Re-Establishing Old Ties

[Pyro]

“Chess metaphors are back, then?” Another question – their proliferance only fitting, of course, given how this still wasn’t making much sense – this one delivered deadpan with a slight wry smile. Of course he had no idea how Magneto had been spending his days as a norm but it was a pretty safe bet chess had played some part in it, given how the man was obsessed. The image of him hunched over one of the public boards would have been entertaining if it wasn’t quite so tragic and so hard to reconcile with the man stood before him now. Pyro hadn’t wasted time thinking about what any of the others were up to. That would probably only leave him asking why he put up with things being the way they were, and why if they were in fact okay no one had bothered asking whether he was (probably because he was meant to take the fall in all this, to be the ‘trophy’ dangerous criminal this could all be pinned on…). Yeah, those weren’t good thoughts to pursue. His attempt to break that line wasn’t exactly a success either, the throwaway “What’s with those anyway?” skirting perilously close to actual easy banter and a degree of relaxation he couldn’t yet afford.

Pyro watched Magneto’s display of power with schooled dispassion – genuinely apathetic dispassion, rather than the approving, admiring casualness he’d been expected, and more than willing, to adopt before – though some small part couldn’t help but wonder at it. Looked like he really was back, then. Was that a good thing? He wasn’t yet convinced either way though Magneto’ reference to you and I swayed it towards the affirmative on impulse, carrying the irresistible hidden compliment that it did. But that was a short lived high once he remembered the risks it carried – being Magneto’s right hand man wasn’t exactly a safe position, Mystique’s fate had shown that – and (fittingly given that his thoughts had just shifted in that direction) the line about lost comrades brought him back down with a bump. No prizes for guessing who that referred to, then.

Why was it so much harder to accept Mystique’s return than if it had just been him and Magneto? It made sense that her powers would also have come back, right? Maybe (he couldn’t afford those sorts of assumptions, really, given how he was in unknown territory since the revelation that the cure didn’t work knocked him for six). But having her back would force him down a peg, Magneto and Mystique always having been at the top of the pyramid, where he couldn’t depend on even the scant protection such close proximity to Magneto afforded up until you did something stupid like sacrificing yourself for him. With Magneto alone he could be a protégé, or something like; with the two of them he was always going to be the child. Having coped on his own without the pseudo-parents looking out for him, their shadow wasn’t somewhere he wanted to return to, and the idea of Magneto reuniting them as a dysfunctional family left a sour taste.

The thing that would stick, would force him to think more deeply than he’d have liked, was why Magneto came to him first. He had an inkling that he was backup if Mystique turned nasty – and that Magneto, therefore, had assumed he’d come back without a fight.

”So you’ve found her?”

[Magneto]

Magneto found Pyro's blunt remarks quite comical and amusing, lifting his spirits somewhat. No matter how serious things seemed, Pyro always had that air of calm and arrogance about him, two things which were good for morale. "War is no different than a challenging game of chess, except the losses are far more tragic," he said with a semi-serious tone and look. Magneto had lost many good friends over the years, either to some sick scheme of a crazed mad man bent on the eradication of a group or just to time in general. Of course, there had been a few times when fate itself saw fit to rear her ugly head and play some sort of sick hand and tear his life apart and any of his comrades along with it.

When the conversation shifted to the subject of -her-, the one who both wished to remain nameless at this point, Magneto seemed to grow a bit more tired, as if a large burden was laid upon his shoulders once again. "Truly by accident my boy, truly by accident. She's working in a coffee shop in town, right along beside the other homo sapiens. I saw her one day and lucky for me, she didn't notice me," he said with a sigh, not really looking forward to the inevitable meeting with the women who had stood beside him for so many years.

[Pyro]

”How did you reco…” he started, but stopped dead, dismissing the question with a curt shake. He didn’t particularly care how he’d spotted her amongst the norms, though he had a fairly good idea; it would be hard for anyone to forget that face from the prison transport after what had happened, and Magneto had more reason to remember than most. Besides, those two had always been close…

Ick. Like he said, he didn’t need, or want, to know.

”So” he changed topic smoothly ”I guess we’ll be picking her up some time soon? Then” A slight smile played on his lip at the next line; a little risky, perhaps, both in trying to second-guess the master plan, if indeed there was one any more, and in its gentle send-up of Magneto’s own idiomatic vernacular, but he couldn’t resist. Besides, flippancy was a pretty good mask for the seriousness of the situation. ”Reset the board and start the next match, game, whatever? Only with… less pieces… and a bigger board..” Yeah, that was getting a bit strained. As was the easy tone, because if another ‘game’ was about to start, then he was probably the closest this broken old man had to a pawn. He’d been willing enough to sacrifice them before, at the height of his strength, and Pyro knew well enough that when you had nothing left to lose – as it seemed Magneto had now – then desperate measures seem to make more sense than anything else.

[Magneto]

Magneto could hear the sound of worry in Pyro's voice, but he wasn't totally sure of what ate at his one time protege. Was it the fact of falling back into his old role, the sudden realization that mutants weren't as immortal as he had come to believe, or was it maybe the fact that Mystique might be coming back into the picture. The old man knew Mystique and the boy never really saw eye to eye and that Pyro might be a tad jealous of her position and relationship to the man he held in such high regard, or at least used to anyway. Magneto knew he had lost respect in Pyro's eyes and ways of thinking and he couldn't really blame the boy, after all, it was Magneto who led them to the that horrible massacre at Alcatraz and the humiliating defeat at the hands of the combined forces of the homo sapiens and the X-Men.

Pyro's little attempt at his own chess metaphors amused Magneto, giving him reason to smile again, "We have our king and our knight my boy," he said as he put one hand on Pyro's shoulder, an act of reassurance, "but if we wish to really win, then we need our queen," he said sticking to the metaphors, mostly out of habit and then some out of prodding young Pyro. The boy was smart, no doubt there, he just lacked refinement, so Magneto would slowly carry that act out, one little step at a time and what better way than through a good game of chess. "Now come boy, we have plans to carry out and mutants to find. I'm sure the X-Men are still recovering from their loss," he said but then grew silent as he thought about the loss of a dear old friend, but then shook his head, "So, let's take advantage of such opportunities and get the leg up on them."

[Pyro]

A knight?

Well, that wasn’t too bad. From what he vaguely remembered of chess (which wasn’t much; like most things, he’d given it up – or more accurately given up trying – when it didn’t click right away, probably because he resented the suggestion he put his mind to better use than planning what to burn next and the implication that he needed chess as ‘therapy’) the knight moved in little l-shapes which apparently didn’t make much sense but kicked ass. Plus it looked like something, rather than a bizarre twisted little blob. It was childish, of course, to get excited about such a title, but whatever.

Thing was, Magneto seemed to be developing an unfortunate habit of spinning the mood on a dime, bungee-jumping between extremes, and all manner of other metaphorical niceties which basically meant whenever things got good he seemed determined to mess them up. Take bringing up the X-Men. Their ‘loss’ cut, though he didn’t want it to, not least because Pyro’s own reaction had been the one time he’d managed to piss Magneto off. There was more than that, of course. It couldn’t have been more than a week, and felt like a hell of a lot less, since he and Rogue had met up, not-drunk together, and not-chatted about how they weren’t enemies any more. Of course it was dumb to get torn up over that. Not like he’d entertained any notions of getting back into a ‘relationship’, and not like she’d have wanted him back… No, Magneto was the best chance he had, same way he always had been.

Now there was just the small problem of a clean getaway.

“You going to let me in on how you’re planning to get out of here?” Of course Magneto would have a way out. He always did. A few police and a press detail weren’t going to stop him… right?

[Magneto]

Magneto dropped his head and gave Pyro a "you should know better than to ask that" sort of look. Magneto almost always stayed one step ahead of the moment, of course that was when he was thinking clearly and not blinded by his own arrogant ego in thinking nothing could go wrong with his plans. Of course the incident at Alcatraz put things in a whole new perspective for the old man, it showed him that his opponents were learning and weren't as ignorant of him as he thought they were. Even with Charles gone, the X-Men had proved themselves capable of handling intense situations, a total surprise on Magneto's part.

Reaching into one of the pockets of his faded and worn blue jeans, Magneto fumbled around for a moment and then smiled as he pulled out metallic Zippo. Holding his hand out flat, the lighter hovered in mid-air, waiting for Pyro to claim it as his, "Well for starters, lets give the homo sapiens something else to worry about instead of one old man and a young boy," he said as he looked around at the hotel. Several screeching tires could be heard, indicating the police had arrived. "Show me just how creative you can be Pyro," Magneto said as the lighter floated through the air, seeming to dance in front of the boy's face.

Meanwhile, the two cop cars which had pulled up were already radioing in for backup. The small barricade which Magneto had erected tipped them off that they weren't dealing with your typical street thugs. Of course, with Magneto back in control of his powers, even if still hindered somewhat, he and the boy could be long gone before any real help could arrive.

[Pyro]

The Zippo danced in Magneto’s invisible grip, the light catching it so it glinted as if the sparks were fighting to get out. It lay just within his reach – proper metal, not the plastic he’d been making do with – and he knew that, once he had it, it would feel just right pressed to his palm, make the exact same click he remembered, and flare just so.

Magneto had obviously been carrying it for him, and him alone – from what he remembered, the Master of Magnetism wasn’t a smoker, and who else had an obsession (call a spade a spade and all that jazz) with lighters the way he did? – and that meant something, right?

He could have just reached out and taken it. Nothing could be simpler, right? Once he had it, he’d be unstoppable, and everything would be…

What? Just like it was? Yeah, right. Even sort of okay’s hopelessly optimistic. Pyro sighed, dropping his hand just short of grabbing the lighter. He wasn’t naïve, definitely wasn’t stupid. This was no simple gesture, was it?

”Shouldn’t you at least pretend to warn me there’s no going back?

[Magneto]

Magneto gave Pyro a nonchalant look and and slightly shook his head, shrugging a bit as he did. "That would make sense, but I we've both been down this road before so I don't really see any need to pretend your still a novice," he said casually as the metallic lighter began to spin slowly in front of the boy. Magneto knew Pyro wouldn't be all that easy to snag, to drag back to his side, and of course, he couldn't really blame him for that. The incident at Alcatraz Island still hung vividly in the old man's mind as well, a burning reminder of the failure his arrogance had wrought. Magneto had become too comfortable with the fear that went with his name, thinking himself unstoppable....a mistake that would not find him again.

"No matter how much you run or try to blend in my boy, you know they won't ever let you be. You've been seen at my side far too many times for them to just let you wander around free like this. They'll hunt us all until every one of us is locked up somewhere, pushed away like dirt underneath a rug," he said as he stood up straight, putting his hands behind his back, fixing Pyro with a practiced glare, "I've seen it before boy, they talk of wanting to help the world, but in reality all they want to do is help their own desires. They'll lock us up, torture us and then kill us, all in the name of safety. You think you've seen horrors my boy....," he said with a scoff, "You haven't even scratched the surface of true terror and horror. I know what these self righteous homo sapiens are capable of, I've seen it first hand and that is something I wish no mutant to witness or go through," he said as his face grew more serious with each word and his tone filling with more conviction.

[Pyro]

Yeah, right. Of course, I know nothing. Because I was the one holed up somewhere playing at being Erik fucking homo sapien Lensherr while everyone else went to hell…

Wisely for once he bit his tongue, holding back from filling Magneto in on his own education in the fine arts of human barbarity. Naturally he couldn’t hope for it to appear anything other than ‘barely surface level horror’ in Magneto’s eyes next to what he’d been through – not that it was his intention for this to descend into a round of My genocide’s better than yours – but it had been enough. He wondered whether Mr. Lensherr had been blissfully ignorant of the whole affair, or faked the smiling approval with which the rest of the world greeted what was happening to the ‘degenerate gene freaks’, whether he’d seen through that title and the accompanying image of ‘Big Bad Mutie’ and known it was the newer and younger disciples who took the brunt of it, unable to make a clean getaway or buy their way out of what the homo sapiens termed ‘Justice’. He’d got away, eventually, somehow. But it had left its mark.

The scowl Pyro couldn’t easily bite back, though enough savvy remained for him to hastily direct it away from Magneto and towards the pavement, or what remained of it, ragged edges gaping like a raw wound around the barricade of warped piping.

He was right, of course.

Yes, but…

But what?

If that’s how things are, why haven’t they picked you up yet? They have no idea who you are, do they? You’re just another mutant kid, definitely not this ‘Pyro’, because no kid could do that… And provided you don’t do anything stupid…

Right… Take a look around. Way past stupid

Damn Magneto. He’d done it again, removed the luxury of choice. And more than that, he was being so… blind (though Pyro had the sense it was more a matter of now wanting, rather than not being able, to see). Okay, so mutant-human relations were never going to be brilliant, but in the absence of organised mutant terrorism there had been a certain general grudging tolerance.

Did Magneto not realise it was at least in part his fault? That it was acts like this which fuelled the persecution, giving the homo sapiens a reason to be self righteous in their smiting? Just as Magneto’s experiences fuelled him, so their picture on the front of the next Friends of Humanity pamphlet, their story played on the news day in day out, would fuel the calls for the reopening of the Mutant Camps (they had, of course, a more politically correct and euphemistic name, but why sugar the pill when they all knew what they were?).

He’d seen that too – the glazed look which came over the human guards, the one that meant they were remembering, dredging up enough hatred to go through with what they felt they had to do. It might have been termed punishment, but the majority of what went on (the side that never officially happened and that the mutants on the receiving end would kill to forget so easily) could only be termed revenge. They weren’t ever looking at their ‘charges’, really, but at the headlines and the photo fits, at every burnt out cop car and crushed prison transport.

What the hell difference does any of that make? Once the anti-mutant bandwagon got rolling again they weren’t going to discriminate, were they? He’d been on the receiving end often enough at the Institute; at least with the Brotherhood, without their ridiculous credos holding him back, he’d have a fighting chance (and, should the worst come to the worst, could probably count on the more fucked up ones following through on his request that they should kill him before they let the humans take him again). That alone was worth all the shit, right?

”Okay.”

… and that would be the total resignation, his eyes downcast, his mouth filled with the salty blood taste of biting his lip in uncharacteristically blatant uncertainty, as he reached out and took the lighter. Click-click. Yes, exactly how he remembered it. Click-click. Fwoosh.

The flame was dancing in his eyes now. He knew what he had to do, and couldn’t pretend that, underneath all the reluctance, there wasn’t some part of him which still desperately wanted to torch everything. Sure, he’d woken up to how the world really was…

And found that it was only worth burning.

[Magneto]

The tension hung thick in the air between Magneto and Pyro, the boy's animosity and angst clearly evident. Magneto stood silently as he waited for the boy to take the lighter and the mantle of Pyro once again. The old man's face was stern and cold, showing a bit of a different Magneto now, one who would wage a war like no other. His pride had been hurt and the homo sapiens showed themselves a formidable opponent for the first time since his private hell emerged on the scene. Things would be different now, he would not stop until he had brought the governments of the world to their knees and obliterated the homo sapiens to nothing more than a huddled mass of quivering children who were afraid of just the mere mention of a mutant.

As Pyro took the lighter, Magneto nodded his head slightly in approval, but the real joy showed when Pyro brought forth the bright red flame. Magneto saw the look in his young protege's eyes and stepped aside in his old fashion, letting the boy have his way. "Burn them my boy....burn them all," Magneto said as with a cold and callous voice along with a look to match. Homo sapiens would regret what they had done to he and his kind.....and he would also see that the X-Men would partake of the same fate. The line had clearly been drawn now, the X-Men were clearly as much as an enemy as the homo sapiens they strove to protect and as much as Magneto hated to harm a mutant, he would do what he had to do, ethics be damned.

[Pyro]

He didn’t exactly hear Magneto’s words – they blending into the haze which surrounded the flame, vague details he was aware of but didn’t really take in because they didn’t matter, weren’t flickering and spiralling and creating a whole new palmistry which promised, if not a long life, then certainly a far more interesting one than he’d been leading so far. If you termed that life. He didn’t. Without that spark which kept him going it hadn’t even passed as a cheap forgery thereof, because not being able to burn was like not being able to breathe, only without the comforting knowledge that he’d either break or die outright.

Pyro knew full well he couldn’t create fire, but without that knowledge he could have sworn the flames were inside him. And it felt good. Far better than he had remembered. Cyanide egg hits the acid at a million miles an hour, the real fire and the fake fire and everything else coursing through him. Everything they said about drugs (because much as he’d denied that it was an addiction the comparison was undeniable) and more - better than sex, better than anything because nothing else could take his own special brand of madness away so neatly.

All of that would change, of course, if the humans had their way. That was one lesson which had sunken in, Magneto would be so very proud. And while it had been easy enough to claim the moral high ground before, now that he’d been properly reminded how much he’d miss this, giving it up wasn’t something he planned on doing lightly. That rush, mixed with the lingering memories of the Golden Gate fallout, really didn’t leave him any other choice.

He’d grown beyond the one-liners - all that nonsense about ‘dangerous mutants’ and ‘being the cure’ – so he told himself, at least. In any case they seemed hideously inappropriate. They were for later, when the destruction would feel as natural as the exercise of power rather than just being an unfortunate side-effect, or necessary evil. The slow hiss of crimson and golden flares was the only sound… for about 10 seconds, until the humans realised what was going on. Then it was back to his usual soundtrack – the squeal of sirens twisted and alien as the flames distorted them, the crackle of the blackening cop car, and the screams.

[Magneto]

Magneto felt the heat from the flames under Pyro's command, keeping his back turned as the screams from the homo sapiens echoed in his ears. War was not something Magneto enjoyed nor was it something he wished to begin, but in his eyes, the homo sapiens started this horrible turn of events. The mutant camps, the mutant registration act, and of course the horrible black ops experiments on mutants whom where deemed worthy of some sick and twisted death penalty. Mutants were treated as second class citizens, they had been tread on and pushed underfoot long enough, it was time to finish this war and show the homo sapiens just how misguided and foolish they really were.

"All of it Pyro, burn it all. Leave no witnesses," Magneto told his companion. Neither he nor the boy could afford to leave witnesses behind, no one who could identify either one of them. His return was not ready yet and neither was Magneto, for many pieces still had to be gathered. Magneto would show these homo sapiens true terror and horror if that was what they truly wished to see, after all, they were the ones who had labeled them as monsters.

More sirens could be heard in the distance and for one moment, a slight smile tugged at the corners of Magneto's mouth. "Foolish," he said as if assessing a situation as he turned and caught sight of a few more patrol cars speeding their way. Holding his hand out as if beckoning the cars to stop, the first car did just that and rather violently. The entire car was crushed together like one would smash a tin can from end to end. The car behind collided hard and flipped into the air, end over end and was caught as such by Magneto's grasp. He flung his hand aside and cast the car into a condemned building, letting it then fall to the ground with an unmistakable crunch. The third car slammed on its breaks and slid sideways, its back end spinning around, but of course this would be retreat would not save them. Extending both hands, Magneto lifted the car into the air and crushed it flat as he tightened his fists together and then pulled the car in half as he separated his hands from one another. He flung both pieces to the side and then resumed his normal stance, his hands behind his back and his face as cold as ever.

[Pyro]

Burning cop cars. Déjà vu all over again. Full circle would sum this situation up fairly nicely, wouldn’t it? And so little had changed… so much was different, true, but in terms of who he was in that moment… No. No change whatsoever.

Scratch that. Something had changed. Because however good the fire felt, Magneto’s next command left a bitter taste. The flames flew back with a roar, swallowed into a clenched fist.

Stop it. You’ve killed before.

Not like this

He shot a glance at Magneto, mercifully caught up in his own carnage and so seemingly not having noticed Pyro’s lapse. How could he be so cool about it? Pyro knew no matter how much grooming he received he’d never be able to make those sorts of sweeping statements; burn it all, leave no survivors… let the pawns go first. He’d admired him for it before, now it was… repulsive.

Oh, so now we have moral scruples? Can’t afford them, remember?

Can’t just do this either. I’m no one’s pawn.

Yeah, you tell yourself that. Everyone’s a marionette, aren’t they? There are no real boys and girls at the end of the film, only the strings they’re so convinced they ‘got no’ of

Maybe he really had gone insane, since here he was in the middle of everything else worrying about things like mixed metaphors and why he was suddenly quoting comics which in turn referenced Disney films… but hey, maybe that wasn’t the insane part after all. Those were (relatively) normal things to do, weren’t they? Human things.

[Magneto]

Magneto had been caught up in his own deeds and thoughts for a moment, not really noticing Pyro's lack of determination and his unwillingness to do as he was told. Perhaps it was Magneto's perception of the boy as he was before the Alcatraz incident which distorted his view for the time being, but as usual such things would not keep the old man blind for long. Magneto was usually quite observant and on top of things and for him to be this oblivious, well....that just didn't happen. Of course, Magneto looked at his actions in life as he did as he looked at his actions on a chess board.....three moves ahead. Could he have foreseen Pyro's faltering actions and faith in him long before the boy even did?

"There is no place for hesitation my boy, the only thing it will accomplish is our defeat, you would do good to remember that," Magneto said as he cast a sideways glance to Pyro. The tone in his voice however, well....it was hard to tell whom he was trying to convince, the boy who stood beside him or just himself in general. Magneto had done many things which plagued him in his sleepless nights, but they were all things that -needed- to be done....or at least thats what he told himself. "Do you think they would give you a chance? Do you think they care if you live or die my boy? Any one of those homo sapiens would soon as put a needle in you neck as to even look at you," he said with such conviction as he slowly turned to stare Pyro down, his cold blue eyes boring straight through Pyro. Magneto was a full of complex thoughts and actions, he strove for peace, but everything he did contradicted that...or at least it did to those who didn't truly understand him. Peaceful actions were grand and all, but Magneto had seen the horrors wrought by the persecutors and he knew that all those monsters understood was violence...so violence was what he would give them.

[Pyro]

… yeah, stating the obvious was really going to convince him, wasn’t it? Pyro had already reconciled himself with just how fucked up humans were. It was negotiating the same realisation when it came to Magneto which was proving more difficult.

The decision to join Magneto… well, it hadn’t really been a decision at all, had it? Chuck an’ co had never really had any use for him – fire’s pretty pointless in a world where you’re trying to stop things exploding – and so the ‘choice’ had been between not-burning and having the freedom to. Which boiled down the choice between not-breathing and breathing, and no one could expect him to choose the first option, because survival was another one of those hard-to-shift addictions.

If that’s the truth, if this really is just about the fire, then there shouldn’t be a problem, should there? Burn it all. Click open. The golden spark flickered, stretched into a taper spiralling red and orange. It shouldn’t have been difficult. He flexed the fingers on his left hand, about to draw the flame and…

”So I’m killing everyone who doesn’t give a damn about me? World’s going to be a pretty empty place”

Click shut. Hand buried deep in his pockets (lighter along with them so he wouldn’t have to look at it but could still feel the reassuring weight), he turned away from Magneto’s stare, half-growling with frustration directed at every- and any-thing, but mostly at himself. What the hell was wrong?

It had made sense… once. But the problem with having nothing really tying him there was that when things like this happened he couldn’t just kick back, safe in the insanity of devotion. Magneto’s cause wasn’t really his, it just happened to have similar aims, which had once been enough to make it the best option.

“Say we do torch it. Destroy everything? How far d’you think we’re going to get?” Contradicting Magneto… not exactly the smartest move. But neither was fighting a losing battle purely to bring pieces back into play. The lighter was out again, tossed between his hands, thumbed and not-quite opened as he continued. Unlike the more fanatical core, Pyro was never going to be Magneto’s martyr. There was only so far he was willing to go for the cause alone; without some other driving force (like, say, revenge. Or improved long-term survival odds) he was always going to save his own neck before waving the banner. ”Don’t know about you, boss, but I don’t bounce back after being shot in the head. If we’re making a getaway then fine. But hanging around here is suicide at best, and no matter how much it sucks, I’m getting pretty attached to life”

Run. Hide. Live and fight another day when the odds are more in your favour. Not exactly difficult, was it? If Magneto was so determined to 'accomplish' something, he'd have to see the logic in there - surprising though it may have been, coming from Pyro (hell, even he didn't quite know where the maturity and restraint sprang from). If Magneto latched onto that at all, so much the better... even if it wasn't quite the truth, it not being the death which had him shaken. Going down in a hail of bullets did have its own strange romanticism, and would no doubt make a fitting end; being taken alive, ending up their latest laboratory exhibit, that was scary