OOC: AU Log!
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Friday, June 15, 2007, 10:20 PM
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April 21, 2006. Light filters dusty brown through the flimsy shelter offered by a temporary assortment of large tents assembled in a pack behind a wall of scrap and rust and razor wire that rears up out of the rubble some feet away. Occasionally a bullet ticks off the mass of iron and steel, but within the tents, voices comprise a majority of what noise there is to be heard.
In this particular tent, marked at each entrance by one haphazard slash of red over another, one of them is screaming. Erik does not seem particularly fazed. Dust bleached and engaged in low conversation with a pair of men who are cleaner than he is, he takes measure of the damage dealt thus far today without comment for their condition.
April 21, 2006, and Jean Grey has come into the remains of the city alone and on foot, a supplicant dressed not in Prada and Donna Karan, but much-abused leather and denim, and a military backpack not so much surplus as repurposed. Its previous owner, left behind in a skirmish some weeks past, will have no real use for it any more. On foot, she arrived at the alpha checkpoint of Haven. On foot, she's been sent away again. Somewhere in the remains of Manhattan is Magneto, and thus she seeks him.
Mass death has left the island a pale wraith of its former psychic network, and in the horror is one small blessing: much easier now, to drop mental shields and scan the area, until unshielded minds are found and a location triangulated. Scrap, rust and razor wire are an effective barrier indeed, and on the outside looking in, Jean studies it for a moment, closeted behind the remains of what was once a VW minibus. Someone clearly thought it would make a better barbecue. << Uncle Erik? >> The thought is weighted with gallows humour, projected out in a check of whether a certain helmet is in place.
Recognition is immediate. Cold eyes set all the starker for all the washed out color around them lift sharply from the clipboard that has been pushed into Magneto's hands, and he hesitates a moment before pushing it back, along with a short rapid fire of muttered orders. Orders that soon see him outside of the tent and roughly surrounded by four very large and menacing looking mutants carrying automatic rifles. "Jean Grey. I hope you haven't come to kill me."
Jean is not a small woman, 'nor a helpless one. All the same, she seems rail thin and overburdened by the heavy field pack she's carrying. Hands given some small protection with cutout gloves spread out from her sides and splay, and the look she gives to Magneto and not to his bodyguards is somewhere between fatigue and fatalist. "Nate is dead," is her answer, quiet and stolen on an outward breath.
Magneto stiffens, but from within the limited protection offered by his merry band of bodyguards, there is no sympathy. A heavy chill in his gut turns sleekly over into measuring calculation of posture and tone, and more signficantly, potential. "Ah."
"The last of the children I could help get out of the country is safely in Halifax," Jean continues, advancing a few slow paces closer to Magneto as if the guns are invisible. Irrelevant, certainly, for despite the thin frame and the overstressed lines to her face, something smoulders about Jean, all seven senses at her command on high alert. "There's no reason to pretend that Charles and I still see eye to eye on this."
Four black barrels turn up to wink at Jean in the warm afternoon light, and Erik makes no move to stand them down at Jean's approach. "You intend to fight." Eyes narrowed, the closer one gets to Magneto, the more readily apparent it is that he is not as he was. The broad of his shoulders is balanced by muscle thick enough to box out the dust-coated black of his figure, and he does not appear to be a day older than forty-five, though his hair has retained its predominantly silver sheen. Somewhere along the line, he has cheated.
Practical immortality in the form of Ellen Dramstadt is a tempting thing to have access to. Jean smiles, thin and humourless, and notes that "You're looking well," all the same. Without any outward sign of noticing the guns trained on her, she nonetheless stops that small advance and lifts a hand to brush stray hair out of her eyes, tucking it back behind her ear with the rest of a failing ponytail that reaches to just between her shoulderblades and looks like the remains of a once-stylish haircut. "I intend to do what I can to make sure that Haven survives and thrives. It's the only option with a future to it, now."
Her smile is mirrored just as thinly, and Erik lifts a brow, resigned to the absence of subtlety about his person. "Well then. I hope you are of the mind that Haven is best equipped to survive with Magneto at its helm. Would you like something to drink? Coffee, perhaps? Tea?" He continues to watch Jean closely, and so do the bodyguards.
"You've got the war you always said was coming." Charitably, Jean doesn't point out it was a war that he started. Her lips twist, but she admits that "You're the best leader of any of us for the sort of war this is. And if you have real coffee..." At this she trails off, and lets slip another black smirk, at a loss for superlatives, but approving all the same. A sharp flare from the haphazard medical tent steals her attention, though, and the pack is swung own from her back suddenly, heedless of startling the four impressive men with four impressive guns. "I came to Haven by way of Hell's Kitchen. Got what was still left from my clinic." Telling, perhaps, that the backpack is far from bulging.
Happily for Jean's pack, the bodyguards do not prove to be trigger happy, though one at the rear does see fit to lift his rifle up against his shoulder so that he may better take aim. Before he can do much else, Magneto finally lifts a gloved hand, and all four rifles fall to face ruptured asphalt. A series of potential questions is stayed after a moment's thought, and drawing himself up, he resolves to herd the conversation on into less combustible territory. "What healers we have are stretched thin. I have soldiers filtering through recent arrivals for more."
Jean looks briefly grateful, shoulders easing from redline tension down into something merely ulcer-producing. She nods slightly, and likewise keeps her answer to professional arenas. "I can help." It's a start.
Magneto nods once, just on the border of being curt when a voice crackles to life in his ear, and he presses a hand up over the receiver situated there to better hear. The chill of his glare remains focused intently upon Jean until he responds with a simple, "I shall be with you in a moment. Jean--" This, of course, directed to the young woman in question, Erik lifts his chin and his brows. "--Sam shall show you to my quarters, where you are more than welcome to rest before you reassume your endeavor to save the world. My personal stores are beneath the cot. I trust you to manage the lock on your own."
Save the world. Jean snorts at that, and another black smile surfaces briefly, before her face resumes the still tension it's been sporting all along. "I'm thinking a little more locally, these days," is her reply, before she nods, turns towards the indicated Sam, and waits for her dismissal. There's a final soft comment. It may be a "Thank you." It may simply be a noise.
There is no comment for that. Sam steps forward, and Erik glances from the taller man back to Jean before he nods a lazy dismissal and takes a slow step back in the direction of the tent he emerged from. "It is good to see you."
"I can still recite the quadratic formula in my sleep." An odd statement for the middle of an urban battlefield, that, and an equally odd way of saying 'it's good to see you, too' but it's paired with a brief crack in the weary, wary armour about her. Jean smiles a final time, that brief crack freeing it of the self-protection of gallows humour, and then obediently follows after her escort, the pack shouldered once again. To rest, and then to useful purpose.
AU Flashback: Magneto has a new volunteer. Black Queen icon used until I can get a properly badass AU one Behold the AU icon!.