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The Evils of Necessity	By : Ksennin Category: X-men Comics > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 13050 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Ultimate X-Men or any of the characters associated with the franchise. I make no money from publishing this.

Chapter List
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One part of Scott’s mind was in chaos. He needed to know if Raven was out, if she’d gotten Rogue out with her. But it was a small part. He hated himself for it, but his omnipresent discipline pressed it down. He could think about where Wanda was. He knew where Magneto’s traveling citadel was parked—Wanda and Pietro would be nearby.
He was right, after a fashion. Running into the din of Magneto’s scrambling protection detail—Raven must’ve sounded the alarm—he found Wanda’s bedroom next to the portal up into Erik’s chambers. He forced the door, but the room was empty. His mind whirled. Pietro. Scott barged into his bedroom, finding the siblings sitting on the bed, deep in conversation. They must’ve assumed it was a drill.
Pietro shot to his feet, blurring at the edges. “How dare you intrude upon—“
“Bomb,” Scott said simply. For the first time in what seemed like hours, he slowed, padding inside on his bare feet. With a deep breath: “Wanda, you can alter probabilities, play with them. If someone set a trap for us, where would the statistics place it?”
“That’s not how her power works!” Pietro argued. “I need to remove her from the—“
Wanda brushed away his hands even as they reached for her. “I could put a hex on you. So that when you’re searching for it, there’s a ninety-plus chance that it’ll be in the first place you look.”
“Do it!” Scott ordered, at the same time Pietro stepped in the way. “No!”
Scott stared at him, shocked. He knew Pietro was protective of his sister, but this was—
“Do it to me,” Pietro said. “I can search faster.”
Wanda looked quickly to Scott. He nodded. And while Wanda cast the spell, Pietro gave him an ineffably smug look.
***
As Magneto came in, Pietro’s exit sent his cape into a paroxysm of flutters like he was in the middle of a storm. The man didn’t try to follow his son’s exit with his eyes. They stayed locked on Scott. “What is the meaning of this?”
Scott was throwing on some of Pietro’s clothes. “It’s a trap. This whole island. SHIELD or Weapon X, it doesn’t matter which. They funneled their ‘undesirables’ to Mojo so he could set up these hunts—probably arranged for the X-Men to be captured. They knew sooner or later, we’d make an attack on this place. Once they had us all in place—“
“A concentration camp.” Magneto’s voice was low and deadly, and even without being directed at Scott, it burned into him. “You’ve put us in a concentration camp.”
“Wanda, I’ve found it!” Pietro’s voice echoed into the room. Moving at superspeed, it came in oddly over the communicator on the room’s desk. Scott supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that the twins had some private way of communicating with each other.
“Can you disarm it?” Scott demanded, stalking toward the room’s desk.
Pietro’s voice now came through loud and clear; he’d slowed down. “It’s small. Well-hidden. I’ll move it out to sea.”
“No, find Forge, he can—“
“It’s armed--!” Pietro’s voice echoed again, soundwaves falling away under supersonic speed, trailing off when—
The blast turned night into day. The others averted their eyes, but Scott had picked up his visor before he went out the door, just in case the Banshee wore off. He looked out the window and his ruby quartz compensated for the light. Turned the small sun on the horizon into a simple fire. A funeral pyre.
“Suitcase nuke,” Scott said, bland, stunned, just saying it to be said.
“I’m sorry, Wanda.” The voice buzzed out of the communicator. Soundwaves and radio weren’t as fast as Quicksilver. He was already dead by the time they heard him.
Erik grasped it first. He stumbled, then sat down heavily on the bed, still warm from Pietro’s body. Seeing him sag like that, like an old man in armor that was too heavy for him, that clinched it for Wanda. Sunk the thought into her body like a knife.
She threw herself onto her father, sobbing into the metal of his chestplate. He moved to stroke her hair, soothe her, but he couldn’t. His hands were formed too tightly into fists.
“After the Great Flood, God spared only Noah and his family. He did so because he knew they’d be loyal. They were the last of mankind.”
“What?”
Erik turned to Scott. His eyes were not wet. They were dry; cracked. Stones in a desert. “I’ve given my son for you. For all of them. Now, haven’t I earned the choice of who lives and who dies?”
Scott almost spoke over him, even as he waited for Erik to finish. “We should consolidate our forces, see if this base can be salvaged or if it’s too compromised—“
Magneto stood, setting Wanda aside. “These are the times of plague and pestilence. Those that remain will be forever grateful. They will find themselves in Heaven on Earth.”
“Sir…” Scott began, but it was pointless. Erik was already floating off his feet, his power taking hold.
The ceiling contorted out of the way and Magneto was part of the night sky. The masses of mutants spilling out into the jungle, mid-way through evacuation, turned to regard him as electromagnetic lightning made him appear half a god.
Scott pulled off his visor, going to Wanda. His eyes didn’t yet burn with the old power. He took the girl in his arms and held her as best he could. She fit against him as easily as Raven did.
“Wanda, you have to talk to him, now, before he does something—“
“Don’t ask me for that.” Wanda’s voice ripped out of her throat like it was barbed, cutting her tongue as it came off her lips. “Don’t ask me for mercy now. Right now, I wouldn’t stop him if he killed every last one of them.”
Scott gritted his teeth, but said nothing. Almost nothing. “I can’t let him.” It was that simple. There couldn’t be a war between humans and mutants. Both sides would perish. There could be battles, skirmishes, saber-rattling, but no full-blown conflict. Nothing to start up the Sentinel factories again, nothing to make the Persons of Mass Destruction start taking lives.
Nothing like this.
“Don’t let go,” Wanda said softly. She melted into his grip. He wouldn’t call it an embrace.
Scott’s communicator buzzed, still in his collar. He vaguely remembered how to turn it on. “Summers.”
“Mystique,” Raven replied wryly. “What’s going on? Erik’s giving a Sunday school lesson, there was that blast—“
“Pietro’s dead.”
“…shit.” She grasped it instantly. The pause was her remembering what Erik was capable of.
“Raven, what is he going to do?”
“Do?” Raven’s voice trailed off. Scott looked up through the gnarled hole in the roof. The electricity Magneto commanded swirled like the Northern Lights. “Scott, he’s already done it.”
To be continued in The Invisible Handjob Chapter 10.
- 10
- 11
- 12
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The Evils of Necessity