This is the beginning of an EPIC. If you don't like cursing, violence,
sex, or philosophical and religious themes, don't read this. If you don't
want to think about pacifism, war, the meaning of life, the existence of
God, human isolation, humanity's evil, or humanity's goodness, don't read
it. If you want to read about good fights and true love and walk away with
new opinions about politics and metaphysics, read it.
A few new characters will be introduced, for example a mutant named Reaper
who makes everything he touches turn black and die, a mutant named Ecstasy
who derives pleasure from pain, and a mutant kind of taken from the new
comic series named Exx who has control over human pheromones. There is
also a central character that profoundly changes the X-Men's lives,
especially Logan's.
I don't need 1,000 people who are genuinely interested. Just one or two.
If even a few people promise to read the updates, I'll post the rest. But
let me know! Even if it stinks! I'll go back to the drawing board and
work on something else if this is going nowhere.
CHAPTER ONE .. hope
She came for coffee and stayed for hope.
Another stood down the staring down the streets, chin high, one eyebrow cocked. Already the sidewalks were claimed by the opposing sides, neither daring to cross to the other, each shaking their signs and their fists at the other. The corner of her mouth under her cocked eyebrow raised into a smile. The beating of her heart pounded like a war drum. She felt it in her stomach. She felt it in her hands that had the power to light the fire to start it all. Today a war would start.
It was breathtaking. It was awe-inspiring. It wonderfully watered the aching, hope-thirsty valves of his heart. It was like seeing the unimaginable and witnessing a miracle. It was.
. easy to be fooled.
He wanted to be inspired by the beautiful scene in the thousands of cheering people in front of him, but a cynical and very-often-true voice reminded him that people are fickle. And mutants were only one gene different from them.
But still, he hadn't seen a sight so beautiful in a long time. The unified cheers and applause of the crowd that had gathered before his platform were perhaps the most gorgeous noises mankind could make. They were.
"Amazing, Professor," Storm said like an eight-year-old in front of her presents on Christmas day, her voice showing none of the caution of his. "Your speech, all these people. I, I really feel something here today."
Don't count your chickens until they are hatched, he wanted to say. Instantly, he felt guilty for thinking that. A comment like that would be more appropriate coming from the mouth of Eric Lehnscherr.
She put a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him, looking for his agreement.
Was it was to smile back?
Is it foolish to hope?
He patted her hand and smiled. "I do too, Storm." He scanned the ocean of multi-colored faces flooding the grass in front of him. The sun was setting and their applause was enduring. "They came because they're all seeking hope, also. I just hope they know the struggle for peaceful coexistence is not an easy one. Let us work to make sure this-" he made sure Storm followed his glance and took in the scene of the cheering crowd, "-this lasts." They had listened patiently and fairly, almost hungrily, to his speech. He had passionately told them the truth and only the truth. He'd done all he could without taking over their minds, which tempted him. What does a parent do with a child that he knows is heading for trouble? Lock the child up or allow him to make his own mistakes? What if those mistakes meant the death of many innocent people? The Professor was definitely tempted to do their thinking for them.
But there they were, begging to be believed in. The view from the platform was so splendid that it was difficult to believe they were capable of hurting anyone. They were all cheering, with mouths open, children on their shoulders clapping also, waving flags, swinging banners, and believing in peace between mutants and humans. Nearly two million people, human and mutants, came to Times Square and spilled all over the city of New York to protest the undemocratic passing of the Mutant Freedom Act. What's wrong with an act giving freedom to mutants? In actuality, the Mutant Freedom Act is a more pleasing name for the Mutant Registration Act. A senator from Louisiana came up with the brilliant title after fears of hate crimes against the now-public mutants were discussed in congress. Two pitiful provisions making mutant prejudice illegal constituted this bill as giving mutants greater freedom. Though they, unlike humans, had to register themselves like the Jews in World War Two, (it was also discussed if the mutants should wear some sort of identification, like a yellow star,) and also carry separate identification, this act was aptly named the Mutant Freedom Act. It was rushed through congress with such speed because presidents have a knack at declaring "national emergencies'" when the democratic system becomes too slow and cumbersome.
"God bless America!" one loud voice shouted above the rest.
God save our souls, the Professor thought.
All was gorgeous.
There were opuses of shouts and screams and cheers and claps, but then there was this crow. Floating like a sleepy tuber on the Mississippi River, like a lazy teenager on a couch, flapping only once and coasting forever, calmly, peacefully, and effortlessly this crow skimmed the air with a pace and attitude as lackadaisical as the girl below him.
Humming a tune to herself, she walked equally as lightly on the cracked sidewalk below her and sipped her coffee. It was worth the trip. Starbucks coffee was great.
This lazy crow, high in the air, swooped down and did a few circles with her. She would occasionally spin with him, lift her arms for him to fly over and under, and the stark, sharp, shadows of the skyscrapers would cut and slide over her artistically. For a moment she actually appreciated them, these cubes, coffins, and crowning architectural achievements called skyscrapers. But they were really just temples of vainglory to their creators. Towers of Babel. Gross blockers of the sunlight that made stretches of city streets into ceiling-less hallways. Pats on the back to human ingenuity.
I suppose they thought they were doing something good when they built them, she thought, peering through the cracks of the ceiling-less highway of the New York streets and spying some striking blue patches of sky. What a gorgeous blue. Man can build towers that scrape this sky but they can never make a blue as gorgeous, she thought.
She was just another dirty New York punk, dressed in ripped jeans, a ripped leather coat, and her hair not visible under her dirty cocked hat. She walked by many people without them giving her a second look. She walked by many people in her life that would never give her a second thought.
If only they truly realized what it was that was walking past them, they would have never left her side.
She was still humming when she found herself in the center of Times Square with the boundary lines between enemy sides clearly and tacitly drawn. The tune was slow, simple, and its resignation was sharply out of tune with the angry passion around her. She continued its slow measure as she inserted the words, "Papa, Papa. my Papa, please don't let me be. let down."
It was time to light the fire. But it was like gasoline filled the air already. All she had to do was toss a match. She had a potbelly, a rough beard, and a nasty laugh that reeked of beef jerky. Oh, and she also had a very large automatic gun that Charlton Heston helped give her the right to legally own in her backpack. She lit a cigar and stuck it in her false, foul mouth.
Her companion noted this signal from the other side of the street in Times Square. Pyro began to tap his foot. His lips curled into a Grinch- like smile. "We are the future, not them!" he turned and shouted in a voice more similar to another's and not his own. He lifted his arms as he shouted and the crowd around him roared in agreement. In the hour he had inserted himself into their presence and protested with them, they had come to like him.
Anything that came out of Mystique's cigar-filled mouth was loudly agreed with, also.
"Damn motherfuckin' right, ma friend. Damn fuckin' right. Couldn't be no fuckin' righter if -" the drunken Podunk next to Mystique hiccupped, "- if, I don't know but you're goddamn right. God bless America! Those fuckin' mutants."
"So why duncha tell 'em, ma friend? Don' leddem take this goddamn country! Ya fuckin' mutants!" She shook her hairy, lumberjack looking fist in the air at the other side of the street.
"Ya motherfuckers! We don' wancha here! Go back ya where ya came from!" her new acquaintance staggered.
"I come from America!"
"America is ours!"
"America's no place for freaks!"
"America's no place for weakling humans!"
It was no longer Mystique and Pyro shouting. The insults had increased flawlessly from the acquaintances they had acquired. The fire would soon be lit.
"I'd fuckin' kill all ya if this fence weren't heya!" the Podunk screamed and took a swig from his flask.
"And we'll always fight back!"
In a matter of thirty seconds the shouting quadrupled in volume. The fences guarding the protestors from the streets shook. The police perked up and began to move in to try control things. But the insults, the shouting, the curse words all rose suddenly as if a gust of wind rose to tempt the fire.
"Mutants are evil-
"People are evil-
They seemed to think whoever yelled louder was more right.
"Mutants should die!"
The cries came like furious and venomous serpents from their mouths. Of course there were a few cries for reason but these peacekeepers' shouts were easily covered by the collecting mob of fear and anger. The puny gates penning each side in were pushed and heaved to their sad limits. People closest to these gates were nearly crushed and fallen on as these primates beat their chests and defended their territory. Here there were no smiles and cheers, only faces twisted and ready to spit, yelling and screaming, veins popping out of necks and crooked fingers pointing to the other side. Stuffed mutants hung from nooses and signs claiming to know the will of God shook everywhere. A gate broke and more shouts arose.
"People should die!"
Police rushed in. They tried to pull out some bruised people. They tried shouting too, also thinking if they could yell louder that would somehow make everything quiet again.
There was no need for the second signal. The people swelled. They surged like an ocean wave. Pyro was lifted off his feet by the crush of people and carried toward the front. He sailed forward on the rioters. One unified voice chanted below him.
It should have felt slower than it did. This action, this shot that started the revolution, this light of the fire of war, happened in the blink of an eye. But so many Earth-changing events happen in the blink of an eye while the effects linger for eons.
His lighter flicked. He remembered the smell of fuel. Then a fire was curling and licking and tumbling down his arm like a hungry dragon then curling and licking over the street until it exploded into the wall of humans on the other side. Dozens of people were on fire.
The police had their guns up before the Podunk could curse. The police had their guns up before the Podunk could curse.
"You fuckin' mutants! You asked for it!" Mystique growled and her automatic gun rained on where the fire came from.
The bodies below Pyro dropped.
They didn't have a chance when the cops started in. They knew the mutants would do something like that any minute. That's just like mutants. The shouts turned into screams. We have to defend ourselves kill 'em or die trying now's the time boys let's gettem' they're coming for our children they're coming for our children you mutant freaks you human fucks. can you hear it? The bullets rained upon them from the police and the humans, and the fire, rain, fireworks, frogs, and anything else one could imagine rained upon the humans.
Once the gates were broken down, and the mutants and humans were safely at each other's throats or ripping each other's hair out, Mystique smiled with satisfaction and slid back into her blue skin. Her drunken acquaintance was being pushed forward in the mob right next to her and jerked his head to face her.
There weren't words for the terror in his eyes. The confusion. The fear.
There was no time for anger. She blew him a kiss and gave him a punch that snapped his neck.
It didn't take much for her to keep her balance. An elbow here, a knee there, and humans around her were broken and crying and easy to be stepped over. It was the raining fire and the rampant elephants that were a problem. Some had given up fighting and just began good ol' fashioned looting. Broken glass, fire, elephants, tv's rushing by, rain and hail, the miasma around her didn't bother her a bit. She liked it.
Magneto always assumed that mutants would win if it came down to war. Yet she noticed a house-wife-looking woman beating a teenaged boy with gills. Breathing under water didn't make him better in a fight.
But they were the future, not-
"Mystique."
She stopped and turned to look at the voice. An X-Man. Not the cute one though, she thought disappointedly.
She just smiled at the man in the stupid glasses.
"You're always where trouble is."
"No time to chat, Cyclops," she said and kicked him in the stomach. He instinctively hunched over and she kneed him in the face. He tried to take a swing at her but she caught his arm, twisted it, and used it to punch himself in the face. As he squinted she ripped his glasses off.
He screamed and a pillar of fire erupted into the sky.
If she wouldn't have taken the time to smirk, she would have been all right. With a painful yell, he kicked her swiftly in the kneecaps.
Crack.
She fell backward, her knees broken. A twenty-five foot mutant didn't see her amidst the people running back and forth like ants. He couldn't avoid her.
One footstep of his on her chest felt like it broke nearly all her ribs. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't walk. She was being trampled. She looked over her shoulder and saw Cyclops between a mess of people, screaming and searching for his glasses. She began to crawl, using her tired, bruised, and bleeding fingers. They were crushed nearly every step. Everyone was screaming. It was getting worse. Everyone was panicking. And she'd lit this fire.
Crawling was useless. Her arms were nearly broken from being run over. She dragged herself, bleeding and barely breathing, to a curb where only occasionally did someone run over her. She tried to sit up but was knocked over by a group of six people fighting on top of her.
She had never felt such excruciating pain. She couldn't breathe. couldn't . breathe.
A girl in punk clothes with a giant coffee stain on her was just ten feet away and not fighting.
"Help, help me! Please! Somebody!" came the voice of a little boy.
The circling crow stopped in its tracks and the girl snapped her head to the left to see a little boy with twisted legs and bleeding arms, lying on a curb. She pushed through people, not throwing a punch, but forcefully moving them out of her way.
This is why I shouldn't have stayed, she thought. Her heart broke as she saw the little boy and his little voice being closer to her ear was her only concern as she crawled over and through people to get to him.
She dove over a sleeping or dead body and grabbed the little boy just as an enraged mutant came toward them swinging a baseball bat. The little boy didn't see what she did, he just hid his face in her shoulder, but when he looked up again, the man was just walking away. He sniffled.
"Where does it hurt, love?" she asked, surprisingly lightly considering the miasma around them.
"Where's Momma."
"I'm Momma till she gets back, love."
He was panting. And panicking. And things were slowing. And things were oozing.
"Momma! Momma!" he wailed. His pain moved through his knees and right up and out of his throat. He couldn't control his wailing. And the more he wailed, the more it hurt.
"Hush love, screaming won't heal you," she spoke calmly, and it was a slap in the face to the urgency of the situation. She could have sent evil away with the calm fearlessness she had in her voice. Then her left arm glowed like gold smoke, like fire, like the light at the birth of the universe, and she put it to his dirty, sweaty forehead.
His body gently sighed, or rose as if he was yawning, and he felt as unafraid as she was. He forgot himself. Where he was. Whether he was a boy or a woman or Senator Kelley. All was fine. All was enough. He could have died at that moment and been content.
He was near sleep when suddenly he saw a man approaching.
"Momma! Mommaaaaaaa!" he suddenly panicked, his eyes large and horrified at what he saw. She snapped her head over to follow his gaze. A man with dark glasses was approaching. It was obvious his target was the little boy. The man came toward him like a monster and for that moment, his panicked scream was instinctual. He crawled and clawed like desperation all over her. "Save me, Momma! Save meeheeeheeeheeee!" he bawled.
Never taking her eyes off of the approaching man, she held the little boy tighter and spoke calmly, "You're safe, love." Something surprised him and he jerked his hand to his glasses, as if to strike.
In an instant, her left hand was up in front of her.
Cyclops stopped. He just stopped.
He couldn't strike them.
The chaos continued to rain around them. Fire fell. Smoke rose. It moved at light speed. It moved in slow motion. It was over. It hadn't begun. He saw how ugly people's faces are when they're contorted in hate. He saw how little people had to show for themselves at death. He saw wives weeping when they heard that their husbands were beaten to death in this riot. He saw children in ill-fitting suits at their funerals. He saw the boy and saw everything this boy was and still only saw innocence. He saw the girl, her arm around the little boy, under a broken streetlight, a group of cops swinging guns and swinging guns and swinging guns and shouting, and he couldn't bring himself to harm any of them. He couldn't. He had no desire to. They actually could have killed him and he wouldn't have minded. He would not have felt any different. He felt no fear and no hate.
He put his hand down and noticed the girl's eyes for the first time -
It was brief.
The peace was interrupted by a loud shot and a sharp pain in his chest.
It woke all three of them up because Cyclops didn't realize what the pain was. He looked down and noticed he was bleeding. That pain was a familiar one.
With a loud plop, he was on the ground.
The girl was confused, though her face showed just the slightest trace of it. She turned to look at the little boy.
A full-grown woman, her size, covered in blue skin, and with a gun in her hand was under her arm instead. She had time to narrow her confused eyebrows only slightly.
She didn't remember the blue fist in her face. She was simply knocked unconscious.
CHAPTER ONE .. hope
She came for coffee and stayed for hope.
Another stood down the staring down the streets, chin high, one eyebrow cocked. Already the sidewalks were claimed by the opposing sides, neither daring to cross to the other, each shaking their signs and their fists at the other. The corner of her mouth under her cocked eyebrow raised into a smile. The beating of her heart pounded like a war drum. She felt it in her stomach. She felt it in her hands that had the power to light the fire to start it all. Today a war would start.
It was breathtaking. It was awe-inspiring. It wonderfully watered the aching, hope-thirsty valves of his heart. It was like seeing the unimaginable and witnessing a miracle. It was.
. easy to be fooled.
He wanted to be inspired by the beautiful scene in the thousands of cheering people in front of him, but a cynical and very-often-true voice reminded him that people are fickle. And mutants were only one gene different from them.
But still, he hadn't seen a sight so beautiful in a long time. The unified cheers and applause of the crowd that had gathered before his platform were perhaps the most gorgeous noises mankind could make. They were.
"Amazing, Professor," Storm said like an eight-year-old in front of her presents on Christmas day, her voice showing none of the caution of his. "Your speech, all these people. I, I really feel something here today."
Don't count your chickens until they are hatched, he wanted to say. Instantly, he felt guilty for thinking that. A comment like that would be more appropriate coming from the mouth of Eric Lehnscherr.
She put a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him, looking for his agreement.
Was it was to smile back?
Is it foolish to hope?
He patted her hand and smiled. "I do too, Storm." He scanned the ocean of multi-colored faces flooding the grass in front of him. The sun was setting and their applause was enduring. "They came because they're all seeking hope, also. I just hope they know the struggle for peaceful coexistence is not an easy one. Let us work to make sure this-" he made sure Storm followed his glance and took in the scene of the cheering crowd, "-this lasts." They had listened patiently and fairly, almost hungrily, to his speech. He had passionately told them the truth and only the truth. He'd done all he could without taking over their minds, which tempted him. What does a parent do with a child that he knows is heading for trouble? Lock the child up or allow him to make his own mistakes? What if those mistakes meant the death of many innocent people? The Professor was definitely tempted to do their thinking for them.
But there they were, begging to be believed in. The view from the platform was so splendid that it was difficult to believe they were capable of hurting anyone. They were all cheering, with mouths open, children on their shoulders clapping also, waving flags, swinging banners, and believing in peace between mutants and humans. Nearly two million people, human and mutants, came to Times Square and spilled all over the city of New York to protest the undemocratic passing of the Mutant Freedom Act. What's wrong with an act giving freedom to mutants? In actuality, the Mutant Freedom Act is a more pleasing name for the Mutant Registration Act. A senator from Louisiana came up with the brilliant title after fears of hate crimes against the now-public mutants were discussed in congress. Two pitiful provisions making mutant prejudice illegal constituted this bill as giving mutants greater freedom. Though they, unlike humans, had to register themselves like the Jews in World War Two, (it was also discussed if the mutants should wear some sort of identification, like a yellow star,) and also carry separate identification, this act was aptly named the Mutant Freedom Act. It was rushed through congress with such speed because presidents have a knack at declaring "national emergencies'" when the democratic system becomes too slow and cumbersome.
"God bless America!" one loud voice shouted above the rest.
God save our souls, the Professor thought.
All was gorgeous.
There were opuses of shouts and screams and cheers and claps, but then there was this crow. Floating like a sleepy tuber on the Mississippi River, like a lazy teenager on a couch, flapping only once and coasting forever, calmly, peacefully, and effortlessly this crow skimmed the air with a pace and attitude as lackadaisical as the girl below him.
Humming a tune to herself, she walked equally as lightly on the cracked sidewalk below her and sipped her coffee. It was worth the trip. Starbucks coffee was great.
This lazy crow, high in the air, swooped down and did a few circles with her. She would occasionally spin with him, lift her arms for him to fly over and under, and the stark, sharp, shadows of the skyscrapers would cut and slide over her artistically. For a moment she actually appreciated them, these cubes, coffins, and crowning architectural achievements called skyscrapers. But they were really just temples of vainglory to their creators. Towers of Babel. Gross blockers of the sunlight that made stretches of city streets into ceiling-less hallways. Pats on the back to human ingenuity.
I suppose they thought they were doing something good when they built them, she thought, peering through the cracks of the ceiling-less highway of the New York streets and spying some striking blue patches of sky. What a gorgeous blue. Man can build towers that scrape this sky but they can never make a blue as gorgeous, she thought.
She was just another dirty New York punk, dressed in ripped jeans, a ripped leather coat, and her hair not visible under her dirty cocked hat. She walked by many people without them giving her a second look. She walked by many people in her life that would never give her a second thought.
If only they truly realized what it was that was walking past them, they would have never left her side.
She was still humming when she found herself in the center of Times Square with the boundary lines between enemy sides clearly and tacitly drawn. The tune was slow, simple, and its resignation was sharply out of tune with the angry passion around her. She continued its slow measure as she inserted the words, "Papa, Papa. my Papa, please don't let me be. let down."
It was time to light the fire. But it was like gasoline filled the air already. All she had to do was toss a match. She had a potbelly, a rough beard, and a nasty laugh that reeked of beef jerky. Oh, and she also had a very large automatic gun that Charlton Heston helped give her the right to legally own in her backpack. She lit a cigar and stuck it in her false, foul mouth.
Her companion noted this signal from the other side of the street in Times Square. Pyro began to tap his foot. His lips curled into a Grinch- like smile. "We are the future, not them!" he turned and shouted in a voice more similar to another's and not his own. He lifted his arms as he shouted and the crowd around him roared in agreement. In the hour he had inserted himself into their presence and protested with them, they had come to like him.
Anything that came out of Mystique's cigar-filled mouth was loudly agreed with, also.
"Damn motherfuckin' right, ma friend. Damn fuckin' right. Couldn't be no fuckin' righter if -" the drunken Podunk next to Mystique hiccupped, "- if, I don't know but you're goddamn right. God bless America! Those fuckin' mutants."
"So why duncha tell 'em, ma friend? Don' leddem take this goddamn country! Ya fuckin' mutants!" She shook her hairy, lumberjack looking fist in the air at the other side of the street.
"Ya motherfuckers! We don' wancha here! Go back ya where ya came from!" her new acquaintance staggered.
"I come from America!"
"America is ours!"
"America's no place for freaks!"
"America's no place for weakling humans!"
It was no longer Mystique and Pyro shouting. The insults had increased flawlessly from the acquaintances they had acquired. The fire would soon be lit.
"I'd fuckin' kill all ya if this fence weren't heya!" the Podunk screamed and took a swig from his flask.
"And we'll always fight back!"
In a matter of thirty seconds the shouting quadrupled in volume. The fences guarding the protestors from the streets shook. The police perked up and began to move in to try control things. But the insults, the shouting, the curse words all rose suddenly as if a gust of wind rose to tempt the fire.
"Mutants are evil-
"People are evil-
They seemed to think whoever yelled louder was more right.
"Mutants should die!"
The cries came like furious and venomous serpents from their mouths. Of course there were a few cries for reason but these peacekeepers' shouts were easily covered by the collecting mob of fear and anger. The puny gates penning each side in were pushed and heaved to their sad limits. People closest to these gates were nearly crushed and fallen on as these primates beat their chests and defended their territory. Here there were no smiles and cheers, only faces twisted and ready to spit, yelling and screaming, veins popping out of necks and crooked fingers pointing to the other side. Stuffed mutants hung from nooses and signs claiming to know the will of God shook everywhere. A gate broke and more shouts arose.
"People should die!"
Police rushed in. They tried to pull out some bruised people. They tried shouting too, also thinking if they could yell louder that would somehow make everything quiet again.
There was no need for the second signal. The people swelled. They surged like an ocean wave. Pyro was lifted off his feet by the crush of people and carried toward the front. He sailed forward on the rioters. One unified voice chanted below him.
It should have felt slower than it did. This action, this shot that started the revolution, this light of the fire of war, happened in the blink of an eye. But so many Earth-changing events happen in the blink of an eye while the effects linger for eons.
His lighter flicked. He remembered the smell of fuel. Then a fire was curling and licking and tumbling down his arm like a hungry dragon then curling and licking over the street until it exploded into the wall of humans on the other side. Dozens of people were on fire.
The police had their guns up before the Podunk could curse. The police had their guns up before the Podunk could curse.
"You fuckin' mutants! You asked for it!" Mystique growled and her automatic gun rained on where the fire came from.
The bodies below Pyro dropped.
They didn't have a chance when the cops started in. They knew the mutants would do something like that any minute. That's just like mutants. The shouts turned into screams. We have to defend ourselves kill 'em or die trying now's the time boys let's gettem' they're coming for our children they're coming for our children you mutant freaks you human fucks. can you hear it? The bullets rained upon them from the police and the humans, and the fire, rain, fireworks, frogs, and anything else one could imagine rained upon the humans.
Once the gates were broken down, and the mutants and humans were safely at each other's throats or ripping each other's hair out, Mystique smiled with satisfaction and slid back into her blue skin. Her drunken acquaintance was being pushed forward in the mob right next to her and jerked his head to face her.
There weren't words for the terror in his eyes. The confusion. The fear.
There was no time for anger. She blew him a kiss and gave him a punch that snapped his neck.
It didn't take much for her to keep her balance. An elbow here, a knee there, and humans around her were broken and crying and easy to be stepped over. It was the raining fire and the rampant elephants that were a problem. Some had given up fighting and just began good ol' fashioned looting. Broken glass, fire, elephants, tv's rushing by, rain and hail, the miasma around her didn't bother her a bit. She liked it.
Magneto always assumed that mutants would win if it came down to war. Yet she noticed a house-wife-looking woman beating a teenaged boy with gills. Breathing under water didn't make him better in a fight.
But they were the future, not-
"Mystique."
She stopped and turned to look at the voice. An X-Man. Not the cute one though, she thought disappointedly.
She just smiled at the man in the stupid glasses.
"You're always where trouble is."
"No time to chat, Cyclops," she said and kicked him in the stomach. He instinctively hunched over and she kneed him in the face. He tried to take a swing at her but she caught his arm, twisted it, and used it to punch himself in the face. As he squinted she ripped his glasses off.
He screamed and a pillar of fire erupted into the sky.
If she wouldn't have taken the time to smirk, she would have been all right. With a painful yell, he kicked her swiftly in the kneecaps.
Crack.
She fell backward, her knees broken. A twenty-five foot mutant didn't see her amidst the people running back and forth like ants. He couldn't avoid her.
One footstep of his on her chest felt like it broke nearly all her ribs. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't walk. She was being trampled. She looked over her shoulder and saw Cyclops between a mess of people, screaming and searching for his glasses. She began to crawl, using her tired, bruised, and bleeding fingers. They were crushed nearly every step. Everyone was screaming. It was getting worse. Everyone was panicking. And she'd lit this fire.
Crawling was useless. Her arms were nearly broken from being run over. She dragged herself, bleeding and barely breathing, to a curb where only occasionally did someone run over her. She tried to sit up but was knocked over by a group of six people fighting on top of her.
She had never felt such excruciating pain. She couldn't breathe. couldn't . breathe.
A girl in punk clothes with a giant coffee stain on her was just ten feet away and not fighting.
"Help, help me! Please! Somebody!" came the voice of a little boy.
The circling crow stopped in its tracks and the girl snapped her head to the left to see a little boy with twisted legs and bleeding arms, lying on a curb. She pushed through people, not throwing a punch, but forcefully moving them out of her way.
This is why I shouldn't have stayed, she thought. Her heart broke as she saw the little boy and his little voice being closer to her ear was her only concern as she crawled over and through people to get to him.
She dove over a sleeping or dead body and grabbed the little boy just as an enraged mutant came toward them swinging a baseball bat. The little boy didn't see what she did, he just hid his face in her shoulder, but when he looked up again, the man was just walking away. He sniffled.
"Where does it hurt, love?" she asked, surprisingly lightly considering the miasma around them.
"Where's Momma."
"I'm Momma till she gets back, love."
He was panting. And panicking. And things were slowing. And things were oozing.
"Momma! Momma!" he wailed. His pain moved through his knees and right up and out of his throat. He couldn't control his wailing. And the more he wailed, the more it hurt.
"Hush love, screaming won't heal you," she spoke calmly, and it was a slap in the face to the urgency of the situation. She could have sent evil away with the calm fearlessness she had in her voice. Then her left arm glowed like gold smoke, like fire, like the light at the birth of the universe, and she put it to his dirty, sweaty forehead.
His body gently sighed, or rose as if he was yawning, and he felt as unafraid as she was. He forgot himself. Where he was. Whether he was a boy or a woman or Senator Kelley. All was fine. All was enough. He could have died at that moment and been content.
He was near sleep when suddenly he saw a man approaching.
"Momma! Mommaaaaaaa!" he suddenly panicked, his eyes large and horrified at what he saw. She snapped her head over to follow his gaze. A man with dark glasses was approaching. It was obvious his target was the little boy. The man came toward him like a monster and for that moment, his panicked scream was instinctual. He crawled and clawed like desperation all over her. "Save me, Momma! Save meeheeeheeeheeee!" he bawled.
Never taking her eyes off of the approaching man, she held the little boy tighter and spoke calmly, "You're safe, love." Something surprised him and he jerked his hand to his glasses, as if to strike.
In an instant, her left hand was up in front of her.
Cyclops stopped. He just stopped.
He couldn't strike them.
The chaos continued to rain around them. Fire fell. Smoke rose. It moved at light speed. It moved in slow motion. It was over. It hadn't begun. He saw how ugly people's faces are when they're contorted in hate. He saw how little people had to show for themselves at death. He saw wives weeping when they heard that their husbands were beaten to death in this riot. He saw children in ill-fitting suits at their funerals. He saw the boy and saw everything this boy was and still only saw innocence. He saw the girl, her arm around the little boy, under a broken streetlight, a group of cops swinging guns and swinging guns and swinging guns and shouting, and he couldn't bring himself to harm any of them. He couldn't. He had no desire to. They actually could have killed him and he wouldn't have minded. He would not have felt any different. He felt no fear and no hate.
He put his hand down and noticed the girl's eyes for the first time -
It was brief.
The peace was interrupted by a loud shot and a sharp pain in his chest.
It woke all three of them up because Cyclops didn't realize what the pain was. He looked down and noticed he was bleeding. That pain was a familiar one.
With a loud plop, he was on the ground.
The girl was confused, though her face showed just the slightest trace of it. She turned to look at the little boy.
A full-grown woman, her size, covered in blue skin, and with a gun in her hand was under her arm instead. She had time to narrow her confused eyebrows only slightly.
She didn't remember the blue fist in her face. She was simply knocked unconscious.