It was midnight in the city of San Francisco as Thomas Fitzpatrick looked down from where he crouched atop a spire on the Golden Gate Bridge and surveyed the sprawling metropolis as if it were his own personal domain. And, in a way, it was. It was his home, having been born and raised here. It was his 'beat', to coin a phrase his dad, one of Frisco's finest, would use. And while Tommy was not a cop, he still felt the responsibility to protect the city, especially after a white supremacy group, Purifying Rain, had attacked his then girlfriend, Amanda, an African-American.
What had shocked him the most was the one who led the attack, a white woman who called herself Warangel. She had had a pair of fully feathered wings that, apparently, gave her the ability to fly. She also appeared to be a very competent fighter, especially in the air. Which he found out in short order when he revealed that he too had wings and could fly. That was the final straw for his relationship with Amanda. So not only did he get his butt thoroughly stomped by Warangel, Amanda stomped his heart by breaking up with him.
A distant alarm attracted his attention and brought him back to the present. He stood, unfurled his wings, and jumped off the bridge. Halfway down to the water, he snapped his wings open and captured a rising thermal updraft. He rode the updraft to about ten feet above the bridge and began gliding toward the source of the alarm.
As he approached the site of the disturbance, he noted that a pickup truck was speeding away from a high-end jewelry dealer. He folded his wings and dropped like a missile. Seconds before impact, he opened his wings and dropped behind two men in ski masks.
"My, my, my, aren't you two in a hurry to get married. Can't even wait for the damn store to open." Tommy said.
The men swung around bringing their firearms to bear on Tommy.
"Didn't your mama ever teach you not to play with guns?" Tommy said as he pointed at the guns. A thin trail of fire erupted from his finger, split in two, and melted the barrels of the weapons.
The driver of the truck noticed that something was wrong in the bed and slammed on the brakes. Tommy went flying over the roof of the truck cab and rolled to a stop ten feet in front of the truck.
Tommy groaned as he stood. "Should've seen that coming." He berated himself. He faced off with the truck with spread wings and a ball of fire in each hand. "You do NOT want to do this." He commented loudly. "The jewels will survive, you will not. Do you really want to take that chance?"
The driver responded by revving the engine.
Tommy shook his head in resignation. "Stubborn idiots. Will they never learn?"
The driver slammed on the gas and sped toward Tommy. Anyone else, cops included, would have dodged out of the way the second the truck took off, but Tommy had learned a thing or two in the six months that he had been in the superhero biz. He mentally counted to three then fired jets of flame from his hands toward the truck tires. The forward momentum of the truck barely faltered as the tires and rims melted into the pavement, causing Tommy to jump up and back. He performed a back flip and landed ten feet from the front of the stopped truck.
Five men erupted from the truck, three from the cab and the two from the bed. They warily approached Tommy, spreading out in a rough semi circle.
From the corner of Tommy's eye he noticed an outline of a man's baldhead seemingly watching from a distance. But, he did not have time to contemplate the implications of the sight as the men rushed him. Before they moved more than a few feet, they became encased in ice from the neck down.
Tommy whirled around to locate the source of the attack. He saw a group of people running toward him. Well, technically, one was hovering toward him in a gilded chair of an unknown origin. But, either way, Tommy dropped into a fighting stance as the group of four people came to a halt in front of him. Tommy immediately recognized the man in the hover-chair as the man he had seen out of the corner of his eye earlier.
The bald man extended a hand with a confident grin. "Greetings. I am Professor Charles Xavier."