Mystique and Angel would go to Genes on Thursdays sometimes, Angel for the inclusive atmosphere, Mystique because they served the best tequila in the city.

Genes was the first mutant-owned club of its kind in the city, and had seen its fair share of bricks through its window. Anti-mutant sentiment was everywhere, and Angel walked briskly with her wings tucked in and Mystique with her blonde hair flowing. They were proud, but not reckless. Not these days.

Angel nudged Mystique out of her musings. "See that?" she asked, pointing at the graffiti spanning the wall across from them. On top of years' worth of flyers was the phrase 'Burn The Abominations!' sprayed in bright red. It dripped in places, a trickle down the wall.
"Think it's People Against Mutants again?" Mystique wondered, her voice low in anger. Angel nodded, pulling her jacket closer around her.
"They've made massive gains in this area - leeching Republican votes by the day, by the sounds of it," Angel said. For a former stripper, she followed politics closely.
"I just wish that the fated arrival of a third strong party in America was like, for the Green Party, or something, and not you know, PAM," Mystique said, and Angel laughed, and just like that the graffiti seemed smaller, just the words of some idiots with a vendetta on a wall. They couldn't touch her.

"Saying that," Angel teased, "some people do like mutants. Maybe one mutant in particular…" and she grabbed Mystique's hand. "Stop that!" Mystique said, but she was smiling. The men she'd known had never been able to tease her: Hank was too shy, Erik too stoic. Angel though, she was leagues ahead of Mystique when it came to, well, mystique. She liked that. They dropped hands again though, after a second, and the subject changed.

"You know Hank is thinking of getting into politics since this PAM nonsense?" Angel asked her as they queued for Genes. It was never heavily crowded, as a mutant club, but the security knew the school was nearby and had to weed out the over-eager kids. At least they're not still checking mutant status, Mystique thought. They'd dropped that policy since it began pissing off humans, and human-passing mutants, like herself. Anyone who wants in should be allowed in. Some people get their mutations late anyway.
"He didn't tell me, no," she said in reply to Angel, rummaging for the ID that actually matched the blonde facade she was wearing. "We don't talk as much these days."
"Yeah, he says you can only fight bigotry by showing an example, by proving them wrong," Angel said, waving her ID at Colossus, who stood at the door. Apparently men with steel bodies make good bouncers. Who'd have known.
"Hey - isn't that just respectability politics?" Mystique asked. "I mean, some of us are dangerous, and like it that way. Maybe they should feel threatened for once." Angel turned, perplexed, her brow wrinkled. "
"You don't mean that-" but she didn't finish that sentence.

There was no noise, no warning. One second Angel was standing under the fluorescent lights of the club, and then the wall exploded outwards onto them.

Mystique's world was red and black and attacking her from all sides. She was on her back, pieces of walls strewn over her, rubble around, in her eyes. All she could hear was the pounding of her own ears.
"Angel?" she yelled, but her voice was lost in the chaos. Vague shapes pushed past her, running over her, and she curled tighter into a ball, her ribs screaming with the movement. She heard people cry out. She heard cellphones ring and ring in pockets. In the distance, there were sirens. A shadow above her, grey in the blackness.
"Angel?" she asked again, hoarse, but they were too broad, too tall. Cool metallic hands scooped her up, but she stretched out her fingers, reaching for her friend.

-

Most nights, Charles left the chess set untouched. The match had been going on for months, but those were the perils when one of the players was a radical, off smuggling arms or raising donations or whatever this month's scheme was. Sometimes he'd return to his room to see a black bishop moved, his own white pawn on its side, with a note scrawled on a napkin saying "Check."
Even though he didn't disturb it, Charles would stare at the board most evenings, thinking through a thousand moves, before Erik would saunter in, briefly assess, and attack again. This had always been their dynamic.

This time, when he wheeled himself into his room, he saw a tall figure standing by the open window. A black knight had moved, and was threatening his queen. "Erik," he said. It was a greeting, a question. "Charles," said the man who called himself Magneto now, "It's Mystique."
Charles could feel a numbness where he should feel something coming from Erik, an emotion tied to his words, a flurry of thoughts, of worry. There was nothing but silence.
"It was in that mutant club downtown. Lone bomber. They're still counting casualties."
"Get me down there. Call a team. Whatever needs to be done."
"I already have people on the way. I didn't want to disturb the children."
"This is not - no, the Brotherhood have no place there. They'll aggravate the situation."
Erik's eyes narrowed. "No place?" he says, so low he could barely be heard. "No place, when their brothers and sisters have just been slaughtered for the crime of daring to have a place where they could be themselves, unafraid?"
"I only mean the Brotherhood will unnecessarily provoke the police. This is a crisis, not a political moment, Erik. Our priority is making sure people get out safely."
Erik stepped forward, bitter steel in his voice and his eyes. "Charles, our priority is making sure that this doesn't happen again. That they know we won't take this lying down. The arc of time does not bend towards justice without a strong push."

Charles closed his eyes, and drew a long breath. "Please. Take me to Raven."
When he opened them, Erik's face was expressionless once more, the mask replaced over his emotions, the helmut clouding his thoughts from Charles. He was a non-entity, a non-presence, where once he had been so alive.
They left the mansion, himself and a ghost, to count the living and the dead.