Slow Motion

Posted on Fri Jun 21st, 2024 @ 4:30pm by Erik Magnus Lehnsherr & Jade Farwynd

1,936 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Episode 4: The Savage ConneXion
Location: Skull Mountain | Savage Land
Timeline: September 7th, 1990

While the others had gone in search of the healing plant that would give Magneto strength while the electromagnetic coil recharged his power, Jade sat in vigil over him. There were only rudimentary medical supplies at hand and very little that could help monitor him. Fortunately, Jade's power over the blood could provide an instant vitals check without the need for instruments or equipment.

Levi hung out near the door where he could stand watch for anyone who might approach the mountain. Truth be told, it was becoming a little boring, if not for the fact that Magneto had knocked on death's door all night long. After a time, the EM coil had given him enough juice that his eyes opened to a lucid if strained look on his face.

"You..." The word hung heavy in the air as his eyes came into focus. "You made it." Magneto closed his eyes and leaned his head back as his throat dry-swallowed. "I thirst..." He gave a raspy cough. "And the others?"

Jade took the bottle from the supply pack nearby and returned back to Magneto. "Most of us made it. We lost one, but there's a rescue in progress." She opened up the bottle and knelt over him. She slipped a gloved hand under the back of his head and leaned his head up enough to help him slowly sip the water. "Slow sips, you're still primed to overload at any moment."

"Just one?" Magneto looked surprised as he took a sip of water. "Thank you..." He took a deep breath and let his eyes refocus. "I've been holding out here, defeating wave after wave of Zaladane's army. I was beginning..." He trailed off for a minute but then completed his thought. "...to lose hope."

"Just Escapade. Hopefully the others can get her, before we lose more." Jade helped him up. "Why is she attacking you?" She asked, "and where are the other X-Men? What do you know?"

Magneto coughed his throat clear. "Zaladane despises me because I am everything she is not. What I achieved in my short time in this land many years ago overshadows what she's spent half her life attempting to emulate." He managed to sit up, though not without a groan that stretched out his sentence with a tone that was almost as contemptuous as his eyes. "Her failure is made complete by her claims to be my heir by blood, but she is no kin of mine. Killing me would cement Zaladane's reign for a generation." His face turned somewhere between a smirk and a sneer. "I'd never give her the satisfaction."

"I can't imagine why someone would hate you for it." Jade quipped, "come in, rain on my parade and then show me up for it. Really, can't fathom why." She sighed and headed over to one of the tables with supplies. "What's she done with the other X-Men? Iceman keeps whinging about Polaris...."

"Watch your tongue..." Magneto's eyes narrowed. "She may have chosen Xavier's path, but she is still my blood. Have care or I will drive it into you."

Jade was in his face in a second, her eyes flashing a dark red, "I beg you to try. Let's see who can stop the other first. Mistress of Blood or the Master of Magnetism." Her tone come out in a hiss as she glared at him.

"I can command the iron in your blood as surely as the iron in the alloys all around us," Magneto said, droll and unimpressed. "Everything I see is my weapon down to the molecule. Keep your hissing tongue behind your teeth."

Jade grinned, canting her head sideways in an un-natural manner, "and I command blood itself..." she raised a glowing wrist. The life-giving liquid surrounding his lungs began to increase in temperature and press into the air sacs of his lungs. "Pity that using your command of the iron will cause you to die just as quickly as my command of blood," she said with a smile.

Magneto gasped at the pulmonary distress, a hand going to his chest and neck. Rage boiled up within him and he snapped his fingers. The metallic content of Jade's bloodstream began to flow backwards from her limbs and vital organs. "If you can still hear me, Sanguis, know that you have managed to earn my attention if my not my respect." He watched her eyes begin to roll back into her head as she fought for consciousness. "I may be weakened but I am not to be trifled with." He released her from his magnetic grip. "However, I shall have to applaud Charles for finally instilling some ruthlessness in his team."

Jade chuckled as her brain fog cleared. The experience had been surprisingly exhilerating. Finally someone who had the ability to make her feel a difference. Sure, telepaths were one thing, but they were the same for everyone, but for most others, Jade's abilities could still easily overwhelm them. Most days, she kept a tight control over her abilities because she scared herself and others. This bloke though...was something else.

"Now, you done posturing?" Jade said, hands on hips. "Sit down before life and gravity kill you. Like it or not, we need you alive."

"I'm the one who brought you here, you insolent fool." Magneto took his rest again, though for all appearances it was as if he had done it himself rather than from being told. "You are subordinate to me in this time and place, and you will respect that, one way or another."

"I am here because the Prof wanted to help you and because the kids needed an adult. Fat lot of good the latter did." Jade shook her head and set about getting them each a ration. "So what's got you in your holier than thou attitude? Were you born this way or did insolent fools like me kick you into this gear?" she asked as she picked up a bar and a canteen of water, handing each to him. The questions came out in a casual way, as if she were talking to an old friend, not someone she just nearly experienced mutual destruction with.

"You know who I am," replied Magneto between bites and sips. "Feigning ignorance does not become you. Ask questions to which you do not already know the answer, such as why a killer such as yourself wastes away under Xavier's pitiful watch when you clearly could be so much more."

Jade chuckled as she sat opposite him, "so born with it. Gotcha." She opened up a ration pack herself and took a bite. She mulled over his question for a moment before replying, "because they don't see me as a monster. And because I was about to get fired at the hospital when the Prof offered me a job. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. I'd think someone like you would know that concept."

"The hand which feeds me is my own," Magneto retorted with a smirk. "What other excuses for smallness do you tell yourself, I wonder?"

Jade scowled at him before taking a sip of her own water. His question, though, wouldn't leave her. Parts of her rebelled against even entertaining the point behind the question. The hidden parts of her, however did wonder. What did she tell herself indeed?

"Tell me about the Brotherhood?" She asked instead. "I only know of what I'd heard...you seem like a man who would tell the truth, or at the very least less sugar coated lies."

"The Brotherhood is the tip of the spear," Magneto said plainly. "I gathered a following of mutants who would not accept the lot assigned to them. We write our own rules, as we should, since we are avatars of the new age. My goal was always a mutant nation, but needs called for starting small. My Brotherhood served as a strike team against military industrial targets that destabilized the humans' ability to wage war against us. My Brotherhood has expanded into that nation as I've built upon Asteroid M one phase at a time. The Port of Avalon receives more and more mutant migrants every week." He smirked at Jade. "You might even recognize a few. As I recall, you were present when I issued my invitation for the Great Mutant Exodus at your little school."

"I remember," she said with a nod. Jade couldn't deny that what he said was appealing somewhat, because it sounded like mutants were more free to be themselves. While Xavier believed in the better nature of mutants, Magneto seemed to simply believe in mutants. She couldn't deny the appeal of that. Her own anger at the bigotry and abuse she'd suffered as a mutant latched onto those thoughts stronger that she would have liked. "You and the Prof have very different ideas as to how to fight for our kind. Is this why you parted ways? He was too soft for you?"

"We parted ways because he lacked the fortitude to do what must be done," Magneto barked. "Nobody wants to become death, the destroyer of worlds, yet peace is a myth propagated by those already in power. And there is only power. Those who have it must rise to the top, otherwise those who govern will have no choice but to subjugate in order to maintain their rule. It is simply the way of things." Letting out a depressed sigh, he said, "Charles was always too much of an idealist to see that simple truth."

"I suppose you know about that better than most." She'd read about the atrocities of World War 2. About what normal humans did to eachother.

Jade gave a half sigh, half chuckle to herself. She still thought as regular humans as the normal ones. How her perspective shifted and didn't at the same time.

"If you don't know it for yourself, Sanguis, then you had better resign yourself as someone else's servant until you do." Magneto lolled his head back and sighed. "Even Charles is an unwitting pawn of the humans."

"There is still more of them, than there is of us. Regardless of our own power." Jade said, "it's not wise to poke the anthill too much either. He's wise enough to know that." She said and took a sip of the water from her canteen. "But...I can't deny the allure of what you're saying. I...I exsanguinated someone who shot me and healed myself from his blood. In that one moment, I felt powerful, unbeatable." Her expression shifted from enchantment to disgust at herself. "The next...I felt appalled at myself. I should have found a different way to disable him. And yet...having such power over his life was...exhilarating, much as I hate to admit it."

"You are a medical professional," Magneto said. "Have you ever seen anyone reach their fullest potential by hiding from it? Embrace who you are, Sanguis. It is the only way you can truly live. Anything less is death in slow motion."

Jade finished off her ration and gave him a slow not as she listened. She could hear the Professor in her head and his view on the same thing, advocating cooperation, the betterment of mutant kind, control of their abilities, not rocking the boat...submitting oneself as the humans' servant...

Jade sighed. Did Magneto really have a point? "You need to get some more rest before the others return."

"Then go away and leave me be." Magneto closed his eyes and surrendered to his exhaustion.

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