The character of Lucas began in a much longer Wolverine/Jubilee story I'm writing that is still in progress. He really came to life for me and I had to write his backstory. He's a good kid!
I also mention a few other new characters, Lucas' room mates Diss, Cobra and Brittle. They're passed over pretty quickly, but you will get to know them better when the long story gets put up.
Things happen "behind the scenes" here. Once again, when the long story is published those scenes will be written out.
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Dragon Journal
Entry 1, Beginnings
My friend Wolverine was right. The first couple of days here at the Xavier Institute were hard. I really missed my dad, even though he threw me away, like garbage. At least that's what I thought then.
My mom died when I was little, she got burned real bad and died. That's all I know. Dad won't tell me any more than that. He always looks away or changes the subject when I ask him about her. Lately he gets mad and yells at me to stop asking him already. But I won't ever stop. I don't remember my mom much, but even so, I want to know what happened to her, all of it. I think he knows I won't give up because sometimes I see him looking at me with this real angry face and the only thing I can think I did to make him that mad is ask about mom again.
Until I started to get these scales and claws, I mean. Then he had a new reason to give me those bad looks, and everything changed at home. He didn't notice what I was going through at first, though, I kept it hidden from him, and it wasn't hard to do. He doesn't really look at me much, he never has. He always tells me I look too much like 'that bastard'. I wish I knew what he meant. That's another thing he won't talk to me about.
So it wasn't that hard to keep out of his way and hide what was happening to me, and for a few weeks I kept going to school as usual and I hid it there, too. But then a kid in gym class noticed the scales because they were spreading and I couldn't cover them up as well any more, and after that kids started making fun of me. More than usual, I mean. Even some of my friends. Sometimes a kid would trip me or shove me into the lockers and then laugh and say it was an accident. They didn't want to play with me anymore and everyone was calling me Lizzy the Lizard and one boy called me Slither and someone else yelled Fishboy at me.
They used to call me Loony Lucas, or Luker the Puker. That all started a year ago on our field trip to the natural history museum. They did this frog dissection demonstration…I really don't want to think about that right now. I'm just saying I'm used to names. And I never let it show, how much those names hurt me.
So anyway, then my dad found out, I don't know how. I came home from school one afternoon and he was waiting for me on the porch. Maybe the principal called him. I could tell he was mad but I didn't think he was mad at me until I tried to walk past him and then he grabbed my arm really hard. When he saw the scales he looked sort of shocked, and then real mad. He swore and slung me around some and into the house. My books and papers went flying onto the lawn and I never did see them again, or go to my school again, and I didn't even get out of the basement until something else happened, I don't know what it was, and everything changed for me again. Dad told me I had to stay down there because I was a mutie and he didn't want anybody else knowing there were freaks in his family. Then he yelled that he should have known. Known what?
I kept real quiet at first, in that basement. I was thinking. I decided maybe Dad was right, I was a freak. Maybe it was better for no one to see me. Was I turning into a reptile or something? I was so ugly people wanted to hurt me when they saw me. It wasn't fair, why did I have to be different? I took a paint scraper from the tool bench and tried to scratch the scales off my arm. It didn't work very well so then I tried using my fingernails. They were changing too, getting real sharp and kind of pointed, like cat claws. That worked better but it really hurt and it bled so much, I finally stopped trying.
I'm not real sure how long I was down there in the basement, maybe a couple weeks. I thought once Dad forgot I was there because he didn't come down to see me for two whole days. I could hear him moving around the house above me, though. After those two days with no food I couldn't stay quiet any longer and I started pleading with him to let me out, but he didn't answer me, not once.
There was a little bathroom there so I had water and a toilet and I kept myself washed. There was a cot I slept on. But I was so lonely and so hungry. I couldn't understand how he could hate me all of a sudden, like. Unless he'd hated me all along and I just never knew. When he finally opened up the door the next afternoon I tried my best to push past him, but he shoved me back so hard I almost fell down the steps, and then he tossed me a hamburger from McDonald's. The door banged shut but I didn't care, I had food. I stood right there on the stairs and gobbled it down.
The morning after that he gave me a bowl of oatmeal and when he shut the door on me I heard him take one of his rifles from the rack in the hallway. If he was going hunting he could be away for days, so I yelled as loud as I could for him not to leave, but he left anyway. He was gone for three days then. I was so hungry that time I tried to eat some cardboard from an old box and I even ate a spider I found behind the toilet. I kinda puked the spider back up, though, and that's when I got really mad and started just, well, screaming and pounding things and breaking things and crying. I was swearing at my dad and wishing he was right in front of me so I could kill him. I hated him. It was then that I first breathed fire.
I was crying so hard and gulping, you know how you do when you really, really cry? Then I burped, and out came this little ball of fire from my mouth! At first I couldn't figure out what had made it happen, but then I burped a little later it happened again, so I knew. I started to practice a little 'cause even if I was a freak, being able to breathe fire is pretty cool. I decided I was going to flame my father, blast him good when he came down here next. That'd show him. It would scare him real bad. I wanted to see him afraid of me.
But when he came home, when he finally opened the basement door, I forgot about my plan. I didn't really want to hurt him. I was glad to see him, in a way. He said something about a school. I couldn't understand what he was saying. He had a small suitcase in his one hand, and a piece of bread with butter on it in the other. I grabbed the bread and wolfed it down. I wanted to make the bread last it but it was impossible. It was gone in a few seconds, a split second. More, more. Oh, I was so hungry! I craved pizza. Or a banana shake. Cheese fries. Fried chicken. I couldn't stop thinking about food.
He took me in his truck, he drove into Salem, to the train station. I was happy to be out of the basement, the sunlight was really nice, now if I could eat something else things would be really looking up for me. I felt like maybe I would pass out if I didn't get more food inside me. When we pulled up to the station he gave me a couple dollars and told me there were vending machines in there, that I could go get some food there if I wanted. He was looking at me funny. He took my hand, turning it over, feeling my nails. I was afraid he was going to get mad again and I pulled my hand away. Then I was scared he'd be mad I did that. But he only told me he was sorry for everything and hoped I could forgive him some day.
He told me some people were coming to meet me here and take me to a new school, where I would live from now on. He said he didn't know when he'd see me again. That made me really scared, because then I knew my dad didn't want me any more. He was giving me to strangers, to get rid of me. Because of the scales. Because I was a mutie. What would they do to me there? I started to cry and pleaded with him to not make me go and tried to hold onto him, and I said that I would stay hidden in the basement for my whole life if only he wouldn't get rid of me. He pushed me away again and again, but then he grabbed me in a hug and told me there were good things in store for me on this new path I was taking. I'd never heard him talk like that before. He's never hugged me before either and I stopped struggling with him, and that's when he reached over me, opened my door and pushed me out of the car, my suitcase tumbling after me.
I fell on the cement and the car took off. A kind woman helped me up, brushed me off, but when she saw my scaly arms she wasn't very helpful any more so I made my way inside by myself. I didn't know what to do. I still had those two dollars clutched in my hand so I found the vending machines and bought a Snickers and a bag of Jays Potato Chips. I like sweet and salty mixed and I ate them together. I kind of felt like crying again but I made myself not do it, because some people were staring at me and that would only make them stare harder. And I'm not a crybaby.
I found a place to sit near a shoe shine guy, back in a corner, so I could hide from all those eyes. That guy was nice, he winked at me and smiled, too. He shared his sweetroll with me, and showed me how his skin could change colors, from regular skin color to blue to green to orange to red. It was neat in a way, but he was a freak too, wasn't he? Like me. I wasn't sure then if I should stay around him. I decided to get away from him. He looked sad when I moved off. I waved to him, 'cause I was sorry I made him feel bad, but I was too afraid, he might draw more attention to me. Somebody might try to hurt me.
Then I started to worry again about the strangers that were coming for me. Who were they? What would they be like? What did they think of muties? How would I know them? And what kind of school was this? I'd be the new kid, probably would have to fight some of the other kids, and it'd be even worse now, I'd be the new freak. They'll hate me. They'll tease me. It'll be awful. I wanted to go home.
The people from the school found me, though, with no problem. A bald man in a wheelchair and a real tall guy wearing red sunglasses came right up to me, like they already knew me. The bald guy said he was Professor Xavier, the head of the school, and Scott Summers was the guy with the red glasses. They took me in a huge, long car, a limousine, to the Xavier Institute. I knew that this was the place X Men live and train, kids at school used to talk about it. The sign on the gate said it was a school for gifted youngsters. I supposed the gifted ones were the ones that become X Men. But what were they gifted with? I hoped I would meet a kid with those gifts so I could see what they were. It'd be so cool, to be an X Man.
Now I know that gifted means mutant, and Wolverine told me all the people here are mutants, just like I am. I'm a feral mutant, like Wolverine is. He's the Wolverine, and I'm the Dragon, Draco, who breathes fire. Anybody here could be an X Man, if they train hard enough and want it bad enough, that's what Logan said. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be an X Man some day. I want to fight alongside Wolverine, we make a good team. He even told me we do. Jubilee will be on our team, she's pretty cool with her fireworks, and Logan loves her a lot, he told me that, too. So she can join us.
Jubilee snuck me some cake and milk late at night a few times, and some for my roomies Diss and Cobra and Brittle, too. Wolverine says I need to fill out, bulk up, he says I'm too skinny and puny. I don't mind when he says that, he always smiles and pinches my arm muscles and makes me laugh. I know he's not making fun of me. I sure am happy I can eat as much as I want here. Sometimes I take something back to my room with me from the cafeteria which I know we aren't supposed to do, but I can't forget how hungry I was and I don't know, it helps me feel safe or something, to have food close by. Miz says eventually I'll get over these feelings about food and not to worry about it.
I'm talking to a therapist here about all this stuff that's happened to me. Miz Turner. She's so nice, she smiles all the time and her voice is always soft and calm. You know what, her skin is the exact same color of the caramel that was on top of the cake I had last night! She has blue stripes too like tiger stripes and her eyes are like a cat's. She's a feral, just like me and Wolverine, and she even has a tail. I wonder if I'll get a tail, too? I guess I kind of hope not.
She told me her name Miz is short for Misery. I said, who would want a name like that? It was very rude of me and I apologized right away. But Miz told me that she had a very hard time of it when she was a little girl, and when the Professor found her and brought her here she had been living in a cardboard box behind some stores on Navy Pier in Chicago, and she was in such a bad state inside her head she wanted her new name to be Misery. But she eventually worked through her troubles, just like I'm doing now. She found peace and happiness here. She said the only good thing about being miserable is you can count on the fact that it never lasts. So the last part of her name dropped away along with her troubles, and she became just Miz. I sure do like that story. Now Miz is one of the school's psychologists, and she's a counselor, too.
I told Miz the very first time I talked to her I was real mad at my dad and I hated him. I told Miz I thought he never really loved me and he proved it by how he treated me and by throwing me away like he did. But I think I'm kinda starting to see that my dad does care about me, because why else would he have sent me here? That was an act of love, Miz says. 'Cause this is a good place. The other stuff he did...well, we're still working on that.
Right now I'm waiting for Wolverine to come get me. We're going to go fishing! I've never fished before, and I can't wait. He told me he's taking me out to eat, too, in town. I can pick where I want to go, he said, as long as it's not some fancy place that won't let you in unless you're dressed in a tuxedo. Boy did that make me laugh! Like I would pick a place like that. I'm thinking outside the box.
Logan told me he'd come get me at11am sharp. I was ready to go by seven! I cleaned my room up real good and made my bed and did all my homework too, and when I finished all that there was still an hour to go so I decided to start writing in my journal. Miz wants me to keep a journal, and write down how I feel, what I've been doing, anything I feel like writing. So when I got tired of waiting for Logan I took out my pen and notebook. At first I had a hard time figuring out what to write, but then I decided to write down what's been on my mind the most, all the stuff that happened to me before my dad sent me here. It feels sort of good, writing it all down. Miz had a real good idea with this journal stuff.
Oh, here comes Wolverine now, with five minutes to spare, what do you think of that? And Jubilee's with him. They're all lovey dovey, those two, hanging onto each other. He kisses her like every ten seconds or so, they do that mushy stuff all the time, geez. But it's okay, really, 'cause I like the way I feel when I watch them together. Two people in love is what they are. That's what Nightcrawler said. Kurt, who scared me so much the when I first got here because he looks like a blue devil. But Kurt's probably the kindest and gentlest person here. He's my friend too. I don't think it was a coincidence that it was Nightcrawler the Professor asked to show me my room and help me unpack my first day here.
But, you know, with Wolverine, well, there's this idea I have. Maybe it's stupid, I don't know...but I think I can write it down here. I wish...I wish he was my father, I really do, like my second dad. I've been pretending that he is. Can a boy have two fathers? Is that possible? I have this secret hope that if Wolverine and Jubilee ever get married one day, maybe I could be their son. The question is, would Wolverine want a son, a boy like me? Would Jubilee? I have room in my heart to love two dads and two moms, I really do. If I work real hard here, maybe they'll love me enough to keep me as their boy. Then I'd never have to worry about anything ever again, would I?