The Danger Room at Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters:
The nine members of the New Mutants are somewhat skeptical about the threat they are about to face. Cannonball fears they are in over their head, while, predictably, Sunspot believes they can take these losers apart. Wolfsbane is shy and Mirage pragmatically orders the team to do their job. Said foes are Danger Room replicas of the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
Quicksilver uses his speed to topple the New Mutants and mocks them.
Watching from the observation booth, current headmaster Magneto muses that, like the original X-Men once were, they are just children, and wonders why Xavier sent them to face the most dangerous adversaries. Arrogance? Overconfidence? Or perhaps he believed no harm could come to those who served a righteous cause.
Down below, Warlock has caught the others and Cannonball uses his power to topple Quicksilver, raising the ire of his sister, the Scarlet Witch. She turns her hex power against Sam, and in turn gets attacked by Wolfsbane.
Magneto muses that, if Xavier has a flaw, it is that he is hopelessly naïve… believing in the inherent decency of humans and mutants. But how many have paid the price for that naivete? And how many more will?
The Scarlet Witch fends Wolfsbane off with a hex, causing Magik to attack her with her soulsword. The lovelorn Toad wants to help the Scarlet Witch, but Sunspot grabs him and tosses him away.
Magneto tells himself to put aside the dark thoughts and embrace at least some of Charles’ idealism and hope for the future. He figures, if there is any hope, it lies with these brave young people.
Warlock has formed an anime-style mecha-suit around Cypher and, together with Magma, they are attacking Unus the Untouchable with not much success, as his forcefield holds. The backlash splits Doug and Warlock apart. Magma imprisons Unus by covering his forcefield with lava.
Magneto is afraid of caring for his students, knowing, if something were to happen, what remains of his heart would shatter, and perhaps his mind with it.
The Blob grabs both Cypher and Warlock and orders Magma away from Unus, but Karma intervenes and possessed his mind.
They are all in for a horrible shock, though, as suddenly the giant figure of the Beyonder appears. He isn’t part of the Brotherhood, Cypher weakly protests. The Beyonder booms that the Brotherhood were merely their first test, while he is death himself!
Magneto chides himself for his dark thoughts, then sees that all their courage and conviction is gone in the face of the other-dimensional being who once wiped them from existence.
An armed, hooded being appears next to him, announcing that the Beyonder may be death, but they are beyond even that. They are the end of all things… Oblivion! As the mysterious being reaches for the Beyonder, he dissipates, leaving behind the frightened illusionist Mastermind.
The kids wonder what happened and Mirage grins that she figured the only way of taking out a cosmic entity is conjuring an even bigger one and, according to what Iceman once told her, Oblivion is as bad as they come. Rahne congratulates her and the New Mutants are pleased with their victory. Sunspot even wonders why those losers gave the original X-Men such trouble.
Time for Magneto to angrily intervene. He reminds Sunspot that by “losers” he is referring to their brothers and sisters! Fellow mutants… tortured souls who have been constantly hounded for being different! Something he thinks they would all relate to.
Sam points out that they beat them. Isn’t that what he wanted? Magneto explains the true victor is the one who emerges from battle with his compassion intact! Who sees his opponents as more than distorted caricatures.
Sunspot angrily protests their foes are the ones filled with hate. They call themselves “evil mutants.” In response Magneto quotes Dostoyevsky: “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer: nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” And while they are pondering that bit of wisdom - watch their back!
They are surprised and utterly overwhelmed by an attack of the Mastermold whom the Danger Room has conjured up.
End program, Magneto orders. The kids angrily protest that wasn’t fair. Coldly. he retorts that life isn’t remotely fair and their worst nightmares tend to manifest when they least expect them.
As the mutants leave to get changed, Sunspot loudly grumbles about Magneto and him daring to lecture them about compassion, after all the things he has done. All the suffering he has caused.
Later, walking the hallways of the school, Magneto muses he has certainly caused his share of suffering. And yet, somehow, he has ended up here at this school, taking up the work of the man who was both his worst enemy and his most treasured friend. Who haunts him like a ghost… his voice daring Magneto to transcend himself… transcend his past… and become what? A hero? He scoffs, the term is meaningless as is the term “villain.” All of them are just flawed humans facing complex circumstances.
He sees Rahne in the living room, engrossed in a journal and asks what she is doing awake. Rahne explains that she couldn’t sleep. Sometimes her mind starts buzzing away. It seems their minds work in similar ways, he remarks. He can’t sleep either. He asks what she is reading. Rahne replies, she was thinking about what he said earlier. About understanding the evildoer. When he presses who the evildoer is, she reacts nervously, because she is reading a journal of Charles Xavier, the chapter about the X-Men’s first battle against him.
A biased history of the evolution of mutantkind, he muses. He suggests she take the Professor’s words with more than a grain of salt. Rahne asks him to help her understand then. How are the compassionate teacher she has come to admire and respect and the terrorist who attacked Cape Citadel and showed no regard for human life the same person? Angrily, he slams the book down and snaps that some questions are best left unasked. With a forceful “good night” he turns away.
Rahne pleads that she is just trying to understand. She knows he struggled… suffered, but… She knows nothing! he shouts and metal levitates around him. Rahne looks frightened and he realizes he almost lost control of his powers. He apologizes but she could read a thousand books and still have no idea. She asks him to tell her. He urges her to let the past stay dead. It’s better for all of them. He orders her to go to bed, and tomorrow they will get the holiday party they’ve been begging him for. She wishes him a good night and leaves.
Left alone, he figures it’s a sweet sentiment but he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since— Calling himself Erik, he urges himself to look forward, not back. He has to keep the past at bay or it will come swarming from the shadows and overwhelm him.
As if on cue, his ghosts appear. His parents, and sister, his wife Magda and their daughter Anya. And always the boy. What do they want now? Magneto addresses them. Don’t just stand there, gaping with accusing eyes. They think he should have told her? The world is as cruel now as it was then, in some ways worse! Rahne and the other children have enough pain themselves. They don’t need to be burdened with his.
The ghosts disappear. He locks the memories away again, but they always come back. Perhaps that is why he programmed the original Brotherhood into the Danger Room this morning. Perhaps he is asking the same fundamental question Rahne is: Who is Magneto?
There are times even he is not sure. And when he thinks back to that day at Cape Citadel when he first stepped onto the world stage, he is both proud and terribly ashamed.
Flashback:
Most people see him as a one-dimensional villain; a raging out-of-control lunatic who desires nothing less than the subjugation of the human race. But what they didn’t understand, what he couldn’t let them understand, was that Magneto was a mask! A role he was playing for the benefit of mutantkind… and perhaps for the entire world. The humans feared mutants. Hated them, but they needed a singular object for their hate… and he provided it. The melodramatic name, the helmet and cape, the anger and arrogance, the merciless threat to everything they held dear… Magneto became the total manifestation of humanity’s mutant nightmares. And that, of course, allowed the X-Men to step forward and save the world. He knew Charles would send his students to confront him and save the people who despised them. Humans would see there are good mutants, and over time the image of mutants would change…
Magneto played the game, fighting the X-Men in the hope it would save them. Maybe a naïve plan. Maybe humanity’s hatred for mutants would calcify… become permanently embedded in their DNA. And if that was the case, he would have to immerse himself in the role. Become him and grind humanity beneath his bootheels. But the ghosts of his past were always there to restrain him, accuse him. And the boy he once was, was always their spokesman. Not dressed in the finery of his early years but in the wretched uniform of Auschwitz. The boy begged him to stop, stating these are Nazi methods. Continue on this path and there would be no difference between them!
While Magneto fought within himself, Cyclops freed Angel from the magnetic junk Magneto had covered his wings with.
Magneto continued his attack on the X-Men while wondering why he couldn’t bury Max Eisenhardt completely. He ignited the rocket fuel but Iceman protected the X-Men with an iceshield.
Secretly aware of their survival and ignoring his ghosts, Magento ranted about fulfilling his master plan.
He feigned surprise, when Cyclops’ optic blast freed the others and the X-Men attacked. He pretended to flee and let the X-Men enjoy their triumph he had engineered so carefully. He felt pride in them and hope for the future they embodied. Perhaps his plan would work and humanity would embrace these new heroes, and through them see mutantkind with eyes of compassion. And if not… well, he did have the power to destroy them all…
Present:
He wonders if he would have done it. Razed the Earth, so that his people could life free. What’s the old saying: “we are who we pretend to be.” And God knows, he pretended all too well. There are times he believes that in those early days his magnetic powers warped his mind, distorted his thinking, blurring the line between the mask and the man. But perhaps that theory is too easy. Perhaps the truth is far more complex and unforgiving.
The morning comes and he goes shopping. For weeks, the students had asked for a holiday party and he just intensified their training. But now, like Scrooge reborn on Christmas morning, he finds himself delighting in the prospect of a small party. A time for the children to be children and for their teacher to simply be a friend.
He returns to the mansion looking forward to the celebration, however he finds the kitchen a mess. He runs to the den to find all the youngsters beaten and barely if at all conscious. Warlock lies pulled along the staircase and barely conscious. The alien warns him of an intruder, when an energy blast hits Magneto. Furious, he demands, how dare that person invade his home and attack his students. The other person retorts, they are Xavier’s students… and his home is with her!
Magneto warns, do they understand who he is and what he is capable of. She understands completely, the other person replies. Unfortunately, he has forgotten!
She steps into the light - a young woman with glowing eyes wearing a red-orange version of his old outfit.
She has dreamed of this moment for years, ever since they first met. He can’t recall her and she replies, she was beneath his notice then, but this encounter is one he will never forget!
She blasts him with full power. For him, it’s like a door has been thrown open in his mind and, behind that door, are ugliness, rage and hatred he can’t control… a tsunami of dark emotions welling up. The woman laughs. Give it to her! she orders, a lifetime of anger that he has worked so hard to suppress. Give it to her!
And once she has absorbed every drop, she slams it back at him, through the wall to the outside, where he lies unconscious ad beaten. The woman grabs him and flies away with him, announcing that this is a great gift.
In the meantime, the battered New Mutants awake and try to figure out what happened. They feel like they were being attacked from the inside out. Warlock pipes up, stating that Magneto saved him from a female intruder and shows them the scene. He figures the intruder beat Magneto and absconded with his body, leaving the horrified youngsters to wonder if Magneto is dead. Xuan announces that they need to get him back, but, as Doug points out, he could be anywhere in the world.
In a mysterious fortress, Magneto awakes to being addressed by a litany of names: Max Eisenhardt, Erik Lehnsherr, Magnus, Michael Xavier. The names he has hidden behind, the roles he has played! It is no wonder he is confused about his identity. His purpose! But there is only one name that reflects the fiery reality of who he truly is.
He awakes chained to a chair, while the kidnapper and several other young women kneel before him: Irae - Queen of Wrath - and the Sisterhood of Evil Mutants welcome him home, Lord Magneto! she announces and the Sisterhood chant: Hail Magneto!
