Tharrow I had divider lines, but they went poof when I uploaded this. I had forgotten that it does that, since it has been so long since I have posted. Thank you for your review.

Emeralden Rapley Thank you! I will be sure to update as soon as I can!

Sabercat7 I will try to continue as promptly as I can! I'm trying to plan this one out, so it is taking a little longer for me than normal. Thanks for the review!

nequam-tenshi You will see! I hope he is, but after going through what he did. . . (I know, I say it like someone else did it to him, when i'm the one who wrote him into that situation, but still . . .) Thanks for the review!

This is a pyro FanFiction; don't be fooled by the lack of mention thus far; he should come in in the next chapter. I want to thank Saber Cat 7 and Nequam-Tenshi for their reviews, even though I ended up changing the chapter completely!

It was barely eight o'clock at Xavier's School for gifted youngsters, and the evening news wasn't due for at least an hour, but that didn't deter every television channel running from stopping and playing the sounds that everyone associates with the news; that same tell-tell jingle that is used by every station, with only slight variations.

As Bart Bedsole, the local news anchor, came on with shifty eyes and a moist forehead, the children in the TV room called for their friends and teachers to come watch, all eyes wide in fear that this announcement could mean life and death; What if a mutant terrorist used powers to leave the nation reeling? What if a human attack on a mutant sparked flames in the already fragile social politics?

Just as the nervous man on the television opened his mouth to speak, Bobby Drake, the seventeen year old X-Man, walked into the room, asking in a weary tone, "What happened now?" to his three friends, Marie, Kitty, and Peter. They all shook their heads, motioning that the news caster hadn't said yet.

"I regret to inform you," Bart Bedsole said, his voice quavering, "That tragedy has befallen our nation yet again." Hushed whispers erupted through the group, kids casting worried glances towards their teachers, teachers looking at each other in trepidation. Before anyone could raise a comprehensive question, though, the broadcaster continued, "We have not been given any details, but the President of the United States will be holding an emergency address to the people of this nation sometime tonight."

Bedsole looked off to the side, frowning, and then put his hand to his ear, talking just low enough for the microphone not to be able to pick up. Turning back to the screen, his face paled, "Just this moment," he said, "we have received news that a team of reporters happened to catch the incident that we are about to be addressed upon on film, and that it is up on the internet. We are switching to that story now. This is unedited and may contain strong images; viewer discretion should be advised."

And with those hurried warnings, the screen went blank, soon to be replaced by a very tanned woman in a canary yellow pants suit in the front of a smoking building. The woman nodded to the camera before saying, "Thank you for tuning in this lovely winter morning, on January-3-2011. This is Tricia Pepperidge with channel thirteen news and we are bringing you today a freshly breaking story. Just minutes ago, we spotted the smoke from this fire at a seemingly abandoned research facility out here in Backwoods, Nevada."

The camera zoomed in on the collapsed building, just in time to see a small figure emerge from it. The woman and her crew rushed forward, helping a soot stained child from the ruins. "Sweet Jesus, are you alright, kid?" said Pepperidge, pulling the young boy to sit next to her on the ground, where she attempted to wipe off the grim on his face with a moist toilette that she had in her purse, though she mainly failed. "Please," the child cringed away from them, backing up against the hole that he had just come out of, "don't hurt me anymore."

And with one last sob, he fell onto a very stunned newscaster. "Quit fucking filming, John! Call a goddamn ambulance! I don't know how long this kid can make it."

The camera dropped to the ground and a man's voice came, muffled by the distance, "Yes, 8823 Wilshire. There was a fire in an old research building out here in the boonies. Yes, we happened to be filming when we saw the smoke. There's a kid here, he just collapsed. No, I don't know who he is! He just crawled out of the place and asked for us not to hurt him . . . No, I don't know what the place is, just the location . . .Oh, god, I hope that there aren't!" The voice came louder, "Goddamn it, Tricia! The chick at the police station thinks that there may be more kids in there! Fuck, hold the phone, you talk to them, I have to get in there!"

And then the man handed the phone to his colleague, running into the building, "Ma'am?" Tricia spoke into the phone, "Yes, I'm here. My camera man just went inside; he's looking for more. . . No, no one is anywhere near here; we were just driving to a nature preserve when we saw it . . . Yes, I think the boy is still breathing. You want me to what? Are you crazy? The kid is bleeding; I don't want him awake for this shit. I know that you're just doing your job but . . . Goddamn it, fine," Tricia placed the phone between her shoulder and ear, shaking the child in her lap awake with both of her hands as gently as she could.

"Kid, she said softly, "Kid, wake up. You're safe now; I've got you. But you have to wake up; the nice lady with the police wants to know what went on here. Kid?"

The boy in her lap opened his eyes and whimpered, before he could start to scream, Tricia put her hand over his mouth, just lightly enough to prevent him from going into hysterics, but not hard enough to scare him, "Kid," she said, "I'm not going to hurt you, just tell me what happened here."

The boy looked confused for a second, then bolted upright. "Oh, my god," he said, taking in the wreckage. "He finally did it." Then he repeated it, a grin breaking out across his face.

"Who did what?" Tricia asked, "What happened here? What is this place? Are there any more of you inside?"

The kid took her in, almost for the first time, and noticed that he was still sitting in her lap, and hastily got up, though he had to brace himself against the nearest patch of remaining wall.

The kid shook his head, "Not if they got out when he did."

"When who did?"

The kid shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know. He was kept in block A and I was in block C. I just heard of him from one of my block-mates. He was caught only a little while ago, and he's wild. They said that he was part of something called the Brotherhood."

Here Tricia paled, as did the students at Xavier's; all of them thinking about the war that could be started if this got out of hand.

The boy continued on, though, as if this was something ordinary, "Our two groups weren't allowed to interact unless the experiments drew us together, and then only when we could find a way around the guards."

Tricia frowned, clearly confused, along with the rest of the watchers, "What do you mean, 'guards'? What kind of experiments?"

"Government ones." He whispered, looking around fearfully, "They were trying to make people that weren't mutants into them, and take mutants and make them more powerful. I think that they were testing to see if they could control them long enough to make them useful. But I heard one of the doctors saying that the most powerful mutants were being cured, and that the cure wasn't working all the time, so they had to make one that was stronger."

Tricia blanched, "This is going to start a war." She whispered, her tone rightfully dire.

The boy cocked his head to the side, "Why," he asked, a small frown upon his young face, "It wasn't just mutants being taken apart. It was us, too."

Tricia looked like she wanted to throw up, "What is your name, kid? How long have you been here?"

The boy shook his head, looking uncertain, "I don't have a name, but you can call me by code; H 2-2-1-3. The 'H' means that I'm human, if I were a mutant; it would be an 'M' in the front. I was born here. Or, at least that's what the file I stole said. Most of us humans are. They catch the mutants though, since there are so many of them on the streets; at least that's what M 3-3-6-9 said to me before he died."

Tricia actually threw up, leaning against the same wall that the boy was, holding her long hair out of her face. When she was done, she turned to the boy, eyes shiny,"How can you talk about it like that? You're talking about someone dying, and you're acting like it's the weather we're discussing!"

The boy shrugged, smiling faintly, "M 3-3-6-9 said that us younger ones were so calm about it because it was the world that we were born into. We don't know any other type of living, so this is normal to us. I'm already twelve, so the time was coming for me to be terminated. It's just what happens."

Tricia shook her head, "That's not how it works!" she seemed almost hysterical when she said it, like she was trying to banish the thought form her head, "You're just a baby. You should be at school with a bunch of friends, and come home to your parents, and be tucked into bed at night, maybe even read to! Not this, this . . . " and here she was interrupted by her coworker, who was emerging from the wreckage with a little girl of about eight and one the same age as the boy with him.

Panting, he set the smallest one on the ground before turning to Tricia, "It's bad in there, Trish. It's really bad. I don't know what the fuck went on in here, but we have to get these kids out of here, right now." And with that he picked the girls up and headed off camera, where the sounds of a car door opening came. Tricia looked at the boy and nodded, opening her arms for him, so that she could help him into the car.

The boy shook his head, sighing. "It's too late. This entire time I've had a pain in my chest; my blood it stilling into my lungs." Almost to prove his point, a hacking cough broke him off, spewing blood the color of thin tar onto his lips, where he whipped it away. "I couldn't have lived too long anyways; like I said, I'm twelve already. Everything that's been done to me over the years has left my body too weak to live for more than a few hours outside of the containment chambers."

"Oh, god," Tricia sobbed, stepping towards him, "this can't happen; you're just a kid. We can get you help. We'll go to the hospital right now; it's only half an hour away. We can get you there." She gestured desperately towards the car, her tears falling in thick tracks to her chin.

The boy smiled, his face lighting up angelically, "its okay, Mrs. I've been ready for this for a long time. I've even wished for it on occasion. "It just sucks that I have to die right when I find someone who cares two shits about me." Tricia sobbed, running her hands up and down the boy's arms.

Finally, though, at the insistence of her coworker, she left the boy against that wall, holding herself close as she walked out of the camera's view. Seconds later, the car peeled out, spraying dirt and rubble around them, temporarily hiding the dying boy from view. As the child watched them leave, his eyes grew dimmer, until, with a last sigh, his head dropped to his chest, giving the camera a good view of his fully dilated eyes.

"Oh, my god," Storm gasped, drawing the eyes of the mesmerized children to her and away from the screen. Standing from her perch on the arm of the couch, where she had been during the duration of the horrific film, she commanded that all children under the age of fourteen go to their rooms, and not try to get any information on what they had just seen. When the room had cleared mostly, she collapsed unto the couch's now empty seats.

"What do we do?" She asked no one in particular, "If this starts a war, we don't have the resources to stop it. Not after everything that's happened recently."

Logan and Warren let out quavering breaths, gazes still caught on the lax face of the young boy on screen. "I don't know," Logan said slowly, "But we have to find out everything that we can about this. Knowing what we do right now, I'm tempted to start a fight with the first human I see, and I know better. Imagine what someone who isn't invested in peace would do right now."

Warren nodded, looking worried, "I hope not too many people focused in on the cure part. My dad already has to hide from the first fallout; if this brings anymore attention to him . . ."

Leech sat up, "Oh, yeah," he said, looking worried, "What am I supposed to do? Enough mutants already want to kill me for helping to make the first cure. If they used my DNA to make this one . . ."

Storm stood up again, her hands flying all over the place, "Don't worry, Jimmy! You will be fine here; we will never let anything hurt you."

"Yeah, Kid," Logan said gruffly, wanting to soothe their newest charge, "We beefed up security so that no one can come anywhere near her without us knowing."

Leech shook his head, "That's fine, but if they're trying to find a better way to make the cure, they'll need me to do it. Mine is the DNA base for the cure, since I'm the most powerful reverser. If someone wants to make something more powerful than the cure, they have to have my tissues to do it; without it, the synthesized DNA won't last long enough to be produced in any kind of large scale."

Storm frowned, "What do you mean?"

Leech sighed, "I am the cure. Each vial of the cure has to have at least a sixty/forty ratio of my DNA. That being said, with only synthesized DNA, the affect would die off almost immediately, and never be strong enough for anyone over a class three, or with serious physical mutations. That's why it took so long for Mr. Worthington to make enough to be mass-produced."

"So they took your blood to use in their cure?" Bobby asked with revulsion in his voice.

Leech nodded, "And my skin and hair. If it weren't for Mr. Worthington the cure would have been produced a whole lot quicker, but he and Dr. Rao weren't going to allow the techs to take more from me than I could grow back naturally in a week's time. They only allowed for the normal amount of blood donated by the average person to be taken, and skin grafts from my left shoulder and right thigh were only taken sparingly, if at all. The hair they just agreed to have shaved off, to prevent it from going to waste and to keep the techs happy."

"How could you stand it," Bobby asked, frowning.

Leech shrugged, glancing back at the screen, where the young boy still lay, "It wasn't so bad. I had anything that I wanted. I didn't have parents or friends, but I had everything else I could want."

As Bobby was fixing to ask something else, motion flashed on screen, and, to the horror of everyone watching, another child crawled from the smoking rubble.

This one, a girl about fifteen, stood still for a long time, looking from the boy on the ground to the camera in front of him, to the tire tracks. "Well," she said, "I guess I missed something while I slept."

Walking forward, she dug in the dead kid's shirt, finding dog-tags similar to the ones that Logan wore. "H 2-2-1-3, just turned twelve yesterday." She sighed looking down at him, "Hell-of-a birthday present, huh? The first bit of freedom that you've ever had. Gonna have to thank M 3-4-6-8 when you see him next."

Then she took up the camera, pointing it towards the ruins. "This," she said, venom in her voice, "Is the research facility that is owned by one Keith Stryker. Inside here more terror and death has happened than I would has ever wanted to have seen. I hope that someone finds this and uses it to its full potential, and makes all of the assholes that escaped 3-4-6-8 suffer like nothing they did to us."

With that, she started to walk away, pointing the camera towards the ground so that it could see her clawed feet walking away from the destruction, toward the road that the camera crew went.

"By the way," she said, "My name is Jennifer. I was captured a year ago in the undergrounds of New York. Three of my friends, Michael, Jordan, and Juan were killed in this hell." She paused and pointed the camera to the shrugs surrounding the building. "Oh, god damn," she cussed, taking in the moving of the bushes branches, "They're fucking back to pick up the pieces." And then she ran; she had barely gotten a couple of feet when automatic shots rang out, catching her twice in the chest and a couple of times in the legs and once in the arm. As she fell to the ground, the camera swung around to catch her attacker; a soldier in camouflage who was standing in the bushes with several other troops, more coming up behind them to enter the clearing. Several peeled off to go and check of the boy laying dead on the ground a couple of feet away, while others started to secure the perimeter.

Before anyone could reach the girl, though, she put her hand of the camera and phased out, cloaking everything in black and odd flashes of color for several seconds before she reappeared in some kind of internet café, where she handed the camera to the first person to reach her, to whom she told, "Take this and make sure that it is seen." Gasping, she lay down on the floor, "Make sure," she breathed, "that it gets out."

The startled man nodded repeatedly, taking the Camera with him as he was pushed out of the way by a group of diners trying to help the girl. In a daze, he pulled out his phone and pressed a series of buttons. After the phone rang for a bit, he spoke into it, "Hey, Jigs? Get everything ready. I just got a file that I'm going to send you, okay?" And then the camera turned off, apparently from the man taking the memory ship out of it.

And then there was beeping, and the muffled voice of men arguing, when, almost as though the world hadn't just been splintered, Bart Bedsole came back, face ashen and slightly green. "This has been a channel ten update, and we implore you to wait for the Presidential address that is to come on at exactly eight thirty tonight." Here he paused, "And may god have mercy on the souls of whoever had anything to do with that travesty."

And then cartoons came back on, but they might as well have not been there at all, because all anyone could see was the images of those ravaged children.

The silence was overwhelming, and it took longer than normal for it to be broken, and when it was, it was with something that could change all of their positions in the coming war;

"Do you think," Bobby said in a pained whisper, "That it was John that caused that fire?"

And that is the first chapter, redone. This wasn't going to be part of the story, but I just didn't like the way that the original first chapter went down. Or how short it was.

Anyways, Read and review, please.

= Bandon

PS If you get confused, or need an explanation, just PM me your questions. Or review them to me. Whichever you are more comfortable with.

These are the ones that I have been asked so far:

1) Why don't you put the camera portions in italics?

Answer: I want this to be almost exactly like it would be in a regular novel or in a movie; it either of those, the author would expect the reader to understand the flow of what is going on. When it is in a camera POV, you should just think of it was sitting on your couch watching television, not like a flashback. The flash back parts of this story WILL be in a different typr of text (Bold or italics, not decided)

2) Is this going to be a torture fic?

Answer: No. There may be some things that happen in this fiction that some of the weaker members of our audience may consider torture, and there will be material that I consider torture and that others would not, but yes, it will be in here. I will give warnings if I think anything borders on it, and if you do not want to read it, PM me and I will give you a summary of the chapter so that you don't get behind.

3) Will there be slash?

Answer: Yes. Yes, there is going to be slash. I don't want flames here; I have no marshmellows, and I am not in the mood to piss all over you for starting a fire. Keep it off my page. If you like the story, but don't want to see slash, PM me, and I will give you the important details, minus the slashiness. I'm not trying ot say 'suffer through slash or don't read good fiction' just that I am a lesbian, and that I tend to slash. I am not fond of hetrosexual stories, but I still read some of them because they are good; I just skim the icky parts.

4) Are there going to be hetrosexual pairings?

Answer: Yes. But not in a 'You took him from her, so I make her go out with him to make everyone have a partner' kind of way. Just in something that would fit. If you don't want to read the hetro parts, PM me and I will sumerize it for you.

5) Are there going to be an Original characters in the story?

Answer: Yes, because I can't do it without them. I want to try to keeo as much as I can to the original flow of the story, but I will do what will make my story the best it can be.

These are the most important questions that I have been asked, but if you have more, then just PM me or leave a review and I wil answer you as soon as I can!