Stupid, stupid, stupid. That was the only word going through my head as I sat in the corner of a shabby bar in Minnesota. On the bench next to me sat the infamous Wolverine, who was definably, thoroughly, and completely bored by his situation. He had grudgingly taken over Cyclops's field combat training class, extremely grudgingly. He had already sat through three days of observation with students and he was just about sick of everyone, including me.
"What do you see?"
He waved his cigar vaguely over the haze of smoke that surrounded his lounging form. I rolled my eyes and did not bother to respond; he knew the answer by heart already. Out of nervous habit I started cracking my knuckles, a habit he hated with a passion. First finger, second finger...
"Shut up, Jason." Wolverine pulled his head out of his cloud to give me a dirty look. "God, when they told me that Stryker had started on a two-year old, I never imagined that they would bother to find you at sixteen, let alone bring you in."
I gave Logan a dirty look before vainly attempting to pull my black bangs off of my sticky forehead; the bar had no air conditioner. The worst part was that he was right. After Stryker had created his bodyguard Death Strike, he became interested in what effect that the procedure would have on a child, specifically a very young child. Stryker discovered mini-me at a park in Tulsa, Arizona where I was playing with a knife my mother had left on a table. When Stryker advanced on the sixteen-month-old version of me, I accidentally sliced off my own hand, causing my powers to prematurely engage.
I was taken to Alkali Lake and tested on until I was two years old. The testing stimulated the unnatural bone growth that could be defined as claws, and then Stryker pounced. I was injected with the same pattern of adamantium as The Wolverine, then left to die on the tundra. After stumbling to an Inuit settlement, I nearly stabbed the chief when my claws involuntarily sprang from my hands. That did not fare so well with my reputation. After being shunned in Canada, I moved up to Alaska at twelve. I relocated frequently, stealing rides on the backs of trucks and R.V.s as I went. At sixteen I had started entering fights for money, which sometimes left a notable trail in my wake. This bothered me because it made me traceable, but I really needed the money. It was after one of my longer trails of carnage that I was caught up by Kitty and Iceman in a bar.
They persuaded me to come back to the lower forty-eight after they showed me pictures of kids my age not running for their lives from the government. I was so used to living by the rules of the wild that the transition to civilization never quite completed. Every night I still checked my door and I kept a secret stash of cans in my room. I did not trust electronics and I once attacked a teacher who tried to get me to use chemicals. The X-men made to probably enlightened observation that I would never be able to fit in anywhere "normal" so I would have to become one of them.
Thus I ended up in a class with the resentful Wolverine as my teacher. Remembering one of my infrequent duties as acting leader of the squad, I checked the placement of my classmates in the wide bar room. Two hunched over forms at the bar indicated that Snickers and his brother Target had fallen asleep at their posts yet again; an unfortunate habit that they had both developed, one involuntarily. My gaze passed fleetingly over a solitary outline of a girl in the corner. Shadow was the newest edition to the class and was considered something of an outcast among the mainly boisterous group of teens. She came from a similar environment to me, eat or be eaten. I groaned as the last post slid into my peripheral vision. Jinx was huddled in a corner of the booth, sharing quiet words with the misty-eyed shape shifter Scales. I resumed the knuckle cracking Wolverine had distracted me from. Whenever Jinx and Scales sat together, I ended up in trouble. Third finger, fourth finger…
I was roused from my musings by the cold breeze that swept through the room every time the door swung open. A hooded customer slid through the tiniest opening possible and slipped into the crowd, clearly not wanting to be seen. I cracked both my wrists, signaling to Shadow that I had news. The light whisper of long hair greeted my ears as Shadow took a seat at our table, her face as shadowed as the girl's.
"The one in the zip up hoodie." Of course Shadow knew whom I had seen, she always did.
"Well…" I prompted her, wanting to know what she had gleaned in the darkness.
She nodded. "The power was defiantly higher than a three. We need to take her in."
Wolverine choked on his cigar at her words. "What- take- what-" he spluttered but Shadow had already moved to inform the others of the arrival. I rose, knowing already that I would have to make the first move.