Disclaimer: Don't own X-Men or Virals

Big Changes

I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I ran, a gunman hot on my heels, or for all I knew he could be. Then I heard it:

Crack, crack

That removed all doubt that he was chasing me. I got up the wall and blanched, the drop was a lot further on this side then it was the on the other side, I had no choice it was jump and risk injury or stay and die. I dropped to the ground.

Snap

That wasn't the gun that was coming from my body, I felt it as much as I heard it; my leg had broken.

"Crap" I muttered as my pursuer was on top of the wall and I couldn't run on a broken leg. I was praying that Shelton or Ben was within range to see me in distress and come to my aid.

Suddenly, I see two people coming my way; I didn't know if they were friend or foe; I could only pray they were friend. One was a male with brown hair and a strange visor over his eyes, the other was a girl; her blond hair was down past her shoulder blades and expressive blue eyes were going back and forth between the gunman on the wall and me.

The world went dark for a few minutes, how long I don't know, the next thing I realize is the male is carrying me.

"What happened?" I asked fear edging into my voice more than I would like.

"We'll explain later, but don't worry, you're safe and so are your friends." The blonde replied.

My friends, Hirum, Shelton and Ben, were they safe, could I trust these strangers? I t seemed I had little choice in the matter but to at least vie them the benefit of the doubt until I knew for certain they were truly safe.

"Make sure the ramp is down, we need to get out of here fast." The male carrying me told the girl.

"It is." She replied, I had no idea how she knew since whatever the ramp was attached to had yet to come into view.

"Good, those gunmen are going to realize what happened sooner or later and come for us; we can't have that, not with her hurt."

At that moment, they seemed to realize that I was still clueless about what was going on. The girl placed her hand on the knee opposite my injury comfortingly as we slowed to a walk.

"I don't know if you've heard of us, we're the X-Men." Her voice carried what sounded like very mild a Scottish or Irish accent that sounded interesting.

Shockingly enough I had heard of the X-Men, from my aunt Temperance Brennan of all people. She had found the corps of a teenage girl who carried a strange gene mutation that led her to the Xavier School for the Gifted and the X-Men. She had told me they had been extremely helpful on the case but it was obvious the subject matter disturbed their founder Charles Xavier greatly, turn out he had a teenage daughter that was the same age as the victim. Tempe had told me it wouldn't have surprised her if he went home and spent several hours just spending time with her.

We got to the destination, a jet plan sitting in the center of an undeveloped plot of land. They took us inside and instantly I noticed Hirum, Shelton and Ben all sitting there, waiting for me. The instant I was placed in a chair they all started talking at once.

"Tory, are you okay?" Hi

"What happened?" Shelton

"Why didn't you contact us?" Ben

"One question at a time, Hi, I'm fine, I think my leg is broken but that isn't life threatening by a long shot. Shelton, I was chased by a gunman scaled a wall and found the ground was lower on the other side than it was on the side I came up on, and Ben…" I paused trying my best to come up with a reasonable reason as to why I didn't contact them.

"Calm down everyone, she was being chased by a man with a gun, those circumstances don't exactly lend well to phone calls. I've been there before, believe me the phone is the last thing you think of." The visor-wearing male said as he started towards the front of the jet to get us out of here.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Right now we are going to Morris Island to speak with your parents about a proposition I would like to make to them," a male voice said, it was strange, the voice possessed the same strange mid Atlantic accent as the girl.

We took off and the man approached us along with a woman that looked to be in her thirties, she pulled a first aid kit from a nearby compartment and a strange object that I soon realized was a splint for my leg and got to work on me. I looked at the guys; they were as surprised as I was that the man was in a wheelchair.

The woman cleaned the cuts and scrapes on my face and arms, it was obvious the boys had already endured this treatment. She then went to my leg.

"This is going to hurt, sweetheart, do you want one of your friends to come hold your hand while I splint this?" she asked.

I made eye contact with Ben, imploring him to understand what I wanted, that I wanted him to hold my hand but I couldn't make the words come out of my mouth. He seemed to get it as he moved to sit beside me and took my hand without thought.

She put the split on my leg, and the pain was intense and I squeezed Ben's hand tightly.

After that, the man in a wheelchair began to speak.

"I am Professor Charles Xavier, I'm sorry we haven't done much in the way of introductions yet, we were more concerned with your safety than anything else."

The forward chairs turned to reveal four others ranging in apparent age from about my age to probably close to twenty, that wasn't counting the Professor himself and the woman treating me. She looked to be in her late twenties to early thirties and he looked to be older than Kit, probably mid-forties to nearly fifty granted the fact that he was completely bald didn't help me with estimating his age. They went around introducing themselves.

"I'm Kathy" the blonde who had helped earlier said I noticed her striking blue eyes looked quite a bit like Professor Xavier's own eyes, were they related to each other.

"Don't be surprised if you catch me calling the Professor "dad" it isn't a mistake, he is my father" Kathy continued almost as if she knew what I was thinking.

A red haired woman I hadn't seen before spoke next.

"My name is Jean Grey." She was rather tall and had green eyes and a very athletic build, all the X-Men did if what Aunt Tempe told me was true.

The next one that spoke was the guy in the visor, he seemed a little uncomfortable giving his real name; apparently they didn't often use their actual names in the field.

"I'm Scott, normally in situations like this we would use code names, or those that have them would use them, mine for example is Cyclops, Kathy's code name is Time Trap, due to her ability make it appear as if she has frozen time. Typically the only way we know if she froze us is we don't remember anything from the time we were frozen."

That explained it, why I didn't know how I got away from the gunman.

"Did she freeze me?" I asked.

"I did," Kathy replied "Had circumstances been different I might not have, but the guy had pulled the trigger I only had milliseconds to get you out of there, and that ended up being the only safe way to do it. He unfroze a few minutes later but by that time we were long gone."

I nodded a knot forming in my stomach at the thought of how close I had come to getting shot, most likely the shot would have been fatal. Ben and the others didn't seem to like the thought any more than I did.

The introductions continued, a short brunette introduced herself as Kitty and I assumed that was a nickname to begin with and a girl with auburn hair punctuated with white bangs introduced herself as Rogue.

The woman that treated my leg now stood by Professor Xavier.

"My name is Gael, I came here from Ireland when I was seventeen years old I graduated high school and decided to study medicine. After all of that I returned to the Xavier Institute to help out as a doctor." She started towards a seat as we waited for our parents to arrive. That was the first time I noticed she was favoring her left leg. I didn't ask why, I figured if she wanted us to know, she would have told us.

Professor Xavier had contacted our parents and they soon arrived at the location where the jet sat. He had wanted Kit to be there with us when I was taken to the emergency room to get my leg tended to by a doctor with proper equipment.

To Be Continued…