Family Reunion
What would you do if you found a runaway that turned out to be part of your family standing on your porch? Part 2 of Wild Child and another episode in my "Playing House" series.
Again, my stories, their characters, "Nuff said!
Family Reunion
It had something to do with the humidity. At night when the sounds seemed the loudest, words could become muffled by distance, range, and the heaviness of un-fallen raindrops in the air. The slight hairs at the base of the inner ear were dampened by miniscule particles of water making words sound less clear and muffled. Or so that was what he read somewhere.
Even with heightened senses of smell and hearing, it took Victor Creed a while to process what was being said. That was what the humidity told him.
In reality, he heard every word, smelled every smell, and took in each posture the skinny kid was saying.
"Fuck me." He thought.
The kid was still out of range standing slightly away from the long porch where just minutes before he was enjoying a little bit of time outside with Raven. Inside, the rest of the kids were still fighting over some video game. To their credit, they were clueless about the kid standing at the edge of the driveway. They were more interested in what was going on inside than outside. Everything else that didn't involve a forty-two inch screen and sixty-four bit pixels was oblivious to them. He had to do something about that. There was a whole world outside of HDTV that they were missing out on.
This being one of them.
To his credit, the kid spoke eloquently enough. He seemed to show a cell phone and give explanations in order of who he was and what he was doing here.
All Victor could pick up one was: Sinister. Experiment. Laboratory. Kid.
"Fuck me." He said again. Only this time he said it out loud.
In his lap Raven sat up. This had as much to do with her as it did him. And between the two of them, they studied, scrutinized, and peered at the kid waving his hands nervously and trying to give the best explanation he could. How do you really explain being the biological offspring of two of the world's most terrifying mutants especially when you show up unannounced and standing on their property?
"So that's, uh, that's sort of it." Kyle finished. He stood like a lone pup with awkward social skills just waiting for either of them to say anything.
For her part, Raven shook her head and gave a sigh. "I knew it. I knew I shouldn't have gotten involved with that Goddamn psycho. Never trust a man with a cape. Even a tacky cape." She waved the kid closer 'Well come on, don't just stand there. You came all this way for a reason."
"I didn't mean to interrupt. I just thought, you know, that you'd like to know."
"Yeah, we know already kid. I could smell it on ya before you were even two yards away." Shit another damn mouth to feed, Vic thought. He looked up at the clouds forming in the night. "Come here before you get rained on. How old are ya anyway?"
Kyle stepped a bit closer. For their part they didn't seem all that surprised to see him. They almost seemed as if they were bored of the story and what he told them. It wasn't a surprise to them at all. To him, yeah, it was a really big surprise. He was the result of both their DNA a quarter of a century ago, raised in a laboratory not knowing who his real parents were. Now that he knew, and he was meeting them for the first time, it was almost anti-climactic.
He stepped onto the porch giving a slouched look. "Twenty five." He answered.
"Good. Old enough for a beer and too old to go to High School. Put 'em here, sonny." Creed reached for a beer from the mini-frig and handed it to him. "Trust me, it ain't the weirdest story I've heard. The weirdest one I've heard today, but not the weirdest one I've heard."
The beer hit him in the gut with a cold wet punch. "Uhhh, thanks." Kyle said "So you're really not surprised?" He asked. Hell, if he were them, he'd be surprised. But then he wasn't them and any kind of surprises he could think of was just status quo to Vic and Raven.
"Vic really?" Raven scowled. "You're just going to hand him a beer and that's it?"
"Why not? Might as well make the most of it. Not the first time I've found out about a kid I didn't know I had." He said
"That was really underhanded, Vic. I had my reasons." Raven grit her teeth and locked eyes with him. Their own history was full of deceptions, lies, and secrets. For Vic, he locked eyes equally back with her. At one time she was Leni Zauber, the love of his life back in the days of the Cold War. When he found out she was dead, it had taken him decades to recover from the loss. Then to find out she wasn't dead, but still alive in the form of Raven, he soon learned that not only did she lie about being Leni, but that she had kept his son Graydon, away from him. That caused too many issues that the both of them never talked about but was still an unspoken agreement between them both.
He sensed that he had treaded on sensitive territory even though he didn't know why. He busied himself taking the cap off the beer and studying the label.
Made from the finest hops and the clearest of water, Cools Light is a refreshing brew made from 118 years of brewing specialty. If this beer doesn't live up to your exacting tastes, feel free to leave comments at . Best used by born on date 2/18/2056. Wow, 2056. That was a long time.
Depending on how you looked at it, Kurt was the first one. He didn't know it, but he was royalty born to a small east European town with a Count. Born in a castle, she had to flee her abusive husband after Kurt was born, blue, furry, and with a tensile tail that no one could mistake. She didn't mean to throw him over the waterfall, she had only tripped and the small blue bundle slipped out of her arms. That was the first time she was chased by angry villagers but not the last.
The next years were a blur of both anger and sadness. It didn't escape Raven's attention that those that were responsible for losing her son, were also the ones she wanted revenge. She wanted her revenge and used all of her powers of manipulation and shape shifting to exact it. The Eastern Block would be torn down by her own hands if she had anything to do with it.
That was where she met Destiny. Her lover, her friend, and the one person in her life she could trust. Destiny set her on the path to destruction telling her every secret that the World Powers at the time had. That was the first time she met Creed.
It was a huge mistake that she even knew at the time. She betrayed Destiny and worse. She came back, pregnant, alone, and seeking help. Destiny didn't seem to have a concern though, and with them both, she gave birth to Graydon.
But, the guilt over what she did by betraying Destiny was too much. She came to resent Graydon and all he signified. She turned cold. She couldn't stand to think that the boy she mothered was a product of deception. That boy turned out to be the leader of the FOH: Friends of Humanity.
It was ironic that the offspring of Creed and Mystique could have such hatred for mutants considering his own upbringing and in the end; he tried to kill both his parents.
So much for Motherly Love.
And now, here was a kid standing on the porch asking for it.
"Hey kid, are you paying attention?" He heard.
"Huh? Uh, yeah. So, um, I'm your kid."
"Yeah, we know. " Vic said. As he thought, it wasn't the weirdest story he had heard, just the weirdest one he heard today. "So what are you doing here?"
Kyle shrugged. "I didn't have anywhere else to go." He replied. He worked up the courage to take a drink. Cools Light was actually pretty good. After those stories, he could use one. Vic took his empty bottle and gave him another one.
"So you came here?" It was Raven. She didn't look that overly excited but then again, knowing her history, she never was the maternal type. "And what did you think we could do?" She asked.
God between all of her biological children and adopted children, she left a fucked up mess the likes three generations of mutants couldn't figure out.
She had thought that this was her chance to finally settle in and relax without the damage of her past coming back to haunt her. She was wrong.
The two most powerful mutant super villains in the world had more than they could bargain for: being a family to other mutants.
And oddly, it seemed to work on most days. She liked her job as being Vice Principal of Bayville High School. After everything she had been through, teenage angst was a walk in the park. She didn't know the reason why Vic stayed around. She thought it was mostly for the sex. And, whatever kept him calm she didn't mind doing as long as he didn't go into another berserker rage. She had missed one Friday and it seemed as if everyone in the house could tell by the way Vic crashed and stomped the next day.
Kyle finished his second beer, thinking about the question. "Well, I can fix almost anything." He began. He looked at them both. Given the way they watched him, they were expecting a little bit more. As if showing up wasn't enough, they were expecting more.
"And I also know where Sinister keeps his laboratory and what he does there."
Raven and Creed looked at each other with an unspoken plan. The knowledge of Sinister's base was almost too much to handle. Sinister was one of the prime targets they both thought they would never find and now here was a kid that was more than willing and able to give them all the information they needed.
For the last time, they could finally destroy Sinister and his experiments. Even if it did involve sending in their own kid.
"Take your hood down, kid." Vic replied. "And welcome to The Family."
He stood up to his full height towering over the skinny version of himself. It wasn't a threatening gesture as he put his hand on his shoulder but Kyle flinched anyway. The man was way too tall and powerful not to feel intimidated, especially on first meeting.
"Kids!" He yelled.
Immediately all of the arguing stopped from the living room as all ears and eyes turned towards the patio. There was the sound of video game music and the drop of a controller as footsteps sometimes skipped, rolled, or walked to the front of the house.
"Yo, Vic, like, what's up?" Toad aka Todd Tolansky was the first one to ask. Behind him, as usual, was Fred Dukes, aka Blob, followed by Piotr Rasputin also known as Colossus, Remy Lebeu or as he was called, Gambit, Pietro Maximoff also known as QuickSilver, and last but not least, Pyro-John Allerdyce.
They stood by the front waiting and looking at Kyle. He was older than them but yet seemed to be more innocent in their world. He stood almost shoulder to shoulder with Piotr but weighed a good hundred pounds less. He was as thin as Toad but clumsier the way he stood. And even with a beer in his hand, he was the one that was nervous.
"Who's the knock-off?" Pyro asked. There was no mistaking the facial features, the stringy blond hair, or the way father and son both stood with a beer in their hands. The posture was the same, the expression was the same, and the scowl was the same as they both exhaled at the same time.
This would take some explaining.
"Shut up and meet your new brother." Vic grinned. He turned back to Kyle and clinked bottles "What did you say your name was again?"
To be continued…..
