'North and west of the Seychelles. If I run across Kiber Island in a straight line, I won't get too disoriented by the waters.' Pietro reasoned to himself, and managed to keep a sigh back. He didn't want to do this. However, he had no other option. He was disquieted by the idea of his father - his father! - the sovereign leader of a nation. It was bad enough that the madman tried it on an orbiting rock. Why did anyone consider him for a position over a nation?
Pietro was not in a good space mentally, if her were perfectly frank. His life had become more and more difficult lately. Ever since X-Factor disbanded, he felt…adrift. And only last night, he and Crystal fought once again. It was in the middle of their nightly routine; reading together with Luna. The benefit of being one of the fastest mutants alive meant nearly anywhere in the world was not too far from his daughter.
'Turn the…telly…on, and we'll have no more talk." Crystal said, trying her best at a posh British accent, and succeeding well. If only she didn't pause at every British term. The latest book they were reading to their daughter was Matilda by Roald Dahl. A classic, and they both agreed that she deserved to have as many happy memories as possible. Thus the nightly ritual. Their daughter enjoyed it; she knew her parents were upset with one another, but Pietro kept stressing to her how much they loved their little girl. It seemed to work, she wasn't as apprehensive as she was when he and Crystal began to separate their lives. And the nightmares stopped ever since they began this family event. Luna yawned, her large eyes drooping tiredly after a long day.
"Must've taken lessons from your father's side of the family," Crystal uttered, but not low enough.
Pietro wanted to sigh, but he knew he needed to keep calm; Luna didn't deserve familial strife. He would do his best to avoid as much of it as possible for her. She should never have to experience anything close to the stresses he and his sister lived through. And part of that started in the home, even if that home wasn't going to last much longer. They would make certain that many activities would be reproduced in their dual households. Luna would never want anything. Ever.
"Thank you for reading tonight, Crystal." Pietro said, wishing for the thousandth time someone out there kept count at the level of his patience and restraint. "I think I would like the turn tomorrow night. You can be on tuck-in duty."
"Tuck-In Duty, Duckling," Crystal cooed, switching immediately to a honeyed tone, helping to smooth over her own faux pas as she poked her daughter in the sides eliciting a sleepy giggle. "Sweet dreams."
They each took turns pressing a loving kiss to their perfect daughter's brow before lowering the lights, letting the galloping unicorn night light cast a gentle glow over the room. Luna drowsily murmured a goodnight to her parents as they exited, and entered the hallway. The congenial facade dropped from both of their faces as they door clicked shut.
The silence lasted until they were out of their daughter's earshot.
"You're so prickly, Pietro."
"That kind of pointed behavior is unbecoming in front of our child, Princess."
Crystal spun around, her eyes aflame. She did so love a good fight. "Yes, Pietro, I am a princess. I am royalty. And now, finally, so are you."
"And does that make us equals in your eyes? Am I finally a worthy enough husband?" he asked, bitterly.
"If you have to ask then you already know the answer," she replied, her tone melodramatic.
"Crystal-" he started to exclaim before he calmed himself. 'She's baiting you, don't bite,' he told himself. And then he told himself again. 'The argument isn't worth it, it never is,' he reminded himself to support his refusal to rise to her prodding. "I'll see you tomorrow night. Have a nice day." he told herself as he walked calmly toward the door. The last thing he needed was for her to claim that he stormed out on her tomorrow evening. Slow even steps. Slow and steady and he wouldn't have to speak with her until-
"You won't defend yourself," she scoffed. "How can you ask if you're a worthy husband when you're barely a man," she criticized.
All rational thought left him as he felt her blood pressure dangerously rising. "I'm not the cause of our marriage's failure and you know it," he spat back, turning to face her.
"Maybe I can't claim to have been a good wife to you, but any errors I made were ones you drove me to with your self righteous indifference to me and our daughter," she said.
"I'm here every night!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, Pietro, every night, to put her to bed. The fun father who doesn't have to see her tears, her cuts, her bruises, her ailment-" Well, that stung. Crystal may not always have the moral high ground, but she was right. He was no saint.
"I would gladly take her for any appointment and at any time but as you are so insistent on only Inhuman physicians for our daughter-"
"Because she is an Inhuman," Crystal insisted.
"Then perhaps you'd like to prove that by allowing Luna to undergo Terrigenesis," he suggested hoping that now, finally he could trap her under the weight of her own argument. "You've always said she's more likely to manifest Inhuman abilities over any mutation she may have inherited from my side," he said. Great, he was getting as dramatic as she was. What happened to not taking the bait?
"Yes, from your father and his tyrannical grip over his little island," she bit back.
'Ignore it. Focus on what's good for Luna,' he told himself. "Even Blackbolt says she's ready to undergo the transformation," he added.
"She's only a child," she insisted and even had the gall to turn her head away from him, casting her gaze down like he had wounded her with his words.
"How old were you?" he asked.
"That doesn't matter, we were at war," she said.
"And I was no older than Luna is now when my powers manifested," he said, continuing his argument. "Give your consent and allow her to become the Inhuman Princess she is meant to be. The younger she is, the more time she'll have to grow into her powers," he reasoned.
"Something else I have to do alone," she spat bitterly.
"I'll help as much as you allow," he said.
"And what does that mean?"
"You know what it means," he said. "Every action, every conversation. The little asides. All we do is fight, Crystal, and no child should have to listen to their parents bicker. I only come at bed time for her sake, not yours,"
"Then it would be better if you didn't come at all," she declared, with a dramatic flair he had grown used to; a flair that had once been utilized for declarations of love, which he now understood were merely lip service. If it wasn't for the joy their daughter brought him, he would wish to have never met the harpy he called wife.
"You are not keeping me from my daughter," he said. "And you won't be able to stall her Teragenesis forever, Crystal, or we really see whose genes she inherited most from," he said.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? A cast-out Inhuman Princess with mutant powers, unfit to succeed Blackbolt," she said, baiting once again for yet another fight. And to be honest, he'd had enough.
When he made no move to respond, Crystal clucked her tongue, making a moue with her mouth. "Pietro, I thought you were quick of feet and wit."
His eyes flared, always the first tell of his temper. Before his complexion could potentially rise, he shook his head. And held his tongue. Patience. Restraint.
Crystal threw her hands up in the air.
"See?! No fun! Pietro, I can't stand it when you're like this. Go. Unwind. It's no fun if you're not willing to participate in this marriage!"
Despite agreeing with her, if only to end this torrid drama, Pietro thought to himself that she was substituting a different word there.
He didn't enjoy looking back on those moments. It angered him because instead of deciding, he was stalling. It was apparent in his listless, restless attitude, enough that it affected a fight. He didn't enjoy being stuck, he hated it. Yet here he was: dithering over his choices over how to best handle his duties as a good father, his role in his corroding marriage, and the stress from it began to seep into his dreams.
Pietro dreamt of impossible things. Impossible was commonplace for heroes, and yet, he was confounded nightly by strange dreams. As a father, going to tuck Luna in at night, only for it to turn, and he was no longer the parent, but the scared child looking for comfort. Or instead, he was gathering at a grave for a funeral, thinking it was for him by the way folks were acting, but instead, it was for his father. And everyone was consoling him while they tried to get the Avenger to put his father's infamous helmet on. He hadn't experienced those kinds of dreams in over a decade. He thought himself past that, taught himself not to dream like that.
Dismissing this sentimentality initially as over-emotional pap, he continued his time to himself. He was looking for a way to reconcile the ever-warring aspects of his life. Father. Hero. Son. Wasn't there more to him than this? Pietro found himself leaving the sun soaked Playa La Chorrera in Peru two weeks earlier than he had expected. A speedster by birth, he had a nomadic soul, but now, he couldn't ascribe this restlessness to that. Pietro felt disquieted by the events of late. Their marriage, their relationship was…fractured, to say the least. He was trying to come to terms with…with…
Well, no matter what, he loved his daughter dearly, as he loved all of his family-
Family. That word again, dragging his mind once more to his dreams. Why was he dreaming of a state between child and adult? Why was he thinking about his father so much? Was it due to the news articles that he finally started to pick up again, detailing Magneto's rise to power? Why did he feel as if he needed to be responsible, and go to his father's side?
Without really knowing it, he had made his way back to continental Europe, and spent the next while fighting the urge to head south and further east. It didn't last long; he was racing across the continent before he could stop himself. He was compelled, and as his feet left Kenya and skirted over the waters of the massive ocean system that circled the planet, he knew that he had to let this urge play itself out, to give over to it, and just allow events to occur as they must.
His sister would be proud, he reflected as Kiber Island came and went under his feet in a flash. She often encouraged him to let the world tell him how to act. Well, if this wasn't doing that, then Pietro didn't know what was. He poured on the speed, and his run left a small pathway that struck up walls of water half a foot tall. It was as if a bar of steel was streaking across the silvery-blue waters, hurled by a titan of a previous age. He'd reach Genosha in minutes.
Thirty seven minutes after her departure from Westchester, Rogue was shelled by Genoshan mortars and literal incendiary fire. Startled, but undaunted, Rogue glided to a stop. She didn't want to be hit by that much liquid death and heat. What ever happened to being welcomed?
Before she could think of what to do next, the sky literally erupted. Despite having little notice, the Genoshan army managed to scramble a defense, and Rogue was disoriented by enough artillery that she was tossed into the Indian Ocean with an undignified series of splashes. The pain and abrupt shock of hitting the water at more than enough force to kill an ordinary human was enough to cause her to pass out momentarily.
Three minutes later and a skimming helicopter with a mutant who could create and control a frictionless but breathable forcefield, the Genoshans had easily scooped the X-Man out of the water. Carried now, and recovering from the stun, Rogue let them deliver her to Genosha. She was confident she'd get out, one way or the other. She only had to decide how hard she was going to punch Magneto when she arrived.
When the field she was in touched down at one of the harbor docks at Hammer Bay, the capital of the small nation, she found herself surrounded in seconds by armed guards. The civilians around them scattered immediately as the officers began to shout orders. "Now now, fellas." Rogue said, holding up her hands with palms flat out. "This here's a right proper social call; I even got permission." She said as the commander of the troop approached her. Someone else seemed to be calling back to base for further instructions. Rogue eyed the munitions, it wasn't particularly cutting edge, but neither was it terrible.
'So, how did the former mutates go on the offensive?' she asked herself as the back portion of the squadron parted and she saw the reason she received such a hostile welcome. Cortez came forward, in clothing that some would consider 'ostentatious'. Most of it was what she had always seen him in; but maximized to an even larger scale. The majority was his original Acolyte uniform with an even bigger cape, if it could be imagined, glittering armored boots with matching gauntlets, and his chest was adorned in a similar armor.
'Covering up the vitals. Got smart, huh, lackey?' she thought to herself as he parted the knot of soldiers with his very presence. Perhaps he sensed her thoughts as he crossed his arms while smirking at her.
'Just loves to look down on folk.' she thought to herself. Rogue had no patience for him and his posturing. So he was taller, so what? He was that typical kind of guy that liked to think height gave intimidation a factor. "Whaddya want, Cortez?"
Cortez seemed to think he scored himself a point. His grin widened, the fox finding the hens unguarded. He removed his hands from the voluminous depths of the fabric. One was empty, the other, held an item that she found herself unable to stop looking at, as her stomach sank.
"Well, laws have been passed while you traveled to our lands; even persona non grata like you are granted their diplomatic immunity, but Genosha demands safety for its citizens. Safety that must be maintained with insurance and tangible protection from loose cannons." In his hands was a familiar yellow circle with a clear red plastic panel at the front. She could feel the weight of the collar on her neck before it was even there. Sometimes it was there on her neck when she woke from her worst nightmares.
Yes, she remembered the feeling of powerlessness in this country well. She and Logan were illegally detained by one of their roving gangs and sent to the country for processing in what felt like four different lives ago. Looking for Scott's lost wife Madelyne, they had come afoul of the Genoshan magistrate's extralegal activities. Logan nearly died because of it and she…she…
Rogue shoved the memories back, stuffed them down in the back of her mind. She felt the panic race through her body, fear wanting to climb up and show in her eyes. She couldn't, though, she wasn't going to give Cortez another chance to "win" any of his stupid little games. Still, though, it was a Genoshan inhibitor collar, and the indelible memories it brought up were far from pleasant.
She couldn't, wouldn't, let it show.
"Y'think the most dangerous thing about me is my powers." she said as she picked it up, letting bravado lead her, as she always decided. There was no particular flourish she used as she snapped it around her neck, an echoing tremble deep in the pit of her stomach in response.
Cortez seemed disappointed as she acted, clearly he expected a fight. With a sniff, he turned away, issuing a curt, "Follow me." The squad fell into formation, which just so happened to be around her. One of them used the long side of his rifle to nudge her forward and she bit her tongue. She was still measuring how much damage she should deliver in retribution, and so for the moment Rogue had no choice but to follow.
Pietro saw Hammer Bay growing as he exited international waters and entered the island's jurisdiction. But as the shoreline grew, he could see details. The ships in the harbor took more detail, and few showed signs of battle. In fact, there was a cruise ship at one of the larger piers that could support it. Something about a Genoshan cruise ship unsettled Quicksilver's stomach. There was a silvery streak in the air, not of a missile, but an airplane. Pietro could see a glint of color on the tail, a commercial airplane then.
The buildings were tall and proud, some were battle damaged, others were reaching naked girders to the sky. Perhaps they were being constructed for the first time and not for repair. It wasn't certain. But the buildings that made the city skyline stood as a majority undamaged; and in this they spoke to Magneto's reign. Clearly ceding the country wasn't that destabilizing then.
Perhaps his father could run a nation? Pietro pondered as he approached the capitol, and more was made apparent. Not just basic safety was in existence, but there was a robust energy to the air, and the quick moving automobile traffic. Billboards touted the sale of luxury vehicles, carbonated beverages, and -
Stand With Your Country
Stand With Magneto
Join the Acolytes
Written in multiple languages, English, Bantu in the local Kiswahili dialect, French, and Arabic; the billboard had the superimposed words emblazoned across the new Genoshan flag, the shape of the newly stylized red strikes somehow vaguely reminiscent of Magneto's helmet. Pietro felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. Who was behind the propaganda?
But before he could think further on this, the dock and its inhabitant was more clearly visible. He could see a knot of soldiers as they clustered around someone who was released from some sort of mutant power based hold. He knew those colors, in that combination. It was…
It was Rogue, and Cortez seemed to be speaking to her. Readjusting his trajectory, he decided to derail his plan of going immediately to his father, demanding to be heard by the Master of Magnetism. But an X-Man was here, and as a former X-Factor employee, they had a kinship. They fought together often. If anyone could potentially be an ally in this strange, new land, she would most certainly be.
However, there was a tight knot of soldiers around them, and none looked at rest. Pietro didn't understand why there was some tension in the group. As he closed the distance even more, he saw Rogue take something from Cortez, and affix it around her neck. He couldn't tell what it was at first, but there was little need to wrack his brain about what it may be.
Pietro's stomach turned over on itself. To have a mutant wear that collar, especially in this country. What could possibly be happening?
Well, if he witnessed the action, perhaps he could use his newfound status as soon as he sets foot on land. He corrected his trajectory and ran faster. The group was moving away, and Rogue was in the center of it. Oddly enough, they weren't moving towards the center of the city; it seemed Cortez was taking a more indirect route, and heading in the opposite direction of the Halls of M, as news channels were calling it.
Pietro readjusted once again. The surf scattered in a spray of sparkling water as his heel pivoted his movement slightly. He'd catch up to them easily.
