The Hotel Plaza - Paris
The courtyard was absolute chaos.
Hank McCoy, fully transformed into the Beast, held Magneto underwater in a feral rage.
Nearby, Mystique staggered to her feet. Blood poured from the gunshot wound in her leg.
A deafening crack of displaced air shattered the noise.
"You three handle Eric," Azazel commanded.
"I'll secure Raven."
Azazel teleported directly behind Mystique, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Mystique shrieked, thinking Magneto had caught her.
"Don't be afraid, Raven," Azazel whispered, pulling her into a protective embrace.
"It's me. You're safe."
Meanwhile, the extraction trio moved with lethal precision.
They didn't use their mutant abilities, keeping their identities strictly concealed beneath Ernst's scaled, Sentinel-like tactical armor.
Angel and Riptide engaged their suits' kinetic enhancers, grabbing the Beast by the shoulders and hurling him backward.
Emma Frost waded into the fountain, dragging a sputtering Magneto from the water.
Magneto gasped for air. He looked up at the armored woman, taking in the alien scales and the narrow eye-slits.
Emma immediately stepped back, raising her hands in a non-threatening, silent gesture.
Seeing the other two armored figures subduing the Beast, Magneto realized they were allies. He offered a curt nod of thanks.
But the master of magnetism hadn't forgotten his mission.
His eyes locked onto Azazel and Mystique.
If Raven lived, Trask would harvest her DNA. The Sentinels would be born.
Magneto ripped a heavy steel rebar from the courtyard railing. He hurled it like a javelin, aiming to skewer them both.
"Behind you!" Mystique screamed.
Azazel spun around on pure instinct.
He ripped open a swirling blue wormhole. The steel bar vanished into the void, spat out into an unknown dimension.
"Eric, what are you doing?" Azazel roared.
"Why are you trying to kill us?"
"To protect our future, Raven must die," Magneto declared, his eyes cold with murderous intent.
"Step aside, or I will end you both."
Azazel shielded Mystique with his body.
"You disappoint me, Eric," Azazel growled.
"You named us the Brotherhood. We hoped for unity. Now you slaughter your own. You are not fit to lead."
Leaning against him, Mystique felt an overwhelming surge of security. In that moment, the demonic teleporter was her absolute savior.
"You don't understand the stakes," Magneto pleaded coldly.
"Limited sacrifices are necessary. It is the only way our kind survives."
"Enough," Azazel snapped.
"Our paths diverge here. If you want her, you go through me."
Negotiations were over.
Magneto raised his hands. Every scrap of loose metal in the plaza levitated, vibrating with lethal magnetic tension.
He unleashed a storm of shrapnel directly at them.
Azazel crossed his arms. A spherical, blue spatial barrier erupted around them.
The metal rained down, piercing the outer shell, but the shrapnel lost its momentum, hanging harmlessly in the warped space inches from their faces.
It was Azazel's turn.
He punched the air. A human-sized wormhole tore open in front of him.
Simultaneously, half a dozen spatial rifts opened in a tight perimeter around Magneto. Azazel thrust his fists through his portals, raining punches down on the mutant leader.
Magneto reacted instantly.
He shattered a manhole cover beneath his feet, wrapping the razor-sharp shards into a swirling defensive cyclone.
If Azazel kept punching through the portals, his arms would be shredded.
The Red Devil retracted his hands, snapping the wormholes shut.
Magneto escalated the violence.
He tore two massive, three-meter iron spheres from a nearby monument. He slammed them toward Azazel, crushing the spatial barrier.
BOOM.
The deafening impact sent a shockwave through the plaza, scattering the fleeing civilians.
Azazel's barrier groaned, webbing with glowing cracks, but it held.
With a violent sweep of his hand, Azazel conjured a massive rift.
One of the iron spheres was swallowed whole, dropped miles away into the freezing Atlantic.
Furious, Magneto reached out, beginning to rip the structural steel from the surrounding hotel.
Azazel didn't wait. He shattered the spatial mirror between them.
Jagged, invisible shards of fragmented space hurtled toward Magneto like a shotgun blast.
Recognizing the lethal threat of spatial tearing, Magneto slammed his remaining iron sphere down directly over the expanding cracks.
The sheer magnetic density disrupted the spatial frequency. The attack shattered harmlessly.
"Enough! Stop this at once!"
Emma Frost stepped between them, her voice mechanically altered by the tactical suit.
"What are you doing? Acting like children while our kind is hunted?" Emma shouted.
"This civil war ends now."
"You don't understand the timeline!" Magneto argued.
"I am trying to save millions. Help me, "
"Shut up," Emma commanded.
"We do not execute our own. We are retreating."
Azazel surveyed the ruined plaza. He had violated Shaw's orders to avoid direct conflict, but keeping Raven alive superseded everything.
Crack.
Azazel snapped his fingers. A glowing rift opened beside the extraction team.
"Go back," Azazel ordered the trio.
"I will secure Raven and find a medic. I will rendezvous with you later."
Relieved to avoid a prolonged war, Emma and the others stepped through the rift. It snapped shut behind them.
Magneto lowered his hands. He couldn't stop an apex teleporter who wanted to leave.
The assassination had failed.
But Magneto didn't notice the few drops of blue blood Mystique had left on the pavement.
The very catalyst for the Sentinel program.
Moments later, Charles Xavier and Logan rushed into the courtyard.
They found only ruin and Magneto.
Logan, overwhelmed by the chaos, entirely missed the brief appearance of Ernst's advanced tactical armor.
- - - - - -
Medical Bay - Unknown Location
With a flash of brimstone, Azazel and Mystique materialized inside a sterile, blindingly white room.
It was a secure medical bunker.
Azazel gently laid Mystique down on the crisp sheets of the central cot.
He moved to a glass biometric panel on the wall, pressing his thumb against the scanner.
"Doctor, report to emergency bay three," Azazel spoke urgently into the comms.
"I have a priority patient."
"Understood, Azazel. On my way," a calm voice replied.
Azazel turned back to the bed.
Mystique's blue scales were rippling. In seconds, the cobalt mutant dissolved into a flawless, blonde human woman.
Azazel frowned.
"Raven, you don't need to hide here," Azazel said softly.
"The doctor is a mutant. No one here will judge your true form."
Mystique offered a weak, tired smile from the pillow.
"I know," she whispered, her blonde hair fanning out across the sheets.
"But right now... this just makes people more comfortable."
Azazel sighed, adjusting the pillow beneath her head.
"If you insist," he murmured.
"Rest now. You're safe."
-------------
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