A/N: 'Nother challenge for the Writing Junkie forum here on Fanfiction. Again, by MidnightNimh. Why? Because this idea was awesome and there isn't anyone else on the forum to give me a challenge. Read and enjoy!

In the year of 2010, a small group called the Friends Of Humanity sprung up. This group, led by a man named Tom Fallows, was fiercly against the new sub-race that had been springing up. This sub-race, more often called an abomination by those that chose to recognize it's existance, was the one that we often call mutants. Human beings with extraordinary powers and insurmountable amounts of strength and stamina.

The Friends Of Humanity believed that the mutants would rise up and try to destroy them; that they were a dangerous creature and that they had to be destroyed. And, in the beginning, this group was nothing more than a laughing stock. Putting up anti-mutant posters and speaking at rallies to try and ban children with mutant abilities from going to the public schools.

No one thought that they would amount to anything, least of all the mutant population.

By the year of 2013 those that had once believed that began to feel differently. Tom Fallows decided that they needed to use a different aproach. They needed to show the world that they were serious and that those with the X Gene, as the strand of DNA that gave one mutant powers was called, were mere beasts that had to be put down. So the Friends Of Humanity slackened on their posters and their speaches - and they picked up guns and metal poles instead.

Mutants who lived on the streets were no longer safe. The Friends Of Humanity would kill any mutant that they came across. They broke into houses and stormed schools, dragging the mutants outside and murdering them for all to see. People were apauled. At least until the mutants started to fight back.

On October fourth, 2016, a mutant by the name of Renee Weathers started what would soon be known as the Mutant Wars; and, eventually, as the third World War.

Renee Weathes was young woman with the ability to shoot burst of heat out of the palms of her hands. When the Friends Of Humanity tracked her down, she was at the grocery store with her boyfriend, Michals Trey. They pulled her into the streets by her hair and held a gun to her head. And she fought back, killing one of the members of Friends Of Humanity by blasting obscene amounts of heat into his face.

People in the streets began to panic. They began to loose their common sense and fear the mutants. After all if one could do that to a man, just by touching him with her palm, then what could someone with stronger powers do? What could happen if someone lost control?

So they backed up the Friends Of Humanity's odd laws and brutal ways. They petitioned to the government for help, for a defence against what would surely be mankinds downfall. At first, the President refused. They were still people, he argued, and they still had rights.

December twenty-fourth of the same year brought madness to the streets. It was a planned event. All across the United States, people gathered in the streets. They gathered carrying guns and knives. Pipes and bats and wratchets. Gasoline by the gallons and matches by the dozens. And, as the smoke curled into the sky and the snow turned crimson, the message of the people came across loud and clear.

If you don't do something about them, then we will.

Hundreds of people were slaughtered that day and, on the next, thousands of buildings used as bases for the Friends Of Humanity cropped up across the country.

The war had begun and it wouldn't end for years to come.

Over the next five years, millions of men, women, and children carrying the X Gene were yanked from their homes and killed. Bombs went off. Buildings burned. And the government turned a blind eye to it all. The rest of the world, however, did not.

In the year of 2021 the countries of France, Scotland, and China got involved. They sent messages to the President of the United States asking for actions against the Friends Of Humanity to be taken. When their requests were ignored, they announced over national television that their countries would forever be open to the mutant populace.

In 2022, the first of what would soon be a series of bombs were dropped onto the idyllic city of Paris, France. By 2023, war had offically been waged between all four countries. Over the next ten years these four countries turned to eight and then thirteen and then forty and, soon, there was not a country in the world that had not voiced their opinion on the matter. Some agreed with the orginal three countries, now known as the F-S-C-Union, and stated that mutants were human beings too and should get the same rights as everyone else. Others agreed with the Friends Of Humanity and wished to completely abolish the mutant race.

On the fifteenth day of June, 2033, Poland became the one hundredth and ninty-third country to join the Mutant Wars. And, in every sense of the word, it was a World War.

Mayham filled the streets. Entire countries were bombed and burned and wiped off of the map. Cities crumbled. Forests burnt to the ground. Gasses and smoke filled the air like never before, polluting and poisoning the waters and animals that humans everywhere used to survive. No one was safe unless they were on the side of the Friends Of Humanity.

During all of this madness, a small town just outside of New York City was chosen as the main headquarters for the Friends Of Humanity. This town was called Bayville and was home to the worlds single largest school for mutants; Xavier's Institute For Gifted Children. This school became the main target for Fallows. In fact, he was almost obsessed with destroying them.

Why?

For the simple reason that this school housed the team known as the X-Men. And the X-Men, he knew, could grow to be a problem. What he didn't realize was, way back on the fourth of October of 2016, Charles Xavier gathered up his teachers and his students and he fled with them. Abandoning Bayville and all those that lived there, leaving in the middle of the night with nought a word to anyone, they moved to an unknown location.

When Tom Fallows realized this, he turned his full attention on the other mutants in Bayville and the nearby towns. And, as the war started and raged on around them, Bayville became a tabboo word. No one tread there for fear of the labratories, Factories, and mass groups of Friends Of Humanity agents that prowled the streets.

By the year of 2034, the Uniter States was completely run by the Friends Of Humanity. Mutants everywhere lived in fear - forced to register themselves and, when the time came, step forward and go to whatever Factory they were ordered to move to. Those that didn't instantly became outlaws and issues were sent out to kill them on sight. Food was rationed out, only sold to those that had Ration Tickets. Water was even harder to come by. Medicine nearly impossible to find anywhere.

On February of 2034, with the fighting reaching a high in the world around them, the first incinerator was built in Orlando, Florida. In April, the fourteenth one was built. By June, people started to give up and give in.

October third brought about a revelation that no one expected. It brought about the first sighting of an X-Man in nearly twenty-three years.

This is that story. The tale of how a war-torn world reacts to seeing the heroes again. How they affect the flow of the world - whether it be for the better or for the worst. And how, by the time the war ended, a lesson that had never been taught before was learnt by millions.