Hello, I'm here from a really crummy interent connection. This is the introduction to a story I've been working on and I figured that I'd send it on to the list to see if people are interested in reading more about it. It's not really a magneto story as much as it is a acolytes story -- on topic? Alara? As always, the characters are trhe property of Marvel comics and used without permission for no profit! Introduction The man looked outside his window and watched the stars shining in the night. It wasn't a usual thing for him to be doing (usually he worked obsessively on projects until exhaustion overcame him) but tonight was a very different sort of night and somehow it seemed appropriate. It was the first night of a return, of sorts, and he had time enough to learn later. Having faced oblivion, he indulged himself in watching natural beauty (if only for a brief time). The stars that he saw were not the feeble glows that we see from Earth, but the blazing echoes of distant suns unencumbered by travelling through a thick atmosphere. The man was hardly an ordinary man either. He had chosen to make his home here -- among the stars -- rather than on the green world that had given him birth. In some ways it seemed a betrayal as he was linked to this green world in ways that were as deep as his soul, but it was no longer really his home. Instead he had chosen to live here, in the most hostile environment possible, rather than to remain below with the memories. Not that he could run from his memories. No matter how hard he tried they haunted him -- a legion of ghosts to remind him of what he had lost . . . and what he would kill to protect. Not that it was easy. In the past he had tried to kill himself rather than face what was inevitably coming. But those attempts had failed and he had been driven mad by the inevitable results. So, against all odds, he continued on to stare out into a midnight sky with only the stars to comfort him. He had thought that it might have been over before he last fell asleep. In a fit of rage against all who had stood against him he had unleashed an attack against the planet beneath him. It was a cruel and reckless gesture and it was the moral equivalent of raping his mother. He had used his link with his planet to violate it horribly and the result had been as bloody as could have been predicted. "If only they had left us alone . . ." he murmured but then stopped himself harshly. He was not a man to think about "if only statments" -- that way lay madness. No, he would deal with the world on it's own terms and to the devil with the consequences. The sattelite network had frightened him more than he wanted to admit. He remembered others who had relied on his judgement and his protection who had been murdered when his resources had been insufficent to protect them. He had acted to protect a new breed of followers -- murderers and bigots perhaps, but they relied on him and he had decided that he would not fail them. It had been a catasphrohic mistake. His oldest foe, and his dearest friend, had issued forth against him. His only son had been there as well as a woman that he had once loved (along with her new lover) and his most vicious foe. He had fought hard but he had been unable to bring himself to use lethal force against those that he cared for, Didn't they realize that he had acted to protect them as much as anyone else? But they didn't understand and his friend had reached out and . . . But no, it was best not to think about that. The memory was too painful and too frightening. It told him a tale about his own weakness and mortality. He had been forced to confront all of his failures and all of the mistakes that he had made and them he had been dismissed. Purged of it all, he had slipped into the quiet darkness. He could feel the scars on his chest where he had been gutted. Alone and isolated on the station, it seemed a miracle that he hadn't simply bled to death. At the time he was half convinced that the wound had been mortal. Unable to act to protect himself, it certainly should have ended up that way. But fate seemed to have intervened and saved him one last time. But was his survival fated to give him one last chance to protect his people or was it merely because fate hadn't finished with inflicting horror on him? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Build Your Group Headquarters at Fortune City? http://www2.fortunecity.com/cgi-bin/homepage/estate.pl?referer=findmail eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/magneto Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com