Profile addy's fine. Tag's from Tomato Nation. She's a fucking hoot.

Sent.

I'm wondering, just glancing over it, if I oughtn't to go back to the last bit and add something about her using the music of the spheres. Because she experiences that the first day she ever walks into the Carolan, and that's what she'd be accessing with those four little bottles her dad left for her.

In fact, yes, I'm going to do that, but not until after I get thoughts and other edits.

Must check out Tomato Nation. That was extreme coffee spittage.

OMG - I finally caught up on this thread and all the amazing fic.

Deb, Connie, Steph, Plei...you are amazing. The way you nail the voices of the characters...I am in awe.

Deb - Needfire is amazing. And to find out you are in the Bay Area is an added bonus (not quite sure why, but nice to know you live near me).

This lurker is doing the snoopy dance!!!

Oops, thought this was the Bitches' thread!

Deb, Connie, Steph, Plei...you are amazing. The way you nail the voices of the characters...I am in awe.

Speaking for myself, THANK YOU!

And me likewise, with the thanks.

Lexine, so delurk, already. We're waving madly at you.

and I am bowing before you...

Hi, lexine. I know! Aren't they great?But they put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.

I put mine on two legs at a time. Or wear skirts.

I'm funny that way.

I'm calling this one "Magneto Dreams" for now. It's kind of a pendant story to the Wolverine one that FayJay did just a while ago 'cause I realized that you could come at some of the same material from a different perspective.

&&&

Erik Lensherr, who styles himself Magneto, waits every evening when guard shift changes to practice for his inevitable escape. He has every confidence that this will happen, whether on his own or perhaps through the good offices of Mystique, his most loyal lieutenant. He waits until the guards are ritualistically signing in and out. He has rote-learnt their conversations word for word and gesture for gesture. They are unimaginative men, stolid and righteous, not unlike the Nazis of his youth.

The guards take scrupulous care not to let metal near Magneto. All his dishes, utensils, trays are plastic, his wood-framed bed and furniture are held together with pegs, and his clear Plexiglas cell is suspended in the middle of a vast space, at a calculated distance from load-bearing metal girders and metal air-conditioning ducts, away from nails and screws and nuts and bolts, a million pieces of lethal potential.

But they underestimate how much metal is present in tiny things, like the staples in a magazine, or the eyelets on a visitor’s shoe. Magneto is devious, he simply removes one staple and leaves the rest, or else slims them down by removing a little steel all along their length. He’s accumulated enough for a small key or an improvised bullet. To beat the regular metal detector sweeps, Magneto has stretched it into a slim wire that he keeps tucked up between his lips and his gum, where the metal in his few fillings will disguise its presence.

Magneto long ago learned to thrive in captivity. Compared to the concentration camps, this is very nearly a luxury hotel. He would honestly blanche at the suggestion that he is habituated to institutionalization.

Magneto takes advantage of the guards’ inattention to practice extending his power. When he first arrived, he could barely feel along the perimeters of the giant outer cell – by design, Charles Xavier having been consulted as to the best method to imprison him. Through months of discreet practice, Magneto has increased his grasp by a good ten feet, not quite enough to control the automated systems that keep the doors locked and the communications with the outside world secure.

A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Magneto tells himself. He spends this evening tracing the control circuits that extend the plastic bridge to his cell. Moving the current from here to there will enable his escape; while Magneto can fly, suppressing the alarms while simultaneously overpowering the guards and overloading the door circuits will be a tad taxing.

Besides, there is a certain style involved in strolling out of his prison that he can’t entirely resist.

Magneto shifts in his cot to a more relaxed posture and bids sleep come. Next week will bring Xavier’s monthly visit, and he doubts he’ll be ready to move before that… unfortunate because he’ll have to be especially cautious when Charles probes. Magneto believes his Psi defenses have held against the gentle onslaught – how typical of Charles to assume that if mental rape is non-violent, it is not truly a rape.