visor. “Hard plastic, made especially for you. We’ve been training to take you down for years now, Magneto. This time we’re not letting you go.”

“This time I am more powerful than I have ever been before,” their former mentor retorted. Steel cables snapped up from the ground and tried to ensnare them, but Jean caught them with her mind before they made contact. The cables trembled, caught between Jean’s power and Magneto’s.

“So are we,” she said. Scott let out an optic blast straight at Magneto, and the mutant stood up and pulled panels from the walls to block it. The shield held up as Cyclops’ energy poured into it. So much of his strength was drained from tearing their path through Asteroid M. She could see the sweat beading on Scott’s face as he closed his visor and stopped the beam.

The metal panels parted to reveal Magneto standing from his seat, the absurd helmet leashing him no more than a foot from it as he tried to step away. There was a new look in his eye, a madness Jean had only glimpsed before in their previous battles. He now wore it proudly, the psychosis buzzing around him like electricity. He was still mangled from his fight with the Avengers, his right arm a scarred and twisted piece of flesh at his side.

“I’ve spared you for the last time,” Magneto said, his voice shaking with anger. “This is it. This is the end for them, and it will be the end for you if you continue to stand in my way. You’ve used up your allowances and you’ve wasted them for the paltry gratitude of a dying race.” His eyes darted toward Jean, his face aghast. “You’re trying it now, aren’t you? You’re trying to reach into my mind and cripple me like Xavier crippled his brother.”

Jean wasn’t. She knew it would do no good while he was wearing his helmet, and even without it he had shown before his ability to resist attacks of the mind. “You aren’t well, Erik,” she said, taking two tentative steps toward him. “Something’s wrong with you, and we’re going to get you help.”

Luckily, it was Scott and Jean who received the help. The wall behind Erik burst open in a cacophony of wind and lightning. Ororo floated in, lightning crackling from her fingertips and her eyes consumed by a foggy white.

“Storm!” Scott called out. “Where’s Beast? Is he alright?”

“He’s...yeah. He’s mauling every Brotherhood member he can get his claws on right now and we might have to pull him out of it a bit, but he’s alright.” She kept her focus on Erik, now wild-eyed at the idea of being surrounded.

Erik let off a short cackle. “Just like that first night, isn’t it? The first night my students turned their backs on me and their very race.”

Scott didn’t leave time to trade more banter. “Everyone, now!” he commanded, letting loose a beam from his visor. Once again Erik formed a barrier around himself, but Jean and Ororo knew the beam was only a distracted. They attacked the machinery around him, with Jean tearing out cables and wires as Ororo fried everything she could with her lightning.

Smoke began to fill the room. A piece of metal shot through Scott’s beam and hit him square in the chest sending him spilling over. Jean swept the smoke out of the way with her mind as best she could, coughing into her fist and squinting her eyes against the sting.

Magneto stood in the middle of the wreckage, his breath haggard. A steel cable coiled around Ororo’s neck and held her choking in the air behind him. “Enough!” he let out. “Enough of all of you!” He reared his hand back, a spear-shaped shard of metal lifting from the wreckage, and then thrust his hand forward, carrying the spear along with it. The spear flew straight at Jean, but she held out her own hand…

...and caught it. She grabbed it with all her power and Erik pushed back with all of his. The spear shook violently in place, caught between the two mutants, and as Erik honed his focus even more Jean saw Storm slip from the coil he held her with. She felt a trickle of sweat work its way from her forehead down her cheek. “I’m not the little girl from a broken home anymore, Erik. I’m a grown ass woman now.” The spear inched closer toward Erik, his teeth grit in determination. “You may have found me, but it was Charles who raised me. It was Charles who taught me what “might makes right” really means.” The spear inched closer still and Jean stepped forward with it. “You think you’re right just because your stronger than the humans? Well. What does it mean when someone comes along who’s stronger than you?”

She saw it in his eyes before it happened, the look of recognition. The spear sprung from its place in the air and impaled Magneto through the abdomen. He let out a cry of anguish and fell to his knees. Ororo let off the final blow, shocking him into unconsciousness and letting him fall unconscious to his side.

Charles’ voice came alive in their heads. “You did it! My word...you beat him.”

Scott stepped up to Jean’s side holding his arm at an odd angle. “The mission’s still not over, Professor. Have you gotten through to Hank?” he asked.

Hank’s voice appeared to them. He sounded strained. “I’m here, I’m here. I managed to, uh, collect myself.”

Scott wasted no time. “Hank, if you were right before the generators could give out at any minute. We’re going to need to find a way to keep everyone on this asteroid safe and we need to do it ASAP.”

“Many of the Brotherhood are already using the escape pods, but there can’t possibly be enough for everyone. I’ll see what I can do.”

Scott turned to Jean and Ororo dust coating one side of his visor that he didn’t seem to notice. “I know you two are tired and you’ve already done a lot. Hell, you probably just saved the day for us once, but we’re going to need you to do it again.” Something ruptured in a faraway corner of Asteroid M and the whole room shook. “That was probably one of the generators, and the others won’t last long either. We need you to keep this whole thing afloat until Hank can come up with another solution.”

“The whole base?” Jean asked. “This place is like a city block, how are we going to--

“We’ll do it,” Ororo cut in. She turned to Jean. “You just went toe-to-toe with Magneto and won, girl. We’ve got this.”

Jean nodded and held out her hands. “Together,” she said. The two of them sat down with their legs crossed, their hands intertwined, and their eyes closed.

A breeze of serenity passed through them as Xavier offered his encouragement. “I believe in you both. Just focus on your breath and the task at hand. There is nothing else in the world but your breath and the task at hand.”

There was another rupture in the distance and Ororo was already spinning a cyclone beneath Asteroid M. She gathered it up slowly at first, focusing on a single swirl, but soon the swirls began to multiply and feed into one another, growing ever faster at the base of the facility. Jean’s mind stretched out like two colossal hands that cupped beneath the mass of stone and metal. She felt it press into her hands, weighing down as she pushed up. One last rupture sounded in the distance and the whole facility gave way, dropping into the psychic hands as if craving the earth below.

Jean felt the veins in her temples pulsing as she strengthened her grip. Ororo pulled in the clouds from ever greater distances and gathered them underneath like a cushion. The air grew thick, rushing around and upwards and any direction but down. Jean’s whole head began to throb, and she realized that she and Ororo both were squeezing eachothers fingers in a vice. She did not open her eyes to look, she just did exactly as Charles said. She breathed. And she held the world.

Hank’s voice came crashing into their minds. “I’ve got it! Let it drop!” he yelled.

Jean’s eyes shot open, the pressure in her head disappeared to be replaced by a dull ache. She saw the blue leak back into Ororo’s eyes and the two exchanged a smile. Then the white strands of Ororo’s hair began lifting into the air and suddenly everything was rushing toward the ceiling.

Gravity completely reversed. Scott, Jean, and Ororo screamed at the top of their lungs as the floor stretched away from them and gave a collective “Oof!” as they smashed against the ceiling. They were falling. Everything was falling.

But it wouldn’t last, and Jean knew she had to focus just one last time. She prepared herself for the moment, and then it came. Asteroid M smashed into the ground below and sent out an explosion of rock. The floor came rushing back at them, but this time Jean caught the trio before they hit it, her preparation worth it. They settled easily into the floor and Jean brushed her hair out of her face, spitting out some debris that found its way between her lips. She could feel the pulsing migraine pushing out on her eyes, but as she stood up and looked at the others she grinned at them. “We did it,” she said. “We freaking did it.”

“Hank?” Scott called out. “How are we alive?”

Hank appeared in person then, crawling through a hole in wall with the unconscious figure of the Italian girl they crossed paths with earlier. Hank pointed at her with a toe as he held her up with one arm. “This lovely jewel is the one they call ‘The Untouchable.’ The forcefields she creates are unstoppably powerful, but I don’t think she ever attempted anything of this size before.”

“And she volunteered to do that all on her own?” Ororo asked skeptically.

“I may have helped convince her when Hank couldn’t,” Charles cut in. Jean smiled up at the ceiling, knowing that it was absurd to think Charles was looking down on them, but wishing she could meet eyes with her mentor nevertheless. “Bind those two up as best you can and come outside. I think we can consider this the X-Men’s first impromptu press conference.”

#x-men #marvel #comics #reboot #brotherhood of mutants #magneto #erik lensherr #cyclops #scott summers #ororo monroe #storm #jean grey #beast #hank mccoy #charles xaver #professor x #unus the untouchable #asteroid m

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 59

Chapter Fifty-Nine

It all seemed to be happening so fast. One minute they were all laughing and grumbling around the TV as Bobby hogged the remote. He froze it in a block of ice in his hand so that nobody could remove it, but then Kitty had snatched it right through the ice and suddenly it wasn’t fair to use powers to hog the remote. Hank had just been about to step in and settle the dispute when the TV changed.

He had control of every satellite. Magneto had somehow focused every single one toward broadcasting his ultimatum: every nuclear world power had to disarm itself within 24 hours or he would bring every satellite down. If they did nothing in the 24 hours after that he would reverse the magnetic poles of Earth itself and rip the planet asunder. The Brotherhood would be untouched in their fortress in the sky and any mutant on the ground would be forced to use their powers to survive the wasteland.

And then Scott was barking orders and Charles was telling the kids that all would be well, that he would never let any harm come to them or their families. Kurt and Piotr both wanted to come along, but it was still another month until their shared 18th birthday and Charles would hear none of it. But Hank had no such excuse. He was an adult, a grown man who had to defend the life that he had, and this was the time to defend it.

All of it was a blur. Hank remembered it only distantly as he sat in the co-pilots seat of the Blackbird monitoring the readings and tinkering with the magnetometer he brought along. He tugged at the seams of his costume, so stifling to his overgrown fur. He wished he thought to trim up before going on a mission. He wished he actually trained as dedicatedly as all the students in all the months and years since they had the Danger Room. He wished--

“It’s going to be alright, Hank,” Scott said from the pilot’s seat. His smile was as friendly as it could be with the looming glow of his visor above it. Hank realized that he had been working at the same screw in the magnetometer for far too long.

“I’m just not predisposed toward physical confrontation,” Hank admitted. They were far enough from the others behind them, Logan, Jean, and Ororo, that they could speak in low tones without being heard. “I’m just the science-guy.”

Cyclops scoffed. “You’re a lot more than that. Not predisposed? Hank, you’re the whole reason we ever beat Juggernaut. You think I didn’t hear about that? About you yanking the last bolt of his helmet out with your bare teeth? Come on.”

There were certain advantages to being coated in fur, and chief among them were that nobody can see you blush. “I just wish I’d seen it all from the start,” Hank said. “If I could have known what Erik would become...how many people he would hurt…”

“None of us could have known. We had two of the best psychics on the planet and they didn’t know. The important thing is that we know now, and we’re finally going to stop him.”

Hank looked straightforward and the clouds rushing into the Blackbird. They kept rising higher and higher, knowing that they would be pushing the Blackbird to its limits in order to reach Asteroid M. As they drew closer Hank was able to pull up a radar image of the base and began inspecting it for the best place to attach the Blackbird. Scott could see that the machinery in front of Hank helped distract him.

“Try to get a read on how he holds that place aloft,” Scott said. “If it’s Magneto keeping it aloft I don’t want it tumbling down as soon as we take him out.”

“Hmm,” Hank started, fiddling with the problem, “It’s quite possible that he’s constructed electromagnetic generators which mimic his own abilities. With any luck they should maintain altitude even in the absence of Magneto’s influence.”

“See? That’s why it’s good to have the science guy around.”

Landing was harder than Hank had imagined. Asteroid M was a mishmash of buildings pulled straight from their foundations and massive chunks of rock and dirt that there was no surface flat enough to land on. Ultimately there was no easy solution. Scott’s plan was to keep the jet in autopilot through the duration of the mission and to summon it when we needed it, but without the Blackbird immediately on hand there would be no easy escapes.

“We’re not running away from this one anyways,” Scott said as the Blackbird’s back hatch opened up. It was just a small jump down to the rocky surface of Asteroid M, but Hank hesitated until he was the last to join.

“Come on, Hank!” Jean yelled up at him. A memory flashed through Hank’s mind of her as a young teenage girl, all knobbly-knees and awkward mumbling. Now she smiled up at him confidently, and as he jumped down to join the squad she lead the way toward an entrance.

They managed to find a line of escape pods attached to one side of the base. Wolverine managed to slash his way into one, but just before he slashed them through the other side into the base Jean stopped him, grasping at her temple. “There are two minds walking by. They’ll pass soon.”

“We need to play this quiet,” Cyclops said. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned. Surprise is one of the few advantages we have.”

When Jean gave the all clear Wolverine cut an opening into the base as neatly as they could. The X-Men piled around the open hangar and Beast suddenly felt exposed. He sniffed at the air and found that the closest Brotherhood members were down a stretch of hallway and in a kitchen area. Charles’ voice came alive in all of their heads, linking each of the X-Men up to eachother, and Beast relayed what he smelled to the others.

“We’ll start by incapacitating them then,” Cyclops said telepathically. “Then I want you to use that magnetometer to take us to the big bad himself, Hank.”

Hank nodded, taking up the rear as the others started down the hallway toward the two scents. He found himself down on his knuckles, walking on all fours like a gorilla. If there were not so much adrenaline heightening his neural synapses it may have disturbed him, but in the moment he took whatever small comforts he could get. He felt more agile on all fours, faster, as if he could spring away at a moment’s notice if he needed.

The first two Brotherhood members that they came across were the one called Blob and a young woman with tanned skin. They were sitting in a commons area drinking beers and laughing when they noticed the X-Men’s appearance.

“Hey! How’d you get in here!” Blob yelled. He stood up from his seat, looking around his shoulders as if for backup, and said “Come on, Eunice! We gotta stop these guys!” before stampeding toward the X-Men.

A moment later he was clutching his throat, down on the floor, his face growing increasingly red before he lost consciousness. Jean held her hand outstretched, assuring everyone “Don’t worry, he’s still alive. I just closed his windpipe long enough to put him out.” Jean turned her gaze toward Eunice and arched an eyebrow. “You planning on raising any alarms, or do I need to put you out too?”

Eunice held her arms up in a gesture of submission. “Whoa, hey, I’m just along for the ride. I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

Jean and the others seemed satisfied, but Hank lingered as they all turned to continue their progress through Asteroid M. Beast gave a strong sniff. The girl’s scent had vanished the moment she noticed the X-Men’s appearance, it lingered only in the parts of the room where she had walked. The girl considered him with curiosity, but did not seem as frightened at Hank’s appearance as others usually were. Without another word he joined the rest of the group.

“Hank, any sense if we’re heading the right way here?” Cyclops asked telepathically.

Hank looked at the magnetometer, then up at the hallways before them, then back at the machine. He pointed “I think I was right about the mechanism by which the base stays aloft. Its signal is interfering with Magneto’s own, but if we assume Magneto himself has the stronger signal then he will be this way. “

They continued on, their progress slow but steady. Every so often Jean would stop the others to make they crossed no paths. The further they got into the base the more nervous and cautious Storm grew. She was learning to manage her claustrophobia admirably, and she never would have admitted to it if Hank brought it up, the way her hooded head darted around her shoulders at every angle gave her anxiety away.

“Wait a second,” Jean broadcasted, stopping them. “There’s something...weird. I think it’s a mind...or...two minds? I can’t quite--

He recognized her at once. All those years ago it was her appearance that first unsettled Hank, that made him feel a revulsion he would only come, increasingly, to fear in others. Before he sprouted fur and fangs and claws and walked on all fours it was her, Mystique, who showed him how inhuman a mutant could look.

She paused in the middle of the hallway, processing the sudden appearance of five young mutants in her path. Wolverine was the first to spring into action, rushing forward with his claws outstretched, a growl rumbling from his chest. She was too fast, vaulting over him, her body line a boneless twisting acrobatic mass. She latched onto the ceiling and skittered along it, her joints popping out of place like some alien insect. It was Cyclops who acted next, trying to catch her with an optic beam, but he missed his one and only chance as Mystique tore away an air vent and compressed herself into it.

“Well,” Storm said with half a laugh, “we may have lost that element of surprise you were talking about.”

“Okay everybody circle up.” Cyclops started, “We’ll need to keep our progress slow, but the emphasis is on defense now. Who knows how many they’re about to throw at us or what all they can do. Our target is still Magneto.”

“Your target is still Magneto,” Wolverine said, the eyes of his mask narrowing as he bent his head forward to track a scent. “I’m no good in that fight, and I think it’s about time I tend to my own matters, Slim.” Wolverine turned and started to chase the smell. Beast caught a whiff of it himself, an undercurrent of wet dog but with an overwhelming sense of alpha male foreboding.

“Wolverine!” Cyclop called after the mutant. When Wolverine disappeared around a corner Cyclops cursed to himself. “This is why we have team exercises. This is why I try to get him to do team exercises.”

“No use fighting it now,” Jean said, pressing on forward. “Besides, if we’re real lucky Mystique just went to save her own tail. Maybe she didn’t raise any alarms at all.”

As if on cue, a red tint overtook the hallways as a claxxon sounded off. “Well, at least we don’t need Charles to relay all of our messages now,” Beast said aloud.

“Come on, let’s go!” Cyclops yelled, running forward as everyone else followed behind. They lost their advantage though. This was Magneto’s domain, and now that Magneto knew they were here the very surroundings themselves became the enemy. The floor started to contort out of shape, the tiles twisting so that Cyclops and Jean were sent forward on a wave of metal as Beast and Storm began to fall. The floor beneath them opened up, sealing over them after the fell through and popping back into place.

They were on a lower level, and they were not alone. On one side of them stood Pyro, now armored in a flame-retardant suit and armed with gauntlets that spit out flames, each spurt lighting up his maniacally smiling face. The gauntlets were connected by hoses to a fuel tank he wore on his back.

On the other side was Avalanche, and while he did not share Pyro’s mad smile he was even more heavily armored and wore an icy determination on his face. Both men prepared their attacks, and the X-Men prepared theirs.

“Mind if I take this one?” Storm asked, jutting her chin out at Avalanche. “We have something of a score to settle.”

“Oh, I’d be delighted to take the human flamethrower,” Beast joked. He wasted no time, sprinting at once toward his target. Pyro thrusted his arms forward, the flames coiling out and taking the shape of pouncing cougars that Beast just barely managed to jump over. Just as he landed, however, the cougars came pouncing back and Beast threw his arm up into his face, the flames crashing into one side of his body and searing off a layer of fur and skin. The acrid smell filled the air, and as Beast lowered his arm and turned to Pyro the grin melted from the pyromaniac’s face.

He unleashed the beast inside of himself and attacked.

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 58

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Everything had changed. Perhaps this was just the new way of life, perhaps these revolutions of thought and belief and the state of things were just part and parcel of the world that they lived in now. Perhaps, like the chaos magic she weaved from her finger tips, the impossible could change to the possible with the snap of fingers.

Her orb landed in Asteroid M and whirred as it opened up. She stood up and looked around, seeing the other original Brotherhood members stretching from their own orbs. Before she coulds top him Magneto was already off, flying off to his chambers without another word. It was her brother that drew her immediate attention, however. Pietro barely stood out of his orb, clutching at his knee and covered in blood. Wanda rushed to her brother’s side.

“Are you alright?” she asked him, taking his arm over her shoudlers so that she could help him limp away. He dragged one limp leg along the floor and winced.

“The Russian appeared out of nowhere and blew my kneecap off. It...it will heal soon, right? I’ll be able to run again?”

“Of course, Pietro. You’re not going to let a little thing like a gunshot stop you, are you?”

He gave a sour laugh. That was good. She lead Pietro to his quarters so that he could rest, stewing on the battle they lost and what it could possibly mean for their lives.

The Avengers did not earn their reputation without merit. The Brotherhood had every reason to win that fight. They had the element of surprise, they had the raw power, and to them their father was invincible, indefatigable. It was Thor who made all the difference. The God of Thunder ripped through everything they threw at him and threw it back tenfold. It was only just barely that Magneto had managed to gather them each into orbs to escape, and even then they were all injured in their own way.

Pietro did not take notice of Wanda’s injury until he laid down on his bed and saw her face. He reached out to touch her purple cheek lightly, half her face swollen. “Your face!” he said. “What did they do to your face?”

“The odds are that your leg will heal before my face ever does,” she replied, looking down at Pietro’s leg. His muscles already began pushing the shards of bullet still lodged within them out of the wound. The bleeding was slowing down and there was the soft crackling of bone mending itself together.

Pietro laid back, exhausted, staring up at the ceiling. “We were no true match for them.”

“Maybe,” Wanda started, but then stopped herself. She looked at the door, making sure it was shut watching the crack underneath it for any eavesdropping shadows. She dropped her voice and leaned in close to Pietro. “Maybe we don’t have to match them.”

Her brother looked into her eyes as if trying to read her mind. “You think...you think we should take his offer?”

She whispered even lower, “As soon as we have the chance. The very second.” She could see that he needed convincing, and as she spoke she watched the door as closely as she could. “We never wanted this. Any of this. We were scared kids without a real home when he found us. We just plain did not know any better. There’s still time for us if we--”

The door whooshed open and Magneto stood framed by the light. His helmet and his costume was off, but he had done nothing to dress his wounds. He wore a long cloak that he bled into, with one arm severely scarred by lightning that he held out at his side in a twisted hook. Blood trickled down his brow and across one eye, the eye itself full of fiery determination. Was it possible that he heard what they were saying?

“I have to speak with you both,” Magneto said, passing into the room and letting the door close behind him. He gazed at the walls, the same barren chrome and slate as all the rest of Asteroid M, as if there were fascinating items in a museum. Wanda and Pietro watched him with their breath held tightly. “I did not...anticipate any of that,” he said. He reached into a pocket of his cloak and withdrew an envelope. He stared at the envelope for some time before speaking again.

“When I found you both I had a dream that we would be at the head of a revolution that would change the world for the better. I still believe that.” He gripped the envelope so tightly that it began to crinkle in his hand. “I do. But the road to revolution will be a longer and harder fight than I thought. It may be that it needs many heads.” He threw the envelope onto Pietro’s body. Wanda did not turn to read it, instead watching her father intently as he continued. “I have one more attempt I must make. It’s possible that I can end this all in one fell swoop, that I can bring tomorrow to today without another drop of blood.” He took in a sharp breath, vacillating from one set of his children’s eyes to the other. “But it is only possible. I recognize that it is not definite, that the wheel of determinism may not turn in our favor. Whatever you may have seen of me in these past months...years. I am not a madman.”

“We would never say that you were--”

He cut Wanda off and pointed at the envelope on Pietro’s body with his good arm. “I need you to stay safe from what is to come. I will rain hell upon the earth and I need you to be safe from it. As soon as Pietro has healed you will both go. You will deliver that letter. And if I fail you will be the heads of this revolution.” His cloak whirled around him as he turned to leave, his children failing at finding any words to say goodbye before he could do so.

Pietro lifted the envelope, now soaked in blood, and looked at it. Wanda’s jaw was agape as she stared at the door and then stared at her brother, wondering if what had just happened had really happened at all.

A smile curled onto Wanda’s lips as she locked eyes with her brother. “I think we can take that as a sign from God.”

“We just met God,” Pietro said, wincing as he sat up in his bed to inspect the letter further. “And the only signs he gave came with lightning bolts attached. Surely Magneto’s not just letting us go?”

“I don’t think he is. I think he wants us to keep the Brotherhood alive if he...well, he’s planning to do something drastic.”

“Quite the options ahead of us,” Pietro said, reaching out to grasp his sister’s hand. They looked at each other in disbelief. “Start the next Brotherhood of Mutants…”

“Or join the Avengers,” Wanda finished.

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 57

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The drops of moisture created a pitter patter on her hood. It sounded like rain, but it did not have the sweet clean comfort of rain. There was little comfort in these tunnels, Ororo knew. That was part of the reason that the Professor sent her to investigate along with Logan. Putting her in the underground tunnels was what the Professor called “Confrontational Therapy.” In her fight with Avalanche along the Andres she had nearly become a bumbling mess of a person when she was trapped under debris. The Professor knew that it was past time that she faced her claustrophobia head on. Still, there was surely a place she could have done so that was not so disgusting as the abandoned tunnels beneath New York City.

Logan stalked several paces ahead of her, the flashlight clipped to his belt leading the way. He was not much of one for conversation, but caution was paramount and voices could carry for miles through the tunnels. She closed the distance between herself and Logan to whisper at him.

“Any sign of them?” she asked. When Scott and Jean reported that they found a small mutant boy in the city being harassed by bigots the Professor used Cerebro to track him. To everyone’s surprise, Charles found over a dozen mutant signatures alongside the boy’s, but there was little sign of life in the abandoned tunnels.

“It’s impossible to pick anything up down here,” Wolverine replied. “But do you hear that? It’s faint, but…”

Wolverine trailed off, but as soon as she was listening Ororo could pick up on it too. There was a gentle melody playing further on down the tunnel. She found herself drawn toward it, walking alongside Wolverine. Her train of thought began to derail, her focus circling around the call of a flute without fully honing on it. It grew louder and more commanding and Ororo’s steps grew more determined.

Wolverine threw out his arm in front of her and they both ground to a halt. “Someone’s foolin’ with our minds, ‘Roe.” His claws popped out with sharp “snikt.” “I don’t like my mind bein’ fooled with.”

The call of the flute was tempting them in, but the two stalked forward with caution, resisting it as best they could. They turned a corner and saw the silhouette of the flutist ahead of them, the orange light of an entrance into a chamber behind him. The flutist’s music grew shrill at the sight of them, more panicked. It was then undeniable that he was a mutant calling to them with his powers, but there was more than enough training in resisting telepathy at Xavier’s to resist him.

“You mind shutting him up, ‘Roe?” Logan asked.

It was difficult to call on her powers from underground, one of the factors which terrified her most about it. Nevertheless, Ororo reached out and tugged at the breeze behind her, throwing it forward in a gail force wind that rushed forward and blew the flute out of the flutist’s hands and sending him into the chamber ahead. The two X-Men’s perception became much stronger in the music’s absence, and they could hear the commotion of several voices in the chamber beyond. Wolverine kept his claws out and lead the way, and Ororo kept the winds swirling at her sides ready for her next command.

When they were just ten feet off from the chamber’s entrance two more figures appeared. One was a giant of a man who had to stoop to keep his bald head from scraping the top of the tunnel while the other was a disheveled and lean woman with an eyepatch.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Ororo called out at them, cutting off whatever challenge Logan was presumably about to issue.

The woman in the eyepatch did not seem convinced. “Our friend Piper might disagree,” she said, her voice raw and gravelly. “We don’t get many visitors and yet here we are with three in one week. What do you want?”

This time Ororo was not fast enough to cut Logan off. “You got a kid in there,” he said. “This don’t seem very kid-friendly down here.”

“There are several children who found their home with us Morlocks,” the woman replied. Her remaining eye scowled with the force of a hundred. “It’s not very friendly for any of our ilk up there, either.”

Ororo stepped between Logan and the woman. “We just want to talk. We’re mutants, too -- we’re all on the same side here.”

The woman looked Ororo up and down several times over. “You’re pretty mutants is what you are. I wouldn’t say we’re on the same side at all.”

Despite her confrontational tone, the eyepatched woman patted the giant at her side’s arm and motioned for him to step back into the chamber before turning herself to follow him. Ororo and Logan then followed her, taking that as an invitation.

Even though the smell was no more pleasant than the tunnels had been, the chamber allowed Ororo to breath. The chamber was massive, with tall stretching arches and a wide open floor filled with cots and pilfered crates and other supplies. The Professor’s estimate was low. There were nearly two dozen people sitting around small barrel fires and on cots in the chamber. Many of them were disfigured beyond anything Ororo had ever seen before. There was a young girl with bright pink hair and bony spikes protruding from her spine and yet more framing her face. A chalk-white man completely without hair stoked a fire and eyed them cautiously alongside another man with a twisted face and tattered red robes drawn around his shoulders. On a far wall an old woman whose skin hung loosely from her face sheltered a small green boy with yellow eyes in her arms. Artie. That was the boy they were looking for.

The woman with the eyepatch stood in the middle of the chamber and motioned out to the others. “Morlocks. We have a couple new visitors. Judging from the outfits I’d say they’re with the famed X-Men.”

Ororo drew her hood back to unguard herself, and then smacked Logan’s arm and hissed at him “Claws.” Wolverine’s claws slid back in their sheaths, but his eyes still darted around the room expecting a threat from every angle. Ororo ignored him. “We are. I am Storm and this is my colleague, Wolverine. It’s a pleasure to meet all of you.”

The eyepatched woman spit at the ground between them. “Can’t say we return the pleasantries. You might have guessed we don’t much like being bothered down here.”

Artie broke away from the old woman’s arms and walked toward the two X-Men curiously. “Do you know the red-headed lady and the man with the glasses?” the boy asked Ororo.

She knelt down and smiled at the boy. “They’re two of my best friends,” she said.

“Can you tell them thanks for saving me the other day? I never got the chance to say so myself.”

“I sure can, Artie.”

The boy stopped in his tracks. “I’m not Artie no more,” the boy said. “We all got new cool names like you guys now. I’m Leech!” The boy brightened up and started pointing around the room, first at the eye-patched woman, then the bald-headed giant, then at the pale man by the fire, then the red-robed man next to him. “That’s Callisto. She keeps us all safe. And that’s Sunder, he helps too. That’s Caliban--he’s the one that found me. And that’s Masque. He’s scary.”

Callisto stepped forward and put herself between Leech and Storm. “Thanks for the introductions, Leech. I don’t think they’ll be sticking around as long as their friend did, though.”

Storm’s nose crinkled in confusion. “Friend? None of the other X-Men have been down here.”

“The frog man,” Callisto said, with suspicion in her voice. “He tried to recruit us, too. You can send ugly ones at us along with the pretty and the answer will still be the same. The Morlocks don’t get involved.”

“Toad?” Ororo asked. “He’s not with us at all. He’s with the Brotherhood. He was down here?”

Callisto scoffed and ignored the question. “Same difference to us. One side is just as bad as the other.”

“That’s not true,” Ororo tried to say.

“Get out of here!” the red-robed man, the one Leech called Masque, shouted at them. “We don’t need any more empty promises or campaign speeches.”

“Just leave us alone!” the old woman who had been holding Leech earlier said.

Ororo held up her hands in submission. “Alright, alright, fine. We just wanted to make sure the boy was alright.” She started to back away. “Come on, Wolverine,” she said, turning to leave. Logan did not turn with her, though. “Wolverine. Let’s go.”

Logan sniffed twice and popped his claws. Callisto flicks out a switchblade at the ready and all eyes in the chamber turn to Wolverine. Wolverine sniffed twice as if to confirm something to himself. “Toad ain’t been your only visitor. Who else was down here?”

Callisto narrowed her eyes and gave two sniffs of her own. Tentatively, she answered Logan’s question. “Someone else came with him, but never showed himself. I could smell him lurking in the tunnels around us and Caliban sensed another mutant, but we never found anyone.”

Logan looked her up and down, sizing up the truth in her words. Finally he sheathed his claws once more and turned to leave with Ororo. They were well outside the chamber and making their way back to glorious sunlight before Ororo felt safe enough to finally ask. “Who did you smell?”

The word bust their way through his gritted teeth. “Sabretooth.”

“That’s impossible. I dropped a mountain on him.”

“We don’t stay dead easy.” The two of them reached a ladder up to a manhole cover and Logan let Ororo climb up first. She hurried her way toward the sweet sweet fresh air of the night above. As relieved as she was, she knew Logan was all the more uneasy. When he came through the manhole he stood on the city street and looked down at the tunnels below, his flashlight still casting ghostly shadows about his masked face. He heaved the manhole cover back in place, dusted off his hands, and looked up at Storm. “Wherever Toad is, I’m guessin’ Sabretooth won’t be far away,” he said. “This time when we kill him how about we make sure he stays dead?”

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 56

Chapter Fifty-Six

Even for Pietro there were times when it was important to settle down and take it all in. Scant weeks ago the growing Brotherhood was crammed into a broken down factory, training the new recruits in the confined quarters as best they could, the machines whirring and thundering and pumping out products that Magneto alone knew the purpose of. They weren’t crammed in anywhere now. Now they had all the space in the world.

The speedster gazed out the long window along one side of Asteroid M at the Earth below. They were not completely outside the atmosphere, but they were high enough to remain in orbit around the glowing blue globe below. The facilities were a mishmash of buildings ripped from their foundations combined with carved out pieces of earth. It was just when the new recruits were grumbling about living in squalor that Magneto had gathered them all in the same room, sat in his gleaming throne of chrome, and lifted them into the heavens.

As majestic as the view was, it could not hold Pietro’s attention forever. He zipped through the hallways, passing the workout room where a few mutants were getting in some late night lifting, then passing the barren rec room where Pyro cackled his head off at some TV show called Offspring. Pietro slowed down when he came through the upper level of the main hangar where two of the chrome pods finished docking and opened up. One of the orbs barely contained Blob’s girth and he stretched out his arms as it came unsealed. The other orb had a young woman with slicked back hair that Pietro did not recognize. He appeared at her side with a handshake and a smile. She saw him just as he was reaching out his hand and suddenly he was thrown back into a stack of boxes, spilling them over. When he stood up he was flushed red and Blob was laughing his gargantuan ass off.

“Eunice here don’t much like to be touched. Fact, we’re thinkin’ that’s what we might be callin’ her. ‘Eunice the Untouchable,;” Blob said, indicating the smiling woman.

She spoke with an Italian accent, “Not without a little warning.” She smiled.

Pietro stood up and dusted himself off. “Was this the one camped out in a wine cellar?” he asked.

Blob chuckled. “Sure was. My first recruit mission and it was with a gal doin’ same as I was when you found me, Quick Sliver. Sat herself down to drink and refused to get up. Halfa Italy was outside her door and ain’t noone could get in ‘til ol’ Blob came knockin’.”

“Charming,” Pietro said. Resisting the urge to try for another hand shake he instead indicated himself and said, “Dear Eunice, the name is Quicksilver. I think you’ll find my father’s accommodations to have a more scenic view than even the best of Italy can offer.”

She looked around. “Non mi interessa,” she replied. “Is there wine?”

“You bet your ass there is,” Blob said, leading the way at his glacial pace ahead as Eunice followed.

How did he come to be associated with these people? They were in orbit, surrounded by machinery more advanced than any of them had ever dreamed, and yet Pietro felt at times that his sister and himself alone could appreciate any of it more than cackling at stupid TV shows and pouring and endless stream of stolen booze down their throats.

Of course, there was also Magneto himself. Pietro wondered often how his father could tolerate such lowly individuals, but he at once knew the answer was that Erik would take any who stood on his side of the cause. Without knowing where he was going he sped off, realizing that he was heading toward the throne room only after he arrived at the massive doors.

He knew that Magneto was inside, as it took Magneto’s active presence on his throne to retrieve the orbs that Blob and the Untouchable arrived in. Pietro’s father called the machine Ferraro, and its amplification of his abilities was how Magneto was able to lift Asteroid M into the sky in the first place. He knocked on the doors and waited what felt like an eternity (but what he knew was no more than thirty seconds) for the doors to open themselves up. The throne sat at Ferraro’s epicenter with Magneto in its seat, the wires and cables feeding down into the helmet that he wore in a tangled mass of sparking and buzzing electronics. Magneto removed the helmet and his white hair, so like Pietro’s own, spilled out.

“Pietro. I was just about to summon you.”

“What for, father? Can I be of help?”

“Gather the others before I explain. The original Brotherhood alone. We have an undertaking ahead of us which requires...preparation.” Pietro hesitated for a moment, not knowing exactly what it was he wanted to talk to his father about, but knowing that he would not have the chance once there were others around. His father had as little patience as he did. “With haste, Pietro!”

Wanda was exactly where Pietro expected her to be, spread out in bed with a book arched over her nose. It was A Tale of Two Cities, the same copy Pietro finished during a commercial break once and now hardly remembered. He knocked lightly on her door frame.

“Father needs us. Apparently we have an ‘undertaking,’” as he said it he wiggled his fingers and bounced his eyebrows, making Wanda laugh. She looked longingly at her book as she set it aside, changing into some clothes piled around her bed.

“I’ll see you there, just give me a minute.”

“Last one there is a rotten egg,” Pietro said before darting off. It was one of his favorite new phrases in English, one that Mystique thought he might enjoy. The woman had an ear for regional dialects and was invaluable in teaching Pietro and Wanda to blend in to their new American environs, but Pietro knew better than to trust her. She had some kind of relationship with their father that surpassed that of the other Brotherhood members, and even though she was not an original member it was as though Magneto trusted her more than he did his own children.

With trustworthiness in mind, Pietro came upon Jason Wyngarde, the “Mastermind,” the kitchen area with a steamy cup of tea and a cigarette. “You aren’t supposed to smoke up here,” Pietro told him, appearing in a chair opposite the Brit.

Wyngarde puffed his cigarette with exaggeration before saying “It hardly seems worth our noble leader’s time to send me out for a smoke break, now does it?”

Pietro snatched the cigarette from his fingers and threw it in the sink, saying “He wants us all in the throne room immediately,” before racing off.

Toad proved much harder to find, and it was only after Pietro searched every corner of Asteroid M twice that he stopped to ask where he was. Avalanche was the first one he came across, the Cretan mutant shrugging his broad shoulders and saying, “Somewhere in New York, last I heard. Been gone nearly a week.”

Pietro did not look forward to telling Magneto the news, and rightly so. Moments later when he relayed the information Magneto tore a panel of chrome off one wall and smashed it into a tight ball before dropping it. “The incompetent fool. I sent him out on a recruitment mission so long ago I nearly forgot.”

Wanda and Wyngarde showed up nearly simultaneously, with Wyngarde walking behind Pietro’s sister and doing things to her with eyes that Pietro did not like one bit. Pietro turned to his father.

“Is it really critical that we need him for whatever you have planned?” Pietro asked.

Magneto raised his hands and the panels in the floor whirled around and assembled themselves into a conference table with three chairs on the side opposite from himself. Pietro, Wanda, and Wyngarde took their seats as Magneto spoke. “What I have planned next is a statement, a bold statement, and it is one best made with all of the original Brotherhood members present. While Toad himself is of little importance, as a unit we will show the world that the Brotherhood has been the most powerful threat to mankind since our first attack on the Capitol Building.”

“What is it you have planned, sirt?” Wanda asked.

Wyngarde leaned back and gave her a sick smile. “I would wager your father is setting his sights an ambition surpassing even our surroundings, dear Wanda.”

“If you call me ‘dear’ again I will turn you inside out so that you have so smoke your cigarettes through your other end, Wyngarde,” Wanda told him, turning her attention back to Magneto. “Father?”

Magneto ignored the tension between the two. “Mastermind is correct. The X-Men’s resistance to our first attack tempered our message of mutant superiority and it is past time that remind humanity of just who looms overhead. We need to show them that even their mightiest mortals are ants beneath our boot.”

Pietro’s eyes widened as he put it together. So unlike himself, his next words dripped from his mouth so slowly that he was interrupted. “You...don’t mean we’re...going to attack--

“The Avengers,” Magneto declared. He gave a smile of such confidence that a thought recurred for Pietro that had been racing around the furthest corners of his mind for months. It was possible that his father was entirely and completely mad.

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 55

Chapter Fifty-Five

There were fleeting moments where he really felt like he achieved it. When they were on the highway with the top down, Jean’s hair whipping in the wind as she raised her arms up and laughed louder than he had ever heard her before, at least for a moment, he felt normal.

That’s what Scott wanted to give her. Everything at the Institute had been so heavy lately. The training and the in-fighting and the preparing for possible missions and recruitments. Every day there were new rumors about the Brotherhood’s activities, whisperings that Magneto was building an orbital headquarters, new politicians coming forward to support the MRA. When they finally had a free day Scott knew they had to seize the chance. Today they were just going to be normal.

“You like that, huh?” Scott said.

Jean settled back in her seat and giggled. “I love it. And what about you, Mr. Summers? Is it possible that the fearless leader of the X-Men is finally enjoying himself?”

Scott laughed. “So you finally admit I’m the leader, huh?”

“Don’t dodge the question. And don’t be petty.” Jean closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat.

“Well, Ms. Grey, I think I might just be enjoying myself. I felt like we both deserved a treat. We never got to celebrate becoming legally adults, for Pete’s sake!” He cringed, knowing exactly what was coming.

“If you seriously say ‘for Pete’s sake’ I don’t think you’re eighteen, I think you’re eighty.” He reached his arm over and tickled the side of her stomach and she shrieked playfully. “Eye on the road! Eye on the road!”

The rest of the drive was like that, all laughter and fun and warm rushing air. They tried to keep their spirits up when, just as Scott predicted, they hit the traffic of downtown Manhattan. By the time they inched their way past the traffic lights and spent a fortune in parking they were ambling down the streets wondering what to do next.

“We live so close to the city and yet we never get to see it,” Scott said, gazing up at the skyscrapers and wishing he could see anything but the wavering crimson from behind his sunglasses. “What do we start with first?”

“Um. Lunch,” Jean said, her eyes fixed on a falafel stand. They walked over and stood in line and Scott dug around in his wallet for cash. From down the street some projected voice shouted to a buzzing crowd. Scott tried to close it out of his mind, telling himself it was just one of a million things going on in the metropolis.

Once they had their food they ate it as neatly as they could walking down the street. Without paying it any mind, they were wandering toward the crowd of people. Jean was spilling some sauce out onto her chin and was giggling while Scott tried to wipe it away, brushing her hair behind her ear and leaning in to kiss her. And then they heard it, unmistakable, words that echoed in their nightmares they were so immediately recognizable now.

“Mutants are an abomination!”

It was the projected voice, and it was followed by a chorus of agreement. There was no ignoring it now. Scott and Jean gravitated toward the crowd, all the while the projected voice continuing its tyraid.

“It’s unnatural, against God, and He is punishing us all for their actions. Is it some coincidence that there are hurricanes the world round, that there are earthquakes tearing down the homes of God-fearing servants, or that our country is under attack every single day when such affronts to God’s creation walk among us?”

The speaker wore a reverend’s garb, an old man with anger burned onto his face, a megaphone in one hand while the other emphasized every point. Each time he punctuated a sentence the crowd let out a cheer, their signs now visible to Scott and Jean. “God Hates Mutants.” “Go back home N get out of ours.” and of course those words again. “Mutants are an abomination!” One of the signs finally identified the man speaking on the stage: “Praise God for Rev. Stryker!”

“Let’s just ignore them, Jean,” Scott said, leaning in so close he could smell her perfume.

“No, Scott, this is...they really mean it.” Jean’s brow furrowed as she scanned the crowd of fist pumpers and chanters and sign-holders. She turned back to Scott. “They really do hate us.” Scott tried to think of something to say to comfort heard, tried to think of what he himself even wanted to hear, but he didn’t come up with words in time before Jean’s head shot toward a far corner of the crowd. “Something’s wrong,” she said.

The two mutants began to push their way through the crowd, with Jean leading the charge. Scott tried to ask what the disturbance once, but Jean would not take the time to answer her. Eventually they found their way back to the periphery of the crowd and the disturbance became clear.

“Please, we were just getting groceries. We didn’t have anything to do with any of this,” a woman was begging. The woman was holding grocery bags and surrounded by some of the protestors, one of them with his sign hitched over his shoulder like he could swing it at any time. A small boy cowered behind the woman’s legs, his skin a deep sickly green and his eyes two quivering golden orbs.

“We don’t mean no harm,” one of the men said, “Jus’ let us look at the boy, eh? We jus’ wanna look.”

The men were forming a semi-circle around the woman so that she could not escape. They kept closing in tighter and tighter, with more protesters joining as they swiveled their heads around and saw the commotion. Desperately, the woman threw her grocery bag at one of the men and grabbed her boy’s hand, trying to run for it. A protester grabbed the boy’s other hand and yanked him away.

“Hey! You take your hands off the kid!” Jean said, pushing through several men as she stormed toward the one holding the boy. The man smiled at her, pushing the bill of his hat up with a thumb.

“We don’t mean no harm,” the man said, “The boy just looks like a mutie is all.”

“Are you sure you always know what a mutant looks like?” Scott knew it was coming, but there was too much distance between he and Jean to stop it now. Jean threw her hand out to the side and flung the man in the hat into a parked car at full force. The others gasped and shouted, but Jean wasted no time gathering the boy up in her arms and telling the mother to run before she did so herself.

It was instant madness. The protesters started storming after Jean with Scott trying to cut between them. The mother of the boy became lost in the commotion, with Jean outpacing her even with the child in her arms. Jean ducked into an alleyway but she was closed off by a chain link fence. She backed into the fence, holding the child in one arm as her other prepared to defend herself.

A scarlet beam zipped through an opening in the protesters and they all backed away from it in shock, practically hugging the brick walls as Scott passed through the opening. “Is the kid alright?” Scott asked. The boy nodded his head, his yellow eyes like trembling saucers, and Scott asked him what his name was.

“Artie,” the kid said. Scott turned back to the crowd.

“If any of you mean to touch a hair on Artie’s head you’re going to have to go through us. The man with the hat who Jean flung into a car stepped up, reaching into the waist behind his jeans and drawing a pistol.

“You think you devils can jus’ do whatever you want? No siree, not in my city.”

“You’re asking for this, pal,” Scott said. He ripped off his sunglasses and…

Everything was normal. All of the colors were back. There was red, yes, but the sky was blue and the streets were black and grey and the clothing of all the people were every color he ever remembered. There were no optic beams, no destruction.

The man in the hat looked confused at Scott’s confusion, and then chuckled to himself nervously as he realized nothing was going to happen. Scott turned to Jean. “Jean...I can see.”

“My powers aren’t working either,” she whispered.

The men started to close in, but there was the whoop whoop of a siren and suddenly it was all over. The crowd broke apart and ran, the man in the hat tucked his gun back into his waist and said “Next time, muties!” before running off, and the cop car passed the alleyway without even making any inquiries.

It was all over.

Jean put Artie down and checked to make sure he was okay. She looked at his skin, puzzled. “Do you know what your powers are, little Artie?” she asked. “Do you know why you still have yours or why we lost ours?”

The boy shook his head, but before Jean could ask any more questions Artie’s mom crossed the alley, saw the boy, and went running toward him for a bear hug. She thanked Jean and Scott profusely, but Scott hardly heard her words as he gaped up at the sky, noting to himself how thick and fluffy some clouds looked while others were wispy strands of silk waving in the sky.

The colors didn’t last long. As the boy and his mother left the red came back, luckily while Scott had his head craned back looking at the sky. A beacon of crimson shot up into the sky, sounding off with its familiar sound, and an instant later Scott had his eyes squeezed close and was on his knees with his fists clenched in rage. He could feel Jean kneel beside him.

“I think it was the boy, Artie.” Jean said. “I think his powers took ours away. He probably didn’t even know he activated them. Probably doesn’t even know he has them.” Scott didn’t answer her, taking one deep breath before putting his sunglasses back on and looking back up at the red-tinted world. She continued, “We should get back to the mansion. We can’t have one of those douchebags recognizing us and getting another posse together.”

She was right. They found their way back to the parking garage, found their way out of Manhattan, and found themselves on the highway back home with hardly a word between them the entire time. They had to put the top back up on the car when it started to rain, and after it whirred up it seemed like their whole world shrank to just the small space between driver and passenger. Scott reached out and grabbed Jean’s hand as it sat in her lap. He gave it a squeeze, and she gave him a squeeze back. “What are you thinking about?” she asked him, her head against her headrest and her eyes resting on him.

“What it felt like to be normal. How great it felt, but how scary it was.” He kept his eyes on the burning red road, the sky turning to a burgundy as the sun drifted below the horizon. He remembered what the sky could look like at sunrise and sunset and considered that maybe, at least just this one, it really was burgundy.

“Maybe we don’t need normal,” Jean said. She lifted his hand up and kissed it. “We got eachother.”

#xmen #marvel #comics #reboot #scott summers #jean grey #cyclops #phoenix #william stryker #mutant registration #robert kelly #senator kelly #leech #artie maddocks

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 54

Chapter Fifty-Four

Fred Duncan’s car pulled into 1407 Graymalkin Lane just as it had been for years. What was new were the knots in his stomach at the thought of the task ahead. He took a deep breath and leaned forward to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. He saw his badge clipped to his belt and considered putting it in his pocket. No. He was here on official business and he should look official, damnit.

He walked up the steps and heard a sort of muffled implosion on the other side of the door just before he knocked. The door open and Duncan’s jaw dropped.

The mutant was crouched so that he stood a good foot beneath Fred’s head, but that wasn’t even the start of what was weird about him. He was covered in a dark blue fuzz, with burning yellow eyes and pointed teeth that curled from his smiling lips, and a tail that swang like a pendulum behind him. But he was just a kid, and if Duncan was going to be profession he wasn’t going to look horrified in the face of a kid.

“Willkommen!” the boy said.

Fred decided to try for a joke, hoping that his sunglasses hid his discomfort. “I will come in, kid. Thanks for getting the door.”He didn’t get it. The kid stood up a little straight when Duncan walked through the door, but he seemed uncomfortable. Duncan held out a hand hoping that would do the trick. “Fred Duncan. Good to meet you.”

A blue three-fingered hand greeted him and Duncan contained himself. “Guten tag! My name is Kurt. The Professor said he will be right down.” There was a beat of silence where Fred wondered if Kurt’s awkwardness was due to meeting people so rarely or if it was just because he was a teenager. And then Kurt said, “Have you ever read Goethe? He’s German like me. Mr. McCoy is having us each read a text from one anozer’s culture and now it’s my turn so we are reading Goethe.” There was another beat of silence and then, “Mr. McCoy says zat literature has ze power to unite all cultures and zat it can be common ground for anyone.”

Yup. It was just because the kid was a teenager.

“No, eh,” Duncan searched for the words, “Well, I’ve never read Goethe. Is it...good?”

“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is exemplary, Agent Duncan, and his Faust is perhaps the best piece of German fiction of all time.” Duncan turned to find Xavier rolling toward him with a cheery expression. Luckily, the conversation changed away from Faust.

“Agent?!” Kurt burst out, turning to Duncan in awe. “Like 007?”

Before Duncan could answer, Xavier cut in. “Kurt, why don’t you go prepare some tea for us. The others should be waiting for us in the drawing room so you can bring it to us there.”

“Yes, Professor.” The muffled implosion noise sounded again and the boy disappeared in a burst of smoke. Duncan took off his sunglasses and stared at Xavier in shock, who only returned his warm bemusement.

“It’s one thing to read about them and another to meet them,” Duncan said, following Xavier as the man’s chair turned him around and started down the hallway.

“That’s exactly why I like you to come on these visits. We’ve grown so much since you came by last, and I think everyone will be more comfortable meeting you now that they’re settled.”

Duncan straightened his tie around his neck. “I certainly hope so. I don’t exactly have the best news.”

“No news has been good news of late,” Xavier said. “The students are terrified, but I can’t hide anything from them. True courage will come with knowledge. I teach them that every day.”

The drawing room was all set up for a presentation, with all of the students arranged in a semi-circle around one wall. It was the kind of setup that was one podium short of being a college classroom and Duncan felt his armpits start to dampen. Luckily, none of the other kids were as unnerving as Kurt had been. There was one slouched in his chairs with a backwards ballcap in, another was a girl with bushy hair sitting on the edge of her seat with a notepad at the ready, and a broad-shouldered boy who had to be almost eighteen sitting behind the girl with the bushy hair who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of her, and yet another girl sitting a few empty seats away with a white streak in her hair Duncan assumed was from a rebellious streak. She looked the type. Scott, Ororo, Jean, and Hank were all there. Outside the semi-circle, leaned against a wall, was Logan, the source of Duncan and Xavier’s first big disagreement all those years ago. Times like this were times to bury the hatchet, though, and Logan could have a part to play in what was to come.

Kurt appeared with the tea tray, but Duncan politely declined as Xavier began to make his introductions.

“Agent Duncan here has been our liaison with the FBI for some years now. We’ve always had an amicable relationship, and given the recent discussions in the media about the Mutant Registration Act I thought it would do everyone well to see a government face that isn’t calling for the forfeiture of their civil liberties.”

Xavier kind of spoke as if he was expecting light applause, but there was no applause of any kind. Duncan gave a nervous laugh. “I guess first and foremost I just want to ensure you all that the U.S. government has your best interests at heart. You have all been a tremendous help to us with Magneto, the Brotherhood, and now Juggernaut. Each of these were situations that the government simply was not prepared to handle, and you all stepped in admirably.”

The compliment did not seem to win anyone over, except for the kid in the ball cap who gave a wide smile. At first Duncan was encouraged, and then he saw the earbuds the kid was listening to and the glazed expression of his eyes. Duncan cleared his throat.

“We care about your privacy and we reward your loyalty. The Juggernaut attack could have easily pointed the media here, but we didn’t want that to happen any more than you. We in the government have known about the mutant situation far longer than the pundits and politicians wagging their fingers right now.”

Monroe was the first to break in. “Mutant situation?”

Summers was next. “We aren’t a ‘situation,’ sir.”

Duncan grasped wildly for the yoke of the conversation. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean ‘situation.’ It’s just, well, you know what I meant. This is increasingly becoming an issue that the public needs to address.”

The girl with the frizzy hair raised her hand, but spoke before being called on. “Why isn’t it being addressed with the other superheroes? Nobody seems scared of Johnny Storm flying around on fire or Tony Stark flying around in a compact tank.”

The boy with the backwards cap pulled his earbud out at the mention of Stark’s name and the attention of the rest of the room seemed to intensify.

“The Fantastic Four and the Avengers are public personas,” Duncan started. “They aren’t hiding anyth--

Grey was the next to interrupt. “We wouldn’t hide if we didn’t have to. The MRA is calling for the public ostracization of potentially thousands of American citizens!”

McCoy stood up and gave a small chuckle. “Our students are used to a more dialogical environment, Agent Duncan. Forgive the intrusions, but I think we would all feel significantly more, ah, commodious if we made this more of a Q and A.”

Exasperated, Duncan took off his sunglasses and at once realized that he had them on the whole time. He looked around the room with all the faces on him and took a deep breath. What must he look like to these kids. He breathed out. “Listen, I get that you’re scared. I don’t like what Senator Kelly is talking about any more than you do. It’s unfair how the other powered individuals are getting treated, but they’re trying to help just as much as you are. My superiors believe that the Avengers are just what’s needed to stop Magneto, and frankly I’d rather them be on the front line than a bunch of kids. I’m sure your professor would agree.”

Xavier gave a grim bow of his head in acknowledgement and Duncan continued. “You’re doing exactly what you should be doing: You’re putting a good name out there for mutants everywhere. You just need to stay strong and support the system and the system will support you back, I promise.”

Despite his support just moments ago, it was Xavier himself who broke in next. “And what should we do when the system is developing weapons to kill us?” he asked.

Duncan stood dumbfounded. “What?”

He knew just the right words to say, and Duncan wondered if he had any hope of feeling the wheelchair-bound man needling around in his mind. “Bolivar Trask. The name should ring a bell. It’s recently come to my attention that the U.S. government is commissioning his work in designing anti-mutant weaponry and detection devices.” Like any good professor, he knew when to stop talking.

Duncan let down his guard, hoping his vulnerability would ease the tension in the room. “Come on, guys. You can’t blame us for wanting to defend ourselves, right? If you’re scared of Magneto and the Brotherhood just imagine how we feel. We’ve got nothing-- nothing! I want to find compromise as much as you guys do, but we don’t have much to bargain with as it is!” He regretted the words as soon as he said them. They all just came flooding out. How did he lose his professionalism, his decorum, so fast? “This was a mistake. Th-thank you for reaching out, and I wish you all well, but I don’t think it was wise to come here.”

He cleared his throat and walked out of the room, brushing past McCoy’s assurances that everything was alright and that they should continue the talk. He walked briskly through the foyer toward the doors when a puff of smoke accompanied the Kurt boy’s sudden appearance. “Mein apologies, sir,” the boy said. “Ve did not intend to get so heated.”

The brisk pace continued and Duncan tried not to look right at the boy. He put opened the front door and paused, turning back to the mutant. “I just think we can find a way to compromise, is all.”

Kurt looked sad, his tail wrapping around himself as if for comfort. “Ve are looking for compromise as well, sir. But ve do not want what is called a ‘Faustian bargain.’”

Duncan left then, haunted the whole way home by the kid with the tail and glowing yellow eyes scared of making a deal with the Devil.

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 53

Chapter Fifty-Three

When the Mutant Registration Act hit the floor of Congress it put everyone in the Xavier Institute on edge. The nervousness was in the air, felt in the pause of every conversation and in the jingling of tea cups on their trays. The TVs in the common areas of the mansion did not show the proceedings on the floor, but there the other students made sighs or little twitches of the eyebrow when they looked at their phones that showed they were masochistically looking up scraps and clips here and there. The tension of the other students kept Jean up during those first few nights, and she could tell in the mornings that Scott and Ororo had the same lack of sleep.

As usual, Scott felt that the solution to the problem would be training. “Just a distraction for the kids,” he explained to Jean and Ororo on the latest in the string of tired mornings. “Something a little different from their usual Danger Room sessions. The training isn’t doing its job if it starts to feel routine, and it will do them good to keep busy.”

The session that Scott developed was simple enough. With Ororo and Jean behind him he explained it to Bobby, Kitty, Piotr, and Kurt outside the hedge maze. “The name of the game is capture the flag, but the real goal here is teamwork. You four will be going against a stronger opponent currently in the center of the maze.”

“Rogue,” Bobby cut in. “It’s obviously Rogue. She’s the only one not here.”

Piotr gulped. “It could be Wolverine? He would be throwing us in with Wolverine, da?”

“The mystery is part of the fun,” Scott said, but Jean could sense his annoyance at being interrupted. She told him telepathically to lighten up, but he continued on without acknowledging it. “The target has four flags pinned to his or her body. Each flag you grab can be used to skip a future Danger Room session. If everyone on the squad gets a flag you get a week off Danger Room sessions.”

“Oh hell yeah,” Bobby cut in once more. Scott barrelled past it.

“You each have a flag of your own though, and if you lose that flag you’re out of the game. Your target will try to get your flags while you try to get the targets. Clear enough?” In response, Bobby and Piotr armored up while Kitty and Kurt did warm up stretches. “Good. We’ll go speak with the target now and you will start on our signal. Good luck.”

Bobby was right that the target was Rogue, but the three X-Men still had a surprise in store that they might not see coming. Jean lifted Scott and Ororo along with herself and moved them through the sky, touching down in the center of the maze where Rogue waited, a flag on each shoulder and thigh.

“So if I get a DR session off for every flag I grab and every flag I keep? No foolin’?”

Rogue asked. Scott held out a bare hand. “See if I’m honest for yourself.” Rogue took his hand for a moment, clenching her eyes shut. She opened them tentatively, but they did not fire off. Next she took Ororo’s hand, once again taking a moment thereafter to compose herself.

“Okay, I think I’ve got it under control,” Rogue said. Jean smiled at her and offered her own hand. Rogue took longer composing herself after absorbing some of Jean’s powers, and when she opened her eyes she gave Jean a puzzled look.

“Is everything okay?” Jean asked with concern.

“Yeah...yeah everything’s fine,” Rogue said, stepping back.

“Alright, let’s go topside,” Scott said with a clap of his hands. Jean took the cue, lifting the three of them once more into the air going higher and higher until they had a spot on the roof of the Institute. They looked down on the hedge maze able to see both Rogue in the center and her four pursuers at the entrance. Scott cupped his hands around his mouth. “MISSION IS A GO!” Jean linked Ororo and Scott to her own mind as it surveilled the students, giving them a sense of what the mission was like on the ground even as they saw it from above.

Scott had a point that it would distract the students. Jean could feel their eagerness to earn a prize right from the start. Without prying into any mind in particular she could sense that it was not the free Danger Room pass itself that they most anticipated, but the sense of accomplishment that would come with it. They all still seemed so young, but ever since their trial by fire with Juggernaut there was so much less doubt in them, so much more assurance that they could really grow up to be heroes.

That said, they still had a lot to learn. Kitty and Kurt took off at once, breaking away from the others. Kitty at least had some hesitation as she passed through the walls of the maze, peering out cautiously before stepping out fully, but Kurt filled the air with his acrid smoke as he teleported to every corner of the maze he could imagine. Bobby and Piotr were more cautious, both of them recently out of the infirmary, but Jean knew that Bobby’s patience would burn out quick.

Rogue proved her advantage quickly. Not only did she have the powers of the three X-Men, but their combined training and acumen as well. Her first move was to settle a thick fog over the maze, clouding the passageways as best she could. She then used Jean’s telepathy to feel her way around, stopping before turning corners that would give away and honing in on her first target. She walked slowly and surely, but froze all of a sudden when she sensed something. Nightcrawler appeared right in front of her, but with his back to her. Rogue reached out and cupped his mouth, draining the boy’s powers and knocking him unconscious. She held him tightly and teleported just outside the maze, removing his flag before returning back into the maze.

By this time Bobby’s patience had long run dry. Piotr urged him to wait, but Bobby brushed him off, insisting that he’d get all the flags himself. Like that Bobby raised himself above the maze on an ice slide, skating above the green passageways in search of something he could not face alone.

“That boy,” Ororo said, “How is it possible to learn so little after so long?”

“Complete lack of discipline,” Scott muttered. “He’s not the only one, though. Why did they all separate? I explicitly said that the point was to work together.”

“I think they took that as a challenge,” Jean said with half a smile. “Still, you have to admire an independent spirit.”

The independent spirits were failing pretty quickly. Bobby made a giant target of himself and Rogue let off an optic beam that dropped him in a far corner of the maze. Not expecting her to move so quickly, Bobby was caught unawares when Rogue teleported right behind him and grabbed at his wrist.

By sheer dumb luck Bobby made it through. Rogue’s fingers slipped off his ice armor and Bobby instinctually encased her in a block of ice. He stopped to let himself catch his breath, laughed, and then started to try to puzzle through how to get Rogue’s flags while they were encased in ice. Rogue’s response was to blast her way through the ice, the ensuing beam sending Bobby straight through three walls of hedges before he dropped.

Rogue freed herself and started to advance on the boy, but by this point she had attracted attention. Kitty slipped through one of the walls, snatched a flag from Rogue’s thigh, and disappeared behind another wall before the Southerner could respond.

“Hit and run,” Scott said. “Clever.”

Piotr let out a battle cry. “Woooooaaaaagh!” he let off, barreling through wall after wall toward the commotion that he heard. When he crashed through his last wall running toward Rogue she whipped up a small tornado underneath him, spinning him around as she reached out with her telekinesis and plucked the flag off his belt, letting the tornado hurl him outside the maze.

Kitty came back for a second hit, but this time Rogue was ready. She teleported just behind Kitty and timed an optic blast for the brief moment that Kitty solidified. The blast was light enough to knock her over without knocking her out, and Rogue retrieved her third flag from Kitty’s form as Bobby prepared a counterattack. By the time Bobby was ready, however, Rogue was gone in a puff of smoke.

Bobby was clearly unnerved. He looked down in all directions trying to decide which way to go. Then, instead of heading down any of the paths, he began forming thick icy walls to block himself in.

“There we go,” Scott said. “Now that’s a plan.”

“It’s not a very good plan,” Ororo added, “But yeah, it’s a plan.”

Unfortunately for Bobby, Rogue had a plan too. The skies above crackled with thunder and a heavy downpour started over the maze. Rogue concentrated it as best she could to the area where Bobby walled himself in, filling it with gallons of water with each passing minute. By the time it got up to his own chest Bobby looked around in desperation.

“If he freezes anything he’ll trap himself,” Scott observed, a wide grin on his face. The way that most teenage boys smiled at a woman in a slinky dress was the way Scott smiled at a well thought out tactic.

“Her plan doesn’t end there,” Jean said, guiding the others psychically into Rogue’s mind. While Bobby waded through the water, now up to his shoulders, wondering what to do, Rogue teleported beneath the water and crouched down. She clasped Bobby’s flag.

All at once it was all over. The storm stopped, Rogue teleported back to the entrance of the maze jumping up and down screaming “I got ‘em all! I got ‘em all!” as the others sauntered toward her. Jean, Scott, and Ororo all floated down with congratulations.

“Really well thought out, Rogue,” Scott said.

“Marvelous job,” Ororo added.

“We didn’t win did we?” Kurt asked, and the unarmored Piotr shook his head in response.

Rogue was beaming, clutching the flags in her fists like a prize and counting them over twice. And then Bobby came storming out of the maze.

“That was total bullshit,” Bobby said, the ice crumbling off his sour face.

“She won fair and square,” Scott said.

“Fair and bullshit!” Bobby stopped and pointed at Rogue accusingly. “She’s overpowered! That’s what we call characters like her in video games because they aren’t freakin’ fair to play with!”

“I’m not overpowered, I---” Rogue tried to start.

“Huh huh, sure. And I’m sure we all have to avoid bumping into you every day because you’re the one who would end up in a coma, right?”

All went silent. Rogue’s bottom lip quivered. BAMF! She was gone.

“Bobby!” Jean said, giving him a look that could melt concrete. She floated into the sky and took off, searching for the spot on the mansion grounds with too many minds bustling around one head.

By the time Jean found her in the hangar underneath the Blackbird Rogue was crying, but the girl wiped away what tears she could once Jean landed and she heard her footsteps. Rogue sat on a stack of boxes, thick gloves pulled back onto her hands and her hood drawn up over her head.

“Hey,” Jean started, “That was totally unfair of Bobby, alright? He was just being a sore loser and I’m sure--

“He had a point.”

“Come on. Don’t be hard on yourself.”

“He did. He and all the others are scared o’ me. I’m scared o’ me. All those people on TV are scared o’ me.”

“They don’t know anything about you!” It was a weak defense, and Jean knew it wasn’t convincing. She tried to come at it from a different angle. “We all feel the same way, Rogue. We’re all in this together.” Rogue stopped sniffling and stood up, turning to walk away. “You’re not alone in this!” Jean pressed on. Rogue whirled around with a sudden fury.

“I am always alone. Don’t pretend like those men in suits are scared o’ you. You’re the pretty all American dream girl. You could have any guy you wanted any time you wanted. Don’t act like your powers are a curse like mine are. Yours are icing on a dadgum cake!”

“Please. We all struggle for control.”

“And everyone except me gets results!” Jean didn’t know what to say, and Rogue knew that she didn’t know so she continued, “What, you gon’ tell me about some bad dreams you had where the furniture shook? You gon’ tell me about bein’ in that Australian scumbag’s head and how you wanted to rip his childhood out?”

A sick smile twisted on Rogue’s face at look of Jean’s shock. “Yeah, that’s right. I know you’re as messed up in the head as I am, but don’t act like our problems are the same. They ain’t.”

With that she stormed off, leaving Jean in the hangar under the Blackbird where she sat and thought well into the night.

#x-men #marvel #comics #reboot #cyclops #scott summers #ororo monroe #storm #jean grey #rogue #anna marie #nightcrawler #kurt wagner #iceman #bobby drake #colossus #piotr rasputin #kitty pryde #shadowcat

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 52

Chapter Fifty-Two

Magneto surveyed the seeds of his empire from the office of a broken down car factory. The wide windows overlooked the rusted remains of conveyor belts and mechanical arms, but it was the tents and cooking pots and friendships sprouting between the Brotherhood that drew his interest.

Not all of the new recruits made such explosive introductions as Avalanche, Pyro, and the newly dubbed Blob. The scared and the vulnerable found their way into Magneto’s arms looking to him for strength and security. He offered it openly, asking only for their dedication to the cause of mutant supremacy and their devotion to honing the weapons of their bodies in return.

That was not good enough for all of them, it would appear. In a far corner of the factory Magneto saw his daughter the Scarlet Witch arguing intently with one of their newest members, the one called Vanisher. He was an astonishingly powerful teleporter, but Magneto could guess at the source of the argument. Just a moment later he did not have to.

Vanisher disappeared in a flash of green light that instantaneously filled Magneto’s office. He saw it reflect off the window in front of him, and turned to face Vanisher himself. The man was well muscled and covered in a hodgepodge of faded and garish tattoos. His head was shaved, and it was clear from the cracking of his knuckles that he meant to intimidate the Master of Magnetism.

“I want my payment,” Vanisher said.

“Whatever for?”

Vanisher snorted and pointed out the window at a section of the factory floor where the new recruits were gaining instruction from a hairy beast of a man who claimed decades of military experience. “I pulled your asses out of the fire. My services aren’t free.”

“This isn’t the mob, dear boy, you don’t get a ‘cut.’ You were helping your fellow mutant and in return they will help you. This is the new order of the world, and any money you are expecting won’t be of any use for long.”

The man snorted again and Magneto restrained himself from killing him on the spot. “What a crock. I don’t need help from you or no one else and if I do help someone I expect a fat payday in return. Now you’re going to give it to me or--”

The man fell to his knees writhing, scratching at his chest and arms while gritting his teeth. “Your recompense is that I don’t kill you right now for trying to stand on the backs of your brothers. I assumed you learned something of brotherhood in prison, given your tattoos.” Magneto knelt down in front of the writhing man, a strand a spit stretching down from Vanisher’s lips. “At least, I assume these are prison tattoos, given the iron and graphite in their ink.”

“Piss off.”

Magneto tightened his magnetic grip and Vanisher dropped to the floor completely. He put a put on the man’s chest. “I’ll let you leave, but if you get in the way of my war I won’t hesitate to spread you to every place you’ve ever been all at once. Understood?”

There was another flash of green and Magneto’s boot landed on the ground where the Vanisher formerly was. He heard a commotion out in the hallway of his office and thew out his hand to open the door.

Toad, who insisting on standing guard outside Magneto’s door as if it granted him some level of authority on the others, proved an incapable barrier. A green man with long pointed ears stood with a foot in Toad’s back holding Toad’s tongue around his own neck, choking the maladapt with it. “Let him go,” Magneto commanded, and the green man smiled and let the boy fall to the floor. “Who are you?”

The green man smiled, striding into the office and kicking the door closed behind him as Toad gasped for air. The green man looked at the window, asking “I assume we can have some privacy?”

In answer, metal shutters clanged shut along the windows, darkening the room as Magneto strode over to lean against his desk. Satisfied, the green man answered Magneto’s question by changing shape, shortening in height and sprouting red hair as his skin became blue and his eyes an irisless yellow.

Magneto’s eyes widened. “Mystique?”

She smiled at him. “I’ve been looking for you for quite some time, Erik. Almost made contact with you back in D.C., but one of Charles’ pets got in the way.”

“It’s been years and you haven’t changed a day.”

“Oh, I’ve changed,” she said, walking over to one of the chairs in front of the desk and curling into it. “Many times. It looks as though you have, too. Quite the revolution you’re starting.”

Magneto moved to take his own seat behind the desk, a voluptuous red armchair like his throne and in the bare metallic office. “Can I assume you’ve come to join it?”

Mystique kicked her boots up onto the desk, stretching out in her seat as she smiled at Magneto. “I’ve come to join you. I’m a survivor, Erik, I was even back in Europe and I knew it then that you were too. If you’ll have me.”

He stared at her for a long time, falling back in his own seat with the same ease that she showed. “I’ll have you,” he said at last. “You can start by helping that wild man out there in training the recruits. They could use some lessons in...subtlety.”

Mystique stood up and nodded. “From what I saw they certainly do.” She turned and walked slowly out, stopped with her hand on the doorknob and turning back once more. “Is there a reason you aren’t wearing your helmet?”

“I’m waiting for Charles to put his on,” Magneto replied. She seemed puzzled, but asked no further questions before leaving and shutting the door behind her. He watched the door for some time wondering if he had imagined her, wondering if he just simply opened the window shutters if he would see her out there training the recruits in all the sundry ways she knew to kill a man.

After a while he drifted off to sleep slumped in his throne, his neck falling to his chest and his hands hanging off the arms. When he awoke he knew at once he was not truly awake.

He was the clothes of a college boy, sitting in a bright lecture hall empty save for himself in one of the student’s chairs and a man standing in a finely pressed suit at the front of the room, his hand posed on the podium.

“I was wondering when you would find me, Charles,” Erik said, his voice reverberating in the room. Charles always did have an eye for the minutest detail.

His old friend smiled at him. “Every so often I cast my line out hoping that you will bite. It’s been too long. I assume there’s little point in communicating your location to the authorities?”

Erik stood up and began to walk down the steps. “Not unless you want several dead authorities. I certainly wouldn’t object.”

“No, Charles said, his hand falling from the podium as he turned away to pace, “You wouldn’t. “That was a dastardly move sending my half-brother against me.You had to know how much it would hurt me to do that to him again.”

“I hoped it would make you see the light. I hoped it would show you that undesirable means are occasionally necessary, that there is not always another way.” It was now Erik at the podium. “You’ll say that I’ve given up on hope, but there is still great hope in me. I still hope, everyday, that you will stop this senseless infighting.”

Charles turned to face him. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare accuse me of stoking the flames of conflict you so tenderly care for. These are children, Erik, and you’re forcing them into a war.”

“They are MY children!” Erik slammed his fist against the podium and regained his composure. “You stole them away from me and the rest of the world and locked them up in your idyllic fantasy world. More than mine or yours they are the atom’s children, and you are robbing them of their destiny to inherit the ground we walk on.”

An icy blue hue overtook the room, either as a matter of conscious effort or an unconscious detail slipping through Charles’ psyche. “I don’t walk on the ground anymore. I only walk in dreams, and it’s you who did that to me.”

In such a psychic world it was impossible to tell how much time elapsed. Eventually the blue hue faded from the room while the two men stared eachother down. It was Charles who broke the silence. “I assume you know that the Mutant Registration bill will find its way to the Senate floor this week. Should we be watchful of your intervention?”

Erik gave a venomous smile. “Oh no. They are doing precisely what I expected them to do, and I further expect them to drive greater numbers into my arms with their little bill.”

Charles made no effort to hide his relief. “They’re making a dire mistake, but they’ll come to see that with time. I assume this was the reason you dropped your constant guard for us to speak?”

“Yes and no. Congress is only the most public of their anti-mutant hatred bubbling to the top. What simmers below is far more sinister, and it is to our mutual advantage to be aware of it.” Charles waited for Erik to continue and Erik took the cue. “The humans are trying to level the playing field. We’ve known that for some time. What threatens us now is that they are getting results. Search the mind of a man named Bolivar Trask. He was there on the aircraft carrier the night of my first attack. The man has been working doggedly to kill all mutants regardless of their belief. I don’t want that any more than you do.”

Charles ran his fingers across the top of his head, the familiar tic picking a string of sentimentality deep within Erik. “We’ll do what we can,” he said. The walls of the lecture hall began to evaporate along with the most distant desks. The evaporation ate its way toward the men. “One of these days it won’t be so rare for us to share common goals.”

The two men smiled at one another, but there was a sparkle of challenge that shined in both men’s eyes. “No,” Erik said. “It won’t.”

#x-men #marvel #comics #reboot #magneto #erik lensherr #charles xavier #professor x #vanisher #mystique #raven darkholme #scarlet witch #wanda maximoff #brotherhood of mutants #blob #pyro #avalanche

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 51

Chapter Fifty-One

Everything was so wrong. Why were they doing this? Why were these mutants striking out like that, advertising themselves to the world and begging Magneto to come save them? What chance did Charles have of stopping them, and why did he ever agree to let his students go out alone to face each of them?

As if he was the mind reader, Hank addressed his concerns. “They’re adults now, Charles. If they want to protect the world this is what we trained them for and we should be proud of it.” Hank spoke from a seat in front of several computer monitors set up behind Cerebro. The two men monitored the situation as best they could, with Hank watching the news reports and Charles watching through his student’s eyes.

Cyclops was in Texas battling it out with Quicksilver and some disgusting lout laying waste to a sizeable portion of Lubbock. Jean was literally putting out fires in Sydney trying to find a pyrokinetic who had already claimed a dozen lives. It was Storm who Charles worried for the most, already engaged in battle with Scarlet Witch and a new mutant called Avalanche who was bringing the Andes crashing down on Venezuela. The havoc that Storm was up against had her pinned in a mineshaft with no visible means of escape, and her claustrophobia was setting in.

Charles eased her concerns as best he could. “Just stay calm, Ororo,” he assured her. “Deep breaths. You can get yourself out of this.” She did as Charles said and closed her eyes, the darkness no different from that of the mineshaft itself. “Bring the weather to you. Pull it in and Hank and I will find you.”

Hank watched the helicopter footage from Venezuela closely, waiting until he saw a dust devil kick up on one side of the mountain. “Tell her to sweep the wind downwards off the mountain. She may be able to dislodge some of the debris,” Hank called out.

Charles relayed the advice to her and then turned his attention to Cyclops, firing wildly at the afterimages Quicksilver left in his wake. A sedan fell from the sky atop Cyclops and the teenager sliced it in half with an optic beam. “Good work, Scott. Now forget about trying to hit Quicksilver where you see him. Anticipate his moves.” A moment later and a flash of crimson and Quicksilver slammed against the side of a brick wall.

“Thanks, Professor,” Scott answered. Charles tented his fingers anxiously.

Jean found the mutant called Pyro. The madman was cackling wildly atop of flaming bus when she floated out behind him. He had a lighter in each hand that fueled two swords of fire, but the swords dissipated when Jean pulled the lighters from his grasp. He turned in confusion and she gave him no time to comprehend the floating girl in front of him.

She dug into his mind and found anger and horror and frustration. Charles was there right alongside her, watching a series of memories of mangled neighborhood animals and the harassment of every girl who ever made the mistake of being nice to John Alderdyce.

“He’s sick,” Jean said to the Professor.

“He’s had a troubled life.”

“Yeah, because he’s the trouble.”

Charles did not like where she sensed she was going. She started gathering the memories up into bundles and squeezing them all together. Somewhere outside the twisted mind they heard John let out a tortured scream. “What are you doing, Jean?”

“I’m doing what you did to Marko,” Jean said, a tinge to her voice that Charles did not like. “I’m making it so he’ll never do this again to anyone.”

“Jean, you have to pull yourself back! You’re letting him get to you, feeding off his sickness. Jean. Jean, stop right now!”

Something did stop her, but it wasn’t Jean herself. Chains wrapped around Alderdyce’s memories and pulled them into shadows that grew from every corner. Charles felt the presence of yet another mind.

“Charles?” Jean asked. “Is that you?”

“No…” Charles said. The image of himself stood in front of the image of Jean, guarding her off from whatever approached from the shadows.

“It looks like I’m late to the party,” said a voice from the shadows. A cane punctuated each step as a figure approached from the darkness. “That’s okay. There are always more parties where I’m from.” The figure stepped out dressed in Victorian garb, a silk top hat resting along a handsome and sculpted face.

“It’s the Mastermind, Jean.”

“Oh, she knows who I am. From what I hear we’ll get to know eachother even better in the future, won’t we, my lady?”

Charles’ felt a tugging at his pant leg and saw that Jean was just a girl, the same age she was when she first came to the Institute.

Charles’ concentration broke and he was pulled back into his body as Hank shouted for him. “Professor! Professor, they’re just disappearing!”

Charles blinked at into the light, realizing how tightly he had been squeezing his eyes shut. “What? What’s happening?” He turned to see Hank’s monitors. Hank replayed the footage that he was watching on one of the screens.

Just as Cyclops had Quicksilver and the Texan beat a mutant wearing green appeared from nowhere and then vanished just as quickly, taking the other two mutants with him. Then in another video window Charles watched as the green mutant appeared in Venezuela and did the same with Avalanche and Scarlet Witch. Yet again the man appeared in Sydney and grabbed Pyro and whisked him away, leaving Jean to stare at the empty smoking bus.

All voices of all three students appeared in Charles’ head at once asking the same question. “Where’d they go?”

“They...they vanished,” Charles said, tenting his fingers once more. They had lost. The Brotherhood was now three members stronger and the world had even greater reason to live in fear of mutants. But, for now at least, his students were safe and that was all Charles cared about. “Come back home. All of you saved lives today and you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Except for Jean, Charles thought to himself. Whatever it was he sensed in her he hoped that it truly was the byproduct of entering the mind of a psychopath, but there was a nagging doubt in the back of his mind that rocked him to his core.

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 50

Chapter Fifty

Fred Dukes never knew he was a mutant, he just thought he was fat. Since discovering the truth he was having the time of his life.

Who knows how long he could have gone if Jimmy from the next trailer over never said anything. It was a hot day in Lubbock and Fred just wanted to on the crushed remains of the couch in his trailer in front of the fan and watch whatever prank videos he came across on the internet. When Jimmy knocked on the door Fred assumed he was just bringing another customer. Sometimes Jimmy would round up tourists and bring them on over to Fred’s trailer as a sort of sideshow attraction. Fred would come to the door and he’d maybe step outside and they’d maybe ask a few questions and at the end of it Jimmy would kick back a few bucks to Fred for the trouble.

But this time it was different. Fred opened the door wearing nothing but jeans, blocking his eyes from the Texan sun while he blinked at Jimmy’s silhouette. There was nobody behind him.

“What you want, Jimmy? It’s hot as hell in here I know you ain’t tearin’ me away from my fan for no good reason.”

Jimmy asked him if he’d seen the news. When Fred said he hadn’t Jimmy seemed to change the topic and ask if Fred ever heard of mutants. Fred hadn’t heard much about any of that and didn’t know what Jimmy was driving at. Jimmy just kind of shrugged and said maybe it was something worth figuring out and left.

It wasn’t until a few hours later of poking around the web that Fred put it all together. Mutants were these people who could do whatever they wanted. Some people said the law didn’t apply to them like it applied to everyone else. Now they were going on some kind of rampage. There was on in Australia throwing fireballs around willy nilly and one in South America bringing down whole mountains onto people’s homes. They said that mutants didn’t fit in with anyone else and that’s just how Fred felt his whole life.

He knew he was obese, but until he tested it out he never knew he was so strong. He started by lifting a broken washing machine someone left out in the middle of the trailer park. Then he lifted a whole truck, and soon enough he was lifting a whole trailer and shaking out the people inside, giggling like a baby all the while.

That’s when the real fun started.

People ran screaming from the trailer park as Fred knocked over one trailer after another. When he started marching toward town he got scared when the cops pulled up and started pointing their guns at him and yelling at him to stop. He stopped, but they got nervous anyways and fired--and the damn bullet bounced off him!

They fired some more and all the bullets all the same either bounced right off Fred or sank into the folds of his skin. He just started chuckling and walking toward the squad cars and kicking them over onto their sides and flipping the cops the bird. After that Fred knew he could do whatever the hell he wanted, and what he wanted at that particular time was some damn beer.

He was holed up in the nearest bar for the next hour or so chugging every keg he could find. The cops formed a ring around the place, but that didn’t bother him none and he figured he’d just walk right through them whenever he wanted to go somewhere else next. He watched some TV in the bar and saw all the news channels covering the South America and the Australia stuff, but then they started showing the bar he was at and Fred started shouting that he was famous.

It was around that time that the silver-haired kid showed up. He said his name was Quicksilver, which Fred thought was odd, and he just kind of appeared out of nowhere. Fred was sitting on the floor leaning against the bar with a keg cradled in one arm as he watched the one of the TV’s mounted in the corner while the kid surveyed the broken tables and chairs littering the room.

“Well, you certainly know how to make a statement,” the Quicksilver guy started saying. “I see the ‘seize your heart’s desires’ portion of my father’s manifesto particularly appealed to you?”

Fred belched for several seconds. “I don’t know nothin’ about all that. But this mutant stuff is pretty fun! Hey, you a mutant too?”

Quicksilver grimaced. “Yes. Would you like to meet more of us, by any chance? There’s so many more out there in the world, and only more to come after today.”

“I don’t know about all that neither. You folks any fun? Know how to have a good time?”

“Some of us are.”

“Heh heh. Prove it.”

And instant after vanishing Quicksilver appeared again holding a cop’s revolver. He pointed it at the TV Fred seemed so distracted by. “When in Texas, do as the Texans do, I suppose.” He fired off several shots until the TV started smoking and then fell to the ground with a crash. Fred dropped his keg and started clapping and laughing.

“Heh heh heh! Ooh, I like you, Quick Sliver.” He started to move to get up, but suddenly one wall of the bar burst into splinters in a flash of red. Fred toppled over onto his side and waved his arms around trying to roll into a position where he could stand.

Cyclops stepped through the wreckage with his hand at his visor. “Quicksilver. I had a feeling you’d see this as a recruitment opportunity. Where are your friends.”

Quicksilver looked around in mock confusion, appearing to either side of Cyclops and then several feet out behind him before returning to his original position and asking “Where are yours?”

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 49

Chapter Forty-Nine

It was pitch dark and something was twisting around his limbs as he regained consciousness. Instinctively his claws popped out and he began thrashing wildly around him, actutely aware of the cold sweat coating his clammy skin. The sound of shredding fabric filled the air and he felt the feathers falling back down onto him like snowfall.

It was just a bad dream and Logan had ruined another bed. He rolled out of bed and sheathed his claws, throwing open the curtain of his room to let in the moonlight. His window overlooked the grounds out front where the gate was still smashed and there were huge chunks of lawn missing. The broken statues were fixed up, and they were lucky that nothing happened to the fountain. Logan tried to imagine what he ever could have done to stop Juggernaut from getting to the grounds in the first place, but that only made him remember what it was like to have that gargantuan hand pummeling his face into the dirt over and over and over.

His skull refused to break, but the brain inside was not so lucky. Each time Logan came back from an injury like that there were parts of his past already foggy that grew foggier still. Memories seemed to mix together and intermingle, differing timelines that didn’t make sense. When exactly did he join the military? When was he recruited for covert missions? When were the experiments, the torture, the breaking out? When were the loves that he found or the rivalries he formed?

He did what he always did on sleepless nights like this. He walked downstairs to grab a beer and forget about it all.

The mansion was best at night when everyone else was in bed. When the kids were in their beds they seemed safer, and when they weren’t running around the halls they weren’t catching glimpses of the grunting mankiller that made them whisper and gossip.

The smell of cologne wafted into Logan’s nose before he entered the kitchen and he stopped for a moment to take a second whiff. No danger. It was only Kurt, who seemed to think that bottled scents could somehow distract women from the fact he was covered in blue fur and had a tail. Logan pressed on into the kitchen and nodded at Kurt, who was perched atop a stool eating a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his phone.

Kurt froze at the sight of Logan, the spoon still in his mouth and milk dribbling down his chin. Logan ignored the reaction and opened the fridge, removing a beer and watching the counter mechanism Beast installed to ensure the kids didn’t get into the stash. Logan turned back to Kurt and popped the cap off his beer. “Why do you sit like that?” he asked, suddenly.

Kurt looked down as if to remind himself how he was sitting. His tail seemed to wander around behind him, although it did so less fluidly since it was put into a cast some weeks ago. “Ze tail gets in ze way of sitting normally. My spine is curved differently too, I am thinking,” the kid said.

Logan pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the island from Kurt and sat down with his beer. “Fair enough. Trouble sleeping?”

Kurt nodded, sliding his phone over to Logan. “People are calling Juggernaut’s rampage an inspiration. Some of zem are planning to do the same, to try to get Magneto’s attention so zey can join ze Brozerhood.”

One disturbing message followed another as Logan scrolled through the phone. He pressed the button on the side to turn it off and slid it back over to Kurt. “Lot’a psychos in the world,” Logan said, sipping on his beer wordlessly for moments after. He realized that Kurt was waiting for him to say something comforting, but he let him wait and enjoyed his beer. Kurt played at his cereal, his soft yellow eyes downcast into the milk.

Ah, damnit. What the hell. “Listen, we’ll be fine. If we could stop a guy like the Juggernaut we can stop anyone. Let ‘em at us, I say.”

The yellow eyes turned back up toward Logan. “So he did not frighten you, ze Juggernaut?”

Roaring echoed of memories reverberated in Logan’s head: the buzz of his entire skeleton rocked with every blow, the feeling of his own brain liquefying more each time, the feel of his teeth turned to dust at the back of his throat.

Logan stared into those yellow eyes and said “No.” Logan finished his beer and turned to get another one. As he opened the door he said, “You should get back to bed, furball. The Professor wouldn’t much like it if--

When he turned there was only a puff of smoke and an empty bowl of cereal. Logan sat down, all tiredness gone from his body, and looked out the window across from him that showed the grounds out behind the mansion. They were untouched by the fight with Juggernaut and the shadowy woods behind them were serene. They reminded him of the peaceful portions of the Boreal forest in Canada and the nights where it felt like it was just him and the wolves and the night sky.

“You know, a lot of people don’t think of packs of wolves as comforting.” Jean Grey stepped out from behind a corner with a smile on her face, an oversized t-shirt on that went down to her mid-thigh. Logan’s eyes travelled down the legs before darting away.

“That ain’t polite, Red.”

Jean smiled. “Don’t worry. I just caught it by accident.” She sat in the stool Kurt had occupied and slide the bowl of cereal out of her way so that she could lean forward. From behind him Logan heard the refrigerator open and felt the carton of orange juice brush over his shoulder. A cabinet squeaked open and soon a glass cup joined the carton in their mid-air dance between Logan and Jean, the juice pouring out and settling into the cup then screwing its cap back on and retreating back to the fridge.

Jean curled her fingers around the cup, her gaze never leaving Logan. “What did you like about the wolves?” she asked.

Logan looked down at the counter, unable to take her staring. “They’re honest creatures. They tell you what you want, you know where you stand with ‘em. They’re never cruel, never greedy. They’re a whole lot better than people.”

“I caught little flashes of your dreams earlier, too” she said. “I really have no control over it at night. Everyone else’s dreams become my own.”

That got Logan to look up at her. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“Neither should you,” she told him. A loose bang hanging on Logan’s head picked itself up and tucked itself back into his hairline, settling into place with the feeling of invisible fingers running through his hair. He closed his eyes and heard Jean set her drink down upon finishing it. “Try to get some rest, Logan,” she said.

Like that she was gone. Well, she was gone from the kitchen. She lingered in Logan’s mind through much of the rest of the night, with beer after beer trying to make her go away along with everything else.

He was still drinking into the dawn when the sky above the distant woods began to bleed. His vision was blurred slightly and he had resigned himself to having one last beer when a third visitor walked into the kitchen.

“Sweet Jesus, Logan, you drunk already?”

It was Rogue, dressed for a job and with earbuds wrapped around the back of her neck.

Logan shook his head, but didn’t manage to say anything. He wondered how he was so obvious before remembering that he hadn’t been throwing his bottles away all night. An array of them decorated the countertop in front of him.

Rogue came over with a half-cocked smile. “Least you could do was invite a gal to your party.”

Logan stifled a burp. “Yer more...chipper, than usual.”

“I’m still ridin’ that high from kickin’ Juggernaut’s ass. The other kids don’t seem as scared of me no more, neither.”

“And you’re runnin’ now?”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile, “the Professor says if I’m gonna learn ta control my powers I need ta control my body first. Maybe you could learn a thing or two ‘bout that y’self.”

Logan drained the last of his beer and stumbled off the stool, throwing his hand out to the counter for balance. He knew it was only momentary and that his liver would catch up to him soon. He wanted to make it to bed and pass out before that happened. While rounding the island Logan stumbled once more, however, and Rogue caught him and put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her hood up so that he didn’t make contact with her neck.

“Hey, listen, I’ll help you get upstairs. Just take it easy, alright? Jesus, you’re heavy.”

The progress up the stairs was slow. Logan’s stomach gurgled and he suddenly remembered that he had a bottle of whiskey somewhere between all those beers. How did he get so damn drunk? It was a school, not some hole in the wall tavern in Madripoor. How pathetic could he get?

“Too young,” Logan mumbled as Rogue walked him up the stairs.

“What? Who’s too young?”

“Too young for me. I’m just some creepy old man. Creepy old sad man.”

Rogue chuckled at that as they topped the stairs. “I won’t argue there. But you got good qualities.”

One foot went in front of another. They were almost there. Why couldn’t he stop babbling?

“All the ones before are all dead. Feel like everythin’ I touch...dies.” He hiccuped.

“Believe me, I know that feelin’.”Rogue let out a bitter laugh as she opened Logan’s door with one hand. She started to walk him over to his thrashed up bed. “What in the sam hill did you do to this bed, Logan?”Logan flopped onto the bed and the springs crunched as his weight settled into it. His eyelids fluttered for a moment and Rogue knelt over him. “Hey...you torn up over some lady friend?”

Logan didn’t say anything and rolled over onto his side.

“That lady friend me, any chance?”

A gentle snoring buzzed into the room. Rogue put her earbuds in and started to walk out the door. She selected “Tuesday’s Gone” on and hit play.

#x-men #marvel #comics #rebook #logan #wolverine #james howlett #nightcrawler #kurt wagner #jean grey #phoenix #marvel girl #rogue #anna marie #juggernaut #x-mansion

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 48

Chapter Forty-Eight

What are violent and disturbing messages to some are sources of inspiration and hope to others. Around the world Magneto’s weekly videos, uploaded from one continent one week as easily as they were a different continent the next, threw gasoline on internet communities of mutants who were tired of hiding, sick of holding back, and ready to seize what Magneto most assuredly insisted was theirs.

In a hot cafe in Sydney, Australia a wiry blonde writer by the name of John Alderdyce closed out of the message boards to stare at the blinking cursor of the blank document that was sure to be his next hit. He settled his hands on his keyboards and took in a breath.

Silverware clattered all around him. Some man sitting behind him had an obnoxious voice and was telling an obnoxious story. Glassware jingled on the waitress’ platter as she galavanted around from table to table asking in the same high pitched squeal if this person would like that or if that person would like this.

John snapped his laptop shut and slammed a fist onto the table, then opened the laptop again and went back to the message boards. If even half of these people were telling the truth there would be a mutant revolution within the month. That’s what he should do, he decided, he should revolt. Of course he couldn’t write anything new in such an oppressive society. His creativity was being stifled right alongside his freedom. Even the noise, the clattering of metal and ceramic and the chatter of half-stuffed mouths was oppressive.

“And can I get you anythin’, mate? Bit more coffee?” the waitress asked.

“NO, I’m quite ALRIGHT!” John burst out at her, looking at her with his jaw thrust forward and locked half open. The waitress grew bug-eyed and backed away, apologizing pathetically as she did so and retreating at last back into the kitchen.

He could still see her back there, though. There was a service window between the kitchen and the diner itself where John could see the waitress muttering to the cook about him. He couldn’t hear the muttering, but it was somehow still deafening, somehow robbing him of any chance to get out a coherent thought, and what gave her, a filthy human, the right to look down on him anyway?

A plume of fire erupted from the service window. The sudden burst of flame and the screams of the waitress and the cook alarmed all of the other diners into standing up or backing away, and they yelped and covered their mouths and rushed around with fire extinguishers and pitchers of water trying to bring some sanity back to the situation.

For the first time in that diner John felt a sense of peace and began to write. He ignored the blank word processor forever torturing him, and instead wrote a response to a man calling himself “Avalanche.” Avalanche was rallying the mutants that Magneto called for, insisting that the revolution was now, and trying to organize a date to strike out against the homo sapien oppressors.

John posted his response under the name Pyro.

“I’m in.”

#x-men #marvel #comics #reboot #pyro #john alderdyce #avalanche #dominkikos petrikas #brotherhood of mutants #magneto #erik lensherr #brotherhood of evil mutants #blob #fred dukes

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 47

Chapter Forty-Seven

Piotr never had never broken a bone before, but if it was always such fun he regretted not getting the experience earlier.

Most of the other X-Men were in the infirmary after Juggernaut’s attack. Only Kitty, Mr. McCoy, the Professor, Rogue, and of course Logan were left completely intact after the battle. Piotr’s friend Kurt left before the others with a cast on his tail, and Scott and Ororo insisted their ways out of their beds as soon as they could walk. Everyone else sat in the infirmary and joked around and bonded and played what games they could between Mr. McCoy’s tests and wound cleaning and bandage replacing.

It was a great opportunity to work on his English, Piotr figured. While the Professor could help bridge the language barrier during his classes, without active telepathic assistance Piotr found it much harder to learn the nuances of the language. Kurt, who read his Bible in English every night, gave what help he could, but Russian and German were two very different languages and to truly learn the language Piotr always knew that he would have to immerse himself in it.

He refused the telepathic assistance that Jean offered, knowing that the only reason that she was in the infirmary in the first place was that Juggernaut had broken through her telekinetic barriers with such force that she had debilitating migraines in the time since. She slept most of her days, and the happiest Piotr had seen her since they were recovering from the battle was when the Professor came in to assure them all that the Juggernaut was back in his bed and back in his coma.

Bobby was a lot of help at first at teaching Piotr American slang. At least that’s what Piotr thought at first. He realized after a retrospectively embarrassing week that saying he was feeling “turned on” did not mean that he was recovering well when Kitty finally told him as much. After that he took Bobby’s advice with what he learned to call “a grain of salt.”

It was those visits from Kitty that Piotr enjoyed the most. She confessed to Piotr that she felt somewhat guilty for making it out of the fight unscathed when so many of her comrades were hurt so badly. He assured her that she should not feel guilty, that her getting hurt would not have eased the suffering of any of the rest of them.

On one particular late night, after the others in the infirmary were already asleep, that Kitty floated down from the ceiling and landed right in her chair next to Piotr’s bed. She knew the spot from the ceiling above exactly by this point, and she settled right into her position and smiled at Piotr. “How you doing, big guy?” she asked.

“I am good,” Piotr said.

“You mean well,” she said, knowing that he liked to be corrected.

“What is difference?”

“No clue. But English teachers get picky about it. The arm feeling better?”

The arm that Juggernaut swung Piotr from had popped out of its socket in some way that Mr. McCoy was completely puzzled by. Piotr wore it in a sling and looked over at it as he answered Kitty. “Is sore. Mr. McCoy tried to inject me with a medicine earlier, but every time needle poked into arm I would make armor that snapped needle.”

Kitty winced. “So there’s a bunch of needles stuck in your arm right now?”

Piotr tried to shrug it off. “Is not bad. I need to learn not to do such a thing.”

Something about that made Kitty laugh. He always liked how she laughed, with little snorts interspersed throughout the laughter itself. She asked more questions about how he was and he answered them as best he could, and when he said that he was self-conscious about his English she told him not to be. It was dark in the infirmary with the lights kept low, and during a lull in conversation Piotr noticed Bobby’s deep snoring from the next bed over. He did not know what to say, but he knew that he did not want Kitty to leave.

Kitty stared into her lap as she spoke, as if looking for the words to say. “Peter. I’m still kind of shaken from that fight. Is that what we signed up for? I thought, you know. I thought this school would be a bit more like a normal school.”

Pitor reached out with his good arm and grabbed her hand as it sat in her lap. “We are not normal people, Katya.”

She looked up at him. Her look was so hard to decipher, like sadness mixed with confusion, and yet a hint of happiness mixed into all of it. “This is just the start of it all. Magneto’s been putting out these videos, these crazy ramblings about mutant superiority and calls to arms and...and there’s a lot of people agreeing with him. These message boards where they’re all saying he’s right and that mankind has got what’s coming to them. Scott and the Professor are fighting about what to do or what not to do.”

Her hand phased through Piotr’s as she moved it up to wipe budding tears from her eyes. Piotr drew back his hand to his own lap and stared forward. “Back home, on farm, every winter we did not know for certain how we would make it. Yet always we did. We persist; that is what we do.”

Kitty snorted a small laugh. “It’s late. We should get some rest.” She stood up and looked at him and he felt that he should do something, but before he could she was standing on her chair and jumping into the ceiling. He stared at the empty spot that she left in the ceiling, tiredness finally taking its hold.

“Don’t let that wait much longer.” The voice came from the bed across Piotr’s. It was Ororo’s bed, but she did not set up or making any effort to meet Piotr’s gaze. “After what we just went through you shouldn’t wait for a damn thing.”

All was quiet after that and, eventually, sleep finally came to the farm boy’s bed.

#x-men #marvel #comics #reboot #colossus #piotr rasputin #kitty pryde #shadowcat #nightcrawler #kurt wagner #storm #ororo monroe #juggernaut #iceman #bobby drake #beast #hank mccoy

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rebootrevolution · 6 years

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X-Men Novelization Ch. 46

Chapter Forty-Six

The world came back into focus and Beast blinked the dusted granite out of his eyes. He rolled around in the grass and newly made gravel, pushing himself to stand up. He saw his students bodies strewn across the grounds as Juggernaut walked up the steps toward Charles.

“His helmet, Hank! Take out the last bolt in his helmet!” Charles’ mind screamed into Beast’s. A low growl vibrated in Beast’s chest and he let the animal inside him take hold as he sprinted toward his prey on all fours.

Juggernaut was yelling in a tearful rage at Charles as he closed in. “HALF MY LIFE, CHARLIE! YOU LEFT ME TO ROT IN THERE FOR HALF MY FREAKING LIFE!” He grabbed a fistful of Charles’ shirt in his hand and listed the Professor up to his eye level, kicking the chair into the front door of the mansion where it burst into a dozen pieces. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF HELL YOU PUT ME IN? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU MADE ME LIVE THROUGH EVERY SINGLE DAY?” He wrapped a hand around Charles’ head, leaving his face exposed as he screamed into it “I DREAMED OF THIS EVERY SINGLE--

There were gouges in Juggernaut’s armor from Wolverine’s claws and Beast dug his own into them for leverage. He saw the last bolt holding the helmet in place, the metal around it twisted and mangled, and he grabbed onto it with his teeth and yanked as hard as he could.

When his neck tore backwards he had the bolt in his teeth, spitting it out and grabbing the helmet with both hands. Before Juggernaut could grab him with his free hand Beast leapt off, landing in the ground with a thud, the helmet curled into his arms like a football. “Now, Charles! NOW!” Beast roared.

Juggernaut froze in place, still holding Charles up in front of him, but staring into his brother’s face with impotent horror. His grip loosed and his arms dropped to his side along with Charles, who crumpled onto the ground and stared up with two fingers at his temple.

“No…” Juggernaut said, a new weakness rattling in his voice Beast did not know the man was capable of. “Not again...please…” He collapsed, falling backwards onto the steps.

Charles’ fingers curled into a fist next to his head. “I’m so sorry, Cain. It’s the only way.”

Beast pushed the animal inside of him back down, caging it back up so that he could survey the scene. He saw Bobby curled into a ball with his arms around his ribs, shattered pieces of his armor still clinging to him, but alive nonetheless. Peter was wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, the metal sheathing itself from around his body. It was Kitty that Hank was most worried about, but he caught her scent in the air and turned to find her raising up through the ground in a distant corner of the lawn.

“Oh my stars and garters,” Hank said, walking over to Charles to pick him up. He crouched down next to his old friend. “We did it. Somehow….”

“Yes,” Charles said, exasperated. He surveyed the damage to the grounds and the students himself. “Somehow.”

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