Vallo seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Rogue didn’t exactly understand everything that was happening, but she’d seen the effect of the loss of magic on those she worked with and some of the buildings in town by then too. The fact that magic was what made up the world they were living in meant the destruction of it was a bit more worrying than when it had blipped in and out a few other times in the past. She remembered people losing bits of their magic here and there when Vallo did something weird, but it had never been like this before.
Those instances had been small inconvenient annoyances, something muttered about when she was getting her daily coffee or going for a job in the park. This was different. There was a sense of foreboding now, of fear that had crept through the city and it only seemed to be steadily increasing. The natives were scared, but they weren’t bitching about the waypoints having brought in some new creature to be dealt with. There were whispers of something else, something ancient and native to Vallo.
She doubted that even Genosha would be a safe haven for very long. So this time she didn’t take Anka Irene away from the crazy, not with how many seemed to be in need of help now. Especially with most of the magic users out of commission. And with Ferris being around, they at least had an indestructible robot nanny to take care of Anka Irene.
Which was why when Rogue had heard over the radio that there was something happening at the zoo, she’d suggested to Erik that they head over to help. The last thing anyone needed was those animals escaping and needing to be rounded up with everything else going on.
It felt as if it had been awhile since something catastrophic happened - thus, Erik believed they were due. He wasn’t certain what he could do to help with whatever was causing this since it seemed very widespread and there was no mapped plan for a solution yet (he was trying to stay calm too, given everything going on with Wanda and the twins). But he could help mitigate the damage done while a solution was being worked out - it likely wasn’t going to be a magical one, however. Not if magic as a whole was beginning to malfunction, more things going wrong than right.
Rogue’s idea to suit up and head out to see what temporary problems they could avert was a good one - and Erik was more than willing to do that. He donned the armor he had here in Vallo, telepathy-blocking helmet included, plus gloves and sturdy boots - and then was flying toward the zoo that was in trouble. It was a place meant to educate the general public about the different animals, and manage any populations that were threatened - a few species were, even in Vallo, as this was always the case; but the animals were well-cared for and he and Rogue had taken Anka Irene here a few times. Erik would hate to see the place destroyed.
In the forest, he could tell right away that the wards that had been protecting the zoo were no longer working - there were flashes of multicolored illuminations, colors that couldn’t seem to decide what they were; and animals ran loose, from horses with white feathers sleek as a swan’s to large red cats that appeared to be scraggly, until they burst into flames and a phoenix would emerge from the burnt ashes. There was chaos and calamity and they would certainly have their work cut out for them.
“Let me reach out and see what metal I can sense - pull pieces around to make a new gate,” he suggested. “You may have to herd some escaped animals back?”
Getting a new gate up would definitely help make a dent in the escaping animals. Hopefully there was enough metal nearby to be able to do that, but Rogue had a feeling there would be. It could be found in some of the weirdest places and if needed should be easy enough to gather from the city if the amount of it in the forest was limited.
“On it,” Rogue told him before heading off and up into the air.
The animals that had magic to them like the phoenix seemed to be doing worse than those whose appearances were only their outlier. The few cats that she’d learned would eventually change into the mythical bird looked exhausted, as if every movement that they tried to do took out far more energy than was worth the effort. They also seemed to be fraying around the edges as if their very existence was in peril, about to be sucked into some kind of void that she couldn’t make out.
She headed toward the escaped Bedlington lambs--somehow a cross between a lion and a sheep--that were trying to run from the confines of their former home. Rogue pulled on Ororo’s wind manipulation from deep within her, letting her synapses rewire themselves so she had access to the knowledge to utilize that particular power. It all happened in nanoseconds as she called on the air around her to alter, blocking the Bedlington lambs' escape and herding them back toward the enclosure where they were usually kept. An actual fence was going to need to go up until the wards that usually kept them in place around the enclosure could be reinstated.
On his end, Erik focused - he could use actual metal, but he could also make magnetic force fields using energy; they were similar to wards, in a sense, but his shields wouldn’t falter because they weren’t a result of magic. They were the result of him concentrating - he closed his eyes and connected with the metal in the earth, the ground beneath his feet; iron, nickel, titanium, cobalt. Many others he could work with.
Then, with a flex of his hands, he brought them all up into twisting spirals - dirt and debris scattered, circling in a cone shape before deviating outward. They formed barriers, combined with magnetic energy that was always present in the atmosphere - the shield began extending, rippling up and over. If he could form a dome around the zoo, that would likely be the most efficient - then there would need to be smaller barriers put up on the inside, to prevent any scared animals from escaping and going places they shouldn’t.
He could feel the thrum and pulse of the energy that sizzled out from him and over his skin, down to his bones and in every muscle - but with enough of a push from him, the dome held steady.
Erik took off and looked for Rogue after that, finding her by the lambs. He pulled at any other metal he could sense - more in the ground, any smaller pieces that he could re-shape to make something bigger - in order to construct a makeshift fence. “Those are cute,” he heard himself saying and then winced because, ugh. He was well beyond ‘soft’ and had crossed over into ‘I have a toddler who makes me watch Disney cartoons all the time.’
“I put a dome up over this place - it should hold. But on the inside, there are definitely animals that shouldn’t mix - “ And it seemed like in an enchanted zoo, everything was warded off by magic, “...so I’ll follow you.”
She grinned at his use of the word cute. They were one of Anka Irene’s favorite animals so she’d spent many occasions standing around and letting her daughter observe the creatures as they moved about their enclosures. “If it helps they’re also apparently real vicious,” Rogue offered.
The dome had definitely been the right call, already preventing a few from getting very far away. Figuring out where everything else was supposed to be might take some more time though. They had been to this zoo several times with Anka Irene and Rogue remembered where some of the bigger attractions that their daughter enjoyed the most went, but she was clueless on some of the others. The last thing they wanted to do was put one animal that would end up eating the other or that hated one another.
“We might need to do a lil research while tryin’ to put them all where they go,” Rogue nodded toward the signs displayed to offer information to visitors.
“Yes, let’s do that,” Erik agreed, gloved hand resting on the small of his wife’s back - the lambs would be alright here, with access to their food and enough water (and they were vicious? He would not have guessed that, but then again, it was often true that innocent looks were quite deceiving). “I can help put up shields wherever.”
He studied the informational signs, working quickly to memorize what was what - there were a lot of animals, and mixing them all together in one giant enclosure pot was not going to end well but they’d fix that. Erik presumed that many of the zoo employees and doctors had fallen prey to the affliction going around, hurting those with magic. Hopefully none of these effects lingered or lasted very much longer.
“The monocerus?” he said, referring to the creature that resembled a unicorn in that it had one single horn - but it also had the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the legs of an elephant, and the tail of a boar. Whew. “Separate from the other creatures with the body of a lion and the head of an elephant.” Despite the elephant similarities, he didn’t think a lion-like creature would fare well with a horse - horses, that were often attacked by wild lions and such.
“Their enclosure is usually over that way,” Rogue nodded toward the left. It was another of Anka Irene’s favorites and something she tried to replicate with her own toys at home sometimes, with rather hilarious results.
They hadn’t run into anyone else at the zoo, so Rogue’s thoughts echoed Erik’s about where the zoo’s employees probably were. How much of the population was magic in some form or another? Technically, wasn’t the world made up of it? How long did they have before it started to come undone as well like the wards were? It was a thought she didn’t want to have, reminding her of that time with the black hole on the spaceship, but it was hard to shake.
She scanned some more of the informational plaques as they came upon more animals, working to separate them into areas that would give them some comfort and enough food and water to last for a while. “Have ya heard anythin’ else from Wanda about the twins?”
They worked efficiently, he and Anna - she had flight in her arsenal of absorbed powers, and Erik’s movements were an easy glide on ‘ramps’ made of magnetic fields, when he manipulated the energy in such a manner and propelled his body. That way they made quick work of the various exhibits and could travel between them with ease - he set up as many shields as possible, and also used materials from the zoo’s structures if he could. Sign posts or shingles or even parts of a couple of the food and drink carts nearby - these fences were literally pulled together from metal scraps, but he was used to doing things like that. And working with what he had.
“I haven’t heard much,” he confessed, extending his hands again to let another bubble ripple out and around them - this time, it protected a flock of colorful birds, their feathers nearly blinding. They made these screeching sounds, obviously indignant. Or confused. Perhaps both. “Billy mentioned to me awhile back that it was possible he and Tommy carried the x-gene - so I’m hoping that they’re not too affected by whatever is happening.”
Wanda, however, was a different story - she was literally magic, and he hated that he couldn’t really do much to help her. That feeling wasn’t exactly something Erik was fond of.
It looked like they had gathered nearly everything into some sort of enclosure. Hopefully whatever was happening wouldn’t last too long because Rogue wasn’t sure how much the food and water would last the animals in the different areas. They might need to check in on them again in a few days to make sure everything was still holding up, though maybe by then the current chaos in Vallo would be solved.
She nodded to what Erik said about the twins maybe having the x-gene. Rogue didn’t completely understand how the whole thing worked with Wanda and the boys back in her world. They had their own families as well as being twins and somehow her children. It was a mess that probably tied back to magic or whatever Wanda was currently back there. The sliding between mutant and not mutant, Magneto’s kid and not Magneto’s kid was a headache that she was never going to fully wrap her head around.
“I ain’t sure if some of what Billy can do is magic or not too.” The distance between powers and magic could be a thin one. There were plenty who had a mix of both--Illyana and Pixie being two she remembered struggling with all that they could do.
“I reckon we’re good here though.”
Erik’s boots touched down onto the ground again, and he settled to have a look around - things had definitely quieted, at least. The animals weren’t bleating, shouting (or - if one could classify that as shouting), whinnying, or braying - once they had their holding blocks, they would hopefully settle more and not try to escape.
Otherwise they’d be running face first into an invisible barrier, and the reverberation from the shockwaves probably wouldn’t be pleasant either.
“Nice job, darling,” he complimented, placing his hands on the sides of Rogue’s face and dropping a quick kiss on her mouth - and he also twisted one of those silvery streaks around his fingers, because that was a signature move by now. If only he didn’t likely smell of barnyard creatures and - what a zoo normally smelled like.
But he’d kissed her under messier circumstances so it was fine. “We’ll come back in a little while to check on things? In the meantime we can see what else needs doing.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself,” Rogue told him with a grin, her hands sliding to rest over top of his own before she looked out at what they had managed to accomplish. Everything did seem much more peaceful than when they had stumbled upon it earlier, but there was probably a lot more out there for them to try and help out with.
One down, who knew how many more fires there were to put out.
It was thrilling in a way, and part of Rogue had missed running headfirst into things and helping out when there was danger afoot. But she really did prefer letting the others handle Vallo’s insanity most days and making sure that her daughter was out of harm’s way. She’d done enough heroics in her lifetime to cover several lifetimes over by that point and had no intention of suiting back up becoming a regular occurrence for her.
But for now, it was good to help out. “Let’s go see where we’re needed.”