A SAGE ADRIFT - #20

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A SAGE ADRIFT

#20

“Are you seeing this? This is going too far!” Senator Robert Kelly barged into his home office where his contact from the Friends of Humanity was waiting for him.

The nameless mook stood up, trying to defend their organisation, “Senator Kelly, we can assure you, we are actively looking at options to try and curb this nonsense. I assure you that-”

“I don’t need your damn ASSURANCES!” Kelly shouted before sighing and sitting back in his seat. Even then, his cold eyes never left the representative, making him sweat.

“What I wanted from your organisation, in exchange for substantial legal immunity, was making this problem go away. Now, I have to deal with the disappearance of the Juggernaut all the while this is happening in the public,”

The representative stuttered, “S-Sir, we have been trying to locate,”

“Save it!” Kelly snapped.

“I made an active effort to shield your organisation because I was guaranteed that the problem would never spill over into the public domain. That was the only reason I had thrown my weight behind you. Now, I have multiple senators breathing down my neck because the organisation they had supported is now in the limelight. The CIA and the President are both curious about how a Grade A prisoner escaped the specialised facility made for him without anyone ever being the wiser.”

“And now this Frost woman. She is opening a school for mutants and giving out a public call for all mutants to join them. If that is not getting into the limelight then I don’t know what is.”

“S-Sir, we are on it, Sir. We are preparing to-”

“All the preparation in the world won’t get you anywhere if Charles Xavier and Magneto stand in your way and from what I have seen of the reports of that disastrous operation in Westchester County, there is someone new on the board who also has enough strength to threaten everything we have ever built.”

Before the representative could get a word in, Kelly picked up the report and threw it at the representative’s face.

“Now get out and tell your bosses that don’t come back to me unless you have some goddamn RESULTS!” 

Kelly breathed heavily as he watched the mook scramble out of his office, no doubt about to get punished by his superiors once he reached his base. He had no regret for that though.

He had gotten behind the Friends of Humanity for one thing and one thing only.

Total and Utter extermination of the freaks known as Mutants.

A goal that was both commendable and achievable because of the relative anonymity and wariness that the public had regarding the mutant phenomenon. They were still the “others” right now and once the common masses realised that mutants were even somewhat similar to them, the human rights pussies would hound him until there was no end in sight. 

He would be forced to resign and abandon all his ambitions if Emma Frost was successful in doing what she wanted to do. Bringing mutants’ plight to the public would have a disastrous result on his campaign.

He would much rather die than let that happen. First of all, he would have to do some damage control. Already, Kelly had to sacrifice a few of his trusted members to regain the trust of the congressional committee that was established to investigate into the alleged illegal detainment and subsequent torture and weaponisation of the mutants for private agendas.

Lending the Juggernaut to the group was a huge mistake but he had been rather gleeful about the possible chance of bringing down another mutant who could grow on to become as strong as Xavier or Magneto. How was he supposed to know that the mutant would defeat even that Giant with sheer physical might? That was supposed to be literally impossible.

He was told, repeatedly, by his analysts that the only way to stop Juggernaut once he gained momentum would be through taking out the ground from under him or through mental powers, neither of which was used to utterly defeat him to the point of unconsciousness by the new mutant.

Worse of all, he was now missing and with Xavier or even Frost having erased the memories of everybody involved in the incident, he had no concrete information on the new mutant aside from his name.

Naruto.

He was an unknown and he did not like unknowns. Not in his line of work where a single enemy could bring about ruin in his entire career. And this Naruto person seemed like exactly the sort of person who could go on to completely ruin his career for him.

“Send Gregory in,” He used the intercom to call in one of his more capable people into the office.

“What can I do for you, sir?” Gregory asked once he got inside. He liked that about him. Getting right to the point.

He threw a copy of the reports on the table in front of him, “I want you to track this Naruto and find out everything you can about him. Also, look for the school that this Emma woman has opened. I want ins and out of that school and look for ways we can bring it down. Time is of the essence. Go!”

Gregory was about to leave the office when he stopped him, “And Gregory?”

“Yes, sir?”

“If possible, dispose of this Naruto person. If not possible, bring back any weaknesses and report back to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Saying so, Gregory left the office.

He was left alone in the office, his thoughts swirling. He would have to get rid of this school first of all but that was made more difficult by the news of Frost INternational having secured multiple government and private projects for multiple countries. Contracts worth billions seemed to just fall into Emma Frost’s lap without her doing any of the work for them.

He could foresee her being the biggest problem for him in the future. If she managed to gain even a small foothold into the minds of the public, removing her would become infinitely harder, especially without any substantial support from the President.

In fact, he could foresee her providing jobs to the community and getting support for the mutants in return.

He had to stop her but how?

She was way too well connected and in the public spotlight for his usual methods. Even this Naruto person was probably with her as well. So was Juggernaut probably because if he had been in the hands of either Xavier or Magneto, he would have been back on the field by now.

Xavier would have handed him back to the government for detention once again. That man was really foolish and naively trusting of the government.

Magneto too would have also returned him back to the government’s custody but in a different way. He would have set him loose on the nearest base he could find and watched as the Juggernaut destroyed everything in the surrounding even as they struggled to bring him down.

That was the kind of man that Magneto was and honestly, he was one of the few reasons they could not do any overt movements regarding mutants because that man was one without mercy.

He would swiftly crush anybody that came in his way and while that did garner him an international reputation as a terrorist, it also tagged him with a DO NOT APPROACH tag that allowed him to remain largely independent without anybody actively targeting him.

His analysts, aside from the numerous reports they had gotten from the other governments, had predicted that should he wish, Magneto could probably cause irreversible damage to the planet’s magnetic shroud that helped life thrive on the planet. That would cause an extinction-level event that nobody wanted.

So, it was a consensus made by everyone and partially forced by S.H.I.E.L.D. itself that Magneto is not to be pushed into a corner. Otherwise, who knows what would happen if that madman decided to just end it all without caring about the consequences?

He had suspicions that S.H.I.E.L.D. was developing countermeasures for that but he had a sinking feeling that they were not very successful in that regard. If they were successful, they would not have had to resort to begging Xavier to step in whenever Magneto went too far.

He hoped that this Naruto did not get the same level of infamy as Magneto. Already, he had reports of S.H.I.E.L.D. spooks trying to get their hands on the reports his agents had made and it would not be long before Naruto himself was approached by the agency to either hire him or make a deal with him because he did not seem like a maddening rage type of person.

He had struck off the part of the report where it said that Naruto did his best to protect the people on the farm. He did not want even more people to get a positive impression of Naruto.

More and more people taking interest in him would make his job even harder and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Word Count - 1560

A/ n -I am not particularly happy with this chapter. Will try and improve.