The year was 2002. After the terrorist attacks of the 11 September 2001, the world had changed once again. One year after Magnetos attempt to turn the Leaders of the world into mutants, the eyes of the world were turned towards Afghanistan and the anger and mistrust against mutants had lessened 'cause most feared and hated the less optical obvious and more dangerous threat of the Al-Quaida and their cells of fanatic and absolutely human terrorists.
It was also the year, when a normal young human called 'Xander' by most people, stood between a grieving supercharged witch and the doom of the world.
And also in the year 2002, a project was put in action, that would later change the world.
The mutant, that was known to most of the world as Magneto and to a selected few as Erik Magnus Lensherr, was bored. Veerrry bored. He'd been locked up in his plastic prison for one and a half year now and there wasn't very much he could do to entertain himself. Sure, Charles was coming to visit him regularly. They would play chess, talk and sometimes he would be allowed to bring him a book or two.
Each of his movements were carefully monitored on several cameras. Erik could only shake his head at their stupidity. He was called the 'Master of Magnetism' for a reason. And nothing was better to rid oneself of some troublesome videobands than a nice clean swipe with a wave of magnetically charged particles.
He settled down on his bed, starring through the plastic-ceiling of his cell, thinking. Wondering why he was still here. This prison, futuristic as it was looking, was laughable. If he'd wanted to, he could have broken out countless times. There might be no metal around here, but who was saying that he needed iron or cobalt or other metals to use his powers? Everyone seemed to think that his powers were contained in the field of ferro-magnetism, but that was only the area he liked to use most. He could work with the entire magnetic spectrum, from the simplest electron up to light, heat and different sorts of radiation. And yet, he was still here, was still sitting in this glorified hamstercage and waiting for Charles next visit. Why?
Because his machine had failed? No. Since he'd seen the images Charles had transmitted from his student, who had watched the senator die, he was glad that it hadn't worked out. He had wanted to mutate the world leaders, not kill them. Maybe he was simply tired. He was seventy-four after all and his body, strong as it was, was not immune to the effects of time.
Erik sighed. There were day now, when he felt so old, so empty and all used up. And yet, he couldn't rest. His memories didn't allow him to. Maybe that was the true reason he hadn't broken out yet. If he was free, he would feel compelled to do something and he didn't feel like he was ready for that now.
The lights dimmed down for the night. They never went out completely, but he had learned to deal with it. With practised ease he willed himself to sleep. Just two more days and Charles would come to visit.
As the lights of the city disappeared in the rear-view mirror he sighed with relief. Ever since his first, failed roadtrip, he felt like his cars were jinxed. None of them seemed to survive for long and none had taken him further than Oxnard. But now Oxnard was behind him and the car was still running. Maybe this time his holiday plans would work out. Xander released the breath he didn't realised he had been holding.
He'd pulled together all the vacation left for him and all the overtime hours he'd pilled up. Four weeks of freedom and absolute no hellmouth! No bimonthly apocalypse, no random demons, no vampires, no research, he was free!
And Alexander Harris laughed out joyfully, shifted gears and accelerated, driving further and further away from the mouth of hell.
An official stamp on an official document. A signature. That was all it took. The files were already shipped, the project waiting for the last details.
The United States of America needed soldiers. Powerful soldiers. And since the Initiative and the demonid cyborg hadn't worked, they had turned to the next best source of superpowerfull beings: mutants.
Fifteen years ago the combined efforts of the scientists of the Weapon X project had created a soldier that had been strong, fast and deadly, but unfortunately the treatment had turned him into a savage beast and so the project had to be abandoned.
But, there were samples. Bloodsamples, tissuesamples, the man had healed so quickly that they had enough for their scientists to play with for years.
So far they had managed to locate and differentiate the genes responsible for his mutations. After several discussions they had decided to concentrate on the healing factor only. They deemed it was safer, because, who knew which of his mutations was responsible for the animalistic behaviour he'd occasionally displayed? The healing factor was relatively save and while it was a passive power, it was also a impressive one. And anyway why should they play around with boneclaws and adamantium when the greatest weapon of all had simply been dumped into their laps? True, the man was even more dangerous than Weapon X had ever been, but if they could manage to duplicate his powers they would win every war. Nobody would ever try to mess with the United States again.
These information was all that was needed. The project was stamped, approved and the lifes of three men, of one Riley Finn, one Alexander Lavelle Harris and one Erik Magnus Lehnsherr would never be the same.
He was asleep when the gas came. The smell and nightmarish panic allowed him to wake and he jumped out of his bed, fear and memories keeping him awake. He had to get out, get away from the gas, but his concentration was shot. Without being able to concentrate, he couldn't reign in his powers and free himself.
Was this the end? Would he die here? In his minds eye he saw the showers again. The showers and the ovens. As the gas dragged him down into unconsciousness, he screamed and released an uncontrolled blast of magnetism. In the radius of a mile every single electric item was fried, every videoband, every diskette or other electronic medium wiped clean of information and in a bedroom in a mansion in Westchester, a telepath was ripped out of his sleep, knowing that something terrible just had happened.
Xander looked at the building in front of him and then back at the address Willow had written down for him in her neatest handwriting. That was it? He didn't know what he had expected but it sure wasn't something like this.
And yet, it looked so, so Riley, that he simply knew he was right here. Here was a quaint little farm in the nowhere of Iowa, while little was being a matter of perspective... the fields surrounding the street and the building were smaller than some others he'd passed on his way her, but still bigger than downtown Sunnydale. And yellow... yellow and green as far as he could see.
He parked his car, shouldered his duffel and grabbed the stack of letters the others had given him to pass on to Riley. And then Xander took a deep breath and knocked at Riley's door.
They came in the dark of the night, wearing nightgoggles and thermo-isolated suits. Like ghosts they moved, surrounding the farm. Their mission was to abduct one former marine, Riley J. Finn for the Project Marvel Soldier. They had thought they had planned everything perfectly, believing Finn to be alone, his wife, Samantha Finn, out of town, visiting her family. None had even considered the possibility that Finn would have a guest. A guest that, despite being rudely woken by fighting noise, was able to take down three of their numbers. They tranqued him and took him as well.
Riley Jeffery Finn became specimen eight of the Marvel Soldier project. Alexander Lavelle Harris became specimen nine.
Glass and ceramic dominated the underground laboratories of the Marvel Soldier project. There were no metal allowed near the specimens. And as an additional security measure specimen zero, as Erik Lensherr was called here, was always under the influence of sedatives.
There were ten test specimens. Ten young men that would be injected with varieties of the Weapon X healing factor and specimen zero's magnetic genes. Each specimen would get a different gene therapy and the one that would get closest to the original specimen zero, would be used as the blue print for their army.
Specimen three died two hours after the first shot. Painfully.
Specimen ten went insane.
Specimen four committed suicide in one moment of inattention.
Specimen sevens heart exploded.
Specimen twos brain became damaged and he had the mentality of a four year old child.
Specimen eight's body rejected the healing factor and developed cancer. They didn't even bother to try specimen zero's genes.
Specimen six's' kidneys stopped working, then his liver, then his spleen, then his lungs... he smiled as he finally died.
Specimen one became violent. Very, very violent.
Specimen fives genes mutated just fine, but he stopped interacting with his surrounding, became a living, breathing statue.
Specimen nine finally was everything they wanted. His body had accepted the healing factor like he'd born with it and after some minor difficulties (he was screaming his lungs out every time they injected him) his genetic code also displayed specimen zero's gene.
The entire process had taken them three months. Now they would observe him for another month and they would allow him to interact with specimen zero for a while.
They had noticed that he couldn't control the magnetic powers he now possessed, so zero had learned to use them somehow. If he taught nine, they could learn how to teach their soldiers in the future. And after nine had learned to control the powers they had given him, they would continue to the next step: mass production.
In his glass and ceramic cell, lying on his plastic cot, Xander smiled for the first time since his capture... Willow had just established a mental link with him.
When they stopped using the sedatives it felt like his mind was wading through quicksand. Like waking from a dreamless sleep into a nightmare. Erik Lehnsherr woke up, feeling sore and weak and disoriented. He tried sitting up, but his arms were shaking so much, that he fell back onto his mattress again. But someone had noticed his struggle, was in fact coming over to help him sit up. A glass of something was pressed against his lips and despite his fear of it being tampered with, he drank, he was simply too thirsty not to. It was water. Pure, simple, untainted water and it felt like heaven running down his parched throat.
He waited until his breathing had turned to normal again, then he looked up to see who ha helped him. It was a young man, barley twenty if he had to guess, with shaggy brown hair and brown eyes that remembered him painfully at the people in the camps... eyes that had seen too much. The other wore a simple white shirt and drawstring-pants and on the right side of the shirt there was a big black nine. And the most important thing he noticed was the unstable magnetic field the other emitted.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Xander. Or specimen nine if you ask the mad docs out there."
A specimen! So it had already begun. His greatest fear was once more reality.
He had so many questions, but whatever they had done to him, Erik was too tired and weak to stay conscious for long.
Over the next three days he woke sporadically, as his body fought against the last of the sedatives and tried to replace what the scientists had stolen from him.
When he woke, Xander was there, to help, to talk and he listened and learned. He nearly laughed in bitter irony as he learned that the government was trying to duplicate his mutation in normal people... hadn't he been locked up for trying to mutate people against their will? He learned more about the process Xander had been subjected to and that the young man was so far the only one who had succeeded in gaining his powers.
Powers, Xander wasn't very happy about. There were the extra senses, that had just kicked him which allowed him to feel magnetic fields. Erik had lived with his powers for more than fifty years, but he still could remember how he had felt after the first rush had been over. All his senses had suddenly gained extra-uses and it had felt like he was a baby and had to learn to use them all over again. Added to the fact that while his own magnetic field was very stable, weak right now, but stable, Xander's was anything but. To Erik it felt like sitting next to a wildly strobing and always colorchanging discolight.
At the fourth day, after two hours of trying to ignore Xander's magnetic field, he finally craved and started teaching him. He knew the scientists had brought them together for him to teach the young man, but despite that knowledge he couldn't ignore the young mans plight. Firstly it wasn't Xander's fault that he had wound up here and Xander was as much a prisoner to those madmen as he was and secondly, no matter how he had become a mutant, Xander was a mutant now and with his powers being like his own, Erik knew exactly how to help him. And lastly, he couldn't help but feel a touch of paternal pride. While the boy was not his son, he was carrying his genes, his powers. Maybe he could train him to be his successor, his heir when he was no longer able to carry on. Also there was the fact, that even with him teaching Xander, it would take years for the young man to hone his powers. He himself had needed more than five years to be in complete control of them. If the people behind this project really wanted Alexander as their model for a new type of soldier, they would have to wait until he was in control of his powers. And five years were a lot of time to plan ones escape.
And revenge.
Six days after Willow had established the mindlink, she finally found out where Xander was held. She had hacked into the right database and she was shocked at the things she discovered.
This couldn't be right! Hadn't they stopped the Initiative only two years ago? Did those people never learn? She shuddered as she read the detailed fates of the specimens, finding some relieve in the fact that both Xander and Riley were still alive. But Riley's health was anything but and Xander had been locked up in a cell with the one only labelled as zero, meaning that he had displayed the mutation the shady government people were wanting. Which meant a lot of unpleasantness in Xander's future, if they didn't bring those people down.
At first Willow had thought of it like a rescue mission, but now that she knew the truth of this project, a rescue mission wasn't enough. Those projects had to be shut down, and shut down for good.
She reached out through the link and showed Xander the results of her search. They had a long talk and planning session, before she collected her purse and went to the magic box.
When she had gone to England after her breakdown, she had promised to only use magic in emergencies. This was an emergency and she would need all her witchcraft working to pull off the plan she and Xander had hatched.
When he felt the little tingle in his head that signalled him, that Willow had done the first spell, he nearly cried with relief. Yesterday the food and drinks had been laced with sedatives and when he'd woken, he'd been strapped down on an examination table and there had been 'Tests'. Even with the healing factor removing every trace of injury in minutes, the psychological scars lingered for much longer.
Then, when he had woken out of the second narcosis, once more back in the cell he shared with Erik, he had shaken for hours until he finally had calmed down.
Xander closed his eyes and prayed to all benevolent gods he had read about in his years as a Scooby, that Willows spell would do what they thought it should do.
Slowly, painfully slowly and oh so carefully he reached out to the mind of his cellmate, until the link was established.
#Erik... please don't freak out or let them see your reaction.#
#Xander? I thought you were a human before they caught you or it the telepathy a new developement?#
#Neither. I was 100% human yes, but I have a friend who's a practising wicca. She established the mindlink for us. Say hi to Willow.#
#Uh, hi Xand. Hello Mr Lehnsherr.#
#Good evening, Miss Willow, was it? I'm quite suprised that someone could establish a telepathic connection when even my old friend Charles had not managed to contact me yet.#
#That's because I don't use telepathy, but witchcraft. The entire compound has been lined with a thin layer of a metal-alloy to block out telepaths, but I am using a bit of Xander's blood in the Communis Familis spell. And I could only reach out to create a link with you, because they injected Xander with so much of your genetic material that the spell thinks you are related.#
#That is quite fascinating, Miss Willow. Are you telling me that witchcraft is real? And where did you find the information about this compound?#
#Of course it is real. Witchy Willow here, remember? I do tons with it... uhmmm did tons with it, but I got a bit out of line. But it is all better now. And the info... well I sorta hacked the government security systems a bit?#
Xander's friend was marvellous. Not only did she talk without the need for punctuation, but she had also manage to stabilise the link so he and Xander could use it without her present and she had found a rather astonishing amount of information about the project they were used for.
And she was a witch. Here he was, a 74 year old, very powerful mutant and he had never even wasted a thought at the possibility that witchcraft could be real. Actually he had doubted it until the moment when Xander had allowed him access to his memories. Some of the things he saw the redhead do looked like things he knew other mutants could do, but there was no mutant that could do all those things. And there were other things... beings in Xander's mind, that reminded him of the legends and ghost stories his father liked to tell him when he brought him to bed, a long... long time ago.
It was quite a shock to learn that most of it was real. His entire life he'd looked down at those people that weren't able to realise that they were thinking in little boxes, only to learn that he had done the same.
What else had he missed? What else was there?
Aliens?
Parallel dimensions? No wait, those had already been proven to exist by that strange ragtag group Alexander was part of.
Erik Lehnsherr was not a very religious man, but he felt scared by the fact that those young adults had seen evidence of the existence of heaven and hell.
But he could think about it all after he had gotten out of here. And thanks to Willow and her information about the project, they now had a plan.
It was not something he would have tried alone, but if he could train Alexander for at least half a month and have Willow prepare things from the outside this could free them and make the USA loose face in front of the entire United Nations.
And they would never dare to try something like that again.
It had been twenty days and everything was ready. It was time. Together the two magnetic mutants reached out with their senses for the layer of alloy they knew was there to keep out telepaths. The found it and then they pushed.
The earth started to shake as the underground-complex was forced upwards. Higher and higher through earth and stone and whatever.
Once, when he had tried to find the limits of his power, Erik had lifted a sunken Russian submarine from the bottom of the sea. 25000 ton of steel plus the water that was in it. He had managed to do so without overtaxing himself, but this was different. If not for Alexander working with him in concert and Willow casting a spell to easen their burden, he wouldn't have even thought about it.
But so he pushed and lifted and forced the complex higher and higher until it finally burst through the air, destroying a street and half a park while doing so; before the complex came to rest, barley half a mile from the UN building, New York.
If Willow had done her job, then she had sold the story to at least half a dozend news stations and had displayed the hacked files openly on the internet. And now the last, the final prove was here. Nobody could deny the existence of the project now.
The project was finished, the USA had a lot to explain and he would get out of this hellhole.
And Erik Lehnsherr sank into blissful unconsciousness, with a smile on his face.
He looked at the monitors showing the inside of the hospital room, searching, with his eyes and his mind, for a sign that Erik might be waking some time soon. But his old friend was still unreachable in his coma.
The act of lifting the complex, where he had been held prisoner, through about fifty feet of earth, even if he had done it together with the other, had drained him beyond his ability to cope.
His body had used up too much energy and he had left so little, that there was the possibility that he would never wake up again, but would simply slip deeper and deeper into his coma until he finally died.
And if he died, then he, Charles Xavier, would be partly responsible. If his students hadn't left Erik for the authorities to find after the battle of Liberty Island, if they had been able to act faster, sooner, then Erik wouldn't have been able to go through with his crazy plan, if he had been able to convince his old friend to come back to the school for a while, then none of this would have happened.
But he had failed. Instead he had visited Erik in his plastic prison regularly, had played chess even if he knew that his friend wasn't really caring, he simply won too often. And while he was wasting his time that way, those people where building a new prison, a new hell for Erik to go through.
Once more he looked to the battery of monitors that were showing him Erik's room. Despite the fact that he was in a coma and victim of horrible violations of his civil rights, they still feared Erik, still threatened him as a criminal. Erik hadn't moved, he hadn't really expected him to, but now the young man they had found with him, Alexander, was sitting next to his sleeping form, watching.
Alexander, the young man was an enigma to him. He had been found locked in a cell together with Erik, half-councious and with a mind full with memories of gruesome tests and experiments done to him. Because he had Wolverine's healing factor as well as Magneto's magnetic powers and because he was more than fifty years younger than Erik, he had recovered very fast... at least physically. But the things he had seen, the things that had been done to him, they had left deep scars in his mental landscape.
When they had found them, when they had tried to separate him from Erik, he nearly went berserk. Alexander trusted none and nobody, fearing that if he left Erik alone, he would disappear again.
And wasn't that fear justified?
When the complex had appeared from the underground, when the news-stations uniformly showed the pictures of American citizen, being experimented on by their own government, when the storm of the angry people had broken loose over the officials, he had sitten in his office, silent and alone. And wept.
Outside the world was growing mad, people, other governments demanding answers, but the one responsible had fled their offices and posts, afraid for their very life. The people had learned that, in the eyes of their government, they seemed to be expendable and they liked that not a bit.
Riots were breaking out in the cities, those who represented the state, those, that were officials, they all were fair game now.
Normally he would sent out the X-Men, trying to contain the violence, but now he was afraid. For now he had seen the ugly truth, that neither mutant nor human mattered for those in charge. If you were useful and a mutant your chances were even worse. What if those people were waiting for him to send his students out? Who would they take next? First Logan, then Erik and now...? And would other states try to follow the American way of thinking?
He didn't know and for the first time in a very long time, he was afraid... very very afraid of the humans he'd tried to protect.
He rubbed his eyes in a tired motion before replacing his glasses. Giles sighed. He wished that Willow had told them earlier about Xander. But instead he had to take care of a hyperworried slayer and her younger sister, not to mention Anya, who, as he had suspected, still loved Xander despite her memories of the failed wedding and her re-entering her old job.
When Willow finally had told them, bare hours before the big event in New York had happened(she had been afraid that they would try to stop her doing the earthmagic Xander and his cellmate needed to lift the complex), he had collected his kids, as he was secretly calling them, had driven them to L.A. and had used a few connections to get them onto the next flight to New York.
Not that it had helped them very much, because the panic, that had started to sweep through the city had already been in full swing when the plane had landed. And Xander had been out of their reach. Hidden somewhere in a hospital and as far as he had heard, Xander had been fundamentally changed without the possibility of undoing the changes.
Giles started polishing his glasses. In all his time, living and fighting on the hellmouth, Xander had never been hurt or changed as much as he had on this last roadtrip he'd attempted. True, there were the possessions, the near brushes with death, but somehow he had always expected Xander to be the one that would remain forever unchanged from the influence of the hellmouth. Xander had been their anchor, the one that made them remember to life when they had buried themselves to deep into the prophecies and other troubles. He was the one to remind them that despite everything, they still were human and their lives would be unlived if they themselves didn't live them.
And now he was the one changed. He was no longer the normal one and the one to do this had been humans. It had been a shock. After so much supernatural and paranatural evil he had almost forgotten that humans could be evil too. And they had no racial requirements or prophecies or other natural reasons to be so, they were evil because they wanted to be evil.
And Xander was only one of their victims, yet he was the one dearest to the group, the most important for them.
If he had understood Willow correctly, Xander was a mutant now and one with very powerful abilities. He remembered how he had researched the few scattered bits of information on mutants when the word had hit the Press for the first time. His watcher training had made him suspect those beings to be demons in disguise, but finally he had come to the conclusion, that they were humans. Powerful humans, but humans none the less. And he had dropped the matter. His responsibility was with Buffy and the Slayer codex strictly forbade the harming or killing of humans. He would only sporadically read something about them, making notes when some of them had altered appearances, to tell Buffy that she couldn't hurt them, but otherwise he stayed away from that theme.
Now it looked like he would invest more time in that area of research. Xander was one of his group and he was a mutant now, Giles wanted to be able to make him comfortable with the group again.
In a nondescript house, somewhere in the Midwest, the Leaders of the Friends of Humanity had an emergency meeting. The reason for that were the unbelievable news that were shown on every news-channel. The discovery that the government was MAKING mutants out of normal American citizen didn't sit very well with the FoH. Here they were, an organisation for the purifying of the human genome, always ready to battle the dreaded mutants and their own government was taking brave normal citizen and turning them into freaks!
What could they do, how should they react?
Different opinions became loud and the tempers heated up, the voices of the different leader becoming louder the longer the meeting went.
Later this day would become known as the Day of Shizma, as the Friends of Humanity splintered into different groups. The Bewarer of genetic Purity, the hardcore mutanthaters, who wanted to eradicate even those government created freaks, the The Untampered ones, who wanted to give those mutants a chance to prove themselves and finally the relative small but later rapidly growing Church of Equality, who, deciding that nobody could know which mutant was created in a lab and which was natural, to give them all a fair chance and only to hunt them down if they did something criminal.
But as of this day, the Friends of Humanity did not exist any longer.
Willow nervously looked at the ancient scroll she'd hidden in her suitcase until this morning. Somehow she had known that she would need it, but the risk in using this spell were high, for her and for Xander. But Xander wanted this. Had asked her for it. He knew the risk and was willing to take them on.
She smiled to herself as she packed the ceremonial obsidian dagger into her purse, next to the five green, orchidscented candles. Xander was always like that, risking his life for those he deemed friends and family.
And sometime during his imprisonment, Erik Lehnsherr had become part of this very exclusive circle.
And now, that Xander could feel him slowly slipping away, he'd asked Willow via their link to do the spell.
The spell.
She had found it during the Warren hunt. It had been one of the few things she had been unable to absorb in her quest for power and revenge. She had always carried it with her since that day, partly as a reminder and partly as the last possible resource if one of her friends were near death.
Now Xander's mentor was close to death door and Xander had begged her to do it, with himself as the conduit.
Three green Quetzalfeathers were put into her purse, next to the bag of corn.
She would do it. For Xander.
He was her oldest friend, after all.
She slipped through the halls and stations like a wisp of mist, unnoticed by humans and video security alike. Her spells protecting her from detention, making her feel like a ghost. A ghost with a goal. Stubbornly she followed the softly buzzing mindlink to Xander's room.
Without a second thought she walked through the door and called up a mystic shield to protect them, then she dropped the illusion spells.
"Willow!"
The hug her friend bestowed on her was better than anything she had expected. It made her feel warm and welcome. She had missed this while she'd been in England, nobody could hug as good as Xander.
"Xander! OhitissogoodtoseeyouagainImeanyoulookdifferentbut notasbadasIthoughtyouwouldafterIreadthefiles! I missed you so much! Nobody hugs like you do."
He laughed softly and hugged her tighter. While they had communicated quite often since she had established the mindlink, he had missed Willow's physical presence very much and it looked like she had felt the same way.
Willow finally stepped out of the hug and scruntinized Xander. He was thinner, his hair longer and the entire way he held himself made him look older, more serious than she had ever seen him before. And yet, he was still Xander, despite all that had happened. Just like she had always been Willow, even when she had tried to destroy the world.
And thinking of magic...
#Xander, are you absolutely sure you want to do this? There is a risk, that I'll fail or that the spell backfires or....#
#Shhhh, Willow. I trust you. I trust you absolutely. Yes, some of your spells went wonky in the past, but you always pulled through when we needed you. It will be alright Willow, trust me, as I trust you.#
She smiled brightly at those words, knowing that Xander wouldn't, couldn't lie at her through the mindlink. Willow placed her purse on Xander's bed and together they started preparing the spell. She had a moment of panic when she noticed that her compass no longer worked correctly, since the needle was influenced by the magnetic fields of the two mutants, but before she could have a full-babble panic-attack, Xander managed to calm her down, stating that he could feel earth's magnetic field better than the compass she would have used, plucked the candles out of her hands and placed them on the four cardinal points of the circle she had drawn on the floor with chalk. The fifth candle he put exactly in the middle of the other four. Then he stepped back and pointed at the first candle he'd placed.
"This is North."
Willow nodded her thanks and started to fill the chalkoutline of the circle with carefully copied sigils. Each line had to be exact, or the one she was calling to would be angry and reverse the meaning of the spell. After she had been finished and had double checked the symbols, Willow placed the anointed corn around the candle in the middle and then grabbed the dagger and a small jade chalice. This ritual was old and powerful and as such, needed a powerful base to start... blood.
It wasn't very funny, but she couldn't suppress a nervous giggle, as Xander had to cut himself again and again until half of the chalice was filled with his blood. Then she gritted her teeth and let her blood fill it nearly up to the brim.
Mr Lehnsherr, as the benefactor of the spell, only needed to sacrifice three drops, that Willow carefully watched dropping into the chalice.
Willow placed the chalice on a small table, next to the three feathers, took a deep breath and looked at Xander.
"Are you really sure we should do this Xander?"
Xander looked at her and she could feel his decision through their link, but the spell needed a loudly spoken consent of the 'donor'.
"Yes, I am sure."
"Then we will begin."
The moment Willow had dropped her illusion spells, several alarms had started to blare and security had tried to enter the room to arrest her. Tried being the correct word, since Willow's mystic shield had held and no one could even get close to the door of the room. But Willow had done nothing to disable the cameras and so, those that were able to, watched as the small redhead prepared the ritual, listened to the strange conversation she had with the younger of the two mutants and continued to watch as she spoke three words that ignited the candles that had been placed on the design.
And since several news channels had more or less successful linked themselves to the videofeed, curious about what was happening with the main witnesses to the biggest scandal ever, there were a lot more watchers than anyone could have suspected.
Willow started the spell... and the world watched.
"Huehueteotl hear my call, Ixquitecatl guide my tongue, Chalmeccacihuatl lead my hand, for I have come to call the one that is two, the first that will be the last, the light that is darkness still."
Willow held up one of the three Quetzalfeathers, let it float two inches over her cupped hands and it flared up, then turned to ash, the first sacrifice.
"I call to Metztli, Nanautzin and Citlalatonac, be my witnesses before them, that my words are untouched by evil and my plea justified before Nauhyoteuctli's eyes."
The second feather burned as quickly and as brightly as the first.
"I call to you Omecihuatl, Mother of all, One of the Two that is one, I call to you Ometecuhtli, Father of all, One of the Two that is one, I call to you Ometeotl, Dual Deity, first that will be last, Mother and Father of everything."
The last of the three feathers was burning brighter than the first two together, a good sign.
"I call you with my blood, my life, my soul. I call you with my heart and my mind. I call you to bind together The Father and the Son The Brother and the Brother The Mentor and the Student I call you to balance I call you to heal."
She dipped her fingers into the mixed blood, starting to draw sigils of power between the chalk ones until the circle flared up white with power.
"Great Ometeotl the one bound but unbalanced the one standing on the doorway the one about to enter the next world I beseech you to Heal!"
At her last word, the circle burst into a pillar of bluish white power and Willow gritted her teeth as she trust the chalice into the middle of the pillar.
It was as if she had dipped her hands into molten iron, it felt like her hands were burned away, leaving only cauterised stumps. Her eyes teared, but she couldn't let got, she had to stay strong even if it hurt and hurt and hurt.
She was close to passing out, only holding on because she had a stubborn streak a mile wide and refused to give up that close to her goal, when the entire room was bathed into bright light and it finally stopped hurting.
The light flowed together to form a figure, a silhouette filled with darkness and stars. The outline of this nude being showed that it had breasts like a woman, but genitals like a man. This was Ometeotl, the dual Creator of the Aztecs. And while it was very hard to make out their face, it looked like they were... smiling?
They stepped out of the circle, walking the two steps to the obviously exhausted witch. Their hand captured the witch's chin, forcing her to look up, into their eyes.
For a moment Willow understood. She saw into their eyes and knew everything, felt everything, was everything. Her mind stretched out between the stars, further and further until she touched the edge of eternity. Then the eyecontact was broken and she nearly wept, as she found herself back in her own body.
They smiled and placed the lightest, softest kiss onto her forehead, before they walked to the one that was to be the donor. Once again they established eyecontact and again they were happy with what they found and finally they looked into the heart and mind of the one who would be the benefactor of the plea. His mind was unbalanced, more pain and darkness than light, but the donor was slowly working on changing that. He still could be balanced and the plea was right and just in their eyes.
Ometeotl was pleased and because they were pleased they decided to grant each of them an extra bon they hadn't asked for. But first...
They stepped back to the donor, held his face between their hands and kissed them onto the mouth. During the kiss, they inhaled, pulling in his life-force, making him age a bit. When their kiss ended, Xander was, and looked, four years older than before.
Then they returned to the benefactor and kissed him, like they had kissed the donor, pushing the life-force they had taken into him, but not before amplifying it a little. Four years times twelve, 48 years of life-force were infused into him and those watching could see the years melting from him like hot wax.
Ometeotl stepped back, scruntinizing him for a moment, before kissing him a second time, but onto the forehead, like the witch. Then they stepped to the donor, kissing him and finally they walked to the witch. Her, they kissed onto the mouth, before laughing softly and stepping back into the circle.
There was a flare of light and power and then they were gone. As well as the lines of chalk and blood, the candles, the corn and everything Willow had used for the calling... except for the scroll and the jadechalice, which had been changed by the power channelled through it. There were craving in the jade now, blessings and symbols. The chalice had become a holy object that was keyed to the three that had bleed into it.
Willow picked it up and put it back into her purse. Then she looked at Xander. He still stood there, where the dual being had kissed him, a glazed look on his face and the faintest smile on his lips. She knew how he felt. Her eyes wandered to the bed where Mr Lehnsherr was sleeping and she gaped.
During the ritual she didn't had the time to look what had happened to him, too dazed by the presence of the celestial being, but now she got her first real good look.
She turned her head, looked at Xander, then turned back to the man still sleeping in his hospital bed.
"We overdid it a bit, did we?"
Willow smiled, then exhaustion hit her. She barely had time to stumble towards Xander's bed, before she collapsed into a deep sleep.
Xander looked at Erik's sleeping form and laughed softly.
"Just a bit, Willow. Just a tiny little bit."
He arranged her, so that she would be comfortable, then laid himself on the covers next to her. He had lost four years of life-force and his healing factor was working in overdrive to repair the micro cellular damage that had occurred, he needed a nap, too.
A few minutes after he'd fallen asleep, Willow's barrier went down and security stormed the room. They found them all sleeping, the redheaded intruder sharing a bed with the younger mutant and the other... they stared at the bed, the one sleeping in that bed in shock. This morning, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr had slept in that bed, and he had looked worn and exhausted and his age. Now, they assumed that Erik Magnus Lehnsherr still slept in that bed, but he looked relaxed, peaceful and not a day over 26!
"Holy...," he whispered to himself as he read the results of the testing.
Professor Godfrey Wandel was a specialist in the area of genetic mutations and had been called in when the secret experiments on humans and mutants had come to light. He had worked with the samples, taken from the victims during their captivity, and some that had been taken afterwards and everything had been logical and explainable. But now he had taken a look at bloodsamples, taken this morning, the morning after the strange happening in the hospital room and then it was, that things got weird.
He held up the 'old' chart of Alexander L. Harris, old meaning that it had been done three days ago. The chart showed a stable dual mutation. The first a fast working healing factor and the second one being magnakinesis [1]. They hadn't had the time to test the young man, but Prof. Wandel was sure that it could be as strong as the magnakinesis Mr Lehnsherr had displayed on several occasions. And their ranking system had classed Mr Lehnsherr as an supposed Omega class mutant [2]. Godfrey Wandel couldn't suppress a shudder as he tried to imagine what those people could have done with a mutant like him if the project hadn't come to such an abrupt end.
Then he looked back at the new chart. From a geneticists point of view it was a work of art. Beautiful in its complexity. If a normal humans DNA was like the painting of a student of arts, then that of a 'normal' mutants would be like something a more seasoned artist would paint. But the DNA of this young man was like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, unique in its existence, full of secrets and mystery and heartbreakingly beautiful. A masterpiece.
There were the regular human genes, the X-gene and something so different, something new he had no name for. And it was everywhere in the young mans genetic code.
The soft 'ding' of his gene sequencer startled him out of his thoughts. He walked over to the machine, watching it ejecting the printouts of Mr Lehnsherr's genetic chart. He took a first look and nearly dropped it. The same anomalies! But they were not, as he soon noticed, in the same places. And there was something else... his X-gene had been changed. Before there had been only the genes for the magnakinesis, which were still there and untouched, but now he also had the healing factor Mr Harris had. How? And when? And why?
He had his suspicions of course, but to prove it, he would have to wait for the results of Miss Rosenberg. Which would take a while.
Godfrey Wandel sighed and started the sequencer.
It is not every day that you wake up and suddenly find yourself fifty years younger, so it was quite understandable that Erik was quite disoriented the day after he had woken out of his coma. He thought that it had been a rather vivid dream, waking up to find a young, babbling redhead and a noticeable changed Alexander, who had babbled in concert about what they had done to wake him up. In this dream he'd stood up and walked to the smallish bathroom, looking into the mirror, seeing a face that was alien to him, but that he knew had to be his since it looked like him, had he been 50 years younger. He thought that he had screamed in shock then. But that was all a strange dream, was it? He rubbed his eyes, his hand stopping when he didn't encounter the wrinkles he was used to. In fact his skin felt rather soft, and his hand... he held it in front of his face turning it this way and that way, his hand was free of ageing spots and wrinkles, too.
So yesterday was not a dream then? He really was deaged by fifty years? Slightly dazed he walked into the bathroom and once more looked into the mirror. The proof was there, beyond question, he was young again. His hair was needing a cut rather badly and the beard was a rather alien element to see, but nobody had trusted him or Alexander with razors during their captivity. A trend he saw continued right now, he mused after he finished riffling through the bathroom cabinet. No metal, not even a nail clipper. So the beard would have to stay for a bit longer. Erik looked back into the mirror. Maybe he would leave a bit of it. He looked so painfully young and even this wild growth of hair was adding a bit of maturity. For a moment he tried to imagine how he would look like clean shaven and shuddered.
No, he would definitely let a bit of that beard remain!
It almost had become a ritual for him. Right after waking up and before facing his students he closed his eyes and concentrated on one particular consciousness. The last months he'd only reached emptiness, the last days a mind deeply unconscious, but today, the mind he was reaching for was awake and aware.
#Hello Charles.# The mindvoice of his friend greeted him, as he tentatively made the connection between their minds.
#It is good to hear from you again, Erik.# He projected a bit of the worry he'd felt during the last months, as he had used both his telepathy and Cerebro to find him... without success.
The answer came in the form of images... a cell, drugs and a young formerly human youth being returned to their cell shaking and traumatised every time the scientists 'tested' him.
#Do you still think, we can coexist peacefully, Charles? Those beings didn't thought that we were worthy of their precious so-called human rights...#
#Uhmmm... excuse me if I'm interrupting, but youtwoweresoloud thatIcouldn'thelpbuthearwhatyouweresaying'causethespellnetiskinda resonatingwiththetelepathyandasIsaidyouweresoloudanditlookslikeI'm babbleingagainsoshuttingupnow...,# a youthful female voice interrupted them.
#What Willow is meaning,# a amused male voice interrupted the female voice, #is that you two where loud enough to give any aether-sensitvive in the area a big headache with your screaming. Added to that is the fact that the mindlink bounced your conversation around, magnifying it until we felt like our brains were starting to leak out of our ears the next moment and you see why we had to interfere. Willow, could you ?#
In the next moment, he felt a pulling sensation and then he was somewhere completely unknown to him... correction, his mindself was. It looked like a... coffee bar? And there were three other astral beings waiting for him.
One of them seemed to be made out of bluish, wildly crackling energy poured into the shape of a man. A man he knew rather well. Erik looked a bit uncomfortable and disoriented, but not as bad as Charles had feared he would be. Next to him stood another man, clad in a white robe with big white wings sticking out of his back, a sword belted around his waist and a shield attached to his left arm. He was arguing with a woman made out of plants.
"I can't see why I couldn't have chosen my own form, I look sooo dorky in this night-shirt. Willoooow, please."
The green woman shook her head at him. "No, Xander. That's my revenge for you singing the frog song to me, at two o'clock in the morning twice last week."
The winged one sighed and pulled a chair from seemingly nowhere. "Might as well get started then," he sighed, then smiled at the others, "Welcome to Willow's and Xander's little corner of the astral world. Sit down, so we can get this show on the road."
Once more the gene sequencer finished it's task with a soft 'ding'.
Godfrey Wandel's hands were shaking, as he forced himself to reach for the printout slowly, as not to damage it in his haste.
Willow Rosenberg... the young woman who had turned the world upside down and inside out just yesterday. Her genetic code showed no X-gene, not the tiniest bit of mutation in the mental or energy-converting area, but she had the same, strange new anomalies that the two Mutants were showing. He placed the charts next to each other, comparing them.
Curious, none had the markings in the same places. One or two might be in similar regions of the DAN chart, but none were identical.
Godfrey Wandel was a methodical man and he prided himself for his competence in his chosen practice, but he knew when he was out of his depth. He reached for the phone. Time to call in the real experts.
He was having a headache. Correction, he had the mother of all headaches. Too much had happened in the last few days and his mind had difficulties to work through it all. Erik rubbed his forehead, trying to relieve some of the tension he could feel pulsing behind his eyeballs. But unfortunately this only reminded him of the strange state of existence he currently found himself in. He was blue... electric blue... actually his body, if it could still be called body, seemed to consist out of solid blue energy and small amounts of this energy were constantly fizzing away from him to merge with his surroundings. It was disturbing to watch.
Someone touched him at his shoulder and he looked up questionly. It was the witch. The not-so-redhead looking witch. She looked like her body had been formed out of plants and earth and dark green energy.
"The first time in the astral plane can be quite unsettling. It is the first time you see yourself like the image your mind has of you."
She gestured at herself. "I for example, could have defined myself several different ways. I could have taken my cultural background, had it meant enough. Or, as a computer expert, could have formed my image out of ones and zeros. But in my mind I am first and foremost a witch, an earth-witch to be exact and so my form takes on these qualities."
Once more he looked at his blue hands and he had to admit that it made sense. Ever since his powers had manifested themselves, he had build his entire identity around them. And here, in this strange place outside of his own mind and body, he 'was' his power. It was fascinating and frightening at the same time.
He turned his head to the left, thinking, as he looked at the astral form of his oldest friend. It had been months since he had seen him, but he had no trouble recognising him. Charles looked like himself, only made out of colour-changing energy, a metaphor for his telepathy, it seemed. But the correctly formed image ended at his waist, leaving everything below a nebulous cloud, undefined and unformed. Charles had been in a wheelchair for so long, that his mind had 'forgotten' his legs. In its own, strange way, the form was absolutely perfect for him.
Then he frowned as he looked at the form of Xander, who was sitting straight across of him. His form seemed to be close, but not his true one, like he was wearing a costume. He turned back to Willow, to ask her about it, but she spoke up before he could ask his questions.
"It is a long story, but Xander has some trouble with his astral forms and so he's allowed me to form his essence into what my mind thinks is fitting form him."
Forms? Plural? Erik had the feeling that this would be a long conversation.
He had known that the man was a mutant, who of his colleagues hadn't? Dr. McCoy had not made a secret out of it. But the last time he'd seen the man, on a geneticists meeting in Switzerland, the only thing that indicated his mutation had been the abnormal long arms. He'd looked a bit strange in the tailored suit, but no one had really cared as they had talked shop, the mans mind was brilliant and that had been all that counted.
So he'd expected Dr. McCoy to look similar to when he had seen him the last time and was, quite explainable, shocked when he found himself face to face with a big blue furry creature, which strangely reminded him of the Cookie Monster from the Sesamestreet.
Sure, he was still the same brilliant mind and watching him work was a joy to behold and yet, he couldn't help but have one train of thought shooting through his brain: 'How did he kept his fur from contaminating the samples?'
It had been a bad idea, Xander reflected, a very bad idea to let the two men have time and space to discuss their differences. The beginning of the screaming match had attested to that. Both had different ideas how to react to the threat of human/mutant experimentation and they were giving him a huge headache. And the more the two debated, the worse his headache got and his patience grew thinner and thinner. And finally he exploded.
"You are both so wrong that it isn't even funny anymore! You," he pointed at Xavier, "think everything can solved without the use of force, while you," and now he pointed at Erik, "seem to think that physical violence solves everything! But what both of you don't realise is that this is that this is not chess we are playing, but domino and Willow and I already set the stones falling!"
With a simple movement of his hand he remodelled the entire astral space around them.
Cells with electrified glass walls, one next to the other were seaming the corridor they where standing in now. And in the cells there were the strangest things either Erik or Xavier had ever seen.
"This is a memory, the memory of a little government project called 'The Initiative'. They set up shop in our hometown two to three years ago. We first learned about them Thanksgiving day 2000 and they troubled us for quite a while. Demons and those in contact with the supernatural would disappear and we had no idea what they were doing to them. Until IT appeared...,"
A tall, humanoid creature appeared in front of them, part human, part android, and part demon patchwork.
"IT's name was A.D.A.M., Automated Demonoid Android Machine and it should have been the USA's new superweapon, if everything went like they had planned. Unfortunately they forgot the most important rule of weaponingeniering: never create a weapon that can think for itself. It killed its creators first, then it vivisected a six year old little boy in its quest for knowledge. A.D.A.M. then decided that humans were too flawed and should be replaced by creatures after his own design. It nearly succeeded."
Suddenly the corridors were full of battlenoise, soldiers and demons dying alike at the weapons and hand of each other.
"It took a very powerful spell, to merge and balance the abilities of four people into one, a spell that nearly killed us. After that debacle the Initiative was shut down, the building sealed with cement, but we, Willow and I, we knew sooner or later they would try something like that again. And we started planning, digging for information of other, older, similar projects and we found quite a lot. We collected evidence, papers, every last scrap of information we could find and we prepared."
Again the astral space shifted and now they were floating over a huge, flat plain filled with a complex arranged pattern of dominoes.
"When Willow noticed my disappearance and was informed of Riley vanishing at exact the same time, she started searching for us. Since I left a bit of my blood, sealed in a vial for emergencies, behind, she could weave a spell of mindspeech and talk to me. Together we planned and put the stones into the right pattern."
"When the undergroundcomplex was literally brought to light, the first line was set in motion."
Below them a row of dominoes started to fall, leaving new and exotic designs in their wake.
"Willow activated the second by releasing all the information of THIS project to the public."
A second line started falling, adding to the musters of the first and creating their own.
"The third was a quite visible display of witchcraft. Had the situation been less dramatic, the chosen ritual would have been another, not so dangerous one, but so they were witness of a one in a lifetime chance of watching the fracmental summoning of a force of existence... I hope Andrew and Jonathan made some good tapes of that."
The designs of this line of fallings stones looked extremely beautiful, more so than the patterns of the first two ones.
"The fourth line will be activated with the release of all the data of the other projects we know about, everything that we found out, will be made public as of today, at six a.m.. The internet is quite a beautiful tool if you want to reach a lot of people and it had already begun."
"The next one lies solely in Willow's hands. With her admittance of being a witch, with the added fact that magic is real, works and can be used as long as you have training and a bit of talent, the balance should be partly restored."
"Number six is the release of evidence that the supernatural is more than a brunch of stories. With the backup of the Initiative data, the existence of several quite violent and human hating and/or eating demontribes can be proved. If they want to hate and fear someone, let them hate a target that can actually BE dangerous for their health and existence."
"Seven will have to wait until the end of the week, I want them to have a bit of time to digest all the information. It will make it easier for me, to contact certain groups, anti war groups, human rights groups, several large student groups, we made a list of contacts to use for situations like this."
"Eight is the unveiling of the Watchers Council and their less than stellar methods and the number of slayers, American or not, that had left their live on the battlefield for those stuffy Brits, which should put one or two nice blocks into the British/American relations."
"Nine is suing the government. What they had done is illegal and amoral and they should pay for it."
"Ten finally is 'suggesting' a number of laws to the senate, equal rights, call it emotional blackmail if you like. But at that time, the public image of the USA will be damaged, their allies suspicious of their movements and reasons, the general public in hysterics, the bigger protest groups on the warpath and the pressure to make things right again will be immense."
The dominoes below them exploded into a beautiful woven mandelbrotpattern made of colour and light.
"The eyes of the world will be adding their own weight, but to not appear a hypocrites, they will have to allow similar laws and since they will be suspiciously watching the USA for some time, the politicians will have to make sure the laws are obeyed."
He settled back into a chair that had appeared out of thin air. Slowly the bright image of the dominoes vanished, to be replaced by the coffeeshop where it all had started.
Outwards he looked calm and collected, but inwards he was shaking to keep the astral image that Willow had spun for him in one piece, for his outburst of anger had let 'her' closer to the surface and he had no wish to allow the hyena out right now.
"So," he said, "any other questions?"
He was feeling a bit steamrollered, the beauty of the plan the two had created had left him speechless. Each part of their plan was simple, easy to do, but together they had created a net in which even the greasiest lawyer would be lost.
Erik liked it. The idea of letting humans do most of the work, of using the own expectations of them against them was great. And the fact that they would have a good guy image in the end was not to shabby either.
He leaned back in his own chair and smiled. Oh yes, he had been deaged, had quite good chances to get out of the governments watchful presence and it looked like the plan Xander and Willow had spun would work to all of their benefits. The future, he decided, looked a lot of brighter right now.
[1] Magnakinesis: a crude description of Magnetos mutant ability.
[2] The classification I found on a Marvel Fansite, so I don't know if it is completely right, but the Omegaclass I know is mentioned in the comics as the highest class a mutant can be (except for Franklin Richards).
It starts with: Epsylon: a mutation that is so weak that nobody notices it. The mutant himherself thinks heshe is a normal human.
Delta: a mutation that might manifest in a streetlight dimming when they walk past, weak premonition or especially good luck. Like Epsylon mutants, most Delta mutants never notice that they are mutants.
Gamma: weak, noticeable mutation. For example weak telepathy, changed skineyecolor, small energy mutations. The Gammamutant knows about hisher mutancy but it is not a big mutation.
Beta: normal, noticeable mutation. Can be anything as long as it is not too strong.
Alpha: strong, noticeable mutation. Among those classified as Alpha mutants are Cyclops (Scott Summers), Storm (Ororo Munroe) and Cannonball (Sam Gutherie).
Omega: very rare mutation. Mutants that are classed as Omega can literally change the entire world if they wish to. Known Omega mutants are Iceman (Bobby Drake) and Magneto (Erik Lehnsherr), possibly Professor X (Charles Xavier)
beyond Omega: Franklin Richards son of the Fantastic Four Sue Richards and Reed Richards, has displayed powers well beyond the Omega class. He created a entire pocket universe to 'store' the heroes who had seemingly died during the Onslaught crisis. His power level is on par to that of a Celestial.