Chapter 2 - A Walk in the Woods
Dani was out for her morning jog on this crisp cool day clad in sweatpants jacket and a took. She could feel the sway of the pompom on top of the hat she borrowed from Northstar as she ran and she couldn't help feeling a little foolish. Only the Canadians think tooks are sexy, she thought as she headed around the front of the main building. Suddenly, she was face to face with Professor Xavier's astral projection, which took the shape of his 3 foot high head.
"Dani, can I talk to you for a moment? I'm afraid it's rather urgent." the head said to her telepathically.
Fighting off the creepy feeling that she still retained from her teen years with Xavier, she replied, "Are the kids ok?" Since becoming a mentor to the new students at the school, they have always been first in her mind. She continued jogging but now went to Xavier's office instead of her room.
Xavier's avatar kept pace and said, "Yes, the children are just fine." As she stepped in the door to Xavier's office, the large astral head zoomed into his own head he continued talking. "In fact, I continue to be impressed with your ease with the youngsters, so I'd like you to go on another recruiting spree for me."
New York City has all that mankind has to offer all in one place. From the highest highs of culture to the lowest lows of filth, it's all here somewhere if you know how to find it. As Esme looked around at the loft that is the brotherhood's hideout she figured someone must have looked really hard to find this slime pit. The former occupants left a large pile of trash in a corner to augment the other, smaller piles of trash that served as furniture for her and Toad.
Getting down to business, Esme concentrated hard. She had remote controlled the likes of Cyclops and Sage and was getting cocky. "This should be cake," she thought to herself as she initiated her scan of the Xavier Institute in search of Dani. She found her target in the same room as Xavier and was slightly taken aback. Proximity is a different animal on the astral plane, but it still counts enough to be weary of a giant like Prof. X. She watched Dani walk out of Xavier's office and go to her room to change. Once Dani was alone, Esme struck, surreptitiously sliding into Dani's mind.
A peacefully flowing creek ran through a wooded patch on a warm summer day. The sunlight made it through the leaves in patches making the underbrush shimmer. Esme sensed she had entered Dani's thoughts and memories, though was completely disoriented.
"Have I failed?" she thought. "No. Dani is a highly trained mutant. Xavier must have trained her to defend her mind subconsciously. I just gotta find a way in."
MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! SMACK! ... "zzzzZZZZDANG!"
A dream of stars that sing and moving planetary bodies that kept harmony was cut short for May Armstrong by the blaring of a god awful alarm clock. She hated that clock and now it was waking her up with a headache she found that little extra hate inside of her to throw it's way!
She sat on the side of her bed and looked around her room. Her Dulcimer and Mandolin stood propped up in their stands among the trophies and ribbons on display, each with a little plastic gymnast on their highest pedestal. Her own letterman jacket, adorned with patches was strung across the back of her desk chair. "Yea, I do all this and the wise man tells me I suck because I hate History. Blah. Who needs History or English? I'm going to be an engineer." She got up and walked to the door. Without realizing it she reached out with her mind and caused her bath towel to levitate three feet off the ground. She sleepily grabbed the floating towel and started to walk down the hall to the bathroom. "He was right about one thing thought," She thought "I do smell like smoke. Blah!"
Esme examined her surroundings in more detail. As she looked deeper into the vein of a leaf near her, she found herself drawn into a scene. Suddenly she was watching a competitive and focused Sam Guthrie pitching a baseball to Roberto DaCosta. Even from this vantage point near first base she could see the overconfident stance of the tan young man at the plate. Roberto burst into his Sunspot form just as the ball whizzed within the strike zone and whiffed with a tremendous swing. The bat flew from his hands by the force of the intended blow and Rhane, Allison and Doug all laughed. Sam said "How'd you like that curve ball 'Berto?"
As Sam turns to head back to the mound, Esme found herself back by the creek. What was that? She thought. A Memory?
Lost in her own thoughts Esme looked up at the sun and was instantly confronted with Magma using her powers on her. Esme recoiled back to dodge the blow and landed with a bump on the creek's edge.
Maybe she's on to me and that was a warning, I gota get out of here. She started to panic and looked around for something she could use.
She looked into the dark water and found herself staring into the soul swallowing Demon Bear. "AAAAAAA!" That scared her, as it would anyone, but it also shocked her back into the reality of the situation.
Finally getting her wits about her, Esme realized what she had here. It was an illusion, much like the illusions Dani uses to confront her opponents. All the memories and thoughts are here, but hidden behind a tranquil mask. Each small piece of color was actually a memory. Here, laid all around this telepath was the totality of who Danielle Moonstar is, was and will ever be. All Esme had to do now was find the right moment and change her memory of this mornings conversation with Xavier.
Closing her mind to the contents of the mosaic of images around her, Esme adjusted her perception to get a glimpse of the age of Dani's memories. This technique would help her in her quest for today's memory without destroying the illusion, which would probably be detected by ether Xavier or Dani herself. She fancied herself as being far too skilled for that kind of mistake. By adjusting her own perception rather than the world around her, she could find what she was seeking with out altering the environment at all. When she again focused on the creek and the forest it was rendered in a false color from red to blue. Images of young Dani's childhood came in as red, while the bluest of blue were the events of this day. This was still too much information for Esme to absorb. Since the color assigned to a particular memory was a combination of the color she perceived through her eyes an felt through her emotions age and since the location of each memory was determined by it's color to create this illusion of earth and sky, the forest now moved as a nauseating and bizarre whirl of colors and shapes superimposed upon the trees and things around her.
The young telepath changed the resolution of her own perceptions again. This time everything up to yesterday would be red, and today would be a prism of color. The trees, the grass and even the sky and water seemed to be on fire in this new color scheme, but it did have it's advantages. Esme spotted a multicolored shell on the bank of the creek that shone with perfection. Here lay the symbol of Dani's day to this moment. The blonde girl's astral form smiled and touched the spiral of the shell with her mind.
Xavier's office was a place she'd thought she'd left behind forever, so Esme was a little startled to be back, even in someone else's memory. Dani had just walked in the door huffing and puffing, perspiration on her brow. The young blonde paused the moment to get a better look around. She noticed how in Dani's mind Xavier had a kind of unearthly glow about him, almost like Byzantine paintings of Christ. "Such undeserving worship." she thought. "For all his aspirations to be the Gandhi of mutants, he sure behaves like a thug. I always wondered about that." She went up to the brighter-than-he-should-be image of Xavier. "Why do people love you when you are self contradictory? You preach peace, but you train weapons. You would have us all be warrior poets." Esme puts her hands on her hips, puffs out her chest and mocks, "I am so strong and sure of myself that I need not bother with you if you fight me, humans. Yet let us be friends."
She got right in Xavier's face and said "BULL! I didn't see the humans come to our aid when the Sha'lar tried to kill us all! When they killed Sophie!! Why should we care if we step on the ants? Maybe there are some mutants who think humans just SUCK! Thought of that?" Esme looked at him frozen there and resisted the temptation to make him say something stupid just to get a laugh. She was on official business after all and let the memory resume.
As before Xavier said "In fact, I continue to be impressed with your ease with the youngsters, so I'd like you to go on another recruiting spree for me."
Dani walked off her jog around the Professor's office and huffed, "Well, I do have history lessons to plan and teach. The kids have a quiz today. Do you have a sub for me?"
"Well, it's only for a couple days, I was thinking that Bobby could do it if you gave him your quizzes and lesson plans." He smirked anticipating her reaction. She did not disappoint.
Dani's hands flew into the air. "Iceman? No offense Professor, but Bobby is a goofball. I want my kids to learn something while I'm gone." She started to stretch her hamstrings, bending over at the waist, waiting for Xavier's reaction.
"I'll let you fly the Lear."
Dani's head whipped up from her stretch, flinging her braids behind her shoulders. "I'll leave a video, where am I going?"
Esme stopped it right there and backed it up. Best to get this out of the way quickly. She had already taken too much time and her rant at Xavier didn't help. She walked things forward until Dani asked, "Do you have a sub for me?"
At that point she made Xavier say "Well, it's only for a couple days, I was thinking that you and Xi'an could take your charges with you and show them how you recruit mutants." Esme liked that but it didn't make sense with the next thing Dani said so she edited further.
Thinking of what she knew of Dani's past she had her say "Recruit? No offense Professor, but these kids aren't Xmen. They need to learn first at the very least."
Esme let Xavier speak his next line and then had Dani finish up with "I'll get the recruitment video. Where are we going?"
From there the telepath let the memory play out without paying much attention to it. Esme looked it over, back and forth and it seemed to flow decently enough, so much so that when she went out of the memory, the shell looked almost the same although the day's events had been tampered with. So enamored, was she at her handiwork, that she didn't notice someone walking out of the woods.
Doug Ramsey stood and looked at Esme. She finally looked up and yelped. This must be a defense mechanism!
"You don't belong here." Doug said.
"I was just leav---" She was touched on the face by the Doug Ramsey avitar and it sent her back in an instant to her physical body that was experiencing searing pain. "YYYAAAAAAAA!" she cried. Then she shook her short blonde hair and looked around. It was the hideout, dim and dingy. Toad kept catching flies from a nearby pile of trash.
"Ewwww"
The cafeteria of the Xavier's Institute was a lively place that didn't quite fit on the surface of the planet Earth. The tables are standard issue as are the trays, forks, knives, and napkins. In fact, everything is just as you would expect in an up scale high school cafeteria except the students. They are the ones who look out of this world. Funny then, that they call not only the planet but this school as their home. For you see, Xavier's is a special place. It is a school for mutants!
Melissa Moore was at her usual table with 2 full trays. Given her mutant talent, Melissa redefines the term big beautiful woman. At 7 foot 6, 400 pounds or so, supermodel looks, long blonde hair in a braid down her back, and big blue eyes, she is built like a concrete Barbie doll. As Laurie Collins walked by the table of the gigantic young woman she heard a quiet sniffle cut through the happy din of the cafeteria.
Laurie looked over her shoulder at the giant girl and saw that she was all alone and crying into her eggs. Having been like that lonely girl before finding her first real friend in her perky roommate Sofia, her heart went out to Melissa. Vowing to follow the optimistic example of her friend she swallowed her shyness and approached the table. "Excuse me, Melissa, right? Would you mind if I sat down?"
Though she was seated and hunched over, the unhappy girl looked Laurie straight in the eye. For a moment Laurie thought that this was an incredibly bad idea but then the sobbing girl said, "Aww, why the hell not." And grabbed an apple in her right hand. As the petite blonde girl sat down, she noticed that the apple was crumbling in her fist and was soon gone in a faint patch of pink smoke.
"You're in my Geometry class aren't you?" Laurie said trying to squelch her fear and take on Sofia's friendly and inviting tone.
The big girl glowered at her. "Look, I know why you're here and I don't need any pity." She pushed her left hand into a plate of eggs, which similarly disappeared into pink smoke.
Laurie was terrified of the now even more upset girl but tried her best to keep her power in check. The power with which she had struggled was her ability to release mood-altering pheromones that make others feel the same emotions she does. "Please, please don't scare me. I only saw that you were unhappy and alone. And, uh,... I'm sorry, I'll go."
Quickly grabbing her tray and starting to get up, Laurie heard a small "Please, wait, stop, I'm sorry." from the other girl. "I'm the one who should apologize. I... I'm Melissa."
"I know. I'm Laurie. Can I ask what's wrong?" Inside her feelings were changing from scared to sympathetic. Still, she struggled to keep her power in so she didn't affect the already fragile mood of the big girl.
From across the table, Melissa's big hand started down on a doughnut. For the first time she noticed that the palm was rough and oddly pink. "What's wrong? My power sucks. I'm always hungry and I'll never be able to eat again!"
"You seem to be doing ok, I mean, with the hands thing and all."
"It keeps me alive, for all the good that does, but my stomach is gone. And while I use my power to eat with my hands, I'll never taste anything." She made and exaggerated shrug "But, thanks to my curse of a power, I'll keep getting bigger and stronger"
"And you never loose the weight?"
"Only after I exercise a lot, I loose some of the height and muscle, but it's so hard! I just want to eat."
Laurie was letting the conversation sink in for a second when Josh Foley and Victor Borkowski came walking past the table. "Hey Laurie!" Victor said as Josh Groggily made his way to an empty table to drink his morning soda. "Sofia and the gang are going to meet up with us for breakfast. Save you a seat?"
"Thanks Victor, in a second ok?" She said, then turned back to the girl seated across from her.
Melissa's mouth was open. "That Josh Foley is cute! I'd sit with him too, if I were you."
"Well why don't you go over and meet the gang?" She said, feeling a bit territorial with the way she was looking at Josh but keeping it to herself.
She shrank back "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I'd gross him out with the hand thing and I always want to eat more when I'm nervous." Melissa stuck a finger in a glass of orange juice, turning it to a pink smoke, which absorbed back into her hand. She was quiet for a moment then she began to tear up anew. "I mean, look at me! My advisor, Mr. Drake says that you should be the person you are inside no matter what the outside looks like, whatever that means! My friends keep wanting me to get together with the huge monstrous invulnerable types like Santo, but those guys have rocks in there heads. I mean,...", She completely broke down into sobs, "Look at me! I am a monster! Who's going to love me like this? Who?"
The girl completely broke down and her pink smoke completely enveloped the two trays swiftly removing from them everything edible, including the cloth napkins. Laurie didn't know what to say so she spoke as honestly as she knew how. "No one ever knows who is going to love them and it's hard to keep trying. It sucks but it's true! Because no matter how foolish and painful the search becomes, being lonely and devoid of hope is worse." The thought of her mother flashed into her mind for an instant.
The big girl looked up, her face a mess. "You think?"
"I know. Here, lets clean you up." She tossed the napkin at Melissa and it went up in pink smoke the second she went to grab it. "Oops!" The two girls giggled in nervous laughter as the big girl cleaned her face off by rubbing her hand over it. "Nice trick"
"It's a good thing I never need a napkin." They giggled anew.
Dr. Henry McCoy, The Beast, strode up to the two at the table and went right toward Melissa "I had a report from the faculty that you were here overeating again Melissa. Do I have to tell you what will happen if you persist in this destructive pattern?"
"Here we go again." Melissa rolled her eyes.
Beast continued without breath. "You will continue to grow bigger and stronger and taller and denser until your body can no longer take it. Come on you need to blow off some of that extra energy. I'm going to place you on a strict workout schedule until you are down to at least six three or fifteen stone, whatever comes first."
"A Hundred pounds? That'll take forever!" The big girl protested.
The Beast looked at her sternly then calmly said, "Then, my dear sweet Miss. Moore, I'd suggest you get started. My office, fifteen minutes if you please, I have a regimen you might like. Jubilee set up the danger room to fight an annoying pop princess named Jessica Sampson or something. Most humorous, so she tells me." He walked off still talking like the absent-minded professor in a big blue fur coat.
Melissa's face went from sad to a twisted evil grin. "That does actually sound pretty funny. I wonder if she programmed it to cry. That might make me feel better."
"Maybe I could get permission for that program when I'm feeling down. I'd love to make that no talent twit run in terror!"
"Yea, but what do you need cheering up from, really, you have your friends waiting for you and you look normal. You can walk down the hallway with no one ever noticing you."
She looked at Josh throwing an apple in the air for Victor to snag with his tongue and said, "Yea, I can get by unnoticed. Lucky me." She looked at her new friend. "I'll see you in Geometry, OK?"
"OK." She said as they both got up from the table. "Hey Laurie" Melissa looked down from her towering perspective and smiled. "Thanks for not BS-ing me."
"Any time."
Victor snagged a grape out of the air with his long sticky tongue as Josh watched. "Dude, that's totally sick!" He busted out with a mixture of amusement and revulsion. "Ok! So can you do it with something even smaller?"
"I don't know, the grape was kinda hard, not a lot to stick to and it wants to jump away from me."
"Hi guys!" Laurie said, as Josh looked for something smaller than a grape on his breakfast plate. "Did you loose something?"
Josh looked up and gave Laurie a smile, "Nah, we're just testing Victor's mutant powers!"
"He's watching me eat like a sideshow freak and giggling about it. Laurie, I think your boyfriend here has a thing for tongues!"
Laurie blushed a deep red as Josh immediately blurted out "She's not my girlfriend! Grow up Vic!"
"This from the man who thinks it's amusing to throw food in other people's mouths. Check this out, you want to see funny? Watch this." The green plated, spiky headed Victor carefully eyed the next table over, behind Josh. Laurie had just sat down next to Victor so she could see what he had planned. Katie the Cat Girl was sitting with her back to them and she had just put down her milk. Victor struck with lightning speed. His tongue lashed out and stuck to the carton of milk.
As it began to recoil Katie pounced and grabbed the tongue in one clawed fist and the carton of milk in the other. Her momentum made her back legs swing around so she was sitting on the edge of the table and facing victor and his intruding prehensile appendage. "Hey cutie! Don't you know how much Kitties like their milk?", she said drawing stares from all over the room. "Next time, you will have to be a little quicker with your tongue!" She pulled back and let the tongue go like a big rubber band. It recoiled back into his mouth with an audible snap making his head go back. The cafeteria busted out laughing in unison including His two friends sitting at the table.
"Now that's funny!" Josh snorted while Laurie was incapacitated with laughter.
Victor, still dumbstruck, looked at Katie, who was now cart wheeling out of the dining room. "Did she just call me Cutie?" He said dumbly, making Laurie and Josh laugh even harder.
When Laurie could finally focus again, her advisor Dani Moonstar was hurriedly approaching them from across the room. "Laurie, Josh, I'm glad to find you here! You too Victor. Do you know where David and Sofia are?"
"Well, they usually meet us here for breakfast. Apparently they went to the gym this morning."
"Good. I've got something special for you guys. The professor wanted you all to come on my next recruiting sweep with me. We start in a half an hour at the hangar bay. Victor, you and Cessily are coming too, with Xi'an. This is hands on experience for you all and I know that you are ready for the challenge." She looked at them and smiled. "I'm going to go find the other and tell them the good news. Have a weekend bag packed and meet me in the Lear Jet by 8:00. Got it guys?" She whirled around and left to find the others as soon as she got an affirmative nod from the group who now looked at her walking away in confused silence.
May Armstrong made her groggy way to school after an all too short night. It was only a mile's walk but to her it was endless misery. Making the walk all the more miserable was what was waiting for her at school - first period English. She used to like English but now it was a chore. She didn't have a feel for it like she did math and physics and all that reading was starting to give her headaches. As she walked, she reached into her backpack and pulled out some Motrin and gunned it down without water.
"Poppin pills? I thought you were Miss Goodie Two Shoes!" A friend greeted May as she walked. The other girl dwarfed May by more than a foot and a half though she was hardly tall. "Did you sleep well?" the new girl asked, flipping back long black locks.
May grimaced "Yea, slept like a baby after talking to dear old dad about what it means to be BUST-ED!"
"Ouch"
"Got that right." She looked up from under bangs and assessed her friend "And to what do we have to give thanks for your chipper demeanor, Ms Jannie?"
Jannie did her best to stifle a smile "Oh you know, clean living, Ms May. And the fact that I got Ben Kalonowski's phone number last night!!!" She jumped up and down excited.
"You did? Man, I guess I left early!"
"Come on, Lets blow off Ms. Q's and I'll tell you all about it. I could use a coffee" Jannie pulled her by the hands. After briefly thinking about her father, She allowed herself to be swept away by her friend's excitement.
Dani was now flying the X-corp Lear jet that was parked at Xavier's for official business. Since she had gotten a commercial Pilots license she had been bugging Warren and Xavier to let her fly some of the bigger planes to no avail. She thought to herself, "With the kids sitting in the back of the plane and Xi'an sitting in the co-pilots seat looking over the profiles of these two mutants, I felt less like a pilot and more like the father of some weird family out on a road-trip vacation. First stop - Cleveland to check up on a 13 year old boy who has apparently been quite interested in his newfound powers. After that, there is a hunt for some 'Mystery girl' in Missouri, which may be challenging. I don't know if I like bringing the kids along with me but Xavier was pretty specific. Sofia, David, Josh and Laurie should be ok, but Cessily and Victor have such obvious mutations! I hope their image inducers work ok for them."
"This kid certainly has been cranking out the power since he was detected." Xi'an said over the intercom. "Cerebro thinks he's some sort of structure builder. Apparently his structures are so smooth that they have very little friction. Wonder what he's making. Slippy slides?"
Dani smiled "I remember 13. Even for me it was a time of relative innocence and all that. I bet he's only figured out how to make stuff and is doing art or something. Who knows? These kids at that age think up so many silly things. I'm kinda looking forward to meeting an innocent kid and showing him the ropes, you know? Guess I should concentrate, were almost there. Tell the kids to buckle up. I wonder what he's doing now?"
At that very moment in Cleveland - 200 miles away and closing - three 13 year old boys, all white, sit around a hastily drawn map of the inside of a convenient store. The one at the head of the table flexes some invisible muscle and coats himself with obscuring gray thorns that give the illusion that he is six foot 4, big and black. The deception is excellent and the other kids say "whoa!!" When he speaks His voice is distorted and deeper.
"Ok, you two come in and when I rush in you push the cashier and the deli guy back into the freezer. I'll get the cash from the register and we'll meet by the door. you two then hang on to me and I'll zip us out of there with the cash. Any questions?"
To be continued.
Dani was out for her morning jog on this crisp cool day clad in sweatpants jacket and a took. She could feel the sway of the pompom on top of the hat she borrowed from Northstar as she ran and she couldn't help feeling a little foolish. Only the Canadians think tooks are sexy, she thought as she headed around the front of the main building. Suddenly, she was face to face with Professor Xavier's astral projection, which took the shape of his 3 foot high head.
"Dani, can I talk to you for a moment? I'm afraid it's rather urgent." the head said to her telepathically.
Fighting off the creepy feeling that she still retained from her teen years with Xavier, she replied, "Are the kids ok?" Since becoming a mentor to the new students at the school, they have always been first in her mind. She continued jogging but now went to Xavier's office instead of her room.
Xavier's avatar kept pace and said, "Yes, the children are just fine." As she stepped in the door to Xavier's office, the large astral head zoomed into his own head he continued talking. "In fact, I continue to be impressed with your ease with the youngsters, so I'd like you to go on another recruiting spree for me."
New York City has all that mankind has to offer all in one place. From the highest highs of culture to the lowest lows of filth, it's all here somewhere if you know how to find it. As Esme looked around at the loft that is the brotherhood's hideout she figured someone must have looked really hard to find this slime pit. The former occupants left a large pile of trash in a corner to augment the other, smaller piles of trash that served as furniture for her and Toad.
Getting down to business, Esme concentrated hard. She had remote controlled the likes of Cyclops and Sage and was getting cocky. "This should be cake," she thought to herself as she initiated her scan of the Xavier Institute in search of Dani. She found her target in the same room as Xavier and was slightly taken aback. Proximity is a different animal on the astral plane, but it still counts enough to be weary of a giant like Prof. X. She watched Dani walk out of Xavier's office and go to her room to change. Once Dani was alone, Esme struck, surreptitiously sliding into Dani's mind.
A peacefully flowing creek ran through a wooded patch on a warm summer day. The sunlight made it through the leaves in patches making the underbrush shimmer. Esme sensed she had entered Dani's thoughts and memories, though was completely disoriented.
"Have I failed?" she thought. "No. Dani is a highly trained mutant. Xavier must have trained her to defend her mind subconsciously. I just gotta find a way in."
MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! SMACK! ... "zzzzZZZZDANG!"
A dream of stars that sing and moving planetary bodies that kept harmony was cut short for May Armstrong by the blaring of a god awful alarm clock. She hated that clock and now it was waking her up with a headache she found that little extra hate inside of her to throw it's way!
She sat on the side of her bed and looked around her room. Her Dulcimer and Mandolin stood propped up in their stands among the trophies and ribbons on display, each with a little plastic gymnast on their highest pedestal. Her own letterman jacket, adorned with patches was strung across the back of her desk chair. "Yea, I do all this and the wise man tells me I suck because I hate History. Blah. Who needs History or English? I'm going to be an engineer." She got up and walked to the door. Without realizing it she reached out with her mind and caused her bath towel to levitate three feet off the ground. She sleepily grabbed the floating towel and started to walk down the hall to the bathroom. "He was right about one thing thought," She thought "I do smell like smoke. Blah!"
Esme examined her surroundings in more detail. As she looked deeper into the vein of a leaf near her, she found herself drawn into a scene. Suddenly she was watching a competitive and focused Sam Guthrie pitching a baseball to Roberto DaCosta. Even from this vantage point near first base she could see the overconfident stance of the tan young man at the plate. Roberto burst into his Sunspot form just as the ball whizzed within the strike zone and whiffed with a tremendous swing. The bat flew from his hands by the force of the intended blow and Rhane, Allison and Doug all laughed. Sam said "How'd you like that curve ball 'Berto?"
As Sam turns to head back to the mound, Esme found herself back by the creek. What was that? She thought. A Memory?
Lost in her own thoughts Esme looked up at the sun and was instantly confronted with Magma using her powers on her. Esme recoiled back to dodge the blow and landed with a bump on the creek's edge.
Maybe she's on to me and that was a warning, I gota get out of here. She started to panic and looked around for something she could use.
She looked into the dark water and found herself staring into the soul swallowing Demon Bear. "AAAAAAA!" That scared her, as it would anyone, but it also shocked her back into the reality of the situation.
Finally getting her wits about her, Esme realized what she had here. It was an illusion, much like the illusions Dani uses to confront her opponents. All the memories and thoughts are here, but hidden behind a tranquil mask. Each small piece of color was actually a memory. Here, laid all around this telepath was the totality of who Danielle Moonstar is, was and will ever be. All Esme had to do now was find the right moment and change her memory of this mornings conversation with Xavier.
Closing her mind to the contents of the mosaic of images around her, Esme adjusted her perception to get a glimpse of the age of Dani's memories. This technique would help her in her quest for today's memory without destroying the illusion, which would probably be detected by ether Xavier or Dani herself. She fancied herself as being far too skilled for that kind of mistake. By adjusting her own perception rather than the world around her, she could find what she was seeking with out altering the environment at all. When she again focused on the creek and the forest it was rendered in a false color from red to blue. Images of young Dani's childhood came in as red, while the bluest of blue were the events of this day. This was still too much information for Esme to absorb. Since the color assigned to a particular memory was a combination of the color she perceived through her eyes an felt through her emotions age and since the location of each memory was determined by it's color to create this illusion of earth and sky, the forest now moved as a nauseating and bizarre whirl of colors and shapes superimposed upon the trees and things around her.
The young telepath changed the resolution of her own perceptions again. This time everything up to yesterday would be red, and today would be a prism of color. The trees, the grass and even the sky and water seemed to be on fire in this new color scheme, but it did have it's advantages. Esme spotted a multicolored shell on the bank of the creek that shone with perfection. Here lay the symbol of Dani's day to this moment. The blonde girl's astral form smiled and touched the spiral of the shell with her mind.
Xavier's office was a place she'd thought she'd left behind forever, so Esme was a little startled to be back, even in someone else's memory. Dani had just walked in the door huffing and puffing, perspiration on her brow. The young blonde paused the moment to get a better look around. She noticed how in Dani's mind Xavier had a kind of unearthly glow about him, almost like Byzantine paintings of Christ. "Such undeserving worship." she thought. "For all his aspirations to be the Gandhi of mutants, he sure behaves like a thug. I always wondered about that." She went up to the brighter-than-he-should-be image of Xavier. "Why do people love you when you are self contradictory? You preach peace, but you train weapons. You would have us all be warrior poets." Esme puts her hands on her hips, puffs out her chest and mocks, "I am so strong and sure of myself that I need not bother with you if you fight me, humans. Yet let us be friends."
She got right in Xavier's face and said "BULL! I didn't see the humans come to our aid when the Sha'lar tried to kill us all! When they killed Sophie!! Why should we care if we step on the ants? Maybe there are some mutants who think humans just SUCK! Thought of that?" Esme looked at him frozen there and resisted the temptation to make him say something stupid just to get a laugh. She was on official business after all and let the memory resume.
As before Xavier said "In fact, I continue to be impressed with your ease with the youngsters, so I'd like you to go on another recruiting spree for me."
Dani walked off her jog around the Professor's office and huffed, "Well, I do have history lessons to plan and teach. The kids have a quiz today. Do you have a sub for me?"
"Well, it's only for a couple days, I was thinking that Bobby could do it if you gave him your quizzes and lesson plans." He smirked anticipating her reaction. She did not disappoint.
Dani's hands flew into the air. "Iceman? No offense Professor, but Bobby is a goofball. I want my kids to learn something while I'm gone." She started to stretch her hamstrings, bending over at the waist, waiting for Xavier's reaction.
"I'll let you fly the Lear."
Dani's head whipped up from her stretch, flinging her braids behind her shoulders. "I'll leave a video, where am I going?"
Esme stopped it right there and backed it up. Best to get this out of the way quickly. She had already taken too much time and her rant at Xavier didn't help. She walked things forward until Dani asked, "Do you have a sub for me?"
At that point she made Xavier say "Well, it's only for a couple days, I was thinking that you and Xi'an could take your charges with you and show them how you recruit mutants." Esme liked that but it didn't make sense with the next thing Dani said so she edited further.
Thinking of what she knew of Dani's past she had her say "Recruit? No offense Professor, but these kids aren't Xmen. They need to learn first at the very least."
Esme let Xavier speak his next line and then had Dani finish up with "I'll get the recruitment video. Where are we going?"
From there the telepath let the memory play out without paying much attention to it. Esme looked it over, back and forth and it seemed to flow decently enough, so much so that when she went out of the memory, the shell looked almost the same although the day's events had been tampered with. So enamored, was she at her handiwork, that she didn't notice someone walking out of the woods.
Doug Ramsey stood and looked at Esme. She finally looked up and yelped. This must be a defense mechanism!
"You don't belong here." Doug said.
"I was just leav---" She was touched on the face by the Doug Ramsey avitar and it sent her back in an instant to her physical body that was experiencing searing pain. "YYYAAAAAAAA!" she cried. Then she shook her short blonde hair and looked around. It was the hideout, dim and dingy. Toad kept catching flies from a nearby pile of trash.
"Ewwww"
The cafeteria of the Xavier's Institute was a lively place that didn't quite fit on the surface of the planet Earth. The tables are standard issue as are the trays, forks, knives, and napkins. In fact, everything is just as you would expect in an up scale high school cafeteria except the students. They are the ones who look out of this world. Funny then, that they call not only the planet but this school as their home. For you see, Xavier's is a special place. It is a school for mutants!
Melissa Moore was at her usual table with 2 full trays. Given her mutant talent, Melissa redefines the term big beautiful woman. At 7 foot 6, 400 pounds or so, supermodel looks, long blonde hair in a braid down her back, and big blue eyes, she is built like a concrete Barbie doll. As Laurie Collins walked by the table of the gigantic young woman she heard a quiet sniffle cut through the happy din of the cafeteria.
Laurie looked over her shoulder at the giant girl and saw that she was all alone and crying into her eggs. Having been like that lonely girl before finding her first real friend in her perky roommate Sofia, her heart went out to Melissa. Vowing to follow the optimistic example of her friend she swallowed her shyness and approached the table. "Excuse me, Melissa, right? Would you mind if I sat down?"
Though she was seated and hunched over, the unhappy girl looked Laurie straight in the eye. For a moment Laurie thought that this was an incredibly bad idea but then the sobbing girl said, "Aww, why the hell not." And grabbed an apple in her right hand. As the petite blonde girl sat down, she noticed that the apple was crumbling in her fist and was soon gone in a faint patch of pink smoke.
"You're in my Geometry class aren't you?" Laurie said trying to squelch her fear and take on Sofia's friendly and inviting tone.
The big girl glowered at her. "Look, I know why you're here and I don't need any pity." She pushed her left hand into a plate of eggs, which similarly disappeared into pink smoke.
Laurie was terrified of the now even more upset girl but tried her best to keep her power in check. The power with which she had struggled was her ability to release mood-altering pheromones that make others feel the same emotions she does. "Please, please don't scare me. I only saw that you were unhappy and alone. And, uh,... I'm sorry, I'll go."
Quickly grabbing her tray and starting to get up, Laurie heard a small "Please, wait, stop, I'm sorry." from the other girl. "I'm the one who should apologize. I... I'm Melissa."
"I know. I'm Laurie. Can I ask what's wrong?" Inside her feelings were changing from scared to sympathetic. Still, she struggled to keep her power in so she didn't affect the already fragile mood of the big girl.
From across the table, Melissa's big hand started down on a doughnut. For the first time she noticed that the palm was rough and oddly pink. "What's wrong? My power sucks. I'm always hungry and I'll never be able to eat again!"
"You seem to be doing ok, I mean, with the hands thing and all."
"It keeps me alive, for all the good that does, but my stomach is gone. And while I use my power to eat with my hands, I'll never taste anything." She made and exaggerated shrug "But, thanks to my curse of a power, I'll keep getting bigger and stronger"
"And you never loose the weight?"
"Only after I exercise a lot, I loose some of the height and muscle, but it's so hard! I just want to eat."
Laurie was letting the conversation sink in for a second when Josh Foley and Victor Borkowski came walking past the table. "Hey Laurie!" Victor said as Josh Groggily made his way to an empty table to drink his morning soda. "Sofia and the gang are going to meet up with us for breakfast. Save you a seat?"
"Thanks Victor, in a second ok?" She said, then turned back to the girl seated across from her.
Melissa's mouth was open. "That Josh Foley is cute! I'd sit with him too, if I were you."
"Well why don't you go over and meet the gang?" She said, feeling a bit territorial with the way she was looking at Josh but keeping it to herself.
She shrank back "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I'd gross him out with the hand thing and I always want to eat more when I'm nervous." Melissa stuck a finger in a glass of orange juice, turning it to a pink smoke, which absorbed back into her hand. She was quiet for a moment then she began to tear up anew. "I mean, look at me! My advisor, Mr. Drake says that you should be the person you are inside no matter what the outside looks like, whatever that means! My friends keep wanting me to get together with the huge monstrous invulnerable types like Santo, but those guys have rocks in there heads. I mean,...", She completely broke down into sobs, "Look at me! I am a monster! Who's going to love me like this? Who?"
The girl completely broke down and her pink smoke completely enveloped the two trays swiftly removing from them everything edible, including the cloth napkins. Laurie didn't know what to say so she spoke as honestly as she knew how. "No one ever knows who is going to love them and it's hard to keep trying. It sucks but it's true! Because no matter how foolish and painful the search becomes, being lonely and devoid of hope is worse." The thought of her mother flashed into her mind for an instant.
The big girl looked up, her face a mess. "You think?"
"I know. Here, lets clean you up." She tossed the napkin at Melissa and it went up in pink smoke the second she went to grab it. "Oops!" The two girls giggled in nervous laughter as the big girl cleaned her face off by rubbing her hand over it. "Nice trick"
"It's a good thing I never need a napkin." They giggled anew.
Dr. Henry McCoy, The Beast, strode up to the two at the table and went right toward Melissa "I had a report from the faculty that you were here overeating again Melissa. Do I have to tell you what will happen if you persist in this destructive pattern?"
"Here we go again." Melissa rolled her eyes.
Beast continued without breath. "You will continue to grow bigger and stronger and taller and denser until your body can no longer take it. Come on you need to blow off some of that extra energy. I'm going to place you on a strict workout schedule until you are down to at least six three or fifteen stone, whatever comes first."
"A Hundred pounds? That'll take forever!" The big girl protested.
The Beast looked at her sternly then calmly said, "Then, my dear sweet Miss. Moore, I'd suggest you get started. My office, fifteen minutes if you please, I have a regimen you might like. Jubilee set up the danger room to fight an annoying pop princess named Jessica Sampson or something. Most humorous, so she tells me." He walked off still talking like the absent-minded professor in a big blue fur coat.
Melissa's face went from sad to a twisted evil grin. "That does actually sound pretty funny. I wonder if she programmed it to cry. That might make me feel better."
"Maybe I could get permission for that program when I'm feeling down. I'd love to make that no talent twit run in terror!"
"Yea, but what do you need cheering up from, really, you have your friends waiting for you and you look normal. You can walk down the hallway with no one ever noticing you."
She looked at Josh throwing an apple in the air for Victor to snag with his tongue and said, "Yea, I can get by unnoticed. Lucky me." She looked at her new friend. "I'll see you in Geometry, OK?"
"OK." She said as they both got up from the table. "Hey Laurie" Melissa looked down from her towering perspective and smiled. "Thanks for not BS-ing me."
"Any time."
Victor snagged a grape out of the air with his long sticky tongue as Josh watched. "Dude, that's totally sick!" He busted out with a mixture of amusement and revulsion. "Ok! So can you do it with something even smaller?"
"I don't know, the grape was kinda hard, not a lot to stick to and it wants to jump away from me."
"Hi guys!" Laurie said, as Josh looked for something smaller than a grape on his breakfast plate. "Did you loose something?"
Josh looked up and gave Laurie a smile, "Nah, we're just testing Victor's mutant powers!"
"He's watching me eat like a sideshow freak and giggling about it. Laurie, I think your boyfriend here has a thing for tongues!"
Laurie blushed a deep red as Josh immediately blurted out "She's not my girlfriend! Grow up Vic!"
"This from the man who thinks it's amusing to throw food in other people's mouths. Check this out, you want to see funny? Watch this." The green plated, spiky headed Victor carefully eyed the next table over, behind Josh. Laurie had just sat down next to Victor so she could see what he had planned. Katie the Cat Girl was sitting with her back to them and she had just put down her milk. Victor struck with lightning speed. His tongue lashed out and stuck to the carton of milk.
As it began to recoil Katie pounced and grabbed the tongue in one clawed fist and the carton of milk in the other. Her momentum made her back legs swing around so she was sitting on the edge of the table and facing victor and his intruding prehensile appendage. "Hey cutie! Don't you know how much Kitties like their milk?", she said drawing stares from all over the room. "Next time, you will have to be a little quicker with your tongue!" She pulled back and let the tongue go like a big rubber band. It recoiled back into his mouth with an audible snap making his head go back. The cafeteria busted out laughing in unison including His two friends sitting at the table.
"Now that's funny!" Josh snorted while Laurie was incapacitated with laughter.
Victor, still dumbstruck, looked at Katie, who was now cart wheeling out of the dining room. "Did she just call me Cutie?" He said dumbly, making Laurie and Josh laugh even harder.
When Laurie could finally focus again, her advisor Dani Moonstar was hurriedly approaching them from across the room. "Laurie, Josh, I'm glad to find you here! You too Victor. Do you know where David and Sofia are?"
"Well, they usually meet us here for breakfast. Apparently they went to the gym this morning."
"Good. I've got something special for you guys. The professor wanted you all to come on my next recruiting sweep with me. We start in a half an hour at the hangar bay. Victor, you and Cessily are coming too, with Xi'an. This is hands on experience for you all and I know that you are ready for the challenge." She looked at them and smiled. "I'm going to go find the other and tell them the good news. Have a weekend bag packed and meet me in the Lear Jet by 8:00. Got it guys?" She whirled around and left to find the others as soon as she got an affirmative nod from the group who now looked at her walking away in confused silence.
May Armstrong made her groggy way to school after an all too short night. It was only a mile's walk but to her it was endless misery. Making the walk all the more miserable was what was waiting for her at school - first period English. She used to like English but now it was a chore. She didn't have a feel for it like she did math and physics and all that reading was starting to give her headaches. As she walked, she reached into her backpack and pulled out some Motrin and gunned it down without water.
"Poppin pills? I thought you were Miss Goodie Two Shoes!" A friend greeted May as she walked. The other girl dwarfed May by more than a foot and a half though she was hardly tall. "Did you sleep well?" the new girl asked, flipping back long black locks.
May grimaced "Yea, slept like a baby after talking to dear old dad about what it means to be BUST-ED!"
"Ouch"
"Got that right." She looked up from under bangs and assessed her friend "And to what do we have to give thanks for your chipper demeanor, Ms Jannie?"
Jannie did her best to stifle a smile "Oh you know, clean living, Ms May. And the fact that I got Ben Kalonowski's phone number last night!!!" She jumped up and down excited.
"You did? Man, I guess I left early!"
"Come on, Lets blow off Ms. Q's and I'll tell you all about it. I could use a coffee" Jannie pulled her by the hands. After briefly thinking about her father, She allowed herself to be swept away by her friend's excitement.
Dani was now flying the X-corp Lear jet that was parked at Xavier's for official business. Since she had gotten a commercial Pilots license she had been bugging Warren and Xavier to let her fly some of the bigger planes to no avail. She thought to herself, "With the kids sitting in the back of the plane and Xi'an sitting in the co-pilots seat looking over the profiles of these two mutants, I felt less like a pilot and more like the father of some weird family out on a road-trip vacation. First stop - Cleveland to check up on a 13 year old boy who has apparently been quite interested in his newfound powers. After that, there is a hunt for some 'Mystery girl' in Missouri, which may be challenging. I don't know if I like bringing the kids along with me but Xavier was pretty specific. Sofia, David, Josh and Laurie should be ok, but Cessily and Victor have such obvious mutations! I hope their image inducers work ok for them."
"This kid certainly has been cranking out the power since he was detected." Xi'an said over the intercom. "Cerebro thinks he's some sort of structure builder. Apparently his structures are so smooth that they have very little friction. Wonder what he's making. Slippy slides?"
Dani smiled "I remember 13. Even for me it was a time of relative innocence and all that. I bet he's only figured out how to make stuff and is doing art or something. Who knows? These kids at that age think up so many silly things. I'm kinda looking forward to meeting an innocent kid and showing him the ropes, you know? Guess I should concentrate, were almost there. Tell the kids to buckle up. I wonder what he's doing now?"
At that very moment in Cleveland - 200 miles away and closing - three 13 year old boys, all white, sit around a hastily drawn map of the inside of a convenient store. The one at the head of the table flexes some invisible muscle and coats himself with obscuring gray thorns that give the illusion that he is six foot 4, big and black. The deception is excellent and the other kids say "whoa!!" When he speaks His voice is distorted and deeper.
"Ok, you two come in and when I rush in you push the cashier and the deli guy back into the freezer. I'll get the cash from the register and we'll meet by the door. you two then hang on to me and I'll zip us out of there with the cash. Any questions?"
To be continued.