Ultimate X-men : Of Hatred…

Disclaimer: Not my copyrights

Did you know that men and women aren't that different from each other on a genetic level?

My name is Alex.

Right now I'm on a grey hound bus headed away from home and the life I knew.

Looking out the window of the bus, I can see the police lights that are still at my house, former home. My father must have been hurt bad.

I'm running because I'm a mutant. I'm running because I am ashamed of what I have become and what I was. I'm running because my father just found out about my gifts, my curses and I think I may have killed him.

Looking at me right now you would see a scared young girl wearing clothes that are way too big for her, faintly smelling of sweat. Five hours ago I was the star quarterback of Lincoln high.

I was big, muscular, my body was the epitome of teenage physical conditioning. I could have had anybody I wanted if the desire ever took me.

I don't know why I am like I am now. I only know that after so many years of being the alpha male at my school, one of the first to call someone a mutie or a faggot, that I was suddenly both of those things.

As hard as I was on any poor bastard who I suspected of being either a mutant or a homosexual, I was much harder on myself for having feelings for another man. My father taught me long ago that only men and women were ever meant for each other.

I was in the middle of one of my self punishment sessions, intense weight lifting, for having such thoughts when something shifted and I wasn't me anymore. Unfortunately, my father was right there spotting for me. He always knew when something was bothering me, and he approved of my way of dealing with it.

The look in his eyes as he watched his son with the bright athletic future finish one of the most intensive workouts, finishing up with a yell that didn't quite end right was one of betrayal, and hatred.

I was still in shock when the first backhand hit me.

No son of his was going to be some mutant scum. His son wasn't a girl.

He wouldn't listen, he wouldn't let me get away, I could tell that he was going to kill me. The look in his eyes and the way he was holding one of my dumbbells told me everything.

Part of me wanted him to end it.

I felt another shift as he brought the thirty-pound barbell down on my head. It was like a full body sneeze except different. I only felt a light tap against my head when he hit me. I hit him back.

Hatred is a terrible thing to live with, especially when you internalize it, bottle it up within you and use it as a weapon. I had become something so horrific with my hate.

My body was the same size as what it was before, only now it was horribly scarred, malformed, grotesque. My mother's screams of fear and loathing prompted me to flee even as my father was still lying still where he landed. I managed to grab my gym bag on my way out.

I shifted back to a girl once I was calm again.

The irony isn't lost on me. Closet homosexual mutant with a violent past against both gets it in the end. I laughed about that one for a while.

I just needed to get away.

The grey hound buss drives through the night leaving my mid America town for other places.

Superheroes don't come out to the Midwest. There's not anything to do or fight. At most the middle of America is either a stepping stone or starting place on a hero's resume.

That left the decent normal folk who didn't much like those who were too different from them. A lot of the areas were developed and roads made, paved, and towns boomed up until the highways were built, making some towns instant cities while others were abandoned.

The Grey hound bus left the terminal and took me away from my life. I couldn't look back now. I was asleep in my seat before we left the city limits. My sleep was mercifully dreamless.

When I awoke, we were at the terminal of the next stop. My ticket was for as far as possible from home. Beyond getting away, I hadn't put any more thought into my escape.

I figured I still had some time before the bus started to move again and my bladder was making itself felt.

In the terminal I started to push into the men's room when another guy came out, bumping into me, and looked at me funny.

"Wrong room girl." He said gruffly and indicated the door opposite with the lady's sign.

I was going to have to get used to this.

Looking in the mirror, I looked like a wreck. One side of my face was bruised from where my father had hit me. My short dark hair was now blonde to the point of being white and the style didn't go with my face, meaning that even I noticed it didn't fit.

My face was strikingly different from what I was used too. Where my face before would have fit on the cover of sports illustrated, now it looked more like something off one of those teen girl magazines.

I got back on the bus after taking care of business, a few minutes spent getting used to not having anything between my legs now. The roster of the bus had increased some while I was off. A guy that looked like he was in the military with his buzzed head and just out of boot camp body. A few older men and an older woman were also on board.

I settled back down into my seat and got prepared to wait for my stop.

I didn't get very far from home before the limit of my ticket ran out. Amarillo Texas was just as good as any place for somebody like me to disappear. It was the middle of the day and I knew I smelled funny.

I could smell myself like I could never before, or at least I could smell what my clothes were smelling like. My sweatpants were drawn up so tight around my unnaturally small waist that the drawstrings were hanging to my mid thigh while the legs were rolled up just to fit my new height.

There I was, a homeless teenage mutant with the world's worst case of gender identity confusion, and I had no idea what to do.

Luckily for me, that little problem soon fixed itself by me visiting the hospital, in serious condition.

I was in a gas station, about to buy a soda with a little of the money I still had when I was grabbed by the neck from behind and used as a hostage to rob the place.

I got angry. I forgot about my fears and sudden insecurities, and I was sick of people touching me. I felt something shift and things looked a lot like they used too. I also felt a snap at my waist and things are a bit drafty. That surprised me. My rage petered out pretty quickly at that point turning into embarrassment, and I shifted back into a girl.

"Shit, a mutant!"

Bang.

The funny thing about being shot is that you don't actually feel any pain, just something that can be described as a deep body punch. Quickly following that is the sudden and intense loss of energy that tells you that something is definitely wrong.

You also start to get tunnel vision and everything goes distant, like it's happening in another room. My last thoughts before it went black was that this was the worst way to die, bleeding on the gas station floor with my pants torn and ripped halfway down my legs.

Author's notes:

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