Plague of the Black Womb
by carla, aka cali-chan.


Prologue

A couple of teenagers snooped around the hallways of Bayville High School, a few hours after classes ended for the day. One was a boy, who seemed in a hurry to get to a specific room, and the other one was a girl, who was being pulled by the hand by the boy. She didn't seem to want to go where he told her, but she wasn't putting up a fight either.

"Devon..." the girl murmured, whispering, even if it wasn't necessary, since the school was practically empty. "Devon, this isn't necessary, really. I'm used to it. I can better that grade, you know it..."

The boy stopped in front of some lockers, making her almost hit him as she didn't notice. "I know you can better your grade, Betsy," he told her, turning to her without lowering his voice, "but I can't allow them to continue treating you unfairly just because you're a mutant!"

The young woman seemed to pale when she heart the last phrase. She opened her eyes wide, and almost broke out in a cold sweat. "Devon... shhhh! Don't say that out loud, someone could hear you!"

Devon almost laughed at the expression in her face. "Calm down, love. There's nobody around." Then his expression became tender, and he caressed Betsy's face with one hand. She closed her eyes at contact. "It's not fair that you have to hide who you are... you're worth ten times more than anybody like me."

She smiled, but wouldn't give in. "Even if that were true, Devon... I don't think you should be so impulsive. I don't care about what other people say about me, really. As long as I have you, I'll be happy. It's not necessary for you to get in trouble over such silly thing like this."

Now the boy did laugh. "Come on, Beth. It's just a little protest, it's not like I'm going to bring down the entire system..."

Betsy sighed. She knew she was going to lose this argument. It was easy to see, because when Devon looked at her with those baby blue eyes, she always ended up melting. And that's what happened, without saying anything else, the boy continued pulling her towards their destination.

Soon they both stopped in front of a door with a plaque on it that read "Principal." Devon opened the door with one hard push and with such a determined expression that Betsy couldn't repress her shivering. The man that was sitting behind the desk, after seeing and hearing such a ruckus, stood up immediately. Betsy moved to stand behind Devon in a pathetic attempt to hide from the threatening eyes of the school's Principal.

"Mister Stratfordshire! What are you doing!"

Betsy grabbed Devon's shirt on his back, to stop him from stepping forward. She had a very bad feeling about this situation, and didn't want anything bad to happen. Devon, on the other hand, had other ideas.

"Principal Kelly, I just came to tell you that from today on, I won't allow people to play favorites with a certain group of students only because the minority is... different. Discriminating people because their genes is completely immoral and I will try to stop it..."

"Listen, mr. Stratfordshire," Principal Kelly interrupted him, clearly angry. "On the first place, you have no right to interrupt me in my office in such a way, demanding such idiocy. I will make sure you're penalized for that."

"I'm not afraid of your punishments," Devon, replied, rebellious. Betsy tried to catch his attention again, but couldn't.

Principal Kelly continued speaking without paying attention to him. "And second, if you think you have a favoritism problem, I advise you to consult directly with the professor, and stop bothering me about it."

"I'm not moving from here until you listen to me!" Devon hollered, his tone flying up suddenly. Betsy noticed that he was clenching his fists so strongly that his knuckles were almost white. That made her worry even more. She knew Devon enough to know that he only did that when he was really, really mad. "Betsy earned an A+ on that project, and it's not fair that professor Sidney failed her just because she's a mutant!"

"Devon--"

"She is a wonderful person and she gives her studies her best effort. She's one of the best students in the whole school, for God's sake! And I'm not letting any repressed jerk screw her GPA up just because she's so much better than him!"

Betsy covered her ears. She didn't need this; she didn't even need the stupid grade. She just wanted to get out of there before Devon ended up getting into more trouble. But she couldn't run out and leave him alone...

Then she felt goosebumps all over her body. Scared, she looked up, and found Principal Kelly looking at her openmouthed, as if he'd never seen her before.

She's a mutant. Filthy scum, they should all dissapear off the face of the Earth.

At that moment, Betsy knew she was completely shaking. With a doubtful hand she started to pull on Devon's sleeve, desperately.

"Devon... Devon, drop it, I-I want to go home..."

Hearing her, he knew she was about to cry and that effectively pulled him out of his defender of justice bubble. Worried, he turned to her. And just as he saw her eyes wide open, her pale face and the tears rolling down her cheeks, he realized what was happening. Obviously Kelly had offended Betsy, but he didn't do it with words.

"Wha-? Beth..." A little desperate, he turned to Kelly. "What did you think!"

The principal didn't answer, but Betsy kept telling him that it was better to go. He couldn't just leave it like that. "I know you thought about something that hurt Betsy! Bloody hell, what did you think!"

Kelly just looked darkly at them, almost hatefully. "Get out."

That was enough to make Betsy crumble, and she ran away from the office. Devon stayed a few seconds, looking back at Kelly, defiant. "I swear that I'll..." he started to murmur, jaw clenched, but before he could finish the phrase he ran out behind Betsy, leaving Kelly standing there by himself. Minutes later, he himself crossed his office to close the door forcefully.

Out of the shadows of the lockers a man walked out, looking in the general direction in which the two teenagers had run. And he smiled. So miss Braddock was a telepath. Very interesting. Maybe she would be useful after all...

author's notes!

this fanfic is being reposted, mainly because i looked it over and decided to move in a different direction-- i changed many of my key plot points and so i'm editing it now in order to take out some things that could become huge plotholes. this prologue is pretty much the same, but expect some things to be different in the first chapter, which i will post soon.

as far as canon goes, this follows the whole of the evolution series, save for that little "let's see the x-men in the future!" epilogue they added to the last episode. you can see what i concluded should be the timeline from the series and adjusted it to this story, at my website found at kyoudai dot net slash xmenevo slash pestetimeline dot html. comments about it are appreciated. oh, and the story itself will follow storylines from several of the x-men comic series and also the original animated version.