Red Dawn
Posted on Tue Aug 24th, 2021 @ 11:06am by Charles Xavier & Scott Summers & Connor Bruin & Iris Walker & Erik Magnus Lehnsherr & Cameron Hood & Jade Farwynd & Gabe Spicer & Sonya Cross & Kai Akana & Elias Buckley
6,280 words; about a 31 minute read
Mission:
Episode 1: X-Odus
Location: X-Mansion
Timeline: July 2, 1990
It was early morning when the perimeter alarms began to blare within Xavier's bedroom. He awakened with a start and immediately began to dress himself. What with the bold invitation he had sent out, there could be only one person who would be breaching the campus grounds at the early hour. He had managed to pull on slacks and a turtleneck sweater before sliding into his chair when the bifold glass doors to his private balcony opened seemingly of their own accord.
"Thank you for coming so swiftly, Erik." Although he could not detect the Master of Magnetism himself, Charles immediately sensed the minds of other mutants skulking the school's perimeter, toeing the line before the automated defenses were activated. And then there was his old frenemy's flair for the dramatic. Charles would know it anywhere. He deactivated the automated defenses before the campus became a warzone. "I hope you have come in peace."
Telepathically, Xavier reached out to Scott, Cameron, and Jade. Trust but verify. ~Get the children to the subbasement immediately. Silent running only.~
"You sent an invitation, Charles. I'd hope we know each other well enough to vouchsafe my own conduct. Besides, I'm the 'villain': the inevitable betrayal is in my playbook, not yours."
Erik stepped off the balcony's parapet, and in through the doors. He was dressed well for the occasion, a suit of dark blue with a white shirt underneath. A slender string tie was about his neck, its tips beaded with polished metal beads. He looked like the sort of man who enjoyed the strenuous sport of yachting and counting one's money. It was only his head that stood out, encased within the curled Halcyon helm that was his trademark.
For a moment, a second, the shade of Sebastian Shaw stirred in the shared graveyard of memory.
"No doubt you have sensed my people. I trust you, Charles, but your children can be...rambunctious. The usual terms of parley then? Peace until whatever piece of information you think I have is in your possession?" Erik asked, looking around the room. He chuckled. "Sorry if I sound bitter, old friend. Neither one of us is getting any younger."
"It is for the sake of my students that I have called you here," Charles replied from his chair. He wheeled out from his bedside and faced Magneto from the center of the room. "They have gone missing for nearly two weeks now. You wouldn't happen to know anything about their disappearance... old friend?"
"Careful, Charles. That sounded awfully like an accusation," Erik said with a chill to his tone. "But no. I hate to break it to you, but I do have other projects at work that do not revolve around this little campus of mediocrity. I have more important things than your neutered proteges."
Having awoken instantly at the sound of the alarm, Iris had darted out of her room and through the hallways before almost everyone else had even registered the sound. As she ran, she listened carefully, both for any disturbance and also for her own footsteps- too loud and she would give herself away. Her instincts had carried her to the professor’s rooms and she had heard the tail end of the visitor’s reply. Neutered protégés, indeed! Who did he think he was, anyway?
"Do not stand here as if you have not made attempts on the lives of my students in the past," Charles retorted. "My question was warranted, as is its daughter question: would any of your 'projects' have benefited from the disappearance of the X-Men?" His head turned as if listening to something from afar, though his eyes remained fixed on Erik. "Any of your Acolytes, for instance?"
"My 'Acolytes'." Erik chuckled. "You do like your labels. Must help, being able to provide a colour-coded tab to everyone under your care so that those who fear them know them for what they are. You can imagine my thoughts of that, even with the helmet blocking your abilities."
He raised his hand and a metal-framed photograph floated into the air and then into his fingers.
"My plans would be infinitely improved by removing your cadre of school children from the board, but they are not my enemy. They are my people, misguided and misled," he sniffed as he put the photo frame back down. "But my people all the same. I'd only hurt them if they got in my way, which they have not."
Lurching out of bed, Scott was on his feet and ready for action. The Professor's telepathic message was actually a welcome reprieve from the restless sleep Scott had faced ever since Jean and the others went missing. It was like his mind was searching for missing memories that no longer existed, or tried to imagine a dream that never was. He took a moment to pull on his uniform before taking to the hall where he started knocking on doors.
Jade was already awake when the mental prompt came through. The redhead shook off the ever unsettling effect before putting on her trainers and grabbing her slightly curved dagger which she tucked into the sheath at the back of her belt. She headed down to the nearest set of rooms, opening up her senses, letting her 'blood sense' detect the kids so she could usher them to the basement quicker. Quickly, she began knocking on doors and issuing instructions.
Cameron had just slipped on his trainers for a run when the call came through. He switched direction, heading up the stairs in a practiced, silent crouch. His fingers had dug into the floor of the kitchen, pulling out a properly balanced long sword as well as two daggers he had stowed. He saw Jade was already working her way down one side and stepped to the other, seeing Cyclops doing the same. Then he saw the stream of children coming towards him and gestured them quietly down the stairs.
When Kai's bedroom was banged upon, he shot up out of bed quickly. He pulled on shorts over his boxers and made his way out of his room without a shirt. There was no telling what was going on. He watched as the younger students may their way, in a hurried fashion, down the stairs. He eyed them suspiciously and knew for certain they were being taken to safety. Immediately, his spirit bristled at the idea and he started down another path.
Down in the subbasement, Connor began counting all of the students filing in after him. He had been the seventh. Lucky seven. Luck was stupid, an ignorant misunderstanding of Chaos Theory, the mathematical study of dynamical systems. Why were people so dumb? Someone brushed past Connor's broad shoulder. He blinked and quickly updated his headcount. Twenty-one. Were people missing? Why were they missing?
Tapping Jade on the shoulder, Connor asked through his device, "WHAT. IS. GOING. ON?"
Jade shook her head and whispered. "I don't know. The Prof just wants the kids down in the subbasement and looked after." She said ushering a younger girl down the stairs, "stay close to Serena and keep quiet." Farwynd said to her.
"Then answer me this," Charles said. "When the Blackbird returned from its mission, the flight logs had been erased. My wrist watch was ripped off my body and clung to the fuselage. The flight recorder is still degaussing, meaning a powerful magnetic field had been generated and sustained at length." Staring at Erik with appraising eyes, Charles said, "We both know how you feel about your daughter, Lorna, who chose my path over yours. We both know her powers of magnetism could not accomplish the feats I just described. I will ask you again, Erik. Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of my missing students?"
Before Erik could answer, a crimson beam shot out from the doorway to the professor's room. Cyclops, in full uniform, had given Magneto a full powered optic blast.
"You son of a bitch!" he shouted as he dropped to one knee and fired away another blast. "I will fucking kill you!"
~No, Scott!" Xavier emoted in a telepathic broadcast. ~Stand down, everyone!~ Xavier sent out as hard as he dared. Some of the more impressionable minds on campus could not withstand the full brunt of his mental bombardment, so he needed to be careful. And then there was the fact Magneto would not be privy. ~It's not too late for peace!~
But it was too late. The parley had been broken. There was no telling what the Master of Magnetism would do now.
The door's the balcony had shattered as Erik, carried by the optical blast, flew through the glass panes and over the edge. But even as Magneto vanished from sight in the fall, the metal frame of the broken door's began to twist and animated under his control. Edged in glass shards the thrashing metal vines leapt across the room, unfurling to embrace Scott Summers in their jagged embrace.
"BROTHERS! SISTERS!" Magneto bellowed, rising in the air, framed by the open balcony. "WE ARE BETRAYED!"
Cameron chased after Scott, arriving to see the younger man wrapped in glass and metal. The bellowing voice of Magneto confused him, but being an experienced soldier Cameron didn't let himself be distracted. He instead knelt down next to Scott and used his powers to morph the metal frame into a number of metal ingots.
Unable to contain her anger, Iris burst into the room after Cameron. “You idiot!” she growled out at Scott. “They we’re just talking! He doesn’t know anything!”
After breaking free of the metal constraints in no small part due to Cameron's assistance, Cyclops kipped up to his feet.
"Cyclops, go secure the students!" Xavier said.
"That's what I'm doing," Cyclops said as he ran through the twisted balcony and hopped across the debris to the campus grounds below.
Xavier palmed his face. "Cameron, go help Jade keep the kids calm." ~And safe~ he added with a mental note of unspoken sanctioning of force. "Iris, follow along and stay out of sight as best you can."
"Copy that." Cameron replied.
Iris frowned, but followed anyway. Once in the corridor, however, she slipped out of sight and stayed there long enough to become unnoticed again. She had no intention of hiding in the basement.
"MAGNETO!" Cyclops shouted from the courtyard. "YOU HAVE HURT MY FRIENDS FOR THE LAST TIME!"
Sonya heard the commotion and the red beam blast was hard not to notice. It gave her a direction to home onto. With the voice of the Professor in her head, it was clear that things were bad and escalating to worse quickly. She grabbed nearby black leather pants and slipped them up, put on a blue hoodie and opened the window. Looking outside she quickly planned the next route and stepped outside. Agile, jumping here and there, she reached the roof and flipped around its edge. She landed quietly and rushed forward parkouring. She wanted to take a better position, to hear and see things, and possibly set herself to flank the obvious battle. Cyclops… was he behind all this. She had a feeling that the man was loose cannon creating more problems than he was solving... and he supposed to be a teacher here that leads by example?
Kai emerged from a door below the Professor's balcony and his eyes rested, immediately, on the older man floating in the air. He was determined to act but wasn't sure how yet. For now, he would wait and try to stay out of sight.
Cameron looked out the win at the top of staircase down to the subbasement. He gritted his teeth and his fingers itched to get stuck in the fight, or to drag that bastard Summers back inside. The hand holding his sword flexed constantly but his orders were to look after the children, to keep the youngsters safe.
"THE. MANSION. IS. UNDER. ATTACK," Connor's speech-generating device announced at full volume. "CYCLOPS. NEEDS. OUR. HELP."
Setting his device aside, as he would not need it for what he intended to do and didn't want to risk it breaking, Connor jumped over the stairs and flipped through the doorway.
~Cameron! Connor is not field ready! Go retrieve him!~ Xavier's voice blared inside Cameron's mind.
The sudden blaring mechanical sounding voice woke Katy from a dead sleep and she heard "Needs our help," which served to get her out of bed, dressed and out the door in seconds. She sped down the hall and checked the rooms, waking people up that weren't yet, then dashed to a window and looked out. She saw the red beams of Thugclops, and others attacking the people she had come to call friends, if not associates.
She got an idea and took off, checking every supply closet she could get into and then headed to the storage area in the basement. She went through box after box at speed, then yelled. "Eureka!" as she found what she was looking for. She ripped of a long strip of duct tape, then put four rolls onto it and taped it around her waist, then pulled a starter from the roll in her hand, gave a malicious smile and took off.
In the subbasement level, Jade had just finished herding the kids that were willing to listen to instruction when the chatter exploded over the comms. The aussie swore under breath as she secured the room.
"Sean, unless it's myself, Cam or the Proff, be ready to fight and run, alright? Don't engage them unless it's to get away," she said to the oldest kid in there.
The tall, pale skinned boy nodded solemnly as he engaged the lock from their end.
Taking a deep breath, Jade took off the vial from the chain on her neck, poured a little of it's contents onto her palm.
Closing her palm she focused on the liquid which instantly began to grow and expand, shaping into a long fighting spear, seemingly entirely made of the same liquid, but entirely solid.
Looking up, her eyes completely glowing red, Jade glanced down the corridor, listening for any incoming footsteps or signs of fighting. None were coming down their direction yet, so she took off down the hall towards the upper levels.
A slender Asian boy in an outfit that looked like he came from an anime stood at the front gates. He raised his arms and four large, long tentacles shot out of his sides, gripped the gate from the hinges and threw it at the mansion. He leaned forward and began to run, both on two legs and two tentacles, giving him greater speed, with the other two tentacles reaching out to grab anything within reach.
In the mansion, Katy shot in a blur to her room and changed into a blue bodysuit with jagged white lightning going up and down it, changed the duct tape rolls over to her waist again with one in her hands, and took off for the front door.
"What the heck?!" Gabe thought as he rushed to the window. He hurriedly opened it to see Mr Summers blasting at a guy in a red suit flying. It didn't take a hint for him to tell what was happening. The young Texan knew he needed to help, so he bolted out of his room, pajamas and all. As he bolted down the stairs he found his path blocked by some guy with a water tank on his back
"You aren't a fireman, right? You're with that flying dude, ain't ya?" Gabe said.
"And you're with baldy," the man replied. "And yer just a kid, but orders is orders," the man said, before blasting Gabe with a stream of water.
Gabe let out a loud grunt as he hit a nearby wall. He got up though, visibly in pain. "Alright, it's on, Captain water park," he said, his face in a scowl. His words came out as sort of a growl. As Gabe got into a fighting stance he noticed that his hands turned hairy and his claws were present. He smiled.
A loud thunderclap sounded off outside the mansion as someone with a metal staff in the ground was returning fire at Cyclops. The chainfire of lancing arcs had Cyclops effectively pinned down behind a tool shed.
With another glance out the window at the field, Katy took a big breath and stretched out a length of duct tape. "Chugga, chugga," she said before she blew out the breath, then was out the door, down the stairs and heading across the lawn like a runaway train. She came across a mutant that seemed to be ripping a large chunk of the ground up in the air and smiled. She ran around him in a blur and used half a roll of duct tape, but he fell to the ground with it around his ankles, below and above his knees, and around his wrists, elbows and a big X over his mouth. "Next!" she declared before she took off again.
Cameron chased after Connor. His sneakers left quiet footfalls as he saw the ginger lad leading the way. "Bruin, mate!" Cameron called. He saw the burly lad land farther afield. Across them was a man with metal arms.
Without his speech-generating device, Connor had nothing to reply with aside from a feral grunt.
"Well sluggers, it's just plain bad luck you ran into me," the man said, a wicked smile revealing metal teeth. He raised both arms. The arms immediately reformed into two miniguns. The whining sound of the barrels spinning up filled the moment of silence.
As soon as Cameron saw the arms rise his left arm shot to one of the daggers behind his back. The stone knife whistled through the air, hitting the unknown man straight in the chest. And it clanged off.
Connor dodged as best he could, but the minigun simply filled the air with too many projectiles for him to advance. Tumbling out of the way toward the tall grass, Connor began crawling on his belly in hopes of avoiding the suppressive fire. Perhaps his impulse action was a bit rash on second thought.
A blur came by and something sticky slapped itself to Connor's back. "Body surf!" came a feminine voice before she started sliding over the grass, getting faster by the second. Katy ran ahead, hoping she wasn't about to die and that she wasn't making the cave man a moving target, but she had to try to save him.
"BAH!" Connor shouted. His balance and equilibrium were all over the place as he struggled to reorient to what was happening.
Meanwhile, Iris had observed enough. It was time to take action. Starting with Shooty McGunhands here. She had come up behind him and decided that those knees were a great target for her foot. So, just as Katy scooped up Connor, Iris hauled her leg back and kicked karate style at the back of the gun crazy mutant.
Gunfist halted his auto-fire long enough to spin around and turn his dual miniguns onto Iris. He couldn't see an obvious target, so he started spinning the drums hanging from his wrists. The barrels whined as they started to spin.
"UHHHHH!" Connor shouted, pointing at Iris.
Katy skidded to a halt when Connor started bellowing and making more noise. She looked over her shoulder, then saw the other mutant getting ready to turn the invisible girl into paste. "Duck!" she shouted as she dropped the duct tape she had been dragging Connor with. She grabbed another roll from her side, then headed back the way she had came, but three times as fast. She ripped out a few feet of the duct tape, then swung it around the other mutant's head and began to run around him.
Blades sprouted out of Minigun Man's head, slicing down in various patterns through the tape, shredding it. The extending roll was cut, and within two blinks his face was free. "Cute trick dah'ling" The man growled and turned one of his minguns into a long lance, placing it in front of Katie's path.
Cameron used the distraction afforded by the girls "DeCobray, get Bruin back to the house, now!" Cameron shouted as he closed the distance. His hands smacked into the steel back of their foe, and slid in. From the metal around Cameron's hand he formed a warhammer with a wicked sharp point.
Minigun Man shouted in pain as he felt a part of his liquid metal body being pulled out of him, and out his control. His head turned a 180 degrees on his torso. Just ready to witness the hard, flat side of the hammer smacking him straight into the side of his head.
"The name is Leadfoot!" Katy called as she backpedaled rapidly away from Mini Gun Man and zoomed around him and Cameron. As she did so, she kicked one of his legs and kept moving. "Caveman! I'm coming!"
Professor Xavier was having a hellish time parsing the minds of everyone on the grounds. There were dozens! Each time he shut down one Brotherhood member, there were two others poised to deliver killing strokes to his students, the precious youth under his care. Cyclops was not responding to his telepathic prompts, either, yet Xavier dared not neutralize his field commander until the field was clear.
It was imperative for him to get to Cerebro. Only then could he split his focus on neutralizing more than one adversary at a time. Painful as it was, the Professor did not rule out Cyclops from that list.
Before he could take the emergency transport tube from the top floor down to the second subbasement where Cerebro awaited, he moved his chair down the hall and beheld an odd sight that would be confusing to the naked eye.
Standing before him was Gabe in a frozen, quivering rictus that left his body in a sheen of sweat as his ability shifted his skin and musculature into different forms. It seemed he was fighting thin air while stranded in place.
Immediately the Professor sent his mind out in search of something hidden. He found it. And when he did, instant recognition flashed through him.
“Jason Wynguarde!” Xavier shouted, his words carried on a maelstrom of psychic energy that clashed against those emitting from the hidden mentalist. “Release him!”
Suddenly, the man Gabe had dubbed “Captain water park” vanished from view, though another man appeared in the corner as from thin air. He wore a high collar, broad mustache, and sudden look of terror.
“You will find the source of your conflict there,” the Professor said to Gabe, his eyes darting to the man in the corner. “Mastermind should pose little danger now.”
Gabe snapped awake. He had the mother of all headaches. "Head's buzzing. What happened? Where's squirt gun?" he said, slightly bewildered. He looked and saw two people. The prof he knew, the other guy not so much. He saw the man lunge towards him. Instantly Gabe reacted, putting fur covered fist to Mr. Unknown's face.
"That felt good," Gabe said
“Come with me, Gabe,” said Xavier. “I have let this continue for far too long already.”
"I'm with you, Professor."
Another crimson optic blast pierced the night sky, as did Cyclops’ vicious outcry. The X-Men’s team leader was well past the point of words. His warpath had cut through one Brotherhood member after another who had tried to stand between him and Magneto. Gone was his ruby-quartz visor, tossed aside wherever they’d fallen when he’d taken his last hits.
And hits he’d taken. His sweatpants and tanktop were hanging by threads, not that anyone could tell from the mud and detritus kicked up from the field of battle that covered him from head to toe.
All in all, he was a picture of vengeance incarnate, firing off one widebeam blast after another that pushed Magneto and his Acolytes to and fro. Above it all, his screaming voice demanded nothing less than Magneto’s death.
"Is this the so-called leader of the X-Men? Brute force with no finesse?" Erik goaded from the air, sidestepping one crimson lance after another. Once in a while, he let one of them connect, using a pair of sewer caps he'd purloined as shields. The Westchester County Water Department might be rife with corruption, but they used good old fashion cold iron. With each blast the sewer caps began to glow, soon deforming into taffy-like discs of molten metal.
"Clearly you need a better teacher!" Erik snarled. This time he threw only one of the shields into the path of the beam, letting it soak up the energy until it was white-hot. It billowed outwards, become a sheet of scalding metal that spun away into fragments, hissing suddenly into a cloud of steam as they smashed a decorative fountain.
The muggy cloud of steam stung the air, illuminating in full whenever Scott's ocular beams lashed out.
"I learned a long time ago that coming at an enemy directly would always lead to bloodshed. Believe it or not, I am not a violent man at heart, Mr. Summers. We are brothers, separated perhaps by kin and kith, but we share more in common between ourselves than the maddening crowds. Your protectiveness of this school...I find it admirable, praiseworthy," his voice spoke from the cloud.
Scott saw nothing but red as he rained crimson showers upward into the night sky. "WHERE IS SHE?!" he shouted. "WHERE'S JEAN?!"
The metal shards, now cooled by the water, whipped out and around Scotts head. They handed around his head, creaking and groaning as magnetic fields contorted them into solid blind fold gripping the young man's head.
"You have my word, young man, I do not have the slightest clue," Magneto said as he dropped to the ground next to Scott. He then sent with a flick of his wrist a magnetic wave to kick the metal band about his head harshly.
The sensory input was magnificent. Circulatory systems infused with adrenaline, cortisol and various other hormones, powers coursing through blood streams. Then there was, of course, blood. Lots of it. Some that of the older kids from the school, some that of the attackers, she could smell it all.
Shaking her head, Jade pulled her mind back together and focused. The school kids needed her, the Prof needed her, Cam needed her.
Stepping up onto the ground floor, Jade noticed the first opponent. Although she'd not yet interacted with all of them, she knew who was friend who was foe.
Ducking and stepping out of the way of two clawed, furry hands, Jade swung her spear at the beast-man's feet slashing at his ankles before bringing the spear back down and stabbing into his stomach. He shoved his equally clawed foot directly into her stomach, violently pushing her away from him, sending the Aussie flying across the hall, slamming into the wall and sinking to her knees, groaning painfully.
The man crawled onto his feet, pulling the spear out of his gut.
"Ungh! Effin' hell!" Jade's vision cleared just in time to see the beast attempt to stab her with her own spear.
Jade stuck her arms out, palms open, her wrists shining red, her fingers dancing in empty air. The spear descended upon her, however it dissolved moments after into hundreds, thousands of blood droplets, Jade's arms pulling back momentarily before pushing out again.
The droplets reformed into a smaller spear, the tip pointing towards the beast. As Jade's arms struck out again, the spear flew upwards and struck into the beast's chest. The assailant dropped unceremoniously on the floor, face first, the spear dissolving and mixing into the puddle of his own blood.
Farwynd remained half crouched hand kneeling where she'd landed against the wall, arms still out, trying to catch her breath, trying to clear her mind of the frenzy and the bloodlust that infiltrated her senses at the kill.
Through the wall punched an enormous tentacle that wrapped Jade around the waist and pulled her through it. Suction cups bit through her clothing into her flesh as the membranous limb squeezed like a vise.
"Aaagh!" Jade grunted as the tentacle wrapped around her and pulled at her. The wall and debris hurt a lot more than that, opening a few additional cuts and gashes as she was pulled through.
Cameron had jogged back to the House, having seen Leadfoot and Caveman heading that direction. He was still carrying his new warhammer when he was a boy with tentacles that reached inside the walls. Cameron slowed, staying out of sight and snuck up next to one of the tentacles in the wall before swinging his hammer down, spiked face first into the tentacle.
Jade's pain filled senses cleared moments later, as the tentacle around her released a smidge. She looked around to see the source of the tentacle but couldn't make out their origin. Anger flared up as the tentacle re-affermed its hold. Jade reached into her own blood cells that had been spilled and focused as best as she could, the droplets coalescing into a saber-like weapon in her hand.
She turned the now solidified weapon in her hand and stabbed down, into the tentacle's flesh.
Three more tentacles flailed and trying to wrap themselves around her legs with the one begins stabbed yanked back yard. The boy they were attached to screamed and started turning at her.
"You're...a...farkin'...kid?!" Jade's anger flared further as she reached out her hand focusing on the cut tentacle.
The blood seeping out of the tentacle formed a tentacle of its own which reached out around the boy's neck and squeezed.
"Let..." Jade commanded through gritted, bloodied teeth, "me...go!"
The tentacled teen shrieked and the tentacles retracted back into his body as he fought to get the tentacle of blood away from his neck.
Jade landed unceremoniously on the ground, as she did the blood tentacle dispersed into millions of tiny droplets. With some difficulty Jade got back on her feet, using the scattered blood to form a spear and got into a defensive posture, anger, adrenaline and lust for more clouding her senses. All she saw and felt was red.
From his position tucked in against a chimney on the uppermost section of mansion roof, Elias regarded the battlefield before and below him. The chaos and carnage found its own points and focus in smaller conflicts bar the main event that seemed to be warming up between what was left of Cyclops and the powerhouse of Magneto. Everyone else seemed to have things under control, for the most part.
Still, for his own amusement, the teen had hurled a vast messy mixture of goblins and imps into the fray -- expendable troops who cared more about violence and destruction than saving anyone's lives. Perhaps their myriad tiny arrows, blades and blunt instruments would help distract and derail some of those unwanted enemies deployed across the grounds.
The blur that called herself Leadfoot was wrapping (literally) up a few of the minor problems, and it seemed that the soldier - Elias didn't know his name - and the stunning redhead were holding their own with panache. His attention remained on Cyclops and the consideration of whether or not, and when, to bring in a potential draconian solution.
Then... what was that? The skinny blond girl seemed to be running away from the scene.
It took him two attempts to find the accurate exit point, but Elias stepped onto the grass just ahead of her - Sonya - and stood, arms crossed before him, facing her bravado down with a scathing expression of curious judgement.
"So," he levelled accusingly. "What exactly do you think you're doing, coward?"
Down in the second subbasement, escorted by Gabe who ensured his way would be unhindered, Xavier rolled up to the Cerebro interface. The metal felt cold at first, as it often did, when he took it up in his hands, but as the servers began to warm up for the required astronomical levels of computation, the helmet was only mildly cool as it fit over Xavier's head.
"MY X-MEN, MY ADVERSARIES, BROTHERS AND SISTERS ALL!," Xavier said aloud in harmony with the telepathic barrage that was now overwhelming every unshielded mind on the campus grounds. "STAND DOWN OR BE STILLED!"
Katy came skidding to a halt at the mental barrage and tried to clap a hand over her ears, but the Professor was in their heads and there was no escaping it.
After years of telepathic correspondence, even in his time on Muir Island, Connor was very accustomed to Professor Xavier's voice in his head. In many ways, it did not seem unnatural since the way he processed memory recall was a nearly lucid one. What was unnatural was the intensity. It made him somersault, tumble, and flail in attempts to regulate his overwhelmed senses.
Jade muttered a curse or few as The Prof's voice resounded in her head. The momentary distraction caused the spear to dissipate and the red that filled her mind to ebb off. Sense began to slowly re-emerge.
Dozens of others reacted similarly, grasping their heads or stooping to their names under the psychic bombardment that ordered all fighting to stop. Some of the Brotherhood members fell prostrate in their resistance. In the end, though, the conflict quickly fell to a dull roar that ended in groans from fleeting aggressors.
With Cerebro scanning the entire grounds, Xavier could see through the eyes of every unshielded mind. Nobody had been killed, thankfully, though he expected the X-Mansion's autodocs in the trauma ward may be busy. As Brotherhood assailants scampered off into the night, the shocking realization struck the professor that they were not alone.
There were students of his in flight among the Brotherhood.
He reached out to them, but he was rebuffed by fear, shock, even...inspiration? Something had moved them to break out and join with...
"The mutant race will no longer be managed," Xavier heard Magneto say through a hundred different ears. "Ladies, gentlemen, you have been chosen to be part of the most momentous event in the history of our planet: the liberation of mutantkind! Too long have we suffered under the oppression of humankind. I have witnessed firsthand the barbarous treatment of mutants in this wretched world. We have seen communities torn apart by the jealous hatred of our mutant gifts. Roving mobs of vigilantes seek out the infirmed among us. Some mutants conceal their true power, living a charade of normality while their spirit suffocates. Others have gone into hiding beneath your cities, huddling in the darkness like rats. Professor Xavier has tried nobly to enlighten the humans, but clearly his efforts have been repaid with brutality and hatred, not least of all since his greatest students could not escape the brutality within themselves. I will NOT allow this madness to continue! Mutant scientists and I have created a spaceborne mutants-only haven on Asteroid M where you can live apart from humanity free from its cruelty. I offer to you a great exodus in order to leave this world and join a better one!" Then, as though to Xavier personally, he said, "My mission is a peaceful one, but my response to interference in the Great Mutant Exodus will be otherwise. Let my people go, Charles."
While the philosophical argument could deliberate well into the ages, Charles could not deny the merit of his old friend, his greatest adversary, in his appeal to reason and justice. Even if Magnus had come under the auspices of a parley, it was clear that poaching had been his intent all along. Even so, it was an X-Man who was the first to break parley. There would be consequences for that small and great. Charles would not deny agency to anyone who chose of their own sound mind and free will. Freely his students had come to him and freely they would go should they choose to leave.
Both resolved and devastated, Charles Xavier removed the Cerebro headpiece to better lower his head and weep bitterly. There would be a heavy accounting that came when the red dawn broke later that morning, but for now there was only grief to observe.
END
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