Chapter 4: Aftermath and foremath
Sure, none of us really wanted to face Magneto when we got back to the base. Sure, there were lots of ways we could have avoided telling him. But unfortunately, he was waiting at the helicopter pad when we arrived. When we landed, Dil, Pyro and I exchanged several long, significant looks. And nobody moved from their seats.
"I said this was on your head." Pyro whispered.
"No, be a man and die for me like you're supposed to." I hissed back, blinking my eyes innocently.
"Oh, grow up." Dil rolled his eyes.
As we squabbled, magneto got tired of waiting and opened the helicopter door himself. We froze.
"Well?" He asked. As he glanced around the cockpit, his face twisted into a scowl of displeasure.
"Uhm, well, we, uh…" I stammered.
"We tried to stop her, of course, but she eloped with Sabertooth." Dil explained, spreading his hands helplessly.
"Apocalypse kidnapped her!" I exclaimed simultaneously.
Magneto raised and eyebrow and looked at Pyro.
"We don't know, sir. She didn't make it back to the helicopter on time." Pyro held out the hard drive. "But we achieved our objective."
"Ah." Magneto's face lightened, and he took the hard drive. He cleared his throat, and turned around to leave the helicopter. He paused by the door.
"Chi." He said sternly. I jumped and stiffened.
"Yes, Magneto-sama?" I asked sweetly.
"I am displeased." He stated and began to walk away.
I burst out crying and flung myself after him. I grabbed his cape and threw myself out of the helicopter, on to the floor.
"But it's not my fault that she really loved Sabertooth more!" I sobbed.
He tugged at his cape for a moment, and saw that I was firmly attached.
"Chi…" He seemed to facepalm internally. "Just… Stay out of trouble until the next mission."
"Sure thing, Magneto-sama!" I responded with a bright perky smile and released the cape. He walked away and seemed to mutter something I couldn't quite hear.
"Hey, why don't we go out for ice cream?" Dil asked from the helicopter. Pyro took that as his cue to jump out of the helicopter.
"Nuh-uh. You losers are nothing but trouble." He glared at us as he walked away. "I wash my hands of you."
Not having Pyro there to drive the helicopter made it considerably harder to go get ice cream. In the end, I managed to convince Dil that he really felt like transforming into a giant eagle to carry me across the ocean to the ice cream shop.
Once we reached a city with ice cream, we quickly situated ourselves at an outdoor table with heaping waffle cones.
"So…" Dil said thoughtfully, wrapping his tongue all the way around his scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
"So?" I asked, taking little licks of my birthday cake ice cream. It then occurred to me that despite the fact that we went for ice cream, neither of us was having ice cream flavored ice cream. And I laughed.
"You know Magneto's just using you, right?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "You're just a power amp for him."
I thought for a long moment and watched a butterfly fly past. Beyond that, I noticed a large amount of people gathering on a sidewalk about a block away.
"I know." I shrugged. "All I do is generate electricity. The bracelets he gave me act as batteries, and if I don't discharge the electricity once in a while, it hurts. When I'm around him, he taps into the electrical aura and gets a +10 to all his power rolls. What's your point?"
"Well…" He mumbled, scratching his head. "Don't you feel kind of… used?"
"Why?" I asked, staring blankly at him.
"You could be more than that." He said slowly.
"More…?" I said thoughtfully. "No, Dil, I don't have any delusions of grandeur. I know that I'll never be one of the top 10 powerful mutants. Too much competition. But that's okay."
At about that time, the crowd I had noticed became substantially noisier.
"What's that all about?" I mused as we stood up and cautiously moved closer to the crowd.
"So what's up?" Dil asked one of the people on the outskirts of the crowd.
"Mutant pride, bro!" He stated, making some kind of gang symbol with his hands. "We don't need no stinking cure!"
"…cure?" Dil and I exchanged a long glance.
"Here, hold this." I handed Dil my ice cream, then grabbed ahold of our informant by the shoulders. I used him as a springboard to launch myself into the air and run on top of the crowd to the highest vantage point in the area: a nearby fountain.
"Fellow mutants!" I shouted, but the crowd didn't listen; they were too busy hollering.
"I said, hey!" I yelled again. When ignored again, I sent a shot of electricity into the fountain I was standing on, which caused and impressive splash. The crowd seemed to quiet, and looked at me.
"Why are you all wasting your time and energy being an angry crowd…" I began, and noticed a news camera nearby take notice of me. At that point, I began to really ham it up. "…When you could do so much better in the service of Magneto-sama? Join the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants today!"
"That's sexist!" A female voice in the crowd shouted.
"Uhm, well…" I thought for a long moment. "No, it's equality, because girls can be brothers too!"
The crowd seemed stunned at my rationale, and somewhere, far away, I felt as though Professor Xavier was facepalming over me.
"We've gotta stop the cure!' Another mutant in the crowd shouted, and the crowd rumbled in agreement.
"We've gotta save mutants from getting cured!" Someone else shouted, and the crowd rumbled in agreement again.
Somehow, the crowd managed to rumble away to a place where they believed the first cure was being performed. I met up with Dil on the way, and we finished our ice cream as we strolled leisurely behind the crowd.
"I'm surprised they haven't called law enforcement yet." He observed.
"I don't think we've been violent enough for that yet." I said. "And beside, they don't have sentinels to send after us, so I bet the regular law enforcement really doesn't want anything to do with us."
We deduced from the angry statements the crowd made that the mob had arrived at the Worthington building, where Warren Worthington was to receive the cure as the first test subject.
"Don't do it, Warren!" I shouted. "You really don't want to become the Horseman of Death! It's not cool!"
Dil looked at me and shook his head.
The crowd got more and more agitated as the moments slowly dragged on. Finally, there was a sound of glass shattering, and Warren flew away. The crowd was stunned for a moment, then began to cheer.
"Hey, those windows aren't reinforced!" I roared, and as one, the crowd seemed to have the same idea as me. They all picked up rocks (or similar debris) and began to throw it at the building, which was more glass than anything else.
"Uh, we'd better get outta here." Dil grabbed my shoulder. "They're gonna call the military."
"Oh, yeah, I guess this is kind of violent enough to warrant that." I agreed, and we escaped into the daylight.
Author's note: I know this is taking forever. Is it my fault that X3 was so much less inspiring to write about than the other two?