Back to Gatefold#17 - "Civil Unrest - Part V"
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story may contain scenes of graphic violence and sexual situations. It is recommended for mature readers.
In Case You're Just Joining Us: In response to The Fallen Angels' kidnapping of the French prime minister, France sends a fleet of warships armed with nuclear weapons to Genosha. And while their families escape with the help of the mercenary Harriers, the Magistrates begin a suicide run against the mutants of Hammer Bay, forcing Magneto--who has stayed his hand until now--to finally make his presence known.
"Baby got an atom bomb
A twenty-two megaton...
Baby got a master plan
A foolproof master plan"
- Fluke, Atom Bomb
"This had better be important, Harlan. There are people who need our help."
"Won't take long. But this's important too, Delgado. And we figured you'd wanna be in on it."
Harry Delgado followed the wall of muscle and bone that was Harlan Kleinstock into a rickety structure that had once been a Hammer Bay theater--once, that was, before the almost-constant warfare on Genoshan soil had all but leveled the place. It was one of the many buildings that hadn't yet been refurbished since Magneto's rise to power here, and the interior was almost completely black as they entered.
"'We'?" Delgado said, and blinked in surprise as a flame sprang to life nearby. The ball of fire was held in the hand of a smirking red-haired man with a rash of blazing freckles across his face and arms. Harry recognized him, but only vaguely: Seamus something-or-other. Codenamed Backdraft. He'd joined the Acolytes shortly before they'd arrived in Genosha. Harry hadn't had much chance to get to know the kid before Magneto had--
Before he'd disbanded them. Oh hell, Delgado thought.
He was surrounded by former Acolytes, men and women who had literally worshipped Magneto, had been unflinchingly devoted to him, until the man had told them he no longer wished to be worshipped. It had hurt, being cast aside like that, and Delgado knew that some of his former colleagues had let that hurt fester into rage.
"What's going on here?" he asked Kleinstock. The man had stopped and was facing him now.
"We're staging a coup, Delgado," Kleinstock replied mildly.
"What?"
"Magneto has fallen from grace. He's no longer worthy of us--our worship or even our loyalty--so we're going to take this land from him." Harlan smiled, and the dancing firelight made his face look positively sinister. "Welcome to the revolution."
The army of magistrates swept through the streets of Hammer Bay, and mutants died by the dozen as the human wave crashed over them.
The attack had caught them all completely by surprise, coming in the wake of the commerce district bombing and the destruction of the Magda Gardens. (There was also the small matter of that French fleet sailing into the harbor, but most Genoshan mutants didn't know about that yet.) Some of the offense-capable mutants had kept their cool enough to direct their gifts at the humans, but these found out quickly that the magistrates were ready for them.
A woman's scream joined the tumult as she fled from the gunfire. She was silenced when a small sphere, smaller than a cue-ball, struck her in the back and split open, flattening against her spine and sinking hooks and electrodes into her flesh. The impact knocked her off her feet, and she hit the ground hard, skidding to a halt on the tarmac. She was in trouble, dire trouble. Her gift was a benign camouflage, an ability to adopt the color of whatever she was touching and blend in with her surroundings. There wasn't much hope that she hadn't been seen, but she tried to activate her power anyway.
And...nothing.
"Nooo," she moaned, looking at her still flesh-colored hands as tears rolled down her cheeks. A boot landed on her chest and slammed her back down to the ground, driving the hooks and electrodes farther into her back and pulling a tiny scream out of her.
"You've been negated, you fucking genejoke," the magistrate above her said. An odd-looking, long-barreled launcher was slung over one shoulder--apparently the source of the negator device that was inhibiting her at the moment--and an M-16 was in his hands, aimed directly between her eyes.
"Please! I've never harmed you!"
"You stole my home," the magistrate said, and squeezed out a short burst that vaporized the woman's head. The body went limp beneath his foot, and he smelled shit as the corpse's bowels released. Wiping his blood-covered boot off on the woman's blouse, he looked around for another target.
"Oh, you sick fuck!"
The magistrate whirled, bringing the rifle up as he did so. But it was far too late. The M-16 detonated before he'd completed his turn, taking most of his hand with it, and the contents of the magazine went whizzing off in every direction. The rounds chewed him to pieces before he could scream.
Tabitha Smith, sometimes known as Meltdown, stepped around the corner of a nearby building. She approached the dead woman cautiously.
The magistrate was moaning, but it was obvious he wasn't long for this world. Tabby realized that meant that she had killed him, and felt absolutely nothing at the thought, not even exhilaration. She considered the headless corpse of the dead woman for a moment, then turned away from both of them.
She had no idea what she could do to stop this, but she intended to try. She was a Fallen Angel after all, and the Angels were terrorists.
Time to spread a little terror.
Shatterstar emerged into the basement of a Hammer Bay apartment building, pulling himself up the thin ladder despite the line of pain being stitched across his shoulder blades at the exertion. He crawled up onto the basement floor, not bothering to close the cleverly-concealed trap door he'd ascended through, and steadied himself against the wall for a moment.
After a time, he got to his feet and moved toward the stairs. The first floor of the building was as empty as the basement had been, but already he could hear the commotion out in the streets. He set his jaw grimly, feeling his swollen face stretch and twist at the motion, and pushed the door open.
The streets of Hammer Bay were bedlam. Mutants and magistrates alike were dying by gunfire and genetic gifts. Shatterstar's head spun and he put out a hand to brace himself.
What could he do to contain this? Especially in the shape he was in. After that beating Axe had given him...
The next obvious question was, How do I atone for my part in this? But he wasn't ready for that just yet.
Somehow, though his head was still spinning, he managed to pick a familiar face out of the rushing crowd. He descended toward the street, his movements more fluid, more certain, now that he had a clear objective in front of him. One of the silver balls that were flying across the street from magistrate launchers came at him from the right, but he sliced it in half with his sword without even looking at it.
Magistrate Henri Diesing, with his shining metal legs and his roaring assault rifle, never saw Shatterstar coming. 'Star grabbed him by the collar of his black fatigues, and when Diesing swung an elbow at him reflexively, Shatterstar caught it, twisted it down, and pulled the rifle right out of his hand.
"Shatter--?"
That was as far as he got. Shatterstar slammed the butt of the assault rifle into Henri's face. The young man's nose exploded and he crumpled, and Shatterstar proceeded to drag him into a nearby alley, all but unnoticed in the tumult.
From his position high above the burning Magda Gardens, Magneto looked down on his enemies with a mixture of awe and bewilderment.
What could they possibly hope to accomplish with this suicide run? Surely they knew they would never get near him with one of those power negators, and as long as Magneto drew breath, their cause must die stillborn. They had done their damage in quick guerilla assaults against much lesser targets, and in that at least, he had to admit they had been in some small way successful. At least they had survived to tell about it. But this would mean all their deaths. Why?
He tested the ring of stone he had liberated from the earth to act as a firebreak between Avalon Tower and the Gardens, and found it to be sound. It would remain in place without his consciously willing it.
Quickly, Magneto dropped through the smoke towards the ground, prepared to deal with the magistrates' madness once and for all.
The mercenary Harrier known as Piston waved the convoy to a halt, then moved around to the back of the first truck to meet his partner, Ranger. Ranger was sitting on the edge of the truck's apparently empty covered bed, his legs dangling over.
"Any excitement to report?" Piston asked, his heady Russian accent thickening the words.
"Not a bit, hermano. Just like I like it." Ranger got up and slapped a plunger on the interior wall of the truck. The inside of the bed shimmered, and the back wall seemed to leap ten feet forward as the hologram that had been hiding the refugee compartment was deactivated.
Ranger slid back the door, allowing the three-dozen humans packed in back there to come out. Piston moved on to the next truck, and between the two of them, they got all of them emptied in about fifteen minutes.
"Take them to the lift," Piston said, pointing toward the makeshift elevator platform set up at the edge of the cliff face face they were standing on top of. "Tell them to be careful. We already had one man fall today. He was lucky that he did not fall from very high...only broke both his legs."
Ranger nodded, getting the point. He motioned to the refugees and they followed him as Piston swung himself up into the bed of the lead truck, the perch Ranger had inhabited earlier.
The trucks set out again on their way back towards Hammer Bay, there to pick up another load of refugees and bring them back to the cliffs, where they would be launched in boats and, with a little luck and a whole lot of help from the Harriers, reach the southeastern coast of Africa. Where they would be safe from Magneto. In theory, anyway.
The trucks crossed the island without a hitch--most of it was uninhabited, anyway, save for the lands directly around Hammer Bay. But on the way back, they happened to pass through a little town called Lucien's Ford. No one was on the streets, nor had anyone been since the engineering crew that was attempting to reclaim the hamlet had been recalled to Hammer Bay late yesterday. So Piston and the magistrate drivers didn't give the place a second thought.
But the place gave them a second thought.
Cesare Castelletti had the unenviable mutant ability to speak with insects. In fact, a good case could be made that Cesare--squat, big-nosed, and prone to speaking to himself or his insect friends (it was hard to tell which sometimes) in low, conspiratorial tones--actually preferred the company of bugs to those he shared a genus with. The man was just creepy.
He had stayed behind when the rest of the repair crew had been recalled--he doubted his absence had even been noted yet--because of a fascinating palmetto bug that had shared its life story with him in wisps of pheromones and electrical impulses. He'd stayed inside since the others had left, getting to know the bug, and occasionally he would glance out the broken window and see a convoy of trucks going by. And another. And another. And here came the first convoy again, going the other way this time.
It made him suspicious. Creepy and a bit distracted Cesare might have been, but he was not a stupid man. As far as he knew, there was no reason for those trucks to be driving so far west over and over again--hell, Lucien's Ford was supposedly the westernmost settlement of Magneto's Genosha so far. Worse, Cesare didn't recognize the men driving the trucks, nor the assortment of tough-looking men and women that accompanied the empty caravans, always sitting in the bed of the lead truck.
Cesare had held onto a shortwave radio when the others had left, and he got on it now. Someone would want to know about this.
"You must try to see it from a normal human's point of view," the Prime Minister of France said.
"I am a human," Gomi returned.
"But not exactly normal, eh?" The PM was propped up against a plain white wall in a plain white room. Gomi was sitting against the opposite wall, both of them trying not to think about how the air was getting thicker, harder to breathe.
"You must take such things into consideration. Your psychokinetic abilities put you on a level footing with mutants. But others..." The PM sighed. "How old were you when you received your bionic parts?"
"Thirteen."
"So you remember what it was like to be a normal human being."
"Sure, I suppose."
"Imagine for a moment, then, that you are a normal human being again. No extraordinary physical attributes, just a skinny boy with a pet lobster. A normal pet lobster."
"Ooooo-kay."
"Now imagine that two to five percent of the population of your world were suddenly allowed to carry handguns. Not just allowed, but compelled. And no one else is allowed to do likewise. Furthermore, this two to five percent are chosen randomly, given power to end your life with no consideration of their background or their dispositions. And that they all hide the guns, so that you can never tell when you are meeting someone with a gun and someone without."
"That's not even remotely comp--"
"And then imagine," the PM said, talking over him, "that two to five percent of that two to five percent were carrying nuclear devices instead of handguns. Not only can they kill one or two or even ten people, but they can wipe out entire cities. Imagine that for a moment, and tell me honestly whether you would feel safe. If you are honest, the answer is no, and I tell you that fear is what every non-enhanced human in this world lives with every day."
"You're saying registration of mutants in your country is justified."
"No. I am saying it is vital. You do not know the stranger with the concealed handgun, you do not know whether a bad day at work or the end of a relationship will, for him, be cause enough to fire into a crowd. You know literally nothing about him. You don't even know he holds a weapon. And that is the true danger." The PM sighed, rubbed his sweaty face. "I am not a bigot. The majority of my government are not bigots. We understand there are good mutants as well as bad, and that is why we are simply asking for registration. Not confinement, not decreased status. Just registration."
"Registration is decreased status. And besides, the Nazis started out 'just registering' the Jews, you know."
"You are American, yes?"
"Yes. I was until recently anyway."
"Your country insists on Selective Service Registration. Every young man aged 18 or above must register. Not women, only men. Do you suppose then that all of America's men will be moved to concentration camps, perhaps ferried into gas chambers disguised as showers?" Gomi didn't reply. "Please don't insult my intelligence by comparing us to the Nazis. America knows nothing of the Nazis except what they read in books and see in movies."
"That's not true. We've got Hogan's Heroes too."
The PM stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. Then Gomi's face split in a grin, and the old politician broke into laughter. He laughed unfettered for several minutes until his head began to spin, at which time he stopped and knuckled his streaming eyes.
"I wonder if Bill's made it out yet," Gomi said when the laughter had stopped.
"Christ," Rictor said, looking toward the city. "Are those the magistrates?"
"Gotta be," Feral purred beside him. Then she pointed, above the heads of the people fighting in Hammer Bay and out into the harbor. "I'd be more worried about the warships coming into the bay, though."
"Warships?" Rictor demanded, squinting in the direction Feral indicated. He couldn't see anything, but Feral's eyes were a lot better than his. "Are you fucking with me?"
"No." Long pause. "But I could be talked into it."
Rictor scowled, deliberately ignoring the come-on. The two of them had been working to dig through the rubble of the Symkarian Embassy for the last half-hour. He wasn't crazy about having her around--they had some issues he wasn't ready to deal with--but he doubted he could have made the progress he had without her. She could dig faster and better than he could. That didn't make it any easier to deal with her, and he was sure the only reason she was bothering was so she'd have an excuse to be near him.
But...warships? There was only one reason warships would be entering Hammer Bay, and that reason was currently buried beneath this building, probably dead.
"I need to get back to the city," he said abruptly. He looked back toward the rubble, torn for a moment between his duty to Genosha and his uncertainty about the French prime minister's fate. Duty won out, and he started to move down the slope of debris.
Feral's lithe, strong hand shot out and grabbed his arm. Rictor looked around at her. "What?"
"You need to get back to the city?" she demanded, cat-eyes narrowed in anger. "What about me?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" He wrenched his arm free. "You're a grown-up, Feral. If you want to come along, let's go."
"You been treating me like I'm barely there for weeks now," she growled. Her tail whipped in agitation, but her voice was steady and low. Dangerous.
"Feral...look, can we deal with this when the country isn't being invaded?"
"No. We'll deal with it now." Her hands were curled, and her claws were extended from her fingertips. Rictor looked at them, then looked back up into her eyes.
"What, are you gonna gut me now?" Feral didn't say anything. "What do you want me to say, Feral? You want me to say you were the best I ever had and I haven't stopped thinking about you since?"
"You stupid, self-centered asshole," Feral growled. "We had a good time, Ric. We got drunk and fucked. And that was it. I fucked you 'cause I liked you, not because I wanted you to love me, or any bullshit like that. I didn't want anything from you after--except maybe for you to not treat me like the ugly fat chick you were afraid to tell your friends you got it on with." She stood up straight, looking less like a cat than she had in months. "That what you think, Ric? You think I'm ugly? Or maybe you're just ashamed you fucked something you think of as an animal."
Rictor opened his mouth to reply--not sure what he was going to say, given that everything Feral had just said to him was true--but he was saved by the sound of shifting rubble behind the cat-woman. Feral whirled, dropping back into a more cat-like stance as she did so, and both of them watched as a chunk of the embassy's ceiling shifted aside and an angry blue shape climbed out of it.
"Bill?" Rictor moved around Feral, stepping carefully over the debris until he reached the lobster. "What the hell were you doing down there?"
Bill looked righteously pissed. His large eyes narrowed, he slapped both claws atop the rubble, then turned and pointed with them down the tunnel he'd just emerged from.
"It's like Nick at Nite," Feral said at Rictor's elbow. Then, to the lobster, "What is it Lassie? Is Billy trapped down the well?"
"I think Gomi's down there with the PM," Rictor said. "Why the hell else would Bill have been down there? Didn't he say something about Magneto making him homo sapien liaison to his Cabinet?"
"Like I ever listen to that creepy little gnome..."
"He might have been down talking to the PM--shit, c'mon Bill. Show us where to dig."
He did, and, putting their differences aside for the moment, the three of them began to make short work of the debris.
"You will explain everything to me immediately, or I will hurt you very badly for a very long time. And then you will explain everything to me anyway."
Those words were the first things Henri Diesing heard as he swam up from unconsciousness. The first thing he saw was an injured face that he only vaguely recognized beneath all the blood and the swelling. The owner of the face had the tip of a sword pressed into Henri's throat.
"Shatterstar," Henri choked.
Shatterstar grunted. The two of them were in a dark, narrow alley between two buildings that had been gutted by fire months ago. The stink of ash, soot, and garbage was nearly overpowering, but in Henri's case it only served to bring him back to his senses more quickly.
"I...I didn't want to leave you with that mercenary--" Henri began.
"Shut up," Shatterstar replied, pushing the sword farther into Henri's throat, drawing blood this time. "I'm not interested in your rationalizations and excuses. I want to know what is happening here."
"We...we told you the truth..."
Shatterstar's eyebrows went up. "Really? I don't recall the part about you killing every mutant in Genosha."
"That's...just part of the plan. We needed to ensure that...our families...would be able to escape. So while they're loading onto the boats..."
"You and the rest of the surviving magistrates are keeping Magneto busy," Shatterstar nodded. "Too busy to look to the west, at any rate. Clever." He thought about the little girl, Caroline, and was satisfied that she at least was safe.
"And...we'll do as much damage to Magneto...as we can."
"A mass suicide run." Shatterstar shook his head. "And the mercenaries?"
"They helped plan the evac...and supplied us with the bombs to level Hammer Bay...before the attack."
"So you didn't lie to me. You told me just enough of the truth so I would feel compelled to help you." He stood and yanked the young magistrate to his metal feet. "Let's go."
"Where?" Henri asked as the mutant pushed him toward the mouth of the alley. The fighting out there had tapered off as it moved further inland.
"We are going to stop this."
"How? Do you think Magneto will accept a surrender? He'll simply kill us all. Better to go down fighting than to lie down and die."
Shatterstar didn't reply immediately, and when he did, he seemed to have changed the subject. "That story you told me when we first met...the one about all the magistrate children disappearing. Was that a lie?"
Diesing shook his head as they emerged into the street. "No."
"And your brother?"
"Was one of th--"
A bolt of lightning flashed vertically across the street and struck Henri hard enough to send him flying down the sidewalk. He screamed in agony, even as he was still flying through the air, but the scream didn't last very long. By the time his scorched form struck the sidewalk, the metal legs popping off the end of blackened thigh stumps, Shatterstar could see that the man was dead.
"Got one!" a new voice trumpeted, high-pitched and gleeful. Shatterstar whirled toward it, fire and hatred in his eyes, and saw a mutant male with blue lightning dancing over his extended palm. Electricity arced between the spikes of dirty blonde hair on his head. He was maybe sixteen years old.
"You fool!" Shatterstar said, and leapt at him.
The woman strode through the overcrowded hospital ward, head high and bearing confident. She seemed to know where she was going and what she was supposed to be doing, so those in charge who didn't know her simply let her go on her way unchallenged. Those who did know her did the same, but cut her a wide berth as they did it. With the explosions and the fighting still going on right outside their door, they all had more immediate things to worry about anyway.
She moved far back into the ward, where the most stable patients had been shunted to make way for the ones that still needed attention, finally coming to a halt in front of a particular bed. The bed was occupied by a young Argentinean man who happened to be unconscious at that moment.
"I never liked you, DaCosta," Carmella Unuscione intoned. "Even when you were with Xavier, I never liked you."
Psionic energy, tinted an emerald green, flickered to life over Unuscione's smooth skin, forming a blocky armor around her. She extended her arm, and the armor stretched until its hand had wrapped around Roberto DaCosta's throat. "Wake up, you little bastard. I want you to hear this."
Roberto's eyes flickered open, and he began to groan at the pain in his broken arm and ribs. Carmella squeezed with her armor, and his eyes bulged as the pressure closed his windpipe.
"You shouldn't have left Xavier's," Carmella said. "Shouldn't have come here and tried to be something you weren't. You've caused more trouble than the X-Men ever did, made Magneto think he could be something other than what he is. Made him cast aside those who <i>truly</i> believed in him."
Roberto clutched at the armored hand with his uninjured arm. She was allowing him enough air to keep him conscious, but not enough to cry out for help. He tried to summon his powers, to blast the bitch with solar energy, but they'd given him too many drugs for the pain--he couldn't focus--and it had been too long since he'd been in direct sunlight anyway.
"He--he won't...allow...this..." he managed to croak out, his fingers falling feebly to his side.
"He doesn't have any say in it," Unuscione replied. "After I get done with you, we're going to dispose of Lord Magneto. He's fallen too far, compromised his ideals too fully. We should have realized it the moment he recruited you Fallen Angels--even the name he gave you was a clue. No...he's far more use to mutantkind as a martyr than a leader."
"You can't...beat...him..."
"Oh yes we can." Carmella grinned, and the expression made her look eerily like a wolf. "With a little help from some suicidal magistrates we can. But enough of that, Roberto. Time to go to sleep. And don't worry...the rest of your buddies will be joining you soon enough."
Carmella began to squeeze, and Roberto first felt his windpipe close, and then his spine begin to creak with the applied pressure. He choked, clutched at the hand again, reached deep down into himself for reserves of power he hadn't tapped yet...but there wasn't enough there. He was done, and all he could think was what a stupid way to die this was.
And then, miraculously, the pressure was gone. Roberto dropped back down to his pillow, gasping in precious oxygen, barely aware of the dumbfounded expression on Unuscione's face as she looked at her suddenly bare arms and hands.
"What the--?" Unuscione said, her powers utterly and completely vanished.
"Fucking bitch!"
Carmella turned, and saw a young Oriental girl in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, boyish in appearance, racing toward her down the aisle between the beds. She turned to meet the charge, but it was too little too late.
Chance's foot swung up and connected with Carmella's pubic bone, producing a terribly final thud on impact.
armella's eyes bulged, she went up on her toes, and then she crumpled.
Chance was there to catch her. The girl was small, but her muscles were wiry and strong. She caught Carmella by the shirt just long enough to punch her in the face with her free hand, and then let the former Acolyte fall the rest of the way to the floor.
"You're pretty hot shit with that force field of yours, but without it..." Chance kicked Carmella's kneeling form over and spit on her. "Without it, you wouldn't last a minute on Yancy Street, bitch. Hell, you wouldn't last that long on fucking Sesame Street.
"Time to go Bobby." Chance moved up the side of the bed and yanked out the IV stuck in Roberto's arm. "You're lucky I came to check on you after ferrying some wounded here in the shuttle."
"Chance," he gasped as she helped him to his feet. "Chance...we have to..."
"Take away that bitch's powers and kick her in the uterus? I already did."
"No..." He was on his feet now, his head actually beginning to clear just a little bit after a brief but violent headrush. "We...we have to find Magneto. The Acolytes...they're staging a coup. I think they made...made a deal with the magistrates."
Chance looked at him as they began to hobble up the aisle together, leaving Carmella all but forgotten behind them. "Jesus," she said finally. "The fun never stops in this country does it?"
Together, they headed outside and moved quickly toward the shuttle.
"Revolution?" Delgado demanded, looking at the faces gathered around him. "Are you all crazy? Or just stupid?"
"None of the above," the kid with the fire in his palm, Backdraft, said. Delgado put a hand up in his face.
"Don't speak unless spoken to, Opie. Leave it to the grown-ups. Kleinstock, I'm talking to you."
"Magneto is...confused, Harry. You've gotta admit that you've noticed it too. Why wasn't he down in the streets the second the bombs started going off? Hell, why did he let the bombs go off at all? Why hasn't he flushed the magistrates out like rats before now?"
"He's just a man, Kleinstock, a man I almost died for when Asteroid M burned up. No matter how much we want him to be more."
"Want nothing," Harlan spat, swiping a hand through the air. "He has to be more. And if he can't be...we'll make him more. We'll make him a martyr."
Delgado was quiet for a moment, silently weighing his chances of getting out of this building in one piece. His powers were formidable, but he estimated nearly two dozen Acolytes hanging back in the shadows. He needed to stall, give himself time to think.
"This was Unuscione's idea, wasn't it?"
Kleinstock shrugged. "Sure, Carmella got the ball rollin', but she wasn't preaching nothin' all of us haven't been thinkin'."
"You realize you're starting to sound like Cortez."
Kleinstock's face darkened. "Fuck you, Delgado. Fabian Cortez was a weasel, and if I ever get my hands on him, I'm going to wring his scrawny weasel neck. Now are you in or are you out?"
"How do you plan to put down L--Magneto? He could fart and kill us all."
"You remember how the top few floors of Avalon were blown off a few months ago?" Delgado nodded. "We found out why. We found out he's got a machine up there for transferring power from one magnetically-charged mutant to another. We got...specialists who say they can use it to remove his powers again."
"Specialists? Who?"
Kleinstock was quiet for a moment, and Delgado sensed a shifting in the crowd surrounding them. An impatient shifting.
"Carmella cut a deal with the magistrates."
"What?"
"They're going to help us take out Magneto, and then it's going to be us versus them. Shouldn't take too long once Mags is out of the picture."
Delgado's jaw was hanging open. With an effort, he managed to close it. "I take it back," he said slowly. "You're worse than Cortez ever was."
"Is that your final decision?"
"Did Carmella help them plant those fucking bombs, Harlan? Is she responsible for all the carnage out there? Was that part of the deal with the humans?" Harlan stared at him in silence--but silence was all the answer Delgado needed. "She did. Jesus Christ..."
"We'll squash them once Magneto's done."
"And in the meantime innocent mutants who don't want anything to do with your bullshit, who just wanted to live somewhere safe, are dying! No. I can't be a part of this." He turned to take in the crowd. "And any of you that are were never really with us in the first place. Do you understand? You're killing mutants! That is the one thing Magneto and the Acolytes never wanted!"
Kleinstock nodded. "Guess you're free to go then."
Delgado's eyes narrowed as he turned back toward the ringleader. "That's it? I can just walk out of here knowing what I know?" He shook his head. "I'm not stupid Kleinstock, and I'm not turning my back on you so you can see where to put the knife."
The Acolytes didn't even wait for the order from Kleinstock, they just surged forward, with redheaded, freckled Backdraft leading the charge. Delgado activated his gift, leaping instantly to a height of sixteen feet. He swept the first wave of Acolytes aside, but then there was a <i>whip-crack,</i> and Senyaka's burning whip was encircling his throat. Delgado cried out, reaching for it, wrapping his fingers around it before it could tighten, and that left his abdomen open for a strike from Kleinstock. Delgado doubled over, head swimming as the air tried to erupt from his lungs. He felt flame cascade over him, and even though he was more durable at this height, he began to burn.
"Enough," Kleinstock said, and Backdraft and another Acolyte named Plasmar ceased their barrage. Senyaka retracted his whip, and Delgado fell flat on his belly on the floor. His skin was blackened, and his labored breathing sounded like air passing through broken glass.
"Shoulda gone with the winning team, Delgado. I didn't wanna have to do this to you."
Delgado stopped moaning for a moment and said something, his breath stirring the dust on the auditorium floor.
"What's that?" Kleinstock said, looming over. "Is that a, 'You're right, Harlan'? Cause I gotta tell ya, Harry. I ain't interested in nothin' else."
Delgado pulled in another raspy breath, and said, a bit louder this time, "Suck it, fatboy."
Kleinstock shook his head and, without a word, reached down and put his hands on either side of Delgado's head. The smaller man tried to struggle, tried to grow again, but when the cooked skin on his face peeled away with Harlan's insistent fingers, all he could think to do was scream.
So Harlan snapped his neck.
Kleinstock straightened, wiping his ash- and blood-covered hands on his trousers. Backdraft had a light going in his palm again, and Harlan looked out over the faces gathered here. One or two of them looked unsettled by what had just happened, but most seemed satisfied. And not one of them looked mutinous. Good, good.
"Okay then," he began. "The magistrates are attacking the city right now. We meet up with Carmella near Avalon, and get set up to bust Magneto's head open as soon as they got their doohickey finished. Nobody's gonna be able to stop us with all the chaos out there. Not Magneto's Fallen Angels, not Voght, and not--"
"I'm your huckleberry."
Harlan turned at the sound of the new voice. Feminine, unfamiliar, it had come from the stage. He gestured at Backdraft and the kid's flame leapt higher and brighter, revealing a white-haired woman leaning against the proscenium arch. She was wearing bright red sunglasses, even though it was pitch-black in here without Backdraft's light.
"Who the hell are you?" Harlan demanded. "And what did you say?"
"I'm your huckleberry," the woman said. She levitated over the orchestra pit and dropped down in front of the first row of seats. "You know, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday? Tell me somebody in this dump has seen Tombstone."
"What do you want?" Kleinstock asked, wondering how much the woman had heard and how long it would take to kill her.
"I want lots of explosions and violence and death. But something tells me, if you morons were in charge, the party would be over in about a week. Besides, I can't let you do what you say you're gonna do to Mags. He acts like he's got something cold and uncomfortably large up his ass, sure, but he's kinda sexy too. Makes me want to call him daddy." She began moving up the aisle, slowly, sure of herself. "You guys I think I'll just call 'mud'."
"You can't let us," Harlan said slowly. Of course it was possible she was powerful enough to take them all on...but likely? No, if she was packing that sort of firepower, and lived on this island, Harlan would know about her. It was a bluff, had to be.
"I'm not bluffing," she said, as if she'd read his mind, and blue-white electricity pulsed out from her in a wave, hurling the chairs around her aside and blasting every single one of the Acolytes back toward the back of the auditorium. Before they could get up and return fire, she said,
"My name's Siena Blaze. And I'm the one who blew up Mother of Hope, boys and girls, the one who killed all of your friends. So bring it."
And, moving as one, the Acolytes did just that.
"Are you sure?" Amelia Voght demanded.
"Yes, ma'am," the mutant nodded stiffly. "Castalletti doesn't like talkin' to people, so he wouldn't have called unless he was sure somethin' was going on."
Amelia turned from the man and looked out at the violence rushing over Hammer Bay. She'd done her best to disrupt the attacks where she could, but those damn negator pack launchers were taking out mutants left and right, and there were just too many for Amelia to handle by herself. Magneto was making quick work of any he engaged, of course, but there were so many...
And now this business with the convoys passing through Lucien's Ford. They simply couldn't afford to send anyone to check it out. Besides, there had to be some sort of misunderstanding. After all, the magistrates were all here...
Blink.
Or were they?
"Get me a map," she told the man who'd reported this to her. "I want to see where these convoys might be headed. And then get a few mutants together--four or five Beta-levels ought to do it."
"Ma'am...is that--not meaning to question you, ma'am, but is that wise? With all the trouble here, I mean."
"If we play our cards right, this might be just what we need to finish this. Now get going. We don't have much time."
Magneto crushed a squad of magistrates with the wall of a condemned factory. He lifted ten more by the iron in their blood and hurled them into the ocean. He tore the very street they walked on down the middle and watched twenty more plummet to their deaths in the resulting chasm.
And still they kept coming.
Their numbers were finite, Magneto knew this, but he realized now that he'd never had any true concept of just how many magistrates remained in Genosha. And while he could kill them all in time, he couldn't kill them all at once. So his people kept dying while he tore the enemy to pieces as fast as he could.
A negator sphere erupted against his personal force field while he battered a trio of humans to death with their own guns, and he turned toward its source. A trembling young man stared wide-eyed at him, nearly dropping his launcher in his hurry to get it back on his shoulder so he could lift his rifle.
It wouldn't have done him any good, but Magneto didn't give him the chance anyway. He gestured, and the man lifted into the air and hurtled across the street, coming to a dead halt within three feet of the Lord of Genosha. Magneto considered him.
"You will tell me who helped you engineer this assault," Magneto said. "You will tell me who betrayed me."
"Fu-fuck you, you mon-graaahhh!"
"I don't have time for your posturing, human," Magneto said as blood began to stream from the open fracture he'd just created in the man's upper arm. "You will tell me immediately, or I will work my way through all 216 bones in your throwback's body. That I have time for."
"I--I don't know wha-kkkkaaaa!"
"Again," he said, outwardly unmindful of the matching fracture he'd created in the other arm. "Who was it?"
"H-h-him..." the man said, his head lolling to the side.
"Who are you...?" Magneto began, but his question was answered as he looked in the direction the magistrate's head had fallen. A block away, in an area the fighting had moved away from, were two mutants who seemed to be in the process of killing each other. They were both his people, but Magneto only recognized the one who wasn't bleeding electric current over the street.
"Shatterstar," he said, all the pieces coming together in a satisfying flash of insight that nearly took his breath away.
"Thank you," he said to the moaning magistrate, and then he hurled him far away, somewhere over the buildings, forgetting him as soon as he was out of sight.
"Hey! What's--oof--what's your problem, man?"
"That man was a friend!" Shatterstar insisted, driving his fist into the boy's face, enjoying the feeling of breaking teeth even though he got a mild electrical jolt for his troubles. The kid opened his mouth to spit out blood that was blue-white, and his mouth was full of arcing electrical current.
"Oh, man...you shouldn't have done that," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. "Shouldn't have laid hands on The Bomb. The Bomb is now obliged to kick your ponytail-wearing ass!"
Lightning flew from the man's fingertips, and Shatterstar danced over it with ease, feeling his aching muscles beginning to loosen up. He rolled across a clear portion of pavement, slipping his swords back into their scabbards, and neatly swept the kid's feet out from under him.
"People who speak in the third person are boring," Shatterstar opined, and kicked the kid across the forehead, the rubber in his soles protecting him from any further shock. The blow put the kid to sleep, and Shatterstar was turning away from him--wondering what on Earth he could do to stop all this without Diesing's help--when a new voice, a familiar one, trumpeted behind him.
"Shatterstar!"
He turned...and magnetic lines of force seized him by the blood and yanked him straight upward, over the streets and above the buildings, until he was hovering with arms spread outward in front of his captor.
"Shatterstar," said Magneto, "we need to talk."
"What the hell is Magneto doing?" Rictor asked.
Feral looked up. They'd managed to dig an angled shaft nearly fifteen feet long, Bill working like a demon while Feral cleared away his rubble and Rictor used gentle seismic waves to set the walls together more firmly. They figured if they could just get down into the first basement, they could punch through the floor to the sub-basement with little trouble.
The way the shaft was angled, they could see out over Hammer Bay, and it was in this direction Rictor was looking now.
"Who fucking cares, Ric? Let's handle one thing at a time, huh?"
Rictor didn't reply, just squinted off into the distance. After a moment, his eyes went wide. "Feral, get up here. I need your eyes."
If she'd been a little less pissed at him, Feral might have admitted to herself that it was nice to hear him say he needed her, in any capacity. Hell, maybe she was a little hung-up on him. She wasn't about to let him know that though.
"I'm busy."
"Feral, I think he's killing Shatterstar."
That got her attention. She turned and, grumbling all the way, moved up the shaft, leaving Bill to make his mess, and looked out across the city.
"Yeah," she nodded, her eyes narrow and puzzled. "That's 'Star. Hey, where you going!"
Without a word, Rictor had begun to move down the slope, toward the street. "I've got to see what the hell's going on up there."
"What about Gomi and the PM?"
But Rictor didn't reply. He was already jogging toward the city, toward whatever the hell was going on between Magneto and Shatterstar.
"I knew it," she groaned. "He's gay. I fucking knew it." She looked down the shaft, where Bill was making good progress all by his lonesome.
With a shrug, she set off after Rictor.
In Case You're Just Joining Us: In response to The Fallen Angels' kidnapping of the French prime minister, France sends a fleet of warships armed with nuclear weapons to Genosha. And while their families escape with the help of the mercenary Harriers, the Magistrates begin a suicide run against the mutants of Hammer Bay, forcing Magneto--who has stayed his hand until now--to finally make his presence known.
"Baby got an atom bomb
A twenty-two megaton...
Baby got a master plan
A foolproof master plan"
- Fluke, Atom Bomb
"This had better be important, Harlan. There are people who need our help."
"Won't take long. But this's important too, Delgado. And we figured you'd wanna be in on it."
Harry Delgado followed the wall of muscle and bone that was Harlan Kleinstock into a rickety structure that had once been a Hammer Bay theater--once, that was, before the almost-constant warfare on Genoshan soil had all but leveled the place. It was one of the many buildings that hadn't yet been refurbished since Magneto's rise to power here, and the interior was almost completely black as they entered.
"'We'?" Delgado said, and blinked in surprise as a flame sprang to life nearby. The ball of fire was held in the hand of a smirking red-haired man with a rash of blazing freckles across his face and arms. Harry recognized him, but only vaguely: Seamus something-or-other. Codenamed Backdraft. He'd joined the Acolytes shortly before they'd arrived in Genosha. Harry hadn't had much chance to get to know the kid before Magneto had--
Before he'd disbanded them. Oh hell, Delgado thought.
He was surrounded by former Acolytes, men and women who had literally worshipped Magneto, had been unflinchingly devoted to him, until the man had told them he no longer wished to be worshipped. It had hurt, being cast aside like that, and Delgado knew that some of his former colleagues had let that hurt fester into rage.
"What's going on here?" he asked Kleinstock. The man had stopped and was facing him now.
"We're staging a coup, Delgado," Kleinstock replied mildly.
"What?"
"Magneto has fallen from grace. He's no longer worthy of us--our worship or even our loyalty--so we're going to take this land from him." Harlan smiled, and the dancing firelight made his face look positively sinister. "Welcome to the revolution."
The army of magistrates swept through the streets of Hammer Bay, and mutants died by the dozen as the human wave crashed over them.
The attack had caught them all completely by surprise, coming in the wake of the commerce district bombing and the destruction of the Magda Gardens. (There was also the small matter of that French fleet sailing into the harbor, but most Genoshan mutants didn't know about that yet.) Some of the offense-capable mutants had kept their cool enough to direct their gifts at the humans, but these found out quickly that the magistrates were ready for them.
A woman's scream joined the tumult as she fled from the gunfire. She was silenced when a small sphere, smaller than a cue-ball, struck her in the back and split open, flattening against her spine and sinking hooks and electrodes into her flesh. The impact knocked her off her feet, and she hit the ground hard, skidding to a halt on the tarmac. She was in trouble, dire trouble. Her gift was a benign camouflage, an ability to adopt the color of whatever she was touching and blend in with her surroundings. There wasn't much hope that she hadn't been seen, but she tried to activate her power anyway.
And...nothing.
"Nooo," she moaned, looking at her still flesh-colored hands as tears rolled down her cheeks. A boot landed on her chest and slammed her back down to the ground, driving the hooks and electrodes farther into her back and pulling a tiny scream out of her.
"You've been negated, you fucking genejoke," the magistrate above her said. An odd-looking, long-barreled launcher was slung over one shoulder--apparently the source of the negator device that was inhibiting her at the moment--and an M-16 was in his hands, aimed directly between her eyes.
"Please! I've never harmed you!"
"You stole my home," the magistrate said, and squeezed out a short burst that vaporized the woman's head. The body went limp beneath his foot, and he smelled shit as the corpse's bowels released. Wiping his blood-covered boot off on the woman's blouse, he looked around for another target.
"Oh, you sick fuck!"
The magistrate whirled, bringing the rifle up as he did so. But it was far too late. The M-16 detonated before he'd completed his turn, taking most of his hand with it, and the contents of the magazine went whizzing off in every direction. The rounds chewed him to pieces before he could scream.
Tabitha Smith, sometimes known as Meltdown, stepped around the corner of a nearby building. She approached the dead woman cautiously.
The magistrate was moaning, but it was obvious he wasn't long for this world. Tabby realized that meant that she had killed him, and felt absolutely nothing at the thought, not even exhilaration. She considered the headless corpse of the dead woman for a moment, then turned away from both of them.
She had no idea what she could do to stop this, but she intended to try. She was a Fallen Angel after all, and the Angels were terrorists.
Time to spread a little terror.
Shatterstar emerged into the basement of a Hammer Bay apartment building, pulling himself up the thin ladder despite the line of pain being stitched across his shoulder blades at the exertion. He crawled up onto the basement floor, not bothering to close the cleverly-concealed trap door he'd ascended through, and steadied himself against the wall for a moment.
After a time, he got to his feet and moved toward the stairs. The first floor of the building was as empty as the basement had been, but already he could hear the commotion out in the streets. He set his jaw grimly, feeling his swollen face stretch and twist at the motion, and pushed the door open.
The streets of Hammer Bay were bedlam. Mutants and magistrates alike were dying by gunfire and genetic gifts. Shatterstar's head spun and he put out a hand to brace himself.
What could he do to contain this? Especially in the shape he was in. After that beating Axe had given him...
The next obvious question was, How do I atone for my part in this? But he wasn't ready for that just yet.
Somehow, though his head was still spinning, he managed to pick a familiar face out of the rushing crowd. He descended toward the street, his movements more fluid, more certain, now that he had a clear objective in front of him. One of the silver balls that were flying across the street from magistrate launchers came at him from the right, but he sliced it in half with his sword without even looking at it.
Magistrate Henri Diesing, with his shining metal legs and his roaring assault rifle, never saw Shatterstar coming. 'Star grabbed him by the collar of his black fatigues, and when Diesing swung an elbow at him reflexively, Shatterstar caught it, twisted it down, and pulled the rifle right out of his hand.
"Shatter--?"
That was as far as he got. Shatterstar slammed the butt of the assault rifle into Henri's face. The young man's nose exploded and he crumpled, and Shatterstar proceeded to drag him into a nearby alley, all but unnoticed in the tumult.
From his position high above the burning Magda Gardens, Magneto looked down on his enemies with a mixture of awe and bewilderment.
What could they possibly hope to accomplish with this suicide run? Surely they knew they would never get near him with one of those power negators, and as long as Magneto drew breath, their cause must die stillborn. They had done their damage in quick guerilla assaults against much lesser targets, and in that at least, he had to admit they had been in some small way successful. At least they had survived to tell about it. But this would mean all their deaths. Why?
He tested the ring of stone he had liberated from the earth to act as a firebreak between Avalon Tower and the Gardens, and found it to be sound. It would remain in place without his consciously willing it.
Quickly, Magneto dropped through the smoke towards the ground, prepared to deal with the magistrates' madness once and for all.
The mercenary Harrier known as Piston waved the convoy to a halt, then moved around to the back of the first truck to meet his partner, Ranger. Ranger was sitting on the edge of the truck's apparently empty covered bed, his legs dangling over.
"Any excitement to report?" Piston asked, his heady Russian accent thickening the words.
"Not a bit, hermano. Just like I like it." Ranger got up and slapped a plunger on the interior wall of the truck. The inside of the bed shimmered, and the back wall seemed to leap ten feet forward as the hologram that had been hiding the refugee compartment was deactivated.
Ranger slid back the door, allowing the three-dozen humans packed in back there to come out. Piston moved on to the next truck, and between the two of them, they got all of them emptied in about fifteen minutes.
"Take them to the lift," Piston said, pointing toward the makeshift elevator platform set up at the edge of the cliff face face they were standing on top of. "Tell them to be careful. We already had one man fall today. He was lucky that he did not fall from very high...only broke both his legs."
Ranger nodded, getting the point. He motioned to the refugees and they followed him as Piston swung himself up into the bed of the lead truck, the perch Ranger had inhabited earlier.
The trucks set out again on their way back towards Hammer Bay, there to pick up another load of refugees and bring them back to the cliffs, where they would be launched in boats and, with a little luck and a whole lot of help from the Harriers, reach the southeastern coast of Africa. Where they would be safe from Magneto. In theory, anyway.
The trucks crossed the island without a hitch--most of it was uninhabited, anyway, save for the lands directly around Hammer Bay. But on the way back, they happened to pass through a little town called Lucien's Ford. No one was on the streets, nor had anyone been since the engineering crew that was attempting to reclaim the hamlet had been recalled to Hammer Bay late yesterday. So Piston and the magistrate drivers didn't give the place a second thought.
But the place gave them a second thought.
Cesare Castelletti had the unenviable mutant ability to speak with insects. In fact, a good case could be made that Cesare--squat, big-nosed, and prone to speaking to himself or his insect friends (it was hard to tell which sometimes) in low, conspiratorial tones--actually preferred the company of bugs to those he shared a genus with. The man was just creepy.
He had stayed behind when the rest of the repair crew had been recalled--he doubted his absence had even been noted yet--because of a fascinating palmetto bug that had shared its life story with him in wisps of pheromones and electrical impulses. He'd stayed inside since the others had left, getting to know the bug, and occasionally he would glance out the broken window and see a convoy of trucks going by. And another. And another. And here came the first convoy again, going the other way this time.
It made him suspicious. Creepy and a bit distracted Cesare might have been, but he was not a stupid man. As far as he knew, there was no reason for those trucks to be driving so far west over and over again--hell, Lucien's Ford was supposedly the westernmost settlement of Magneto's Genosha so far. Worse, Cesare didn't recognize the men driving the trucks, nor the assortment of tough-looking men and women that accompanied the empty caravans, always sitting in the bed of the lead truck.
Cesare had held onto a shortwave radio when the others had left, and he got on it now. Someone would want to know about this.
"You must try to see it from a normal human's point of view," the Prime Minister of France said.
"I am a human," Gomi returned.
"But not exactly normal, eh?" The PM was propped up against a plain white wall in a plain white room. Gomi was sitting against the opposite wall, both of them trying not to think about how the air was getting thicker, harder to breathe.
"You must take such things into consideration. Your psychokinetic abilities put you on a level footing with mutants. But others..." The PM sighed. "How old were you when you received your bionic parts?"
"Thirteen."
"So you remember what it was like to be a normal human being."
"Sure, I suppose."
"Imagine for a moment, then, that you are a normal human being again. No extraordinary physical attributes, just a skinny boy with a pet lobster. A normal pet lobster."
"Ooooo-kay."
"Now imagine that two to five percent of the population of your world were suddenly allowed to carry handguns. Not just allowed, but compelled. And no one else is allowed to do likewise. Furthermore, this two to five percent are chosen randomly, given power to end your life with no consideration of their background or their dispositions. And that they all hide the guns, so that you can never tell when you are meeting someone with a gun and someone without."
"That's not even remotely comp--"
"And then imagine," the PM said, talking over him, "that two to five percent of that two to five percent were carrying nuclear devices instead of handguns. Not only can they kill one or two or even ten people, but they can wipe out entire cities. Imagine that for a moment, and tell me honestly whether you would feel safe. If you are honest, the answer is no, and I tell you that fear is what every non-enhanced human in this world lives with every day."
"You're saying registration of mutants in your country is justified."
"No. I am saying it is vital. You do not know the stranger with the concealed handgun, you do not know whether a bad day at work or the end of a relationship will, for him, be cause enough to fire into a crowd. You know literally nothing about him. You don't even know he holds a weapon. And that is the true danger." The PM sighed, rubbed his sweaty face. "I am not a bigot. The majority of my government are not bigots. We understand there are good mutants as well as bad, and that is why we are simply asking for registration. Not confinement, not decreased status. Just registration."
"Registration is decreased status. And besides, the Nazis started out 'just registering' the Jews, you know."
"You are American, yes?"
"Yes. I was until recently anyway."
"Your country insists on Selective Service Registration. Every young man aged 18 or above must register. Not women, only men. Do you suppose then that all of America's men will be moved to concentration camps, perhaps ferried into gas chambers disguised as showers?" Gomi didn't reply. "Please don't insult my intelligence by comparing us to the Nazis. America knows nothing of the Nazis except what they read in books and see in movies."
"That's not true. We've got Hogan's Heroes too."
The PM stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. Then Gomi's face split in a grin, and the old politician broke into laughter. He laughed unfettered for several minutes until his head began to spin, at which time he stopped and knuckled his streaming eyes.
"I wonder if Bill's made it out yet," Gomi said when the laughter had stopped.
"Christ," Rictor said, looking toward the city. "Are those the magistrates?"
"Gotta be," Feral purred beside him. Then she pointed, above the heads of the people fighting in Hammer Bay and out into the harbor. "I'd be more worried about the warships coming into the bay, though."
"Warships?" Rictor demanded, squinting in the direction Feral indicated. He couldn't see anything, but Feral's eyes were a lot better than his. "Are you fucking with me?"
"No." Long pause. "But I could be talked into it."
Rictor scowled, deliberately ignoring the come-on. The two of them had been working to dig through the rubble of the Symkarian Embassy for the last half-hour. He wasn't crazy about having her around--they had some issues he wasn't ready to deal with--but he doubted he could have made the progress he had without her. She could dig faster and better than he could. That didn't make it any easier to deal with her, and he was sure the only reason she was bothering was so she'd have an excuse to be near him.
But...warships? There was only one reason warships would be entering Hammer Bay, and that reason was currently buried beneath this building, probably dead.
"I need to get back to the city," he said abruptly. He looked back toward the rubble, torn for a moment between his duty to Genosha and his uncertainty about the French prime minister's fate. Duty won out, and he started to move down the slope of debris.
Feral's lithe, strong hand shot out and grabbed his arm. Rictor looked around at her. "What?"
"You need to get back to the city?" she demanded, cat-eyes narrowed in anger. "What about me?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" He wrenched his arm free. "You're a grown-up, Feral. If you want to come along, let's go."
"You been treating me like I'm barely there for weeks now," she growled. Her tail whipped in agitation, but her voice was steady and low. Dangerous.
"Feral...look, can we deal with this when the country isn't being invaded?"
"No. We'll deal with it now." Her hands were curled, and her claws were extended from her fingertips. Rictor looked at them, then looked back up into her eyes.
"What, are you gonna gut me now?" Feral didn't say anything. "What do you want me to say, Feral? You want me to say you were the best I ever had and I haven't stopped thinking about you since?"
"You stupid, self-centered asshole," Feral growled. "We had a good time, Ric. We got drunk and fucked. And that was it. I fucked you 'cause I liked you, not because I wanted you to love me, or any bullshit like that. I didn't want anything from you after--except maybe for you to not treat me like the ugly fat chick you were afraid to tell your friends you got it on with." She stood up straight, looking less like a cat than she had in months. "That what you think, Ric? You think I'm ugly? Or maybe you're just ashamed you fucked something you think of as an animal."
Rictor opened his mouth to reply--not sure what he was going to say, given that everything Feral had just said to him was true--but he was saved by the sound of shifting rubble behind the cat-woman. Feral whirled, dropping back into a more cat-like stance as she did so, and both of them watched as a chunk of the embassy's ceiling shifted aside and an angry blue shape climbed out of it.
"Bill?" Rictor moved around Feral, stepping carefully over the debris until he reached the lobster. "What the hell were you doing down there?"
Bill looked righteously pissed. His large eyes narrowed, he slapped both claws atop the rubble, then turned and pointed with them down the tunnel he'd just emerged from.
"It's like Nick at Nite," Feral said at Rictor's elbow. Then, to the lobster, "What is it Lassie? Is Billy trapped down the well?"
"I think Gomi's down there with the PM," Rictor said. "Why the hell else would Bill have been down there? Didn't he say something about Magneto making him homo sapien liaison to his Cabinet?"
"Like I ever listen to that creepy little gnome..."
"He might have been down talking to the PM--shit, c'mon Bill. Show us where to dig."
He did, and, putting their differences aside for the moment, the three of them began to make short work of the debris.
"You will explain everything to me immediately, or I will hurt you very badly for a very long time. And then you will explain everything to me anyway."
Those words were the first things Henri Diesing heard as he swam up from unconsciousness. The first thing he saw was an injured face that he only vaguely recognized beneath all the blood and the swelling. The owner of the face had the tip of a sword pressed into Henri's throat.
"Shatterstar," Henri choked.
Shatterstar grunted. The two of them were in a dark, narrow alley between two buildings that had been gutted by fire months ago. The stink of ash, soot, and garbage was nearly overpowering, but in Henri's case it only served to bring him back to his senses more quickly.
"I...I didn't want to leave you with that mercenary--" Henri began.
"Shut up," Shatterstar replied, pushing the sword farther into Henri's throat, drawing blood this time. "I'm not interested in your rationalizations and excuses. I want to know what is happening here."
"We...we told you the truth..."
Shatterstar's eyebrows went up. "Really? I don't recall the part about you killing every mutant in Genosha."
"That's...just part of the plan. We needed to ensure that...our families...would be able to escape. So while they're loading onto the boats..."
"You and the rest of the surviving magistrates are keeping Magneto busy," Shatterstar nodded. "Too busy to look to the west, at any rate. Clever." He thought about the little girl, Caroline, and was satisfied that she at least was safe.
"And...we'll do as much damage to Magneto...as we can."
"A mass suicide run." Shatterstar shook his head. "And the mercenaries?"
"They helped plan the evac...and supplied us with the bombs to level Hammer Bay...before the attack."
"So you didn't lie to me. You told me just enough of the truth so I would feel compelled to help you." He stood and yanked the young magistrate to his metal feet. "Let's go."
"Where?" Henri asked as the mutant pushed him toward the mouth of the alley. The fighting out there had tapered off as it moved further inland.
"We are going to stop this."
"How? Do you think Magneto will accept a surrender? He'll simply kill us all. Better to go down fighting than to lie down and die."
Shatterstar didn't reply immediately, and when he did, he seemed to have changed the subject. "That story you told me when we first met...the one about all the magistrate children disappearing. Was that a lie?"
Diesing shook his head as they emerged into the street. "No."
"And your brother?"
"Was one of th--"
A bolt of lightning flashed vertically across the street and struck Henri hard enough to send him flying down the sidewalk. He screamed in agony, even as he was still flying through the air, but the scream didn't last very long. By the time his scorched form struck the sidewalk, the metal legs popping off the end of blackened thigh stumps, Shatterstar could see that the man was dead.
"Got one!" a new voice trumpeted, high-pitched and gleeful. Shatterstar whirled toward it, fire and hatred in his eyes, and saw a mutant male with blue lightning dancing over his extended palm. Electricity arced between the spikes of dirty blonde hair on his head. He was maybe sixteen years old.
"You fool!" Shatterstar said, and leapt at him.
The woman strode through the overcrowded hospital ward, head high and bearing confident. She seemed to know where she was going and what she was supposed to be doing, so those in charge who didn't know her simply let her go on her way unchallenged. Those who did know her did the same, but cut her a wide berth as they did it. With the explosions and the fighting still going on right outside their door, they all had more immediate things to worry about anyway.
She moved far back into the ward, where the most stable patients had been shunted to make way for the ones that still needed attention, finally coming to a halt in front of a particular bed. The bed was occupied by a young Argentinean man who happened to be unconscious at that moment.
"I never liked you, DaCosta," Carmella Unuscione intoned. "Even when you were with Xavier, I never liked you."
Psionic energy, tinted an emerald green, flickered to life over Unuscione's smooth skin, forming a blocky armor around her. She extended her arm, and the armor stretched until its hand had wrapped around Roberto DaCosta's throat. "Wake up, you little bastard. I want you to hear this."
Roberto's eyes flickered open, and he began to groan at the pain in his broken arm and ribs. Carmella squeezed with her armor, and his eyes bulged as the pressure closed his windpipe.
"You shouldn't have left Xavier's," Carmella said. "Shouldn't have come here and tried to be something you weren't. You've caused more trouble than the X-Men ever did, made Magneto think he could be something other than what he is. Made him cast aside those who <i>truly</i> believed in him."
Roberto clutched at the armored hand with his uninjured arm. She was allowing him enough air to keep him conscious, but not enough to cry out for help. He tried to summon his powers, to blast the bitch with solar energy, but they'd given him too many drugs for the pain--he couldn't focus--and it had been too long since he'd been in direct sunlight anyway.
"He--he won't...allow...this..." he managed to croak out, his fingers falling feebly to his side.
"He doesn't have any say in it," Unuscione replied. "After I get done with you, we're going to dispose of Lord Magneto. He's fallen too far, compromised his ideals too fully. We should have realized it the moment he recruited you Fallen Angels--even the name he gave you was a clue. No...he's far more use to mutantkind as a martyr than a leader."
"You can't...beat...him..."
"Oh yes we can." Carmella grinned, and the expression made her look eerily like a wolf. "With a little help from some suicidal magistrates we can. But enough of that, Roberto. Time to go to sleep. And don't worry...the rest of your buddies will be joining you soon enough."
Carmella began to squeeze, and Roberto first felt his windpipe close, and then his spine begin to creak with the applied pressure. He choked, clutched at the hand again, reached deep down into himself for reserves of power he hadn't tapped yet...but there wasn't enough there. He was done, and all he could think was what a stupid way to die this was.
And then, miraculously, the pressure was gone. Roberto dropped back down to his pillow, gasping in precious oxygen, barely aware of the dumbfounded expression on Unuscione's face as she looked at her suddenly bare arms and hands.
"What the--?" Unuscione said, her powers utterly and completely vanished.
"Fucking bitch!"
Carmella turned, and saw a young Oriental girl in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, boyish in appearance, racing toward her down the aisle between the beds. She turned to meet the charge, but it was too little too late.
Chance's foot swung up and connected with Carmella's pubic bone, producing a terribly final thud on impact.
armella's eyes bulged, she went up on her toes, and then she crumpled.
Chance was there to catch her. The girl was small, but her muscles were wiry and strong. She caught Carmella by the shirt just long enough to punch her in the face with her free hand, and then let the former Acolyte fall the rest of the way to the floor.
"You're pretty hot shit with that force field of yours, but without it..." Chance kicked Carmella's kneeling form over and spit on her. "Without it, you wouldn't last a minute on Yancy Street, bitch. Hell, you wouldn't last that long on fucking Sesame Street.
"Time to go Bobby." Chance moved up the side of the bed and yanked out the IV stuck in Roberto's arm. "You're lucky I came to check on you after ferrying some wounded here in the shuttle."
"Chance," he gasped as she helped him to his feet. "Chance...we have to..."
"Take away that bitch's powers and kick her in the uterus? I already did."
"No..." He was on his feet now, his head actually beginning to clear just a little bit after a brief but violent headrush. "We...we have to find Magneto. The Acolytes...they're staging a coup. I think they made...made a deal with the magistrates."
Chance looked at him as they began to hobble up the aisle together, leaving Carmella all but forgotten behind them. "Jesus," she said finally. "The fun never stops in this country does it?"
Together, they headed outside and moved quickly toward the shuttle.
"Revolution?" Delgado demanded, looking at the faces gathered around him. "Are you all crazy? Or just stupid?"
"None of the above," the kid with the fire in his palm, Backdraft, said. Delgado put a hand up in his face.
"Don't speak unless spoken to, Opie. Leave it to the grown-ups. Kleinstock, I'm talking to you."
"Magneto is...confused, Harry. You've gotta admit that you've noticed it too. Why wasn't he down in the streets the second the bombs started going off? Hell, why did he let the bombs go off at all? Why hasn't he flushed the magistrates out like rats before now?"
"He's just a man, Kleinstock, a man I almost died for when Asteroid M burned up. No matter how much we want him to be more."
"Want nothing," Harlan spat, swiping a hand through the air. "He has to be more. And if he can't be...we'll make him more. We'll make him a martyr."
Delgado was quiet for a moment, silently weighing his chances of getting out of this building in one piece. His powers were formidable, but he estimated nearly two dozen Acolytes hanging back in the shadows. He needed to stall, give himself time to think.
"This was Unuscione's idea, wasn't it?"
Kleinstock shrugged. "Sure, Carmella got the ball rollin', but she wasn't preaching nothin' all of us haven't been thinkin'."
"You realize you're starting to sound like Cortez."
Kleinstock's face darkened. "Fuck you, Delgado. Fabian Cortez was a weasel, and if I ever get my hands on him, I'm going to wring his scrawny weasel neck. Now are you in or are you out?"
"How do you plan to put down L--Magneto? He could fart and kill us all."
"You remember how the top few floors of Avalon were blown off a few months ago?" Delgado nodded. "We found out why. We found out he's got a machine up there for transferring power from one magnetically-charged mutant to another. We got...specialists who say they can use it to remove his powers again."
"Specialists? Who?"
Kleinstock was quiet for a moment, and Delgado sensed a shifting in the crowd surrounding them. An impatient shifting.
"Carmella cut a deal with the magistrates."
"What?"
"They're going to help us take out Magneto, and then it's going to be us versus them. Shouldn't take too long once Mags is out of the picture."
Delgado's jaw was hanging open. With an effort, he managed to close it. "I take it back," he said slowly. "You're worse than Cortez ever was."
"Is that your final decision?"
"Did Carmella help them plant those fucking bombs, Harlan? Is she responsible for all the carnage out there? Was that part of the deal with the humans?" Harlan stared at him in silence--but silence was all the answer Delgado needed. "She did. Jesus Christ..."
"We'll squash them once Magneto's done."
"And in the meantime innocent mutants who don't want anything to do with your bullshit, who just wanted to live somewhere safe, are dying! No. I can't be a part of this." He turned to take in the crowd. "And any of you that are were never really with us in the first place. Do you understand? You're killing mutants! That is the one thing Magneto and the Acolytes never wanted!"
Kleinstock nodded. "Guess you're free to go then."
Delgado's eyes narrowed as he turned back toward the ringleader. "That's it? I can just walk out of here knowing what I know?" He shook his head. "I'm not stupid Kleinstock, and I'm not turning my back on you so you can see where to put the knife."
The Acolytes didn't even wait for the order from Kleinstock, they just surged forward, with redheaded, freckled Backdraft leading the charge. Delgado activated his gift, leaping instantly to a height of sixteen feet. He swept the first wave of Acolytes aside, but then there was a <i>whip-crack,</i> and Senyaka's burning whip was encircling his throat. Delgado cried out, reaching for it, wrapping his fingers around it before it could tighten, and that left his abdomen open for a strike from Kleinstock. Delgado doubled over, head swimming as the air tried to erupt from his lungs. He felt flame cascade over him, and even though he was more durable at this height, he began to burn.
"Enough," Kleinstock said, and Backdraft and another Acolyte named Plasmar ceased their barrage. Senyaka retracted his whip, and Delgado fell flat on his belly on the floor. His skin was blackened, and his labored breathing sounded like air passing through broken glass.
"Shoulda gone with the winning team, Delgado. I didn't wanna have to do this to you."
Delgado stopped moaning for a moment and said something, his breath stirring the dust on the auditorium floor.
"What's that?" Kleinstock said, looming over. "Is that a, 'You're right, Harlan'? Cause I gotta tell ya, Harry. I ain't interested in nothin' else."
Delgado pulled in another raspy breath, and said, a bit louder this time, "Suck it, fatboy."
Kleinstock shook his head and, without a word, reached down and put his hands on either side of Delgado's head. The smaller man tried to struggle, tried to grow again, but when the cooked skin on his face peeled away with Harlan's insistent fingers, all he could think to do was scream.
So Harlan snapped his neck.
Kleinstock straightened, wiping his ash- and blood-covered hands on his trousers. Backdraft had a light going in his palm again, and Harlan looked out over the faces gathered here. One or two of them looked unsettled by what had just happened, but most seemed satisfied. And not one of them looked mutinous. Good, good.
"Okay then," he began. "The magistrates are attacking the city right now. We meet up with Carmella near Avalon, and get set up to bust Magneto's head open as soon as they got their doohickey finished. Nobody's gonna be able to stop us with all the chaos out there. Not Magneto's Fallen Angels, not Voght, and not--"
"I'm your huckleberry."
Harlan turned at the sound of the new voice. Feminine, unfamiliar, it had come from the stage. He gestured at Backdraft and the kid's flame leapt higher and brighter, revealing a white-haired woman leaning against the proscenium arch. She was wearing bright red sunglasses, even though it was pitch-black in here without Backdraft's light.
"Who the hell are you?" Harlan demanded. "And what did you say?"
"I'm your huckleberry," the woman said. She levitated over the orchestra pit and dropped down in front of the first row of seats. "You know, Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday? Tell me somebody in this dump has seen Tombstone."
"What do you want?" Kleinstock asked, wondering how much the woman had heard and how long it would take to kill her.
"I want lots of explosions and violence and death. But something tells me, if you morons were in charge, the party would be over in about a week. Besides, I can't let you do what you say you're gonna do to Mags. He acts like he's got something cold and uncomfortably large up his ass, sure, but he's kinda sexy too. Makes me want to call him daddy." She began moving up the aisle, slowly, sure of herself. "You guys I think I'll just call 'mud'."
"You can't let us," Harlan said slowly. Of course it was possible she was powerful enough to take them all on...but likely? No, if she was packing that sort of firepower, and lived on this island, Harlan would know about her. It was a bluff, had to be.
"I'm not bluffing," she said, as if she'd read his mind, and blue-white electricity pulsed out from her in a wave, hurling the chairs around her aside and blasting every single one of the Acolytes back toward the back of the auditorium. Before they could get up and return fire, she said,
"My name's Siena Blaze. And I'm the one who blew up Mother of Hope, boys and girls, the one who killed all of your friends. So bring it."
And, moving as one, the Acolytes did just that.
"Are you sure?" Amelia Voght demanded.
"Yes, ma'am," the mutant nodded stiffly. "Castalletti doesn't like talkin' to people, so he wouldn't have called unless he was sure somethin' was going on."
Amelia turned from the man and looked out at the violence rushing over Hammer Bay. She'd done her best to disrupt the attacks where she could, but those damn negator pack launchers were taking out mutants left and right, and there were just too many for Amelia to handle by herself. Magneto was making quick work of any he engaged, of course, but there were so many...
And now this business with the convoys passing through Lucien's Ford. They simply couldn't afford to send anyone to check it out. Besides, there had to be some sort of misunderstanding. After all, the magistrates were all here...
Blink.
Or were they?
"Get me a map," she told the man who'd reported this to her. "I want to see where these convoys might be headed. And then get a few mutants together--four or five Beta-levels ought to do it."
"Ma'am...is that--not meaning to question you, ma'am, but is that wise? With all the trouble here, I mean."
"If we play our cards right, this might be just what we need to finish this. Now get going. We don't have much time."
Magneto crushed a squad of magistrates with the wall of a condemned factory. He lifted ten more by the iron in their blood and hurled them into the ocean. He tore the very street they walked on down the middle and watched twenty more plummet to their deaths in the resulting chasm.
And still they kept coming.
Their numbers were finite, Magneto knew this, but he realized now that he'd never had any true concept of just how many magistrates remained in Genosha. And while he could kill them all in time, he couldn't kill them all at once. So his people kept dying while he tore the enemy to pieces as fast as he could.
A negator sphere erupted against his personal force field while he battered a trio of humans to death with their own guns, and he turned toward its source. A trembling young man stared wide-eyed at him, nearly dropping his launcher in his hurry to get it back on his shoulder so he could lift his rifle.
It wouldn't have done him any good, but Magneto didn't give him the chance anyway. He gestured, and the man lifted into the air and hurtled across the street, coming to a dead halt within three feet of the Lord of Genosha. Magneto considered him.
"You will tell me who helped you engineer this assault," Magneto said. "You will tell me who betrayed me."
"Fu-fuck you, you mon-graaahhh!"
"I don't have time for your posturing, human," Magneto said as blood began to stream from the open fracture he'd just created in the man's upper arm. "You will tell me immediately, or I will work my way through all 216 bones in your throwback's body. That I have time for."
"I--I don't know wha-kkkkaaaa!"
"Again," he said, outwardly unmindful of the matching fracture he'd created in the other arm. "Who was it?"
"H-h-him..." the man said, his head lolling to the side.
"Who are you...?" Magneto began, but his question was answered as he looked in the direction the magistrate's head had fallen. A block away, in an area the fighting had moved away from, were two mutants who seemed to be in the process of killing each other. They were both his people, but Magneto only recognized the one who wasn't bleeding electric current over the street.
"Shatterstar," he said, all the pieces coming together in a satisfying flash of insight that nearly took his breath away.
"Thank you," he said to the moaning magistrate, and then he hurled him far away, somewhere over the buildings, forgetting him as soon as he was out of sight.
"Hey! What's--oof--what's your problem, man?"
"That man was a friend!" Shatterstar insisted, driving his fist into the boy's face, enjoying the feeling of breaking teeth even though he got a mild electrical jolt for his troubles. The kid opened his mouth to spit out blood that was blue-white, and his mouth was full of arcing electrical current.
"Oh, man...you shouldn't have done that," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. "Shouldn't have laid hands on The Bomb. The Bomb is now obliged to kick your ponytail-wearing ass!"
Lightning flew from the man's fingertips, and Shatterstar danced over it with ease, feeling his aching muscles beginning to loosen up. He rolled across a clear portion of pavement, slipping his swords back into their scabbards, and neatly swept the kid's feet out from under him.
"People who speak in the third person are boring," Shatterstar opined, and kicked the kid across the forehead, the rubber in his soles protecting him from any further shock. The blow put the kid to sleep, and Shatterstar was turning away from him--wondering what on Earth he could do to stop all this without Diesing's help--when a new voice, a familiar one, trumpeted behind him.
"Shatterstar!"
He turned...and magnetic lines of force seized him by the blood and yanked him straight upward, over the streets and above the buildings, until he was hovering with arms spread outward in front of his captor.
"Shatterstar," said Magneto, "we need to talk."
"What the hell is Magneto doing?" Rictor asked.
Feral looked up. They'd managed to dig an angled shaft nearly fifteen feet long, Bill working like a demon while Feral cleared away his rubble and Rictor used gentle seismic waves to set the walls together more firmly. They figured if they could just get down into the first basement, they could punch through the floor to the sub-basement with little trouble.
The way the shaft was angled, they could see out over Hammer Bay, and it was in this direction Rictor was looking now.
"Who fucking cares, Ric? Let's handle one thing at a time, huh?"
Rictor didn't reply, just squinted off into the distance. After a moment, his eyes went wide. "Feral, get up here. I need your eyes."
If she'd been a little less pissed at him, Feral might have admitted to herself that it was nice to hear him say he needed her, in any capacity. Hell, maybe she was a little hung-up on him. She wasn't about to let him know that though.
"I'm busy."
"Feral, I think he's killing Shatterstar."
That got her attention. She turned and, grumbling all the way, moved up the shaft, leaving Bill to make his mess, and looked out across the city.
"Yeah," she nodded, her eyes narrow and puzzled. "That's 'Star. Hey, where you going!"
Without a word, Rictor had begun to move down the slope, toward the street. "I've got to see what the hell's going on up there."
"What about Gomi and the PM?"
But Rictor didn't reply. He was already jogging toward the city, toward whatever the hell was going on between Magneto and Shatterstar.
"I knew it," she groaned. "He's gay. I fucking knew it." She looked down the shaft, where Bill was making good progress all by his lonesome.
With a shrug, she set off after Rictor.