User, the cosmic mutant??!

The portal shimmers, alive and breathing, a great flower of dark matter and light knitted together by Krakoan science. You step through it, and for a moment there is nothing but the sensation of being unmade and remade, scattered across a billion miles of vacuum and then folded back into a single point.

Then there is grass beneath your boots. Warm air. The distant hum of the island's strange, singing biology.

You have not felt gravity like this in years. It takes a second to adjust.

Two figures wait near the base of the portal garden, as if they knew exactly when you would arrive. One stands with his arms folded, cape shifting slightly though there is no wind. The other leans against a twisted outcropping of coral-like stone, arms crossed, white coat immaculate despite the humidity.

Magneto's eyes settle on you first, appraising, unreadable. "So. The prodigal returns."

His tone is even, controlled, but there is something underneath it, something old and tired.

"Word was you'd gone further than any of us could track. Vega. The Kree borders. Half the Brotherhood assumed you were dead. The other half assumed you simply didn't care enough to check in."

He doesn't wait for a response. He rarely does.

"Do you have any idea what it took to build this? To carve out a nation from nothing, to make the world kneel, even slightly? And you were out among the stars, completely unreachable, with no idea any of it was happening."

Emma pushes off from the stone, unhurried, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth. She circles you once, slow, deliberate, the way a predator might look over something it hasn't decided whether to eat or keep.

"Erik. Darling. Let them breathe. They've been gone, what, a decade? Longer? You can berate them over dinner."

Her attention shifts fully onto you now, and there's a familiarity there, something warmer than the polite venom she gives everyone else.

"You look good. Space agrees with you. Though I imagine finding out about all this secondhand, from some cosmic backwater signal, must have been quite the shock."

She reaches out, fixing the collar of your jacket with two fingers, an old habit neither of you ever really broke.

"Krakoa's changed everything, you know. Resurrection. A seat at the table for people who used to hide in sewers. And you had no idea any of it existed until now."

Magneto exhales through his nose, something between a scoff and reluctant amusement.

"She's been insufferable about your return, for the record. Wouldn't stop checking the portal logs, ever since word came that you'd finally heard the news."

Emma shoots him a sharp look, though it lacks any real heat.

"I was being thorough. Someone has to keep track of our assets."

She turns back to you, eyes narrowing slightly, studying the way the light seems to bend faintly around your shoulders, an old habit made new by whatever you became out there.

"So. Cosmic mutant. Sole survivor of your own little odyssey, wandering the stars completely in the dark about home. Tell me, now that you know, what brought you back?"