On Fire

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters that belong to Marvel or any of the X-Men. I only own Flex, Blaze, Dustin, Alyson, Alexis, and Brent, etc. The restaurant is mine also. I've never been to New York so I would never know. Also the song "On Fire" which inspired this story belongs to Switchfoot. NOT ME!

Chapter 1

"They tell you where you need to go

They tell you when you need to leave

They tell you what you need to know

They tell you who you need to be."

"On Fire" by Switchfoot

Walking down the halls of the high school, hearing the whispers and the rumors that spread like wildfire. Walking passed the groupies; jocks, preps, Goths, hippies, nerds and geeks, the god-fearing, and the thespians. But they had their own group that they couldn't share with other people and that made them outsiders. They were twins and mutants. It didn't help that this was the fourth school that they have been to in the past year because one of them slipped up and used their powers. Not long after they would be run out of town by the people concerned with keeping their town uncorrupted by the unholy. They were at the tender age of 15 and smart for their age and were placed as juniors in their new school. Neither one of them had friends that they could call and talk to in any city that they had stayed in. They moved too much to actually make any kind of real friends. It was a few years ago that Edana and Hali discovered their powers and were rejected by society. Always living in fear and running from abuse from others, arriving at a new school was starting to get old. Frustration would build up and many a times a remodeling company would have to come fix their home due to destruction by the twins.

Edana was older by mere minutes of birth and took on the maternal role over her younger sister. She was always protecting her from glares and fights that broke out. She would take the blame of slipping up if one of them used their powers and was caught, even if Hali did it. Hali never took Edana for granted and was forever grateful that she had someone watching over her. But as close as they were, their powers were totally contradicting. Edana who also went by the name Blaze, could create and control fire. Hali who went by the name Flux could pull water vapor out of the air and freeze anything or spray water. Many times when Edana would get mad, a fire would explode on the bed or the curtains would be charred, and Hali would have to extinguish the flame. But no matter what they were a team, partners and inseparable.

Both were 5'7" and well toned and fit and gorgeous. Edana had more of a year-round tan, brown hair with red highlights that reached her lower back, and green eyes that turned to flame when she was using her powers. Hali on the other hand had very fair, pale skin, brown hair with blondish-white highlights that was cutely styled just above her shoulders, and grey eyes that turned ice blue when she was using her powers. Sometimes their powers would be connected by their emotions and when they'd get mad or upset, Edana's eyes would flame up and Hali's could stare anyone who would even think about crossing her with her piercing eyes. But on this note, it was very difficult to get boyfriends even for a little while. All of the boys avoided them like the plague, since of course everyone thought that being a mutant was contagious.

The night before, their family just unpacked the last box in their new home. Their mom, Alexis, and dad, Brent, sat them down to have "the talk" again.

"Girls, your mom and I are a little tired of doing this packing and unpacking so let's get this right this time."

"Girls, your father's right. Now, tomorrow you two will go to the office to get enrolled to the school two blocks away. Be in your classes on time and in your seat before the bell rings. Don't give any of the teachers any reason to get either one of you in trouble or to be caught. Edana, I know your temper is getting out of control and you need to control it before you make a mistake…again" the last part she said under her breath, but Edana heard it and it hurt. "Once school is out, you two will come immediately home and work on your homework."

"Yes and the school you will be going to is a prep school that is top in the state. You need to behave like young ladies and not to make 'waves' in the new school."

The girls sat slumped on their couch with the same blank stares at their parents. "Girls sit up please." Their mother snapped. It was evident that her patience was running thin now days. "Did you hear anything that your father and I have said?"

"Yes mother. We will be the well-behaved, perfect, little princesses that you've always wanted." And with that Edana got up from her spot and headed towards the kitchen to get some left over pizza from earlier that evening. She was soon followed by Hali who walked up to Edana and gave her a hug. Ever since they had discovered their powers together, it brought their relationship closer because the other knew exactly, to a point, what the other was going through. They were on their own when they went through their own personal "change". Life was complicated before the mutation and was now even more confusing.

"E. Everything's going to be okay. We always pull through somehow, don't we?"

"Yeah, but I'm so sick of being judged by everyone and then to come home and then to be judged by our parents. It's unfair. Our home should be our safety, not a place to keep our defenses up!" She broke down in tears and cried on her sister's shoulder. Hali made soothing sounds as she rubbed her sister's back, trying to calm her down before she blew up the stove again or the microwave that was cooking her pizza. Finally the tears subsided and Edana dried up her tears and her green eyes returned from the red flames. She grabbed her pizza from the microwave and started to chow down, again. Right then, their younger twin siblings, Dustin and Alyson, came bouncing down the stairs to get some snacks. Having two sets of twins in one home could get a little crowded but Edana and Hali loved them dearly and would never let anything bad happen to them. Both Dustin and Alyson had yet to show signs of any kind of mutation and that was a sigh of relief for E and Hali. They didn't want Dustin and Alyson to go through what they've been through. It was horrible and they wouldn't wish it on anyone. A few times Dustin would get angry at Edana and Hali for getting caught and forcing everyone to quit what sport they were into, school and work and uproot the family. In the last town was the longest they've ever stayed in one place. That was where Dustin and Alyson had made some friends and got involved in sports like soccer and ballet. And then Edana slipped and they had to move from the only place that seemed like a normal life to anyone.

Both Dustin and Alyson are 8 years old and are once again going through another growth spurt and eating everything in sight. Dustin walked into the kitchen and grabbed the pizza Edana was about to eat and ate it for himself. Edana shot him a look of disapproval but just smiled and shook her head.

"I guess I wasn't hungry after all!" she said. Everyone busted up laughing.

"Nope you weren't!" Dustin said with a mouth full of pizza.

Edana's POV

Four and a half years on the run will make any one grow up quickly. If only we could've controlled our powers earlier. Try meditating or something. I remember the day quite clearly the day that our parents kicked us out of the house at the age of 15. Hali and I were upstairs in our rooms, listening to music and working on some homework. We were the youngest juniors in the school but we couldn't help that we were a bit more intelligent than the others. Most of them were drug addicts anyways. Christmas break was slowly coming and we were writing out our lists of what we wanted. Snow was falling lightly just enough to cover the ground and put a chill to the bones. Of course, I wasn't cold at all and Hali is used to the cold.

"Hey, Hali. During the night we should go out and freeze the streets so we don't have school tomorrow! I can't seem to finish this essay and could use the extra day…" I said glancing up at her. We had always had the joke that we could use our powers to get out of school whenever we needed to, but we never seriously did anything dramatic, although we would have liked to. Before Hali could respond, we heard our dad coming up stairs and by the stomps of his feet we could tell that he was in no way happy.

"Girls!" he yelled outside of our door. "Get out here now!"

We shared a scared glance at each other. We both knew that it wasn't good. He usually sounded like this right before we move. I thought that we had done pretty good on keeping our powers in check. I opened the door and found my dad fuming, not literally, but still you could tell that he was extremely mad.

"What is it dad? We really have to finish our essays for English."

"What this is about is that someone slipped, AGAIN!" He was starting to scare me because his temper was extremely short. I hoped that the younger kids weren't here to witness what was going on right now. It might have scarred them badly.

"Dad, I swear that it wasn't me! Really! E, did you slip?" Hali pleaded. She had just made a few friends that I could talk to also. They were pretty cool kids and I could tell that Hali didn't want to move again. But I had to tell the truth to dad because otherwise we would be in a lot of danger.

"Dad, it wasn't me either. I've been keeping my temper down and have been more relaxed. Please! We can't move again! We like it here."

Dad visibly calmed down but I could tell that his mind was running a mile a minute. "No, you are right, Edana. We can't move again. Your mother is tired of running and so am I. Your little brother and sister can't keep living like this. It's not good for their minds and development."

"So what are we going to do, Dad?" I asked, almost scared of what he would say, but we would have never expected what he said.

"You two are going to stay with your grandmother in New York. She lives on the out skirts of Albany. Not as populated as the city. You two will be home schooled by her. She used to be a school teacher. I just got off the phone with her and she said that she would take you on if you work for her. I think that if you two did some work that it would do you two some good." And with that, he turned on his heel and started back down the stairs. "Oh, you need to be packed by the day after tomorrow." And he disappeared.

Shock had yet to settle in for me, but I noticed that Hali was really shaken up. We didn't even know our grandmother. My mother's parents died when we were children and yet we didn't even know them either. My dad's parents didn't like my mom and so when they married, that was the last time that dad had ever talked to them. I felt a chill sweep through the room and looked around; the room was one big freezer. All the walls had ice on them and icicles were hanging from the ceiling. Hali was in the corner, slowly letting a tear fall off her cheek before it froze and hit the floor and broke. I can't stand to see my sister in such distress like this, so I made the plans to get out of the house before our parents could do anything about it or send us to our mysterious grandmother. I took a deep breath and exhaled and walked around the room to thaw it out and to warm the place a bit. When I felt satisfied that the room was dry and warm, I turned to Hali.

"Hali, I don't know about you but I don't want to go to grandmother's house." I went into our closet and dragged out my back pack and dumped my school books out with the homework in it and grabbed my duffle bag.

"E. What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? I'm not staying here anymore. We are obviously a burden to everyone so why not just disappear to them. Let's get out of here Hali." I stopped packing some of my clothes and turned to face her. "Just you and me, a team. We can make it. We've saved enough money to get by until we can get jobs and support ourselves. Get our GED's and be done with school altogether. Come on, Hali. It's either me or grandmother who hates us." I left the decision up to her and went back to packing. I soon heard her grabbing her bags and dumping her books. Our parents would just have to deal with the school on getting their books back; it's no longer any of my concern. In less than an hour, we had all of our belongings that we couldn't live without. We quietly walked down the stairs and started walking towards the doors.

"Where do you think you're going?" our dad growled.

"We're leaving, just like you said. Just not on your terms." And with that I pushed Hali out the door. I've never known my dad to be abusive but for some reason he didn't seem to be his normal self. He grabbed my arm and slapped me across my face, leaving a handprint on my left cheek. That was when I lost my temper and slapped him back. I could feel my eyes flaming up and when I slapped him, his skin caught on fire. The smell of burning flesh rose into the air. Hali witnessed it all and turned dad's head into a popsicle with icicles hanging off his nose.

"Come on E! He'll be waking up soon. Let's just leave before he gets you again!"

I could hear the distress again and so I grabbed my bags and we ran out the door. I knew of some wooded areas that we could sleep for the night until we could get out of town. It was almost 10:30 at night and the temperature was dropping fast, not that it bothered me at all or anything.

Well, that was four and a half years ago and we did make it. We both have our GED's and both have our own cars. Hali's is light blue with snow flakes coming back from the front fenders. Mine is cherry red with orange flames coming back from the front fenders. We heard from Dustin and Alyson that grandmother died not too long after we were supposed to arrive. Dustin and Alyson have cell phones now and we are able to talk to them whenever we want as the same for them on our cells.

My stomach is starting to growl. It should, I didn't eat any breakfast and it's getting on to about 2 o'clock.

"Flux, let's go to the food court and get some grub!" I grabbed her and started to lead her out of the store.

"Ah, but Blaze, they're having an awesome sale! What if someone takes my shirt that I want?"

"Then it wasn't meant to be." I smiled at her. Just then her stomach growled louder than I've ever heard it. "Food is on your top priority instead of that shirt!" I joked and we both laughed. We haven't gone by our birth names since we left. I now go by Blaze meaning flame, duh, or friction since I can create flame. Hali now goes by Flux meaning discharge of liquid. We passed by an exhibit on the Neanderthal history, which I thought was kind of cool since they thought that they were mutants, too. I saw a field trip group from some school listening to one of their teachers. I never got to experience any kind of field trip because we moved so much, so I stopped to listen to the teacher. Flux saw what I was looking at and understood why I had stopped. I looked over the student body and saw a little girl holding her mom's hand, eating an ice cream cone staring at another boy from the school. The little girl stuck her tongue at him and he returned her gesture, but his tongue was long, blue and split like a lizard's. Before she could approach the boy, her stomach growled again and Flux pulled on her arm.

"Come on Blaze. We're both hungry and we can come back once we're done eating." And she started heading back to the food court.

'Is that boy a mutant? And he's still among the class of normal children?' As I started to walk away I heard the teacher scold him, "Not here," she said with a shake of her head. 'So the teacher knows about the mutation and she's okay with it? The kids didn't look at all scared that this boy had a lizard tongue!'

"Blaze! Come on! I'm extremely hungry!" Flux said dragging me to the food court by my arm.

We finally got our food and sat down to eat.

"Hey do you have a light?" two okay looking guys came up to our table, holding a cigarette.

"No, sorry. Don't smoke. This guy next to us has a lighter though. Try them." I said pointing to the threesome group at the next table.

"Okay, thanks." He said and winked at me.

"Ah, Blaze, you do know that you control flames right? You two could've hit it off."

"Oh yeah? Now tell me Flux, where would I explain where the flame came from? My finger?"

She giggled, "Maybe…" Flux was always more the innocent type and when we ran away, she lost that innocence, but sometimes she liked to get back into the innocence groove.

"Well, are you done? I'm ready to leave." I asked Flux.

"Yeah, let me finish my Chalupa." She said, stuffing her face and swallowing the last part down.

"My brother asked you a simple question."

"Why are you being such a dick?"

"Yeah, why are you being such a dick?"

"Because I can." The guy sitting at the table with the lighter laughed. His two friends laughed with him, I could tell that it was just his personality and that they were used to it or they were getting very tired of it.

"Can I have a light?" the second guy asked.

The guy sitting down flicked open the lighter, "Hmmm….sorry can't help you out, pal." And snapped the lighter closed.

'Man that guy is a jerk!' I thought.

"John, knock it off." The girl sitting with them said.

"Why don't you stop showing off." The other guy sitting with John and the girl said.

"What for her?" John asked, "I can't help it if your girlfriend's excited."

"I don't think she's excited."

"We're trying to have a good time."

"I think you're the only one having a good time."

The guy impatiently waiting for a light got tired of waiting and grabbed the lighter from John.

"Hey!" he got up and tried to grab for his lighter but the guy's brother stopped in front of him. "That's real cute, man"

"What are you gonna do?" he said as he lit his cigarette and exhaled smoke. John chuckled an evil laugh. "Suddenly, you're not so tough." He said before he took another drag. John winked at the guy and fire shot out of his cigarette and into his lungs. The guy fell down with his sleeve on fire as John was laughing at him. Just then, the boy that was sitting with John stood up and blew ice and cold air over the fire. Once the fire was out, everyone froze, everyone but the mutants.

"Bobby, what did you do?"

"I didn't do this." He silently said.

"No. I did." A man in a wheelchair rolled up to the small group. "And the next time you feel like showing off, don't."

In the background the news was still running from the TV's in the food court saying that there was a mutant attack on the President earlier today.

"Blaze, I think it's time to go."

"Yeah me, too." And we walked unnoticed out of the mall. When we reached our cars, we noticed a bus that the mutants were loading. "Flux, follow me."

When the bus took off, I followed it, all the way to Westchester to a school called, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

'Come in.' I stopped my car outside the gates. I looked around. No one was out in the yard or in the streets. Where was that voice coming from? It was all starting to creep me out. 'Come in. It's alright.'

For some reason, against my better judgment, I got out of my car and started to walk up to the front door. "Blaze! Where are you going? You can't just walk into some strange school!" Flux was yelling after me then suddenly stopped. "Blaze? Did you hear that voice? Please tell me you did because I can't be going insane. We might have a blizzard."

"Flux, I did hear that voice. It's the same voice I heard at the mall. I'm going to check it out." I slowly approached the front door and it opened to reveal the man in the wheelchair.

"So glad you decided to join me. My name is Charles Xavier and I run this school. I think you'll like what you see. Flux, please follow me too."

'What is this place?' I asked myself.