◉◉◉◉◉
"Magneto!"
The name rippled through the gathered mutants as the figure descended like a dark deity, cloak stirring in the night air. For a beat, even breathing seemed to pause.
Emma scanned the clearing, a frown tugging at her features. Leo wasn't among the rescued.
The thought struck like ice: He went back to fight that Deadpool thing. Urgency flashed in her eyes then a thunderous detonation split the night.
A crimson beam lanced skyward from the collapsing complex, and every head snapped toward it. Several of the kids looked instinctively at Scott, who stiffened beneath his black metal visor.
"Charles, stay with them," Magneto said, expression unreadable. "I'll take a look."
Xavier's worry deepened. He didn't know how Erik had gotten here, but his presence wasn't the surprise; the timing was.
What troubled Charles wasn't Magneto himself he'd parley with Erik any day but the children.
Traumatized, angry, newly freed… they could be malleable clay for Magneto's harder creed. That would scar them in ways no lab ever could.
He'd come tonight chasing a different lead entirely: a mutant named Remy LeBeau. Recruit him for the X-Men that had been the plan.
Remy had refused with a shrug and a smile… and then tipped Charles to the island's experiments. So here they were: a rescue Charles hadn't planned but couldn't ignore.
"Young lady, where are you going?" Xavier called as Emma broke into a run toward the ruins.
"Someone's still fighting in there," she shot back over her shoulder. "He's the one who freed us."
Xavier hesitated for only a heartbeat, watching Magneto angle toward the blast site. If this ally was the sort who saved children from cages, the X-Men needed him too.
"Very well," Charles murmured, and wheeled after them, mind reaching forward like a lighthouse beam.
—
Thirty seconds earlier.
"Logan, move! This place is coming down!" Leo blinked out of a beam's path, snapped a kick into Deadpool that sent the weapon staggering, then turned and sprinted.
Logan didn't argue. He ran. Leo flashed once, twice, and burst out into the open air.
The building finally gave up the ghost. Floors pancaked. Walls folded. For a long breath, Deadpool vanished in the avalanche. Dust boiled outward in a hot wave.
Leo exhaled, chest heaving. He won't die in there, but maybe we bought a minute—
A red lance tore a canyon through the rubble.
Deadpool stepped out, charred edges knitting. He flickered, teleported, and reappeared at Logan's side, twin adamantium blades already buried through Logan's abdomen.
"Teleporting," Leo and Logan blurted in the same instant.
Blood trailing in an arc, Deadpool yanked free and blinked again, carving Logan with a brutal rhythm stab, vanish, slash, vanish until Logan was a lattice of wounds knitting as fast as they opened.
Claw met sword. Sparks skittered across stone. It was a butcher's duel, all attrition and angles, each man cashing pain for a chance at purchase. Leo hovered at the fringe, teeth clenched.
Earlier, he could ambush blink and kick, blink and cut but now every teleport presented his neck to a blade that might already be there when he arrived.
So he was holding back, Leo realized, bile rising. 'Damn him he saved the worst trick for last.'
Logan answered by going bigger. When Deadpool's katanas punched into his chest again, Logan trapped both wrists in his hands, muscles cording, pinning the blades where they were.
They locked close enough to smell the chemical burn of Deadpool's skin.
Deadpool's eyes began to glow.
"Now," Leo hissed. He flashed behind the weapon, grabbed the skull, and twisted hard.
Vertebrae popped. Deadpool's head spun a neat half circle.
Leo blinked away as the optic blast triggered on reflex, shearing a crimson tunnel through the night. Logan used the opening, reared back, and chopped. Adamantium met neck.
The head hit the ground with a clean thunk and rolled once before settling, the mouthless scar turned toward the stars.
"You killed a mutant that strong?" The outrage cracked like a whip from the dark. Magneto swept in on a cushion of power, eyes bright with anger.
For a man who built his life around a threatened minority, every mutant was rare metal scarce, precious. To see one, even this twisted one, destroyed by other mutants made the blood rise hot in his veins.
In a shadowed alcove, Stryker's fist hammered his control console. Dead screens stared back. He slid a hand into his coat, fingers closing around a pistol loaded with very special rounds.
If he couldn't retrieve his weapon, he'd salvage what he could vengeance would do.
"Magneto," Leo said, hauling Logan up as flesh crawled back over bone. He didn't wait for pleasantries. He reached for his power and felt it falter, like a muscle cramping.
He tried again.
Nothing.
An invisible hand pressed against him, slick and humming. Magnetism.
"Still running?" Magneto asked mildly as he drifted lower, palm open, the air around Leo buzzing. "You slipped me once. I came prepared."
Leo's eyes narrowed. "That's you."
"Of course." Erik's mouth twitched. "And him." With a lazy crook of his fingers, Logan lifted off the ground, suspended like a pinned specimen. "Adamantium is… cooperative."
"Put him down," Leo snapped, taking a step—
—and froze mid-stride. Every inch of iron in his blood felt leashed. He flexedand his limbs didn't answer. Magneto had reached inside him, manipulating trace metals like wires in a marionette.
"Erik, Enough." Xavier's voice carried before his chair rounded the ruin. He'd arrived in time to catch the last, ugliest implication whispering through Erik's field.
Magneto's smile was polite; the adjustment of his power was not. The magnetic grip around Logan hardened, then… shifted. Something inside the feral man groaned.
"AHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Logan screamed.
Because Erik wasn't just holding him. He was peeling him. The adamantium laced through Logan's skeleton rang under Magneto's will, straining against muscle and sinew like a second body trying to rip free.
"Stop!" Leo shouted, straining uselessly against the restraint pinning him in place.
"Erik," Xavier said again, firmer now, mind like a calm sea pushing back on a storm. "Don't."
For a heartbeat, the air crackled between the two old friends. Magneto's jaw worked; Xavier's gaze didn't waver. The night held its breath.
—
Far behind them, in the treeline, children watched with wide eyes as two very different saviors stood in the same moonlight. Emma squeezed Scott's shoulder.
"Stay ready," she whispered. He nodded once, hands hovering near his visor.
Emma glanced back toward the ruins, toward the place where the man who saved them was still fighting for his life.
'Hold on' she thought, anger and hope twining tight. Just a little longer.
—
Back in the ruins, dust drifted. Deadpool's severed head lay still where it had fallen.
His body twitched.
A muscle crawled near the collar. Skin crept like spilled mercury, testing edges. Even decapitated, the weapon's stolen gifts looked for a way to reassemble.
"Erik," Xavier said quietly, eyes flicking to the body. "This isn't over."
Magneto did not look away from Logan or from Leo frozen in his field but his tone cooled a fraction. "No. It isn't."
His fingers eased, just a little.
Logan fell to his knees, sucking ragged air through clenched teeth. The adamantium settled back into him like a living weight.
Leo staggered as control returned to his limbs, every muscle buzzing.
Xavier's chair rolled forward between them like a line drawn in chalk. He glanced from Erik to the two younger men.
"If we're going to survive the next minute," he said, calm as ever, "we'll need to stop arguing and start working together."
Something thumped wetly behind them.
Deadpool's body took a step.
◉◉◉◉◉
Support with 100 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
◉◉◉◉◉
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!