"You want me to join you… join your Brotherhood gang?" I asked, unable to hide some disbelief from my voice.
"It's not a gang, you idiot!" Pyro shouted from below, flames briefly flaring from his wrists.
"Do not interrupt while I am speaking," Magneto said without even looking at him.
The effect was immediate.
Pyro straightened slightly. "...Yes, Magneto," he muttered, his voice instantly subdued.
Magneto's attention returned to me as if nothing had happened.
"And yes," he said calmly, "I am formally inviting you to join our cause against human tyranny. Join the Brotherhood of Mutants, Aeon."
"Hey, don't listen to his garbage sales pitch!" Logan barked from below.
"Yeah, he literally looks like a supervillain!" Kitty added loudly.
That immediately earned her several murderous stares from the Brotherhood below. Sabertooth especially looked one second away from pouncing at her throat while Pyro openly cracked his knuckles with a sneer.
Kitty shrank back slightly.
"Shadowkat," Storm warned quietly.
Meanwhile, Jean and Marie were both watching the exchange above with obvious tension, neither of them relaxing in the slightest.
Magneto, however, merely looked thoughtful.
"It seems you have already formed strong attachments to Charles's students," he observed. "Then I ask that you think carefully about their future… and yours."
He spread his arms slightly, his cape shifting behind him in the night wind.
"Join us, Aeon. Help us claim the place in this world that rightfully belongs to mutantkind. With power such as yours standing beside us, the day mutants rise above humanity, that they rule this very Earth… would no longer be some distant dream."
Below him, Wanda's eyes lifted toward me again, far more interested now than before.
"Mutants ruling the Earth?" I repeated with a short incredulous laugh. "Do you even hear yourself when you talk?"
Magneto's eyes narrowed faintly behind the helmet.
"Maybe some of the younger mutants here don't fully know who you are yet," I continued, my voice hardening, "but I do."
I looked directly towards him.
"I know exactly what kind of man you are. Every intelligence agency in the world has you marked as a high-level terrorist. Your group leaves behind destroyed facilities, dead bodies, and chaos wherever it goes. There are entire classified files documenting the people who have died because of your actions over the years."
The atmosphere grew heavier with every word.
"And after all that…" I said, keeping my gaze locked onto him, "you honestly expect me to join you?"
Magneto didn't look offended.
If anything—
he looked resolute.
"The work we do is necessary," he replied, his voice carrying calmly across the shore as magnetic energy rippled subtly around him. "Humanity has spent generations hunting us, suppressing us, using us whenever convenient and discarding us whenever afraid. They must learn that mutants will no longer endure such treatment in silence."
The sand beneath him trembled faintly.
"And people like them," he continued, gesturing toward the facility below, "only understand suffering when it is inflicted upon them in return."
His eyes hardened.
"If opposing such cruelty makes me a terrorist in their eyes… then so be it."
A cold conviction settled into his voice.
"History is not written by the righteous, Aeon. It is written by the victorious. And when the future finally belongs to mutantkind…"
A faint smile crossed his face.
"…they will remember us not as monsters, but as the saviors of our race."
Below him, several members of the Brotherhood straightened proudly at his words. Pyro grinned openly while Sabertooth let out a savage chuckle. Avalanche even started clapping and whistling loudly—
only to awkwardly stop a second later when nobody joined in.
"How can you speak so casually about war and death, Erik?" Charles asked quietly, genuine pain visible on his face.
Magneto didn't even look toward him.
"Our discussion ended already, Charles," he said flatly. "You have made your choice, and I have made mine. Perhaps only after your ideals crumble before your eyes will you finally understand why mine are necessary."
Then his attention shifted back toward me.
"So tell me, Aeon…" he said, extending his hand once more, "will you stand beside us?"
His gaze sharpened beneath the helmet.
"Or have you already been poisoned by Charles Xavier's fantasy of mutant and human harmony?"
For a moment, the entire beach seemed quieter.
I could feel the weight of everyone's attention on me now — not just Magneto's, but Professor Xavier's as well. The X-Men below were all watching closely, tense, waiting to hear what I would say.
I took a slow breath before answering.
"Before I respond," I said calmly, keeping my eyes on Magneto, "there's something I want to understand first."
Magneto tilted his head slightly.
"While educating others is usually more suited to my old friend here," he replied, gesturing faintly toward Xavier, "I suppose I can spare a few moments to enlighten a fellow Homo superior."
He folded his arms.
"Ask your questions."
"You said your ultimate goal is mutant supremacy," I began. "A future where mutants inherit the Earth and stand above humanity."
I paused briefly.
"So what exactly happens to the billions of humans already living on it?"
Several members of the Brotherhood shifted slightly at that.
"You can't seriously expect me to believe you haven't thought about it," I continued. "Because there are only a few possible outcomes. Either humanity gets wiped out… or they end up beneath mutants in some kind of controlled society."
A colder edge entered my voice.
"So which is it? Genocide? Oppression? Segregation?"
Magneto's eyes narrowed faintly behind the helmet.
"My goal has never been genocide," he answered slowly. "Humanity will simply learn its place. Those who have harmed mutantkind will answer for their crimes, and those who remain will stay far away from us."
His magnetic field pulsed subtly around him.
"I do not care what humanity chooses to do afterward… so long as they never threaten mutants again."
"So isolation, then," I replied with a thoughtful nod. "Humans and mutants separated from one another."
I tilted my head slightly.
"At first glance, that almost sounds reasonable."
A few members of the Brotherhood looked pleased hearing that.
Then I continued.
"But the more I think about it… the less your entire ideology makes sense."
That immediately drew irritation from several of them.
"Why wouldn't it make sense?" Avalanche snapped from below.
"Because I understand genetics," I answered evenly. "Probably better than most people here."
I raised a gloved hand.
"The actual biological difference between a normal human and a mutant is incredibly small. One gene. The X-Gene."
I snapped my fingers lightly.
"If that gene stays dormant, the person lives their entire life as a completely ordinary human. If it activates…" I gestured toward the gathered mutants around him, "…they become mutants."
My gaze briefly shifted toward the Maximoff twins.
"And that activation can happen at wildly different stages of life. Sometimes during childhood. Sometimes much later."
Magneto's expression tightened slightly.
"What exactly is your point?" he asked, irritation beginning to creep into his voice.
"My point," I replied evenly, "is that every single mutant standing here started out as human first."
The beach fell a little quieter.
"We weren't born separated from humanity. We were born into it. The only reason any of us are called mutants now is because the X-Gene activated."
I looked around at both sides.
"And statistically? There's a very real possibility that for many of us… it never would have activated at all. We would've just lived normal human lives."
Magneto's brows furrowed faintly beneath the helmet.
"So your entire idea of separating mutants and humans simply doesn't work," I continued. "Because mutants don't come from some isolated species. They are born from humans, inside human families, all over the world."
The Maximoff siblings were listening more carefully now.
"In fact," I added, "if you actually succeeded in creating some sovereign mutant nation separated from humanity, you'd just make life worse for every future mutant born outside of it."
I pointed toward the distant horizon.
"Imagine a child awakening their powers inside a normal human household after your 'separation' happens. What then? Do you think humanity would suddenly become less afraid after a mutant regime rises to power?"
The answer was obvious.
"They'd become even more paranoid. More hateful. More violent."
I held Magneto's gaze.
"And if you go down the route of conquest, slavery, or mass slaughter, then eventually another generation of mutants will rise against you the exact same way you're rising against humanity now."
A faint smile touched my lips beneath the helmet.
"Because oppression doesn't magically become justice just because mutants are the ones doing it."
The magnetic field around Magneto intensified slightly.
"So all I can really say," I finished calmly, "is that your plan doesn't solve the problem."
I paused.
"It just creates a different version of it."
For a moment, Magneto said nothing.
Then the air around him distorted as waves of electromagnetic force rolled outward from his body.
"So," he said slowly, his voice colder now, "in the end… you too have succumbed to Charles Xavier's fantasy of mutant-human harmony."
A pulse of electromagnetic energy burst toward me.
My own electric field reacted instinctively, dispersing the wave before it could even touch my body.
"Now hold on," I replied, raising a hand lightly. "I never said that I completely agreed with the Professor either."
That actually seemed to catch him off guard.
Even below, I could feel several surprised looks turning toward me — especially from the X-Men side.
"In fact," I continued calmly, "one of the main reasons I still haven't officially joined the X-Men is because I don't fully agree with Professor Xavier's idealistic worldview either."
Professor Xavier himself remained silent, but even from this distance I could sense a faint trace of disappointment from him.
"Oh?" Magneto's interest sharpened immediately.
"But," I added with a small shake of my head, "that doesn't mean I agree with your radicalism."
I glanced briefly around us.
"Honestly, the very idea of mutants ruling the entire Earth already falls apart the moment you look at the bigger picture."
Magneto's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Because there aren't only two groups living on this planet," I continued. "This world isn't just humans and mutants."
I started counting them off casually.
"There are Inhumans. Metahumans. Monsters. Demigods. Actual gods. Aliens. Eternals. And probably several other species humanity hasn't even properly discovered yet."