Re-Establishing Old Ties

[Magneto]

Magneto stood across the street from the questionable hotel and this Mimi who supposedly was the proprietor. He was dressed in a pair of old faded blue jeans with a white button up shirt he had picked up from the Salvation Army. His hair was combed back as usual and his blue eyes scanned his environment. Judging by the looks of this place and the crowd associated with it, Magneto felt he might have to cause a scene, something that brought a slight smile to his face, after all, the cops were probably the last thing this place would see.

Stepping across the street, in front of a moving car none the less, Magneto put out his hand and flattened the automobile, ceasing its movement. It felt good to have his powers back, finally he was more than just some pathetic homo sapien. Flicking his wrist, the car, or what was left of it, was flipped over onto its top and skidded across the street and up onto the sidewalk. Magneto could have cared less about its occupant, he had more important people on his mind at the moment.....Pyro. He had heard through several mutants that he could find the boy here and now, he had come to take him back home so to speak.

Stepping up onto the sidewalk Magneto headed toward the front office, narrowing his blue eyes as he looked the local street rats hanging about. He wondered a moment if any of the crowd here were mutants, but shook that thought from his head, one thing at a time, Pyro was the main priority at the moment. Stepping up to the front desk, Magneto put his hands behind his back and looked at the short dumpy man running things, "I'm looking for someone...a young boy who has an obsession with fire. He's rather short, brown hair, possibly with blond streaks....Oh, and he has a rather smart mouth on him," he said, ignoring the whispers and chuckles around him.

One man, fairly larger than Magneto stood up and placed a large dirty hand on his shoulder. Turning his head, Magneto noticed the large amount of metal this particular man was wearing, "I don't think your who I'm looking for," he said calmly as the man found himself lifted into the air and tossed out through the dirty front window and into the street. "Now," he said turning to look at the clerk again, "Where is the boy?"

[Pyro]

Mimi's. Hardly the most salubrious of locations, and not exactly what Pyro had imagined on leaving Xavier's to 'step up in the world' and find somewhere he could be himself. Hell, even the Brotherhood campsite had had something on this place. But it was precisely that precarious position – right on the edge of the gutter – which made it perfect for his needs, and right now the closest thing he had to home.

Home. Scowl. An ugly word at the best of times, and especially so today. Word was Magneto had somehow been resurrected, had set up shop and was ready to start the ball rolling again. He should have been able to ignore the rumours, since they surfaced pretty much every day and generally turned out to be false; some jumped up Level 2 intent on securing a legacy, or just desperate ex-supporters genuinely convincing themselves that things were on the up because false hope was better than the alternative. Pyro declined to number himself amongst them, because waiting for the person who’d never return was foolish, he’d learnt that early enough.

Problem was, this smacked of truth. And it was irritating – no, more than irritating, almost fearsome – to be left wondering whether it was worse to believe or to realise that he was unable to. Magneto was dead, and in any case the Magneto he needed had never been real, had he? The Magneto who lived in his head wasn’t the one who’d sent the pawns to their doom, wasn’t the sort of man who’d abandon his most loyal supporters just because they got stuck with the cure. No, that Magneto was as false as the Pyro who’d stood behind him, the activist who’d been his right hand man. The urban myth. The hero.

Hah. Heroes. Alcatraz had taught him about that one, hadn’t it? Bloody X-Men in their stupid little suits turning up and wrecking everything…

Crash. What the hell was that? Almost before the shards of glass had landed he’d reacted, snapping the lighter open and forming a fire-ball… Damn. He thought he’d had that one under control, thought he’d learnt better than to slip like that. He was probably losing it, if he was going to start jumping every time a… Hmm, well. Burly men flying through windows weren’t exactly an everyday occurrence even here. The more pressing evidence of his newfound insanity was the sight of the one who’d been doing the throwing.

Couldn’t be. He was a dead man.

Something about Magneto’s quiet dignity, even now in charity shop castoffs looking more the little old man than ever, made Pyro feel every inch the child. Which was annoying, as was the way that no matter how comfortable he’d been moments before he always felt under-dressed, as if casualness was some private deadly insult. His current outfit was a good case in point – dark denims, undersized baseball boots, and the ubiquitous faded t-shirt bearing the legend 333 – Don’t make me show you my other half which would have betrayed the fact he’d been paying Fred a visit had he been the sort to have confidants.

Even if this was impossible, he couldn’t just stand and gawp with all the norms. After a moment or two when it seemed that this impossible figure was stubbornly refusing to be sensible and start not-existing, he had to accept that yes, it just might be. Some sort of emotional display might well have been in order, but that just wasn’t the way he was made. Nonchalance was so much more his style. Reducing the flare to a smaller point of flame which he played with casually, almost avoiding looking at Magneto as if the spectacle wasn’t really that interesting after all, as if things had never changed and the man before him hadn’t just come back from the dead, he remarked in perfect dead-pan “Guess this means you’re back, then. Can’t say the costume is much of an improvement, although bonus points for ditching the dorky helmet… What the hell took you so long?”

[Magneto]

Before the man behind the counter could open his crooked grubby mouth, Magneto heard a familiar voice and smirked. "I think I've found whom I'm looking for," he said just as the little man grunted and screamed in pain, the gun he had reached for underneath the counter wrapping around his fingers in a tight little ball. Magneto turned casually, hands still behind his back and left the attendant crying on the floor. He looked at Pyro and the small ball of flame the boy played with, was always playing with, the smirk still on his face. "The helmet wasn't so dorky when everyone else was being assaulted by Charles' little machine now was it?," he asked Pyro as he slowly approached his one time protege.

Glass crunched underneath the tennis shoes Magneto wore, the man who had took the trip through the window, unconscious and bleeding on the ground. Looking Pyro over as he slowed and then stopped in front of the boy, Magneto sighed, "I figured you better than this my boy, did I not teach you anything," he remarked giving their surroundings a look over, "Your better than this," he said as his blue eyes slowly found their way back to Pyro, holding him in place with a look of authority that Magneto seemed to radiate.

[Pyro]

“Was still dorky” he shrugged, only just suppressing a grin which threatened to break the whole Don’t really give a damn thing he had going on. “Just in a clever way.”

Of course, the reference to Charles’ little machine couldn’t help but turn his thoughts to Alkali Lake. Pyro wasn’t the sort to indulge in ‘what if’s’ but suffice to say if he hadn’t gone through with that particular choice things would have been… different. Probably not better. But not the same, that much was certain.

Better than this? No shit, Sherlock. He was glad Magento didn’t have the whole ‘inside your head’ thing going on like Xavier had, because he’d rather his old master didn’t know exactly how far he’d fallen – something which hadn’t bothered him up until now, and under Magneto’s steely gaze seemed even worse than it warranted, making him squirm uncomfortably for a moment or two before he recovered his usual nonchalant attitude, switching from the fireball to the dull click of the lighter. “Yeah, well, not like there were any other options… the whole ‘wanted terrorist’ thing sort of complicates matters”

[Magneto]

"Terrorism to some, salvation to others," he said with a faint smile, realizing that he had indeed missed those smart remarks, even if it was just a little bit. As Magneto looked his protege over, he wondered just what is was he saw in Pyro, what it was that made him seek the boy out. Sure Pyro was one of the more loyal followers he had, but there had been even more loyal, so why Pyro, why this young boy. Magneto shook his head as he reached out and patted his once protege on the shoulder, "You followed me once my boy, you ready to do so again?," he asked, his head tilted down somewhat and his ice blue eyes staring directly into Pyro's, looking for that spark of ambition, that desire to prove himself to his mentor and to anyone else who happened to be watching him.

Magneto would start off small, finding those he could trust the most and then going from there, building the ranks of the brotherhood to their once fearsome glory, turning them back into a force who inspired fear in the homo sapiens. He saw now, he would have to go even further this time, he would have to be even more aggressive and even more cold, a place he did not want to go, but now, with the development of this so called "cure", Magneto and those who followed him had no choice.

[Pyro]

… and that would be sounding uncomfortably like an ultimatum right about now. Which was never going to sit well.

There was a time he would have jumped at the chance without a second thought. A time when all he wanted was revenge for Alcatraz, when he’d have given anything for The Cause. But that was before he realised he had as near as damn it no idea what that cause was. If this was a novel, it’s read along the lines of how he’d seen too much, fallen too far, yada yada yada, but that wasn’t exactly the truth, implying that he was somehow embittered. Please. Yeah, he’d seen a lot. But the only effect that had had was a numbing one. Thing was, he’d just… stopped. Stopped caring, because that was just setting himself up for a fall. Stopped waiting for the Brotherhood to reform, for round two to begin.

But that strategy had one major problem now the playing field had changed again.

He’d always been the sort to do things on impulse – well, in so far as he just fell into wherever fate took him - but this was an actual decision, Not exactly a minor one, nor one he could easily recant if it turned out he’d picked the wrong option. His loyalty to Magneto the individual was still there – the my boy was a nice touch if re-awakening those feelings was Magneto’s aim – but to him as the leader of the Brotherhood? That was proving a little harder to recover. Alcatraz had proved that they weren’t the indestructible Gods they made themselves out to be. More specifically, it had proved that Magneto couldn’t really protect him – he’d thought himself untouchable, the right hand man behind the rock-hard Master of Magnetism, and had ended up where exactly? Yeah, that would be the fall, wouldn’t it? The annoying bit that inevitably comes once you get somewhere worth being. And he honestly didn’t know if he still had it in him to go back to life as a member of the Brotherhood now that the risk was something more than a laughed-off fantasy.

“I think we have some things to talk through” was his only reply, not yet committing either way. It remained to be seen how Magneto would take that, given that he was used to Pyro’s unquestioning loyalty.

[Magneto]

Magneto wasn't a fool, he knew it wouldn't be that easy, even with Pyro's loyalty and blind ambition, no it would take something much more complex and concrete to reassure the boy's trust in Magneto once again. Magneto sighed, giving a forced yet faint smile as he slightly nodded his head in agreement, there were indeed things that needed to be discussed, although he was sure it was more on Pyro's part than his. "I take it you've lost a bit of faith in me....or maybe in yourself?," he said raising his head, looking down at Pyro somewhat, "Although by the tone of your voice I'd say the first option would be the answer," he said, still holding his light smile, although his eyes showed the feeling of betrayal and a bit of hurt.

Magneto heard the rustle of a crowd behind him as the motley crew of misfits inside the lounge area began to poke their heads out to see just what was going on. "Maybe we should continue this discussion in a more...-private- location, preferably one with a cleaner atmosphere," he said, wondering if there really was any place within three miles that didn't reek of urine and wasn't populated by would be thugs and burnt out addicts.

[Pyro]

Was that disappointment in Magneto's voice? Probably. And he should probably have felt bad because of that, right? But aside from the general discomfort of being held in that icy gaze his most immediate thought was Good. Now he can get a taste of how the rest of us are feeling

Rest of us meaning him, of course, given how he'd not exactly rushed to stay in contact with any of the remaining Brotherhood veterans. Occassionally one had tried to seek him out, but it had been easy enough to pretend he had no idea what they were on about. Easy enough to lose the immediate legacy of being Pyro, who'd by now passed into Urban Myth (well, right up until his little display just now ressurected him. Great. Back five minutes and already Magneto was getting him in deep water). Suffice to say none of them felt particularly compelled to sit around and share war stories because the last thing they - well, he - wanted was to have to relive the days immediately after. Probably not a patch on what Magneto had lived through, from Pyro's understandably limited understanding thereof, but mutant prison camps were an image he wanted to lose from his memory.

Privacy would be good, even if it made things even more intense and therefore awkward. The distant wail of a police siren, probably alerted to resumed mutant hostilities or something, provided more motivation to move on. Wasn't like he could stay here any more, was it? Magneto must have been pretty secure in his belief that Pyro would come back, since he'd destroyed that option for him without a second thought, leaving him with as near as dammit nowhere to go. Was that the master plan, to entrap him? There was a dark pleasure to be had from the knowledge that he was in some way important enough to merit such effort... but it didn't quite override the less amiable feelings.

"I guess I'd better get my stuff" he half-scowled, half-sighed, resigning himself to the pleasure of Magneto's company. This ought to be good, watching him try to justify the whole debacle that was Alcatraz.

[Magneto]

Magneto knew Pyro wasn't too thrilled to be back in his company yet again, but right now, that mattered little. There were a lot of things that Magneto didn't like but he put up with for the sake of the "cause", for the sake of mutants everywhere. Dragging good mutants like Pyro through this hell of suffering and pain, this was between homo sapiens and mutants, was the last thing Magneto wanted to do to him or to any other mutant for that matter. Magneto had had enough of war, enough of the killing, but as long as the homo sapiens relentlessly persecuted mutant kind, then Magneto would wage his war. Homo sapiens could never be trusted, they would keep pushing for new anti-mutant laws until every last mutant on the earth was rounded up and put down like some wild and diseased animal.

Magneto had become so wrapped up in his thoughts, that he had almost missed what Pyro had said, but when the young man moved to go and get his things, Magneto snapped back to reality. The high pitched wailing of sirens in the distance was getting louder and louder, causing Magneto to look in the direction in which they seemed to be coming from. "By the sounds of things, you had better hurry boy. The last thing we need right now is any press coverage," he said glancing in Pyro's direction, "At least not right now anyway," he added with a smile. Magneto was still relatively weak at the moment, the drug that had supposedly "cured" him was still in his system, albeit small amounts, but still enough to keep him from his true potential.

[Pyro]

If anything that touch of weakness was scarier – no, not scarier, he didn’t do fear – more disconcerting than the knowledge that he was a pawn in a complex game where the stakes kept upping (a pawn who, he had no doubt, would be sacrificed without a second thought if Magneto saw fit). Pyro had long since resigned himself to the fact that pretty much everyone will stab you in the back sooner or later, that being a fairly logical extension of his firmly held belief that no one can be trusted not to disappoint you with betrayal or abandonment or any of the other little devices they use to cut you lose. He prepared himself for that by remaining as detached as would allow him to continue reaping the benefits, and leeching as much as he could before the inevitable happened. But now it seemed that there was less to be gained from standing beside Magneto, that it might actually be more of a risk than the safety it used to afford him could compensate for.

He’d ponder that one later, once Magneto had had his say, because right now escape was a far higher priority. He wouldn’t usually be ‘getting his stuff’, believing with possessions as well as people that it was above stupid to have anything you weren’t prepared to leave behind (the one notable exception to that being his lighter, which he couldn’t leave – a fact he hated, since without it he was as near as damn it a norm), but it was the gesture which mattered, a way of sussing out exactly where he stood in Magneto’s list of priorities. He darted back towards his room, making a show of hurrying while actually not achieving all that much speed at all, more time-wasting if anything. Part of him wanted to linger until the police arrived, until he had no choice but to resume hostilities, because that would leave him no option but to move on. It seemed that all his best decisions were made when there was no other choice.

[Magneto]

Magneto stayed put as he watched Pyro stagger off to retrieve his "things", which as the old man knew was just an excuse to buy some more time. Magneto knew Pyro better than Pyro wanted him to and in all the time they had spent together, Pyro had only shown interest in one thing....his lighter. When the boy had first joined up with the brotherhood, he left everything behind. He sided with Magneto and Mystique, not giving his old life a second thought and now he seemed to be lingering after something, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that. Magneto had an idea of what was bothering the boy, the events of Alcatraz Island still hung heavy in his own thoughts, but Magneto had the luxury of having been through complete failures before and as a result he knew how to take them in stride. Pyro on the other hand was still young and as such was hard headed and inexperienced, seeing failures as just that...failures, in time the boy would learn that failing at something was just fate's way of teaching you something new.

The sound of sirens grew closer and Magneto knew things were going to be a bit more public than he wished, although he suspected Pyro wished otherwise. Maybe he was taking so long in the hopes that Magneto would grow restless and worried, abandoning him to the situation or maybe he was testing Magneto, curious as to how the old man would react to being forced into a confrontation. Maybe the way Magneto had sacrificed so many on Alcatraz Island had brought questions about Pryo's own standing into light? Magneto sighed and hung his head, his hands behind his back, waiting for the inevitable confrontation that was hastily approaching.

[Pyro]

The term 'room' could only be applied in the very loosest sense to the anonymous cube Pyro had been renting, but he was loathe to call it anything else. Room felt nicely anonymous, where Quarters, Dorm or any similar synonym would have implied ownership not just by but of him, these words best left to the past life with its landscape of Head Quarters, Institutes and Secret Organisations. Room could by any space, anywhere. Nothing special and nothing to make him stay.

Except this wasn’t anywhere. It was here, now. It was Mimi’s, and Magneto was waiting for him outside, and right now the straps of his rucksack packed with fragments of nothing – one change of clothes, contents of the minibar, spare lighter and various sachets he’d pilfered from diners he’d lingered in until delivered that ultimatum which starts Are you planning on ordering anything? – were digging in with the weight of what this meant as much as what this was and he was going to run. Again.

Aww… isn’t that poetic? Shame you gave up on being a writer, same way you give up on everything else. The way you’re giving up being some hustler’s latest bitch to follow a dead man…

Fuck’s sake, pull yourself together he scowled to the ghost fleeting in the dark of a dead TV screen before turning his back on that particular What if…. ‘Giving up’ sounded so defeatist, whereas he preferred – no, needed – to see what he’d done as, if not a victory, then at least a tactical strike which provided some small benefit. Survival was, after all, a damn hard habit to give up.

Part of him considered torching the place as the lock clicked, but he had a feeling he might need the lighter fluid. Besides, then his random inexplicable pocketing of the key would be really pointless.

[Magneto]

Magneto grew increasingly impatient as he waited on Pyro, but out of a common courtesy, he tried not to show such foolish emotion, after all, he had come seeking the boy out, not vice versa. Pyro had suffered just as much as any other Brotherhood member, after all, he had no where to go and no one to really turn to after their defeat back on Alcatraz Island, another realization the old man would have to deal with as he tossed and turned in his sleep, fighting off nightmares that tried to drag him down into that inky blackness of depression and despair. So many memories of past bad decisions and failures ate at Magneto every living, waking and breathing second of his life. He watched so many of his fellow Jews die at the hands of the Nazi's when he was a child and was powerless to do anything about it, he turned his back on his own children in the name of keeping them safe when he had just really abandoned them and then the one that seemed to plague him the most as of late....the abandonment of Mystique. Her dark eyes still haunted him and ate as his soul, making his heart ache with regret.

Turning to look back in Pyro's direction, Magneto watched the boy as he slowly closed the door to the room he had been occupying, noticed how the boy seemed reluctant to leave this life of decadence and self pity. Magneto had been the one to put Pyro here, the boy had nothing to do with the situation he found himself in, it had all been the fault of one foolish and overly arrogant old man. Did Magneto have the right to come looking for Pyro, to come and ask him to resume his old life of doing the bidding of a zealous mutant terrorist? This was a child Magneto was hauling all over, a child he kept putting in danger and who's life he kept ruining. Pyro deserved better than this and better than what Magneto could give to him, but at the same time, who did Pyro have to watch over him? Magneto was the only thing in the boy's life who seemed to really care about him, who was the one to at least try and give the boy something, even if it was only a name.

[Pyro]

He hadn’t realised Magneto had been watching him, else his display would have been far less sentimental… probably. Although he was trying – with rapidly decreasing conviction now that he was literally staring the problem in the face – to convince himself that Magneto’s opinion didn’t matter, that he didn’t need his approval, and that the whole steely nonchalance thing he’d snapped back into was natural as well as habitual.

Some small part of him – no, couldn’t be of him, probably of John, since parts of that, which he thought he’d cut off, were cropping up with alarming regularity these days – couldn’t help but voice the opinion that he should be grateful. Well, fuck that. He didn’t need a guardian angel, not now. The time when that would have been useful was long gone and he’d had more than enough of being the lost cause in need of rescue, of making some embittered old man feel slightly better about his ‘cause’ because they could be the one to ‘save’ him. Xavier had given him a bellyful of that one, and he wasn’t planning on letting Magneto pull the same trick; pretending that he meant something, that what happened to him mattered, when really he was just another trophy. Magneto might once have been the lesser of two evils – better the bastard who’s perfectly frank about his ruthlessness than the hypocrite who masks it as a humanitarian effort – but now that wasn’t enough.

“So…” He’d retrieved the lighter now, pressed it to his bottom lip as if in contemplation though really that gesture could mean any number of the million or so things which ultimately boiled down to the need to handle the thing in order to feel all right. “I take it there’s a plan?”

[Magneto]

Magneto couldn't help but smile at Pryro's question, apparently the boy still underestimated the old man somewhat, for Magneto always had a plan before heading out. The old man looked at his actions as the actions on a chess board, with he being the king and at one time, Mystique as the queen, however now, he was short his queen and if he wished to take control of the board once again, he would have to take her back....of course that was easier said than done. He knew Mystique would not be pleased with him and more than likely, seeing as how her powers had surely returned to her as well, she was already plotting her revenge on Magneto for his act of leaving her behind. He knew Mystique would have seen the action as heartless and in a way it was, but it still hurt him more than anything he had ever had to do, save for the abandonment of his children.

With a deep breath, Magneto thought for a moment, about just what he should and shouldn't tell Pyro. Sure, the boy was packing up and heading out with him, but that didn't really mean anything, Magneto felt the uneasiness from Pyro, something which if not rectified would only lead to distrust and eventually betrayal. "Well, my boy, first we pick up all our pieces and put them back on the board, then we figure out just where to go from there. The Brotherhood is too fragile and broken to be of any real use right now, so it is up to you and I to strengthen its ranks once again," he said as he reached out his hand and uprooted the guardrail on the side of the road and strung it out across the parking lot to prevent any police cars from gaining access, "Now that I have found you, its time we went and looked for another of our lost comrades," he continued as he raised both arms up into the air, causing the metal water pipes which ran underneath the ground to tear free from their earthly prison and create a further barricade along with the the steel guardrail.