Cutscene: Proaíresis

July 02, 2018:

Pietro deliberates the Brotherhood response to the Hell's Kitchen bombings.

Hell's Kitchen, NYC

It's less on fire.

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions: Wanda Maximoff, Magneto

Mood Music: [*\# None.]


Fade In…

They went home, covered in ashes.

(Not that 'home' is anything but a label — a single syllable used to tag the latest crash space to which they retreat, when things get bad. They call things 'home' for convenience, but the truth is that home burned fifteen years ago. They have found no new one since, except in each other.)

They went back to their loft, covered in ashes. Wanda was exhausted, and Pietro barely got her out of her stained street clothes before she passed out in bed. Bestowing a miracle is, after all, hard work. Such things demand their toll.

Pietro was left holding her shawl, for once at a loss to do anything but stand still and silently fold it up.

Not long after, the media coverage starts to roll in. Pietro watches silently as eight thousand lives are repeatedly laid at his feet. Channel after channel, thread after thread… every new talking head repeats the same accusation.

The mutant terrorist group known as the Brotherhood is currently the primary suspect for this heinous act, though they have neither claimed nor disavowed as of yet…

Pietro eventually switches off the news.

A response is expected. Months ago, he was so sure of what it would be. But now…

What would his father's Brotherhood have done? Pietro knows the answer even before the question fully finishes forming in his mind. He knows what Magneto would have done… the choice he would have made. He knows the opportunity here, that his father would have seen and seized. He can even form the words himself, hear them take shape in his mind… as if his father's blood was speaking in his veins.

Eight thousand of your lives, against countless thousands of ours. A promise of your obsolescence as a race, against your vow to eradicate ours, he mouths to himself. A mere taste. A mere preview of what more will be to come, if your violence and oppression against mutantkind continues.

See what it is we can do to you, if we so wish!

Pietro stops himself. He looks across the room to where Wanda sleeps, and then past her out the loft's one rickety window. Smoke still fills the darkening sky.

He remembers putting out the fires, and the many voices lifted in gratitude to him after. He remembers that mother's awed eyes when she looked up at Wanda, and pulled her resurrected child close. He remembers the children they saw: running through the streets, jumping out of burning buildings, faces streaked in soot and tears.

Pietro starts a disavowal.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License