1: Project-M


Shinji looked out across the ruined plains, his legs trembling, "I...I can't do this, Professor."

Charles rolled up to him and placed his hand on the boy's wrist, "Shinji, you're the only one that can." The Telekinetic said, "You are possibly the strongest out of the two of you, even if your mutation is man-made."

"I can't control it!" Shinji shouted, tears forming in his eyes, "I never asked for this! I never asked to be brought here or torn apart by a bunch of maniacs, or become a some kind of hero!"

"I know," Charles said, smiling sadly, "Torn from your world, and forced into something so much worse at only eighteen." Charles looked in the same direction as the boy, "Shinji, believe me, I would do this myself if I could, but because of your powers, you could easily get in close enough and land a fatal blow against him if necessary. But you only need to sap enough of his strength so that we can get him back in his tomb."

Shinji trembled as an arc of lightning crossed the sky as Storm let loose with her powers. He looked down at his black-gloved hands, and then at the people behind him. Charles, Logan, Rogue, Kurt all looked at him with determination in their eyes. "You've all done so much for me," Shinji said, his tears beginning to flow, "I don't even belong here, and you treated me as if I were family - "

"Kid, you are family," Logan stepped forward, knocking him in the shoulder, the clank of metal sound quietly as the blow barely swayed the smaller boy, "There ain't no one here that's gonna say that you're not."

"He's right," Rogue said, her arms crossed, "And I can understand how you feel," she looked down at her own hands clad in gloves, "You and me, we're the same...you're just stronger than me."

Shinji shook his head, "No, I'm not. I'm not strong at all." The boy said, smiling at all of them, his friends...his family. He reached over and slid one of his gloves off, revealing black-tipped fingers, "I'll try, though...for her."

Logan smiled, "Fightin' for a woman's just as good a reason as any."

Shinji nodded to the man, and looked back across the field as Storm and Cyclops kept the fight going. Without any other words, Shinji lifted into the air. It was easy for him to levitate now, he at least had a handle on his...gifts.

In the years that he had come to this world, so many things had been made clear to him, except the why. Even if I don't know why I'm here, he thought as he flew through the air toward the battle, I'm not sorry. His eyes began to glaze over to a milky white as thunder crashed overhead, and lightning bolts danced across his skin. I don't care what happens to me anymore, he thought with a small smile, I don't even care what happens to the world. He homed in on the five figures that were fighting below. One of whom bore a striking similarity to his mentor. But I'm bringing you home, Laura, even if it's that last thing I do!

"Apocalypse!" Shinji roared over the thunder.

The large blue-skinned mutant turned to him as he touched down. "Shinji Ikari," he intoned, "A most blessed child of mine."

"I had a father," Shinji growled, "And believe me, he makes you look like a saint. Now let them go!"

Apocalypse smiled, "I think not. This world, even by your own understanding, needs to be cleansed of the weak, and feeble. Once I have done that, then you may have her back."

Shinji's eyes glowed red, as did his fists as the clenched tightly. "Angel," he said, looking at the winged mutant fighting with Storm, "Havoc," he looked to the two brothers fighting with the same energy coming from himself, and then looked to the two women by the giant's side, "Amara, Laura." Shinji sneered at him, "With all the power you have, you still need these four as your guards?"

"I have been betrayed in the past."

Shinji shook his head, "You're afraid," he said, making the mutant frown, "Afraid of death, and afraid of betrayal. That's all you have, your own fear, just like me."

"If you are so afraid, Shinji Ikari," Apocalypes said, "Then why do you face me now, even though you do not fully comprehend your own gifts?"

Shinji looked him in the eyes, "Because I finally have something worth fighting for!"


How did my life lead to this moment? I don't understand any of it. I don't want any of the pain. All I wanted was...


=|Distant Past|=

He didn't understand why he was still alive. Nor did he care. All that he did care about was that he was alive, for the time being at least. The cold was almost as bad as the black abyss that had swallowed him. One moment he had been about to suffocate, then next he was falling from his pilot's seat, and into a freezing wilderness.

All at once, he had never been so happy to be alive, or so afraid of dying at the same time.

It was his first time seeing snow. A small smile crept to the boy's lips as he took in the frozen rain. He was in an evergreen forest, covered in blanket of the stuff, but his wonder at the sight as the biting cold overtook him.

The plug suit was not meant for cold.

He began to wander through the forest, hoping to find some sign of civilization.

Being soaked in LCL, his body soon began to shut down. It wasn't a sheer force of will that kept him going. But only for a little while. He collapsed in the snow, not seeing the large wall only feet in front of him.

He was only slightly aware of his surroundings as the sound of the snow crunching under heavy feet reached his ears.

"Strange for someone to be out here," someone said, "And a kid, no less?"

"What do we do with him, Colonel?" Another asked.

"Bring him in," another man said, in a voice that remind him eerily of his father, "I want him tested."

"But he's just a kid," one of them said, "And he's half-dead, what could we get out of him?"

He heard footsteps coming toward him, and then an annoying beeping sound. "It's weak, but he's got it." The Colonel said, "Put him on the truck. I want him put on Project M."

He felt himself being dragged across the ground, and lifted before being thrown into what felt like a truck bed. "Once we get back to the lab, contact Trask and see if he's available. I want this one to go right!" He heard the colonel say.

"Should we put him on ice like Project J?"

"No, he's perfect," the colonel said, "He just needs a little more programming."

His consciousness was fading fast as he tried to open his eyes again if only to get a look at his surroundings. Three men were seated around him in a supply truck like the ones used by the army. Were these men military?

"D-Dare?" He rasped out.

"Was that Japanese?"

One of the men leaned toward him, "Hey, it's awake."

"You speak English, kid?"

"Y-Yes...where am I?" He asked weakly.

The man smirked at him, "Doesn't matter. You're with us, and we're gonna get you better again. Clear?"

He nodded weakly, unwilling to argue.

"Good," he said, "What's your name, son?"

"Shinji...Shinji Ikari..."

"Run a back ground check," the man said as his vision began to blur again, "I want to know if he has any immediate family, or if he'll be missed, anything!"

"Yes, Colonel Stryker."

The next time Shinji awoke was to find himself strapped down on an operating table, his arms and legs strapped down at the wrists and ankles as a blaring light shone down on him. "Another unfamiliar ceiling."

"Ah, you're awake," said a man off to his left, and he turned to see a dark-skinned man in a lab coat walking toward him, "How are we feeling?"

Shinji grimaced, and tugged at his restraints, "I feel...better...but why am I tied down like this?"

The man swept into the room, checking a computer screen the looked far more advanced than what he was used to seeing. "A minor technicality," he said pleasantly, and came over to his side, and tapped a bag attached to an IV drip, "You see, when you were brought in, you were quite near death, but we managed to bring you back after a little extreme medicine." He detached the bag, and replaced it with another, filled with a blue liquid marked with a large black "M". "It was touch and go there for a while, because you reacted violently to the medications, and had to be strapped down. One of my assistants was injured quite badly during one of your more...extreme reactions."

This stunned him. "I'm sorry, is that person alright?"

"Oh, yes," he said, smiling, "It was only a scratch above his eye. And it seems that now we don't have to worry about anymore reactions like that as your body seems to have accepted the medication."

Shinji eyed the bag suspiciously, "What's in that, if you don't mind me asking?"

He nodded with that ever present smile on his face, "It's merely cocktail of steroids, and antibiotics meant to strengthen your weakened muscles and regenerate some of the tissue damage that occurred when frost bite set in." He said, and pulled up a stool next to his table, "Now, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself? We've had you here for a few days now, and every background check we've done on Shinji Ikari turns up blank." He pulled a clipboard and pen from a bed side table, "In other words, Mister Ikari, you don't exist."

"But that's - "

"First question; What year is it?"

"It's two-thousand-fifteen, isn't it?" Shinji said uncertainly.

The pen stilled on the clipboard, "Mister Ikari...it's only two-thousand." Shinji's heart monitor spiked, "Let's continue, shall we? Nationality?"

"Japanese."

"Age?"

"Fourteen."

"Date of birth?"

"June sixth, two-thousand-one."

"That would make you about negative one year old," the man said, "Alright, the next few questions I need to ask will sound quite odd, but please, bare with me. Have you ever experienced anything strange happening to your body?"

"Like what?" Shinji asked, mainly because there had been many things happen to him that he found strange.

"Any abnormal protrusions, voices in your head, burning of the eyes, that sort of thing," he said, "Just something that wouldn't be normal with a healthy human body."

Shinji shook his head, "Nothing like that."

"Alright," he scribbled down on his clipboard, "Now, when we brought you in, we found you covered in residue from a foreign liquid, and your lungs were also full of it, but rather than drowning in it, you seemed to have derived oxygen from this liquid."

"It's called LCL," Shinji said, "Don't ask me what it means, because no one ever told me. All I know is that I needed to be submerged in it to be able to..do as I was told."

"I see," the man said, scribbling down his answer, "I take it this is a sore subject, so we'll stop right there. Anyway, the drugs seem to be working their magic on you again, so I'll leave you to your rest."

Shinji nodded, feeling drowsy all of the sudden, "Alright...but where am I?"

The man turned to him and smiled, "You're at the Alkali Lake Hospital, Mister Ikari, and you can call me Doctor Trask." He left the boy to sleep, and met Stryker outside the door, "Everything he said was the truth." He informed the colonel. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say the boy had the ability to pass through time...such an amazing ability, though!"

"The DNA we extracted from him shows a dormant X-gene with untouched abilities." Stryker said, "How is he taking to the mutagen?"

Task looked down at his papers, "Over the last few days, since his body's calmed down from the adaptations, I'd say he's ready to be tested...we just need a mutant with a passive skill..."

Stryker smirked and pushed off the wall, "We have some tissue samples left over from Weapon X I'd like to test on him," he said, striding down the hall, "If he's able to take on those abilities, then I plan on making him our next candidate for adamantium bonding."

Trask followed after him, "Do you really think that's a wise decision? Remember how Weapon X turned out, and the second generation clone is no better than the parental unit."

"Oh, I think we'll be able to handle this one," Stryker said, smiling as the prospects began to form, "If it works, we have the ultimate weaponized mutant, and if it doesn't...well, he doesn't have any family, now does he?"

Trask smirked, "I like the way you think, Bill."

=x=

Shinji knew it had been a long time since he had last woken up, as he was stiff and sore from sitting still for so long. What he awoke to was multiple men and women around him.

"Good morning, Mister Ikari," the same man from before entered his line of sight, blocking out the light, "I'm glad you've come back to us. We nearly lost you again."

"You did?" He asked, his voice sounding strangely hoarse.

"Yes," he said, "Another bad reaction I'm afraid, so we had to switch you to a different medication. You should be fine now, however."

Shinji shook his head to try to clear the fog of sleep from his mind, a burning sensation in his hands. "Why do my hands hurt?"

"Your hands?" Trask asked, having a look for himself, "Ah, seems like you're taking to the medication better than we had hoped!"

Shinji furrowed his brow, and raised his head to look for himself, and was horrified to see three bony prongs protruding from his knuckles. "Wh-what is this!?" He yelled, looking at the doctor, "What the hell did you do to me?!"

Trask chuckled as he motioned for someone over to his side, "Now, now, there's no need to get upset." He said, smiling, "You see, when we found you almost a month ago, yes, it has already been nearly a full month," he said, answering Shinji's shocked expression, "We found that you had a dormant gene my associates and I had been looking for for quite some time, and since our background checks came up empty, we saw no reason not to go ahead and make you our...I don't want to say guinea pig, but that's more or less what you areat the moment."

"Bastards!" Shinji strained against his bindings, "What gives you the right to do this to me!?"

Trask simply kept the smile on his face, "Why the fact that you, Mister Ikari, are no more human than a real guinea pig is," he said, as Shinji struggle, and felt himself being moved, and noticed that he was being carried over to a tank fulled with water, and around it were small vats of what looked like liquid metal bubbling over. "You see, Mister Ikari, not long ago, at least not in my own opinion, Homosapiens found out that, once again, there was yet another species to content with, dubbed Homosuperior, or the mutant, in the common tongue."

"What's that got to do with me?" Shinji asked nervously as he was set over the tank.

"I'm so glad you asked," Trask smiled, "You see, my dear boy, you are a mutant yourself, but I think that you, perhaps, are from a different time, or even dimension, given your skewed sense of time, and your rather strange clothing when we found you."

Before Shinji could ask what that meant, an oxygen mask was placed over his mouth and nose.

"As to what your powers would have been?" Trask went on, "That's going to remain unknown, as the mutation hadn't activated yet, and we saw fit to alter it with a new mutagen, our Project Mimic." Trask said proudly, "As the name suggests, the mutagen we have been treating you with is a variation of a mutation we found in a young woman we managed to sneak DNA from, her power being to temporarily borrow the powers of other mutants." He reached over and tapped Shinji on the forehead, making the boy want to thrash, but knew it wouldn't do any good.

"Your variation is a stronger version," Trask continued, "We were able to isolate the mutation, and strengthen it, making the transferal permanent. Unfortunately, this only steals a small portion of the mutant's abilities, allowing the original to retain, and recover their abilities. You, however will also retain those abilities, making you quite powerful, and our finest, most powerful weapon against the mutants. An anti mutant...mutant, I suppose."

The bone claws at his knuckles itched to get a hold of the man as his restraints creaked.

"Beginning bonding process in three...two...one...drop him!"

Shinji was suddenly dropped into the freezing tank of water and howled as he tried to free himself, but he wasn't strong enough. Then he felt needles pricking his skin, and drilling into his flesh and bone painfully. His screams of agony were cut off by the water around him, only causing bubbles to rise. That's when the fire came. His insides literally felt like they were melting as the needles injected him with boiling hot liquid coating his insides, and searing his nerves.

Shinji tried to suck as much water into his mouth as he could almost willing himself to drown to stop the pain, even going so far as to bite off his tongue, only for it to grow back withing a few seconds.

The water hissed and steamed as the liquid metal drained into the boy while Trask paced nervously, waiting for the process to take effect. "Status?"

"Vitals are holding, sir," one of the lab assistants said, "Pulse, respiration and EEG are elevated but holding stable."

"Good," Trask murmured, "He may just survive this."


All I wanted...was for the fighting to be over...to be a normal student in school...someone...someone please help me!


The pulse and heart monitors suddenly spiked through the red lines. Shinji roared and tore through his restraints, rising up out of the water.

BANG

The bullet struck him in the heart, knocking him back as unconsciousness threatened to overwhelm him. But he felt the bullet begin to push its way back out of the wound.

"Sedate him! He's breaking loose!"

"Shoot him!"

"X 23, put him down." Stryker's voice said.

A blur of black came crashing into him as claws not unlike his own pierced his chest.

His new skeleton didn't allow the claws to do their work, however, and pushed the unknown assailant off of him. The person wore a mask over their face, along with a pair of goggles that hid their eyes, but Shinji could...smell that the person was female.

And skilled.

His flight instincts took over from there, and he made for the nearest door. "Don't just stand there, stop him!" Trask roared. But he was too far ahead of them for them to catch him.

He heard shouting behind him, and gunshots, some of them grazing him, but they were only minor wounds, and didn't bother him much as he made his bid for freedom.

An alarlm blared overhead. "Attenion: Specimen out of containment. The subject is a male teenager, and is not allowed to leave this facility alive. Take him alive if possible, but use of lethal force is authorized!"

Crashing through the halls, not knowing where he was going, Shinji searched for any way out of the prison.

Suddenly, the same figure darted in front of him, blocking his path.

One each hand was a pair of razor sharp claws.

Shinji trembled, but clenched his own fists as his own claws slid out. "Please...let me go!"

She cocked her head to the side, as if she hadn't understood him.

"I won't tell anyone about this place, just please, let me leave!" Shinji repeated.

X 23 straightened, and looked like she was about to attack, making him worry. He was no match for her in a fight, he knew that much. But the faceless girl simply stabbed her claws through a metal door, and pushed it open.

Snow and fresh air flooded the hall, and Shinji felt tears of relief fall from his eyes, "Thank you." He rushed to the door, but stopped, looking back at her, "Will you come with me?"

She stepped back, shaking her head.

"But why?" Shinji asked, "You can't actually like it here?"

"It's all I know." She said, speaking for the first time.

Shinji reached out his hand, "It doesn't have to be," he said, his voice trembling, "All I used to know was fear, and anger, and the place I came from was nothing short of hell...I don't know this place, and neither do you, but maybe we can find a place in it?"

"X 23, what are you doing?!" Stryker's voice roared as he pelted down the hall toward them, "Stop them!"

X 23 looked from his hand to the approaching colonel before reaching for his hand.

Shinji turned and sprinted off into the snow with the girl right behind him.

=|Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters|=

Charles Xavier was a hard man to surprise, being a powerful Telepath, but today he was surprised by what he found while looking through Cerebro. Two new mutant signatures had caught his attention, and they were moving fast. As he took off the helmet, and wheeled out of the room he couldn't help but feel that these two were...oddly similar to someone else he knew.

"Scott, prep the Blackbird," he said to the waiting teenager outside the door, "We have some new students in need of assistance."

The young man nodded and stepped behind him as they made their way down the hall, "Should I ring anyone special?"

"Logan and perhaps Miss Pryde if she's awake." Charles said, "These two are going to be a handful if not handled correctly."


So, yeah, this is me on another trial run with a crossover story. This one I hope gets me fired up into my other stories. For those of you worrying about Shinji's Mimic ability making him too strong too fast, don't worry about that, because this is Shinji Ikari we're talking about. Timid, frightful, and an all around cry-baby until he gets pushed too far, and that's a pretty far line. Plus, he won't have full control over the powers he takes in unless he uses them in practice, which he'll be hesitant about.

As for the pairing, it's X-23(A.K.A. Laura 'Kinney' Howlett), Logan's clone/daughter. Let's face it, these two have almost the same issues, except that X 23 has one hell of a hair-trigger temper!

Anyway, if you like this story idea, them leave a review, and if you didn't like, feel free to not leave a thing and move on to the next story on your list.