Magneto and Professor X

This was a military base. The buildings visible aboveground looked unremarkable, but the underground facility was several times larger than what lay above. It seemed to have been converted from a missile silo.

At that moment, a massive glass room hung suspended in the center of the base, where missiles had once been launched. Within a hundred meters of it, there was not a single piece of metal.

Beneath the glass room was a device resembling a sonic emitter. It could generate a special force field. Although it could not completely suppress Magneto's powers, it could weaken them considerably.

Otherwise, trapping Magneto with nothing but a glass room would have been far too difficult.

And the person who had provided this device was none other than Magneto's old friend, Professor X.

A passage opened at that moment and slowly connected to the glass room. Professor X wheeled himself over to Magneto.

"Erik, I've come to see you."

"You know you're not welcome here, Charles." Magneto did not even look up as he toyed with the chess pieces in his hand. Naturally, they were made of glass.

"But I came anyway." Professor X stopped in front of Magneto.

As he fiddled with the pieces, Magneto suddenly raised his head. "Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night, worried that those unjust laws will harm you and your descendants?"

"Of course I do." Professor X glanced at Magneto and nodded.

"Then what do you do after you wake up?" Magneto continued pressing him.

"I pity the ignorant, and those..." Professor X paused, then deliberately glanced at Magneto. "Those who provoke others."

Bang! Magneto threw down the chess piece and stared at Professor X.

"I really don't know what you're doing here."

"You know perfectly well. I'm here to show you hope." As he spoke, Professor X turned his gaze outside the glass room, toward Lu Yifang, who was leaning against a corner and staring blankly.

"Yifang. All right, he may be one. His ability is truly perfect—powerful and fascinating. Even without unlocking his full potential, he has already reached this level. So this is what a Level 5 mutant is." Magneto watched Lu Yifang, his eyes filled with admiration.

"I think Yifang should let me teach him. Only I can truly help him achieve greatness."

"You know that's impossible, because you can only destroy him."

"I would destroy him? You should be the one to destroy him!" Magneto became agitated at once.

"You're a docile sheep, and all you can teach are more sheep. Look at Jean Grey. What have you done? You turned a Level 5 mutant into a little girl who only knows how to play house at school. Do you want to do it all over again?"

This was the point of greatest conflict between Magneto and Professor X. Professor X wanted to build a bridge of communication between mutants and ordinary people. But in Magneto's view, endless dialogue and goodwill could not win mutants legal rights. Instead, they would only suffer more discrimination. At a time like this, they had to stand up and resist. Only by making others feel their pain and experience their strength would those people patiently communicate with them.

"Jean's powers are flawed. She can't control her abilities the way Yifang can. All she brings is destruction, not hope." Professor X growled.

"Charles, we need to show our claws and let those people know what we're capable of, so they won't dare offend us again." Magneto continued unwillingly.

"So you created the Liberty Island incident. You nearly ruined everything. Is that what you wanted?"

"I..." Faced with Professor X's direct hit on the heart of the matter, Magneto froze for a moment, and his expression immediately darkened.

"I have to admit, that machine was a mistake." Even proud Old Magneto eventually backed down. His goal was to secure legal rights for mutants and even gradually replace humanity, completing the evolutionary leap of the human race.

But if he killed everyone in New York, it would turn mutants and ordinary people into irreconcilable enemies. The ultimate result would be the destruction of everything, and that was not what Old Magneto wanted to see.

"How are things outside now?" Magneto raised his head and looked at Professor X.

"Things are progressing fairly well. After Mystique escaped Liberty Island, she disguised herself as Senator Kelly and publicly opposed the Mutant Registration Act. Combined with your aggressive actions on Liberty Island, this made the government consider the act more cautiously. It has now been temporarily shelved." Professor X explained.

"Oh. That may be the best news I've heard since entering prison."

"Erik, although I don't like your methods, I have to admit that they can be quite effective sometimes." Professor X hesitated before saying this to Magneto.

"But you sent me to this hellhole and helped them improve the methods they use to imprison me." Magneto held the chess piece and looked at Professor X with an amused expression.

"Erik, I had no choice. I needed to give them an explanation and make them understand that mutants are merely discontented, not trying to declare war! They won't kill you so easily, because only you can control the Brotherhood's mutants and keep them from acting recklessly." Professor X explained helplessly.

"Give it a rest, Charles. You don't need to explain. You and I both understand that I never blamed you." Magneto tossed away the chess piece and spoke with an indifferent expression.

He understood his position and Professor X's perfectly well. Among the mutants, someone had to play the bad cop, just as they needed him to play the good cop.

"Charles, do you think mutants really have a future?" After a brief silence, Magneto's expression suddenly darkened. He looked like a dying old man, not the fearsome Magneto.

Magneto was a true fighter. He had struggled for mutant rights for more than half a century, but when he came to his senses, he realized that he was still standing where he had started, no closer to his ideals than before.

Although he did not know the tragic fate that awaited mutants in the future as Lu Yifang did, his experience accumulated over more than half a century allowed him to deduce that the mutants' future was far from bright.

Old Magneto continued fighting. He would never stop unless death claimed him. But Old Magneto was truly desperate. That desperation sometimes even made him want to launch a real war, so that mutants and ordinary humans would destroy each other and everything would be over.

"Erik, I don't know whether I'll live to see true hope, but I will never give up searching and trying. I hope you'll do the same." As Professor X spoke, he controlled his wheelchair and left the glass room.