Chiara tried to open her eyes, feeling her lids heavy. She didn't quite know where she was, and she couldn't remember anything. For a moment, she thought it was just a regular school day, and Yuako was waking her up.
Then the world before her swum into focus, and she remembered what had happened. They seemed to be in some kind of lab. There was a metal table top in the center of the room and several shelves of beakers and antiseptics near the walls. She'd injured Mystique. She'd run, straight into Pyro, tried to defend herself, and been knocked out.
Something was strange, why was she standing up? She tried to glance down, but something was holding her neck straight against the metal wall. She couldn't move her arms or legs either. She realized, looking about as much as she could, that she wasn't the only one in the situation. All around her, all of them were there.
Yuako was directly across the room from her, her arms and legs held against a metal wall with strips of steel. Chiara could tell just by looking at her that she was fighting with her psychic powers to pry away the strips. Tears of concentration and pain wet her cheeks.
Lucea was next to her, looking solemn and angry at the same time. Chiara would not have recognized her if it were not for a beautiful lavender purple hair. With all her piercings removed she looked like a different person all together. For some reason she was not attempting to escape the bands holding her to the wall. Next to her was Cat. Chiara felt as though she was going to cry, just by looking at her. Cat seemed so distraught, trying to change and escape. She looked pained and injured. Chiara didn't have to look further to tell that they had all been captured.
"Miss. Myste." came a low, stony voice from the opposite side of the room. "Good to see you've finally joined us." An man entered the room from the other side of a wall. He seemed old. His hair was grey and his face was aged from many years of pain and confusion. Yet he had a muscular posture, and carried himself like a king. He was dressed in black, with gloves and boots and a belt of metal and leather. She had no doubt that this was Magneto. The one they all feared. Chiara glared at him at best she could without passing out again. Magneto stared back at her before he laughed.
"Teenagers these days." He smiled. "When I was your age, I was living on doorsteps in Switzerland in the war." he said, shaking his head somewhat. "Now if we can just wait for Mr. Erikson to wake up, we can begin." he said, turning and going back behind the wall to whatever he'd been doing before. Chiara let her head droop, hoping that Simon didn't wake up soon. How were they going to get out of this?
She managed to turn her head to the side to try and see who was beside her. It was Gaudi, he was staring across the room as if he were sleeping with his eyes open, his silver blond hair tied back as usual.
"Gaudi?" she whispered. "Gaudi?" He moved suddenly, trying to look at her.
"What?"
"Can't you move out of the bindings?" she asked. Gaudi frowned.
"He's done something to shut off our powers." he said weakly. "The guy's sick."
"We came to get you back, we can get out of this." Chiara said, trying to reassure him and herself at the same time.
"I don't know what's happened to Logan and Storm. We saw them briefly, they tried to save us, but we got caught when Twist and that Connor guy came with Cyclops. Cyclops got separated... this place is a mess of tunnels." Gaudi whispered back. "I hope you've got a plan, cause I don't."
"I'm working on it." Chiara said, thinking hard, but there was nothing she could come up with for them to escape. Beside her she heard someone stir. She looked the other way, seeing Simon, just waking up.
"What the fuck happened?" she heard him groan.
"Mr. Erikson." said Magneto's voice again as he came back into the room. "Good, now we can start."
"Who the fuck are you?" Simon asked, trying to lift his head.
"I'm the bad guy." Magneto smiled, folding his arms. Simon looked at him, then half-fainted. It seemed to take him too much effort. Magneto laughed slightly and turned around.
"Miss. Chanda. There is no way you are going to get out of there, please stop trying." he said, going towards her. Yuako looked at him with tear filled eyes.
"Mo goei." she said, weak.
"Why do you want us?" someone said finally. It was Lucea who spoke, her voice was strong and unwavering. She looked at Magneto without fear.
"Oh that's right, you don't know, do you Miss. Windle?" Magneto said. "Each of you has your own specific power." he smiled. "You, Lucea, have the power to move tectonic plates. Who wouldn't I kill for a power like that?" he asked, illustrating his own mutation, power over metal. He clenched his gloved hands, tightened the bar around Lucea's throat until she began to struggle.
"Stop! You're killing her!" Gaudi shouted from beside Chiara, the other side of the room. Magneto stopped and looked over one shoulder. A childish smile sprang to his lips.
"There's not much you can do to save her. You're all the way over there and you can't use your powers. You can't walk through walls, Geist." he said to Gaudi. "Maybe you'd try a little harder if your sister was at stake as well." he took a few steps over towards Alyx, who looked suddenly much more fearful.
"Don't." Gaudi warned him. Magneto didn't listen, instead he tightened the strip of iron around Alyx's neck too. Alyx looked pained. She wasn't choking, or starved of air, yet. "Let them go!" Gaudi shouted.
"No, Mr. Von Goeth!" Magneto shouted, crossing the room. "I'm afraid that is not an option for them!" he brought back a fist and punch Gaudi hard in the stomach. Gaudi recoiled, straining against the pain. Across the room Lucea started to cry. Magneto shook his hand, stepping away from Gaudi with a satisfied look. "You're all weak." he said. Suddenly his attention was caught, by Simon.
"Except for you Mr. Erikson. You could have showed some potential." he said, going over.
"What the fuck does that mean?" Simon said, glaring up at him now, having recovered slightly.
"You don't really care about anyone, except for yourself." he smiled. "Miss. Chanda tried to do the same thing, but she's born to love people. But you are different." he said. Simon seemed confused, but Chiara saw that he understood something Magneto was saying.
"You could be great, if you sided with the Acolytes." Magneto said, looking hopeful. Simon gave him a look of disgust.
"I'd never side with you!" he said. Magneto sighed.
"Obviously I was wrong." he said finally to him, going back to the middle of the room. "You're affections for each other make you weak." he announced to all of them. "Human emotion will be the downfall of their race. You all think it's so heroic to save each other's lives, when each of us doesn't really matter." he said, glancing around. "The only way to really be a hero, is to make yourself matter. That's what I will do to all of you! Make you heroes! Take the most powerful parts of you and make the most powerful mutant in creation." he said.
"So you won't kill us?" Chiara asked, catching his attention. She had to stop his speech, she could see how much pain it was causing.
"Kill you?" Magneto asked.
"You just need our DNA, then you'll let us go?" she asked. Magneto looked at her in disbelief, and then smiled.
"Miss. Myste, do you have any idea what you are?" he asked, going to stand in front of her. "Apart from being the only daughter of a multimillionaire psychopath and a fairly annoying contribution to the human race?" Chiara kept her face straight and stayed silent.
"You," Magneto began, "are something that mankind has been unable to create in 130,000 years of existence. You are a self-run electric machine. You run on electricity. You're scarcely even human. And do you know where all your power comes from?"
Chiara looked back at him. She had a faint view of what he was saying, but she didn't want to hear it. Finding out she wasn't really all that human was the last thing she wanted to know.
"You're heart." Magneto said. "That means, that if you want to walk out of here alive, it's going to be without your heart. I don't think that works." he said. "I'll have to take every psychic's brain, every shapeshifter's blood. The only one of you who I think could still live after what you're about to go through would be Mr. Larson, I only have to take his eyes." Chiara glanced over, finding Connor looking at her part way across the room. She felt stupid suddenly. Magneto's face looked cold and unemotionless.
"I think that that is enough questions." he said. In one quick motion he had left the room and turned out the lights and they were in darkness. For a moment, Chiara thought about saying something, but the silence that hung in the air was angry and it was painful. She sighed slightly, breathing lightly and began to think for a way to escape again.
----------Note: Well yay! Two chappers in two days... the rest is on the way people! Now I have homework to do!