Chapter One:
I don't remember the early years of my life very well. I remember my parents, Kathryn Worthington and Warren Worthington the Second. I remember that I was born in Centerport, New York. I also remember being rich. Extremely rich. My parents quite literally spoiled me with everything I could want.
Another thing I remember very clearly is how much I loved to climb. We had a large oak tree in the middle of my backyard which occasionally sported leaves every spring, but as it was so old, most of them fell off by the time summer rolled around. I used to scale the branches everyday after school, often going higher than my mom would allow me. She would constantly have to tell me, "Warren! Not so high!" or "Slow down honey, you might get yourself hurt!" Moms, they never understand.
The strange thing was I was not afraid of heights. Both of my parents and my grandparents had acrophobia. I, on the other hand, loved to get as high as I could, and survey the land. Sometimes, I pretended that I owned the whole world (which was my downside later on). I once got into trouble by scaling the walls of my school and crawling out onto the rooftop as a dare. So, with that in mind, it was not really a surprise for me for what my mutation was.
When I was somewhere near thirteen years of age, I began to notice some strange bumps growing between my shoulder blades. It wasn't that hard to hide it, but as the months passed, the lumps sprouted into white feathery wings. I tried to keep them hidden as long as I could, but my parents, like all others, found out. After that, the tension in the house, which was usually always simmering just underneath the surface, spilled out and enveloped us all in smothering, choking, silence. My dad didn't talk to anyone anymore. Unless you count the times I heard him whispering with my mom on what to do with me. I picked up words like "demented", "mutant", and "freak". All those I have heard before and I didn't think much of it until the day my dad announced I was going to MCFA.
MCFA stood for the Mutant Cage Fight Arena. Every night, mutants from around the globe were taken into Germany, where they would be forced to fight each other. The fights were broadcast so many times that I could recite the opening commentary, and visualize the arena where I never, until today, dreamed I would be going. The mutants fought in a metal cage in which the walls extended to the ceiling, providing there was no way out. In addition to this, the walls were electrified. One touch, and you would receive a huge shock of electricity. It ensured that no mutant would be able to leave, as if they wanted to. Surrounding the fighting arena were soldiers, armed with rifles that had, more than once, motivated the mutants into tearing each other apart. I knew, from recent broadcasts, that they killed the mutants who were reluctant to do anything. The knowledge of the enforcers spread to the would-be fighters and thus, they killed willingly, and without mercy, for fear of loss of dignity and pride if they themselves were killed.
So, naturally, I was shocked to hear this. I never imagined I would be a mutant nor that my parents would even consider to send me to MCFA. The next few days for me were spent in shock. I vaguely remember raised voices, my mother sobbing, me being jerked roughly into the back of a van, and the door slamming behind me. And then, darkness.
The next thing I knew, I was being shoved into a small room. A guard briefed me on the rules: "Fight or get killed. If you try to escape then you will be killed. If you resist then you're killed. Try to stay alive as long as you can." Then, he shoved a tray at me and locked the door. The tray contained all the food I was going to get until it was my turn. To be honest, I was too nervous to eat, just sat there, staring blankly at the wall. I remember eating my food after a few hours, and a few more hours later, it was time to go. They blindfolded me and marched me to the ring. The commentator announced me, but all I remember was my codename, Angel, and the jeers of the crowd. My blindfold was ripped off and the gong sounded. It was time to fight.
My opponent was a young woman, with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I knew from the commentary from previous fights that her name was Dazzler. I didn't know what her power was, so I hung back, waiting for her move. Suddenly, white lights quite literally exploded in my face, causing me to stumble back. I felt a slight shock, indicating I was extremely near the electric fence. I lunged forward blindly, my wings aiming to pierce her, swat her, anything that stopped her from shooting light at my eyes. The lower part of my wing made contact with something and I shoved, hard. I heard a squeal of pain, and I could dimly see Dazzler stumbling back, dangerously close to being shocked. Now, as my eyesight slowly adjusted back to normal, I went on attack. I restrained from stabbing her directly, mostly swatting her around. Dazzler's next shot went wide, colliding into the walls of the cage and sending up a shower of sparks. The audience shrieked and backed away. Our fight lasted for what seemed like forever, as I was too reluctant to kill her. Only when one of her sparks flew so close, it singed off some of my feathers, did I really, and truly go on attack. I was filled with an unexplainable rage, that blinded me more than my opponent's first explosion. She was not expecting a full blown attack and therefore was unprepared for the sharp tip of my wing to go plunging into her chest. She gasped in pain, her eyes full of regret and sadness, and then she was gone. I felt no sympathy for her. As her body was being dragged out, I turned to a corner of the arena and marked the floor with a single tally mark. Let the others come. I'm ready.
I was caught in a trance, a rage-filled phase where I killed with no mercy, with no hesitation. I directed my rage from my parents' disappointment, their hate for someone who was different, and their instant reaction to send their only son to a place where people killed for entertainment. All these emotions, all the hatred against me and my brethren, all the names, the unforgivable names directed at the people who couldn't control the genes inside of them drove me insane. It was wrong, I knew, to attack like this, to the people who had the same problems, but I did it anyway. The one thing that broke me out of the spell was my eleventh fight.
I had won ten fights, ten times the audience's approval. The eleventh one, I thought I would win easily. Instead, the unthinkable happened. My eleventh opponent was named Nightcrawler, and his ability was teleporting. I admit, I thought he was a weakling, the way he fell out of his transport box and sprawled onto the floor. He tried to escape a few time, to no avail, and generally refused to fight, directing all his energy to escaping. Only when I pointed out the guards who were surrounding the cage, did he consider attacking. And for that brief moment, I was losing. Nightcrawler had teleported me high above the second level of audience members and proceeded to drag me down the electric fence. The pain was unbearable. I was about to pass out from the pain, when Nightcrawler suddenly let go. I landed rather ungracefully on the rafter just below me and tried to remember what was going on. People were screaming and running all over the place, gunshots could be heard over the din, and for some reason, the door was unlocked.
There were two doors, one on the upper level and one on the lower. I was right in front of the upper level door when the power went out. Instinctively, I reached out and grasped the latch that was bolting to the door shut. For some reason, it was unlocked. I yanked it open and the sudden thrill of being outside the cage that had imprisoned me for weeks was overwhelming. Somehow, I don't know how, I made it outside. The panic and chaos of the crowd made it easy to escape. In no time, I was heading down a long dark side street, with no idea of where I wanted to go. For the first time, I took a look at my injuries.
My left wing was burned from the electric shock, charred, blackened, and useless. It wouldn't heal, as it only would if I pulled the feathers out, which I had no intention of doing. So, I was left to walk. I couldn't fly; my first attempt could only get me as high as a second story window, and even that was hard. With one wing damaged, I lurched awkwardly to the left every time I tried for a liftoff. With the chaos of the breakout over, and my adrenaline returning to normal, the pain from my broken wing came back full force. It was all I could do to stumble into a nearby warehouse while hoping the person owning it wouldn't mind, and passing out.