A/N: We suggest cueing up The Final Solution by Sabaton from the album Coat of Arms to set the scene.

Secret Origins: Magneto

By Alex Shannon and Kevin Ridley

Based on X-Men, by David Hayter and Bryan Singer, X-Men: First Class by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer and characters from Marvel and DC Comics.

First of September, 1944. Occupied Poland, Auschwitz concentration camp, on what would become the second most important day of Erik Lehnsherr's life.

A boy of barely fourteen, his family had fled Nuremberg, Germany when he was merely eight years old after Kristallnacht, for Warsaw, Poland. They evaded capture for as long as they could... But their luck ran out fast. They were rounded up, and herded through the front gates of the compound. His father, Jakob, and his mother, Edie, were herded away through the gates as the soldiers drove their desperate victims apart into smaller groups to be taken in different directions. Men one way, women another. His parents tried desperately to hold tight to him and each other, but the Nazis drove them apart with their rifles. The adults were herded past the gates, and the men one way, women the other, and the gates were shut and barred.

The soldiers tried to line the children up against a wall, but Erik paid their guns no mind and pushed past them toward the gate. On the other side of the metal bars, his father tried to reach the gate, but one of the Germans kicked him behind the knees, knocking him face-first into the mud below. His mother, on the other hand, managed to rush to the gate, where her hands met Erik's briefly. Then, they were torn apart by German soldiers hands grasping at their bodies.

Edie was pulled away from the gate by one man. Erik... Erik clung strongly for a young, undernourished man. It took two soldiers to drag him even feet from the gate as his hand remained extended toward the metal structure. They dug their heels in to the slippery ground as hard as they could, but the boy seemed to be... Attracted to the gate, or the gate was attracted to him, somehow, as it creaked against its' strong hinges and crossbar, and bent outward to the boy's hand.

Erik slipped in the mens' grasp. His feet left the ground as they attempted to regain their hold, and another man joined in to pull him away from the gate, back toward the group of children to be executed, but his hand pulled him and the gate closer together with every passing moment, even as a fourth tried to restrain him from the true entrance to the hellhole. Then, another man snarled, and slammed the wooden butt of his rifle against Erik's head, knocking the boy unconscious. Suddenly, the boy and the soldiers all dropped to the ground as Erik's hold on the gate was broken.

The soldier shook his head in disgust,, grabbed the boy by the shoulder, propped him against a nearby wall and leveled the barrel of his rifle at Erik's forehead as the boy weakly moved his head, only barely aware of his surroundings.

A hand pushed the barrel of the gun at the ground. "No." Its owner commanded. "Leave this von for me."

Doctor Klaus Schmidt was quite an old man, with white hair and a bushy beard. He was clad in a fine suit and shoes, with a white lab coat over top. All he was wearing was to be ruined in the rain and mud, but Schmidt, truly, did not care about such a momentary sacrifice. He was intrigued by the boy's powers.

"Haff his family set aside und brought to Block Ten's holding cells." Schmidt commanded the guard. "I vish to see vat ze little juden boy can do."