Magneto made his way towards Shine.
"Did you think that would intimidate me, woman?" he asked.
The crowd was starting to leave, as the hosts had announced they were ending early tonight, for obvious reasons.
But some of the Mutates still saw this.
"Stay back." Gambit held up a card.
Magneto ignored him.
"How dare you show yourself here?" Storm said.
"Careful, Erik," Shine just said, her tone full of haughty disdain. "I named no names, but if you out yourself here, I can't do anything to stop it."
"And these humans cannot either, and there are not enough of you to stand up to us," Magneto said. "You will fail. I warned you."
"And we warned you," Shine said. "As of this moment, your assassination squad has been soundly whipped by the X-men, and the national guard has been alerted that a known mutant terrorist was planning to cause trouble at our conference tonight."
"What?" one Mutate said.
"Of course we told them that many peaceful mutants were also attending and were concerned about it," Shine said, smiling slyly. "But the name Magneto did seem to raise some concerns. Oh, and get this, they said they'd bring plastic weapons."
Magneto suddenly got a very different look in his eye. "You're bluffing."
"Am I?" Shine said, suddenly sounding fierce. "Am I really? Yeah, you know the staff here have working phones. It took all of five minutes once the police heard we had an actual suspect who might show up."
Magneto and his Mutates looked stunned.
"Didn't think we'd do it, did you?" Wally couldn't help but say. "Thought we'd never try to turn you in."
"You realize you will make it worse for mutants," Magneto said.
"Poppycock!" Shine shot back. "Because a worse word would not be appropriate in church. You started this. Our doing the reasonable thing will make us look good and you look bad--that is the long and short of it. Stop blaming us for your poor decisions, you fool. We warned you."
Her eyes suddenly flashed. "I'd get out of here while you still can. Once this room is cleared, we're going to tell them you're here...and if you make one move, even one, to harm any humans, I will send you into the earth's magnetic field. I know you will survive this...but it will take you a long time to get back here, won't it?"
Magneto glared at her.
"And if your pathetic little followers over there make one move," Shine added, "the X-men will first thrash them and then give every single one of your names to the police, along with our best guess at your location and a free offer to help them track you down--and with weapons that will work on you."
Magneto and his Mutates looked even more shocked.
"And furthermore--" Shine took a savage step towards him. "--if you touch one of our children ever again, and I mean so much as a threat, I will do the exact same thing. And we will not rest until we've searched the globe for you. And your camp. And if that is not enough, we will go a step further. You have children, no?"
Magneto suddenly looked dark. "Are you threatening them?"
"No, I would never do that," Shine said, with utter disdain. "I'm not you. But I think they'd like to know what you did, wouldn't they? Perhaps their opinion will matter to you. I see no one else's does."
