In his heart, Erik Lehnsherr wasn’t all that pleased about this business of “going back to America.”
And yet, when he turned it over in his mind, it didn’t seem so painful either.
Once, he had meant to assassinate the president and seize power, to let every mutant walk openly beneath the sun, to make those self-righteous ordinary humans taste a little of the injustice mutants had swallowed for so many years.
But Raven and Charles had stopped him.
They’d told him there might be a better future.
He wanted to believe that too.
After that, “Magneto” vanished.
Erik Lehnsherr changed his name and his life once again and went into hiding here, where he met Magda, and later there was Nina.
He had begun to think this kind of life wasn’t so bad.
The truth, though, was that “peace” would never come.
Just as “Magneto” had once guessed, the question had never really been how “mutants” treated “ordinary people.” It was how the “ordinary people” holding power chose to treat “mutants.”
This time, those people had come to capture him.
And next time?
Would it be the mutants from the old Brotherhood, or the little ones gathered at Westchester, who probably didn’t even know how to fight?
No one listens to a cause with no strength standing behind it.
If all you do is mouth empty wishes for peace, peace will never arrive.
He would meet Charles again, and he would do it as “Magneto.”
Once the head of the household had made up his mind, the rest was simple enough.
Magda and Nina would, without question, follow him to America.
Surfacing from the anesthesia, the two of them only now began to grasp what that nightmare of a scene had truly meant.
A daughter curled against her mother’s chest, a wife nestled in the crook of her husband’s arm.
Tactful as ever, Angela ushered Hank, Scott, and Jean outside, and the four of them stood talking in low voices beyond the little house. This chapter was taken from novelping dot com without permission.
Angela frowned, plainly unhappy.
“Dr. McCoy, is the military really this brazen? They send soldiers out to kill, without so much as a legal pretext for it?”
Hank gave a rueful smile.
“Most likely… even if they’d botched it, those men would never have admitted to being ‘soldiers,’ would they?”
Angela understood at once, and broke into a laugh.
“Then they must take everyone else for fools. If not soldiers, who else would run the risk of being attacked by a mutant just to pull a job like this? There’s no reason for it beyond following orders and acting on a command. And on top of that, this wasn’t some child who hadn’t even worked out how to use their power yet. This was the famous ‘Magneto.’ The military came thoroughly prepared—I noticed those soldiers earlier were carrying no firearms and no melee weapons. To keep their metal out of the reach of his magnetic field, I imagine.”
Hank let out a helpless sigh.
“Yes.
Sharp as you are, Dr. Ziegler, you’ve more or less worked out how certain people feel about ‘mutants.’ Which is why—and it’s a touch disrespectful to the Professor to say it—there are times when I can’t help feeling that the existence of mutants like ‘Magneto’ is genuinely necessary.”
“And how does one welcome a stranger whose intentions are unknown?” Angela’s lips curled into a smile with a meaning hard to read.
Her lashes dipped slightly, veiling part of her gaze, so that those eyes, bright as clear sky, seemed brushed over by a drifting haze, taking on the deeper hush of dusk.
“With flowers, and with a blade. Charles holds out the flowers, and ‘Magneto’ holds the blade. It’s a fine arrangement. This way they won’t come to the same end as the natives of the North American continent.”
That last remark had a real edge to it—you could say it was a blade swung straight at every immigrant in America.
And to be clear, it wasn’t aimed at the people who came to America from other countries in later years, but at that very first wave who crossed over from Europe to North America.
They had been warmly welcomed by the Native Americans, who received these new arrivals with flowers and food.
And afterward—what did the Native Americans get in return?
The whole world knew.
And if anyone didn’t, they had only to look up the origins of Thanksgiving, and the joke would land all the harder.
Just then, someone came out of the house.
Erik Lehnsherr was a German Jew, and on hearing the gibe he laughed along with it.
“Well said. I find myself wanting you at my side more and more. Compared with Charles, I could let you put that strength of yours to far greater use.”
Hank, Scott, and Jean grew a little uncomfortable at that—all three of them were Americans, after all, and it was hard to say whether they themselves were descendants of that first wave of immigrants.
Angela, for her part, wasn’t the least bit moved by Magneto’s overtures.
She’d admit she probably stood closer to him than to Charles where her core values were concerned.
But serving under a leader whose stance didn’t quite line up with her own was nothing new to her—seasoned at it, even—so she brushed the offer aside with the ease of a tai-chi push-hands move. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
“Mm-hm.
Mr. Magneto, before you go any further trying to recruit me, I’d ask you to keep my earlier quote firmly in mind.”
That “twelve million” rang in Erik Lehnsherr’s ears at once, and he promptly fell silent.
Back when he used to bring people into the fold, not one of them had ever brought up money.
The most they’d ever asked was whether they’d have enough to eat.
How was it that here, of all places, he’d run into someone who opened with twelve million?
“…Sounds like you used to live rather well.”
“It was fine.” Angela gave a noncommittal reply, then wagged a finger at him with a grin.
“So don’t go thinking you can fob me off with just any old offer.”
Erik Lehnsherr’s mouth split into a shark-like grin, and he said nothing further.
Angela, in turn, eased a few steps back, ceding the front to Cyclops and the Phoenix.
Now that Magneto had agreed to come to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, all she had to do was sit back and wait for the task to wrap up.
Better to leave the stage to these old acquaintances of his.
Magneto did, as it happened, still have things to discuss with Hank, and showed no sign of wanting to quarrel; bit by bit, Cyclops and the Phoenix were drawn into the conversation too.
Angela listened in quietly, sifting out anything useful and slowly slotting it into her growing file on “mutants.”
The X-Men, and the Brotherhood.
Their leaders were Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr—two men who had once been kindred spirits and close friends, and who had once joined hands to build the very first X-Men.
The X-Men, more often than not, held a posture of passive defense, helping and protecting mutants, and now and then protecting ordinary people as well.
The Brotherhood was a different matter.
Magneto was friendly toward mutants but vicious toward ordinary humans; far from protecting them, the Brotherhood had done its fair share of striking first and harming others.
Some of it could be filed under “justified defense” and “excessive self-defense,” some under “revenge,” and the rest was nothing but outright retaliation.
Their clashing ideals had brought the X-Men and the Brotherhood to blows many times over the years, until Magneto withdrew into seclusion and the Brotherhood went to ground with him, finally bringing the large-scale conflicts to an end, though scattered little skirmishes still cropped up here and there.
Now that sounded familiar.
More than just ordinarily familiar.