X-Men: The Last Stand (40 page)

His eyes narrowed as the visual information they were transmitting finally made its presence felt inside Bobby’s somewhat heat-addled brain. His ice barriers were melting, no surprise there, but while much of it was indeed incandescing into gas, there were puddles of water all around him. And now that he was paying proper attention, he could see that even though he was sweating, every exhalation of breath brought with it a puffball cloud of condensed air. He wasn’t simply generating cold,
he
was cold.

Connections closed on levels far below his conscious mind, memories of discussions he’d had with Jean Grey on the nature of his power, of mutation, of where it might lead him. She and the professor always talked about things happening in the natural course of time, but he no longer had time to wait. He had to make things happen
right now
.

The puddles crystallized, the crystallization flashed from one to the next, building linkages of ice as Pyro did with fire.

They touched his nearest finger.

“You were always too much in love with your own mouth, Johnny,” Bobby said, getting a shrug in return. “Too damn busy being you to pay attention to basic science.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Entropy.” His finger was coated with ice, yet it bent just like normal, the process of transformation accelerating as it swept up his arm. The sleeve of his uniform shattered to splinters as if it had just been plunged into liquid oxygen, revealing a perfectly formed arm of ice underneath. He couldn’t help grinning at the look on Pyro’s face now, as the rest of his jacket fell apart, even if his humor was partly to cover for his acute embarassment. He didn’t want to think about what was coming when his pants shattered. If this was the way his power manifested from here on, they were definitely going to have to find him at the very least a set of cold-resistant briefs.

“Even molecules get tired, Johnny. They slow down, they get
cold
. The default state of the universe isn’t fire, it’s
ice
.”

The flames couldn’t harm him. His new skin was better than armor.

Pyro didn’t believe it. “This isn’t fair. This isn’t right! Every time we tangled in the Danger Room, every evaluation of our powers and skills, I was always better!”

Bobby lunged forward, grabbing both of Pyro’s hands in his.

“I learned some new lessons.”

He iced the other man’s arms all the way to the elbows, the intense cold striking Pyro with the shock of being plunged into a midwinter ocean, creating a paralysis of thought and action. Before Pyro could recover his wits, Bobby let him have it with a solid punch to the jaw.

Lights out at the source, no willpower to sustain the superstorm of fire he’d created. And since that blaze had been so unimaginably fierce to begin with, it had consumed all the readily available fuel, leaving only Pyro’s power to keep it burning.

There was a discernible
pop
of imploding air, as the flames vanished and cooler atmosphere rushed in to take their place, and the stench of charred debris. But otherwise…

…the island was still, fog-draped and dark once more.

Logan tapped Colossus on the shoulder. “Okay, Tinman, time for that fastball special.” Colossus took some steps back from Iceman—he’d been using the other X-Man’s cold to bleed off some of the heat from his armor, and he was still uncomfortably warm to the touch, but no longer glowing. Logan could handle that. Peter grasped the Wolverine by the belt.

“Make it a strike,” Logan challenged him.

Colossus made it a bullet, right on the mark.

Of course, Magneto sensed him coming.

Without even sparing a glance, he raised a hand and successive waves of magnetic force punched the X-Man into the roadway more than hard enough to make an impression.

Magneto didn’t bother being gentle. He used Logan’s body to create a trench right down to the underlying steel as he reeled him in the rest of the way.

“I warned you,” he chided, ever so gently, ever so finally, making abundantly clear they would not dance this particular dance again.

Logan had no eyes for him, only for Jean, on her perch above and behind the Master of Magnetism. There was nothing of the woman he remembered and loved in her stance or affect. She looked at them as at a strange and alien—and
lesser
—species, the way a scientist might examine some new species of microbe. She perhaps found them intriguing, but there was no emotional contact to bind them.

The first line of troops from shore were close enough to take action. Logan started to yell a warning to Jean to watch out, to the soldiers to stand down, anything to head off what he feared was to come, but they were operating on hair triggers.

They shot on sight, at her and Magneto both—and if Logan got clipped in the cross fire, them’s the breaks, pal. Every combat engagement has its regrettable collateral damage.

He shouldn’t have worried. None of the darts even came close. Jean stopped them all, less than an inch shy of contact.

Her eyes flashed celestial fire and the darts turned to dust.

Satisfied he had nothing to fear from the military, Magneto addressed his full attention to Logan.

“You never learn, do you?” he mock lamented, raising a hand to separate Logan from his adamantium once and for all.

“Actually,” Logan replied quite pleasantly, “I do.”

Too late, Magneto sensed another presence. He spun around, and the fog around him cleared, revealing the form of the Beast—almost invisible against the night thanks to his dark fur and uniform—hanging upside down from one of the suspender cables.

Hank flashed fangs in a grin and flicked a finger at the X-Men’s oldest adversary.

Magneto felt a sting across his cheek and the fingers he clasped there came away colored with the merest thread of blood.

In shock, he took a step away from the Beast. His legs lost all strength. He collapsed to hands and knees in the face of agony such as he had never imagined, much less experienced.

Around Logan, all sense of pressure and pain faded. He rose to one knee beside the man who’d been about to kill him. His right fist was close enough—it would be no effort at all to pop his claws and put an end to Magneto. Hank had the same thought, he saw, and was gripped by the same ambivalence. Some adversaries, perhaps, ought
not
to be spared.

Once, Logan suspected he’d have done just that, without a second thought or an ounce of regret. Thankfully, that man, those days, were lost—Logan didn’t mind in the least. He much preferred the man he was becoming and the way he was starting to live his life. Xavier would have his legacy.

Magneto sunk back on his heels, dazed with horror as he groped for his helmet, only to have it fall from fingers suddenly gone nerveless.

Watching him, Logan realized the true kindness would have been a quick, clean death, but he shook his head to banish the impulse. He had to learn from the mistakes of his past; if Magneto was worthy of Charles Xavier’s friendship, he’d have to do the same. And perhaps find a way to atone for the harm he’d caused that had brought him to this place.

“I’m…” Magneto said, unable to go further.

“One of them,” Logan finished for him. “It should have never come to this.”

Then came the screams.

Another wave of soldiers had attacked, and this time Jean didn’t bother with just their weapons, she erased the men as well.

“Jean!
” Logan called, imperative to get her attention before things could turn any worse. In that regard, he’d reckoned without Magneto, who spoke the moment Jean made eye contact with them all.

“You see, my child,” he said in a voice that could barely be heard but with thoughts that rang out like a clarion call. “Look at me. Look into their hearts. This is what
they
want. For
all
of us.”

She didn’t like that idea.

“Jean,” Logan called again, making his way to her.

She unfolded her arms from where she perched, spreading them wide with stately and majestic grace, and gazed at Logan with eyes no longer even remotely human. They were black eyes, doll’s eyes, predator’s eyes, and deep in the heart of them burned the fires of Creation itself.

Energy pulsed from her body, spiraling outward across bay and city in successive waves that churned the water more powerfully than any storm of nature. She rose from her perch and descended from bridge to island, Logan springing after her, waving to McCoy to follow. He did, gathering Magneto into his arms and then making most of the trip upside down, using his feet as hands to bound along the suspender cables.

Jean was hovering above the center of the courtyard that had been the main battlefield, streamers of fiery energy swirling faster and farther from her body as though she were becoming the core of her own galaxy. She was certainly blazing brightly enough, generating so much radiance that even sunglasses would have been little help.

Waves crashed furiously against the shore of the island, against the base of the bridge’s towers, but the water didn’t recede from those impacts. Instead, impossibly, the water began to pour
up
into the air, as though some great suction pump was evacuating the entire bay. Much the same effect was happening to the island as well, as everything not nailed down—debris, weapons, tools and the like—shot skyward so suddenly it was as if gravity were reversing itself. Thus far, people weren’t being affected, but it didn’t take much imagination to conclude that probably wouldn’t last much longer.

“Everyone off the island!”
Logan bellowed from the ramp.
“Now!”

Jimmy and Kitty emerged from the cell house. For a brief moment, surveying the situation, Kitty considered turning Jimmy loose on Jean. Locking eyes briefly with Logan, she realized with a start that he was considering much the same, and rejecting it, just as she was. Jimmy was a kid, he had no place here. Even if he was willing, both of them knew Jean’s telepathy would give her enough warning to finish him before he got close enough to affect her. Waving off the other X-Men, Kitty made a beeline for the bridge, pausing as she did to inform the army lieutenant about Juggernaut lying unconscious in Jimmy’s cell.

Given the situation, she doubted anyone was going to go collect him.

Bobby ignored her signals as he approached with John Allerdyce slung in a fireman’s carry over his shoulders. He’d definitely undergone some major changes since she saw him last. Kitty couldn’t help wondering if they were permanent. He had much the same questions, made all the more pertinent by the absence of Professor Xavier or Doctor Grey to help him find the answers. Within a dozen or so paces of her, his ice shell began to flake away, revealing the skin underneath; he also started blushing as furiously as anyone she’d ever seen, for reasons that became scandalously obvious a couple of steps later. By the time he was by her side, he was well beyond mortification, staring straight ahead as she struggled to do the same, thankful for this moment of utter absurdity to counterpoint what seemed like the imminent end of the world.

Colossus scooped up as many of Magneto’s fallen fighters as he could carry, passing them off to troopers as they established a rough line through the ruins and up the ramp. Angel saw Iceman’s predicament from overhead and later made himself a friend for life by finding Bobby a pair of pants.

Twenty meters away, bursts of power fell from Jean with increasing strength and frequency, creating what could only be described as
tears
in the fabric of the universe. Magneto, whose training and research in the fields of subatomic physics were rivaled only by his erst- while ability to manipulate the forces found there, shook his head in wonderment and utter weariness. He was spent in soul, far more than he ever had been in the flesh, more so even than at Auschwitz. He had only one moment in his life to measure against this one, the death of his beloved firstborn, his only child, his Anya, and the horror he had seen in the eyes of his wife, Magda, whom he’d saved from the camps but who could not bear to look at him, stay with him, once she’d beheld the vengeance he’d taken against those who’d kept him from saving his daughter.

“What have I done?” he breathed.

“More to the point,” Logan demanded of him, “what’s
she
doing?”

“Discorporating the planet,” was the reply. “Stripping existence around her down to its primal component states.”

“Why?”

Magneto snorted. “Because she can.”

“Your rationale, bub.”

“It’s what Charles understood that I didn’t: the true meaning of the
next
step in evolution. For us, for all our powers, we’re talking little more than baby steps; for her, seven league boots. I don’t believe she can handle the transition.”

“Time for you to go,” Logan told him.

“I’d like to stay.”

“For this,” Logan’s voice was brutal, “you lost the right.”

“I’m sorry,” Magneto told him.

“Yeah.”

A trooper grabbed Magneto’s arms and hustled him up the ramp to be swallowed by the fleeing crowd. Logan didn’t watch, didn’t much care; with his powers gone, Magneto was significantly neutered as a threat. If Logan needed to find him, he’d do so.