Magneto was far from the only mutant who fought. Albion was their home, and they weren't scared of getting their hands dirty to defend it; neither were they afraid of risking their very lives for it.
Because the many mutants who called Albion home all knew that it was far more than that.
They all understood that Albion represented hope.
The future.
Whether it was Magneto's dream of a true mutant nation, or simply what they had now, everyone understood that if Albion fell, their kind would have no future; they would once more be hunted down like dogs.
And so, they were ready to turn into vicious guard dogs for their home.
While coastal towns were heavily protected by Enforcement Knights due to how vulnerable they were, not every settlement along the coast was.
Over the years, countless people had settled right beside the sea: once out of necessity, as people who lived off the waters had to live close to them, and later, many people chose to live there for the views.
After all, living right next to the sea did offer beautiful sunsets.
However, whether they were smaller towns or villages, they dotted the coastline all over.
Most had been evacuated, but not all.
And even then, they couldn't shield the entire population inside Camelot, nor did they have time to move everyone that far.
Many only managed to move toward a slightly larger town a little farther inland.
These places were numerous and very vulnerable; the coastlines nearby had few Enforcement Knights, so it was these places the Sentinels reached.
Owen Fletcher had once joined the Brotherhood of Mutants, not truly because he believed in all the Homo superior talk, but because he wanted to make a difference.
Though he really wasn't cut out for fighting, not because he couldn't. He was, in fact, rather suited to it thanks to his unique mutation, but because he didn't like killing others.
Like most people, he had grown up learning that killing was bad, and one didn't simply change after being taught that from the day they were born.
Not unless there was something seriously wrong with them.
Or they had undergone some serious lessons later in life that knocked the empathy out of them.
Owen understood well that this was what had happened to their leader, Magneto; he wasn't some cold-blooded monster. He had been born a good person; the world had simply made him into what he became.
It was because he understood that that he joined the Brotherhood.
And it was while working with them that he got his new name.
He always called it a codename, even if others inside the Brotherhood took it far more seriously.
He was Bastion.
Named so because he preferred to protect others, and because his mutation allowed him to do just that.
When called upon to fight these machines, he didn't hesitate at all, because he disliked killing people, but machines? He had no resistance to killing as many as came.
The small, idyllic town of Bodmin, with its rich history, eerie legends, and striking natural landscape, was a quiet and peaceful place.
Or it usually was.
Today, however, the entire town found itself surrounded by strong stone walls. They looked ancient, but the ground was still disturbed from their creation.
Three Sentinels had broken through, their path leading them straight toward this place.
They had no idea that this small town had become a fortress.
Bastion stood on the wall, looking out at the approaching machines. His power was not one of direct destruction; he could not hurl fire or lightning or tear metal apart.
His gift was of a different, more subtle, but no less potent nature.
Bastion's ability was to shape materials into structures. He could pull stone from beneath his feet and will it into shape.
This could be used to generate massive stone armor around his body, allowing him to fight directly, but that wasn't its main use.
No, that was using it to shape stone into shields and buildings; he could make an entire fortress appear in hours, and large, strong stone walls in even less time.
Something that served him well in the construction business, but today, it would once again be used for its original purpose: to defend.
The Sentinels, their red eyes scanning the town, registered the sudden appearance of the walls as a high-priority anomaly.
They paused, their collective network processing the new information, calculating the structural integrity of the fortifications, assessing the best method of breaching them.
It didn't take a whole lot of computer power to figure out that walls were far less effective when you could simply fly over them, but Bastion never planned on stopping them like that.
He wasn't that dense.
No, as the Sentinels rose higher into the air, he cracked a slight smile because he knew his job here was done.
Because Albion was home to over a million mutants, so when you saw one, the next wouldn't be far away.
Aiden Price was another mutant, one who had been born on this land before it was called Albion. His mutation wasn't anywhere near as flashy as Owen's, but that didn't mean it couldn't play a major role.
His power, in simple terms, was electromagnetic bursts.
Nothing like what Magneto did—more like EMP effects, electronic disruption, and radar interference.
It was thanks to him that the Sentinels, despite all their advanced technology, still didn't realize the trap they were about to slam into.
Seeing the Sentinels rise into the air, fully exposed with no cover around them, he looked to the side and nodded, giving the final member of their ambush the signal.
Sofia Moreau, also known as Glasswing, nodded back.
She took a deep breath, calmed her shaking hands, and stepped out from the cover she was hiding behind.
With a clear line of sight, the Sentinels instantly spotted her; no amount of interference could block that.
Yet she wasted no time in acting; she kicked off from the top of the wall and jumped.
And as she did, crystal wings appeared on her back.
Despite crystal not really being a material suitable for wings or flight, the powers of mutants didn't always make much sense.
And so, she flew as if gravity had decided she didn't exist.
Right behind her, Aiden, or Pulse as he liked to be called, also made his move.
As Sofia flew up, catching their attention with her almost angelic beauty, he stepped out and released his powers, all of them, while their weapons locked onto her.
It was like a lightning storm made of pure electronic disruption, and it slammed into the three Sentinels, causing their systems to instantly go haywire.
Their screens turned to static, their communication links went dead, and their processors were flooded with garbage data.
It was the perfect window of opportunity.
Their systems were unable to activate their anti-mutant fields, so Sofia was in no danger of suddenly falling from the sky, nor did she need to fear their weapons, as their targeting systems had failed completely.
So Sofia flew right past the three machines, seemingly doing nothing, but as her wings flapped, small crystal fragments broke off them and stuck to the machines.
Under the light of the sun, the metallic Sentinels suddenly started to shine as though they had been covered in glitter or gemstones.
It was beautiful.
Yet it was a beauty that could only be appreciated by organic beings.
After landing on the metal, the crystal quickly began to grow, consuming it like a powerful acid to fuel its own expansion.
And the larger it grew, the faster it spread.
Exponential growth was truly a terrifying thing.
The Sentinels, for all their power, for all their advanced technology, were helpless.
They tried to fight back, their systems rebooting, their emergency protocols kicking in.
But it was too late.
The crystal had already taken root, its insidious growth spreading through their internal systems, severing connections, disrupting circuits, and shattering their cores from within.
Their movements became jerky, their bodies trembling as the crystal spread, a beautiful, crystalline cancer that consumed them from the inside out.
And then they simply... stopped.
They didn't explode. They just fell, and as they touched the ground, they shattered into billions of tiny crystal shards.
The trap had worked perfectly.
Owen forced them higher into the air using his walls, allowing Aiden to easily hit all of them and, in turn, giving Sofia the chance she needed; plus, the elevation meant the wind helped spread her crystal dust before its effective period ended.
On their own, none of them could face even a single Sentinel, but working together, they had taken down three of them without breaking a sweat.
Fully demonstrating the power of teamwork, where the power of one plus one plus one didn't necessarily equal three.
Sometimes, it equaled ten.
They weren't the only ones. All across Albion, similar fights were taking place.
Not all of them were as successful; not all of them ended with the mutants' victory.
Some failed, and the mutants paid the price with their lives.
But for each failure, there were a dozen successes, a testament to the strength, the courage, and the sheer, unyielding spirit of the mutants of Albion.
They were not just fighting for their lives; they were fighting for their future, for the dream of a world where they could live in peace, without fear, without persecution.
A dream that was now, more than ever, within their grasp.
(End of chapter)
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