“Look,” says Mystique, waving her spoon at him after she’s licked it clean, “I might be knocked up, but I’m still Head of Intelligence, which means you have to listen to me when I tell you that the Jets are starting a rumble.”
Magneto gives her a blank look. “What?”
“Not a fan of musical theatre? My mistake. I suppose it would be hard to fit around all your other hobbies.” She scoops up another spoonful of yogurt and eats it with every sign of enjoyment, her feet propped up on the edge of his desk, a liberty nobody else would be allowed to or indeed dare to take. She has the pot balanced on the upper curve of her ever-expanding belly, which seems to swell day by day. “So up until now apart from the occasional assassination the humans have been pretty quiet on the resistance front, which considering their strength of numbers is a very good thing. But they’re getting restless. I think, and all of our operatives think, there’s something bigger coming, that they’re building up to something. We need to decide if we’re going to be ready to mix or not, and how, if it comes to a rumble.”
He sits back in his own chair and steeples his fingers under his chin, forefingers resting in the hollow just under his lower lip, thinking about the protests, about all the little bits and pieces of information Mystique and others bring him every week. Fitting them together is like having the pieces of a hundred jigsaw puzzles thrown in together and trying to fit them together - a cloud here, a corner there. The office outside is very noisy right now - all the better to mask their conversation from anyone who might be trying to listen in, were they clever enough to get past Rogue. “Any rumours as to what this something might be?”
“Not a whisper.” She looks as frustrated as he feels, dropping her spoon into the yogurt and only just avoiding splattering her dress. “We’ve tried getting some of our telepaths close, but we don’t have anyone strong enough to read anyone senior enough from far enough away, and they’re getting pretty good at weeding out mutants from the new recruits. It’s hard to ignore someone thinking very loudly about killing you messily right then and there. I’ve asked Emma for a little of her time, but she has so little to spare, and when we don’t know who we’re looking for…” She tails off, scales flickering in irritation, though she doesn’t noticeably change. “All we have is: big. Unpleasant to be on the receiving end thereof.”
“So no what. How about where? Or when? I’d settle for who.”
Mystique shrugs. “Somewhere in the universe. Some time in the future, which at least rules out the past. Someone who doesn’t like us very much.”
It’s enough to pull a sigh out of him, and Magneto gets up from his seat to pace a little, slowly, just between the desk and the window, looking out at the street below and wondering if this mysterious thing might be happening now, somewhere within a few blocks of where he stands. Mystique watches him move with apologetic eyes, and he knows she is just as annoyed as he is that they have no more information than this, but it doesn’t quite stop him from saying, “So what you’re telling me is that, essentially, we have a sense of amorphous dread and nothing more.”
“Pretty much.”
“If only we had five more of you,” he mutters, as he turns back once again towards the window, arms folded behind his back. “We need to get in there up to our elbows and dig around if we want to find anything, and Mastermind just isn’t as good at subterfuge as you are, more’s the pity. Verdammt!”
FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 133/?
“Look,” says Mystique, waving her spoon at him after she’s licked it clean, “I might be knocked up, but I’m still Head of Intelligence, which means you have to listen to me when I tell you that the Jets are starting a rumble.”
Magneto gives her a blank look. “What?”
“Not a fan of musical theatre? My mistake. I suppose it would be hard to fit around all your other hobbies.” She scoops up another spoonful of yogurt and eats it with every sign of enjoyment, her feet propped up on the edge of his desk, a liberty nobody else would be allowed to or indeed dare to take. She has the pot balanced on the upper curve of her ever-expanding belly, which seems to swell day by day. “So up until now apart from the occasional assassination the humans have been pretty quiet on the resistance front, which considering their strength of numbers is a very good thing. But they’re getting restless. I think, and all of our operatives think, there’s something bigger coming, that they’re building up to something. We need to decide if we’re going to be ready to mix or not, and how, if it comes to a rumble.”
He sits back in his own chair and steeples his fingers under his chin, forefingers resting in the hollow just under his lower lip, thinking about the protests, about all the little bits and pieces of information Mystique and others bring him every week. Fitting them together is like having the pieces of a hundred jigsaw puzzles thrown in together and trying to fit them together - a cloud here, a corner there. The office outside is very noisy right now - all the better to mask their conversation from anyone who might be trying to listen in, were they clever enough to get past Rogue. “Any rumours as to what this something might be?”
“Not a whisper.” She looks as frustrated as he feels, dropping her spoon into the yogurt and only just avoiding splattering her dress. “We’ve tried getting some of our telepaths close, but we don’t have anyone strong enough to read anyone senior enough from far enough away, and they’re getting pretty good at weeding out mutants from the new recruits. It’s hard to ignore someone thinking very loudly about killing you messily right then and there. I’ve asked Emma for a little of her time, but she has so little to spare, and when we don’t know who we’re looking for…” She tails off, scales flickering in irritation, though she doesn’t noticeably change. “All we have is: big. Unpleasant to be on the receiving end thereof.”
“So no what. How about where? Or when? I’d settle for who.”
Mystique shrugs. “Somewhere in the universe. Some time in the future, which at least rules out the past. Someone who doesn’t like us very much.”
It’s enough to pull a sigh out of him, and Magneto gets up from his seat to pace a little, slowly, just between the desk and the window, looking out at the street below and wondering if this mysterious thing might be happening now, somewhere within a few blocks of where he stands. Mystique watches him move with apologetic eyes, and he knows she is just as annoyed as he is that they have no more information than this, but it doesn’t quite stop him from saying, “So what you’re telling me is that, essentially, we have a sense of amorphous dread and nothing more.”
“Pretty much.”
“If only we had five more of you,” he mutters, as he turns back once again towards the window, arms folded behind his back. “We need to get in there up to our elbows and dig around if we want to find anything, and Mastermind just isn’t as good at subterfuge as you are, more’s the pity. Verdammt!”
She smiles. “You couldn’t handle six of me.”