"I've got a location."

We leaned forward, hungry for information.

"Only a location. But that's enough. Now that we know where they're holed up, we don't have to lounge around, waiting for them to attack us. We can take the fight to them."

"With all due respect, Xavier," Jean interrupted, "I don't think we're ready."

"No. We're not. Which is why I'm giving us a week. One week to plan, one week to strategize, one week to train."

Jean nodded. "Anything else?"

"Yes. The Sentinels are resistant to mental attacks. When I wiped all their memories of Scott Summers and Jean Grey back at the school, all they had to do was salvage the lost information and reinsert it into their data storage. That was how they found you two the day after."

"Does this mean your abilities are useless against them?" Jean asked.

"Unfortunately, yes. I would be useless in any assault against the Sentinel base, which is why I'm sitting out on that mission."

My heart caught in my chest. "We'll be alone?"

"I'll be maintaining mental contact with you the whole time," Xavier assured us. "And you'll hardly be alone, not when you have each other.

One more thing. This Wyngarde character you told me about – his power to generate illusions. Do not be fooled by those – remember your senses, and never let emotion trump logic. I will do my best to counter him in the mental plane, but the weight of battle falls upon you two.

That will be all, Jean. Scott, come with me. We have to do something about that little problem of yours…"


I tried. I really did. I scrunched up my face, screamed mental commands, and thought of the most horrible, wrathful things I could possibly imagine.

Nothing.

"These walls are blastproof," Xavier remarked, tapping the side of the underground training room. "Let it out, Scott. You can't hurt anyone in here."

I shook my head in frustration. "I don't know. It's just not happening. I don't know why – it always happened before when I was stressed or angry or scared."

"But of course you are none of those things now," Xavier noted. "And it would be impractical to call upon such emotions while in the heat of battle – it's too unreliable a trigger." He pulled out a large black pad and walked over to the opposite wall, securing the pad firmly on it. "Let's try just focusing, Scott," he said. "I want you to become your power, to lose all sense of the outside world, and to hit this pad with all that you've got."

"Oh, and don't mind me, Scott," he added, noticing his proximity to the target. "I want to be close to the action."

So I tried again. I stared at the black dot on the wall until my eyes began to water. I visualized myself hitting it, visualized my vision filling with that all-too-familiar red. Focus focus focus. The universe did not exist save for that one circle in the distance.

Blinding red light erupted from my eyes, almost filling the entire room. I hit the black pad, the entire wall behind it, and much more. Startled, I blinked, drawing myself out of that intense concentration. The beams stopped, and I looked on at the once again spotless grey room. I felt empowered, more so than when I had first discovered my power. Jean had been right. Control was a wonderful feeling.

A scuffle of feet and arms against metal. "That was brilliant, Scott," came Xavier's winded voice as I turned to see him trying to get up from being thrown across the room. "I asked for a demonstration of power and you did it. Now let's see if we can't perform a little fine-tuning."


"Geometry. I hate geometry."

"Only because you were never taught to love it."

"So what, you say I can't go back to school, but make me do schoolwork anyways?"

"Education nurtures the mind, Scott. Without it we're no different than beasts."

I took the heavy textbook with apprehension. "You're sure I can handle this?"

"If you ever need assistance, I'm sure Jean will be more than happy to help you," Xavier replied with a gleam in his eye.

"Calm your mind."

Easier said than done. Who knows, it might even be impossible. There was no filtering out the million and one thoughts that flew through a pubescent boy's head every second.

"Deep breaths."

I inhaled slowly, savoring the rich texture of processed air. The pounding in my ears deadened.

"Now open your eyes, and fire."

I summoned the terrible strength, filling my mind space with vibrant red. I became one with red. I was red. I was power.

I didn't open my eyes; I opened my weapons.


"What was it like, Scott?" a sweet voice asked.

"Hm?"

"Your old life. Before you were reborn as one of us."

"Oh – well, it wasn't terrible…I mean – "

"Do you miss it?"

"…yes."

"We can never go back, you know. Even if we can finally come out of hiding – they'll never accept us."

"Humans change."

"But human nature doesn't…"


I led my pencil across an elaborate maze of diagrams. "So, if the initial velocity starts off at this point, then the end result will most definitely redirect to this point."

He looked over my work, slowly nodding. "You impress me, boy. Law of sines, special right triangles, an uncanny grasp of the unit circle."

I brightened at the praise, eager to please my hard-to-please instructor.

"But we've hardly breached the tip of the iceberg. What do you know about three dimensional space geometry?"

My hand faltered.


A timer. Thirty seconds. On. Thirty seconds. Off. Thirty seconds. On.

I could never endure too long. Inevitably I would collapse from the strain. Inevitably I would have to literally crawl out of the training arena, so utterly exhausted that even summoning up the energy to breath brought pain.

Inevitably I would endure longer and longer every day.


"Sit with me."

I sat with her, and together we watched the sun descend the horizon.

"I don't want to go to war, Scott."

"We're a three-man band," I said, trying to lighten up the subject. "I think there's a minimum army size for war or something."

"But what if Xavier said was true? What if there are more of us out there…and more of…him…out there, people who want vengeance, who want justice, no matter the cost?"

"I say to hell with them. It can just be us against the world, if that's the way you want it."

"Not against, Scott. Fighting for our place in the world."

"Don't you think that's a little precarious, fighting for people who want to kill you?"

"We have to show them we don't need to and shouldn't be killed. Only then can the greater battle be won."


"Visualize the plane, Scott. See the grids and lines and angles arrayed against the structures of the real world."

I focused, recalling the geometry I had so hurriedly jammed into my brain in my past lessons. I had mastered the bookwork – now came the time to see if I was able to do what really mattered.

"I want you to hit this ball," Xavier said, nonchalantly bouncing a small rubber ball up and down against the floor. "But I want you to aim your beam behind you."

He threw the ball in the opposite direction. In the milliseconds before it even left Xavier's hand I had already calculated its projected trajectory. In the milliseconds after it left Xavier's hand, I determined its acceleration, angle, velocity vectors – no nuance was ignored. Then I turned my head to the wall behind me, obeying Xavier's instructions, all the while analyzing my position relative to the walls of the room, relative to the ball that was now out of my sight, relative to everything that existed in my current environment.

This shouldn't be too hard. Even though it was supposed to be impossible.

I fired, and when I fired, I fired precisely and specifically, with an explicit focus that resulted in an explicit magnitude of force and an explicit location of where my beam hit – down to the nanometers.

I listened for the satisfying pings that told me my blast was being reflected across every available surface in its jagged path towards its destination. I listened for the rewarding whoosh and thunk of a ball being hit and thrown at high velocity across the room.

And then the sound of slow clapping.


For the first time in my life I learned what hard work meant. I learned what patience, dedication, perseverance meant for the body and mind, for the heart and soul.

I began to appreciate the simple beauty of falling into a bed late at night, exhausted and drained, loving the gentle covers and pillows, even if the bed was a humble sleeping bag cradling nature's floor. I began to appreciate the wonder that came with waking before sunup.

I began to recognize the value of rest, and in those rare hours that I was given respite, I learned the value of solitude, or meditation. I learned the value of companionship.

In a sense, I grew more in that one short week than I had in all my fifteen years.

A growth that was needed if I was to survive in this new world.