Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2011-07-31 07:20 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2011-07-31 07:20 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Magnet Rise (X-Men: First Class/Pokémon)
I'm sure nobody saw this one coming.
Title: Magnet Rise
Fandom: X-Men: First Class/Pokémon
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5,600
Summary: In a world of Pokémon, X-Men: First Class would have been a very different film, or at least a film with more Pokémon in it.
Notes: With thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
th_esaurus for inspiration, encouragement and reassurance, and with apologies to the world.
Move the coin, he says.
There was a Steelix guarding that gate, he says, and you threw it aside as if it were nothing. What’s a little coin compared to that?
Move the coin, he says.
Move the coin.
-
He hears screaming in the middle of the night, and sits bolt-upright in his bed before he realises it’s coming from someone’s mind. The maid and her Miltank are asleep, he knows in an instant, and his mother still isn’t home. This is someone else. Someone is here who shouldn’t be, and her mind is screaming.
The screaming is already beginning to fade by the time he’s out of bed and pushing his feet into his slippers, but the alien mind remains. He walks quietly down the stairs, takes the front door key off its hook and slips outside, still in his pyjamas. It’s a warm night, and the air is clear, and a stranger’s hunted thoughts are seeping into his skull from somewhere to his right, setting him on edge.
There’s a little blonde girl doubled over in the recess under his bedroom window, panting, exhausted. She straightens up the moment she sees him, her mind a mess of fears.
“Trainers were chasing you?” he asks. Her thoughts are rushed, overlapping; it’s difficult to make out anything specific. If he wants to know exactly what happened, he’s going to have to ask. “Why?”
She tries to take a step back, but her heel hits the brick of the wall behind her. “How do you know that?” Her eyes dart to his hands and then to his belt. No Pokéballs, he hears her think with relief, although she remains wary, and her instincts are hissing cornered cornered cornered so insistently that he’s beginning to feel cornered himself.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “If you need to hide, you can hide in my house. But I need to know what you’re running from first.”
She hesitates. “You’d really help me?”
“Tell me why you need help.”
The girl goes very still for a moment, and then she begins to change.
Her skin becomes blue. Her eyes become yellow. Scales ripple out from her shoulders.
He breathes out slowly, looking at her standing in front of him, her arms folded across her flat chest, looking tense and awkward and ready to run. What is she? Is she like him: a person, but different, somehow? Is she...
“Are you gonna try and catch me?” she asks.
She doesn’t look human, and she changes shape like a Ditto, but the inside of her mind is a lot more complicated than any Pokémon he’s ever met, and she can speak. “Are you a Pokémon?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m not going to catch you if you don’t want to be caught,” he says. He holds out a hand. “Charles Xavier.”
It’s not until years later that he realises he did sort of catch her, after all.
-
The heels of Raven’s shoes click-click like Ponyta hooves on the pavement. She’s striding ahead of him, angry, although he doesn’t know why; surely he’s the party more entitled to anger here.
“You are risking everything,” he says. “You can’t walk around outside looking like... you, Raven; you can’t. What if someone sees you? They’ll think we’re some new species of Pokémon, and we will spend the rest of our lives being hunted or imprisoned.”
“There was no one around,” she says. “I just wanted—”
“That’s not the point, Raven; someone could have come along. The stakes are far too high to risk it.”
Raven doesn’t respond for a moment, walking ahead in tense silence.
“I swear,” she says at last, “sometimes it’s like you really do want to stick me in a Pokéball and only let me out when it’s convenient.”
“In many ways,” Charles says, tightly, “it would make our lives a lot simpler.”
-
Raven barely says a word to him for some hours after that, but she seems to have forgiven him by the evening. For his part, Charles has managed to set aside his fretting about what would have happened had she been seen and simply be glad that nobody did see her. If someone had discovered them, he reminds himself, he wouldn’t have been entirely devoid of options; he has his powers, after all, and previous minor slipups have made him quite adept at modifying memories. Still, it seems he needs to keep Raven on a shorter lead.
“I’m sleepy,” Raven announces, throwing herself onto the sofa and resting her head on his chest. “Will you read to me?”
She knows very well that he’s working on his thesis, as he explains in his most put-upon voice. At least she’s speaking to him again, though, so he doesn’t protest when she demands that he read it to her anyway.
“Darwin’s theory of Pokémon evolution is well known,” Charles reads aloud, as Raven tucks herself under his arm. “Centuries ago, it was widely believed that Pokémon, upon evolution, ascended to a higher plane of existence and were replaced by an entirely new individual. Charles Darwin proved through genetic and behavioural testing that an evolved Pokémon was the same Pokémon it had been prior to evolution; it had only changed its form.
“Less discussed is Darwin’s theory of human evolution. Darwin believed that, like those of Pokémon, the attributes of humans could change, but that this was a much slower process...”
Raven shifts against him, and Charles promised not to read her thoughts but it’s difficult not to sense the sleep-quietening of her mind, even if he isn’t looking directly at it. He falls silent, rubbing his thumb absently along her hairline.
-
So much for keeping a low profile, he supposes. This is something big; the existence of people like them isn’t going to stay underground for long, and Charles and Raven need to be on the front line if they’re to show that not all of them want to rush this country into a suicidal war with Russia. There are more mutants out there, and they’re – well, they may well start a nuclear apocalypse if they aren’t stopped, but this is still extremely exciting.
And then there’s the other mutant. The one in the water, the one they weren’t expecting.
Charles watches in astonishment as thick metal chains smash through the sides of the ship; he’s never seen a display of power like this before, not from a human. He brushes the stranger’s thoughts, and all he can feel is rage.
“Is that a person doing that?” Moira asks from beside him, incredulous, but as she speaks Charles finds himself distracted. Something strange is happening, the minds in the ruined ship sinking downwar— it’s a submarine.
It’s a submarine, and as Charles watches and as he feels with his mind the mutant who destroyed the ship, the magnetic one, locks onto it and is dragged under the water.
Moira’s Jolteon gives two short warning barks as Charles wraps himself in the stranger’s – Erik’s – mind and realises he isn’t going to let go. Erik has killed many people to get here, but he’s one of theirs and his memories hurt to touch and Charles isn’t going to watch him drown.
“Does anyone have a Water type?” Charles asks sharply, already struggling out of his jacket and shoes, and then, before anyone can answer, “Never mind,” and he leaps.
-
Erik must be mad to stay here. This is his fight with Shaw, and here he is, indulging this near-stranger’s pet project. But these are others of his kind, and that means something. And Charles is a man who saw into Erik’s past without recoiling in horror, and that means something as well.
The second night in the facility, they play a game of chess together. Charles’ Ivysaur gambols bizarrely around the room; Erik has met a few Ivysaur before, but he’s never seen one behave like this.
“Tomorrow the search for mutants begins,” Charles says, moving a piece.
“The hunt, you could say.”
Charles frowns slightly. “I can understand you might have doubts, but we’re going to help these people. Most of them won’t have any idea others like them exist. We’re going to bring them into an environment where they don’t have to hide. You won’t regret staying, I promise you that.”
Interesting that, even in an environment where they don’t have to hide, Raven constantly wears someone else’s skin. Erik doesn’t mention that. It’s there in his mind if Charles cares to listen.
Erik considers the board, and jerks back a little when Charles asks How long has it been? in his head. There’s nobody else there, so he can’t be asking telepathically for the sake of privacy; perhaps it’s just that he can’t find how to ask in words. An image of his mother, and the sense of a question: how long?
“Eighteen years,” Erik answers aloud.
Charles is silent for a moment before responding. “A long time to wait for revenge.”
“I was preparing myself.”
“In every way but the obvious,” Charles says. Erik knew this question would come sooner or later. “Why don’t you have a Pokémon?”
“I don’t need a Pokémon,” Erik says. “Humans enslave Pokémon because the Pokémon have powers they lack. My mutation is all I need.”
“Well, there are other reasons,” Charles says, with a fond glance at his Ivysaur. “Companionship, for one.”
“Even if you keep a Pokémon solely as a pet, you become complacent,” Erik says. “You know that it could protect you. Humans have become over-reliant on Pokémon. As mutants, we should rely on ourselves.”
Charles looks up at him. “Did Shaw tell you that?”
Erik is beginning to recognise the rustle of Charles in the back of his mind. “Why ask if you already know the answer?”
“You shouldn’t listen to him. He did a terrible thing to you.”
“Does that mean none of his ideas can be correct?”
“Erik,” Charles says, leaning forward, “you are so much better than Shaw. You can’t let him tell you what to think.”
“And should I let you decide instead?”
Charles hesitates for a moment. “No,” he says. “No, of course not.”
-
“Why do you have an Ivysaur?” Erik asks some time later, into the silence of Charles’ concentration.
Charles glances up from the chessboard. “Mmm?”
“You don’t strike me as a fighting man,” Erik says. “But you have an Ivysaur. Not a Bulbasaur. Did you evolve it yourself?”
Charles looks at him for a long while, and then he sits back, folding his hands in his lap. “Well,” he says, “not exactly.”
The Ivysaur pauses in its running around. It gazes evenly at Erik for a moment, and then it half-turns to look at Charles.
“Yes,” Charles says. He’s still looking at Erik, but Erik doesn’t feel that he’s the one being addressed. “I think we can take that risk.”
The Ivysaur sits back on its haunches and glows suddenly white. Before Erik’s eyes it begins to change shape, and for an absurd moment he thinks that Raven is masquerading as Charles’ Pokémon before he remembers that Raven’s transformation doesn’t look like this. Besides, the Ivysaur seems to be shrinking.
Transform. It’s a Ditto, of course, Erik thinks, and then the glow fades.
It is not a Ditto. It is a Pokémon that Erik has never seen before, in fact, but he knows instantly what it is from stories, sculpture, ancient drawings.
It should be extinct.
“I want us to feel we can trust each other, Erik,” Charles says. “I’m allowing you to see my friend here as a symbol of that trust. If news of her existence got out into the world, you can imagine that people would come hunting.”
“Mew,” his Pokémon says, leaping into the air. She hovers for a moment before settling lightly on Charles’ shoulder.
“How did you come by her?” Erik asks, staring at the Mew’s large feet, at her long tail, at every impossible inch of her.
“I think she came by me,” Charles says. “Raven may have been the first midnight visitor I had, but she wasn’t the last.”
“So you added this Mew to your collection of strays,” Erik says, smiling very slightly. “And now you’re trying to collect me.”
Charles laughs. “I don’t collect strays. Three is hardly a collection.”
“And what are you planning to do with Cerebro?”
Charles clears his throat and becomes very interested in the position of Erik’s queen.
-
The first mutant Charles manages to locate with Cerebro – it’s a tricky process, wading through the flood of normal humanity and Pokémon ability in search of something that’s not quite either, but he imagines he’ll improve with practice – is in a city not far away, easily accessible by train. As he and his partner step out of the carriage, a stray Magnemite swoops across from the far side of the tracks and pauses over Erik’s head, looking curiously down at him. Erik ignores it and starts walking.
“I think they like you,” Charles observes, as a second floats over to join them on the street. “Not surprising, really.”
Erik keeps his eyes fixed grimly ahead. “This is only the beginning.”
-
No fewer than nine Magnemite hover around them. People are beginning to stare. Mew is not helping matters by pretending to be one of them, presumably for her own amusement.
“Do you have to put up with this wherever you go?” Charles asks, looking around in mild unease.
“It’s worse in the cities.”
Charles places two fingers to his temple. Go, he thinks, and the Magnemite begin to drift away. “I’m surprised you haven’t caught one of your own. They’re obviously clamouring to be owned by you.”
“What use would I have for a Magnemite?” Erik asks. “They aren’t especially powerful. They can’t evolve.”
“That we know of,” Charles points out. “I’ve been studying Eevee, and I’m convinced it has more than five potential evolutions; we just need to find the key. Besides, power isn’t everything.”
“So says the man with a Mew.”
Charles laughs a little. “Well, yes, but when did I last ask her to fight? And Magnemite does have excellent defence.”
Erik takes a moment to respond. “Defence is not my concern.”
-
They’re probably never going to use these code names – well, Yanma is her stage name and Darwin was already Darwin, but Raven can’t see the ones they’re thinking up here getting much use – but it’s fun to come up with them. She leaps on Mystique as quickly as possible, because she really doesn’t want the others suggesting anything Ditto-related.
“Supersonic,” Sean says. “Or Screech. No, definitely Supersonic.”
“What, because you’re confusing?” Alex asks. “How about you, Mankey-feet?”
Sean interlocks his fingers under his chin, grinning wickedly. “We could call him Hankey.”
Hank pales. “Please don’t call me Hankey.”
“What we really need is a cool name for us as a group,” Sean says. “I think we should call ourselves humons. You get it? Hu-mons. Because we’re people, but with the things we can do we’re kind of like Pokémon.”
Raven remembers running down alleyways while thrown Pokéballs clatter against the brick beside her. She remembers back before she found she could change, when every person she encountered reacted by whipping out a Pokédex.
“I prefer ‘mutants’,” she says.
-
“I’ve found each of you a Pokémon with abilities that reflect your own,” Charles says, handing out Pokéballs. “By working closely with your new partners, you should be able to learn more about yourselves.”
There’s a burst of red light from behind him.
“A Zubat?” Sean complains. “Seriously? I hate these freaking things.”
Hank doesn’t seem entirely thrilled with his Mankey, either, although Darwin is happy enough with his Kecleon. Yanma already has a Yanma of her own, of course, so Charles instead gives her a TM for Shadow Ball, the closest analogy to her fireballs he can find. Alex looks slightly dubious when a Raichu emerges from his Pokéball; “It’s not exact, I know,” Charles says to him, quietly, “but I think her Focus Blast will be able to help you.”
Eventually, Charles comes to Raven with the final Pokéball. She takes it warily and stands there for a moment, holding the unopened ball in one hand, looking into Charles’ eyes.
“If this is a Ditto,” she says, “I’m gonna make it turn into a Rhyhorn and stomp on your head.”
Charles just laughs and waits. She rolls her eyes and presses the release button.
There is a brief, confused pause.
“Is that a Ditto?” she asks.
“I’m afraid so,” Charles says, smiling.
“It’s blue.”
“A rare genetic mutation, in fact. The interesting thing is that colour variation is a mutation that occurs with almost the same frequency across every species of Pokémon. I’ve been planning to write an article on it.”
“So you gave me one of your research subjects?” Raven asks, squatting to look at the Ditto. It chirrups inquisitively. “How generous.”
“Come, now,” Charles says; “I may have had access to it already, but that’s still a very remarkable Pokémon you have there. Besides, I thought it would prefer not to be cooped up in a glass box all day.”
“Plus you couldn’t resist giving me a Ditto,” Raven says, standing up again. “I was serious, you know. You’re getting your head stomped on.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Charles says. “If you could wait until this Shaw business is over before you start trying to kill me, though, I’d appreciate it.”
Raven punches him on the arm, and then Sean’s Zubat swoops low over their heads and they both duck.
“Sorry!” Sean calls, his voice touched with something that sounds very much like a snigger.
Charles straightens up when the Zubat has passed, but Raven remains stooped, looking at her Ditto. It looks curiously back at her, then begins to glow. Raven takes a startled step back and laughs when the glow fades to reveal an exact replica of her current form. “Okay, that’s weird.”
“Purely out of curiosity,” Charles says, “now that you know how weird it feels, will you stop transforming into me?”
“We’re both going to transform into you,” Raven says. “You’ll wake up one day to find two of you next to your bed. If you’re going to give me a Ditto, you’re going to face the consequences.”
Mew leaps down from Charles’ shoulder to look at the Raven-Ditto, curious. The Ditto transforms back into its regular form, and then into Mew. Mew, in turn, transforms into the Ditto, and the Ditto starts to giggle so much it can’t hold its disguise.
But thanks, Raven thinks, with a smile. It’s a surprise to suddenly feel her mind; Charles has been blocking out her thoughts for such a long time, ever since he made his promise to her. She must be thinking it deliberately at him. I know you weren’t doing it just to be an asshole.
-
Raven lies back on the couch, drifting, watching Sean’s Zubat flap around the ceiling. It has been flying in circles for the past half-hour.
“Can’t you put it back in its Pokéball?” Yanma asks. “I keep feeling it’s about to Supersonic me into thinking backwards.”
“Oh, c’mon, he needs the exercise,” Sean says, as Raven shifts onto her side to watch the conversation.
“I thought you hated Zubat,” Darwin says from the other side of the room, where he’s been playing pinball with Alex.
“Yeah, but this one is cool,” Sean says. “I’ve named him—” and he gives an ear-splitting screech.
Darwin raises his eyebrows. “How do you spell that?”
And then the bodies start falling.
-
It’s a wake-up slap. Darwin is dead, and Yanma is gone, and these kids need to be able to protect themselves. Just kids, barely more than children, and Charles has thrown them into a war.
He’s not going to lose anyone else. Today, the training starts in earnest. This isn’t a world where they can rely on Pokémon any more. They need to be able to rely on themselves, and on each other. They have to work as a team.
Of course, it’s not only the kids.
-
“Move the satellite dish,” he says.
Move the coin, whisper Erik’s memories, but this is nothing like that. Here, in the grounds of Charles’ absurd mansion, he knows he’s safe. “How?”
“Do you mind if I...?” Charles asks, wiggling his fingers.
It’s the first time he’s asked Erik permission, and somehow that makes Erik realise how intimate this is, allowing Charles to step into his mind. He closes his eyes as Charles very gently, very carefully pulls at his memories, as if handling them too roughly might make them crumble into dust.
Erik starts when something brushes his cheek, but it’s only Charles’ Mew, dropping onto his shoulder. She curls her tail like a scarf around his neck. There’s a great deal of ability within the walls of Charles’ mansion, but it’s still a strange thrill to be so close to something so impossibly powerful and rare.
“Look at that,” Charles says, sounding amused. “There’s a legend that they only approach the pure of heart.”
He’s still sifting through Erik’s memories, and it takes Erik a couple of attempts to speak through the long-forgotten emotions rising in him. “Something must be very wrong with yours, in that case.”
“There’s a lot more to you than you realise, Erik.”
“Perhaps I was wondering why she approached you,” Erik says, with a smirk.
“Oh, charming,” Charles says, laughing, and then his voice suddenly becomes serious. “Are you all right?”
Erik blinks, taken aback by the question, and only then realises that he’s been crying.
“We can stop at any point,” Charles says. “If you’re not comfortable with this, just say so.”
A strange warmth is radiating out from the Mew on Erik’s shoulder: not a physical warmth, but a steadying one. It doesn’t erase the past, or even his memories of it, but it makes the pain easier to bear, somehow.
“I think I’m ready,” Erik says.
He stands there with tears in his eyes and Charles in his head and Charles’ Pokémon on his shoulder, and eventually, startling a distant flock of Spearow up into the sky, the dish begins to move.
-
Her entire self still smarting from what Hank said, Raven seeks out the one person who she thinks might be able to forget about what she looks like underneath: Erik, who wouldn’t change a thing if he looked like her, who thinks she has more important things to focus on than trying to look normal.
But he won’t come near her. It was never difficult before, with others. She can’t seem to work out what he wants.
“I prefer the real Raven,” he says, when she tries becoming older for him.
She ripples back to her usual form. God, she wants someone to touch her.
“I said the real Raven,” he says, and for a moment she genuinely has no idea what else he could mean. She lies there for a moment, staring at him, and then she strips herself of her normal form, her ‘human’ form, and lets her natural self come to the surface.
She half-expects him to recoil – all the things he said just words, after all – but he turns more fully towards her, smiling. “Perfection.”
Raven has never felt so exposed. Nobody but Charles has seen her like this for almost two decades, unclothed and undisguised. “Could you pass me my robe?”
“You don’t have to hide,” he says. He takes a few steps towards her and sits on the side of the bed. Not even Charles has ever looked at her natural form like this: with desire for something other than capturing her, with respect. “Have you ever looked at an Arcanine,” he says, laying his hand along her cheek, “and thought you ought to cover it up?”
Raven goes still. “I’m not a Pokémon.”
She says it without expecting to be taken seriously, and she’s surprised when Erik nods. “Of course not,” he says. “I apologise. You’re something new.”
And he kisses her, and he kisses her again, the cord of the lamp curling around her back to draw her closer, and for once she doesn’t feel like a Pokémon or a pet. She’s Mystique. She’s something new.
-
“This is the day,” Charles breathes, staring out of the window. He turns to look at Raven. “Are you sure you’re going to wear that?”
She gives him the most unimpressed look she can summon up. “By ‘that’, do you mean me?”
“Well, yes.”
“We’re mutants. We’re going to stop other mutants, probably using our mutant powers. I didn’t think we were hiding.”
“Don’t you think it might be a distraction?”
“Do you think I’m worse than the uniforms?”
Charles doesn’t argue after that.
-
The submarine ploughs up the beach, coming to rest in a cloud of sand. The side has been torn open by the impact, and after a moment Magnemite begin to pour out of the gash.
“He must have used them to power his submarine,” Erik says.
Charles almost laughs; even at this dramatic moment, Erik can’t escape the Magnemite. But then they begin floating up towards him, towards the plane, and Hank swears, and it all becomes much less funny.
“The magnetic field’s too strong,” Hank reports. “We’re being pulled off course. If we don’t get rid of those Magnemite—”
Erik raises his hands and the amassed Magnemite are flung away from them, but it’s too late; the plane is already careering towards the beach. Charles stands frozen for a moment as the ground rushes up and the world twists, and then Erik is on him, warm and solid, pinning him with his powers. Charles grips Erik’s wrist and tries to keep breathing.
-
The missiles streak like Pidgeot across the sky. Charles and Erik are fighting, grappling on the sand – fighting by hand, Charles not even using his Pokémon – and Erik throws him off and strides out towards the ocean, his hand held out, and the missiles keep racing towards the ships, towards the doomed men and Pokémon aboard.
Moira is desperately willing Charles to get to his feet again, to stop this, but he’s obviously flagging and, anyway, why does he have to be the one to stop it? There are a lot of people and Pokémon on this beach. Charles is only one man.
They’re all just standing here, watching, like there’s an invisible forcefield around the battle, but maybe it’s time to step in. Maybe Moira – maybe she’s only human, maybe she doesn’t have the incredible powers of everyone standing around her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make a difference. She can change things, here. She can do something.
“Jolteon,” Moira shouts, “Thunder—”
—and Erik twitches his fingers, sends a panel of the submarine’s shattered hull hurtling into her Jolteon’s side, and she’s knocked off-balance just as she attacks and for a moment the world seems to slow down as the lightning streaks out and hits Charles.
-
There’s a moment when so many minds say he’s dead simultaneously that Charles almost believes it, but then he becomes aware of the sand under his shoulders and the pain burning through his abdomen and he’s alive, he’s alive, but it hurts—
A gentle weight settles on his chest, and when he opens his eyes Mew is curled up there, looking at him anxiously. A moment later, Charles feels a strong arm around his back. Erik is holding him.
Erik, his friend who forced a coin through a man’s brain while Charles begged him to stop, his friend who almost killed every man unlucky enough to be on those ships, is holding him. Charles would probably flinch away if he had the strength.
What he does have the strength for is keeping Erik from attacking Moira, because she didn’t do this. Erik has to hear this, even though it pains Charles to tell him. Moira didn’t do this. Erik did.
Erik stares for a moment, and then he lets out a wordless scream of anguish and fury, and the buckles on Charles’ suit jerk upwards so sharply that his entire body arches into the air. Mew leaps up and hovers just above him. The Magnemite from the ship, Charles is barely aware through the agony, are being flung this way and that, giving out high-pitched squeals of distress.
The magnetic grip on Charles’ buckles releases gradually, and he falls back into Erik’s arms, breathing hard through his teeth. The Magnemite are still spinning out of control. One crashes into another and a third is thrown into the collision, and they’re – they’re glowing, they’re fusing, they’re—
They’re evolving. A Pokémon that cannot evolve is evolving before his eyes. The birth of a new species, and Charles would feel privileged to witness it if he weren’t in so much pain.
Erik must see Charles’ surprise on his face, because he looks up at the transformation as well, still holding him.
“Magneton,” it says, when the glow fades.
“Magneton,” Erik echoes, hoarsely.
I did tell you it might be able to evolve, Charles wants to say, but after such a betrayal he can’t bring himself to be lighthearted. Erik needs to understand that this is the end for them.
-
Raven walks across the beach, Charles on one side, Erik on the other, and this wasn’t a choice she ever wanted to have to make. When she thinks about it, though, it’s barely even a choice. Charles has been so much to her, but she can’t stay caged on his belt forever.
She kneels next to Charles. She can’t leave without saying goodbye.
“Raven,” Charles murmurs, and she strokes her fingers through his hair, and for a moment she wonders whether she really has the strength to do this to him.
Charles twists his head to look at her Ditto; it has taken the form of Sean’s Zubat and fluttered across to perch on Erik’s shoulder.
“You should go with him,” he says. “It’s what you want.”
Right now, she feels as if she’s the mind-reader. How little he wants her to go is radiating out from every part of him, and it makes her feel terrible but it isn’t enough. He loves her, and she loves him, but love isn’t enough.
“I think it’s time for me to go to a new trainer,” she says, and then, “I’m sorry.”
He struggles a little, trying to sit up, but he can’t manage it. “You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s why I have to leave.”
And she knows from his lost expression that, even though he can see into her mind, he doesn’t understand her. She can’t stay here.
She kisses him on the forehead, and he presses her hand to his lips for a moment, and then she walks away.
-
Before they disappear, Erik pauses, and then he drags an empty Pokéball from Alex’s belt with a flick of his wrist. It floats in the air for a moment before Erik sends it flying at the new Pokémon, the Magneton.
It’s pure formality, Charles thinks. The Magneton obviously adores him, despite the circumstances of its evolution; there’s no need to catch it, because it will follow him anywhere. Mew stays with Charles of her own free will; she’s never been inside a Pokéball. But perhaps Erik is deliberately catching it so Charles can see; so Charles will know that, now of all times, Erik finally decided to listen to him.
Erik meet Charles’ eyes and holds them, and then he and Raven vanish.
Charles watches them leave, the scene blurred through his tears, and then he allows himself to panic because he can’t feel his legs.
He’s paralysed. He’s paralysed, and a thousand cautionary tales flash through his mind: don’t inhale Stun Spore, don’t wake up a Snorlax, don’t ever get in the way of an Electric attack, because paralysis for humans is not just a matter of a Paralyz Heal.
-
“Gone. Left a bit of a gap in my life, if I’m to be honest. I was rather hoping you could fill it.”
He stands before her, wearing a helmet and cloak in magnificently unmanly colours. What looks like a fusion of three Magnemite hovers beside him. If Emma treads correctly here, she may be moments from freedom. If she treads cleverly, if she doesn’t leap too quickly at the opportunity that presents itself, she may get her Pokémon back.
“Will I have my Cryogonal returned to me?”
“I’m sure something can be arranged.”
Emma casts her eyes across the figures gathered at the door, and then she returns her gaze to him.
“Erik, I believe,” she says.
He smiles.
“I prefer ‘Magneton’.”
Title: Magnet Rise
Fandom: X-Men: First Class/Pokémon
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5,600
Summary: In a world of Pokémon, X-Men: First Class would have been a very different film, or at least a film with more Pokémon in it.
Notes: With thanks to
th_esaurus for inspiration, encouragement and reassurance, and with apologies to the world.Move the coin, he says.
There was a Steelix guarding that gate, he says, and you threw it aside as if it were nothing. What’s a little coin compared to that?
Move the coin, he says.
Move the coin.
He hears screaming in the middle of the night, and sits bolt-upright in his bed before he realises it’s coming from someone’s mind. The maid and her Miltank are asleep, he knows in an instant, and his mother still isn’t home. This is someone else. Someone is here who shouldn’t be, and her mind is screaming.
The screaming is already beginning to fade by the time he’s out of bed and pushing his feet into his slippers, but the alien mind remains. He walks quietly down the stairs, takes the front door key off its hook and slips outside, still in his pyjamas. It’s a warm night, and the air is clear, and a stranger’s hunted thoughts are seeping into his skull from somewhere to his right, setting him on edge.
There’s a little blonde girl doubled over in the recess under his bedroom window, panting, exhausted. She straightens up the moment she sees him, her mind a mess of fears.
“Trainers were chasing you?” he asks. Her thoughts are rushed, overlapping; it’s difficult to make out anything specific. If he wants to know exactly what happened, he’s going to have to ask. “Why?”
She tries to take a step back, but her heel hits the brick of the wall behind her. “How do you know that?” Her eyes dart to his hands and then to his belt. No Pokéballs, he hears her think with relief, although she remains wary, and her instincts are hissing cornered cornered cornered so insistently that he’s beginning to feel cornered himself.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “If you need to hide, you can hide in my house. But I need to know what you’re running from first.”
She hesitates. “You’d really help me?”
“Tell me why you need help.”
The girl goes very still for a moment, and then she begins to change.
Her skin becomes blue. Her eyes become yellow. Scales ripple out from her shoulders.
He breathes out slowly, looking at her standing in front of him, her arms folded across her flat chest, looking tense and awkward and ready to run. What is she? Is she like him: a person, but different, somehow? Is she...
“Are you gonna try and catch me?” she asks.
She doesn’t look human, and she changes shape like a Ditto, but the inside of her mind is a lot more complicated than any Pokémon he’s ever met, and she can speak. “Are you a Pokémon?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m not going to catch you if you don’t want to be caught,” he says. He holds out a hand. “Charles Xavier.”
It’s not until years later that he realises he did sort of catch her, after all.
The heels of Raven’s shoes click-click like Ponyta hooves on the pavement. She’s striding ahead of him, angry, although he doesn’t know why; surely he’s the party more entitled to anger here.
“You are risking everything,” he says. “You can’t walk around outside looking like... you, Raven; you can’t. What if someone sees you? They’ll think we’re some new species of Pokémon, and we will spend the rest of our lives being hunted or imprisoned.”
“There was no one around,” she says. “I just wanted—”
“That’s not the point, Raven; someone could have come along. The stakes are far too high to risk it.”
Raven doesn’t respond for a moment, walking ahead in tense silence.
“I swear,” she says at last, “sometimes it’s like you really do want to stick me in a Pokéball and only let me out when it’s convenient.”
“In many ways,” Charles says, tightly, “it would make our lives a lot simpler.”
Raven barely says a word to him for some hours after that, but she seems to have forgiven him by the evening. For his part, Charles has managed to set aside his fretting about what would have happened had she been seen and simply be glad that nobody did see her. If someone had discovered them, he reminds himself, he wouldn’t have been entirely devoid of options; he has his powers, after all, and previous minor slipups have made him quite adept at modifying memories. Still, it seems he needs to keep Raven on a shorter lead.
“I’m sleepy,” Raven announces, throwing herself onto the sofa and resting her head on his chest. “Will you read to me?”
She knows very well that he’s working on his thesis, as he explains in his most put-upon voice. At least she’s speaking to him again, though, so he doesn’t protest when she demands that he read it to her anyway.
“Darwin’s theory of Pokémon evolution is well known,” Charles reads aloud, as Raven tucks herself under his arm. “Centuries ago, it was widely believed that Pokémon, upon evolution, ascended to a higher plane of existence and were replaced by an entirely new individual. Charles Darwin proved through genetic and behavioural testing that an evolved Pokémon was the same Pokémon it had been prior to evolution; it had only changed its form.
“Less discussed is Darwin’s theory of human evolution. Darwin believed that, like those of Pokémon, the attributes of humans could change, but that this was a much slower process...”
Raven shifts against him, and Charles promised not to read her thoughts but it’s difficult not to sense the sleep-quietening of her mind, even if he isn’t looking directly at it. He falls silent, rubbing his thumb absently along her hairline.
So much for keeping a low profile, he supposes. This is something big; the existence of people like them isn’t going to stay underground for long, and Charles and Raven need to be on the front line if they’re to show that not all of them want to rush this country into a suicidal war with Russia. There are more mutants out there, and they’re – well, they may well start a nuclear apocalypse if they aren’t stopped, but this is still extremely exciting.
And then there’s the other mutant. The one in the water, the one they weren’t expecting.
Charles watches in astonishment as thick metal chains smash through the sides of the ship; he’s never seen a display of power like this before, not from a human. He brushes the stranger’s thoughts, and all he can feel is rage.
“Is that a person doing that?” Moira asks from beside him, incredulous, but as she speaks Charles finds himself distracted. Something strange is happening, the minds in the ruined ship sinking downwar— it’s a submarine.
It’s a submarine, and as Charles watches and as he feels with his mind the mutant who destroyed the ship, the magnetic one, locks onto it and is dragged under the water.
Moira’s Jolteon gives two short warning barks as Charles wraps himself in the stranger’s – Erik’s – mind and realises he isn’t going to let go. Erik has killed many people to get here, but he’s one of theirs and his memories hurt to touch and Charles isn’t going to watch him drown.
“Does anyone have a Water type?” Charles asks sharply, already struggling out of his jacket and shoes, and then, before anyone can answer, “Never mind,” and he leaps.
Erik must be mad to stay here. This is his fight with Shaw, and here he is, indulging this near-stranger’s pet project. But these are others of his kind, and that means something. And Charles is a man who saw into Erik’s past without recoiling in horror, and that means something as well.
The second night in the facility, they play a game of chess together. Charles’ Ivysaur gambols bizarrely around the room; Erik has met a few Ivysaur before, but he’s never seen one behave like this.
“Tomorrow the search for mutants begins,” Charles says, moving a piece.
“The hunt, you could say.”
Charles frowns slightly. “I can understand you might have doubts, but we’re going to help these people. Most of them won’t have any idea others like them exist. We’re going to bring them into an environment where they don’t have to hide. You won’t regret staying, I promise you that.”
Interesting that, even in an environment where they don’t have to hide, Raven constantly wears someone else’s skin. Erik doesn’t mention that. It’s there in his mind if Charles cares to listen.
Erik considers the board, and jerks back a little when Charles asks How long has it been? in his head. There’s nobody else there, so he can’t be asking telepathically for the sake of privacy; perhaps it’s just that he can’t find how to ask in words. An image of his mother, and the sense of a question: how long?
“Eighteen years,” Erik answers aloud.
Charles is silent for a moment before responding. “A long time to wait for revenge.”
“I was preparing myself.”
“In every way but the obvious,” Charles says. Erik knew this question would come sooner or later. “Why don’t you have a Pokémon?”
“I don’t need a Pokémon,” Erik says. “Humans enslave Pokémon because the Pokémon have powers they lack. My mutation is all I need.”
“Well, there are other reasons,” Charles says, with a fond glance at his Ivysaur. “Companionship, for one.”
“Even if you keep a Pokémon solely as a pet, you become complacent,” Erik says. “You know that it could protect you. Humans have become over-reliant on Pokémon. As mutants, we should rely on ourselves.”
Charles looks up at him. “Did Shaw tell you that?”
Erik is beginning to recognise the rustle of Charles in the back of his mind. “Why ask if you already know the answer?”
“You shouldn’t listen to him. He did a terrible thing to you.”
“Does that mean none of his ideas can be correct?”
“Erik,” Charles says, leaning forward, “you are so much better than Shaw. You can’t let him tell you what to think.”
“And should I let you decide instead?”
Charles hesitates for a moment. “No,” he says. “No, of course not.”
“Why do you have an Ivysaur?” Erik asks some time later, into the silence of Charles’ concentration.
Charles glances up from the chessboard. “Mmm?”
“You don’t strike me as a fighting man,” Erik says. “But you have an Ivysaur. Not a Bulbasaur. Did you evolve it yourself?”
Charles looks at him for a long while, and then he sits back, folding his hands in his lap. “Well,” he says, “not exactly.”
The Ivysaur pauses in its running around. It gazes evenly at Erik for a moment, and then it half-turns to look at Charles.
“Yes,” Charles says. He’s still looking at Erik, but Erik doesn’t feel that he’s the one being addressed. “I think we can take that risk.”
The Ivysaur sits back on its haunches and glows suddenly white. Before Erik’s eyes it begins to change shape, and for an absurd moment he thinks that Raven is masquerading as Charles’ Pokémon before he remembers that Raven’s transformation doesn’t look like this. Besides, the Ivysaur seems to be shrinking.
Transform. It’s a Ditto, of course, Erik thinks, and then the glow fades.
It is not a Ditto. It is a Pokémon that Erik has never seen before, in fact, but he knows instantly what it is from stories, sculpture, ancient drawings.
It should be extinct.
“I want us to feel we can trust each other, Erik,” Charles says. “I’m allowing you to see my friend here as a symbol of that trust. If news of her existence got out into the world, you can imagine that people would come hunting.”
“Mew,” his Pokémon says, leaping into the air. She hovers for a moment before settling lightly on Charles’ shoulder.
“How did you come by her?” Erik asks, staring at the Mew’s large feet, at her long tail, at every impossible inch of her.
“I think she came by me,” Charles says. “Raven may have been the first midnight visitor I had, but she wasn’t the last.”
“So you added this Mew to your collection of strays,” Erik says, smiling very slightly. “And now you’re trying to collect me.”
Charles laughs. “I don’t collect strays. Three is hardly a collection.”
“And what are you planning to do with Cerebro?”
Charles clears his throat and becomes very interested in the position of Erik’s queen.
The first mutant Charles manages to locate with Cerebro – it’s a tricky process, wading through the flood of normal humanity and Pokémon ability in search of something that’s not quite either, but he imagines he’ll improve with practice – is in a city not far away, easily accessible by train. As he and his partner step out of the carriage, a stray Magnemite swoops across from the far side of the tracks and pauses over Erik’s head, looking curiously down at him. Erik ignores it and starts walking.
“I think they like you,” Charles observes, as a second floats over to join them on the street. “Not surprising, really.”
Erik keeps his eyes fixed grimly ahead. “This is only the beginning.”
No fewer than nine Magnemite hover around them. People are beginning to stare. Mew is not helping matters by pretending to be one of them, presumably for her own amusement.
“Do you have to put up with this wherever you go?” Charles asks, looking around in mild unease.
“It’s worse in the cities.”
Charles places two fingers to his temple. Go, he thinks, and the Magnemite begin to drift away. “I’m surprised you haven’t caught one of your own. They’re obviously clamouring to be owned by you.”
“What use would I have for a Magnemite?” Erik asks. “They aren’t especially powerful. They can’t evolve.”
“That we know of,” Charles points out. “I’ve been studying Eevee, and I’m convinced it has more than five potential evolutions; we just need to find the key. Besides, power isn’t everything.”
“So says the man with a Mew.”
Charles laughs a little. “Well, yes, but when did I last ask her to fight? And Magnemite does have excellent defence.”
Erik takes a moment to respond. “Defence is not my concern.”
They’re probably never going to use these code names – well, Yanma is her stage name and Darwin was already Darwin, but Raven can’t see the ones they’re thinking up here getting much use – but it’s fun to come up with them. She leaps on Mystique as quickly as possible, because she really doesn’t want the others suggesting anything Ditto-related.
“Supersonic,” Sean says. “Or Screech. No, definitely Supersonic.”
“What, because you’re confusing?” Alex asks. “How about you, Mankey-feet?”
Sean interlocks his fingers under his chin, grinning wickedly. “We could call him Hankey.”
Hank pales. “Please don’t call me Hankey.”
“What we really need is a cool name for us as a group,” Sean says. “I think we should call ourselves humons. You get it? Hu-mons. Because we’re people, but with the things we can do we’re kind of like Pokémon.”
Raven remembers running down alleyways while thrown Pokéballs clatter against the brick beside her. She remembers back before she found she could change, when every person she encountered reacted by whipping out a Pokédex.
“I prefer ‘mutants’,” she says.
“I’ve found each of you a Pokémon with abilities that reflect your own,” Charles says, handing out Pokéballs. “By working closely with your new partners, you should be able to learn more about yourselves.”
There’s a burst of red light from behind him.
“A Zubat?” Sean complains. “Seriously? I hate these freaking things.”
Hank doesn’t seem entirely thrilled with his Mankey, either, although Darwin is happy enough with his Kecleon. Yanma already has a Yanma of her own, of course, so Charles instead gives her a TM for Shadow Ball, the closest analogy to her fireballs he can find. Alex looks slightly dubious when a Raichu emerges from his Pokéball; “It’s not exact, I know,” Charles says to him, quietly, “but I think her Focus Blast will be able to help you.”
Eventually, Charles comes to Raven with the final Pokéball. She takes it warily and stands there for a moment, holding the unopened ball in one hand, looking into Charles’ eyes.
“If this is a Ditto,” she says, “I’m gonna make it turn into a Rhyhorn and stomp on your head.”
Charles just laughs and waits. She rolls her eyes and presses the release button.
There is a brief, confused pause.
“Is that a Ditto?” she asks.
“I’m afraid so,” Charles says, smiling.
“It’s blue.”
“A rare genetic mutation, in fact. The interesting thing is that colour variation is a mutation that occurs with almost the same frequency across every species of Pokémon. I’ve been planning to write an article on it.”
“So you gave me one of your research subjects?” Raven asks, squatting to look at the Ditto. It chirrups inquisitively. “How generous.”
“Come, now,” Charles says; “I may have had access to it already, but that’s still a very remarkable Pokémon you have there. Besides, I thought it would prefer not to be cooped up in a glass box all day.”
“Plus you couldn’t resist giving me a Ditto,” Raven says, standing up again. “I was serious, you know. You’re getting your head stomped on.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Charles says. “If you could wait until this Shaw business is over before you start trying to kill me, though, I’d appreciate it.”
Raven punches him on the arm, and then Sean’s Zubat swoops low over their heads and they both duck.
“Sorry!” Sean calls, his voice touched with something that sounds very much like a snigger.
Charles straightens up when the Zubat has passed, but Raven remains stooped, looking at her Ditto. It looks curiously back at her, then begins to glow. Raven takes a startled step back and laughs when the glow fades to reveal an exact replica of her current form. “Okay, that’s weird.”
“Purely out of curiosity,” Charles says, “now that you know how weird it feels, will you stop transforming into me?”
“We’re both going to transform into you,” Raven says. “You’ll wake up one day to find two of you next to your bed. If you’re going to give me a Ditto, you’re going to face the consequences.”
Mew leaps down from Charles’ shoulder to look at the Raven-Ditto, curious. The Ditto transforms back into its regular form, and then into Mew. Mew, in turn, transforms into the Ditto, and the Ditto starts to giggle so much it can’t hold its disguise.
But thanks, Raven thinks, with a smile. It’s a surprise to suddenly feel her mind; Charles has been blocking out her thoughts for such a long time, ever since he made his promise to her. She must be thinking it deliberately at him. I know you weren’t doing it just to be an asshole.
Raven lies back on the couch, drifting, watching Sean’s Zubat flap around the ceiling. It has been flying in circles for the past half-hour.
“Can’t you put it back in its Pokéball?” Yanma asks. “I keep feeling it’s about to Supersonic me into thinking backwards.”
“Oh, c’mon, he needs the exercise,” Sean says, as Raven shifts onto her side to watch the conversation.
“I thought you hated Zubat,” Darwin says from the other side of the room, where he’s been playing pinball with Alex.
“Yeah, but this one is cool,” Sean says. “I’ve named him—” and he gives an ear-splitting screech.
Darwin raises his eyebrows. “How do you spell that?”
And then the bodies start falling.
It’s a wake-up slap. Darwin is dead, and Yanma is gone, and these kids need to be able to protect themselves. Just kids, barely more than children, and Charles has thrown them into a war.
He’s not going to lose anyone else. Today, the training starts in earnest. This isn’t a world where they can rely on Pokémon any more. They need to be able to rely on themselves, and on each other. They have to work as a team.
Of course, it’s not only the kids.
“Move the satellite dish,” he says.
Move the coin, whisper Erik’s memories, but this is nothing like that. Here, in the grounds of Charles’ absurd mansion, he knows he’s safe. “How?”
“Do you mind if I...?” Charles asks, wiggling his fingers.
It’s the first time he’s asked Erik permission, and somehow that makes Erik realise how intimate this is, allowing Charles to step into his mind. He closes his eyes as Charles very gently, very carefully pulls at his memories, as if handling them too roughly might make them crumble into dust.
Erik starts when something brushes his cheek, but it’s only Charles’ Mew, dropping onto his shoulder. She curls her tail like a scarf around his neck. There’s a great deal of ability within the walls of Charles’ mansion, but it’s still a strange thrill to be so close to something so impossibly powerful and rare.
“Look at that,” Charles says, sounding amused. “There’s a legend that they only approach the pure of heart.”
He’s still sifting through Erik’s memories, and it takes Erik a couple of attempts to speak through the long-forgotten emotions rising in him. “Something must be very wrong with yours, in that case.”
“There’s a lot more to you than you realise, Erik.”
“Perhaps I was wondering why she approached you,” Erik says, with a smirk.
“Oh, charming,” Charles says, laughing, and then his voice suddenly becomes serious. “Are you all right?”
Erik blinks, taken aback by the question, and only then realises that he’s been crying.
“We can stop at any point,” Charles says. “If you’re not comfortable with this, just say so.”
A strange warmth is radiating out from the Mew on Erik’s shoulder: not a physical warmth, but a steadying one. It doesn’t erase the past, or even his memories of it, but it makes the pain easier to bear, somehow.
“I think I’m ready,” Erik says.
He stands there with tears in his eyes and Charles in his head and Charles’ Pokémon on his shoulder, and eventually, startling a distant flock of Spearow up into the sky, the dish begins to move.
Her entire self still smarting from what Hank said, Raven seeks out the one person who she thinks might be able to forget about what she looks like underneath: Erik, who wouldn’t change a thing if he looked like her, who thinks she has more important things to focus on than trying to look normal.
But he won’t come near her. It was never difficult before, with others. She can’t seem to work out what he wants.
“I prefer the real Raven,” he says, when she tries becoming older for him.
She ripples back to her usual form. God, she wants someone to touch her.
“I said the real Raven,” he says, and for a moment she genuinely has no idea what else he could mean. She lies there for a moment, staring at him, and then she strips herself of her normal form, her ‘human’ form, and lets her natural self come to the surface.
She half-expects him to recoil – all the things he said just words, after all – but he turns more fully towards her, smiling. “Perfection.”
Raven has never felt so exposed. Nobody but Charles has seen her like this for almost two decades, unclothed and undisguised. “Could you pass me my robe?”
“You don’t have to hide,” he says. He takes a few steps towards her and sits on the side of the bed. Not even Charles has ever looked at her natural form like this: with desire for something other than capturing her, with respect. “Have you ever looked at an Arcanine,” he says, laying his hand along her cheek, “and thought you ought to cover it up?”
Raven goes still. “I’m not a Pokémon.”
She says it without expecting to be taken seriously, and she’s surprised when Erik nods. “Of course not,” he says. “I apologise. You’re something new.”
And he kisses her, and he kisses her again, the cord of the lamp curling around her back to draw her closer, and for once she doesn’t feel like a Pokémon or a pet. She’s Mystique. She’s something new.
“This is the day,” Charles breathes, staring out of the window. He turns to look at Raven. “Are you sure you’re going to wear that?”
She gives him the most unimpressed look she can summon up. “By ‘that’, do you mean me?”
“Well, yes.”
“We’re mutants. We’re going to stop other mutants, probably using our mutant powers. I didn’t think we were hiding.”
“Don’t you think it might be a distraction?”
“Do you think I’m worse than the uniforms?”
Charles doesn’t argue after that.
The submarine ploughs up the beach, coming to rest in a cloud of sand. The side has been torn open by the impact, and after a moment Magnemite begin to pour out of the gash.
“He must have used them to power his submarine,” Erik says.
Charles almost laughs; even at this dramatic moment, Erik can’t escape the Magnemite. But then they begin floating up towards him, towards the plane, and Hank swears, and it all becomes much less funny.
“The magnetic field’s too strong,” Hank reports. “We’re being pulled off course. If we don’t get rid of those Magnemite—”
Erik raises his hands and the amassed Magnemite are flung away from them, but it’s too late; the plane is already careering towards the beach. Charles stands frozen for a moment as the ground rushes up and the world twists, and then Erik is on him, warm and solid, pinning him with his powers. Charles grips Erik’s wrist and tries to keep breathing.
The missiles streak like Pidgeot across the sky. Charles and Erik are fighting, grappling on the sand – fighting by hand, Charles not even using his Pokémon – and Erik throws him off and strides out towards the ocean, his hand held out, and the missiles keep racing towards the ships, towards the doomed men and Pokémon aboard.
Moira is desperately willing Charles to get to his feet again, to stop this, but he’s obviously flagging and, anyway, why does he have to be the one to stop it? There are a lot of people and Pokémon on this beach. Charles is only one man.
They’re all just standing here, watching, like there’s an invisible forcefield around the battle, but maybe it’s time to step in. Maybe Moira – maybe she’s only human, maybe she doesn’t have the incredible powers of everyone standing around her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make a difference. She can change things, here. She can do something.
“Jolteon,” Moira shouts, “Thunder—”
—and Erik twitches his fingers, sends a panel of the submarine’s shattered hull hurtling into her Jolteon’s side, and she’s knocked off-balance just as she attacks and for a moment the world seems to slow down as the lightning streaks out and hits Charles.
There’s a moment when so many minds say he’s dead simultaneously that Charles almost believes it, but then he becomes aware of the sand under his shoulders and the pain burning through his abdomen and he’s alive, he’s alive, but it hurts—
A gentle weight settles on his chest, and when he opens his eyes Mew is curled up there, looking at him anxiously. A moment later, Charles feels a strong arm around his back. Erik is holding him.
Erik, his friend who forced a coin through a man’s brain while Charles begged him to stop, his friend who almost killed every man unlucky enough to be on those ships, is holding him. Charles would probably flinch away if he had the strength.
What he does have the strength for is keeping Erik from attacking Moira, because she didn’t do this. Erik has to hear this, even though it pains Charles to tell him. Moira didn’t do this. Erik did.
Erik stares for a moment, and then he lets out a wordless scream of anguish and fury, and the buckles on Charles’ suit jerk upwards so sharply that his entire body arches into the air. Mew leaps up and hovers just above him. The Magnemite from the ship, Charles is barely aware through the agony, are being flung this way and that, giving out high-pitched squeals of distress.
The magnetic grip on Charles’ buckles releases gradually, and he falls back into Erik’s arms, breathing hard through his teeth. The Magnemite are still spinning out of control. One crashes into another and a third is thrown into the collision, and they’re – they’re glowing, they’re fusing, they’re—
They’re evolving. A Pokémon that cannot evolve is evolving before his eyes. The birth of a new species, and Charles would feel privileged to witness it if he weren’t in so much pain.
Erik must see Charles’ surprise on his face, because he looks up at the transformation as well, still holding him.
“Magneton,” it says, when the glow fades.
“Magneton,” Erik echoes, hoarsely.
I did tell you it might be able to evolve, Charles wants to say, but after such a betrayal he can’t bring himself to be lighthearted. Erik needs to understand that this is the end for them.
Raven walks across the beach, Charles on one side, Erik on the other, and this wasn’t a choice she ever wanted to have to make. When she thinks about it, though, it’s barely even a choice. Charles has been so much to her, but she can’t stay caged on his belt forever.
She kneels next to Charles. She can’t leave without saying goodbye.
“Raven,” Charles murmurs, and she strokes her fingers through his hair, and for a moment she wonders whether she really has the strength to do this to him.
Charles twists his head to look at her Ditto; it has taken the form of Sean’s Zubat and fluttered across to perch on Erik’s shoulder.
“You should go with him,” he says. “It’s what you want.”
Right now, she feels as if she’s the mind-reader. How little he wants her to go is radiating out from every part of him, and it makes her feel terrible but it isn’t enough. He loves her, and she loves him, but love isn’t enough.
“I think it’s time for me to go to a new trainer,” she says, and then, “I’m sorry.”
He struggles a little, trying to sit up, but he can’t manage it. “You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s why I have to leave.”
And she knows from his lost expression that, even though he can see into her mind, he doesn’t understand her. She can’t stay here.
She kisses him on the forehead, and he presses her hand to his lips for a moment, and then she walks away.
Before they disappear, Erik pauses, and then he drags an empty Pokéball from Alex’s belt with a flick of his wrist. It floats in the air for a moment before Erik sends it flying at the new Pokémon, the Magneton.
It’s pure formality, Charles thinks. The Magneton obviously adores him, despite the circumstances of its evolution; there’s no need to catch it, because it will follow him anywhere. Mew stays with Charles of her own free will; she’s never been inside a Pokéball. But perhaps Erik is deliberately catching it so Charles can see; so Charles will know that, now of all times, Erik finally decided to listen to him.
Erik meet Charles’ eyes and holds them, and then he and Raven vanish.
Charles watches them leave, the scene blurred through his tears, and then he allows himself to panic because he can’t feel his legs.
He’s paralysed. He’s paralysed, and a thousand cautionary tales flash through his mind: don’t inhale Stun Spore, don’t wake up a Snorlax, don’t ever get in the way of an Electric attack, because paralysis for humans is not just a matter of a Paralyz Heal.
“Gone. Left a bit of a gap in my life, if I’m to be honest. I was rather hoping you could fill it.”
He stands before her, wearing a helmet and cloak in magnificently unmanly colours. What looks like a fusion of three Magnemite hovers beside him. If Emma treads correctly here, she may be moments from freedom. If she treads cleverly, if she doesn’t leap too quickly at the opportunity that presents itself, she may get her Pokémon back.
“Will I have my Cryogonal returned to me?”
“I’m sure something can be arranged.”
Emma casts her eyes across the figures gathered at the door, and then she returns her gaze to him.
“Erik, I believe,” she says.
He smiles.
“I prefer ‘Magneton’.”