Rogue held on only long enough to render Sabretooth unconscious, but it was also long enough to allow her to take on his animalistic qualities. She shuddered as she thought of what his foreign mutation was doing to her body, but now wasn't the time for that. Magneto was glaring at her as Sabretooth's limp form dropped to her feet, his thin lips twisted down in a bitter grimace.
"My dear, I had such high hopes..." he said quietly, the lethal edge to his voice apparent nonetheless.
"My mama always said not to count yer eggs before they're hatched," Rogue drawled with a smirk in his direction. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mystique and Toad attack Logan and Jubilee, but she had to concentrate on Magneto for the moment. The results of this confrontation would be decided with words, not a power struggle despite what the dueling four might think.
"Yah really should let us go, Erik. The trouble and pain we'll cause will cripple yer little group for a very long time. Even yah're not safe. Neither of my friends can be used as hostages, because yah know that if yah hurt either of them Ah'll kill yah anyway, even if it means having yah in my head for the rest of my life. Ditto on if yah try to fight me. So, as Ah see it, yer only choice is to let us go," Rogue reasoned as sweetly as she could around two much-larger-than-normal canine teeth.
"You've forgotten something, my dear," Magneto said with a small smile.
"Ah don't think so, Erik," Rogue said softly.
"But it's true. You've completely forgotten the manners your mother most likely instilled in you as a child, and what happens when you display bad manners, as you are doing now. For instance, being so rude to me in my own home. Tsk tsk, Rogue-child," he said somberly.
Rogue lifted her chin. "Are yah sayin' that yah would just let us leave?" she asked, not a shred of doubt in her mind as to the answer.
"Of course not. You are all far too valuable, even with the amount of retraining you will require. No, I am simply suggesting that giving in without a struggle would be the best for you and your friends," Magneto told her, smearing the word "friends" with contempt and repulsion.
Rogue smiled slightly as Toad flew overhead, his chopped up and bleeding tongue a tell-tale sign of whom he'd decided to mess with. The smell of scorched flesh told Rogue that Mystique was probably faring no better with Jubilee.
"Who is going to help you, Magneto? Ah know--because Carol knew, of course--that we're all alone up here. Yer goons are somewhere out in America, trying to provide the professor with a little distraction. Well, it won't work. This world is not yers. It will never be the way yah want it to be. And getting yerself killed won't make yah any more of a martyr than yah already are, Erik," Rogue told him bitingly.
Magneto's face twisted in an expression of fury, but the look in his eyes told her that he knew he was defeated. He turned his head to glare at first Jubilee and then Logan. There's a saying that if looks can kill...well, if that were true, Magneto would've had all of them down on the floor with huge gaps in her skull.
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