Chapter Two: In which the prank war escalates to great & greater heights

"Life is nothing without a little chaos to make it interesting."

― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Demon in My View


When Erik stepped onto the grounds of Westchester, New York, he wondered if he was in the right place, or he had stepped into some strange alternate universe where chaos reigned completely.

The usually serene and almost idyllic institute of learning had been turned into something of a war-zone, and there were shrieks in the distance, and it almost scared him that he was unable to tell if they were shrieks of pain or laughter.

Ducking past a carelessly flung projectile, he made his way to the front entrance of the building, which was still relatively intact, and he wondered what he would find inside.

"Oh— hey Da— Magneto," the silver-haired boy he recognised to be Peter zoomed past, stopping to say hello to him. "Magneto. That's your name, right? Totally. Anyway, I'm kind of busy now, catch you later!"

The boy zoomed past in a barely perceptible cloud of dust out the open front door, and a good minute later, while he was climbing the stairs, Scott Summers came charging down the stairs, looking like a man with a mission and a grim determination in his jaw.

"Sorry, but have you seen Peter pass by this way?" he asked Magneto politely, not at all scared of him. Magneto found it refreshing, that they weren't scared of him here. They knew exactly what he was, and had a healthy amount of respect for him (or so he hoped), but they weren't downright terrified, like any normal human would be.

"I believe he went out the front door," Magneto replied, continuing on his way to Charles's study.

He didn't bother knocking when he reached it, but immediately strode in, placing his hands on Charles's desk and leaning forwards to look his friend straight in the eye.

"Charles," he said. "Do you realise that there are six horses of various sizes out there terrorising that poor boy who can teleport?"

"Erik!" Charles said joyfully. It almost made Erik's heart skip a beat, if he could be completely sure that Charles was indeed, sane.

"Charles?" Erik raised an eyebrow.

Charles rolled over to the window to inspect the problem, but then waved his hand dismissively, turning back to face his old friend. "Youthful high spirits. I'm sure they'll put back the horses by the day's end, or we'll just have to see if the old stables are still in a habitable condition."

"Charles?" Erik said again, this time in confusion.

"Yes, that's my name, don't wear it out," Charles replied. "And if you're worried about Kurt, don't worry. He's tougher than he looks."

Outside, a loud crash resounded, like a window had been broken. Erik started at the sound, but Charles picked up his cup of tea, and sipped it calmly.

"I leave you for a year and you let the place devolve into total anarchy," Erik said dryly.


"Peter, your phone is ringing again," Hank said wearily. "Are you sure you don't want me to just get you a new one?"

"No," Peter said grimly. "Because that would mean he's won."

Hank sighed, and shook his head. He'd been trying his best not to get involved in whatever the kids were cooking up over the past few weeks, but he had to say, it was escalating at an alarming rate. Or perhaps it had always been this intense. (He was pretty sure Scott was still drying out some items in his room from Peter's first prank.)

Just three days ago, Scott and the others (or Team Summers, as they liked to be called) had gone into town and dropped a multitude of keys in strategic places, and on those keys was Peter's number to the cellphone that Hank had gotten made for him recently, and promises of a grand reward if the fake keys were returned to their rightful owner.

And now, Peter's phone was constantly ringing with well-meaning citizens eager to return his 'keys' because of their supposed duty as civic citizens, but mostly because they wanted the promised reward, whatever it was.

And now it was the third week that this nonsense had been going on.

Hank had to admit though, the kids had some very inventive ways to use some of his equipment, ways that he never would have thought to use them in at all.

Peter had long since left him to his own devices in the lab when he heard the glass shatter, and with a sigh, he got up to go and investigate.

"Charles, do you know what happened— oh, Erik," he said, peeking his head into the Professor's study. "Never mind, I'd better go check that no one's hurt."

The lawn was nothing short of a complete mess, and there was horse-shit everywhere.

Somehow, Peter— it had to be Peter, he was sure the boy had mentioned something about horses to him the other day— had gotten a total of six horses onto the estate, who were all running wild and— was that Kurt?— well, making Kurt cower in equal parts fear and awe at the creatures.

At least the kids liked them, he mused inwardly as he watched a group of students petting and grooming three of the horses. He couldn't be sure, but he was pretty sure the horses enjoyed the attention, anyway.

"He's not going to bite you, Kurt!" he heard Jubilee say, as she led a horse by the bridle to Kurt.

"His teeth are so frightening," Kurt moaned in fear. "He's going to eat me alive!"

"Hold still—"

Kurt teleported to where Hank was, gripping onto the older man tightly with all limbs so suddenly that Hank stumbled for a second. (He made a mental note to ask Kurt sometime who his parents really were, because his powers were too close to Azazel's for comfort, and his shade of blue reminded him very much of a certain blue mutant…)

"Save me, Professor Hank!" the young mutant fervently begged. "That beast is going to eat me alive, and Jubilee wants to sacrifice me to it!"

"I do not!" Jubilee protested. "And anyway, what if our next mission needs us to pretend to be Wild, Wild West cowboys from the West? You'd totally blow our cover!"

"I highly doubt that scenario would ever present itself to us, but for future reference, we are never using that as a cover," Hank laughed, amused by the mental image that it presented.

"Are you sure? Because I think I look pretty good on a horse," Peter said, riding up to them on one of the horses. "I challenged Scott to a race, but he's not having a lot of luck with his horse."

He jerked his thumb back, and Hank looked in that direction, only to see Scott struggling to hold on to his horse, practically sliding off its smooth back. The horse also seemed more interested in devouring the fresh grass available, rather than the human on its back.

"Hey Scott, need some help?" Peter called out.

"Fuck off, Maximoff!" was the reply, and Scott flipped the bird at him.

"Oh well," Peter shrugged. "Want a ride, Hank?"

Hank declined politely— animals were always rather skittish around him, probably because they sensed his true form and thought of it as a threat.

"Hank, perhaps we should ring the dinner bell," Charles said from the doorway, followed closely by Erik.

"What?" Hank said. "Professor, it's four in the afternoon."

"Oh," Charles said, looking genuinely surprised. "Maybe later then. At six."

"… Yes," Hank said.

"Are you sure you're not on some kind of acid or drugs, Charles? Have you been using?" Erik said, brows furrowed. "You seem rather… out of it."

"I'm perfectly fine," Charles protested. "The dinner bell usually calms them down though, since we instated that blanket treaty between the two factions. Mealtimes are sacred."

Hank heard Erik suppress a snort at the words blanket treaty, but around here, it was no joke.

He remembered that the two teams had sat down on opposite sides of the conference room with grim expressions, arms crossed, eyes squinting in suspicion. Charles, Raven and he had acted as mediators, of course, and Charles had taken the precaution of mentally warning them that no dirty tricks were to be played in the room, or even thought of, because he would know about it.

Raven had laid out the terms of the treaty: no pranks that would cause undue harm or psychological stress, which meant that it was off limits for Jean to tamper with any of their minds, even if it was harmless, and they had to keep as much damage as possible outside, not indoors.

And most importantly, mealtimes were neutral grounds where people could eat in peace without looking over their shoulders every second.

It had taken some convincing and tweaking, but eventually it was universally agreed upon that the party who violated any terms of the treaty would automatically be the loser, and the other team would get to gloat viciously for the next few decades, at least.

And for now, they were obeying it scrupulously. (For now.)


Later at dinnertime, all eight of them sat across each other, busily engaged in devouring their meal after that admittedly strenuous afternoon.

The horses had been stabled because Peter refused to bring them back or divulge where he had gotten them from, and also because the children were so upset at the prospect of them being gone that Charles and Raven had finally acquiesced to their demands.

The division of teams had been all too easy after the first members had been netted: Peter and Warren had always got along well— they were the same kind of kid after all, and got along really well since Warren's arrival to the X-Mansion. Scott had Jean, of course, and then he briefly convinced Kurt that the other team would try to convert him to Satanism if he went to their side, which was surprisingly easy to do. Jubilee had followed soon after, saying that Scott would need all the help he could get, if he was going to beat the other side. (Scott had rankled slightly at that comment, but Jubilee's powers did come in useful, and she was from the original mall gang after all.)

So those were the teams; slightly unequal, but both sides held their own with unmatched skill, even though Peter's side was short a member.

"One of these days, we'll get you on a horse, Kurt," Peter said. "Why are you so scared of them, anyway?"

"A horse tried to eat me when I was small!" Kurt said petulantly. "How could I not be terrified of those beasts? They have four stomachs!"

"You're thinking of cows, not horses, sweetie," Jubilee said, reaching over to steal one of Warren's fries.

"Don't get me started on cows," Kurt warned.

"I wonder why Magneto's back in town," Jean mused aloud to the table. "He doesn't look like he's bringing any bad news, or here to recruit anyone."

They looked up at the teachers' table, where all four mutants were laughing at some silly joke Charles had told, looking perfectly calm and at peace. Raven had dropped her disguise completely— she had taken to going around in her natural form around the school, and only shifted when they had human visitors or they had to go out. It was a picture of happy times, of peace.

"They look so happy," Ororo commented. "It's so nice to see it."

Out of the corner of his eye, Scott noticed that Peter was staring rather intently at Magneto, and he kicked him lightly under the table.

"You're staring a lot today," he told Peter. "Something wrong with his outfit?"

Even at mealtimes, Magneto did insist on wearing that ridiculous helmet. Charles was a little offended, but could do nothing about it, because Magneto protested that it made him more comfortable.

"Nothing," Peter said a little too quickly. "There's something on your face, though."

"What? Where?"

"Oh, my mistake. It's just everything on well, your face."

"Are you implying something, Maximoff?"

"Maybe."

"Oh yeah? Let's take it outside and—"

"Everything alright, boys?" the Professor hovered nearby their table, with Magneto following close behind.

"Definately," they said in unison.

"Perfectly fine," Scott said with fake cheer.

"Couldn't be better," said Peter just as enthusiastically.

"Wonderful. I would hate to think that anyone was violating the terms of the treaty…" Charles said.

"Of course not," Jubilee said. "Don't worry about us, professor, we're fine."

"Peter," Magneto voiced suddenly, which made the boy opposite him jump. Scott wondered why he was so on edge every time Magneto talked to him or was around him for even a second. It was extremely suspicious.

"Uh— yes— Magneto— sir?" Peter said, visibly a little nervous.

"I thought of a very interesting use for your power, and I'd like to see if you were interested enough to conduct a little experiment with me," Magneto said. "Only if you want to, of course."

Peter practically tripped over himself in his haste to get up, and zipped his plates and cutlery to the clean up area faster than Scott could even blink.

"Sure, sure, so uh— should we go or?" he all but stammered.

"Let's go outside, the weather is rather nice today," Magneto offered, beginning to walk out with him. "And we'll have a bigger space to test what I have in mind."

The pair left, and Scott turned back to the table.

"Damn, I'm jealous," Jubilee was the first to say. "One-on-one tutoring sessions with Magneto! And he actually thought about Peter, and how he was gonna use his powers. I'm unbelievably jealous."

"Well I'm not," Kurt said. "I'm scared of Magneto."

"I'm sure his teaching style is very different from the professor's," Jean commented.

"Wait, hold up, are we just going to ignore how Peter acts when Magneto's around? Practically falling over himself?" Scott cut in.

Warren and Ororo exchanged significant looks. Scott was sure that they knew something about this.

"Well, Peter has always been… how do you say it in English? … A bit of a spaz." Ororo said. "I'm sure he only does that because he looks up to Magneto."

"Totally. He acts like that sometimes around Raven, too, Warren added helpfully.

"Guys, let's hit up the mall later," Jubilee said, already bored with that line of conversation. "I wanna get more gum."

Scott wasn't appeased, but it would have to do for now. Somewhere in his gut, he figured that it was something a little more than that— and the sooner he could find it and use it against Peter in a prank, the better.


please leave comments bc I'm always eager to hear what you think about the story and perhaps how it could be improved! 3

next chapter: we see the actual anatomy of two pranks played on each other!