"We need to go back." Storm said. "They walked right in here with fully automatic weapons and took two of us. We can't let that go unanswered. And how many more mutants could be in there still?" Charles took a deep breath and let it go again as Storm sat down. The latter certainly was a valid point, the concept of eye for an eye violence, less so to his mind. It had been two nights and the day between since they'd found Bobby and Rogue. The two of them had made their way back in to the general population, to a rapturous welcome and seemed, fortunately, very little the worse for wear.
Scott drew a breath slowly, as though cautiously. Charles knew that he'd spent some hours with Marcia, with the aim of bringing his pain back under control. Charles had done the same on occasion. The difference was that, in time, Scott's ribs would heal. "If we go back, we risk more than two lives. We risk everyone we send. I don't want to take Bobby and Rogue,"
"You shouldn't go." Jean said to him quietly.
"That leaves us with…" Scott paused, as though counting. "Three? I'm not sending three X-men in to a paramilitary base."
"Who's your three?" Logan asked.
"You, Storm and Jean." Scott replied. Charles saw Jean tense.
"What about-"
"Kurt won't come." Storm cut Logan off. "He'll fight to protect, to rescue, but I don't think I can persuade him to come to attack. But Kitty and Peter could."
"Five then." Scott said. "I'm still not sure I want to go in to a paramilitary base with five."
There was a long silence.
"Magneto said he wanted in." Logan said. "Don't think it helps much, but he wanted in if we found the place." He stretched. "We found it."
There was an even longer silence. Yes, Eric had asked to join them, yes, as far as Charles could see their objectives were similar enough that Eric oughtn't betray them, but they'd paid heavily for assuming that before.
"They're using metal weapons." Jean said. "Magneto could probably win that fight on his own."
"But he'd slaughter every armed man in there, even if they tried to surrender." Charles said. "And I don't know that he wouldn't consider any captives they held acceptable collateral damage."
"So just setting him on them isn't an option." Storm said. "If we go in with him?"
"That's hardly any better." Scott supplied. "He can throw Logan and Peter around like rag dolls, make me useless… you're the only one who's actually a threat to him, and if he gets the drop on you…"
Storm drew a breath slowly. "He doesn't know that."
"What?" Logan asked.
"Magneto doesn't know that Jean's lost some of her power. Last time he saw her, she was above level three, she could hold him at bay."
"What exactly are you suggesting?" Charles asked.
"Bring Jean, call Magneto in and just… don't tell him." Storm said. "Come up with another reason we're holding her back."
There was a silence.
"It'd work." Logan said. "He doesn't read minds."
"Only until he pushes it." Scott said.
"Do you think he would?" Storm asked. There was a silence.
"This relies on everyone we take behaving as though Jean would still be willing and able to trade blows with Eric." Charles said. "It's not necessarily an untenable position, but it's a precarious one."
,
Getting Magneto on side, it turned out, was the easiest bit. Storm went down to Hellfire The Second that night and hammered on the closed door until a head appeared from a second floor window.
"Shaddup." She knew the woman, one of the bar tenders. She had vestigial wings.
"Xavier wants to see Magneto."
"Why you telling me? Shove off."
"Magneto told us to tell the staff at Hellfire if we wanted to talk. So I'm telling you. Spread it around."
"You sayin' one of us is a leak to Magneto."
"Well, yeah. Don't care who, we just wanna talk to Magneto."
The head disappeared.
,
Magneto, with Mystique in tow, appeared at the front gate barely eighteen hours afterwards. He didn't knock. He didn't call for Charles and wait. He just parted the gates and walked in. Charles caught up with him on the south lawn. Eric turned as soon as Charles opened the door. He cast his eyes back over the tyre tracks and up to the shattered windows.
"Good God, Charles." He said softly. "How many?"
"Eighty or so."
"And how many dead?"
"Sixty-two." Charles said. "Of them, that is. No fatalities on our side."
Eric looked at him for a second. "Under threat of death…" Charles saw him reconsider, choose not to point out that they'd valued mutant life over human life. The humans had come in to a school with machine guns. "Well done, then. To fight eighty armed men and take no casualties, well done."
Charles sighed heavily. The memory was very painful, and he had no desire to discuss it with Eric. "We have found their base."
Eric raised his eyebrows. "Then we have much to discuss."
Charles turned and led Eric inside, to his study. He didn't bring any other X-men in, there was no need. At this point, he was confident Eric meant him no harm, even through the helmet.
He confirmed the agreement to Eric again: two more X-men than Brotherhood, prioritizing getting captive mutants out alive and unharmed, then, and only then, they could raze the place. Wholesale massacre of involved humans wasn't mentioned. The possibility of retribution attacks on mutants did worry Charles, but Eric was confident that this was a deniable operation. And the nice thing about deniable operations was that if they blew up, central government would just look the other way. None of the men who'd been killed at the school had had military dog tags, or any other identifying marks other than tattoos. Charles had grounds to believe Eric, but he couldn't quite put the notion away.
,
Scott, Storm, Mystique and Magneto were standing round a table together, discussing tactics. The profound strangeness of this situation was not lost on Scott, nor was the fact that, if Magneto started something, it probably would go extremely badly for him and Storm, particularly given that he had his glasses, not his visor, so his control of his eye beam was poor. But The Professor was confident that they'd be fine.
"So you're bringing…" Magneto prompted.
"Five." Scott said. "Me, Storm, Jean, Logan, Peter."
"Peter? Do I know him?"
"Forms an exoskeleton." Storm supplied. "Very hard to damage."
Magneto looked at Mystique. "You, me…"
"Pyro." Mystique suggested.
Scott sighed. "If you like." Magneto looked at him. "I happen to think the boy's a liability, but…" He waved a hand.
"Do you wonder if that view of him is why he resents you so?"
Scott felt a smile flicker across his face. "I've known the kid since he manifested. He's impulsive, haphazard… He just doesn't think. A mutant with an energy power who doesn't think is a danger to themselves and everyone around them, but it's your call, not mine."
Magneto smiled. "Sour grapes?"
Storm coughed. "We start having these conversations when they're sophomores."
"And of course that affects how you regard them, how you treat them, and how they regard you." Magneto replied.
"Which way are you arguing cause and effect here?" Storm asked. "Whichever, best line of approach is from the South. The high ground gives us an easy dash down, the sharp level there should protect The Blackbird from artillery fire, if they even have any."
"Do they have aerial attack capacity?" Mystique asked, turning over a page in the plans. Storm held her hands out. So did Magneto. Mystique looked up. "Okay. True."
"Once I have a static column and cyclonic winds up, it's unflyable."
"And we hold one back to protect the jet." Scott said. "So we know we have an escape." Magneto looked up at him. "That's new."
"Who are you keeping back?" Mystique asked.
"Jean, unless we desperately need her."
"You're making an alpha class telekinetic watch the bags?" Magneto asked derisively.
"She's also the medic." Storm said. "If anyone else takes a bullet, she can help, if she takes one, we're stuck."
,
Magneto seemed to buy it. Less than twenty-four hours later, five X-men and three Brotherhood mutants were boarding the Blackbird. Scott was much, much more anxious than he would have been about doing this as just X-men, but Kitty wasn't much use in this kind of operation, and Jean had vetoed Bobby and Rogue, and herself. Four against a paramilitary base was not sensible. This couldn't reasonably be left until Bobby and Rogue were fit and there was no telling how long it would take Jean to… whatever the hell Jean needed to do to fix herself. She'd crashed from level five down to one or two, and it didn't even seem to worry her.
Scott pushed it from his mind, and concentrated on getting The Blackbird in to the air.
,
Then out of the air.
"Storm, off you go." Storm jumped out of her seat and ran down the ramp as it lowered. Scott saw the shift in her breathing, the iron focus on her face.
"How long until they know we're here?" Mystique asked.
"We assume now. Magneto-" He was already moving.
"I know, boy." He said. "Pyro, up you get. You need to be right behind the brutes."
"Thanks." Peter said. Logan just growled incomprehensibly. "How close do you think I get before I turn?"
"Don't leave it too long, don't get shot." Scott said.
"I can protect you." Magneto said. "Bullets are nothing."
"Even from that far back?"
"Bullets are nothing." Magneto repeated.
"We move." Scott said firmly. "We're on the clock here. If they realise they can't hold us, they could just kill all the mutants they're holding."
Logan and Peter went. John and Mystique followed not far behind. Scott kept pace with Magneto.
Magneto was smirking to himself.
"It makes so much sense, Charles choosing you. All about containment, all about control of what fundamentally should not be caged."
Scott scoffed. "You think I should just raze everything I look at? You have no idea what this is like."
Magneto laughed softly. "Not what I meant, Cyclops. Not in the least. So stubbornly non-violent, arguing for trust and integration while training his children for war, and training his children to train theirs. And you're his confidante too, the one he trusts, the one he takes in to his bosom…" Magneto took a breath. "How old were you at the start?" He'd stopped to look at Scott. Scott turned on his heel to face Magneto.
"Is that what you think?" He asked. "Is that what you think The Professor is?" Scott shook his head. "You don't know anything. You proclaim, you make great speeches about how the world is and how people treat us... You don't know anything." He kept walking.
He heard Magneto move too. "I know a great deal more than you, boy. I know how far mankind's nature can fall. I have seen every kind of cruelty inflicted on those who were different. If you do not know it, you are an ignorant, sheltered child, nothing more."
Scott drew breath to round on Magneto. To tell him that he'd seen children run for shelter at the school with no shoes and sometimes no clothes. To tell him he'd seen mutant children shot dead by police the day they manifested, and noticed something about the colour of the skin of those children. To tell him he'd seen mutant children with wounds and scars where parents had cut offending body parts from them with kitchen knives, but he still believed good people existed, and that anyone who called Charles Xavier a paedophile would do it over Scott's corpse, but
"X-men coms check, number off." Jean's voice over radio.
"X-1, copy."