When Professor Xavier asked me to join the X-Men I accepted without hesitation.
I needed a place where peace and tranquillity were mine if I needed it, and where my powers would be appreciated and not feared.
My mother and father died in a tragic accident when I was fifteen, one year before I joined the X-Men.
Up until that point, my powers had barely manifested themselves, but on their deaths they fully came to light.
This was unfortunate for me, as I have no family, and the day my powers showed a bigger sign of their arrival, I got thrown out of the orphanage.
They told me I would be there until my eighteenth birthday; I was there for less than a week.
My powers are quite impressive, I have to be honest, but they aren't anything special.
I can transform into other people, but not into just anyone.
My pick of shape shift has to be a mutant guise, I can't shape shift into anything else.
I met Mystique, who can transform herself into anything she wants, and that was when I realised my powers aren't that brilliant.
Who would only want to shape shift into mutants?
But, as Professor Xavier told me, it would help me get out of sticky situations.
As have a secondary power, I gain the powers of any mutants' guise I take on.
If I transform into Cyclops, for instance, I take on the power of lasers from my eyes.
Although this is quite a prized power, I'm not brilliant at controlling the powers of the mutants whose guises I take on, as it is difficult.
Whereas the mutants have had years to learn about and how to use their own powers, I only have minutes, in most cases, to learn how to use mine.
I can hold up the guise whenever I want once I have taken it on.
On the fourth day of my time at the orphanage I met a girl named Rose.
Her power was to start fires, which she had inherited from her father, a man I have come to know as Pyro.
Having taken on her guise, without realising I had done so, I started a fire on the second floor.
They labelled me an arsonist and called the police.
Unfortunately I had taken off the mutant guise without even knowing I'd put it on and they had realised I had done it.
I had to escape, and did so down the back fire escape.
I was freaked out that I had started a fire with my bare hands, but it came in handy for a while.
I spent the next nine months living on the streets, stealing and begging for survival.
I used my new found power of manipulating fire to start my own, using them for cooking, light and, most importantly, heat.
It was tough, and that was why I accepted Professor Xavier's offer quickly.
He told me I could learn to control them, use them responsibly.
Unfortunately, Magneto and his band The Brotherhood had other ideas for my powers.
However it didn't end too well for them.
Especially when Buffy Summers appeared in my life.