Erik was sure of one thing the moment his gaze settled properly on the man standing in the middle of his office as though this were merely another Tuesday and not a security insult of the first order.
Lucius Noctis was built like a problem.
Tall did not begin to cover it. He was a great deal taller than most men had any business being, broad through the shoulders, heavy with muscle, and carrying the whole thing with the relaxed ease of someone who had never once worried whether a doorway could object to him. Black hair, pale eyes, and a perfect face to make charm look deliberate rather than accidental completed the package.
Other than the fact that he was the size of a minor siege engine and had apparently walked into the most secure Brotherhood headquarters on the continent without giving a damn about its so-called secret nature, there were no issues at all.
Erik stepped forward anyway and offered his hand.
"Erik Lehnsherr. Leader of the Brotherhood."
Lucius took it in a firm clasp and answered with the sort of smile that managed to look friendly while promising nothing.
"A pleasure." His grip held a second longer than required. "I do hope we continue to have a fruitful relationship. I dislike being burdened by owed favours, which is why I sent a little goodwill with your lovely emissary."
While the pleasantry sat between them, Lucius's attention had already gone to work. The handshake gave him enough contact to read the X Gene in proper detail. Magnetism was more than talent. Field control, metallic authority, a body wired to treat iron, steel, and every magnetic alloy as though the world had been kind enough to leave him a second nervous system in the ground beneath his feet.
Useful and beautiful in its own way.
He let the hand go before the pause grew awkward.
Then he turned to Raven.
Tonight, she wore the same human face if she did not have the unique mutation of shape shifting. Lucius extended his hand, palm up.
"It is always a delight to see beauty arrive before the introductions are finished."
Raven gave him a look that carried both suspicion and long experience, then placed her hand in his anyway. Lucius bent just enough to brush a light kiss over her knuckles.
"Though I still prefer the original," he added.
That earned him the smallest twist at the corner of her mouth.
She let the human guise drop at once. Blue skin returned. Yellow eyes settled on him without hurry.
"I noticed you've changed since our last encounter."
Lucius glanced down at himself as though the matter might still be under review.
"Did you now?" He looked back at her. "How can you be certain this is not my natural form and the other one was merely something less alarming for the puny little humans?"
Erik's eyebrow rose. Raven's stare sharpened with interest rather than disbelief. With Lucius, either answer was annoying enough to be true.
Erik gestured towards the armchairs by the side of the room.
"Sit, please."
Lucius did. Erik took the chair opposite him without wasting time on dominance games that only worked on less secure men. Raven stepped out and returned with two glasses balanced in one hand, which she set down on the low table between them.
Lucius lifted his hand with telekinesis.
With a small flick of the fingers, over two dozen vials of Strengthening Potion appeared on the table in two neat rows.
"A gift of goodwill, Mr Lehnsherr," Lucius said. "Or would you prefer Magneto?"
Erik looked at the potions first, "Erik will do." He picked up the whisky instead of a vial, took one measured swallow, and set the glass down again. "I am curious, however, what exactly earned us this visit."
Lucius mirrored the gesture with his own drink, though his eyes never really left Erik.
"Nothing dramatic. I wanted to meet the group who protested my treatment at SHIELD's hands personally. That sort of support deserves acknowledgement. And do call me Lucius."
Erik nodded once.
"Here, you have the core members only."
There was meaning in that line. It was not a threat, and not quite trust either, but a statement of structure about who mattered, who did not, and who would be allowed into the next room of the conversation.
Lucius appreciated that.
Erik set the glass down and leaned back into the chair with the ease of someone who could have all the metal in the room moving at a thought and therefore had no need to perform confidence.
"When you're ready," he said.
Lucius took another sip and rose slowly, the movement deliberate enough to feel polite and heavy enough to remind both mutants in the room that politeness from him was not a concession.
Raven was already turning towards the door.
"I'll gather them."
She left first.
-
By the time Lucius and Erik came down the last flight of stairs into the central hall, around sixty Brotherhood members had gathered in a loose formation below the catwalks and lighting strips.
The moment Lucius and Erik appeared, the room shifted its attention upward.
One figure in particular immediately drew Lucius's eye.
Jamie Madrox stood near the front in that strange overdesigned suit of his, padded, segmented, and faintly ridiculous in the way certain tactical costumes became once nobody stopped to ask what they were protecting against. A heartbeat later, several of the men beside him moved towards him and were absorbed back into his body one by one.
The duplicates did not vanish in smoke or flash. They folded into him with a violent little hitch of reality, one body sinking into another as if the skin had briefly decided to become a door. Each merge landed with a physical jolt, a kinetic reconciliation. The extra mass, motion, and impact returned to the original, feeding it back into the single Jamie as a change dropped into a machine.
Lucius recognised him at once as Multiple Man. His gift was kinetic duplication, which meant every strike, shove, or impact on his body could throw off another full duplicate, and each duplicate could act independently before being reabsorbed with memory and momentum carried back in. Irritating to fight and potentially useful to own.
When the last duplicate folded home, six core figures remained standing apart from Erik and Lucius.
Raven stood first, naturally. Mystique needed no explanation by this point.
Sabertooth stood like a brawl given fur and sentience, massive, feral, and visibly impatient with a civilised posture. He carried enhanced strength, brutal reflexes, predatory senses, claws meant for tearing rather than show, and the sort of healing that encouraged bad habits in violent men.
Pyro stood a little left of him, thin-faced and smug, his hands never entirely still. He could not create flame, which was an important humiliation, but once fire existed, he handled it like a musician with an instrument and a superiority complex.
Juggernaut looked as if someone had built a prison wall into a man and then taught it profanity. Monumental strength, absurd durability, and enough momentum behind a charge to turn architecture into opinion. Crude, direct, and difficult to stop once moving.
Mastermind stood farthest back, neatly dressed and quiet-eyed. His talent was the opposite of Juggernaut's. No spectacle in the body. All danger in the senses. Illusions, perception tampering, false environments, false faces and falser truths. A civilised man's treachery if civilisation had ever been honest about itself.
Erik let the silence hold just long enough, then he looked across his people.
"Allow me to introduce Lucius Noctis."
The name moved through the chamber in subtle reactions rather than noise. A few of the younger ones stiffened. A couple of the older ones merely watched more closely. Pyro looked openly interested. Sabertooth looked as if he was deciding whether Lucius might bleed entertainingly. Madrox's greed sharpened. Mastermind gave nothing away, which made Lucius mark him more carefully.