While the New Mutants were out sight-seeing and Wanda was giving Peter a tour of Genosha, Logan followed Magneto into his palace. Magneto clearly understood Logan's personality, so with a wave of his hand, a hole appeared in the marble floor of the main hall, like ice melting in hot water. The displaced metal floor transformed into a staircase that continuously descended underground. Logan glanced below, wondering why Magneto was being so dramatic.
But he still followed Magneto down the stairs.
"I know you have many questions, Logan. You are welcome to ask them. I will not refuse to answer you."
Magneto spoke as he descended the steps. Logan frowned. He indeed had many questions, but for now, he needed to address the most pressing one.
"Are you sure the Genetic Trimming Device is safe?"
"Yes, you will see it shortly. It is stored alongside other items that require preservation."
Other items that require preservation?
In his confusion, Logan had a very bad feeling. As they continued their descent, a completely unexpected behemoth appeared in his sight—the massive head of a Sentinel robot, over fifty meters high. After a moment of shock, Logan's reaction was fury: "You stored the Master Mold beneath your nation? A Sentinel manufacturing factory, programmed to kill all mutants, you placed it under the feet of sixteen million mutants?!"
"Trask mastered the technology to analyze the X-Gene without requiring a DNA sample, and the Master Mold is the only means to achieve this gene detection on such a massive scale. We use it as an essential tool for identifying lawbreakers. You need not worry about it, Logan. We have reprogrammed it. It is no longer an enemy of mutants. Moreover, as powerful as the Master Mold is, she is still just a piece of metal."
That familiar confidence and arrogance once again surfaced in Magneto's voice. Logan frowned and continued to advance, but the continuously appearing objects made his eyes widen: the wreckage of drones developed by Hammer Industries that once appeared at the Stark Expo, and Chitauri weaponry from the Battle of New York—in vast numbers. These pieces of equipment were meticulously stacked by the thousands.
Not to mention the sheer quantity of ordinary military-grade armaments.
"You plan to start a war?!"
"Start a war? If I intended to start a war, I could have done so long ago. I spent the last few decades doing just that, waging war on humanity. But after Charles' death, I realized something: it's meaningless."
Magneto looked at Logan, directly refuting his speculation: "Do you remember William Stryker, Logan? His hatred for mutants reached the level of wanting to eradicate them, and the source of this hatred was nothing—his family was not harmed by mutants, his friends did not die because of mutants. Even when he and his wife had a mutant son, it didn't eliminate his hatred; it only intensified it."
"Mutants do not need to prove to the world that they are a superior race, Logan. Humans realized this long ago. And I don't need to bring them fear; they will generate it all by themselves."
Logan had no intention of listening to Magneto's rhetoric. He pointed directly at the massive pile of weapons and the Master Mold, capable of infinitely creating Sentinel robots: "Then what are these things? Are they contraband weapons you seized under regulation? Does Genosha have a gun ban?"
"These are for war, Logan."
"You just said you aren't planning to start a war."
"I am preparing for war, not preparing to start a war." Magneto finally revealed his plan: "Imagine what people would think when a man who can terrify the world with just a dozen mutants declares his plan to establish a peaceful nation? What did you think? What will everyone think when this nation boasts a population of over ten million mutants?"
"What will everyone think when this nation continuously supplies mercenaries to war-torn regions? Purely to earn money, of course."
Magneto smiled, looking at Logan. What would happen?
A war would happen.
"In the past, most mutants wouldn't fight back, despite the discrimination they faced, because they could get by. They could survive. Because for a massive population of nearly twenty million mutants, those human experiments, massacres, and tragedies were so few in number and so far away."
"But what if I first give mutants a utopia? Then, humanity declares war on Genosha. Every mutant will realize that humanity will not permit mutants to live. At that point, sixteen million mutants will become warriors fighting for their own survival. And since humanity started the war first, no one will ever believe that humans and mutants can coexist peacefully. It will only be a matter of one side eliminating the other."
Charles Xavier believed in humanity, believed that mutants and humans had a reason to move forward hand-in-hand, right up until his death.
Erik Lehnsherr once did not believe in humanity, believing that humans and mutants were destined to be unable to coexist peacefully. For this reason, he always advocated for striking first—until Charles died.
He still hasn't changed his mind, but he has put down his weapon, handing the gun to humanity and waiting for them to fire the first shot.
He is certain humanity will fire the first shot.
"What if war doesn't come, Magneto?"
Logan walked up to Magneto and stared at him. Magneto maintained his smile: "Are you hoping for war, Wolverine?"
"I'm asking for your plan."
"I will start with the countries that don't discriminate against mutants. For example, Africa or India, where they believe mutants are incarnations of the gods. Or Russia and the East, where they don't believe in that idea. Mutants can obtain legal rights just like other citizens. I will encourage them to marry, have children, and leave behind more descendants locally. When these countries have more and more mutants—superior mutant scientists, mutant armies, mutant politicians..."
"The side that lags behind will either launch a war or change itself to catch up."
And either way, Magneto wins.
Only one question remained to be answered.
"What if you lose, Erik?"
Logan called Magneto by his first name for the first time: "What if you lose this war that you are so confident you will win?"
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