My loyal readers definitely deserve a longer chapter from me, enjoy!


"Did anyone figure out a way to spice up our card game?"

"We can all take off our clothes," Sean replies with a grin.

Alex rests his elbow on the armrest and leans his weight onto a closed fist, shooting a tempting look in Gillian's direction. His wandering eyes peg her every curve and rift and even the beauty mark a finger's breadth above her coral lips, his mind slowly wriggles back to the showers and Gillian in dishabille. She catches his gaze and raises an eyebrow at him, earning a wink from Alex in return, then an eye roll from Gillian.

Darwin clears his throat and eyes both Gillian and Alex. "Something going on with you two?"

Gillian shakes her head, copper curls resiling on her shoulders. She takes the ponytail holder from her wrist and fastens her hair into a careless bun at the top of her head, longer curls dangling down onto her neck. "Alex is just mentally undressing me." She smirks at him. "What a naughty boy."

Sean quickly raises his hand. "Do I get a turn next?"

Eyebrows pulled tightly together, Darwin slaps Sean on the back of the head and curses at him softly under his breath. "Don't be disgusting, Sean."

"Yeah," Gillian starts, leaning over her lap and staring directly at Alex. "Don't be disgusting, Alex."

Alex scoffs and sags into his lap a bit. "Me, disgusting?"

"Yes, you. Peeling off my clothes with your goddamn eyes."

Angel, always sore about something, furls her eyes and crosses her arms over her cleavage, clearly on display for everyone else. Raven's not sure how to take the exchange of anger, impudence, and hot air. Sean is slightly turned on by Gillian's temper and the shirt leaving only one freckled shoulder bare-skinned. Hank is so uncomfortable with the conversation that he looks like he might upchuck breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Darwin just groans and drops his head into his hands.

"Is that really the case? Because I seem to recall an incident in the shower–"

"Don't you dare," Gillian seethes through clenched teeth, cuspids grinding against her bottom teeth.

Sean gasps, "You two took a shower together!" He sighs and gently furrows his eyebrows. "So jealous," he whispers.

"Yeah, and I saw her boobs," Alex says casually.

"You fucking liar!" Gillian wails. She jumps up and lunges for Alex, his hair his skin his fucking eyes, whatever she can get her hands on. But Darwin leaps up to grab her before she can come anywhere near his jacket lapel. It takes a few seconds of cussing and defamatory terms for Gillian to collect herself, she convinces Darwin to sit back down. "I don't think Alex would mind it if you took a shower with him, Sean. I hear he's used to it," Gillian replies with a needling tone in her voice.

"Used to it? You bitch. You fucking bitch." Alex's anger is sparked and he's bristling and practically breathing fire. He begins lifting himself out of his chair, ready to lay siege, but Darwin – being between the two – eases him back into the recliner, pats his kneecap and slightly calms him.

"If it makes you so mad then fucking do something you punk ass bitch," Gillian spits, the vinegary taste in her mouth like acid.

"Gillian!" Darwin shouts. "Stop being the Instigator."

"I'm not instigating, if he wants to hit me he can come over here and do it!" She holds her arms out, waiting for Alex to strike. "I've been hit before! It's not like it even fucking matters anymore!"

The entire room stills. Someone shifts their position on the ottoman or in a chair but no one looks to find out who it could have been. Gillian breathes out hard and looks to the carpeting, squeezing her sweaty toes together inside of her banded socks. She can feel all of the eyes in the room on her, boring burning holes into her flesh. There's nothing to do except keep her gaze diverted towards the floor because she can't dare to look at everyone's faces.

"You've been hit before?" Raven asks.

Gillian looks up to Raven. "It was when I first moved into my apartment in the City. I met a foreign guy with a weird name, we dated for a long time, he moved in, hit me once and I kicked him out. End of story." She scrapes her toe on the floor. "I didn't mean to let that out." Sean opens his mouth to say something, but Gillian silences him. "Don't say 'sorry'. I hate 'sorry'," she laughs.

Raven perks up after a moment of silence. "I don't know about you all, but I'm about ready to find out what everyone's abilities are!" She claps her hands together once and turns to face everyone. "Everyone else in the CIA has a cool name, I think we should all have secret agent names too." Everyone nods and waits for Raven to come up with a name for herself. "I want to be called Mystique."

"Damn," Sean groans. "I wanted to be called Mystique."

"Too bad, I called it." Raven replies. Then something strange happens. A wave of dark blue flourishes Raven's body and after a couple seconds, a hard copy of Sean is sitting where she was. "I'm way more mysterious than you." She changes back into her regular skin and lounges against the couch. "What about you?" Raven asks Sean.

"I'm going to be Banshee."

Gillian raises an eyebrow. "Why do you want to be named after a wailing spirit?" Hank asks, scratching his head.

He stands up from his recliner and stretches his back out. "You might wanna cover your ears."

Everyone's hands move cautiously to their ears as Sean kneels down in front of the table. He sucks in a deep breath and spits it back out as a metallic shriek, it rebounds off the walls and the ceiling and breaks the huge glass window facing the courtyard. Everyone unplugs their ears and gives Sean an impressed look, Alex even claps him on the back while a smile yanks at his lips.

"What about you, Angel?"

"Well." Angel stands up and removes her jacket, moving behind the couch she was seated at. "My stage name was Angel..." The tattoos on her skin pare off of her arms and shoulders, stretching out and fluttering into little sprite-like wings. She drifts off of the ground ever-so-slightly and flies about.

"You can fly?" Raven asks, astonished.

She nods. "Mhmm, and I can do this." Angel spits a fiery ball out of her mouth and it lands on the bronze likeness outside, liquefying its head. Angel lowers herself back onto the carpet and her pinions smelt back into her skin.

"I'll go next. Darwin is already a nickname, so I guess I'll stick with it."

Hank lifts an eyebrow. "Why? What can you do?"

"I adapt to survive, of course!" he yips. "Watch." Darwin stands up and walks over to the fish tank, balancing himself but putting both hands on the rim of the vat. He slowly lowers himself into the water and turns his head to show everyone brand new gills that had just grown on the sides of his face.

"Awesome!" Gillian cheers. "What about you Hank?" The question draws Hank back a bit and his lips pull into a grim line and he uneasily slips out of his shoes. It's amazing how feet that big can fit into size 10 Florsheim penny loafers. A majority of his toes look like over-sized thumbs with huge nails and the veins in his feet stand out against his slightly pale complexion. "Wow," Gillian breathes. "Let's compare our feet!" Gillian bolts up and walks over to Hank, slipping off one sock and setting her foot beside his. The difference is obviously evident and everyone, including Hank, lets out a chuckle. "That is too cool."

"Bigfoot," Alex says. "We should call you Bigfoot!"

Everyone looks towards Alex and grimaces at him, Gillian even gives him the finger. It's sad to watch how quickly Hank can completely fold in on himself, edges turning under and dog-ear overlaps forming, leaving him laying in creases in his seat. He's like a delicate perennial, petals and anthers easily hurt by the slightest touch.

Raven turns to Alex and folds her hands into her lap, smiling. "Well, you know what they say about guys with big feet," she begins, eyes desisting to his own feet. "And yours look kind of small."

A surge of laughter fills the room and Hank even coughs out a chuckle. "Oh my God!" Gillian bellows, laughing back on the couch with Angel.

"So, what can you do, Gillian?" Darwin says, wiping the happy tears out of his eyes.

Gillian scrunches her nose, stands back up, and climbs outside through the blighted glass window. "It's really dangerous to be near me, so just stay where you are." The teenagers are too confused to even move from their spots on the divans. "Most of the time, it happens as an accident and I can't control it then. But there are times when I can make it happen by my own will."

"Make what happen?" Angel asks.

The air around warms up, most of the hair on her forearms blacken and singe right off, and her pulse increases. After a couple seconds of silence, Gillian explodes and clods of her body pith fly into the air and land in various places. Darwin jumps up, followed by everyone else, and runs outside, examining the damage.

"What the hell just happened?" he asks. "Fuck." Darwin scratches his head and bends down to touch a nugget of flesh.

But all of the pieces of meat shake on the grass and the statue, rolling around and basting together to beget Gillian. She struggles to gain her balance, a concerned Sean and Hank rushing over to support her. "Ta-da!" she says, no one can tell if she's being enthusiastic or not.

"You just exploded!" Sean shouts. "Does that hurt?"

"Hurts a lot." Gillian shifts her weight onto Hank, forcing Sean to let go and Hank to lead her back inside to the sofas. "Every time."

Sean taps his finger to his lips. "Fuse! It's fitting because of your temper and your mutation." Gillian is too exhausted to fight back.

"Cool," she mumbles.

"Well, while you collect yourself, let's see what Alex can do."

Alex's eyes go wide and he frantically shakes his head. "No, I can't. It's dangerous, I can't do it in here... around all of you." He looks a Gillian with imploring eyes and she thinks that he might actually cry.

"Come on, Alex!" Raven clamors. "We all showed you our mutations!" She points to Gillian who pants and wheezes on the chaise longue next to the ottoman. "And Gillian is practically dying over there!"

Gillian waves back. "I'm–fine–don't–worry," she replies between gasps.

"Alex! Alex! Alex! Alex!"

"It's your own faults if I end up hurting you," Alex grumbles, walking back outside into the courtyard. He cracks his neck and his knuckles, shaking out his sore arms and positioning himself in front of the anodized statue in the middle of the lawn. Everyone rushes towards the windows, Hank supporting Gillian all the way there until she convinces him that she can walk by herself. "Get back," Alex growls. Heads go away, but soon reappear with anxious eyes. "I told you to get back!" No one listens this time around and he curses silently. "Whatever, just remember that I told you so."

Alex gently wheels his hips, hinging them more fiercely after a few seconds. Red circles gleam around his midriff, soon enough he pivots his body forward, launching the glowing rings into the path of the statue. A screeching sound resounds through the air, then the top half of the statue slides off of the bottom and falls onto the ground.

Everyone breaks into applause, Angel jumping up and down in her boots. "Well done, Havok."

Two hours of celebrating and eating doesn't even tire them out. A thin, treble voice rocks the entire room. Everyone looks to Moira MacTaggert with Erik and Charles standing behind her, clearly not impressed with the messy room. "What have you done?" she asks. "The room is trashed, the garden is destroyed, the statue is... I don't even know what happened there. Explain yourselves, immediately."

"It was Alex," Hank says.

"Thanks," Alex angrily whispers.

"No! It's Havok, it's Havok! You have to use his code name!" Raven replies with her booming voice. "And we made some up for you two also!" She scurries over to Charles and points at his chest. "You are Professor X." Quickly she turns to Erik. "And you are Magneto."

"Remarkable," Erik responds softly before leaving behind Moira.

Charles shakes his head at a frowning Raven. "I expected more from you, Raven. Much, much more from you." He walks away to catch up with Erik and Moira, leaving Raven standing where he left her, in self-pity and rubble from the mass of ruined cobblestone sidewalks.


"Damn," Sean mumbles underneath his breath.

Two agents walk by the newly replaced pier glass window and peek inside. The taller one whistles and claps the other one on his broad shoulders, shaking him slightly. "Well, well, well. I didn't know the circus was in town, man." Both of them laugh and high-five each other. "Come on, Scientist! Show us your feet! Give us a little bit of–" the shorter one lops his arms, looking directly at Angel. Hank stands up and pulls the drapery closed.

"Don't worry about them, just a bunch of stupid guys," Darwin reassures.

"Stupid is easy to handle, ignorant is not," Angel murmurs. "I'd rather have them stare at me with my clothes off than the way they stare at me now."

The absence of sound is unnerving. Gillian shifts in her seat. "You should've given them a little bit of your fist," she says. "Be proud of who you are," Gillian says quietly. "Because we can't change ourselves."

Gillian purls strands of her hair around her finger, laying across the upholstered couch with her legs hanging off the edge. Everyone writhes in their seat, waiting for someone else to say anything. Something that sounds like thunder resonates through the building, but the noise gets closer and turns into loud thumping.

"Does anyone hear that?" Hank asks. "It sounds a lot like slamming."

"Yeah," Darwin replies. "I can hear it too."

"What the hell is it?" Gillian asks, walking over to the curtains and pulling them aside. There's nothing but darkness outside and a few lights illuminating the sod in the courtyard. "I can't see anything besides that weird shape in the sky."

Hank comes closer and stands next to Gillian, taking the curtain from her grip and drawing it back more. The shape turns out to be a dark silhouette. "Is that, is that a person?" He pushes his glassed up closer to his face and lets his hand fall from the drapery. Everyone crowds around the window, eyes wide and faces contorted in horror as the profile of a personage falls from the stars onto the ground. They all jump back from the glass and let out a few strangles screams. "I think that's Agent Black!"

More and more agents begin to fall from the sky, turning to grume as soon as they hit the grass. "What the hell is going on?" Gillian asks, reaching back to grab hold of someone. She knows the jacket she's clinging to belongs to Alex because the leather is hardly tattered.

He puts his hand on top of hers and squeezes lightly. Other agents outside are prepared with guns and one shouts "Stay back!" while reloading a cartridge. Everyone now realizes that they were not under siege by anyone else besides a small group of mutants. A man with red skin, jet black hair, a pointed tail, and a cluster of rough-looking facial hair appears behind the agent. The teens scream for the agent to turn around, but when he does, the mutant evaporates into red dust and reappears behind him, stabbing him through the chest with his tail.

Tornados whisk by trees and fountains, pulling agents in and violently throwing them back out. A body flies through another window and Alex jumps over Gillian to shield her from shards of broken glass. His hands are gripping her wrists while his huddled mass of body weight pushes her down to the floor, he helps her up when the glass stops whooshing.

"Thanks."

Darwin's attempt to get everyone out of the room quickly fails.

"The mutants are in that room, just please don't kill me." Silence, a scream, more silence.

A Spanish man and the red man step in through the broken window and brush off their suits. Another man enters through the door wearing a strange red helmet that he soon takes off after discovering that Charles is not present.

He clears his throat. "Well, then." The man straightens his spine and pulls out his best smile. "My name is Sebastian Shaw," he begins, walking toward the group of young mutants with his voice nonchalant and his smile still friendly. "I am not here to harm you in any way." Sebastian walks around, examining each and every one of them. "My friends, a revolution is coming and all of mankind will discover who we are and what we can do," he says with hope. "Each of us will be forced to make a choice, be enslaved by humanity or rise above and rule." Shaw pauses after he finishes sizing them all up. "Choose freely. But know that if you are not with us, then by definition, you are against us. So, stay and fight for unmindful people who hate and fear you, or join me. Live like the kings you are." Angel looks at him with her big, pitiful eyes glowing. "And queens."

Shaw holds out his hand and after a questionable moment, Angel takes it and walks away with him.

Raven calls out her name and Gillian puts a hand on her shoulder to silence her.

"Come on, guys," Angel says, turning back to face the youth behind her. "We don't belong here, we never did. That's nothing to be ashamed of."

"No, but you should be ashamed of turning your back on your fr–oomf!" Gillian groans after Sean elbows her in the stomach.

Shaw raises an eyebrow. "No need to silence the girl. If she has something to say, let her speak her mind."

Gillian grips her stomach, almost doubled over in pain. "Trust me," she spits. "If I speak my mind, you won't like it." She punches Sean in the groin and he grunts, steadying himself on the recliner next to him.

Alex and Darwin start shoving each other after a few whispers are exchanged. Darwin motions for Shaw to stop and calls out to him, Angel pats him on the arm and smiles softly. "Good choice," Shaw says. "Tell me about your mutation."

"I adapt to survive, so I guess I'm coming with you," Darwin replies.

"What the fuck is going on?" Gillian quietly whines, still clutching her stomach.

Alex grabs onto her forearm and pinches her skin, not meaning to hurt her, just to get her attention. He leans down to her ear, his hot breath tickling her auricle and if the moment wasn't so serious, she would be laughing. "Just listen to me, okay?" Gillian nods, dealing with too much affliction to refuse.

Darwin takes Angel's hand in his own and after several second of rearrangement he pulls her into him and changes his skin. "Alex, do it!"

"Get down!" Alex screams.

Hank throws Gillian onto the carpet behind the davenport and shelters her with his own body, struggling to keep her flailing figure beneath him. All that can be heard is galactic fighting sounds and crumbling rock against cobblestone. A gust of wind fills the room and everyone figures that it is now safe to get up from their hiding spots. Hank rolls off of Gillian who immediately bolts up to delve into the damage, but all that is left standing is Alex.

Darwin is nowhere to be seen. Alex blinks rapidly and breathes in deep, struggling with his words. "D–Darwin, he's, gone."