Obligatory disclaimer: Marvel owns all these characters (except for Margaret Santoro/Dr. Mystery-- she's all mine.) However, they keep doing unbelievably lame things to them, like awful retcons, pointless plot twists, failing to follow up on what good ideas they do have, and so forth, so I have to write things like this.
I had this idea over a year ago, but recent events have actually inspired me to write the damn thing (as opposed to working on Body Snatcher, my extremely long and rather violent get-Magneto, or any of the Trek stuff I'm supposed to be working on). This takes place after Onslaught and the Magneto LS, but before the Christmas issue that led to Adventures in Space. I feel free to ignore anything whatsoever Marvel says about the characters from the Christmas issue on.
This is the first story in my Twin Poles series. There may well be others, but this one isn't done yet, so don't hold your breath just yet. :-) Archive anywhere you please, MST, review, or use as kitty litter-- just tell me what you're doing and where you're doing it. However, Alara Rogers is copyright Alara Rogers and may not be used as a character in a Subreality Cafe story without explicit permission. (Mentioning me as a Writer and and using my characters is okay. Using me as a character is not.) I would love to see any sort of feedback, public or otherwise. Send me a note!
Oh, one more thing-- I'm trying an experiment in this story. The phonetics to indicate an accent aren't there. Rogue and Gambit and Sam all have the same speech patterns they ever did, but I'm not trying to phonetically spell their accents (if I don't phonetically spell Joseph's accent, and how I would do that is beyond me, why should I spell out Rogue and Gambit?) Let me know what you think of it.
Twin Poles 1: Journeyman of Magnetism
Chapter One: In which a soccer game takes place, at Joseph's reluctant instigation
Chapter Two: In which Joseph discovers that he really, really, really hates mindprobes (warning: contains disturbing and violent imagery)
Chapter Three: In which we meet the rest of the players in our drama, the enigmatic Dr. Mystery and her recently recovered patient
Chapter Four: In which Joseph shares coffee and conversation with Rogue and Gambit
Chapter Five: In which Joseph goes searching for the originator of a mysterious magnetic signal, and gets more than he bargained for
Chapter Six: In which Joseph takes on Magnus, and gets his butt kicked six ways from Sunday; later, Magnus puzzles over Mystery's strange behavior
Chapter Seven: In which Magnus attempts to persuade Joseph that he's Magneto and Joseph isn't, but Joseph isn't having any
Chapter Eight: In which Joseph reluctantly comes to the conclusion that Magnus isn't an evil monster, and that maybe he is the real Magneto, but Joseph still needs proof
Chapter Nine: The showdown between Joseph and the X-Men, such as it is
Chapter Ten: In which Joseph is devious, Scott cracks a joke, and Mystery plays a very dangerous game
Coming Soon: Hank has alternate theories, Magnus and Margaret have apples, and Joseph recruits some X-Men for his Clever Plan.