A/N: I made up this storyline after discovering that Wolvie and Native had a child which was supposedly killed along with her. This is the story of what might have happened if it had survived. I own only Artemis. The rest I wasn't smart enough to think of first.

She lay on her back in the valley, soaking up the sun's rays and listening to the life of nature around her. A bee buzzed lazily by her ear, bumbling to itself about its work. A cold, clear creek bounced and laughed from rock to rock along its twisted course. A half a mile away, in the shade of a poplar thicket, a doe stood guard over her young fawn. Artemis felt the mother's wariness as well as her pride in her offspring. She knew the deer could smell her, and she coaxed it gently with her mind. She wouldn't harm the baby. She felt the doe's pulse slow and her mood soften.

Artemis tilted her head back slightly and took a long, slow sniff of the breeze that played over her head. She smelled her mother's cooking, and licked her lips hungrily. It was almost ready, so she rolled onto her stomach and sat up.

A mountain lion at the other end of the clearing froze at the sudden movement, but then gave a slight nod of familiarity to Artemis. She nodded back respectfully and stood up. She growled with comfort and stretched her arms over her head. As she began the 2 mile walk back up the side of the valley to her home, she thought about the delicious meal awaiting her.

She had arrived home yesterday from her school in the small town of Roanoke, B.C., and was now looking forward to a long, beautiful summer spent at home in the mountains. Artemis' parents, Kent and Nancy Harmond, were National Park Rangers and conservationists, and Artemis had a great love of nature like them. Each summer break meant hiking, exploring and making friends with the countless animals that shared her Rocky Mountain home.

Artemis had always had an amazing ability to connect with animals of the wild, even sharing many of the same instincts as them. When she was younger, the Harmonds noticed this and were very happy to have a fellow conservationist growing up in their home. They soon noticed, however, that their daughter was not only a friend to many animals, but also very animal-like herself.

Even as a toddler, she learned to growl and purr to express herself long before she learned to talk. She crawled until a very late age, and her parents were worried that she might be developmentally behind. And then came the fateful day she first revealed her claws.

Artemis was 6 and the three of them were on a routine hike through the woods, when they came across a mother wolverine and her den of babies. They knew that a wolverine is one of the most fearsome and deadly creatures of the wild, and that - as in any wild species - a nesting mother is worse ten-fold.

They backed away slowly as the wolverine hissed and advanced upon them. Kent grabbed Artemis' hand to bring her behind him, but she pulled away and, to the Harmonds' utter horror, marched straight up to the dangerous animal.

Unable to move from shock and terror, Kent and Nancy watched open-mouthed as their daughter - who was the same size as the wolverine - stared down the predator. Though she wasn't talking, Artemis seemed to be communicating with the animal through growls and grunts. When the mother wolverine refused to back down, Artemis raised her hands.

The Harmonds will never forget the moment they saw three 6-inch long claws explode from the back of their daughter's hands. Artemis, however, acted as if she wielded these talons everyday, and slashed the wolverine's nose with one of her claws. The animal let out a howl and retreated snarling, hiding and peering out from the safety of her burrow. 6 year old Artemis stood there for a few seconds, glaring at the animal, then 'sheathed' her claws and turned to face her dumb-founded parents with a huge grin.

The Harmonds often told Artemis this story of her first unsheathing. Though she couldn't remember it, Artemis loved to her the story.

Nowadays, of course, she used her claws all the time. It was second nature. Her parents, however, had warned her at an early age to never let anyone else she her use her claws. Though the Harmonds didn't own a TV in their mountain home, they often heard reports on the radio and in town of the 'mutant threat,' and had seen the hatred on many a townsfolk face whenever 'mutants' were mentioned. They weren't entirely sure if Artemis was a mutant or not, but they didn't want to risk having their daughter subject to the extreme prejudice that people were capable of.

So, for all of Artemis' life, she only used her claws in the privacy of her own home. She was lucky, she felt, that her home consisted of an entire National Park.

While Kent and Nancy often entertained Artemis with her adventure with the wolverine, they kept from her a huge, dark secret that haunted them every time she unsheathed her claws. The truth was, they weren't sure whether or not her wolverine encounter was the first time she had ever used her claws. The truth was, Artemis wasn't really their daughter.