The Rictor Effect - The Platform

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Magneto gives Julio a choice. Live on his feet or die on his knees.



The twin-hulled speedboat carved its way over the waves, gliding expertly over swells and through troughs as the spray rushed over the bow. Behind the wheel, Magneto steered almost instinctively, one hand on the throttle urging the boat ever faster. His research had indicated a demolished oil platform that had been sunk in the 1980s, citing environmental concerns. For his purposes, it would be perfect.

The massive lump of rusted steel girders and paneling below the surface called out to him, the electromagnetic signature like a bonfire to his senses. He circled the boat, giving a small nod to Julio, who had remained silent next to him the entire time, even after witnessing Magneto pin the boat's owner to the marina wall with the ship's anchor.

"This will do nicely," he announced, letting up on the throttle and allowing the speedboat to coast to a standstill.

Julio looked up. They were out in the middle of nowhere. "Why have we stopped?" he asked. He was answered by a dull roar. Peering over the edge of the boat, he saw the water had turned a brown color. Or rather, something underneath them had turned the water brown. Something that was coming up fast. He tumbled away from the edge of the boat as whatever was underneath them hit the boat with a scraping metallic clunk.

The boat lifted from the water, tilting precariously as a support tower from the suddenly-rising oil platform struck the hull. Almost casually, Magneto placed a hand on Julio's elbow, stepping away from the capsizing speedboat and onto a bridge of rusted girders that was assembling itself from the wreckage.

"This is where we shall make our stand," Magneto explained. "The vantage point from which you will make the decisive strike in our battle with homo sapiens. You must look inside yourself, Julio. Unleash your birthright. Become who you were born to be!"

The platform swayed, flakes of rust cracking and spilling off into the sea as the metal supports reformed, stabbing deep into the ocean floor to support the thousand-ton structure. Magneto smiled, raising a hand towards the San Diego skyline.

"Call upon the strength within you," he ordered, "and visit our wrath upon them."

What strength? Julio had no idea how he could do...what he could do. He looked at the old man. "I can't do anything," he said, "I don't know how." He turned back to the San Diego skyline, a smudgy brown blot on the horizon. "I am not visiting my...wrath on anyone."

"Your hesitation may seem to some as mercy," Magneto said disapprovingly, "but I assure you, they will not hesitate when they come for you. Because of who you are, what you are! They will come for you, for every last one of us, and they will make every effort to wipe us from the face of the globe! I will not have this, I will not permit it!"

He gestured emphatically at the skyline in the distance. "That is the world of the humans, the world of the past! It must be razed to the ground, and a new world built from the rubble. Our world, Julio. A homeland for our people. You have within yourself the power to cut away this cancer, this blight on civilization and begin the fight for our very survival! Reach within yourself!" Magneto extended a hand, gripping Julio's shoulder roughly. "Seek your power and strike!"

"And I told you, I don't know how," he said, his temper starting to rise. Julio jerked away from Magneto. This man was clearly insane, and mutant or not, Julio was not going to do anything to a city of people. Julio grimaced and rubbed his forehead. The air felt strange here, and his ears were ringing.

"You know," Magneto insisted roughly. "Would you insist your heart does not know how to beat, that your lungs do not know how to breathe?" Gripping Julio roughly by the chin, he forced the boy's face up, looking into his own. "Embrace your gift, or stand by and be destroyed. I have seen too many of our people cast aside because of their own timidity, and I will see no more! You cannot be strong while you are filled with hesitation! With fear! With grief for what you have lost!"

Grief for what he had lost? "Murderer." Julio hissed. He pushed the older man away roughly. "What are you going to do now? You can't make me do anything. No one left for you to kill out here!" He gestured to the deserted platform. He was panting heavily and sweating like he had just run a marathon. What's going on? I feel so strange.

Yanking Julio back to him, Magneto backhanded the boy across the jaw, a look of fury crossing his features. "You dare call me murderer? You dare? They are the murderers! They are the ones responsible for the atrocities of history! You would call me a murderer while you ignore the very foundations of their society, rooted in the stink and filth of murder and oppression!"

He gripped Julio by the shirt, face contorted in rage. "You dare speak to me of murder, with your human love dead and weighing on your heart. What I have given you is not murder, Julio, but the chance for freedom! For evolution! Become more than you have been, more than they would have you pretend to be! You weep for her, like a child weeps for a lost pet! It is now time to set aside these childish things and do what must be done!" Magneto bellowed, pushing Julio roughly into a steel bulkhead.

Julio stumbled and banged his head against the bulkhead. He sat there dazed for moment, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His grief and rage building quietly inside of him, like his headaches used to. Then something jarred lose. He looked up, eyes blazing. The platform rumbled and shook ominously. "No," he said evenly.

Magneto actually took a step back as if struck, the boy's answer taking him completely by surprise. "No?" he repeated. "You would choose their world, a world that fears and hates you, over a future where you would be as a god walking among men? This is your decision?"

Answering himself with a sigh and a lowering of his head, Magneto exhaled loudly. "So it is, then. You are a brave young man, Julio. That shall be your epitaph."

Every spare piece of metal on the platform began to shake as Magneto lifted his hand towards the boy.

Julio screamed suddenly, making Magneto jump back in surprise. He grabbed his head. Whatever he had set lose began to build inside him rapidly. He doubled over in pain.

Somewhere he sensed two opposing forces pressing on each other, the pressure rising along the fissure. Dimly, Julio remembered his science classes, specifically the ones on geology. He knew instinctively what he was sensing was a fault. A long-dormant one, where the pressure had been building for centuries as the tectonic plates shifted. This fault was going to rupture soon.

And it was going to use Julio to do it.

Julio shook as he tried to force the pressure away, back to where it belonged. The amount of power this had, it would level the city. Finally he understood what Magneto wanted him to do. And he was helpless to stop it.

Like a sudden flare, Magneto saw the boy's electromagnetic field change, his brain aflame with new activity. Despite his initial anger, he smiled in awe. For a moment, he remembered working alongside Charles, watching a new mutant use their power for the first time. Back then, things were so simple.

Today, however, it was war.

"Release it, Julio," Magneto ordered, "This is your power - control it or it shall control you! This is your moment of truth - you must choose whether you will join me and live on your feet, or lay your sympathies with the humans and die on your knees. For no matter what you decide..." he said, feeling the beginnings of the tectonic rumbling through the oil platform's deep supports, "...your power has already spoken."

I don't want to do this. I can't. I won't. Julio fought with his power, demanding that it obey him. But it was too new, and his will was not strong enough. Like it or not, he was going to be Magneto's instrument, and the result would be an absolute massacre. As another tremor ripped through him, he began to pray, "Padre nuestro, que estas en el cielo...."

Quirking one eyebrow at Julio's pleading prayer, Magneto turned to look at the San Diego skyline in the distance, a city that would soon be dust.

"Amen," he said softly.