A/N: Prepare yourself for excessive italics. Sorry, it just sort of happened.

It had been nearly a year since Erik Lehnsherr had deflected that fateful bullet into the back of his dearest friend, Charles Xavier. It had been an accident (Charles stood up at the exact wrong moment), but Erik had flown into a rage, blaming Moira MacTaggert, the idiot who had thought metal bullets could possibly make a difference against him.

(Had she been paying attention at all this whole time?)

When he found out that Charles had wiped her memory of them all, he had almost flown into a rage once more. She had shot the bullet that had paralyzed Charles, yet she could forget about it, about him. Erik was not so lucky, let off the hook so easily. He had to remember the pain his very best friend had been in, the broken, "I can't feel my legs, Hank," he had heard as Azazel teleported them all away, the sick feeling that had slithered down and settled for all eternity in the back of his mind, settled into the space where all his regrets resided. Oddly enough, Charles rested right beside memories of his Mama, the one person he had promised to love unconditionally for ever and always.

For now, though, there was no time for anger towards the naive young professor or the annoying little CIA agent. Right now, mutants were disappearing, and not only the ones on his side. He had been keeping track of the disappearances whenever he heard about them, but he had kept hitting brick walls of government bullshit and misdirection.

However, he now had a lead. It seems that every mutant that had gone missing had had a very public exposure of their gifts, and then a few hours later, they were visited by 'odd men in suits', he was told.

So here he was, standing in the middle of one of the busiest streets in New York City, surrounded by humming metal and oblivious humans. He let the feeling wash over him for a calm moment (the calm before the storm, he could almost hear Charles mutter, rolling his eyes playfully), before reaching out with his powers and seizing the vibrating metal and thrusting it out. He heard the screams, and smiled with far too many teeth as he yanked buildings apart and threw the sheets and rods through the street, hitting any cars, buildings, or people in his way. Growing bored quite quickly, Erik reached out and started constructing a small tower that he could set himself atop. It was situated right in the middle of the street, so he wouldn't be hard to find.

Once he was finished, he floated himself up to the top and sat, waiting for these odd men in suits to arrive and cart him off, hopefully to the same place they had taken Angel and Azazel earlier in the month. Raven was nearly beside herself, with both her boyfriend and her best friend missing, snatched right off of the street. She had practically demanded that Erik bring them back whole and safe right now, or he would be in extreme pain. Erik had never been one to argue with extremely pregnant hormonal women, because he wasn't quite that stupid, so he had done as she said, and here he sat. Woman eight months pregnant were just downright terrifying.

And, right on time, there stood two suit-clad men, looking up at his tower and then smirking up at him. "Hello, sir! Do you think you could come down here, so we could speak for a moment?" one of them shouted up politely, and Erik raised an eyebrow, wondering how many idiots they had caught with an introduction like that. But, he was pretending to be one of those idiots, and he wanted to be captured, so he nodded demurely and floated on down to stand in front of the two men, who looked suspiciously like government agents, and tried not to let the dog tags he could feel around their necks tighten so he could choke them for their impertinence.

"And who might you be, sir?" the first one asked, smiling slightly in a friendly manner. Erik instantly went on edge, knowing a mask when he saw one, but on the outside he seemed just the same. This man knew how to put on masks, but Erik's were better.

"I'm Erik," he said calmly, inclining his head slightly, then turned and looked about the street as if he couldn't care less that the two agents standing in front of him were stealthily reaching for something small and sharp and metal in their pockets. He had to physically stop himself from rolling his eyes in exasperation. Honestly, if the other mutants were taken down by men like these, who were stupid enough to use something they knew the mutant before them could harness against them, then the mutants deserved to have been kidnapped.

"Well, Erik, I'm afraid you'll need to come with us. There's someone who would like to meet you very much." The man had started out calm and friendly, but by the end he had grown ferocious and threatening, a smile full of teeth and malice as he shoved a tranqilizer right into Erik's neck. Erik met the man's eyes as he fell to the ground. He felt fear as well as a deep satisfaction that his plan had worked out so well. And then his face made contact with the concrete, and his last thought was ground out bitterly, you could have at least caught me.