Chapter 35 : Third Step to Becoming King - Creating Rules for thee but not for me. (Patreon)

A/N - Sorry for the month long wait. Two more in the pipeline for the next week. Enjoy!

Disclaimer - I don’t own Marvel/Disney IP. I am just a humble keyboard warrior. Also, the Chaos Gacha was made by Bronz here. I am just dipping my toe in the water, so to speak.

Krakoa

–Mike–

Predictably, Xavier’s reaction to his roughly thought out plan was…

“You wish to be King?” The indignation in his voice was rough to hear, but then again, it was not like he expected anything different from the man who preached equality between two sets of people who could never be equal, atleast not until there was someone to force that equality on them.

Humanity had never been the one to unite properly, not unless there was an external factor that forced them to.

Eric, on the other hand, took it remarkably well, moving past the King thing with stride and instead asking the relevant questions, “What will you be providing in return for becoming the King of this place?”

He eyed the reasonable man with a smile. “Well, as the actual owner of this island and being the one who can actually use its fantastical abilities, I will provide mutants with what they need most. A public safe space, enforced by me and mine. Water. Food. Shelter. Public Safety. Practice with their powers. Hospitals. All of it will be provided free of cost.”

“And what will you ask in return?”

He hummed at that, leaning back to rest on one of the wooden pillars of the cabin. “I don’t know yet. I don’t need anything personally from anyone who might come here. I suppose basic common sense and a reasonable expectation of not trashing this place? As well as training themselves with their powers continuously.”

“You wish to raise an army?” Charles once again intervened here, making him sigh in exhaustion.

A single flick of his hands created gusts of wind so violent that the top half of the cabin was sliced clean in half, revealing the gigantic form of Ghidorah in the distance, currently sleeping, but the size itself was intimidating. 

Understandably, the roof being cut in half made everyone jump, but then they calmed down as he floated up and looked down at Charles. “Look around you, Charles. Does it really look like I need an army to do whatever the hell I want?”

And he sent this message using Telepathy, and that seemed to shock Charles much more than the physical display of power. It meant that Charles’ main weapon that he had used for years to overwhelm opponents who were vastly stronger than him was rendered useless. It was a clear message to Charles that from this point forward, Telepathy was not going to be useful in making sure the situation went according to his plans.

After making sure they understood what he was saying, he slowly floated down as Krakoa’s powers surged forth and repaired the cabin before his feet even touched the ground, making it look as if nothing had ever happened here.

“Alright,” He smiled at both the leaders of the two factions of mutantkind, “Let’s talk logistics, shall we? After this, Charles, I don’t think you should stay in Jersey if you want to be safe, at least not the kids.

He raised a hand to stop Charles from speaking. "Whatever infrastructure they need will be provided before they even set foot on the island. Just send over a mental checklist, and I’ll make sure it gets done.”

“As for you,” He then turned to Eric, “I am sure you can do the whole relocation thing here much faster than him.”

Eric nodded slowly at that. “Great. Make sure they are here as early as possible. If I am not wrong, your bunch are all adults. They can start the work here.”

“And if they don’t want to work under you?” Eric countered, which was a valid claim.

He shrugged, “Then, they are free to go somewhere else without using your name for protection, as your faction is effectively disbanded right now.”

Eric growled at his statement, “What?”

He could tell that Eric was trying for an intimidating display, manipulating the metals all around them to make his point, as was his usual trick, but safely for Eric, they were on Krakoa right now, and even without the island’s innate mutant ability suppression, he could no seel anything Magneto could throw at him with ease, even if he had substantial amounts of metal around him.

The nature of Krakoa was such that once you tried to influence anything beneath the surface of the island, the powers were weakened drastically, to the point that near the core of the island, Magneto would be hard pressed to lift a 10kg metallic dumbbell with his power. Of course, he had activated this feature after he had won over the allegiance of the island, so it was no issue for him and his familiars.

For outsiders, though?

“Calm down.” Just two words and a mental flex had a wave of power wash over all of them, making most of them lose their powers. Well, Logan still had his because it was purely physical mutation. Magneto and Charles, on the other hand, lost all of their powers.

“Listen to me, Eric. I sympathise with what you had to go through, what you had to see, and what you experienced was something that no human should ever have to go through. BUT that doesn’t mean that I can allow you to run around, branded like a terrorist, because now you will be a part of my island, and that is unacceptable. So, you have a choice here.”

Eric remained silent as he laid out the choices that Eric had.

“You can choose to align with what is probably the best chance you will ever get to see mutantkind walk around and live in peace, or you can leave here and continue your activities that will continue giving all mutants everywhere a bad name, eventually forcing me to hunt you down. And let me tell you, Eric, you have no chance of winning that fight.”

“So, choose. What will it be, Eric or Magneto?” He asked, his form ablaze with a tiny sheen of his power, making it clear that in reality, Eric had no other choice.

Eric sighed, “I will stay, but make no mistake–”

“The moment it looks like I will be treating my people badly, or using them as disposable troops, you are free to align yourself with the many heroes of this world and kill me. Happy?”

Eric glared at him but otherwise remained silent. Charles did the same, making him clap his hands in joy. “Alright! Now that that’s settled. Let’s talk jobs.”

“Jobs?”

“Yeah, Jobs. You don’t expect me to do the admin work for the entire island, now, do you? Eric, you will be on disciplinary duty. Charles, you will do the HR equivalent of the entire island, for now anyway. We will have proper elections for the council later on.”

Charles looked at him confused, and whispered, “Elections?”

He waved in the man’s general direction, biting on some truly delicious apples, “Well, they will answer to me ultimately, but I won’t really interfere in the day to day workings of the island. I am not one to micromanage. As long as the Council follows rules and regulations that we will soon set up, I don’t mind people’s will being followed to fill those seats. Of course, I reserve the right to disband the council anytime, for any reason. So, there’s that.”

Charles gave him a complicated look at that, exchanging glances before sighing and rolling forward (he really had to do something about that, if not as a display to the world about their healing, then at least as payment for taking on the burden of being the HR equivalent of a nation.), and saying, “I think we have a lot to discuss before we can go public.”

“On that, I agree. So, let’s get to work.” A snap of his fingers summoned a bunch of pens and paper, along with a table, to get the rules created for his very own nation.

Time to create his very own living, breathing constitution. A modern one that shouldn't need to be changed too soon, he hoped.

_____xx___

[A Few Days Later]

So, as it turns out, Charles and Eric were both very old, like ancient old, and as such, had a lot of experience, not just with life in general, but also with people and they knew exactly how people might misuse something, and as such, he just had to keep on increasing the size of the document to add in for the exceptions and conditions.

For example, despite some rather heated arguments, food was not going to be free. Water was going to be freely available and without any cost, but food? Apparently, just giving people who might have suffered from mistreatment and, as such, had very little opinion of themselves, unlimited free food was a bad choice, even if said food was probably some of the healthiest food on the planet, untainted by even microplastics.

Instead of that, barring special circumstances for people who can’t work due to some other condition, everyone would be supplied with a nutri paste, a type of gel that is easily digestible and has enough energy and nutrients to live off of, but it would have exactly zero taste.

In fact, Eric referenced having read something about the ethical dilemma of unlimited food for everyone, and the book suggested making the food that people who did not do anything got to be very bitter, to the point that they would be encouraged to get off their asses and work. It was one such way to make sure no one abused the generous systems he was going to put into place here.

But he put his foot down and made them settle for just tasteless food. The same was true for housing, as well as clothing and more. bare minimum will be provided for a dignified living, but anything more? You will have to work for it, and that work might just be education, so people won't really have any excuses for living with the lowest available resources.

Education would be the same across the board. Everyone will go to the same place to learn whatever they want. 

Housing will be provided to everyone, but not everyone will get the same level of housing. Sure, it will be more than enough to live in, but if they did not work, they would not be able to get access to amenities such as backyards, high level electrical appliances, personal pools, central heating or cooling, and more.

The need for AC or heaters will be entirely optional because the island will remain pleasant throughout the year, irrespective of the temperatures outside of the Fog that kept the entire island concealed.

Drug use will be absolutely prohibited. Alcohol will be unavailable until they figure out a way to trade with the outside world.

Most of the tools people will need will be generated overnight. Modern housing, instead of just tree houses, might be provided if they ask for it.

Community centers, large ones, that had all the sports and activities one would ever need will be built posthaste. 

He wanted people to talk to each other, socialise without ever having to fear showing their faces to anyone else. That would be the crown achievement of his island, and he suspected that even if he was doing this whole thing to gain some kind of diplomatic immunity and out of a desire to become King, that would give him some other level of happiness.

Either way, it took them days, but after so much brainstorming, they finally had the first draft of their constitution, a set of rules that everyone who sets foot on this island will have to follow, him included. Well, he was special in that regard, as he had the explicit authority to suspend parts of, or the complete constitution for a set period of time or indefinitely.

Yes, it was very much legalese, but it helped to make sure everyone knew who the real King was, even though he suspected that he wouldn’t enjoy most of the King’s duties, hence the Council.

Currently, the Council was comprised entirely of two people.

Charles and Eric.

Eric was the head of law enforcement on the island.

Charles was going to be the temporary transitionary head of everything else. It helped that Charles had a few people he could trust with the tasks assigned to him, and most of them were quite used to dealing with people who were traumatised from having to deal with the lot life dealt to them. Eric, on the other hand, from what he could recall, was quite heavy handed when it came to inducting people into his faction.

He foresaw a lot of conflict on that front as well, as the people under Eric must have similar mindsets and as such, they too would need a proper power display to make sure that his fear overshadowed whatever greed or other schemes they might have in their mind.

While Eric had assured him that he would take care of any outliers himself, he would much rather do it personally, after he had taken a nap because this whole rule thing had managed to do something he never thought mere paperwork could ever do.

Exhaust him mentally.

He could now empathise with anime showing good leaders being overwhelmed with paperwork to the point they treated the paperwork with more enmity than their actual enemies. The heavy mental toll was something he did not look forward to, at all.

Before he could actually go ahead and take a nap with the sound of running water in the background, though, he had one more task left. Lifting Eric and Charles with his wind manipulation, they flew out of the cabin and headed to the tree houses he had built, enough to house more than ten thousand people right now, and looked at the development. 

Unfortunately, he had built the houses with only housing in mind. No space for anything else. Fortunately, parking was not an issue as there were going to be no cars on his island, at least for the first few years as they got the infrastructure sorted out. But that still meant that some houses had to be pulled back into the ground to make space for the community centres, law enforcement centres, mental health centres, and, as much as he hated them, prisons to house the criminals.

While rehabilitation was going to be their primary objective, especially with the level of surveillance they had on hand, he knew that there were just some scum people out there in the world who did not deserve to see the light of day ever again. The Death penalty was not even an option in the Constitution they wrote, because he could see that it would become a contentious issue with both his co-writers, so he just let it be.

After all, he could suspend parts of the Constitution at his leisure anyway, so writing it was not an actual requirement.

“That should do it,” Charles said, and Eric agreed, as they finished removing almost a tenth of the houses built to make way for anything else they might have to add later on, from an administrative perspective. He had purposefully emptied a bit more space than necessary for future expansions, as he could see people being very reluctant to leave their homes if he asked them to.

No need to make people do something they did not want to do if he could just get it done right now.

“That brings our number down to 9000.” He warned them about the destroyed houses, but both of them did not look too concerned about that.

“That is fine. I don’t think we will have that many people arriving at the same time. Plus, once we have a working template, you can just build houses en masse and once we have enough working people here, then–”

“Then they can build their own homes for work.” He nodded at the logic, as he recognised that he couldn't just do everything. People needed something to do. He was going to have to add a lot of redundant jobs just to make sure people had something to work for, though the community kitchens and the utility works were going to absorb a ton of the arriving people, he could tell.

Everything was going to be free for a month after arrival, but after that, people had to work. Charles wanted it to be longer, but he put his foot down and made it standard across the board, as long as they did not have any one of the rather long list of conditions that got them exempt from the requirements.

He knew people were going to abuse that as well, but that’s what Eric’s job was, and he seemed rather focused on it, which was good.

He needed someone strict to handle the day to day enforcement, and if things went out of hand, then he always had the option to sic Ghidorah on them. Well, on second thought, that seemed a little overkill, so maybe Alcina will have to do.

Alcina, who was currently lounging in a pond and seemed to enjoy lying down and enjoying the scenery, something that he was thankful for, as he wished Alcina would just calm down a bit so he could make use of her beyond her physical prowess, especially now that he had surpassed her in every single parameter possible.

With the demolition work done, they flew back to the cabin area but did not fly inside. Instead, they dropped in front of the cabin and turned around to find dozens of large stones being pushed out of the ground, all roughly the sme size, shape, and color.

“What are they?” Charles asked him, and he was all too glad to reply.

“I am glad you asked, my friend. These are going to be the cornerstones of our society. A public ever present reminder of the rules by which this place will run.”

A mental flex made the stones sink into the ground once more before they were all pushed out; only this time, the basic rules of the constitution they had just written were carved into the stone.

None of the exceptions were listed, but the major rules were all there, along with the warning that all of his could be taken away by Governor Mike. Initially, he wanted it to be King Mike, but Charles made him pivot away from that to Governor, not that it would have made any difference to his powers. He supposed he could part with the title itself as long as he was getting the actual powers themselves.

Third Step to Becoming King - Creating Rules for thee but not for me.

Word Count - 3174