Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men in any of their many manifestations. Please don't sue me or steal my story. Thanks!

NOTE: Earth 723 is my own made-up universe, several membranes down from the official Marvel universe, Earth 616. It's something of a combination of the animated TV show X-Men: Evolution and the classic comic series Excalibur, in which Nightcrawler served as the elected leader of a team of international superheroes based in Britain.

NOTE II: Alice, Marta, Suzie, and Edmund Wagner, Twyla Todd, and Historian Zahnrei are all my own original characters.

NOTE III: There's a character in this story called Rowena Zahnrei. I initially made her up in elementary school to be the queen of a tooth-shaped island I drew on the paper bag cover of my history book ('Zahn' is 'Tooth' in German), and I've used her in a couple of other original stories since then. I like her name a lot - so much, in fact, I decided to use it as my online penname when I started posting and sharing my stories. My character Rowena Zahnrei and I both have long hair and an obsession with history, but she's not meant to be a depiction of me.

NOTE IV: This story is related to my previous story "The Day the Earth Stood Back," but it is not a sequel. Although characters from my Earth 723 stories play important roles, this story is set primarily in another alternate universe I made up, one that combines aspects of the Movieverse and the Comicverse. Welcome to Earth 816! :)

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FOOTNOTE #9887354467392, INCLUDING FOUR DELETED POTENTIALITIES

Historian's Note: The following is the historical record of Twyla Todd and her involvement with the X-Men of Earth 816 between April 5 and April 20, 4067 OST (Otherworld Standard Time). All facts herein have been researched and authenticated by Rowena Zahnrei, Head Historian of the Omniverse and Second Advisor to the Supreme Omniversal Guardian Roma.

CHAPTER ONE: TWYLA TODD

Twyla Todd groaned and shifted her position on the bed. Her fingers felt numb, her arm threatening to fall asleep.

She shook the tingling appendage and rolled over on her side to steal a glance at the glowing digital clock sitting on the table by the side of her bed.

1:30 A.M.

Twyla groaned louder and clenched her teeth, silently cursing herself for procrastinating so long. She had frittered the entire afternoon and evening away immersed in her favorite science fiction stories, completely oblivious to the time until her mother had passed by her door some four hours ago...

"You will be asleep by eleven, won't you, Twyla?" her mother said in her stern 'mother' voice.

Twyla jumped, slowly becoming aware of her true surroundings as the futuristic landscape of the story faded from her mind.

"Wha-? What?" she stammered.

"Twyla," her mother said, her Virginia accent thick with warning. "For the past three nights, you've been going to bed past midnight. I'm not going to watch you ruin your health. You're fourteen now. I shouldn't have to be telling you this."

Twyla realized the light had gone from her window. There were stars outside. With a gasp, she turned to her clock.

"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, jumping up from her bed and dashing to her backpack. "It's 9:30! I've still got to write that stupid journal entry on Plato's 'Republic'! And I haven't even started my Latin!"

Twyla's mother sighed, her eyes dark with annoyance.

"Twyla, if you knew you had homework why did you waste the entire day reading those stupid sci-fi books?"

Twyla felt her back stiffen, and turned on her mother.

"They are not stupid! They're about robots, Mom."

"If they start to interfere with your studies, robots or not, those books are going to the shredder!" her mother snapped. "You need to get your priorities straight, Twyla. What's more important to you? Getting good grades, getting into a good college, having a real life and a career, or letting that trash you've become obsessed with lately eat away all your time?"

"My books are not trash!"

Twyla glared down into the depths of her battered backpack, furious at her mother's words but more angry at herself for losing track of the time. She pulled out her Latin textbook and her worn, dog-eared copy of Plato's 'Republic' and tossed them onto her bed. She then began digging for a pen.

She did not look up at her mother.

Aretha Todd frowned down at her daughter.

"Don't stay up all night," was her only parting shot before she continued on her way down the hall...

Twyla scrubbed the sleep from her eyes and struggled to focus on the textbook in front of her.

"I am such an idiot," she grumbled, grasping her pen in her newly awakened fingers and carefully copying the Latin sentence into her notebook.

"God, I hate parsing. It's too late for this. Maybe I should pretend to be sick tomorrow."

She snorted as she brushed a few errant strands of long, frizzy hair from her face.

"I don't feel so great right now, come to think of it."

Her eyes strayed longingly to the colorful book lying on the floor beside her bed. She felt warm and dreamy as her mind began to fill with images from the text, her imagination latching onto her favorite characters, preparing to take them off in new directions...

With a small gasp, she caught herself before she fell asleep and shook her head, disgusted by her weakness.

"Work, Twyla," she grunted. "Work comes first."

She forced her attention back to her homework, seething with agonized frustration as she stared at the sentence before her.

"Regem malum tolerare numquam debemus," she read out loud. "What the heck kind of word is 'numquam'?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Like I really care at practically two in the morning..."

She clutched her face in her hands and executed a muffled scream.

"I am such an idiot!"

A sharp POP left Twyla in total darkness. She froze, terrified, the silence of the sleeping house buzzing in her ears.

Slowly, she reached for her lamp, flicking the switch on and off.

Nothing happened.

She glanced down at her clock, wondering if there had been a power blackout.

The red numbers glowed dimly in the darkness. The power was still on. Blinking, Twyla realized her light bulb must have died.

"Wonderful," she grumbled, slipping off the bed and stretching out her aching muscles in the darkness. "Five more sentences to go and my light bulb goes out on me. I am never getting to sleep tonight."

Twyla dropped to her hands and knees and crawled silently to the hall closet where the light bulbs were kept, holding her breath as she snuck past her mother's open door. Squinting through the dimness afforded by the hall nightlight, Twyla quickly chose the right kind of bulb for her lamp and scampered back to her room, fervently praying that her mom wouldn't hear the small creaks of her bare feet on the floorboards, or the click of the latch as she gingerly closed her bedroom door.

Unwilling to risk turning on her overhead light, Twyla reached out into the darkness, feeling for her bed. She followed its edge to her lamp and quickly set about unscrewing the still warm bulb.

As she did, a strange, tingling sensation began traveling up her arm. She ignored it as merely a sign of her extreme fatigue and rested her finger against the edge of the empty socket, reaching for her replacement bulb...

That's when her world exploded.

A scream ripped from Twyla's lungs, raw and wild and terrified. Powerful waves of energy rolled up her arm, into her violently trembling body, causing her every cell to glow with an inner light of its own. Twyla felt the power building behind her eyes, collecting at the edges of her fingertips—

It was as if she had become a sponge, a vacuum cleaner, helplessly absorbing the electricity surging from her lamp. Fractal sparks exploded all around her, fading off into infinity; power wrapped her thumping heart, filling her mind with a strange elation. The power she drew in was as intoxicating as it was overwhelming; she could never get her fill of it...

A violent scream sounded behind her, and Twyla snapped back to her senses. She pulled her finger from the lamp with a forceful wrench and turned to face the source of the scream.

Aretha Todd stood just outside her daughter's doorway, staring in speechless horror at the impossible sight in front of her: Twyla's form silhouetted against the window, her hand clutching her lamp, her whole body glowing like fingers pressed over a lit flashlight.

"T-Twyla?" she choked.

Twyla gasped, feeling the energy within her churning and building into something more, something dangerous, something that threatened to burst from her at any moment.

"Mom, get out of here!" she shrieked, her voice raw, her tongue crackling with electricity as it moved against her teeth. "Now!"

Her mother just stood there, her dark skin ashen, her round, brown eyes wider than Twyla had ever seen them. She had always been a formidable woman, tall and strong, but now she suddenly seemed so small, so helpless...

The churning energy continued to build, and Twyla knew she couldn't contain it, couldn't control it. She raised her arms slowly, her hands flat, her fingers tight together...

All the energy she had absorbed into her body bolted from her eyes and fingertips in an exhilarating rush of power. Her mother had no time to draw in a breath, let alone scream, before the blinding beams burst through the wall beside her, knocking her off her feet and setting the old, wooden corridor ablaze.

Reality erupted into gleaming, flashing fractals, into angular, beautiful lines and patterns of light that stretched into infinity, and Twyla twirled among them, overwhelmed by the power that swirled and tossed within her deceptively fragile frame. She ran from the burning house, screaming in mad exultation, with no direction in mind, no plans, no coherent thoughts at all.

But, that didn't matter.

In her power-flooded mind, Twyla Todd had become a god.

To Be Continued...