AN: Hey y'all. Now before you totally flip out and blow up my review box with hateful messages accusing me of plagiarism, I'll head you off…It really is me, you guys. Anyone who knows or has heard of me knows that for the past two years I've been incommunicado while life got in the way. In the process I forgot all of my login info and had to start completely from scratch. Please don't hate me. I'm sure it's happened to some of you out there, and if it has, send me some love, 'cause I could really use it. Kinda scared, here. Luckily I kept all the chapters and will be reposting them along with a new one as an apology. Really hope you guys believe me.

(Deep breath) Well…here I go.

You know all those completely far-fetched, outta-this-world stories you hear about in the papers or on the news? About people who can walk through walls, read minds, control the weather or run across the country in a matter of seconds? They're not fake. Trust me…

I know.

The proper term for such beings is the label Homo Mutanis, but the world calls them other things: monsters, freaks, demons, abominations; some people, a very spare few, call them "gifted" or "special".

I would know…I live with them.

Better yet, I'm one of them.

My name is Kaela Rae Blackhorse. I'm a sniper-turned-pilot in the United States Marine Corps…

And I'm a mutant.

No, the Marines don't know about my "gifts", because if they did, I'd be behind bars in Guantanamo for life before they could say, "Court Marshall". It's not like it would matter, because the bars would crumble into dust before my life was even halfway over, hell, even a quarter over.

Basically, I'm immortal. Any wound I get heals almost instantly. The bigger stuff takes a bit longer, a few days or sometimes a week or two, but that's not the point. I'm gonna be around for a long time, and there's nothing anyone can do about it, including me.

And lemme tell ya, I've tried everything:

Smoked like a chimney…coughed up the tar into the commode, still here.

Slit my wrists and bled into the bathtub…scared the livin' shit out of the staff and kids, still here.

More head-on collisions with trees and light poles than I can count…I'm still on probation for the last one (how was I supposed to know that car belonged to the Professor?), and guess what: STILL HERE!

But hey, some good things come out of pretty shitty situations, and I've got one of the shittiest out there.

My other powers allow me to smell, hear, and see practically anything, and that got me into the position of Head of Security for the place where I pretty much grew up, a fancy mansion retrofitted to become a boarding school in upstate New York.

These senses also allow me to be closer behaviorally to animals, getting me put in charge of the facility's stables, and even letting me have my own horse.

And, my skills in the Marines gave me the best job of all…

I get my own jet.

Well, it's not mine, per se, but I'm the only one allowed to drive it. Anyone else who wants to has to ask me first.

We, the "teachers" and I, use this jet to go pick up potential students who either live too far away from the facility or have run away from home, a common problem with mutant kids when their families and friends find out.

I know this…because it happened to me.

I was the result of a rape, an attempted murder gone unfinished. My mother was seventeen when I was born, and was nowhere near prepared to raise a kid, let alone a mutant, so I was put into the foster care system. Thank God, too, because if she'd waited, I probably wouldn't be here. Daddy came back, and shoot shoot, bang bang, no more mommy. He's rotting in the Federal Penitentiary awaiting the death sentence, whether it be the chair or lethal injection. He deserves it for what he did.

I was passed from house to house for about five years until my powers really started taking over. Thing is…out west, there are a lot of wild animals, namely coyotes, and they think of a defenseless toddler as a free meal. The dog tore half of the cartilage in my right ear, my claws came out, and the next thing my "caretakers" knew, I was sitting on a mauled coyote carcass, poking at my long-dried up stump of an ear. New home the next day.

I don't know why it took the Professor so long to find me, but I'm happy he did.

Especially after we found him.

This is the story of how the Statue of Liberty was almost used to turn world leaders into mutants (it wouldn't have worked anyway, Magneto never thinks his plans all the way through) and how I finally became an X-Man…

Before they found me…

And he saved me, in more ways than one.