X-Men fan-fiction

Lightning Spark

Prologue

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Summary: Ellabeth Fait (last name Graycen) is a girl who has grown up as a mutant since she was struck by lightning.

She would have died if her mutant gene hadn't manifested within her and absorbed the lightning in to her body to create her power.

Every since that day she has been a danger to anyone and everyone around her and has become a freak on the run; Unable to touch another person without shocking them. She feels alone and unable to form connections with others because no one understands her.

-a-

Warning : Rated T

(However there is some mention of physical/sexual abuse, but it will only really be mentioned in the prologue –may be mentioned later on in the story too, but very briefly- with no details)

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Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men

-A-

She was 13 when it happened, she was barely passed being a kid and in to her teenage years. She had yet to saviour her first kiss, to embrace a boy who cared for her, to fall in love, when it was all suddenly taken away from her.

Her mother died due to complications in her little sister's birth. She had been 5 when it happened, when her life really died.

Her father turned to drinking and abuse. He hated the world for what had happened and stopped believing in God (she stopped believing too).

She tried to bring her sister, Hope-Ash, up as well as she could but she was always sickly and when she was 10 and her little sister turned 5, that bright young girl who had always adored her no matter what, passed away. She had always had a short life expectancy and without proper treatment it was only a matter of time before she died. They could barely afford her funeral let alone medical treatment for when she lived.

She had tried everything to help her beloved sister, she was too young to work yet but she had turned to a life of thievery and was good at it. She had used all her savings to help her sister but in the end it wasn't enough.

The pain ripped through her when Hope died and she vowed never to care for another again.

After Hope's death her father became even worse and obsessed with her.

By now they barely lived, she had to care for herself while her father lived off his benefits to supply his own hunger and booze addictions.

Their home was a tiny old rundown house on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Barely more than a shack.

She did what she had to, to survive.

One day her father had beaten her so hard that she was disoriented. She stumbled out of the house in to the stormy weather and made her way to her sanctuary. Her place where she was safe, away from it all. She staggered to her den on the old broken down railroad tracks above the river. She didn't notice the lightning lighting up the sky, she was too dizzy and just needed to sit down and wipe off the blood that was pouring down her face from her latest head wound.

She was amazed she was still alive after 3 years of focused abuse by her father.

Suddenly lightning struck the railroad tracks' rusted metal beneath her and her body went numb with shock and shook wildly as she was electrocuted. All she felt was a moment of pain and then darkness overtook her senses.

When she came to she was lying on the tracks still and she had a terrible headache but other than that she felt fine.

She remembered lightning striking and a hot then numbing feeling that had suddenly coursed through her body.

As she stood and regained full feeling she felt exhausted and stumbled back towards her house where her father no doubt lay passed out from drinking again.

When she reached the back door she stumbled a little and fell against the faded and cracked wood of the house. She put her hands out to stop her imminent pain and steady herself.

That was when the fiery burning and tingling in her hands became dominant and she almost screamed in horror and surprise. Her hands were criss-crossed with scarring and still scolding white burns in a spider web pattern across her tanned skin. Red welts covered the surfaces and she moaned as the pain washed over her. This was obviously thanks to the lightning, but she didn't understand how she could have lived and only have these minor wounds.

Pushing through the mesh screen door at the back of the house she silently made her way to her room at the top of the house with its hidden backroom that was a bathroom all to herself. This was where she kept the first aid things and she carefully sorted out her hands and bandaged them up before cleaning the blood off her head and patching up her wound. She had seen enough gruesome looking wounds in her short years she had lived so far and was practically an amateur doctor by this time; so she did a good job bandaging her wounds to heal herself.

She trudged back to her bed (a mattress on the floor) and flung herself tiredly down upon it in exhaustion and slept soundly and deeply for the first time since her mother died.

She only awoke when her father started hammering on her door and shouting her name as a growl, as he always did when he had been drinking too much and wanted someone to take it out on.

She could escape out of her window but she wasn't fast enough. Her drunken yet still strong father broke her lock and flung the door open. He was on her in seconds. He roughly yanked her back to him by her long hair and she cursed herself for not cutting it all off just because her sister had liked it 'beautiful and long'.

He slapped her around a little before finally pushing her down on her mattress and straddling her. She felt a little static shock for a second and the evil man on top of her jerked against her, but she thought nothing of it due to the pain that coursed through her mind, darkening all else, including reason.

She knew what would come next. He would rape her, again and beat on her some more to add to the pain and humiliation.

But the seconds ticked by and nothing happened.

She opened her eyes to find her father staring at her in horror. He was still on her, but his weight quickly and clumsily shifted as he leaped away from her.

She was confused as the evil man stared at her in shock and disbelief.

She wasn't one to throw away this good opportunity to act though, so she hurriedly scurried away from him to the other side of the room.

But too soon, he advanced again, shaking the shock from himself.

He grasped her arm roughly and there was a sudden electric shock when he touched her skin and he was flung across the room with the force of a violent lightning strike.

She was too amazed to understand what was going on right now but she had a pretty good idea.

As her father hastened to get up he pointed to her in terror and cried out 'MUTANT' at her before fleeing the room.

She was frozen with shock, paralysed even for a moment, those last moments as he shouted at her and left still playing over and over in her mind until she made herself stop and finally snapped out of it.

The only reason she had stayed all these years had been to protect her sister and now she realised what a fool she had been not to escape sooner after she died.

Without thinking about it she packed her small amount of things up and left her house. She made one last stop to visit her old trustworthy hideaway spot to collect the rest of her few yet precious belongings. Then she set out to the one place she knew she would be accepted for her talents.

She had barely an education but she had useful skills and she didn't know why she hadn't done this years ago really.

With her newfound identity and little knowledge of mutants she made her way slowly to New Orleans, intent on proving herself useful to the thieves' guild there so they may take her in. She would puzzle out everything that had happened in her mind along the way.

Or at least, that was her plan.

-A-

So, that was the prologue of 'Lightning Spark', another of my X-Men stories.

I know the prologue is very fast paced and doesn't go in to very much detail but that's how I wanted it to be because I am just trying to briefly tell the past events that set up the scene of the story. In the prologue I am just trying to create a background and past for the main character so that when you read the first chapter you can understand the setting and events better.

The first chapter will be set when Ellabeth arrives in New Orleans, and the story will carry on from there.

Thanks for reading

Please review

…Anie