Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonoid, also known as Chang Letian, or Kitty Pryde, Mingzhi, Tianan, or the X-men, period, but I do own everyone else. So NYAH!
When do you get to that point that enough is enough? I dunno. I've never been there. But apparently, my parents thought that enough was enough when they found the scales on my arms.
Biological parents, that is. I don't actually consider them my parents anymore. How could you? Me, I'm ok with it. I am now, at least.
By the way, I'm Chang Letian. But everyone calls me Chang. Everyone except Tianan.
"CHANG LETIAN! You will be late for school!"
"I know!" I yelled back, stuffing a cookie into my mouth and slinging my backpack over my shoulder. I desperately looked for my shoes, crawling on my knees to look under my bed, before I realized that a certain wide-eyed boy was staring at me from my doorway. "Mingzhi…" I warned. Grinning mischievously, he held up one of my shoes. It dwarfed him. I've always been big, at 210 lbs, nearly six feet tall. To my little brother, holding my shoe was like holding a basketball.
"Come and get it!" He sang.
"This is not the time! I'm late already!" I lunged for him, but he was quick, and was already running out the door by the time I picked myself up. I grabbed my other shoe, the one he had dropped while taunting me, jammed it on, and took off after him. "Mingzhi, I'm gonna kill you!"
"Ok, what I'm saying is this-If you take a square root, right? And you divide it by pi, right? Then you multiply that by the cosines of three acute angles-" My friend Fitzgu was interrupted by Pete, the British exchange student.
"You do realize you are contributing to every Chinese stereotype imaginable, right?" Pete attempted to eat a noodle with chopsticks. With hilarious results.
"You know you can use a fork, right?" Fitzgu retorted just as quickly, shoveling ramen into his mouth. I laughed, eating some of mine with ease.
School had just let out for lunch, and the kids were enjoying the warm air and the sun. I had a book on Greek mythology propped open in front of me.
"If you get any more food on her books, Mrs. Hsu said she wouldn't let you check any more out," Pete supplied. I glared at him.
"Thanks, Boss," I threw back at him. "I'll be sure to remember that."
"Hey, don't get mad at me, you've ruined two books on Roman gods and one on Japanese fire demons already."
"Those were dumb books anyway." The bell sounded, and we gathered up our empty lunch sacks and deposited them in a receptacle. I hate that word. Trash can, that's more like it.
On the way to my next class, I accidentally brushed against some girl I didn't recognize. I mumbled a hurried apology, and went into the room as fast as I could but not fast enough.
"Woah, way cool!" I heard her say, so I stopped, and turned around.
"What's cool?" She was smiling vibrantly. I noticed that she wasn't Chinese. She was Caucasian.
"Your arms." She looked down. Not far down, because at this point, I was about five inches taller then her, but she looked at my fore arms. I couldn't help it. I followed her gaze, staring at the scales on them. Not much, just a spattering of them in the back, but they were there all right. Scales.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to touch you with them." I turned to go, annoyed at her for having bothered me.
"No, wait! I like, think it's neat. Your scales, I mean." I kept walking.
"Glad you think so. I have class now." People like her annoyed me. She was a…what's the word? Valley girl. But it wasn't just her. Everyone. They were always reacting to my scales like they were horrible, then trying to backpedal into making me think they liked them. I mean, what's the big deal? They were just scales! I ran a finger over a set of them, then sat down in my desk.
I was walking home that night with my little brother. He was bouncing all around with that wiggly-giggly little kid energy.
"And then we learned about horses, and we learned about colors, and we learned about…" He hadn't stopped for a half an hour. I was so preoccupied with what he was telling me, that I didn't even remember to look both ways as we crossed the street. "And we saw a whale in the book, and we sang a song about flowers, and we…" I couldn't believe that he remembered so much of his day. I didn't even remember what I had had for lunch. I looked up to check the curb we were walking to, when I heard a screeching sound and a loud, continuous honk. I snapped around, and my mind went blank. Barreling down on us like a bat out of hell was a Land Rover. The man behind the wheel was smiling. Not a malicious smile, more like a drunken smile. Mingzhi screamed. I couldn't help it. So did I. I opened my mouth to yell, instead of moving like a sensible person, but what came out wasn't a scream.
A blast of heat filled my throat. A large jet of flame billowed out in front of me, igniting the SUV on fire. It kept coming like a raging bull, hood blazing red hot, and I had time to think Did I DO THAT? When it exploded two feet from us. The concussion threw me backwards, and Mingzhi, too. I landed on my back, skidded, the asphalt tearing into my vulnerable flesh. Mingzhi landed on top of me, safe from the explosion. I heard WHAM of metal hitting the street as the Land Rover smashed back to earth. The door opened and with smoke stained eyes I saw a drunken guy weave his way out, then fall to the ground in a shivering heap. My little brother was lying on my chest, crying. I coughed, trying to catch my breath, and sat up, painfully. I gently pulled him off my chest so I could sit up easier, and felt warmth running down my back. I was bleeding.
"We have to get home…" I whispered, and slowly stood up.
It had been two weeks since the car wreck, and I was convinced that the explosion was caused by some sort of faulty wiring in the Rover itself, not me breathing fire or some other stupid explanation like that. Conveniently, no one had seen anything, so Mingzhi and I managed to limp away relatively unmolested.
Tianan had bandaged my back, but aside from a couple of nasty scrapes, I was fine. We had both been hurled away before we could get burned, so no one was any the wiser. I didn't tell anyone about the accident, because people would have asked me questions. I don't like questions.
Maybe that's why when the girl came back, asking me about my parents, I shoved her out the front door and told her to leave me alone.
"Jeez, some people can't take a-" I turned around and ran into her again. "Hint," I finished, staring open mouthed.
"Kitty Pryde. I think I like, forgot to tell you that last time." She was still smiling. I frowned, determined not to let her get to me.
"I don't know how you got back in, but leave!" I reached for her wrist and felt a slight shock as my hand passed right through it! I couldn't help it. I stared.
"See? We're not so different, right? Now, you never told me your name…" I recovered. This girl was way too overbearing.
"And I'm not gonna. I'm calling the police."
"And I'll show them the marks on your back." I stopped, just shy of grabbing the phone. Mingzhi walked in.
"Hey, Chang, can you help me with some letters?"
"In a minute. Go back to your room." I took a deep breath and turned around to Kitty. I contemplated this girl, the one who had shown up at my door, apparently walking through my door, and knowing about the accident. A defeated sigh escaped my lips. "We can talk upstairs."
"Ok, let me get this straight," I began, tossing my Magic 8-Ball in the air and catching it. "You're a mutant. You go to a school for mutants. You want me to come to your school for mutants. Is that pretty much it?" Kitty looked at my room, and winced.
"Yeah, that's the Cliffnotes version." I nodded, and walked towards her, bring my face down and close to hers, trying to intimidate her.
"And what makes you think I'm a mutant?" She gulped. Good. She was nervous. Very good.
"I saw what you did to the car." She stopped being nervous and stared right back at me. "By the way, you have something in your eye."
"Huh?"
"Yeah, look!" And she poked me, laughing hysterically. Ok, not funny. I was angry.
"I didn't do anything to that car! Get out of my house!" As I yelled the last word, a small wisp of smoke escaped my mouth and floated to the ceiling. I turned crimson, rage turning into embarrassment. "Look, I got stuff to do. Sit here all day, see if I care!" I stormed down the stairs, grabbed Tianan's grocery list, yelled for my little bro to come on, and slammed the door shut.
Who did she think she was?! You don't just walk into someone's house and start demanding they come live with you! Americans, just rude!
"Who was that girl?"
"No one!" I snapped.
"Is she your girlfriend?" Mingzhi asked with all the natural cuteness of an eight-year old.
"No. And how do you know about girlfriends? You're too young," I said emphatically. He pouted, sticking his lip out.
"That's what Tianan says. But I am old enough to understand some things!" We were almost to the store. Another couple of blocks and we'd be there.
"Like what?" I asked absently.
"Like I know you were lying to that girl when you told her you didn't blow up the car." I stiffened.
"What do you mean?"
"Duh. You like burped or something, and then flames came out of your mouth. It was cool, but kinda scary. It reminded me of a dragon or something." I absently ran a hand across the scales on my right arm.
"Uh-huh." Did I really do that? Breathe fire? Did that make me a mutant? Lots of questions. And only one person had the answers. Kitty Pryde.
"That's 206.926 CNY," the cashier said, and I gladly paid him and grabbed my bags. Was Kitty still at my house? I had to make sure she was. But did I really want to see her? Self-doubt ate at me like some sort of intestinal parasite. I left the store and went to the corner where I had let Mingzhi wait for me.
"Mingzhi?" I called, when I realized he wasn't there. It was no big deal, he was always running off somewhere. I wasn't worried. Until I heard a scream. A high-pitched yelp of pain, from an eight-year old boy. I dropped the bags and ran as fast as I could in the direction of the cry, hoping that I was wrong and it wasn't my little brother that was in trouble. I slid through a small divider that kept the sidewalk from the alleys, feet slapping the pavement, maneuvering around dumpsters and garbage cans, leaping over open manholes, launched myself over a chain link fence, scrabbling wildly, and ducked blindly into an alley, when SMASH! The air around me exploded into stars.
"What's going on?" I heard a voice say. I felt hands grab me around the shoulders and hoist me up. My vision began to clear and I could see a group of men, all dressed in black, one holding a knife to a small, quivering boy. That was the guy that had spoken.
"Dunno. He just came running in here," One of the men who had picked me up replied.
"Come to join our little party, maybe?" The first guy spoke. "What do you want?" Was he talking to me?" I tried to focus, but my eyes wouldn't seem to work right. Someone had clocked me pretty hard when I came in.
"I just came to get my brother," I stuttered, trying to sound brave. This brought roars of laughter. The guy with the knife, who seemed to be the leader, stepped towards me and ran the blade across my chest.
"Hey, check out these weird scales on his arms, Slash," The guy on my right commented.
"Yuck, I won't get some sort of disease if I touch them will I?" The other guy on my left said. I noticed he was bald and had a scar running down the center of his head. The leader held up a hand for silence.
"Your brother made fun of a Triad. Do you know what the penalty for that is?" I knew very well what the penalty was. Everyone in this neighborhood knew that if you messed with the Triads, you died. Period.
"Come on, he's just a little kid!" I pleaded. Hopefully I could get us both out of this alive. The leader looked at me and seemed to think what I had said over.
"You're right," He decided at last. I barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before the knife was against my neck. "You'll have to pay for it instead!"
"Chang, fry him!" Mingzhi yelled. "Use your power, blow him up!" There was a half-second delay as everyone looked at my little brother, probably thinking, What the heck is the kid talking about? I wrenched my right arm free of Slash while he was distracted, too surprised to react. The leader thought I was lashing out to punch him, and raised his arm in self defense. I wasn't. I gripped his shoulder to keep him steady, opened my mouth, and willed the flames to come out.
Nothing.
I kept thinking to myself, come on, breathe fire, something! But nothing happened. No sudden blast of heat, no constriction in my throat, come on, something!
"That's it! You're dead, punk!" The knife flashed towards my throat. No time to react. I couldn't jerk away, Slash, who had been holding my right arm was now holding my head in place.
Suddenly, miraculously, my arm flexed. At this point, I still had it on the leader's shoulder. But it wasn't my muscles that flexed, no, it was more like…my nerves flexed. A short of shiver magnified times a thousand. And…
CRACK! WHAM! The air between us exploded in an arc of flashing electricity, a strobe light of cosmic proportions. The knife was forgotten, it had been propelled away from me with such force that it looked like some sort of bullet. CRACK! My left arm flexed, and Scar was blown backwards, writhing in pain on the ground. I jerked forward, away from Slash and heard a gun being cocked.
I whirled to put my self between my brother and the Triad, opened my mouth to tell Mingzhi to run, to get away, to do something, and felt my throat grow hot. Great, now I was getting the flames. I twisted my head in his direction, and a stream of fire engulfed Slash before he could shoot. In the heat of the explosion, I heard the gun go off, ricocheting away from me and into the alley that I had just come through.
"Mingzhi, come on!" I scooped up my little brother in my arms, worried only for his safety, and ran away from the gang. I could hear screaming from behind me, pained terror manifested into a verbal yell. Slash was down, I was sure of that, and Scar had taken a hard hit, but the leader would be coming after me. When I had blasted him, he had been thrown in the wall, hard, but not unconscious.
I blasted him!? Maybe I really am a mutant!
I sprinted back home, not stopping once, Mingzhi sobbing on my shoulder the whole time.
I sat Mingzhi down on the couch, and reached for the phone to call the police. That's when I realized Kitty was still there, leaning against the banister of the stairs. Her eyes flicked to my neck.
"What happened!" I reached up with my hand felt above my shirt. I was bleeding. The knife must've nicked me when I- Never mind.
"We ran into some trouble. I have to call the police now," I responded coolly.
"Did you do your thing? With the fire?" Kitty stood up and walked over to me.
"Sort've." I grabbed a phone book and flipped through the pages for the police office. But then I thought about it. How could I call the police, tell them that I had taken down three Triads, with no weapons? And when they interrogated them, the punks would tell the cops I had done my fire breathing trick and shot lightning bolts out of my hands. I shook my head. "Man, that sounds unbelievable even to me," I muttered under my breath.
"What?" Kitty was still standing behind me, looking worried.
"Nothing. Can you check Mingzhi? Make sure he's okay?" Okay, so if I called the cops, soon, everyone would find out I was a mutant. And I couldn't have that. Discrimination against mutants was big. And with my physical abilities, I was a prime candidate for mutant persecution. I stared at my arms. The scales were there, flesh colored points on my forearms. Less than an hour ago, I had shot lightning out of those hands. How? And how come I couldn't get the fire breathing trick to work when I needed it?
"Here." I turned around to look at Kitty. She was holding a Band-aid out to me. "You need to put this on." I nodded and took it from her, applying it to my cut. Luckily it was small. After I washed it, no one would be able to tell. I glanced in the mirror at myself.
I still looked normal. Well, as normal as I ever had. And if Kitty was telling the truth, that she went to a school where they helped people like me, helped them to realize their potential, then maybe…maybe I should go.
"Ok. I'll go," I stated clearly. Her eyes lit up. "But you have to promise me that Mingzhi and Tianan will be all right. And that I'll be able to come back."
"No prob! Come on, get your stuff!"
I tossed my shirts and pants into a duffel bag, rifling through all my stuff, grabbing what was important to me. I didn't even notice that Mingzhi was standing in the doorway until I turned to leave, sighing heavily. He looked like he wasn't afraid, but I could tell. My little brother's eyes gave away his uncertainty, and the way he clutched himself in a protective hug told me that he was scared.
"Where are you going?" He asked, lip quivering.
"I'm going away for a while. I don't know when I'll be back." I crouched down next to him, face level with his.
"Tomorrow?" He asked hopefully.
"No, not tomorrow. Not for a long time." He stared at the floor.
"Will I see you again?"
"Of course. And I'll write you every day. Don't worry. You'll be fine without me." Without warning, he grabbed me in a big hug. A tear escaped me before I could control myself. "Hey, come on," I told him, gently pushing him away. "You've got to be strong. I want you to call the police and tell them what happened, ok? But don't tell them that… that I…"
"That you blew up?"
"Yeah. Just tell them that there are some Triads waiting for them in that alley, ok? I'm counting on you," I told him sternly. He nodded stoically.
"You got it. I'll miss you, big brother."
"I'll miss you too, little brother."
Downstairs, I scribbled out a note to Tianan, telling him what was going on, and I'd contact him as soon as possible, and not to be mad with me even though I hadn't told him anything about my 'powers.'
Kitty was sitting outside on the steps waiting for me. She stood up and started walking. I followed. We walked for what seemed like hours, finally coming to a small clearing about a mile outside of town. I was extremely frustrated.
"How are we getting to America, by doing this?" She grinned at pointed up at the sky. A sleek black jet circled twice overhead, and despite myself, I smiled.
This was gonna be so cool.
Like? Don't Like? Dragonoid's in the house! Again, don't own most of these characters. Please, read and review, FLAMES WELCOME!
-Zakonius