Chapter 20

The air in the Cerebro chamber crackled, heavy with the scent of ozone and murder. The desire to fight Magneto, to test the limits of his borrowed power against a true god-tier opponent, was a roaring fire in Ethan's blood. It was the Saiyan instinct, pure and simple. But even through that intoxicating haze, his own cold logic prevailed. This wasn't a tournament. This was about survival.

He'd weighed the life of one broken, tortured boy in a wheelchair against the lives of billions, against Oleg, Alina, Wanda, and Pietro. It wasn't a choice. It was an equation. And he was the only one in the room willing to do the grim math and solve it. He felt a flicker of something that might have been pity for Jason Stryker, but it was quickly extinguished. Sorry, kid, he thought. Nothing personal.

"You…" Magneto's voice was a low, guttural snarl of pure fury. He began to float, rising slowly from the floor as the very walls of the chamber started to groan and buckle under the force of his rage. Metal plates shrieked as they warped. "You—a mere child—you have ruined everything!"

He was about to unleash hell. Ethan braced himself, the Power Pole solid in his grip.

"Erik…?" A voice, weak and thin as parchment, drifted from the massive helmet imprisoning the Professor. "Is that you? Are you… here to save me?"

The raw, unrestrained power radiating from Magneto flickered. The groaning of the walls subsided. He took a deep, shuddering breath, the fury in his eyes warring with a complex, pain. He slowly lowered himself back to the floor.

"Save you, Charles?" he finally said, his voice dripping with bitter irony. "You were in your fantasy world, fighting for a justice that doesn't exist. And while you dreamed, they were coming to slaughter us all. Your precious humans, Charles. They don't follow your rules."

With Jason dead, the immediate threat to humanity was gone. In that instant, Ethan went from being an obstacle in Magneto's path to a potential asset—an incredibly powerful, ruthless asset. The game had changed.

"People can lose their way, Erik," Charles responded, his strength slowly returning. "It does not mean they are lost forever. Sometimes, they only need a hand to guide them back. Together, we can still lead them toward a better future."

"You are still so beautifully, tragically naive," Magneto scoffed. "There is no coexistence. There is only us, and them. A war for survival that they started."

Seeing the two old friends about to launch into the same ideological debate they'd had for decades, Ethan stepped between them. "How about we argue about this somewhere that isn't a structurally compromised dam, a thousand feet underground?" he suggested.

He truly didn't care who was right. It all depended on where you stood. Were you a mutant first? A human? An American? An Earthling? He remembered reading about the Celestials, the cosmic gods who had created the X-gene in the first place. On that scale, their squabbles were less than ants arguing over a breadcrumb.

THUMP-KRUNCH!

The massive, reinforced door to the chamber was suddenly shoved open. Storm, Wolverine, and Colossus burst in, dragging a bound Colonel Stryker and a battered but subdued Lady Deathstrike behind them. Cyclops, now clear-eyed and steady, followed them in, his hand near his visor.

Seeing the united front of the X-Men, Magneto knew this particular battle was over. "Let's go, Mystique," he said, leaving no room for argument. He gave Charles one last, long look, a mixture of pity and disappointment. "Our alliance is concluded." He turned and strode towards the exit.

"Stop them!" Cyclops commanded, his visor beginning to glow.

"No," Professor X's voice echoed in their minds, firm and clear. "Let him go." He knew a fight here, with Erik, would bring the entire mountain down on their heads. Besides, a part of him, a part that had been shaken by Stryker's plot, wondered if having a powerful, known adversary like Magneto out in the world wasn't, in some small way, a necessary evil.

After Magneto and Mystique had vanished into the darkness of the tunnels, the Professor finally swiveled his chair to face Ethan. His face was etched with exhaustion, but his eyes were clear.

"I have seen what transpired in all of your minds," he said softly. "Thank you, Ethan. For protecting the school. For saving my students. For saving… everyone." He sighed, a heavy weight seeming to settle on his shoulders. "I am sorry. I brought you to my home for an education, for safety. I never intended for you to be thrown into a war on your very first day."

Ethan just grinned, the Goku-like cockiness returning for a moment. "I told you, Professor. I said you wouldn't regret your decision."

The Professor's expression shifted, the weary gratitude replaced by the stern look of a headmaster. "That may be. But I also want to make one thing perfectly clear. There will be no smoking and no drinking at my school. At least, not until you are an adult." He then fixed his gaze on Logan, who was trying very hard to look invisible. "And you, Logan. If I ever find out you have given him so much as a single cigarette again, I will personally ensure your mind is that of a six-year-old girl who adores pigtails and the color pink. Am I understood?"

A few snickers broke the tension in the room. Wolverine just grunted, looking at the floor like a chastised schoolboy.

Finally, the Professor looked over at the still, broken body of Jason Stryker, a flicker of profound guilt and sorrow in his eyes. He was once my student, he thought. One I failed to save. "Let's go home," he said quietly.

Outside the base, Magneto and Mystique emerged from the spillway into the crisp, pre-dawn air. They had just taken two steps when a sound like a whip-crack cut through the silence. A black-tipped arrow was suddenly there, inches from Magneto's face.

"Who—?"

He froze it in mid-air with a flick of his wrist, a contemptuous smirk on his face. But before he could trace its origin, the arrowhead pulsed with a brilliant light. BOOM! The concussive blast hit him like a battering ram, throwing him back several feet. He stumbled, stunned and disoriented, his ears ringing, only staying on his feet because Mystique lunged to support him. For the first time all night, the Master of Magnetism was genuinely, completely surprised.

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