The last month or two had been a radical transformation period for the Morlocks and while it could be agreed that quite some time has passed and they should have gotten used to it, the Morlocks had been in such a special case of poverty for so long—a few years for their youngest/newest members, and decades for the oldest—that they were still in their honeymoon phase for how drastically their lives had changed.
Swaths of clothes, warm blankets and even mattresses for some, crystal clear clean water, rounds of nutritious meals, fresh air from the purifiers, upgraded security, internet access and snacks! They now had occasional SNACKS!
And the biggest difference was the new avenue of freedom for those who chose to do away with their mutation. Because unlike what the media and public opinion might lead one to believe, not all mutants could control people or make cars fly with their minds. Not all of them could sneak into the White House and hold the President hostage.
Being a close knit community, they knew who and who had the most threatening mutations, and with special recommendations from their resident doctor, those people were advised to sell their mutations. In most cases they didn't even need the persuasion. The appeal to finally live as a normal human being was sufficient enough for them.
It did not need to be said that some of them decided they wanted to live above ground and Callisto kept to her word and let them leave, without their memories.
All in all, they were living pretty good lives.
But like the rules of the universe stated, no good thing lasts forever.
Their relative safety bubble was unfortunately a very important topic among groups that should have otherwise not been interested.
While most interested parties were content enough to watch from the sidelines for now, the same could not be said for those whom the Morlocks' decisions, or lack thereof, affected.
Callisto was aware of the growing interest but what she was not aware of was the scale. She knew the significance of a 'cure' to the mutant community but what she did not want was for the Morlocks to be at the spotlight for it.
That was also why she did not outright tell Mystique where to go for answers. If she had, someway or somehow, statements like 'the Morlocks were the first to get cured' 'the ones who made the shop known were a group of reclusive mutants' 'a group of mutants that live in the underground sewers got to him first' would start flying around within the first month because everyone loved a narrative.
They wouldn't want to put themselves in the spotlight when it eventually escalates. It was a stupid, curvaceous and illogical way of thinking, yes, but it was what convinced Callisto that she was right. Power groups, mutants and non-mutants, were all the same.
What she was doing by remaining mum and ignorant was not a stopgap method that would ensure the Morlocks remain unscathed, but it made its effect by showing others just how detached they were from the whole thing.
It wasn't exactly a logical thought, a bit naïve and baseless but when has power struggles ever been logical?
She wasn't stupid enough to think that she could go against Magneto if he really wanted to strong-arm her compliance. She could resist all she wanted, she would, but that did not ensure everyone's safety. Magneto and his propaganda of never hurting mutants could kiss her tush ass.
"The situation is getting worse. They don't know what is going on but they can feel it. Are you sure this is the best way to go about it?" Mikhail came up behind her and asked.
He was an intimidating mass of a man but Callisto just couldn't see it. Oh she knew that he was more powerful than her, after all she still remembered her intimate defeat, but she just couldn't see the danger.
'Probably why he's more dangerous than he feels.'
Right now, all his powerful frame radiated was concern for the other Morlocks. Whether it was because of his strength or morality, there was a competence about him that granted him the luxury to always worry about others before himself.
It was a good trait to have for someone that was looking after her Morlocks.
"How long is this going to go on for?" He inquired while looking at her with a chiding frown. "What are you trying to accomplish?"
Unfortunately, despite his staunch morals, he was a little naïve in how much he trusted people. Trusting Magneto just because he was a mutant and was also the loudest mutant voice up there was a fool's mistake.
"What else?" She scoffed derisively. "To make sure they all come out unscathed out of this."
"Then why not just tell them and get this over with? Isaac wouldn't mind."
Her scowl deepened. "I don't give two shits about the shop owner." She turned to him, one of her few displeasures about him showing on her face. "If I told Magneto right now where to go, do you think he'll tell everyone else interested?"
Mikhail mirrored her frown but his was consternation as opposed to her disdain.
"If I told him what he wants, do you think he would be so generous as to tell everyone else what he knows?" Her question left Mikhail stumped. A scenario was slowly forming in his head but Callisto did not let him have that mercy.
"And what do you think will happen then? When he probably asks—orders— us not to tell anyone else?" she dug deeper into his naiveté with spades of sheer mockery. "What will happen when everyone finally gets tired of being left out and they decide to copy Magneto? What do we do then? And what if it's government spooks? Maybe that's when we'll finally stand our ground and tell them no. And who knows, maybe they will take 'no' for an answer after we've given 'yes' to everyone else."
Her voice at the end had lost its cutting edge and had gained a soft and encouraging melody that amplified the disgust and mockery tenfold.
"…. You don't think…"
She scoffed. "There's no mutant messiah out there. There's no chosen one. There are good people and bad people, but there's no one who's 'appointed' to save mutantkind." She turned over and watched as the camp survived slowly. "It's ironic. Every time you hear mutants everywhere, even you, cry out that 'we're humans too' and then you conveniently forget that mutants are humans too. We're every bit as evil and self-serving as them."
Her eye spun haphazardly under the cloth, capturing every corner of their underground haven. Truly a useful thing to have.
The eye was a magical thing and so was the wrap of cloth that fed it trickles of magic, but with the eye connected to her head—by being inside her eye socket—it had the added effect of effusing trickles of mana into her brain and slightly boosting every perceptive organ—enhancing her already superhuman sight, smell, taste and hearing.
"You are a fool to think that they would put us before their ambitions. Mutant or not."
Even if she closed her eyes, she could make out vague shapes of everyone in the camp in her head. All her senses were being juiced and they were working overtime to send out and interpret information five times faster.
She had already gotten used to her newly-acquired echolocation ability, and while it was great, it wasn't the best thing she had discovered.
She had to hand it to Isaac because he knew what he was doing when he recommended the eye to her. Not only was the eye being boosted by her own superhuman sensory capabilities and sustained by the magic cloth, she had recently found out that the eye was some sort of focus/siphon and could actually use it to drain her other sensory abilities and use it to boost the eye to ridiculous levels.
She once tried it and drained her hearing and sense of taste to half of their capabilities and found that not only was her vision strengthened, like being able to zoom into bloodstreams, her range skyrocketed so ridiculous that she could perfectly see what was happening above ground halfway across the city.
That was an incredible ability to have, despite the drawback on her other senses, but that wasn't all she could do. With two of her senses drained halfway, the so-called Mad Moody's Eye was boosted to the point that she could now make visual predictions of people's next moves by focusing on the micro-contractions that were all over their body, which she could now see with perfect clarity.
She was already a great marksman, but now it was impossible for her to miss when she could zoom in on her target and even see wind currents.
If she was a great fighter before then she was outright scary now, as Mikhail had so dutifully proven in the last mock battle she coaxed out of him.
And all that came from draining two of her senses halfway. She doubted she would have been able to do this if her heightened sensory abilities weren't part of her mutation.
When she added her sense of smell and drained three of them, it wasn't that shocking when she discovered just how slowly everything was moving. Her brain was processing information so fast that every motion to her eyes appeared sluggish.
She didn't experiment with what would happen if she drained them fully, not because she was cautious but because of the drawback. Their resident doctor had explained it as doping or juicing up her brain power and that the migraines were because of the unnatural enhancements. Her enhanced recovery dealt with the worse of it so it wasn't that serious a drawback, more like a literal headache.
As for her little dagger, well, she had yet to see what it couldn't slice through. A single slash with enough heat turned reinforced steel to molten slag. The dagger was simply a cute wonder work.
"So what? We just wait for them to tire themselves out of their 'hospitality'?" Mikhail breathed hard for a moment. His muscles were coiled tight like a trapdoor while his expression settled hard like cooled glass.
She snorted, either because of Mikhail's words or because of the hapless kid that tripped on himself down below.
"It's a normal store in Queens. Who knows, maybe they'll find it without us getting into the mix."
"That would be setting them against Isaac." Mikhail pointed out.
"And?" She asked genuinely.
"You think Isaac is strong enough to say no?"
Callisto shrugged nonchalantly. "Either way I don't care. As long as it had nothing to do with us." She shifted a bit and glanced at him with half-lidded eyes. "Do you think he's strong enough?"
.
...…
Isaac frowned as the sneeze came in and left halfway, leaving his nostrils itchy and unfulfilled. Looks like someone was asking rhetorics about him.
"Is the weather getting to you too, Mr. Isaac?" Kitty Pryde looked up in concern from where she was looking through a collection of crowns.
"Nah, I'm fine. Someone's probably asking questions about me." Isaac said easily as he reclined on his chair while the group of teens wandered around his store.
A few chuckled at his reply but nevertheless kept going through whatever caught their eye.
As for why the gaggle of kids were over at his store? Apparently, Ellie had let it slip that 'he got some pretty cool retro stuff' and that had let them take permission from their boarding school to check out his store.
"Woah!" Every now and then reactions like that would ring out from different areas of his shop.
"Zadt's a knight's armor. It'z da genuine thing." Kurt softly exclaimed, drawing the attention of Evan, Bobby and Ellie to the muted red and gold armor that spotted roaring lions on its spaulders.
"Sick." Evan gaped in shock and wonder. "How does someone even get their hands on something like this? How come this is even in a pawnshop?"
"How did you get a full knight's armor, Isaac?" Ellie looked over to where Isaac was reclining while throwing nuts into his mouth and asked.
Isaac couldn't see the armor they were talking about but he knew which armor they were looking at.
"Got it from a knight in exchange for a way to save his life. Even got it for cheap. It only cost me a strong horse and a satchel full of food." He narrated half-heartedly as he popped another nut into his mouth. "It was one of my easiest acquisitions from that area."
The look of confusion that was growing on their faces swiftly into frustration.
"Come on man, you don't have to lie about everything just because we ask, you know." Evan grumbled in dissatisfaction as their inquiry was once again swindled.
"I don't lie, kid, least of all about my wares." His offhanded remark was met with rolling eyes and other forms of sarcastic comments.
"I can't even lie since they are all impressive. How did you even get the money to buy all this? They might have cost some serious dough." Bobby echoed his afterthought, earning dazed nods from the others as they walked past the rack of medieval weapons. "Why even open a pawnshop? Couldn't you like, dunno, auction them online instead of stressing yourself with a pawnshop?"
Isaac's reaction was an amused scoff. "You wouldn't understand the business, kid."
Yukio and Rogue came out from another corner of the shop after checking out different types of garments that felt magical to the fingers.
"Those garments were like magic! How did you even get things like that?!" Yukio exclaimed in childish excitement and even Rogue mirrored her expression, but in a more repressed and dull way.
Isaac chuckled. "I've got a lot of things, kid. Trust me when I say I've got pretty much anything you'd want. No matter how outrageous."
It was clear that they didn't really believe his boastful claims but that didn't stop their excitement as they sated their teenage curiosity.
"Whatever you do, don't open those magic books at the back." Isaac reminded them as he swerved to the left to catch a stray shot with his mouth.
"Is that a freaking cannon blaster?!"
––––––
.
Patreon.com/1stDepth
.
––––––