X – Men Mansion
Tikal slowly, and as quietly as she could, went about her normal bedtime routine. As always, this late at night, the mansion around her was quiet.
Knuckles was already in bed, lying on his back as he always did with a special blindfold secured to the back of his head so that it wouldn't accidentally come off in his sleep.
She couldn't tell if he was sleeping or not, so she simply slipped into bed next to him and turned off the light. It had been a very strange day. Much as changed. Ans she was still unsettled with her glimpse into Shadow's mind, and worried about Knuckle's behaviour to him.
In the dark, Knuckles' blindfold was glowing softly. It dimmed slightly once when he blinked. He was awake.
"What is wrong?" She asked.
"I don't trust him" Knuckles said
"Shadow? Why?" She asked stunned by his blunt reply. She was used to his orderly personality, but this is something else.
"He has no respect, he shows no sign of gratefulness for us saving his ass there in Canada, he is rude, and the way that he looks at you makes me feel like he is trying to kidnap you."
Tikal smiled and curled up against him, putting her head on his chest "You know that I love you Knucks" She said "And you should trust me"
She kissed him, and after that, there wasn't much to be said.
Magneto's Headquarters
Senator Kelly slowly came to, the pain in his head a pounding drum, throbbing with each beat of his heart and his feathers ruffled as if it had been through a storm. At first, he couldn't remember what had happened. Nothing around him, from the trees to the clearing floor and rock cliffs looked familiar.
When he tried to touch his head, he discovered that his hands were tied behind his back. He was bound to a cold, silver metal chair.
He looked sown slowly, so as not to increase his headache, trying to focus his eyes. He can tell that he was still dressed in his suit and tie. Maybe he was robbed? No, he can still feel his thick wallet in his back pocket.
Slowly but surely, the memory came back like a bad dream drifting in over the pain: Guyrich turning into a blue and red mutant. The blue and red woman had beat him, kicked him in the head.
The memory sent a sharp stab shooting through his skull. Had it really happened?
His vision slowly cleared a little more, so that he could focus over the throbbing headache. He let himself move his pounding head slowly, looking for anything around him that just might seem familiar.
Most of the space around him was shaded in darkness. It was a clearing of some sorts, inside a covered place. There were tress and rocks and massive stone walls with arching metal entrances. The sound of running water was a continuous background noise. The air was warm and moist with hardly any breeze. He can smell a faint aroma of fine and ocean salt.
He had never seen anyplace like this before. Fantastic architecture blended right in with the forests and rocks as if the two belonged together with neither appearing to be dominant over the other.
Then Kelly saw the large frog standing on one side of the clearing, just in the shadows, staring up into a tree. A bird was chirping there, jumping from limb to limb. The large frog watched intently until something shot out of his mouth and grabbed the bird, pulling it right out of the tree.
Kelly stared, not believing what he had just witnessed. It was the frog's tongue. One very long tongue.
The bird struggled but couldn't get loose. The frogs mouth opened extra wide, as if his jaws had come unhinged and he took in the entire bird. Then, with his eyes closed as if savouring a special treat, the man chewed up the bird, eating it alive, bones and all. Senator Kelly could hear smacking and crackling sounds from where he sat.
He wanted to be sick. He turned away as much as he could, closed his eyes, working to keep his empty stomach from pushing up through his throat. Never in all of his life had he seen such a perverted act.
He struggled with his bindings, fighting to get loose. He had to get out of here, wherever here was.
Slowly another figure, a green hedgehog – a powerful – looking, stately man, with giant scars on his chest – emerged from one of the tube-like entrances in the cliff wall and moved into the light. He smiled at Kelly.
"Who are you?" The senator demanded "Where is my aide? Why have you taken me?"
"My name is Scourge, Senator Kelly" the man said, his voice rich and deep and in control, with just a hint of a European accent "But please, call me Magneto. Your aide, Mr Guyrich has been in a bit of an 'accident' in an elevator. But I had Mystique here, or Fiona to keep you company"
The red and blue fox woman stepped out of the shadows and wrapped her arms around him, as a lover would, claiming territory.
Kelly pushed back, wanting to get as far away from her as he could. But his bonds wouldn't allow him to move at all, and the chair was far, fat too heavy to push. So instead he decided to confront this Magneto.
"You know, don't you" Kelly said "That whatever you do to me will just prove me right? Every word that I have spoken will be confirmed"
Magneto laughed. Letting Mystique lip off and step back "Gosh I do hope so"
That wasn't the answer that Kelly had expected. He watched as the hedgehog stepped closer. He didn't look dangerous. Not like the blue and red fox woman. In fact he looked like anybody's grandfather or cheerful uncle who gives far too much money and has so many stories that may or may not be true. And with a name like Magneto he had to be a Mutant.
"Are you a God – fearing man, Senator?"
Kelly pushed back, trying everything he could to get away from the man who just kept getting closer and closer.
Magneto laughed "Seems that you are certainly afraid of something at the moment. But God – fearing man? Such a strange phrase don't you think? The other way around is understandable yes."
Kelly said nothing, trying to catch his breath as Magneto went on. The throbbing in his head increased.
"I have always thought God as a teacher. As a bringer of light, wisdom and understanding"
To his own surprise, Kelly found it was everything he could do to keep from screaming. The man had moved even closer and was almost leaning down in front of him. In the background, the man who are the bird and the blue and red woman stood as still as a statue clearly enjoying what they were seeing. They looked one step closer to getting a bag of popcorn.
"You see" Magneto said, coming right up into Kelly's face "I think what you are really afraid of is me. Me and my kind. The Brotherhood of Mutants"
Kelly's head felt as if it were going to explode. His entire body was shaking with fear.
Magneto smiled, looking at Kelly right in the eyes for the longest time. Then, without blinking, he stood, turned and walked away. Suddenly Kelly's chair moved, clearly being dragged along the ground behind Magneto by some unseen force.
"Oh fearing Mutants is not surprising really" Magneto said as he walked talking as if he and Kelly were just engaging in a normal conversation while they strolled in a forest. Only Kelly wasn't walking.
"As a friend of mine had told me" Magneto said "People always fear what they don't understand. True?"
Magneto looked at Kelly like how a teacher would look at a misbehaving student, but Kelly refused to give him the pleasure of an answer. So Magneto went on, talking and walking, with Kelly's chair bumping along the ground behind him.
"And mankind has always made laws to protect itself from what it doesn't understand. Laws like your mutant registration law"
"The intention of the Mutant Registration Act…" Kelly corrected
Magneto stopped and turned on Kelly, cutting him off midsentence. Kelly's chair seemed to have slammed to a stop.
"Intention?" Magneto said, he said this calmly but his eyes flared up "Senator, you and I both know all about the road to hell and what it is paved with.
Kelly said nothing to this. His face gave nothing away.
"We are not talking about intentions, Senator. We are talking about mankind. Human Fear. And trust me when I tell you, it is only a matter of time before Mutants and those who dare to help them will be headed into camps and then whiped out of the face of the Earth! I know because I have seen it in action! Did you know that JFK was a mutant? He was executed because of that! I could have saved him but atlas I failed."
Magneto pointed at the faint blue numbers tattoed on his arm. Nazi prison camp tattoos. Despite everything Kelly felt shocked, awkward and sorry for Magneto.
Magneto shrugged and turned as if he had just said too much "Well, I'm much more giving than that. I simply want to show you, to help you understand."
Magneto waved his hand, and the entire area lit up. It became clear that Kelly was in a forest clearing, with towering cliff walls all around. Something stretched overhead, from cliff wall to cliff wall, enclosing the clearing, but Kelly couldn't see what it is.
Stonework ad metal structures blended into the cliff walls, almost as if they had been formed there. Tunnel openings disappeared into the cliffs in a number of different places. Every line was flowing, yet everything seemed stark and oversized.
The centre of the clearing drew Kelly's attention.
A machine?
A sculpture?
Kelly wasn't sure. The gold metal seemed to flow upward from a round base supporting three pillars that held up a platform forty feet in the air. On the platform sat two curved, almost tusk – shaped metal spires, arcing into the air five meters above, pointing at each other but not quite touching. It all appeared to be made of metal and it seemed to shine gold and silver under it's own power. It was the most fantastic thing, sculpture or machine that Kelly had ever seen and for a moment he thought that he was in an auction bidding for an overpriced piece of modern art.
Next to the sculpture was a small stack of what appeared to be generators, which almost spoiled the view of the sculpture grandeur.
Magneto walked towards it, still talking. "Don't fear God, Senator. And certainly, don't fear me" Magneto laughed. Then he added "At least not anymore"
"What do you intend to do to me?" Kelly shouted at Magneto's back
"Lets just say that God works too slowly" Magneto said as he stepped up onto the base of the sculpture.
Suddenly, Kelly realised that his first impression had been right. It wasn't a sculpture but instead some incredible machine.
The Green Hedgehog stood facing Kelly, his feet apart. He placed his hands on two upright posts.
Magneto jerked as his hands seemed to be yanked solidly against the posts; then he was whisked up the centre to the top of the machine, where he was locked into place under the two curving metal shapes.
The generators stared up, making a loud dreadful sound as it boosted power to this incredible machine, however to Kelly he heard nothing as his own heart beating downed the sound out. A set of metal rings rose up around Magneto spinning slowly at first, then faster and faster.
The air around Kelly seemed to be charged with energy; the light seemed brighter, as a slight wind started to blow, swirling around Kelly.
Everything gained in intensity as the rings moved faster and faster, forming a blur around the mutant. The air started to ripple off the machine, like waves on clear water. Kelly wanted to look away but he found that he couldn't. Energy seemed to pour from Magneto's hands, through the post and into the rings swirling around him.
The rings were now moving so fast that it wasn't even a blur, but instead formed a ball. The air around the machine was rippling away harder and harder. The green hedgehog's eyes were closed, he was straining with all his might to do the thing that he was doing.
Then the rings began to glow. Dull red at first, then brighter and brighter, until they became almost a silver ball around the green hedgehog. Kelly wanted to shade his eyes, but his hands were tied. He turned his head, the headache growing again from the intense light.
The green hedgehog was barely visible behind the light. Nonetheless, the strain was very evident on his face. Where before it had been silent, now a whine came from the machine. It started to glow. The light coming off the rings vanished. Yet Kelly could still see the faint outline of the ball that showed the incredibly fast rings.
Louder and louder the whine cut through the vast chamber getting louder then the generators, the ground under Kelly's chair was shaking. Then suddenly, everything just seemed to stop.
Kelly was afraid to even take a breath.
Then the entire top of the machine, Magneto and all, appeared to have vanished leaving in it's place a light that seemed to ooze rather than radiate, a light that filled everything around it, expanding outwards.
Liquid light, creeping and unstoppable.
There was nothing like it in all of Kelly's experience.
And it was coming right at him.
He tried to shove back as the white light reached him, then washed up and over him, crawling into his eyes, his mouth, his ears and flooding his mind.
He tried to scream, but the light muffled everything, filling his every pore, touching his every nerve with hot tips of agony combined with ecstasy. His senses ran though the range of everything that he had ever experienced.
First every scent he had ever smelled, from baking bread to an overused latrine. From a woman's perfume to the smell of fear when someone faced him in the Senate.
Then images stared to flash through his mind, faster and faster like a movie on fast forwared. He was able to see everything that he had done in his life, and then things others had done around him. He remembered things he thought he had forgotten to things that he can remember in precise detail. He saw everything that he had done in his life and then thins others had done around him.
He saw it all.
Understood it all.
The he heard over again what he had said. Everything, clear and distant all at once. And then what people had said around him and about him.
He took it all in.
The touch of old girlfriends of soft pillows and of burning plates.
He could feel every detail one moment then nothing the next.
Then far quicker than it had started it was over.
The light seemed to crawl back out of every atom in the air then vanish.
Inside the machine, Scourge slumped, he looked clearly exhauseted by what he had done. He looked as if he had aged an extra million years. Mystique ran to him and supported him as he came down and slowly walked towards Kelly.
There was a loud bang as the generators gave out over worked by what they have been through.
Kelly looked down at himself. His entire body seemed to be glowing under his clothes. His skin was glistening, almost luminescent.
"Oh, Oh, God!" he cried "What have you done to me?"
He wanted to push back the memory of all the sensations, all the understanding, but they wouldn't ne ignored. He knew the last few minutes can never be ignored.
Magneto stumbled over to a place in front of Kelly and weakly smiled.
"Welcome to the future, brother"