Chapter 13
“What’s gotten into you?” Erik asked unable to bear it anymore.
The thing was that he and Wanda were working in the laboratory since the early morning, so early even Hank was still sleeping, and for the many hours of being together in one room, she barely said a word, radiating restless energy.
The girl lifted her head in a silent question.
“I see something bothers you,” the man prompted gingerly.
Knowing Magneto’s history only from rumors and gossips flying around and rather dark news reports, it didn’t seem like a good idea to reveal the line of thoughts that nagged at the girl. Yet, Wanda couldn’t leave it out, didn’t want to feed her father with yet another half-truth.
With a sigh, the girl put aside a pen and set her hands on the desk, palms down.
“Yesterday Kurt shared a piece of his life with me, us,” Wanda began, her voice quiet, gaze trained down. “He has no family, no home. No real name even. Kurt Wagner? It wasn’t given with love or at least thought over by his mother, it was made up by a circus owner who found him, only an infant, on the street. I can’t stop picturing a child growing up in such conditions, to perform on a circus arena because he looks different. What is truly horrifying is that I can still see it in him, you know?
She looked up and Erik could tell it touched her deeply. He nodded in understanding.
“It’s in the way he sometimes moves or speaks, and this wretched look in his eyes…like he doesn’t expect anyone to listen to him, much less understand.”
The sheets of paper under her palms crumpled slightly, inked letters sank into her skin.
A subtle crackling was heard from the other part of the laboratory – Hank was busy soldering the switches for the first sentinel’s model.
“I once knew a mutant with similar powers, a teleport with an appearance much like Kurt’s,” the Master of Magnetism said, breaking through the looming tension.
A line appeared between Wanda’s brows. “Do you think they may be related?”
He took his time to compare his deceased friend and Charles’ student, really trying to work out a timeline for the guess to have at least a small chance of being possible.
“To be frank, I believe they may,” the man voiced his conclusion after all.
“Do you happen to know where he is now?”
Hope was making its way through the shadows that clouded the girl’s face, and Erik wished he didn’t have to put it out, but there was no way around the truth.
“Azazel was killed and later experimented on by Trask in the late 60s along with countless others.”
“Crap,” she muttered and pressed her forehead against her clutched hands, eyes closed. “I’ve never considered myself as someone who looks at the world through rose-colored glasses, God knows, my brother and I had been through some stuff too, but it pales in comparison with the horrors I keep hearing from each corner.”
There was an echo of Magneto’s speech from seven years ago in Erik’s reply. “That’s why I tried to bring us all together, to stand up against mankind and stop the oppression.”
“Apocalypse showed that not mankind is the problem,” Wanda countered with an equal conviction of her uprightness. “I don’t like that mankind/mutantkind division, to begin with. There is no kind except the human one.”
“Sounds more like Charles,” the man noted fairly, no condemnation in his tone.
“I doubt we share the same level of optimism,” she said with a small smile that, however, didn’t linger on her lips for long. “I see it as such – we have this survival instinct to be cautious of everything that is different. It’s either this or jealousy drawn to the extreme in some people, mutants and “ordinaries” alike when they are pushing against others’ exclusiveness. I presume that could’ve given the start to our multipowered evil counterpart’s journey to world dominance. Perhaps not the fear, but more likely the jealousy that became greedy to the point where it just consumed him. He would’ve never built a better place for the mutants to live in.”
Wanda didn’t need her psionic powers to understand what thoughts made Erik’s head so heavy he ducked it, averting his gaze from her. He allowed Apocalypse to goad him into destructing the world that, regardless of how often he denied it, still had good people, kind, accepting people like Magda or Charles. Charles, whom he quite literally handed over to Apocalypse. Magneto was quick to judge and blame others, make them responsible for his actions. Erik knew what guilt felt like.
The girl tried to bring some light to their otherwise dismal conversation and, hopefully, into her father’s wracked heart. “Although I know somebody who has the heart and gut to step up. He would’ve brought together a team, the freakiest freaks of all, gave it a ridiculous name, surely pompous, and fought tooth and nail to make things right again.”
“Or Peter could’ve called you and fetch help of another telepath for us,” the man uttered on a weary exhale.
He did call her before he was off on an “adventure” and, perhaps, if she agreed to join him, the speedster would’ve found a way to cross the ocean to reunite with her. Or, if she had let her emotion about finding their father slip, Oxford would’ve become the first instance for her brother before flying with the rest of the mutants to Cairo.
“I dunno,” Wanda drawled in a very Peter-like manner, adding a lazy shrug to it. “You had Jean. I heard she is a fiery birdie.”
He sat back in his office chair and glanced up at her, that rigid look dialed down a few notches.
“I would still prefer to see you in action.”
“Well –” A hint of menace twinkled in those magnificent eyes of hers. “– the spectacle you all staged in Cairo would’ve been more vivid then.”
All of a sudden, the notes Wanda kept neatly arranged came loose as the paperclip that held them together slid and soared into the air, hovering between her and her father.
The girl blinked at the Master of Magnetism in incomprehension. “What are you doing?”
“Want to see a glimpse of what missed opportunities look like,” the man answered simply.
A tiny piece of steel shoot toward Wanda and instantly faced a translucent shield, the point of contact tinged with a subtle shade of red. The more Erik’s power pushed, the more Wanda’s responded, though both sat still in their seats.
“Played enough, Mr. Lehnsherr?” she asked with a mocking smile.
“Merely started, Miss…” He left the phrase dangling in the air for the girl to finish when this flaw in his knowledge made itself evident.
“Marvelous,” Wanda hedged, resorting to the help of her witty sense of humor. The man’s lips twisted in a light smirk.
A binder clip entered the mini battle of forces, clicking with its “jaws” as it caught (or rather it had been caught by) a wave of glowing energy that rushed it toward the paperclip. Brows arched in surprise, Erik watched his only forward being violently chewed by this office crocodile. He let go of the wire but it didn’t fall back onto the desk, instead, it began to untwist into a straight thread, then wobbled to form…
The man couldn’t hold back an amused grin that twisted his mouth at the sight of a paperclip that took on the silhouette of a flipped-up middle finger and Wanda smiling like the cat that got the cream.
“It is indeed a vivid display of your powers,” he bantered.
“You bet,” the girl deadpanned. The objects of stationary took off from their working place abode by her will.
The Master of Magnetism leveled a “I dare you” stare on Wanda and, if it weren’t for a whackclink and obvious clatter of something metal being mercilessly scattered, followed by an incomprehensive swearing heard from the other corner, she would’ve definitely dared. However, it sobered her up and served as a reminder that the place they occupied wasn’t a playground but a laboratory for promising projects, thus Erik witnessed as the spark of liveliness left all the pencils, erasers, and whatnot before they were put down to their seemed like legitimate places.
Gaze still fixed on the girl, he posed a question to Hank, his raised voice rang out hollowly in the emptiness of the laboratory’s vast space. “What else unfortunate happened to you out there?”
That caring word phrasing made Wanda roll her eyes though the corners of her lips were lifted by a little but amused grin.
“Try to add a bit of sympathy next time,” she said in a half-whispered teasing tone when they didn’t hear anything from their colleague.
The man waved his hand at her in a “go ahead, try your own words” gesture. Instead of talking, Wanda opted for action. She stood up from her office chair, making it go on a screeching half-circle spin, and pointedly walked towards Hank’s work corner.
Once she realized she could hear only her own steps, the girl turned on her heels to see Erik sitting on his chair, unmoving.
“Aren’t you going to look if Hank needs help?”
“I’m sure he is fine.”
Since the day they met, Wanda assumed – believed – this cool demeanor was only a cover of his, to protect the heart that was shattered to pieces too small to glue the exact same way it was before. As she surveyed him now, dressed in that white lab coat, he looked more out of place than ever, and for a moment a ring bell in her mind.
What if the missing parts were the crucial ones?
What if he was no longer capable to have care in that heart? To fit in with anyone?
No.
No, that was nothing like him. Glimpses of his big, crinkly-eyed smile, his rich laughter at the ridiculous things she and Peter did or told, the sorrow in her voice when he talked about his decised family replaced the now seen image, shushing away a fit of panic.
“Oh, come on.” The girl put her hands on her hips. “Don’t be a jackass.”
“I think I know where that impudence has its source. It comes from your utter confidence that you can easily overpower me.”
“It’s called laid-back attitude and it comes from my confidence that you’re not a psycho,” she quipped without a second thought albeit the look on the man’s face could’ve shaken anyone’s confidence. “You do you, but I’m gonna go see if I can do some good.”
With that Wanda turned around and made her way to Hank’s work corner, not pressuring her father to act a certain way.
Over the past few days, the laboratory had been conditionally divided into two offices: one, for the most part consisting of two desks, chairs, and numerous papers with diagrams and notes, was occupied by the Master of Magnetism and the Energy Wilder, while the second was peppered with computers, measuring devices and boxes with the survived parts of Trask Industries’ sentinels. It was the letter territory that Wanda stepped into.
“Didn’t go as you planned it to?” she asked quietly as not to startle Hank who was searching the floor for the toppled robotic parts.
“Kind of,” the man groaned out as he got out from under a large table and dusted down his grey trousers. “I thought we perfected response-adjustable gauges to at least ninety percent accuracy rate but it went nuts at some nonexistent energy flow.”
Oopsie, flashed through Wanda’s mind, partially reflecting in an involuntary grimace she made.
“Maybe some kids were playing with their powers upstairs,” she offered not far off from the truth explanation, scratching her temple.
“I doubt we have such students,” Hank drawled with a slight shake of his head, contemplating his creation with puzzlement. “Perhaps I need to disassemble it all and look for what I can refine.”
The girl’s eyes trailed over to a snake made of wires that was set on his desk. Its tail connected to a computer, the black screen was glowing with multiple diagrams, and its head bit down on one of the joints of the robotic hand that stood up remarkably among all the mess. All the mechanical components were on display, lacking the coverage since Wanda was still working on the design, but in no way it ruined the impression. On the contrary, this gigantic limb looked like a piece of extraterrestrial technology.
A hell of a time was spent just pulling all the details together and now, thanks to the girl’s dulled prudence, Hank was going to spend way more on undoing his work, looking for the flaws that most likely didn’t exist. But did it make her want to come out as one of the gifted and face the consequences in the face of a questionnaire for the mutant twins? Not really.
The scientist must have snapped back to reality quicker than Wanda and noticed a hard line that was her pursed lips, mistaking the pang of guilt she felt for disappointment in their project, because he elbowed her lightly and said, his tone more optimistic, “Overall, it’s an insanely successful start for such a complex thing. Do you want to see it in action?”
“Are you crazy?” the girl exclaimed in feigned indignation. “Of course I do!”
A smile lit up Hank’s face. He harried to the computer, explaining the technicalities of their joint creation on the fly.
“As we originally planned the motions are created with the hobby servos.” His fingers quickly ran across the keyboard, typing the needed program code. “The hand has five servos spread throughout the fingers, each of them has two degrees of freedom. That means that there’s a base knuckle –”
The index finger of the future sentinel stretched and moved up and down.
“– and then there are these two phalanges here that can also move.”
The robot made a “come here” gesture.
Thrilled with the power of brain and science combined, Hank and Wanda swapped an enthusiastic glance.
“We can optimize the hand for doing different actions. It can pick up a match as well as grab a person. Can you imagine what it will be like when we equip the thing with the blasters?”
“Not that big of a difference with machine guns,” Erik cut in blandly, strolling towards them, “other than this thing has barely an ounce of metal on it.”
The Master of Magnetism drew up with the girl and tilted his head to the side to add a friendlier, “I told you he is fine.”
She glanced up at him, not a shadow of a smile showed on her face at the words, then her head turned to Hank, her brows knitted as her eyes darted between him and the latest robotics development.
“There is a big difference, Erik,” the scientist meanwhile objected, drawing the man’s attention. “Plus, you can stuff it with metal whenever you like. Not that you would ask my opinion or anything.”
Here we go again, Wanda crooned to herself, being caught in a crossfire of intense stares. Bloody vicious circle.
To be honest, it was difficult to blame Hank for discretion, given that, for the most part, these two were still closer to enemies than to friends (that news report where the Beast and her father fought in a fountain, the Eiffel Tower on the background popped up in her head in an instant): nevertheless, the fact that the scientist changed the components of the sentinel didn’t resonate with the girl. After all, she spent plenty of time in the bunker, rummaging through the boxes and drowning in the dust not for the man to then replace all the findings with nonmagnetic parts.
Yet, Wanda only sighed. “Please, cut it out, guys. Just look at where our well-coordinated work and desire to change things for the better has led us to.”
She walked to the table and leaned on its edge, contemplating a sophisticated mechanism that was only a small fraction of a larger whole.
“I think it would be nice if you could give us a run-down of how it works,” the girl appealed to Hank when the staring game was still going strong.
“I can command these with high precision,” the man replied, casting a meaningful glance at the Master of Magnetism at last before he turned back to the computer. “The hand can wave, its fingers can curl into a fist or hold whatever you like. All you need is a software system and joysticks.”
Erik came closer to the sentinel’s part too and silently handed it a cup, surprising both, Hank and Wanda. The scientist typed something on the keyboard, then switched to one of the joysticks, moving it with high precision. The robotic hand accepted the cap, holding it nonchalantly like a human, its elbow joint mechanism shifted and the porcelain thing was slowly put on the table.
“Hmm” of a rather impressed nature came out of Erik.
“Fascinating,” the girl muttered, making the corners of Hank’s lips lift in a complacent smile. “Will it be hard to insert blasters in it at this stage? I mean, I don’t see how we can do it without remodeling the existing structure.”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” the scientist reassured her.
The Master of Magnetism drew his brows. “Charles doesn’t really mind that his students will be taught how to fight, so even with the robots and blasters?”
“It was his idea, actually.” A strange sense of satisfaction tingled Hank’s whole being when he caught a spark of surprise in Erik’s face.
“Besides, the blasters I’m going to install are relatively safe. A couple of bruisers is all the damage they can cause.”
“Or a couple of burned eyebrows.”
The robotic limb dashed inches away from Wanda’s body, ripping a loud gasp out of her and when the sight of her father bending over and clutching at his solar plexus registered in her brain, her hand shot to her dropped open mouth.
“Aw, my bad,” Hank apologized though his tone fell short of being regretful.
“Oh my goodness! Erik!” The girl bent over at the man’s side, her arms slid over his shoulders, enveloping him in a comforting half hug as he was struggling to fill his lungs with air. “Erik, are you alright?”
Wheezing, the Master of Magnetism waved her worries off but didn’t try to push her away or free himself from the sudden embrace. That, together with the way Wanda lovingly stroked Erik’s back to ease the symptoms of the punch, prompted an unpleasant thought in the scientist’s mind. What was about this man Wanda found worth her sympathy? Why Charles and Raven come to his rescue time after time even though he switched sides more often than Hank switched the light in the laboratory? And he would even consider talking to Peter about the concerning connection clearly forming between Wanda and Erik if the speedster didn’t show just the same interest in the magnetokinetic as his twin.
“What?” he exclaimed defenselessly when Wanda hurtled a slashing glance his way. “My hand must have slipped.”
Her condemning gaze lingered on his face only for a moment longer before it shifted to the Master of Magnetism.
“Maybe it would be better if you sit down for a second?”
Though dulled, pain and shock were still edged in Erik’s features when he straightened and replied, his voice a bit raspy, “I’m fine.”
“Well, in a sense, you asked for it,” Wanda dared to tease him at such a moment.
In his turn, the Master of Magnetism didn’t remain in debt. “You know, I wish I had the power of telepathy so I could ask Peter to repeat that Christmas joke with the snow spray. It looked great on you.”
The look she gifted him with was the same her sibling had received back then. It made little sparks of amusement dance around Erik’s eyes.
“Oh, so you’ve gotten inside jokes already,” Hank muttered to himself.
“Excuse me?” The girl eyed him, her posture was all about challenge albeit more playful than serious. “What are you grumbling over there while I’m advocating in your favor?”
“Wanda!”
Their heads swiveled to the entrance as if these vowels and consonants heavily adorned with ф German accent formed a name applicant for all those present.
The tap tap tap of harried footsteps against the tiled floor was accompanied with “Wanda, du solltest mit mir nach oben gehen! Es ist dringend!*”
“Thank you for entrusting me with that generous offer of yours, but I must decline,” Wanda drawled quizzically though the look on Kurt’s face when he burst into Hank’s work zone held nothing close to merriment. Suspicion crept into the girl’s core that maybe the nagging feeling she woke up with wasn’t about the young man’s misfortunes but a premonition of imminent disaster, that some things were going to turn their ugly side towards her or Peter, or both of them at once.
The jab went right past the teleport’s attention, his eyes – two embers engulfed in darkness – locked on Wanda’s, hypnotizing her into the same agitated state.
My German must have gone a little rusty, Erik thought, somewhat concerned because he found it next to impossible to put the young man’s blubbering into logical sentences. After all, he hasn’t been to his homeland since 1958 (and barely entertained the idea of going back to Dusseldorf ever after he met all the other mutants).
“Hold on for a second, boy,” the man said in his Magneto tone, silencing the verbal vortex. “Why don’t you breathe out and tell us what happened, huh?”
It sobered up the young man a bit. He tore his gaze from the girl’s face, finally registering the presence of her father, whose figure seemed even more intimidating in that white lab coat, and Hank…well, he was, as Kurt assumed, furrowing, but the absence of eyebrows turned his expression into the odd one, he looked like a representative of some alien civilization, to be honest (because eyebrows is a goddamned powerful thing).
“In English, please,” Wanda asked when the teleport’s lips parted again.
It took him a painfully long moment to reply, his mind was frantically reaching out the foreign words, chasing the sneaky bastards down in the thicket. “S-someone is calling for you. I did-didn’t hang up the phone.”
The girl’s face took on a more thoughtful, perspicacious expression so that Erik wondered if she used her psionic power to look into Kurt’s mind for a less cryptic answer. If she did, nothing of what she found reflected in her gaze that ran over him and Hank.
“What do you think of half-day Friday, gentlemen?” Wanda asked, apprehensive of leaving these two unattended (also, she had no faith in her father’s “I’m fine”). “I’m sure it’s a nice day outside and since we have achieved a considerable accomplishment with our project, taking the air would be only beneficial.”
“Or spend time with some…friends?” she went on, smelling the appeal to that offer in Hank.
He surveyed his office, the computers, these soulless machines he hung out daily, the mess here and there he would need to deal with…The accumulated fatigue yawned somewhere within him.
“I guess you may be right,” he caved in at last with a small smile of someone who wasn’t used to unreasonable work ditching.
One look at the Master of Magnetism said he knew what Wanda was doing, but he lifted his shoulder in a half shrug nonetheless, accepting the idea too.
“Great!” the girl chirped, glad that for once something went as easy as it could.
“I’ll get you to the Day Room,” Kurt volunteered, nodding to his own words.
As a token of gratitude, Wanda patted him on the shoulder, leaving her warm palm there while her other hand crooked around Erik’s elbow, pulling him into the magic of teleportation too.
“Okay,” Hank drawled, staring at the bluish smoke left after their departure, “I’ll just use the elevator then.”
....
“And I was like, ‘Dude, you didn’t do shit.’,” Peter said with a grimace, making Jubilee, whom he hugged by her shoulders, giggle.
It was one of the countless stories he fed kids and girls with, winning their sympathy in a new role – fun, easy-going, and, well, actually going everywhere with ease since the cast was taken off. Playing a “poor thing” had its benefits, of course, (kids stood in line to draw something on the plaster, girls asked daily how he was doing and often brought him a glass of juice or a cookie), but like all the roles, it exhausted itself. So now he wandered through the school’s corridors, caught up with the latest gossips, charmed the newcomers, played with the little ones, and simply enjoyed his superspeed again.
On this day, Jubilee fell victim to his quirky charisma. They met in the kitchen after breakfast, which the girl happened to miss, and Peter decided to show off by making her a sandwich in half a second. Then they went to the pond but the midges and summer sun didn’t really fit the criteria of a cool pastime, so the young people ended up walking down the gallery, studying the pictures and coming up with ridiculous stories behind them. In a nutshell, they had a great deal of fun together.
“I heard there are new slot machines in the local mall. We should definitely go and check them out,” Jubilee offered, fixing one of her wavy ponytails.
She looked like she stepped out from the fashion magazine’s pages – white with a floral print mini skirt and top set, jellies, hoops, and jingling with each move bracelets. Compared to her, Wanda’s style – white T-shirt, light black trousers, and loafers – could be called classic. Peter glanced down at himself and smirked, surprised to find their looks twinning.
The young man noticed his sister through the opened door to the Day Room. Kurt fidgeted a few feet away from her, the Professor sat at the round table with a cup of tea in his hands, across from him – Erik. Two white coats laid on the arm of the chair he occupied, meaning he and Wanda came here straight from the laboratory.
The silver-haired whirlwind whizzed past his father and Charles, assessed the teleport, and pinched his cheeks slightly. At last, he stopped in front of Wanda, who held a phone to her ear. Her eyes were glazed with emotion even her twin couldn’t place.
Intrigued, the speedster paused.
“I beg your pardon,” the girl said, putting on a smile that added a pinch of fake amicability to her tone. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice. As well as to hear such news.”
Oxford? Peter mouthed.
She shook her head abstractedly, listening to someone on the phone.
“Looks like I’m gonna be booked and busy till the evening.” The speedster reappeared in the corridor, dumbfounding Jubilee. “But the idea with slot machines is bad, I would like to go.”
The girl’s mind barely had time to process what he just said when the young man winked at her and vanquished, leaving “See ya around” dangling in the air.
Back in the Day Room, Peter leaned closer to his sister, trying to overhear what was going on, but couldn’t make out anything besides that the voice of the speaker belonged to a man.
Too old for a boyfriend, he decided, brushing aside the first guess.
Wanda’s grip on the telephone receiver was firm hence twisting her hand didn’t give any results as well as putting an ear to that damned communications tool.
Weird. Didn’t even get pissed off, the speedster pondered, confused. Definitely not a boyfriend or else I would’ve been kicked in my ass already.
Plus, if she had a suitor, Peter would be the first to know about it. They rarely concealed details of their lives from each other.
Having left with nothing else to do but wait, the young man swished onto the luxuriously soft couch.
Kurt gave him a look of reprobation, rubbing his pinched cheeks.
“What?” Peter jerked his chin at the teleport, grinning like a devil. “I did you a favor, took your mind off my sister for a hot sec.”
Wanda nodded and though it was most likely meant for the person on the other side of the phone line, blood rushed up Kurt’s neck, burning his skin with embarrassment. To worsen the matter, his eyes met with a pair of steel-like. Never did he wish to disintegrate into smoke and seep through the cracks as much as at that moment.
“Yes, sir, you explained everything pretty clear. Erm…See you soon, I guess?”
Peter watched his sister hang up the phone and turned slowly as if she was lost in a haze. For a moment Wanda just stood there silent, staring nowhere in particular.
“Fucking shit!” she swore and flung her hands up, fingers strained to the point her skin went taught over the tendons.
The vehemence of her emotions made them all stiffen. The Professor’s gaze flicked behind her back to a group of teenagers that was sitting on the windowsill but luckily their ears were covered with the headphones.
“Mom has been arrested,” the girl declared with a mirthless smile.
Erik’s brows went so high they practically reached his hairline while Charles was dying coughing because he mistakenly decided it was a nice time to take a sip of tea. Kurt experienced another rush of blood, only now it felt like it left his veins.
Peter jolted upright on the couch. “What?!”
“Apparently, it was either because she was drunk driving,” Wanda drawled, turning her left-hand palm up.
“Not for the first time,” the young man drawled in return, dreading to hear another reason. On a subconscious level, he already knew what his twin would say next.
“Or –” the girl turned her right-hand palm up “– the cops pulled her over because she was driving a stolen car.”
Wanda lifted and lowered her open palms as if she was a scale of fate trying to comprehend which option was more sinful.
Almost soundless “no” slipped from Peter’s lips, his face ashen.
“But that’s not all,” his sister chirped with a manic twinkle in her eyes.
For God’s sake, shot through Charles’ mind as he cleared his throat.
“Lora got sick and mom was driving to pick her up. The kid is still waiting for her at school.”
The speedster ran his hand through his already disheveled hair.
“It’s such a massive fuck up!” Wanda exclaimed in despair, twinning her brother’s gesture.
A nice day outside the window now felt like a mockery, an unreachable no-obligation and responsibility world while they were trapped in that asylum built in classic English style (save a lava lamp on one of the bookshelves and a bubble chair in the corner). The air around seemed to be drained of oxygen, suffocating Wanda.
Peter stood up from the couch and approached his twin.
“Wan, we’ll fix it,” he said softly and laid his palms on her arms. “I’ll fix it, okay?”
She shook her head. “No. No mutant stuff. It’s not another rescue mission from the Pentagon, Peter. We need to resolve it all quietly and peacefully because if something goes wrong this time, we will screw up mom’s and Lora’s lives.”
“Alright, fine,” he coaxed. “I’ll pick Lora up from school and you take care of the police business.”
The girl huffed. “Why is it always me to speak with the authorities?”
“They and I have a history together, remember?” He gave her arms a slight squeeze before letting go of her.
“They never pressed charges against you.”
“So didn’t against you.”
The twins locked horns of stubbornness until the gravity of the situation caught up with them again, calling for mature behavior.
Peter resigned first. “But we don’t have time for this. Will toss a coin when we are there.”
“What are you going to do now?” Kurt asked, fiddling with his claws.
“May I be of any assistance?” Charles weighed in on, eager to help those in trouble as always. “Let me write a check so you could pay the bail, it must be –”
“Write a check?” Erik repeated with a scowl. “It’s quite a materialistic approach to the problems of cherished students, don’t you think?”
“Erik, please.” Involuntary, the Professor’s hand clenched into a fist.
You didn’t even consider them being my students, his voice echoed in Magneto’s mind.
“A sheet of paper with your signature won’t solve their problem,” the Master of Magnetism pressed on, his tone laced with reproach.
His children swapped a glance. Nothing warms the soul of a youngster like the fact that their parent takes their side and stands up for them, but the circumstances to get a positive experience were rather dubious.
“Never mind, Prof,” Peter intervened, running up a white flag between them.
“We will deal with it ourselves,” Wanda finished for him.
Even with her nerves royally shaken, chilling determination was solidifying with each passing minute, Erik could tell that. Before her expression closed up, armored.
“Thanks for the offer though,” the speedster said in earnest.
“Kurt, Washington.” In a few long, decisive steps Wanda crossed the room to stand next to the teleport, face to face almost. “Now!”
Her tone that would suit Magneto himself left no room for argument but made it clear they had to leave this room this instant so Kurt rallied his powers again, picturing the Maximoffs’ house in all the details he could revive, and puffed when Peter emerged in the close vicinity.
“I hope they won’t do anything reckless,” the Professor mused, rubbing his chin. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let them go like this.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Erik agreed so that his friend turned his face to him, perplexed. “You could step in instead of offering them money.”
“It always astonished me how eager you are to use my powers against others but every time it’s your mind I touch, you grumble that I stayed out of your head,” the telepath sneered.
“Because I don’t need your guidance.” The man grabbed the lab coats from the arm of his chair and rose to his feet. “If I had the opportunity to keep this bizarre family away from trouble, I would.”
Jubilee, who stood in the door all this time, stepped away when the Master of Magnetism walked past her, the look on his face shadowy.
Shadowy with a thought – lest the twins, and Kurt along with them, get themselves in more trouble.
....
*Wanda, you should go upstairs with me! It's urgent!