Misunderstood

Chapter 1: In Which There Are Changes, For Better Or Worse.

Disclaimer:I Still Don't Own Anything To Do With The 616 Universe. I Would If I Could But I Can't So I Don't. *EDIT Oh, And Suzuki Motorcycles Belong To Suzuki... I Guess =P /EDIT*

Oh, Look! There's A Time Jump And I Changed Perspective From 3rd Person To 1st Person! I Told You That The Rest Of The Story Would Be Totally Different From The Prologue. Hopefully This Story Will Progressively Get At Least A Little Bit More Interesting As It Goes On, Hopefully…

Five Years Later:

It was summer and a fourteen-year-old was slumped at the window of her family's seemingly average suburban home looking out at their browning suburban lawn.

That's me, actually, sitting there at the window waiting. I was waiting for my brother to get home. He's been gone since May, out visiting colleges in places like Florida, Texas, even Hawaii, anywhere hot. He hadn't actually been planning on coming home for another month, 'til September, to be exact but something came up. Namely, our mother brought back my custody case. She's brought it back because I am now fourteen and a half, well into the whole awful puberty business, and still not at all a mutant. Not a single jean out of place, unfortunately. Now our mother is planning on moving up to Maine and she wants me to come and live with her. I don't really know what to think of that, I mean I like my mom a lot, I mean she is my Mom after all and, admittedly, I actually really like the idea of living up there in New England. I've seen pictures and stuff and it looks really gorgeous, like a place where one of my favorite fantasy books might take place. Besides, it's not like I'd never get to come back down and see "the guys" but still. I guess it's mostly the way Eric feels about our mom that's giving me all these second thoughts. I straightened up as a silver car turned onto the street, but wilted again when I saw it wasn't a convertible. I sighed, wiping some perspiration from my forehead and tightening up my short ponytail. Eric will be perky today, I thought wryly.

"Elaine!" My dad's voice with its fading English accent called to me from the Kitchen, "Feed your cat!"

"Alright!" I shouted back automatically, rolling out of the window seat and scrambling to my feet. I went into the kitchen where my dad was sitting at his computer working. Eric and I had been pretty lucky that dad could work from home over his computer or else he probably never would have been able to home school us. I unconsciously pulled out a can of cat food and shook it onto a paper plate. As soon as she heard the can open Tally, my slightly overweight tuxedo cat with an exceptionally fluffy tail, began mewing relentlessly, jumping up onto the counter and nearly knocking the food out of my hand, head butting my elbow with her head. I poured the food out, throwing away the empty can and ran back to the window. A silver convertible was parked in the driveway and someone was opening the front door. How typical that I'd been sitting at the window forever and the second I left he would show up. I leaped towards the entryway shouting "Eric!" and jumped straight into my big brothers arms. He hugged me hard and smiled, revealing rows of sharp pointed teeth. His tail, now as long as he was tall and powerful enough to lift three full-grown men off the ground, was curled carefully around his feet and his yellow slit-pupiled eyes looked down at me affectionately.

"Hey Ellie! How's summer been?" he put me back on my feet.

"Too hot!" I groaned, mock fainting "and too boring! The Whole neighborhood is on vacation in like, Zimbabwe and it's just not the same with out you around to throw me in the pond or take me out on your motorbike!" Eric had an awesome old Suzuki motorcycle that he would ride around on, mostly for fun, and he would take me with him every few nights when he was around. I actually knew a fair amount about motorcycles, including how to ride one, in theory any way; Eric had never let me behind the handlebars, even in a deserted parking lot.

"I'll take you for a ride tonight." He promised. He looked around, "Where's dad?"

"The kitchen, can I get the bike out then?" he nodded and I ran out to the garage. Eric's bike was big, dark orange, and powerful. Just then, however, it was hidden under a tarp held down by some cinderblocks behind a bunch of boxes in our garage, next to the silver Honda Odyssey van. I am ever impressed at how quickly junk piles up in our garage I thought as I moved the boxes, hefted the cinderblocks off the tarp and tore it off of the bike with a flourish. I patted its long, slightly torn seat and smiled then went and rooted through some boxes until I found our helmets. I set them out on a workbench and reattached the visor to mine; it had an irritating tendency to pop off when I raised it.

I jogged back inside towards the kitchen but I stopped and hid myself on the stairs when I heard dad and Eric arguing.

"You can't just let her take her!" Eric sounded desperate and angry. "Elaine could still be a mutant! Sometimes it just takes a high stress situation for powers to manifest and then what would happen to Elaine?! Beth would probably just hand her over to the police!"

"Eric," my dad's voice was much calmer and more reasonable, "I know how you feel about your mother but Beth has changed. She wanted to make amends with you years ago but you wouldn't let her. She doesn't care if you're a mutant or Elaine either---"

"But she would still never be a mother to me! She may not me but she can't love me, and she would stop loving Elaine just the same way if she turned out to be a mutant! I won't let you just give her to someone who's affections are so changeable!"

"But Eric, your sister may never even become a mutant. The chances of her developing a mutation at this age are slim to none. Almost all mutations develop during ---"

At this point I, being my usual clumsy self, slipped while trying to lean out from the stairs to hear better and the ensuing thump alerted the guys to my presence. Eric turned to look into the hall and I tried my best to make it look like I had just come in from the garage.

"Did you get the bike ready?" he said, he looked worried, he defiantly suspected that I had been listening.

"Yeah, I got it out." I said, trying to sound cheerful. "It was behind a bunch of stuff, took a while to unearth it." Probably didn't need as much of an explanation but otherwise a pretty good lie. Still it killed me to lie to my brother; I'm actually a really honest person, I only lie when I'm scared and I usually fess up in the same breath.

"Alright, come give me a hand with my bags then, kay?" he said as he headed for the door.

"What?" I exclaimed, quickly almost forgetting the whole lying argument thing because my memory is just so great like that "why do you need my help?! You're like Superman!"

"Yeah," he said looking back "but I've only got three arms." He grinned and I reluctantly followed him to the car, grabbing his duffle bag and hefting it into the living room. Eric came in behind me with a suitcase in each arm and his tail wrapped around a laundry bin full of boxes and stuff.

"Showoff." I muttered.

"Jealous." Was his automatic, ingrained response. He fished around in the laundry basket and pulled out a generic grocery bag with "THANKYOU" written on it over and over again and handed it to me. "Here, got you a present" he said and went back to unpacking. I sat down on the couch and pulled out the contents of the bag; a jar full of shells and shark teeth from Hawaii, a small, partially de-spined cactus in a terracotta pot which I promptly poked myself with in about three different places from Texas, a stuffed animal alligator with some of the missing cactus spines stuck in it's snout from Florida, and a T-shirt that said Valley with some pretty lizard, sun, mountain patterns between the words that I suspected had the rest of the missing cactus spines hidden treacherously somewhere in the fabric.

"Wow! These are so great! Thank you soooo much!" I said sincerely, "it's too bad you had to come home right when you were going to Mexico, You could have brought me back a sombrero!"

"Yeah," he grunted, distracted "I was just going to get you a bunch of those "I went to 'blank' and all I got was this stupid T-shirt" T-shirts but they are surprisingly hard to find." I rolled my eyes as he smirked at his own joke.

"I'll go put this stuff up in my room." I said. I put everything but the cactus, which I decided to hold to prevent more spine loss on its part, back into the bag and stood up.

"Alright." He was frowning again when I turned to go upstairs. I went to my room and walked over to my window where I carefully set down the cactus, which I had decided to name Lou because I have a thing for naming inanimate objects like by computer, Fritz Razzled III, or my favorite jacket, Jerome. I fished out the alligator and checked it's tag to determine weather or not it needed me to name it too or if it came with it's own mass-produced title. Finding only instructions on how to wash it should it get dirty I decided that it was a alligator and its name was Apples. Cute, right? I turned to throw Apples onto my bed next to Thumper the rabbit and Pepper the elephant but instead threw her right into my brother's chest which I'm sure shocked the both of us (Apples an I, that is) dreadfully. Eric caught her deftly and placed her on my pillow.

"Jeze Eric! What'd you have to sneak up on me for all the time? Is it so hard to make a little noise when you walk or are you really in permanent stealth mode?!"

"Sorry" he said, he still wasn't smiling, "dad says dinner will be ready soon but I wanted to talk to you first."

"About mom?" He nodded "I still don't think that it would be so bad if I went to live with her, it's not like you couldn't still visit, mom would be really happy to have you."

"You were listening to dad and I, weren't you?" he said. I nodded honestly. "Listen," he became very serious, "you're old enough now that you can pick which parent you want to live with, and I know that you've always thought that mom is alright but she's not! She abandoned me, and you too, just because I turned out to be a mutant, she's so set in her ideas that she would leave you just because there is a chance that you might be a mutant too! Do you know what people like her do to us? We have no rights; we're nothing but animals to them. She would have me dragged away and locked up! They want us all shipped away somewhere, or under constant surveillance. They all just think we're monsters!"

"But I'm not a mutant!" I cried, I felt tears coming on; Eric really knew how to upset me.

"Still! How could you want to go and live with the same kind of woman who would desert a child just because it turned out a different religion than what she thought was right, or-or, a different race or gender!" he stuttered out the last bit and glared at me. I stared at my hands, still clutching the plastic bag, and said nothing. Eric stood swiftly and walked to the door, stopping with his back to me. When he spoke his words were cold. "You had better think about this long and hard, it's your future you're ruining. Oh, and no matter how happy Beth would be to see me, I would never, never come visit her." He walked downstairs without looking back. Quietly, I got up and put away the rest of my presents then went back to my bead and curled up against the pillows and stuffed animals. Eric's words were ripping me up, needling themselves deep into my brain and tearing me apart. I didn't know what to think any more. I sat there curled up in a ball, biting my lip to hold back tears and whimpering whenever a particularly bleak and awful thought surfaced in my mind. Would she me if I was a mutant? Would she really treat me like a monster? Not love me any more? Oh god why, why, why? Why is everyone like this? why do they do these things, why, why?!

WHY CANT PEOPLE JUST UNDERSTAND EACHOTHER!?!?

My body stiffened as my mental scream of sadness racked my body with waves of physical pain. As the intense emotions passed, however, the pain did not and I actually did scream in indignation as the pain became suddenly intense in my arms and legs. It felt like how I would imagine breaking a bone must feel, never having actually broken one myself, only all over, and my skin was ling like fire, like flaming cactus spines everywhere. My fingers dug at my hair, at my arms as Eric ran into my room, panic-stricken, followed by my dad who was shouting something but I couldn't understand. Eric grabbed me up into his arms like a baby but his touch hurt enormously and I lashed out at him with my claws because apparently I had claws now and something else and then, thank god, I passed out.

When I woke up I still felt like crap, obviously I had not passed out for long enough. In my opinion passing out should last until everything is totally better and I did not feel totally better, not even jokingly close. Some idiot had put three lead weights on my stomach, but then I realized that the first two were my arms and the third was someone else's hand. With an effort that should have won me a gold metal for perseverance and the admiration of weight lifters everywhere, I slid my arms off of my torso. After that I was about ready to call it a day, and retire permanently from the whole ove "conscious" thing but someone had other plans. I heard talking but none of it made any sense, and then someone with serious superhuman strength actually lifted my head which had to weigh like ten thousand tons, then I felt the claws on the hands against my scalp and realized it was Eric, which I guess made sense. Suddenly something cold and hard was pressed to my lips and then something cold and wet went in my mouth and down my chin, mostly down my chin, unfortunately. The water revived me a bit, especially the freezing cold stuff that went down my shirt, but I still felt tired and feverish.

"Elaine, are you alright?" I groaned, how the hell was I supposed to know, I'd been unconscious, hadn't they been paying attention while I was out?!?

I tried to say 'what happened?' and it came out a very quiet "wuaa hapnt?" which I thought was pretty good for a first try. The ensuing silence woke me up better than the cold water down my cleavage. I managed to open my eyes a bit and saw a painfully bright room and Eric and my dad sitting next to me looking at each other.

Finally my dad turned to me and said weakly "You were very upset about something… it happens sometimes. Very unusual but. Can be rather sudden. Does happen sometimes. Most unusual." I'm sure you can tell that my dad isn't exactly eloquent under pressure.

My brother also lacks a certain finesse "you're a mutant!" he blurted out, an uneasy smile on his face, like he was worried that I may not take the news well. I'm not sure what my brother considers "well" but if it's passing out again, then yes, I took the news very well.

I've Got To Say, Writing In 1st Person Is Really Difficult For Me. I Kept Messing Up Tenses And Getting All Wordy With No Dialogue… But I Can Tell Myself How Much Of A Crappy Writer I Am All Day, I'd Much Rather You Did It, By Leaving Some Reviews!!! Please!!!!

Good Reviews Are Accepted Also But Only Skeptically.