No words can explain how bad I feel for you guys right now. I'm such a quack-a-frak. I promised another chapter, what, seven months ago? Sometimes, I say something will get done, but I forget it won't happen on its own. I could come up with thousands of excuses right now, but now of them are valid. I'm so sorry TT-TT
And now, NEXT CHAPTER!
Head . . . throbbing . . . what happened?
Dark . . . sand . . . what were they?
Screams . . . Ororo . . . Ororo!
My eyes blinked open, but it was too dark to see around myself. I clenched my teeth. I won't be able to do anything in here without sight. Pitch has too great an advantage here.
I gently sat up, and felt as though the ground was swinging beneath me. I froze. What was this? I carefully reached my arm up, and began to grasp at the air. Suddenly my fingers brushed against a freezing brittle surface. Pulling my hand back quickly, I held my breath. Silence took over again before I reached my hand back out. When my fingers once again felt the brittle surface, I clutched onto it. It was a bar, like the ones in prisons.
I crawled over to the bar, the ground swinging underneath me again. Feeling around, there were more bars. Feeling all around the space, I found that the wall was entirely bars. I was in a cage, a swinging cage.
Panic set in, and I began hyperventilating. Getting on my knees, I shook the bars of the cage. Ice started to spread around the cage, making the bars slippery and hard to hold on to. I felt it crawl over me, too. The ice went through my eyes and my mouth into my bloodstream. It felt like cold water was running in and out of me. A sensation like that, to humans, would mean certain death. It just felt refreshing to me. I calmed down a bit, but not a lot.
I swallowed down a lump in my throat, "He-Help! Please, somebody help me!" My voice was coarse and scratchy. Probably from the ice, or maybe from sheer panic.
"Help! Please, help me!"
A plea reached my ears. I didn't echo, it was just there. I swung my head around.
"Hello?" I yelled, and my voice echoed. All was silent for a while. I tried to breathe as quietly as I could, but it still seemed so loud in my ears.
"Stop! Stop it! St-AHHHHHHHH!"
"Ororo?!" I screamed again. No reply came. I was about to yell out again, when a sharp pain hit the back of my head. I hissed, and brought my hand to the top of my neck. There were no bumps or scrapes or blood that I could feel. My eyes widened, bringing my hand back to stare at it through the darkness. What was happening to me?
"P-please! Please . . ."
I didn't turn around or react to the voice. I knew where it was coming from. I knew who was saying it. I knew where he was. The pain in my head hit again, and I felt my eyes drooping. My back fell against the icy bars, and I slid down against them. I was losing myself. Though the voice . . . the voice . . .
The voice was in my head.
It was my voice.
With that thought, I feel into infinity.
My eyes fluttered open. It was so bright. I quickly shut them again. Groaning, I turned on my side to shut out the sunlight.
"Wake up, Jackson. Today's very important! Today I'm going to give you your first training session!" said Mother, picking an outfit for me out of my dresser. My eyes shot open, and I jumped out of bed.
"Really?! Thank you thank you thank you! This is going to be so much fun! I get to try out my powers!" I said, my bleach hair pointed in all different directions and footie pajamas unzipped half way up my chest. My mother smiled, set my clothes on my snowman themed bed, and fixed my hair. I beamed up at her, light blue eyes glowing with excitement.
"Alright, now see the bowl of water? I want you to do something to it. I don't know exactly what's going to happen, so that's why I'm wearing this toxic proof suit. Got it?" instructed Mother. I nodded enthusiastically. Mother had dressed herself in this really weird full body suit with huge gloves and a big screen over her smiling face.
"Alright, I am going to go behind this wall just in case. Begin whenever you want, okay?" said Mother, retreating behind the glass wall.
"Got it!" I said, and turned to the bowl of water. Father could have probably just blow up the water, from what mother has told me, so that is what I tried first. I poked my finger in the water, and waited for it to explode. I shut my eyes tight. After nothing happened, I sighed and went to pull my finger out of the water to try something else. My finger didn't budge.
Opening my eyes, I saw that the water had frozen around my finger. I tugged at my finger, but it wouldn't come out. I started to get panicky, and turned to my mother. She was still smiling. My Mother nodded and edged me on. I was confused. Maybe she hadn't noticed my finger was stuck, or maybe she knew something else was going to happen. So I waited. I stood there, with my finger in the ice, for a good minute before I became inpatient.
"Mother? Is something else supposed to happen?" I asked, turning around to the glass screen.
"Has something happened? I can't see the bowl that well from over here," she replied. Mother hesitantly showed her head from behind the wall. Seeing that it was safe, she took off the hood of the suit and came over to me. She stared at the bowl of ice that my finger was still stuck in.
"Ice powers," She had said, and started to grin at the bowl of ice. "I suppose I can call you Jack Frost now, Jackson?"
We laughed together for so long, and she had hugged me. It was one of the best days of my life.
I shot icicles at the guards. They punctured their weak human armor and went straight through their chests.
"Where is it coming fr-Augh!" yelped the final guard as I touched down on the floor. The icicle in his chest began to dye red. I smirked. What a suiting color on ice, so enchanting.
Click!
My smirk faded. I didn't turn my head to the noise. I knew what it was, I'd heard all too many times before for a fourteen year old. There was a new montage of guards surrounding me, all cocking there rifles. How cliché.
"Welcome, mutant. What brings you here to my humble facility?" said man from behind me. A man that I knew well.
"Hey! Striker! Nice seeing you today! I'm just picking up a friend from daycare, ya' know?" I said mockingly, turning around. I casually swung my staff around, swinging it intimidatingly. The guards flinched and held their guns to their noses. The guards, and Striker, couldn't see me. A few might have heard me. Striker hadn't flinched though.
"You are here for Azazel, correct? I'm afraid he won't be checked out for a while," said Striker. I grit my teeth.
Azazel had showed up at my Mother and I's home in Antarctica two months ago, asking for assistance. He was on a personal mission to find a son he didn't know he had with Mystique. Mother had turned him away. Of course she had, he was such a bother anyways. I was about to as well, but when my mother left the room, he started talking about his son. Azazel said he was probably in some torture facility because of his appearance. I scoffed. Of course your son would be in a facility, I told him. He would probably look like a disfigured wolf of sorts. Plus, won't we all end up in a facility once in our lives?
Azazel kept talking about how he was probably somewhere in Europe. Most likely in Germany, where Mystique last had him. I wasn't interested in helping Azazel in the least. It was his problem, and in a world like this, it was better to fend for your own. But when Azazel had said his son was my age, something in me just sparked. I said I would help him. We searched around Germany for a while, and then Azazel went missing. I should have expected Striker in the first place.
"You can't hit what you can't see, Strikey! What you gonna do about that?" I said. I knew that Striker had technology that would allow him to see me, but he didn't have it on him now. I could have simply flown away, but I was on a mission. You never abandon a mission.
"It's quiet simple, really. I'm going to trap you," Striker said. My eyes widened, but before I could fly away, a cage fell over me and shocked me with electricity. I screamed, and my powers faulted. Striker saw that he had caught me.
"Alright! Load this into the building, men! Projects aren't going to test on themselves!" ordered Striker, and the guards began to push the cage into the facility. Just like I had said. Everyone goes into a facility once in their lives.
I was in a cage. They had stripped me of everything. My powers, my staff, even my clothes! Every time I tried to freeze the bars off, they would burn, and my ice would melt. Invisibility was useless at this point. I had no way to call for help, and no way to contact my Mother. I was done for.
The guards around my cage bowed to Striker as he strode into the room. I wished I could freeze that sly smile off his face. Striker walked right up to the bars of my cage, and leaned over. His breath smelled like rotten eggs.
"Today's going to be a great day mutant. A great day for me," he said. I spit, and it hit him in the eye. He growled, and turned to a guard next to a huge lever.
"Begin the procedure! Flip the switch!" yelled Striker madly. My eyes widened. The guard slowly pulled down the lever. A humming sound came from my cage. I jumped at the feeling of something pressing against my back, and situated myself in the middle of the cage. Segments of the bars flipped towards me, pointed at the end like ginormous needles. The humming transformed into a whirring, and the needles gave a sudden lurch and crept forward.
"No, no no! Please! Please don't do this to me!" I screamed. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins and making me want to escape. Escape was impossible at this point though. I was done for; at the mercy of Striker and his tortures he called science. I turned to the nearest guard.
"Help! Please, help me!" I begged. The guard glared at me.
"Mutant scum," said the guard. I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. I was so desperate at that moment. I would have given anything to ensure my survival. I even would have given Striker my Mother. The needles were mere inches away from my skin and coming closer by the second. I gulped, and turned to Striker.
"Stop! Stop it! St-AHHHHHHHH!" I screamed as one of the needles punctured me. I gripped the bleeding wound on my shoulder. It burned like acid, and my vision began to go fuzzy. Whatever drugs Striker had loaded these needles with my powerful, and excoriatingly painful. Another needle poked my back and another on my other arm. I was barely awake, or maybe barely alive.
"P-please! Please . . ." I said drowsily. All of the needles were in my body now, and pumping drugs into my system. I went limp, but the needles held my in my position. I'm sure the pain was enough to make an elephant beg for mercy, in English, but the drugs had some sort of painkiller in them. My sight was blurry around the edges, and the blurriness was steadily increasing, but I could still make out one of the needles in my arm. It must have been three inches in the flesh. A tear rolled down my cheek, and froze solid at my chin.
Suddenly I heard screams. I remembered the smell of sulfur. Slowly looking up, I saw guards running around and red clouds everywhere. Some were on the ground, motionless and bleeding.
Bamf!
In front of my stood a man with red skin. I don't remember in face, or much of what he looked like besides the black suit he wore. He reached his arm into the cage and grabbed my arm, but I didn't feel his hand. I couldn't feel anything. I stared blankly at him, and my sight went black.
That's when I woke up at that pond in Wisconsin. I stumbled to my feet, drugs still strong in my system. I was dressed in a blue hoodie, and tattered khaki colored jeans. On the snow covered ground was my staff. I numbly picked it up, but barely took notice to the pool of crimson it had been sitting in. That's when I started walking further into the woods.
I kept walking until I reached New York. I had kept on walking until I fainted from exhaustion on the doorstep of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
