Chapter 3: Two Sides of a Broken Coin

A/N:

" " : Dialogue,

' ' : Thought,

"Italicized text" : Telepathy,

"Bold text" : Shadows,

[ ] : System,

| | : Artificial Intelligence.

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Location: New York, North Salem, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters

June 24, 2006

Charles Xavier POV

Today is proving to be the most surprising meeting with a fellow mutant since my confrontation with Farouk. I had chosen to do one of my routine searches for fellow mutants around the world earlier today, and at first, it seemed like today would just be another simple day of noticing the Morlocks and the members of Erik's Brotherhood.

But I was suddenly hit with a powerful wave of energy from within New York of all places. Focusing on the source of the wave, I saw what seemed to be a young boy, however, his mind was displaying multiple separate thoughts at extremely high speed, so I quickly tried disconnecting my mind from his own, but the damage had been done.

My mind felt like it had been stretched out far beyond its capacity, even with Cerebro amplifying its reach, and I felt heavily concussed. I tried to reach out to any of the staff, but my mind was just filled with static and a sound reminiscent of tinnitus, so I struggled to call out to any of them that would be close by. The last thing I could make out before passing out was Logan rushing into Cerebro.

I woke up to Ororo, Logan and Hank beside me, with Hank checking my vitals. When they noticed that I had woken up, they told me that almost 3 hours had passed since I had passed out. "Damnit, Chuck. What the hell happened?" Logan asked me with concern.

Since the boy's situation had brought a sense of alarm to me, I told them of what my encounter with his mind was like. Hank and Ororo looked quite concerned, while Logan seemed more cautious than concerned about the boy.

"Where is he?" Ororo asked, looking like she was ready to fly to the boy's aid. "He's in Brooklyn, if the thoughts of the people around him hold any truth." She began heading out of the room, but I stopped her.

"Ororo, I know very well how you feel about our fellow mutants, especially the young ones, but this time, I would say that it's best we proceed with caution." I warned her. "So are you saying that we should leave a child like him alone?! He could end up getting captured while you stay here contemplating whether or not we should help him."

I couldn't bring myself to say anything against her, because I knew very well that she was correct. But at the same time, the dangers of meeting a person with as many thoughts flying through their head as the boy were also quite apparent.

"I understand, Ororo. We'll get to him as soon as possible. Logan, could you please prepare your car for us to go to him?" I asked him and received a gruff grunt in reply as he headed to the garage.

"Hank, could you help me?" I asked Hank. "Of course." He said as he helped me put in my shirt and jacket, and brought me my wheelchair. "Thank you. Now, Ororo, shall we get going?" She nodded and began pushing me as we headed to the garage to meet Logan and leave to the boy.

After getting to the garage, we got into Logan's car and began the drive down to Brooklyn. It took us about 2 hours to reach the area I got his thoughts from, but when we reached there, I noticed something slightly unpleasant.

"Hello, Charles. I see you've taken an interest in our fellow mutants once more." He was here, most likely to take the boy to his nation. "Hello again, Erik. And yes, I would have to take an interest in our kind of I'm to help protect them."

Looking to his side, I saw a woman. Blonde, lithe and beautiful, a visage that she would use whenever she chose to move among humans. "Raven. It's been quite some time." I greeted her with a small bit of melancholy in my voice. "That it has, Charles." She responded offhandedly as she looked towards the building.

Letting out a short sigh, I followed behind Erik and Raven as they headed to the apartment where the boy was staying, with Logan and Ororo following me. With Erik's help, we soon reached the second floor of the building, where I heard the thoughts of the same people that were close to the boy.

I didn't know why I couldn't hear the boy's thoughts anymore, but in the hopes that nothing had happened to him, apart from being unconscious, we pushed forward.

Upon getting close to the 5th room on the left side of the floor, a woman, or rather, a hologram of a woman was projected in front of us. |My master has been expecting you. Please, come in.| She said after looking at us, then the hologram stopped projecting into the hallway.

If we were slightly worried for the boy before then, we all became wary of the boy's situation after seeing and hearing the hologram. Logan had even started bringing out his claws.

Ororo stepped forward and opened the front door, and we stepped into the apartment to see that everything was black. Not to be confused with the apartment being dark, no. It was quite literally black, as if someone had specifically asked for everything within it to either be black upon purchase, or painted over everything.

"Well, it's about time you all got here. For people who are meant to be doing things as quickly as you can to help metahumans, you took some time to get here." We all heard a young voice say to us.

Turning my head to the source of the voice, what I saw amazed me and scared me. A handsome African American boy whose body looked like he had gone through every sort of training available in every military force.

After some seconds, I noticed something else, something strange. I couldn't hear his thoughts at all, not even his surface thoughts. More accurately, I couldn't hear anyone's thoughts, regardless of how I tried.

"Please, have a seat. We've got a lot to talk about." He said as a black mass formed a chair, which he sat on.

Ashwani Bourne POV

Seeing Charles and Max feeling confusion over their powers not working as they should, put a small bit of pride in me, as it meant that my work was actually effective.

"Okay, let's try and get the less important stuff out of the way. Firstly, my name is Ashwani Bourne. I'm 12 years old, and the metahuman ability I got from my X gene is Darkforce Manipulation." I say, introducing myself.

"You look pretty damn big for a 12-year-old, kid." I hear Logan's gruff voice say, referring to my body that has become much more muscular than before. "And you look pretty young for someone who's pushing 200 years old, James, but you don't see me judging." He looks at me with a raised brow and asks; "Who the hell is James?"

Okay, so that means that he hasn't gotten his memories back just yet, or that Charles is keeping his memories from him. Activating the x-ray function I had added to the nanomachines in my eyes, I look into his body, and see his trademark adamantium coated skeleton.

Using magic to look beyond the coating on his skull, I see a small mass of adamantium lodged in his brain, which after analysis, showed itself to be a bullet. 'So the Wolverine Origins movie is what happened with him, at least partially, seeing as Wade Wilson is on his way to become the better Deadpool in this universe.' I think to myself, as I quickly remember the memories of one of the people killed by Wade.

"I'm talking about you, James "Logan" Howlett. Looking at you, most people wouldn't think you fought in both World Wars." He was about to respond, but Charles stops him and tells him to sit down.

"Sorry about that, Ashwani. But are you alright?" Charles says from his place in his wheelchair. Really would have liked to see his OG yellow hoverchair, if I'm being honest. "Yeah, never better. And as for what you saw, that was just a small matter that I had to attend to." I say, referring to his collision with my mind during the integration.

"Excuse me." Max, or rather, Erik says from the side. "You just said that he fought in both World Wars. How so?" I just smile at him and point to the couches on either side of the living room. Getting the message, they all went to sit down, with Ororo being the most worried about me.

"Now then. To answer your question, Erik, or should I call you Max? Logan here awakened his X-gene sometime in the 1880s, and the powers he got were his absurdly high healing factor, and bone claws. The adamantium in him is from a skeleton grafting operation he got some time in the 1970s." As I say that, Logan holds his head as a small headache assaults him.

Erik looks at me with a frown. "How do you know my birth name?" He clenches his fist, as if trying to move any metal around us. Too bad for him, that won't work.

I look at Charles, and it seems that even he has a similar question on his mind, and possibly another regarding what he witnessed when he was using Cerebro. "It's another set of abilities that I have, which I think have made me one of the most important beings in the world right now."

Logan, who has recovered from the headache, scoffs at my statement. "Hey, kid. You've probably awakened some strong ability, sure, but I doubt that it's made you so important." He says, his gruff voice seemingly hiding a growl.

"Do you think that death is important?" I ask Logan. Erik's eyes narrow as I say that, and Charles goes into a bout of contemplation. Before he answers, I interrupt him. "That was a rhetorical question. Of course it's important."

"Death is probably the one thing that makes all life truly equal. You can gain a lot when you're alive, you could even gain everything, but death will get to you regardless." Erik, in a show of impatience, smacks his hand on the center table.

"That does not answer my question, boy." I smile at him, a smidgen of kindness spilled into my smile. "I have lived quite a number of lives, Max. You do not have any grounds to speak to me in such a way." I say as I activate Intimidation, focusing it on only him.

Charles eyes widen, as if the final piece to solving a conundrum had finally been given to him. "Is that what I saw then, your multiple lives?" I deactivate Intimidation and look at him.

"What you saw was me assimilating all of them into this one. What happened was that I experienced the lives of every intelligent being to have ever died on Earth." My words cause slight confusion for all of them, but Charles soon understands. I wonder how he'd be if he found out I lowballed the number of beings.

"My God. Ashwani, are you alright?" He asks me with a sympathetic and alarmed look in his eyes. "What do you mean by that, Chuck? The kid's fine." Logan says, but Charles, for the first time in what is probably a long time, shouts at him.

"No! No, he isn't! He said that he's experienced the lives of all intelligent beings that have ever died on this planet, Logan. That means he's also experienced their deaths. Do you know how many different ways humans alone would have died on this planet?!" He says with a tight grip on my arms.

Logan and Erik widen their eyes in realization, while Raven and Ororo look at me with kind eyes. "Does... Does that mean..." Erik starts, and I nod. "Yes, Max. And don't worry, Magda would have been proud of you." Hearing his mother's name seems to have put some sense into him.

"Okay. Now, first things first, Charles, I'm fine. There's no need for your worry. Second, answering the other question that Max asked, Logan's healing factor gives him extreme cellular regeneration, making it so that he can theoretically remain at his physical prime for an extremely long time. And by the way, he fought for America in the 2nd World War." I say, getting that part out of the way.

"But now, let's get into your true reason for you guys coming here; which of you guys' ideologies I feel is more fitting for the betterment of metahuman kind." I say, and almost immediately, the tension in the room rises.

Ororo looks at me curiously and asks. "What do you mean, metahuman?" Raven nods. "Yes, I was also wondering what you meant by that, since you had mentioned it earlier." The tension drops for a moment, then Erik and Charles look at me, as if expecting my explanation.

"Fine. Stop looking at me like I owe you lunch money." I say and stand up. "Before I establish what a metahuman is, let me ask you all. Scientifically speaking, what is a mutant?" Erik's brow furrows, as he sees my question as unnecessary.

"A mutant is someone who has an X-gene, right?" Logan says, and a buzzer plays, by my instruction, of course. "No. A mutant is any member of a species that develops a unique characteristic within themselves. So while the X-gene counts as a mutation, it's not the absolute basis for which someone is a mutant."

Charles looks at me with profundity, as thoughts whirl about in his mind. "This means that someone that has albinism is a mutant, someone with red hair is a mutant, someone with heterochromia is also a mutant. The word mutant is far too broad for it to be defined by only people that possess the X-gene. That and it's not good for PR." I say.

Raven raises a brow, as if asking me to explain what exactly I mean. "Allow me to elaborate. If you check out movies now that have characters that are said to be mutants, what would you see?" Ororo frowns as she understands what I'm meaning.

"You'd see horrible, disfigured people who mostly just want to kill the protagonists and innocent people." She says. "*Snap.* Exactomundo. People associate the word mutant with monstrosities and evil beings, despite that not being its true connotation. So I use the word metahuman. It refers to any human that possesses supernatural or metaphysical abilities, or abilities far beyond the human norm." My definition seems to convince them, as it's not only more fitting, it also doesn't have negative connotations linked to it.

"I see. But what if there are other people that have abilities, but those abilities aren't from the X-gene?" Charles asks me. I already know that he's met at least one sorcerer in his lifetime. "They would still be metahumans, as long as they haven't abandoned their humanity to become something like a vampire, or some other shit like that." My response shuts down any more questions on that front.

"Now, getting to your ideologies. Charles, you believe that pacifism and altruism would get normal humans to stop hating us, and with that there'll be harmony between metahumans and normal humans, right?" He nods in confirmation. "And Erik, you believe that it would be better for metahumans if we used our powers to subdue the rest of humanity and make it so that in their subjugation, they'll eventually become docile, right?" Erik frowns, but he still nods.

"Okay, then, I wasn't wrong. You guys didn't think your shit through." I say to the shock of everyone in the room. I don't know why they were so surprised. Had they not actually looked at this in-depth while relating it to humans as they know them?

"Pacifism, my ass. You might as well just tell the leaders of humanity that you want them to take us up for their experiments. And superiority, hah. That'll just give them an excuse to exterminate metahumans." I say, laughing as I point out the main issues of their ideologies.

Without letting them speak, I continue. "If you have all this power and don't defend yourself to a lethal point or to a certain level of deterrence, then people who have different negative feelings for us would take advantage of that. Whether it's because they want to study us to find out how to exterminate us, or because they want to find some way to harvest the X-Factor from us to gain powers, or for something as stupid as them wanting to rule over us. So if you really want us to all survive, stop training them to be non-lethal, but rather train them to use lethal force when necessary." I say while facing Charles.

I then look at Erik, who has a small smile on his face, as he's enjoying seeing someone finally show Charles the flaws of his ideology.

"And what are you smiling for? At least, with his ideology, there's a chance of survival with our kind being turned into lab rats. If we go your way, there'll only be two possible outcomes; either they all die, or we all die. There's no in-between." Erik huffs at my words like they're absurd.

"You seem to forget the number of brilliant minds that are among normal humans. If we go down your road, we'll turn all of them against us. And I'll tell you here and now, you do not want all the brilliant minds of humanity against us, because that will almost always definitely spell doom for our kind." He clearly wanted to scoff again, but he thought about the possibility of what I'd said.

"If both our methods are wrong, then what do you suggest?" He finally speaks. "Now, now. While the actions that you're taking aren't necessarily the best, it doesn't mean that they're entirely wrong either. Ultimately, the best thing for metahuman kind would be for us to colonize Mars for ourselves, but that's still a lot further into the future." The prospect of taking an entire planet, just for our kind, shocks them to the point that none of them speaks for a solid minute.

"You said that colonizing another planet is the ultimate solution, so what can we do for a temporary solution?" Erik asks me. Thank goodness that he values metahuman lives over his pride.

"For the time being, I'd say that we integrate ourselves into normal society. I believe you've heard of Frost International & the Massachusetts Academy." They frown, then nod. "Yes, I have. And from what I know, a Ms. Emma Frost is the CEO of Frost International and Chancellor of Massachusetts Academy. But why these places?" Charles says as he recognizes the name.

"Emma Frost is a telepath with a secondary mutation that allows her to turn her skin into diamonds, and she's a well achieved businesswoman that has a hold on a good chunk of the world's economy. She is the perfect example of what I'm proposing." Charles and Erik immediately frown at my words.

"Think about it. She's cemented a high position within society as a whole, not just among metahumans, and she's used that as a platform to aid her fellow metahumans and train them to properly defend themselves. As far as temporary solutions go, hers is the most plausible to work." Erik and Charles sigh, then nod in agreement to what I've said.

"So I take it that you won't be following either of us." Charles says and I nod confirming his assumption, causing him to sigh. "Don't worry, amongst my other abilities, my body has received quite the enhancement. Add that to the experiences I've gotten from all the beings that have died here on Terra, and you can tell that I'll be fine. I will pay you a visit tomorrow, though." My words both calm and surprise them.

"Although I've had something of a first-hand experience from the lives that have gone to Death's embrace, I still wanna see how much you guys have done in this life. And for you Erik, I'll visit you and the Brotherhood in about a month." Charles and Erik look at each other, then at me. ""But how?"" They ask simultaneously.

"That's for me to know, and for you to be fascinated by. Now, I have to start getting ready to move from here, so thank you for visiting. I hope we can meet in better conditions. Bye-bye, now." I say as I subtly move everyone out of the apartment.

...

Omniscient POV

The metahumans look at each other with a new perspective, then sigh. "Perhaps he's right, Charles. Perhaps we may not have gone about helping our brethren in the best ways we could have. I'll be seeing you, old friend." Erik says and walks away, with Raven following closely behind him.

"Raven. I still hope that you're happy where you are." Charles says as they leave the building. Ororo pushes his wheelchair while Logan walks behind them, contemplating the parts of his past he just heard about.

"Hey, Chuck. You think that kid was telling the truth about what he said about me?" Logan says as they reach his car. "We can't truly be sure, especially since I couldn't read his mind. But I feel like we'll get the truth about that when he comes by tomorrow." Charles says as he is placed in the car by Ororo, not sure how to confess that he sealed a considerable amount of Logan's memories.

Logan enters into the driver's seat and turns on the car. "Well, we should get back as soon as possible to prepare for our guest tomorrow." Charles says as they begin driving back to the X-Mansion, but his mind doesn't leave the thoughts that had been provoked by Ashwani.

Chapter End.

Word Count: 3,627

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