AN: I know, probably not the speedy update you were planning, but in this chapter, the Brotherhood finally puts their plan into action. I don't own X-Men Evo, if I did, there'd be new episodes on right now, damn it. : P
The lie is my expense
The scope of my desire
The party blessed me with its future
And I protect it with fire
I am the Nina The Pinta The Santa Maria
The noose and the rapist
The fields overseer
The agents of orange
The priests of Hiroshima
The cost of my desire
Sleep now in the fire
-Rage Against the Machine, Sleep
Now in the Fire
Gambit's head hurt. He'd gotten a call that Xavier wanted to meet with Magneto, but he couldn't quite remember when, and he was pretty sure he was going to get his jaw broken for not mentioning it sooner.
Xavier wanted to meet with Magneto. He'd said that Magneto could bring as much back up as he wanted, but that he, Xavier, would be coming alone. He also said that he had something to say that Magneto very much wanted to hear. So Gambit reluctantly made his way to Magneto's 'office,' a vast room void of everything but a large metal throne.
"Hey Boss. The bald cripple want a meeting."
"No," Magneto growled from his iron chair.
"He say you can bring whoever, but he's comin' alone. Say he got something to say that you want to hear."
"Does he," Magneto replied. "Was he at all more… specific?"
"Just said he was very tired, too tired."
Magneto threw back his head and laughed, far too much like a mad scientist for Gambit's taste. He half expected the ceiling to open up and Colossus to be lowered on a steel operating table or something.
"Charles is finally broken," Magneto said. "Where are we to meet?"
"Playground in Bayville, he say you know where it is. Friday night at midnight."
"All the children snug in their beds," Magneto smiled. "Prepare the Acolytes."
"You want the Brotherhood too?"
"No. Just the professionals. It would be all too easy for Xavier to turn their minds if this is a trap. Call the Acolytes together. I want them well prepared."
"You want your boy along?"
"Not this time. I want people I can trust to keep their mouths shut while Charles and I chat," Magneto said, standing up and walking towards the door.
"After all," he said, looking back over his shoulder at Gambit. "Few situations are quite so tense as negotiating a surrender."
At dinner that night, Emma announced that the bait had been taken. Two days to prepare, and only one in which to execute their simple but one-shot plan. They did the only thing that could be expected of them- they got drunk on the first, and would recover from hangovers the second, and face death on the third.
"Shouldn't we be like, doing push ups or something?" Freddy said, as Rogue set out a fine crystal glass in front of each of them.
"Push ups won't help now," Wanda said.
"What happens if this doesn't work?" Lance asked. Pietro laughed cheerfully.
"Well, me and Wanda'll be dead, that's for sure," he said. "Shut up and drink."
They sat around and got drunk on very fine wine. It wasn't long before Pietro and Rogue went back into their bedroom to get tangled up in each other's arms, then Todd passed out and Freddy and Wanda carried him upstairs and dumped him in his bed, then went to their own respectively, leaving Lance and Emma sitting with their feet on the coffee table sharing the last bottle of champagne.
"So Wanda and Pietro are probably going to die tomorrow," she said, pouring herself a glass.
"If not all of us," Lance added, forgoing the glass and drinking straight from what remained in the bottle. "You know, you don't have to go, I mean, you just set up this gorgeous house, I'd hate for no one to be around to use it."
"If I go we'll win. If I don't, you'll all die, and then Magneto will probably come kill me too and ruin all my hard work."
"What hard work?"
Emma gave him a scathing look.
"Turning this house into a thing of exquisite beauty and civilizing its inhabitants."
Lance laughed and took another hit off the bottle.
"I remember back when that was my job. The last part anyway."
Emma turned on the sofa so that she was curled up against the arm, facing Lance.
"Do you miss it?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Sometimes. Pietro's just so…"
"Impulsive? Unfocused? Thin?" Emma asked, picking through Lance's mind for Pietro's adjectives. He laid his head on the back of the couch, and gazed at Emma sadly.
"Young. I know he's only a year younger than me, and he's been through a lot, but he still thinks he can do anything." "When did you stop thinking you were invincible, Lance?" Emma asked, moving closer to him on the couch.
"When the one thing I thought could withstand anything fell apart," he said.
"You can do better than Kitty Pryde, Lance," Emma said. "If anyone was ever too young to understand the situation we're all in, it's her. She has loving parents, inconspicuous powers, she looks normal. She's not plagued by her mutation, or the things she's seen in life." Emma stretched her legs out and looked away from him. "You can't touch her. That's her power."
Lance gave a small, bitter laugh.
"I thought it was Rogue's."
"Rogue's the most vulnerable person in the world, you know that."
Lance turned to face Emma.
"I know about Rogue and Kitty. I don't know about you."
"What's that meant to mean?" Emma asked quietly into the champagne flute.
"What do you want? What do you need? Are you invincible, are you vulnerable, are you ever impulsive or unfocused, and why are you ready to die with us?"
Emma just shook her head.
"Spoken like a boy who's never been a battery for a secret government agency," she said, draining the last of her champagne and standing.
"Boy?" Lance said, a little offended. Emma paused at the bottom of the staircase.
"Should I say man?"
"Well, I don't know-"
"If you figure it out any time soon, I trust you can find my room."
Lance's jaw dropped as she walked up the stairs and out of sight. Either he was far drunker than he'd originally thought, or she was totally hitting on him.
You're not that drunk, a sultry voice said in his head. And I am hitting on you. Serves me right for trying to be subtle.
He thought for a moment, then hurried up the stairs as quietly as possible.
Magneto drifted down the wooded path, an eerie figure with his feet off the ground. Colossus crunched along steadily behind him, Sabertooth loping beside him, Pyro and Gambit picking up the rear. They emerged into the playground, the grass turning into a sandy circle. Swings creaked gently in the breeze, and everything was, of course, too silent.
"I smell something," Sabertooth growled.
"Xavier?" Magneto asked. Xavier, he thought, as all the Acolytes crumpled to the ground holding their heads and screaming.
"Charles!" Magneto roared.
"Not quite," a female voice replied from the darkness. "Catch us if you can, Magnus!"
"It's a setup," Gambit said from the ground, shaking his head. "We should get out of here."
"Aww, going so soon, G-man?" another voice said. The Acolytes were soon coughing and sputtering as a wave of sand fell over them, getting into their faces and eyes. By the time he was able to see, Gambit saw Quicksilver standing over him, arms crossed. "I was hopin' for a rematch."
Quicksilver sped back into the wood and metal maze of the playground, Gambit springing to his feet and chasing after him. As Sabertooth and Pyro also split up and stalked into the battle ground to be, Colossus stood looking at Magneto.
"Don't stand there and stare, idiot. Find them."
Colossus reluctantly set out into the playground. They shouldn't be splitting up in a place offering so much high ground and coverage, any idiot knew that. He trudged through the sand, having to duck under the monkey bars and wooden bridges that made up the place. He was not in metal form; he tried to avoid it whenever Magneto was around. It hurt Colossus to be around him, his skin, when metal, crawled as though someone were scraping their fingernails on a blackboard.
He was ducking under the monkey bars when something hit the base of his skull like a large rock going forty miles an hour. Colossus managed to turn himself over as his vision blurred, and saw a pair of yellow eyes looking down at him.
"Sleep tight, yo," a voice said as he passed out.
Gambit was following the deep rut that Quicksilver had left in the sand, a winding and ridiculous trail. Fucking obnoxious, even in a fight. He never realized he was in trouble until the ground began to shake. He grabbed onto a beam for support, only to find himself in a choke hold.
"Pietro's busy, so you're just gonna have to settle," Lance said, clamping down on Gambit's trachea, waiting a good thirty seconds after Gambit had stopped moving to make sure he wasn't faking unconsciousness. He dropped Gambit face down in the sand, which had stopped trembling.
"I hope Emma or Pietro finds you before anyone else, prick," he muttered, then ran back into the dark.
Pyro couldn't see. He'd tried to incinerate the speed demon so many times that he'd set most of the surrounding wooden structures alight, and while he could control the flames, the smoke was another story. The flames took the shape of a dragon, searching for Quicksilver with snapping jaws.
"You know, I really don't know why they say fight fire with fire," Quicksilver's voice said from inches behind Pyro. He spun around only to get a face full of white foam. Unable to see, he lost control of the flames, which became a perfectly normal lethal inferno.
"Fire extinguishers work so much better," Pietro said as Pyro struggled to clear his eyes. "And you know what else?"
Pyro went down hard as Pietro nailed him in the head with the red canister.
"They're damn heavy," he finished, dropping it and running off.
Sabertooth couldn't smell the enemy through the smoke, and something was twisting in his brain, making the playground look like an Escher inferno. He heard a voice laughing in his head, the little rich bitch they'd rescued from Weapon X.
"Dear me, are you feeling queasy?"
Sabertooth snarled and spat, turning wildly, trying to find something to kill.
"It would be so much easier if you didn't fight."
Sabertooth roared, shocked, as he was picked up off the ground.
"Hey Emma," Freddy said. "Wanna see my three pointer?"
He hurled Sabertooth off into the woods, clear out of the playground.
"Goodness," Emma said in his mind. "Why didn't you make the basketball team?"
"I suck at free throws."
"The Acolytes are done. Let's go back up Rogue and the Witch."
Magneto hovered twenty feet above the ground, observing the flames and the smoke. This situation was wholly unacceptable. The Acolytes were proving to be completely useless; he would have to salvage whatever was left of both teams after the fight was done and teach them all lessons in discipline, obedience, and fear. Perhaps this trial by fire would forge a stronger team. The only question was, who would the victors be?
Pietro emerged first from the burning wreck, followed by the others, including the little psychic they'd picked up on the rescue mission.
"If you've made your point, I am prepared to express my admiration," he said coldly from his place in the air.
"You mean those losers?" Lance asked, gesturing back to the battleground.
"That was cake, yo," Todd added.
Magneto smirked.
"I can't help but notice that your sister's not with you, Quicksilver. Did you leave her out of this little bid for attention?"
"Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?" was all Pietro replied before Magneto dropped like a stone. He had the presence of mind to hold onto his helmet, the last thing he needed was an attack from Xavier in the midst of all this. He hit the ground hard, winded, cut off from his power, an all too familiar sensation.
"Wanda!" he roared in fury and pain, staggering to his feet and looking wildly around for his daughter. He saw her sitting on the ground, an inverted pentacle drawn in the sand in front of her with a crudely drawn goat's head inside. Framed by the flames with the infernal sigil in front of her, she truly looked as though she had emerged from hell.
"Agatha told me only to use this in an emergency, Father," she said, spitting out the words.
"Wanda, don't do this," Magneto began, prepared to play the paternal affection card again.
"Rogue, shut him up," Wanda snarled.
Those hands, he hated those hands. Little fingers with chipped black nail polish snuck under his helmet, almost as though she were going to cover his eyes and ask, 'Guess who?' He knew damned well who.
"Wanda, you gotta let him go, you're blocking my power too," the southern girl said. Magneto wrenched out of her grip and lurched away, towards his daughter, his powerful traitor of a daughter that he should have smothered in the cradle along with her wicked brother, a pillow over both their faces at once, better that than this, now.
Pietro knocked him down easily, just a gust of wind and a force knocking him off his feet. Blob and Avalanche each pinned his arms to the ground, his helmet rolling aside.
"Rogue, when I release his powers you cannot let go," Wanda said. "If you do, we're all dead."
Magneto's view of his daughter was obscured as the Rogue stepped between them and knelt down, straddling his chest. She'd stripped off the gauze shirt she usually wore, leaving her arms completely bare, but as she looked down at the monster, all but vanquished, she hesitated.
"It's not so easy when you have to look me in the eye, is it Rogue?" Magneto said in his warmest voice. "Would Charles really want this for you? A mutant murdering another mutant?"
His last ditch hope was dashed as she put one hand on his face, the other behind his neck.
"I'm ready," she said. "When Wanda lets him go, the rest of you get back."
As soon as she was sure Rogue had a good grip on her father, Wanda let him go, rising and staggering away from both her father and the flames. Lance had to drag Pietro away, as they all moved back a good thirty feet.
The second his powers were free, Magneto began tearing at the metal in the playground, a frenzied panic as the powers he lived for were drained away. He rolled over, trying to dislodge the girl, but she threw her arms around his neck like a demonic dance partner, gripping his hair to hang on. He got to his feet, trying to use her weight against her, but she would not be shaken off, no matter how he pulled at her arms or how much he thrashed. She was screaming, and so was he, all the chains of the swings, the red hot nuts and bolts from the burned playground, screws and nails, flying around them in a typhoon as the transfer of power shattered their control. He fell to his knees, then forward, pinning the Rogue with his weight as darkness crept into his mind, not merely sleep, but something more permanent.
Magneto forced the last of his control and consciousness into one final act. As Rogue began to push away from him, he pulled at something with his mind and hoped it would be enough. He grabbed her hand in his.
"What are you- Magneto, don't you'll die!" she said, trying to shake off his hand.
"Wasn't that the idea?" he said bitterly, gripping tighter. The object he'd been seeking, a simple metal bar, which flew towards them and twisted around both their wrists, binding them together.
"You wanted my powers," Magneto snarled as the draining connection was maintained. "So take them."
Now it was Rogue's turn to be afraid, trying to pull away, prepared to dislocate her thumb to get out of the makeshift shackle, but her victim grabbed her other arm.
"You said it yourself. You can kill me and be me in one easy step," he said, fighting unconsciousness to the last. "You've made the biggest mistake of your life."
"What the fuck are they doing?" Pietro said frantically. "She was supposed to let go by now! He should be out!"
"She knows what she's doing," Wanda said. Emma shook her head.
"She doesn't. She's in trouble," she replied. Pietro was off like a shot, dodging all the fragments of metal with more speed than he'd ever mustered before. Magneto was unconscious, Rogue unresponsive, her eyes wide and staring blankly at the smoky night sky.
"Rogue?" he said, starting to pick her up. Her arm dragged, and he saw the metal bar. "Oh fuck. Wanda!!" he screamed, clawing at the manacle.
Wanda reached out as hard as she could. There was still power leeching from Magneto, but the tornado of metals was being caused by Rogue. It was one thing to block the powers of someone in control of them, it was another to block powers that were in control of the person. Rogue was suffused in the red sparks of Wanda's power, and the flying fragments fell to the ground. The Brotherhood ran over.
"Freddy, get this thing off her," Pietro said frantically.
Freddy managed to unbend the metal which held Rogue and Magneto together, throwing it aside.
"Shit, shit, shit, Rogue, baby, look at me," Pietro said. Rogue's eyes remained open, twitching slightly as though she were seeing something far away and frightening, and would not look at him no matter how much he shouted or shook her.
"The cops are coming," Todd said, straining to hear the sound of sirens, faint and distant, but there. "And the fire department's gonna be here any second."
"I can't hold her powers forever," Wanda said frantically. Emma reached out and brushed her fingers over Rogue's head, touching only her hair and not her skin, and Rogue's eyes shut.
"She should be out for a while," Emma said, her usually carefree voice heavy with fear and exhaustion. She looked at Wanda gravely. "If you're going to kill your father, I suggest you do it quickly."
"Is he still in there?" Wanda said.
"He's a prisoner in his own body," Emma said. "He touched Rogue for too long. He won't be waking up."
"Then let him rot," Wanda replied shakily. "Let him rot slow in a hospital someplace. Come on."
Pietro scooped up Rogue's limp body, glancing down at his father's.
"So long, old man," he said, then ran off at a speed reasonable enough for the others to keep up as the sirens got closer, leaving the Acolytes and Magneto behind them to get picked up or die in the fire.
Lance was picking up the rear, ready to cause an earthquake to ensure their escape, only turning when they reached the woods safely. As he followed his friends back to their house, he felt someone's hand slip into his. He gave Emma a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand as they reached home.
AN2: Of course, this is not the end. More to come.