Molotov

A viral video anonymously springs up. It consists of a voiceover over a black-and-white hand-drawn animation, but rather than the lines being black on a white background, they are white on a black background. The voice speaks in a calm, intellectual and measured storytelling tone, with intense charisma... a voice recognisable to those who knew him as that of Erik Lensherr, also known as Magneto.

Sombre piano music plays. The animation begins with the vision of people, rather heroically drawn, toiling and sweating to build a pyramid for masters in garb suggestive of Egyptian attire. But they are led away from this enslavement by a robed figure, who raises his hands and parts a sea to allow them to escape. Displayed less as a divine miracle and more as superpowers, perhaps - very topical given what has been on the news.

"Let me tell you a story. A story of a minority, an intensely gifted people, whose talents meant they could achieve anything they set their minds to. But there were always but few of these gifted people. They were feared because they were different, always forced into servitude."

The people move across a desolate desert landscape, the sun beating down on them. They stop as they find a hospitable place, with trees, water, and shade, building settlements and raising what looks like a temple.

"They sought a home of their own, away from those whom would enslave them. To live in peace, answering only to themselves, free of oppression and hatred. But the world could not leave them to live their own lives, the lives of their choosing."

Soldiers drawn in an Babylonian style arrive, countless in number, brandishing spears and shields. They begin torching the settlement and tear down the temple, throwing the people into enslavement again.

"But no matter how many times they tried to live their own lives, the people found themselves hated for their difference. Their gifts, which could do so much for the world, were instead their curse. All the world would permit them to do was to serve others."

The slave-masters change and morph in appearance as the image pans over the scene, first taking on a Persian look, and then a Greek one. Another temple begins to be raised by the people, grander than the last, being slowly built in the background as the people toil.

"Sometimes, there was hope. The people looked upon what they had achieved, and felt, perhaps, that now they were safe, that the world would respect them."

The temple is finished, and there are no oppressors on screen, only the people looking satisfied. But then more soldiers carrying rectangular Roman shields march upon the scene, tearing down the temple and finally driving the people from their homes, scattering them.

"But it was not to be. They were feared because of who they were, no matter what they had to offer, no matter their own rights as a people. Denied a home of their own, spread across the world, they were forced to live seperately from others, their rights curtailed, mistrusted and feared. Forbidden from fully participating in society, they did what they could to make happy lives for themselves."

The heroically-drawn people are shown being pushed aside and herded into ghettos, even as they carry on their work, the imagery and clothing changing again as the camera pans, to show the passage of time. A goldsmith in early medieval clothes works upon fine jewellery. A banker in Renaissance garb lends money and writes in his ledger. A scholar in late medieval clothes gives a lecture.

"Whenever they followed the rules that were imposed upon them by others, the rules were changed to make life even harder for them. No matter what these gifted people did, they found themselves attacked, again and again. It was not what they did that made them hated, it was the very fact of their blood, their very identity."

The goldsmith's shop is smashed, his jewellery stolen by laughing knights in English chain-mail, as they drag him and his family into a building, bar the gates, and fling torches onto the straw roof. The banker finds himself seized by halberd-wielding guards in Italian garb, flung out of his home with his clothing torn off him, his family now on the street in poverty, while the guards share out his coins amongst themselves. The scholar is led away by men dressed as Spanish Inquisitors, strapped to a chair, and we see implements of torture being prepared for use on him by the inquisitors before the shot discretionarily fades away.

"And yet they perservered, and continued living in hope. They kept abiding by the laws of others, obeying whatever restrictions were placed upon them, accepting their lot and living under oppression and servitude. Always trusting in the kindness of others to keep them safe, no matter how many times history had proven it to be unwise."

As the image fades up again, we see what looks like a microscopic view bacteria, multiplying in a petri dish. A classic twentieth-century style doctor or scientist is shown, looking through her microscope, before she looks out of her window to the street in the Jewish ghetto below, and sees a shoemaker and his family, wearing yellow Stars of David - the only colour shown so far - being dragged from his shop by rifle-wielding soldiers in fascist-style uniforms. She begins to pack her bags.

"Many continued to flee their oppressors, to move on, to try to carry on in the same way that they had. Many more did not, and could not escape. Such is always the fate of these people, to be, at best, living in fear of what would come next. This people's story is not yet over."

The shoemaker and his family are seen in familiar striped clothing, emaciated and starving. They are led barefoot towards a low, buried building that must be a gas chamber, crematoria chimneys belching dark, pencilled-in smoke in the distance. The camera zooms in on the stripes on the uniforms, which, as the camera zooms back out, turns into the skyscrapers of New York. The doctor is older now, in a large apartment in Manhattan, and as she watches a television by the window, images of Klansmen and skinheads with Nazi tattoos march past on her flickering screen.

"Now let me tell you a story about another people. A story that is not as long, but is ongoing as we speak. A story of a minority, of intensely gifted people, whose talents meant they could achieve anything they set their minds to. But there were always but few of these gifted people. They were feared because they were different, always forced into servitude. No matter how many times they try to live their own free lives, they find themselves hated for their difference."

Further images are shown, flashes of past events. Heroic figures are led into the Pentagon under guard, seen interrogated in shadowy rooms under bright lamplight. They are given identical uniforms with yellow highlights, despite their diversity, some of the figures this time exhibiting unnatural features, a bestial appearance in some cases, another glinting crystalline. They emerge from a bunker that flies the Stars and Stripes, and are shown in short flashes, demonstrating superpowers, seen clearly carrying out clandestine intelligence operations against the enemies of the United States. Finally, they are destroying nuclear missiles fired by 1960s American and Soviet warships, some even seen sacrificing their lives, then being shouted at in the interrogation rooms again by U.S. Military officers.

"Their natural gifts, which could do so much for the world, are the source of their problems. Sometimes, with the best of intentions, they look upon what they have achieved, all the good they have done, and feel, perhaps, that now they can be safe, that the world will respect them as equals if they will just co-operate, plead their case, wait patiently just a little longer to be granted the rights that they were born entitled to."

The familiar image of the enormous mansion of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters in New York State appears. The heroic figures are anonymous, shown from behind, mingling happily amongst one another, overseen by a man in a wheelchair. Then the camera revolves around them, and as if in a shocking revelation, shows yellow 'X' of the X-Corporation on their clothing - the singular splash of colour, once again, in an otherwise entirely black and white animation, vibrant against the black background. Marking them out in the same way as the yellow Stars of David had. Then the camera zooms out, and reveals the Mansion's grounds for what they are, showing the great military-looking radar dome, high walls, the barbed wire atop them, all of the security measures surrounding the X-Mansion.

"But it is not to be, not in this way. They are hated because of who they are, no matter what they have to offer, no matter their own rights as people to choose their own destiny. No matter what these gifted people do, they find themselves oppressed, again and again. It is not what they do that makes them feared... It is the very fact of their blood, their very identity, that they are different from others."

The scene changes as the camera pans away to the wreckage of present-day New York City, still smouldering from the Chitauri attack, shining Stark Tower visible amidst the ruins. Then the camera drops down to the street level, and shows a wall, spray-painted with a new symbol, different from the angular, threatening symbol of the Brotherhood of Mutants some might be familiar with - a six-fingered white helping hand laid over the top of a star, the star itself bubbling with the appearance of 'mutation'.

"Others with extraordinary abilities have revealed themselves and shown their faces. Now it is time for those who were born different, born with gifts and talents beyond the norm, to step forward, to make use of their abilities to make the world safer and to assert their rights as free people to live their own lives, free from oppression and control by those that hate and fear them for who they are. If you were born different, born extraordinary; and have the courage to step up and be proud of your differences, rather than ashamed and fearful of them, then contact the Brotherhood of Mutants. Together, we can avoid making the same mistakes, and secure a safe future where we will no longer be oppressed."

Finally, the image fades, replaced only with a slide showing end-to-end, untraceable TextSecure Messenger details for how to leave a message for the Brotherhood.

Tired of Nazi scum? Want to make your Grandparents proud? Feeling like a more woke Captain America? Join Antifa! We are an organization dedicated to punching Nazi scum. Ever since the alien attacks, Nazis have become more and more brazen. They walk down the streets with their stupid baldness and their culturally appropriate hindi symbols. We need to make them scared again. Punch a Nazi and join Antifa today. Those who look hard enough will find us.

Antifa, coming to a barricade near you.

"What will you drink? I'm buying." Erik said, as he gestured to the note to cover the cost of drinks, even as he chose himself a German Pilsner from the refrigerator. Not coming to steal. And offering whatever drink Pilgrim chose, if any, without any deceit.

"What I wanted to talk about is this, peacefully, like civilised men. You've chosen to make yourselves our enemies. But that is unnecessary."

He opened the cold can of beer by the ring-pull, with a hiss of escaping air. Raising his hand for quiet if Pilgrim aimed to speak, to let him finish, and intending to deliver the following discourse if not interrupted by force. It was arrogant, to be sure, but not hostile, the entire thing aimed to show their relative positions of power.

"You've abandoned hatreds before. I have seen your people in the streets, helping those in need without regard for their race, for their religion. We approve of that. Some of those people have even been mutants, and you didn't know. That, if anything, should tell you how meaningless your cause is, how pointless your hatred. Perhaps that is what you should focus on; doing good in your communities, keeping the streets safe, helping those in need. Not spreading hatred."

Erik took a drink of beer, and sighed.

"The Aryan Brotherhood were attacked because they represent hate. They seek to destroy others for being different, different in ways they have no control over. They are a part of a failed, sick and dying ideology, a past that we all must move on from, a disease that must be cured. I will make no apologies for what happened to them, or what will happen to any of their Nazi kind. You do not have to suffer the same fate. Your enmity and quarrel with us, now, is of your own choosing. It is a pointless enmity, a quarrel with your very own children. A hundred years ago, there were perhaps five known living mutants. Now there are at least five thousand that I am aware of. And that in both cases excludes those others with extraordinary abilities who have revealed themselves in the last four years, some of whom may be unconfirmed mutants themselves. But you have not taken up arms and declared yourself against the 'Avengers', even though they too are different from you."

He locked eyes with Pilgrim, speaking seriously.

"Contrary to what power-hungry men like Trask may have said in justifying their efforts to exterminate us, to forever deny humanity the path that nature has set out for us all, there is nothing so ridiculous as a mutant plot to take over the world, or to exterminate non-mutated humans. All that is required for that to happen is time. Until then, my Brotherhood stands for freedom and security for our people. Our lives are our own, not to be lived only at the pleasure and whim of any supposed authority. We will not be kept in cages to be poked and prodded at by scientists, or forced to wear markers signifying who we are. I've been forced to wear one and herded into a camp by men who hated and feared me before. Never again."

Once again, he took a long drink from his ice-cold Pilsner can, draining the rest of it, keeping the empty can in his hand.

"No blood has yet been spilled between your new Brotherhood and mine. No blood needs to be spilled. If you abandon this last irrational hatred, we have no quarrel with you or your group now that you have renounced the other hatreds you once held. Even more, you could choose to make something of yourselves in this city, something positive for its people, if you chose. And in that, you would have our friendship."

A man of perception, John knew hostilities were unlikely to take place today. He was still wary of the potential danger the shapeshifter represented - but right then, at that moment, both sides were in an unspoken truce which he would abide by.

He took a dollar bill of his own and put it on the table for the bartender later - then he grabbed a cup of wine and sat on the table. He sincerely and intently listened to Magneto as he spoke, not missing one word as he made his case. He himself was not so worried as he felt unfortunate - for he could now respect his opponent, yet felt like they were two sides of the same coin.

After Magneto finished speaking, spoke looking at his glass.

"You have said many truths, like one who has seen war and knows how terrible it is. I respect you coming here in peace, not many would do that. But you have also told many lies, unbeknownst even to yourself."

John Pilgrim took a sip,

"I do not know what humanity will be like a hundred or a million years, you might be right and maybe we are the ones headed for extinction and our whole cause might be futile due to time. Then again, we are all dust of stars and given enough time the world itself will be gone, so that makes your cause as futile as mine if you look at it that way." John put his hands on the table, not rudely, but once again interlocked his fingers. His cup still had a bit left and he was saving it for later.

"Let us begin with the basics. The Avengers *are* a problem. You might have considered that to the eyes of my crew the Hulk is a mutant created by science. Thor is not even human and wears a human skin. The fact that people look at them favorably and not so at you is not relevant to me or my people."

He took another sip, freeing his hands before doing so.

"You are right to say that you fight for the security and freedom of your people, I believe you. I do the same."

He then looked at Erik directly.

"I was never a committed Neo-Nazi. I had the tattoos, had the bravado, had the guns." he sipped again. "But it was more about belonging. Finding your place in the world, your friends, your family. Most of the time we would not even fight against other gangs, we would sell drugs or arms and try to make ends met. Sticking together with the boys, that is what the AB was to me."

John looked at the bar, rebuilt. It made him feel better to see it renewed like this.

"But then you up and killed my best friend and his almost entire crew. All that they were, all that they could be. Gone, in an instant. I returned to the bar to find police officers carrying body bags among which was my friend Kusack. One of the few guys who survived yelled something about mutants... And then I realized it."

John finally got to the bottom of his glass, not a drop left by. Then he returned his gaze to the man on the other side of the table.

"You and I are fighting because we happened to be at wrong place at the wrong time and I cannot change that, you cannot change that, nobody can. What is done cannot be undone. You killed the only people I had in the world, and that taught me that there are greater evils than petty gangs out there. Evils who can take away what you hold dear in an instant of a second. People like you, like the Avengers. People with power. People who have been wronged and have wronged others. People like me."

John's gaze falls to the glass before returning to Magneto.

"The war I fight is not because of some delusional conspiracy or phobia. I fight it because I want a future where nobody else is in my shoes. Before you judge me unreasonable, tell me: Are you not the same? Do you not want such a future for yourself, for your own kind not to be subject to the whims of tyrants? No need, you already answered. And perhaps in some other time or place we could stop the wheel. Perhaps I could ask you the question: Will you cease your battle so that I might cease my own? And you would answer yes, then we would leave this meeting as friends." John paused for only a brief moment. "But you know as well as I that today is not that day. You might kill me, if not tomorrow then the day after. Eventually you will wound somebody else and there will be a new Brotherhood of Humanity, just as if I killed you there would rise a new Brotherhood of Mutants, if not that day then later. And for now, I am content to take the bullet for someone else. Rather me than someone with a real family."

He then fell silent.

Erik nodded. "It's personal for you. I respect that. I've suffered losses of my own. My wife. My daughter. Killed in front of my eyes by others to try to compel my co-operation when I made the mistake of trying to become homo sapiens, to forget what I was and live the same way as any of you."

"In a way, I want the same future, without one holding power over another. Evolution is what awaits humanity, mutation is what awaits humanity. If there were only mutants, then that would end the conflict, but that is not something I would seek to achieve through killing."

"But there are flaws in your logic. Two, specifically. There are many other sources of power in this world beyond 'powers'. There are human men in this world who could wipe out our whole species with the touch of a button, human and mutant both. Men who have tried, at that. Men that I and others of my kind, using our abilities, prevented from destroying life on this planet, in Cuba, nearly six decades ago. Some will always have power over others. Every one of your people holds the power of life and death over most other people with a twitch of their finger when they hold a weapon. Yet I am not sure they would lay down their weapons if asked, any more than my people would abandon their abilities even if it were possible and not an integral part of their being from birth." Erik pointed out.

"Unfairness and imbalance are natural, will always be with us. Those with the ability to change things, to have an impact on the world, can do good or they can do evil. They must make their choice, what they do with their life and what capability they have to shape the world. It was tailors and pig-farmers that exterminated six million innocents, not ubermensch that did the deed. It is up to each of us to choose what we do with the ability to make a change in the world we have, for greater or lesser degrees."

"And that brings me to the second flaw - if it can be called a flaw. It may well be exactly what you mean, exactly what you intend. To make yourself, or your people, martyrs in the conflict that you believe is inevitable. For you and your people to be killed, and then two more to spring up from the hurt friends and families of the dead, and then they to be killed too, to make for four new adherents to the cause of revenge. But this course would require you to choose to... sacrifice not only yourself, but your new... 'boys', your new Brotherhood. In a conflict you cannot hope to win. People that you say you hold dear, thrown away in an effort to hurt or kill people who would not otherwise now do you harm."

"It will be little comfort to them or their families or friends to learn that they died today in a conflict that was called 'inevitable' for tomorrow, even though tomorrow has not yet dawned. Your people now have real families, real friends - even if they have nothing else then they would have each other. And immediately, the 'bullets' would be being taken by people with families - even if not in this first generation, somehow, then the next. It might be personal to you, and to some of your people. But is revenge for your friend worth sending them to their certain deaths? Or is it your goal to incite this conflict that you believe to be inevitable, so that those following your ideals will multiply, and celebrate your name as a martyr to the cause? Whether it is your goal or not, you speak of a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"Even if you are correct, and a conflict is inevitable, then there is nothing to be gained by seeking to begin it early. It's a lot of lives to end only because you believe that they will be ended tomorrow instead. Perhaps it is only inevitable in a hundred years, or a thousand. And during that time, how many families will live in peace, their sons and daughters living out the full span of their lives, before the battle comes? And on the other side of the coin, perhaps there will not be blood shed tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. The only way we can know for certain that the bloodshed is inevitable is if we choose to begin it."

John once more listened intently, patiently letting Magneto make new counter-arguments.

"If you do not seek to achieve that through killing, why do you fight? You already said yourself that your victory is inevitable given time." John replied firmly but not in an antagonizing manner. "You fight because there is no recourse, because there is no way to do what you want otherwise. Because more men like the ones who killed your family exist out there." He pointed out in turn.

"As far as I know you are quite powerful, but if you fight one day someone might kill you. You know this, and yet you made your peace with it. I was not lying before either when I told it would rather be me than someone else. It is true, for some of us the Brotherhood is all we have, and we pay the price of death willingly even if it means walking home alone or not at all at the end of the day. And we are here precisely because if we take the shots, then someone else will get to live another day. Someone who would have been in our place."

John thought about it for a moment, almost lost in a trance. Then he finally came up with a counteroffer of his own, almost frustrated by having to voice it - it felt painful, and an affront both to the honor of his late friend and himself. Yet perhaps it was a small shot worth something.

"I will give you one chance to stop the cycle. This is not for you or me, this is for your people and mine. I will let you speak to everyone on the Brotherhood of Humanity at the same time. If you can persuade them to disband out of their own will entirely, and that including the most committed members like Konstantin here, then I will do as they wish and officially end the organization. Fail, however, and you will just have left it with the most dedicated members anybody could ever ask for. The choice and risk is yours to make."

John took his earpiece and offered it to the man across the table, his palm open as it held the tiny object.

"I think I can do better. Simply hearing me speak and give a speech without context would mean little. But if I release the audio recording of our meeting, they will be able to make up their minds and make their free choice based on both arguments." Magneto suggested.

John gave a slight nod and pocketed his earpiece. "That seems fair. I will agree to whatever outcome comes of it, but the terms remain the same." He wondered if such a thing could happen - if his troops would demobilize thanks to a simple conversation. Would they call him traitor and try to oust him? Would they call him traitor for talking to their perceived enemy? In the end, he figured there was no harm in trying such a thing, and indeed many of those who now work with him would do better with another cause. Some however are more hardened - and it was they that worried him.

"It's done." Erik said, finishing the upload of the recordings from the phones, starting from the moment he had offered a drink earlier on and finishing just now with his suggestion to upload the recording. "We'll see what comes of it."

John assented with a simple nod and then stood up, turning towards the rear exit - which perhaps ironically was the entrance he came from. "You are free to go Konstantin, the staff will come by later and get the bar ready for business. Grab something for you and the others if you want." And with that, he left. He knew Magneto was not going to destroy the bar, but he himself needed some time to think.