Vertigo raised his hand to knock on the front door. Then he stopped. Why knock? This was his damn house! He didn't know who was living in it now, and he didn't know what had happened to it since he'd been carted off to the orphanage after his parents died. He didn't care. Since seeing the sign for Thomsonville, he had been drawn here like a magnet, and couldn't have turned back if he'd tried.

He didn't knock. He grabbed the door handle and found it to be unlocked. Kicking the door open, he strode inside. Then he stopped. The house was just as he remembered it. Not the decorations, not the furniture – that was all totally different – but the layout, the lighting, and the smell. The smell of his mother. Only she had been dead for longer than nine years, so it wasn't the smell of her, but it was the smell he had always associated with her. Vertigo walked down the hallway and threw open the door to the living room.

This was it. This was the room where his mother had died. He remembered kneeling over her body, cuddling her, crying to her, shaking her, asking her why she couldn't get up. It had taken him some time to realise and accept she was gone. And the man standing over her with the bloodied baseball bat had told him that if he ever told anyone what happened, he'd kill him too. And Vertigo had obeyed the man. Because the man had been his father.

They hadn't been married. He had been about forty years older than she was. From what little he remembered, and from what he'd been able to piece together from newspaper archives, Vertigo had figured out what happened. His father had moved here after losing his first wife and his job in the same month, and had turned to drink. At some point he'd met another woman a few years younger than he was, and married for the second time. He had no children, but she had one, a daughter who was seven years old.

At some point his second wife had died too. Vertigo hadn't been able to find out how. But as the man's step-daughter had grown older she had looked more and more like her mother, until the man, in his drunken confusion, had taken her to bed as if she was her mother. At the age of thirteen, she was pregnant, and Vertigo was born. As a boy he hadn't known any of this, or even thought it strange that his father was some forty years older than his mother, who was little more than a child herself.

The day his mother had died was the day his parents found out about him, about his mutation. His father had been unable to accept it. The mutant gene came from the father, every scientist knew that, but the man had been unable to accept that his genes had produced a mutant child. He had convinced himself that the girl had gotten pregnant by some other means, that she had been sleeping with somebody else.

Vertigo was burning inside with rage as he remembered that day. How could his mother have been sleeping with someone? She was thirteen! He was the one who had done wrong! How could he say it was her fault? It was his fault, his mad lust, his inability to control himself! And in his confusion and his anger and his drunken rage, Vertigo's father had taken the baseball bat, not for the first time, and beaten his mother until she was bruised and bleeding on the ground. Only this time she hadn't survived.

Pretentious little slut. Those were the words he'd used. Over and over again, pretentious little slut, pretentious little slut. The pure, innocent thirteen year old girl he had taken advantage of and forced against her will, who had through no fault of her own conceived a mutant child. The mother who had loved and adored and cared for her young son, despite her own youth and her inexperience and the complete lack of care showed to her by others. Vertigo's mother, the only person who had ever loved him. Killed before his eyes when she was just twenty one.

Two years later, Vertigo had killed his father. Not with a baseball bat, not with a gun, which by then was the old drunk's new weapon of choice, but with something else. His mutation. His power. The thing that set him apart from the filthy, worthless human who'd created him and then blamed the mutation on his mother. Vertigo's mother had died because a human couldn't accept having a mutant son. And Vertigo knew that all humans were exactly the same. Nobody had been there to protect his mother. All humans wanted the same thing. All humans were equally to blame and responsible for her death. And all humans would die.

"Who are you?"

Vertigo was suddenly jolted back into reality by the small boy standing in front of him. The youngster, maybe seven years old, looked up at him, then called, "Grandpa, there's a strange man in the house!"

A moment or two later a short, balding man in his sixties appeared behind the boy.

"Can I help you, son?" he asked.

"Sure," said Vertigo. "You can die."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Die!" he yelled. "All of you! All of you are the same! All of you would have killed her just like he did! All of you can die!"

The old man wasn't intimidated, and he barked, "Young man, I don't know who you think you are, but this is my house! If you don't start making sense, I'm going to have to ask you to leave!"

"I'll leave," said Vertigo. "Don't worry about that. What I'm here to do won't take long."

With a sudden spinning kick he sent the old man flying across the room.

"Grandpa!" the horrified child screamed.

The old man cried out in pain as he hit the floor, and the child ran to him. Vertigo was about to walk over and finish them off, when a click came from behind his head.

"Get out of here," a frightened female voice said. "Get out of our house now!"

Vertigo turned, to see an old woman, presumably the grandmother, holding a small pistol in both hands. Her hands were shaking and there was no way she could possibly hit a target even at this short range. Vertigo feinted to one side, then kicked the gun out of her hands, sending it looping up into the air. He leaped into the air and stretched out his hand to catch it, then landed on both feet with cat-like grace, swivelling round to point the weapon at the stricken grandfather. The slick manoeuvre had taken less than a second.

"Don't hurt him! Don't hurt my grandpa!"

"Billy, get out of here! Run! Go to your mom's! Tell her to call the police!"

Vertigo ignored the frightened grandmother and child as he walked over to the man, pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the trigger.

Accel kicked the gun out of his hand, the bullet impacting harmlessly into the wall, and then stood protectively in front of the terrified humans.

"What the hell are you doing?" she screamed.

With a roar of fury, Vertigo lashed out at her, but she dodged to one side, and faced him once more. Breathing heavily, he snarled at her, "You stupid, worthless little brat! This has nothing to do with you!"

"This has everything to do with me!" she shouted. "You're supposed to be protecting me and my friends, not killing random people!"

"They're human! They deserve to die!"

"What? Why?"

"Because of what they've done!" Vertigo yelled. "What all humans do! You of all people should understand that!"

"Maybe so, but I only want to go after the people who actually hurt me! Not random people who have never done anything to me!"

"They're all the same!"

"How do you know?"

He lost his patience completely, "Because I've been alive a few more than ten years, I've seen it for myself, and I'm not brainwashed into the lies they teach you at that ridiculous school! Get out of my sight! Pretentious little slut!"

Disbelief crossed Accel's face, and her mouth dropped open, "What did you call me?"

"You know what you are!"

"Vertigo, I'm ten years old!"

"You're all the same! Sure, you're a sweet little angel now, but in a few years, you'll be just like the rest of them!"

"What are you talking about?"

"My mother was a saint!" he screamed. "And you, all of you, little sluts, every girl I know, you're all the same! She died because he thought she was what you are!"

Confused, frightened and overwhelmed, Accel was taken completely by surprise as Vertigo suddenly lunged at her, grabbing her around the throat and forcing her against the wall. She fought against his grip, but he was too strong, and she couldn't breathe. She tried to kick him, but without any acceleration behind it her kick had no effect. He squeezed her neck even tighter, and she felt herself suffocating.

But Vertigo wasn't the only one with painful memories. As her vision swam before her eyes, Accel remembered. This had happened before. Only then it hadn't been a young man choking her with his hands, but a group of older girls at the orphanage holding her head under the water in the shower room, bringing her almost to the point of drowning and then pulling her out, only to push her back in again a second later. Accel knew what it was like to almost suffocate. But now she also knew how to fight back.

Her anger exploded inside her again, and with strength she had never known before, she ripped Vertigo's hands away from her throat, then spun to kick him away from her. He staggered backwards, and she inhaled, then screamed. All of her anger, all of her painful memories, all of her fury at the injustices done to her, burned through her body like a raging volcano, and she advanced towards him.

Vertigo jabbed his fist viciously towards her head, but Accel parried the blow and swivelled round to drive her elbow into his neck. He had seen it coming, and ducked out of the way, then retaliated with a kick aimed at her face. She dropped to the ground, rolled over to avoid it, then flipped back upright to face him once more. The three humans, now in a terrified huddle, could only watch as the ten year old girl fought to protect them from the nineteen year old man.

"You're just a stupid little girl!" Vertigo snapped her. "Do you really think you can stand up to me? I taught you everything you know about fighting!"

Accel spat back, "I learned maybe a quarter of what I know from you! Chris and Mr Logan and Mr Wagner taught me the rest!"

"Well, none of them are here to protect you now! If you don't get out of my way right this second, I promise I will kill you!"

Breathing hard, her anger still burning, Accel shook her head, "Vertigo – we're not friends any more."

To her surprise, he laughed, "Is that it? Is that the worst thing you can think of to say? You pathetic little baby. Quit embarrassing yourself before you wet your panties!"

Accel screamed and charged right at him. Vertigo had made a mistake – he hadn't taken her seriously – and he was completely unable to react as she covered the distance between them in a fraction of a second and drove him hard into the wall behind him. The young man screamed in pain as he felt one of his ribs cracking under the impact.

Still screaming with fury, Accel gave him no respite, smashing a super-accelerated fist into his jaw, then leaping into the air, flipping head over heels and kicking him hard in the face. He gasped and spit up blood, part of one of his teeth landing on the floor.

"Woohoo!" the little human boy yelled excitedly. "You go, girl!"

If Vertigo hadn't been taking the girl seriously before, he definitely was now. There was only one thought in his mind now: revenge. A devastating spinning kick that would have killed even the strongest man was aimed directly at Accel's head, and only her accelerated reflexes enabled her to swivel out of the way, losing her balance as she did so. Vertigo leaped into the air and slammed both feet into the floor where her neck was, or where her neck had been a quarter of a second ago. Smashing his fist towards her face, missing her by inches as she twisted aside, he drove her closer and closer to the corner of the room. Grabbing a chair and swinging it in her direction, Vertigo gave a laugh of triumph and satisfaction as he realised he had the little girl cornered. Accel gave a frightened gasp as she realised she was trapped without nowhere left to run to. Vertigo drew back his fist to slam into her throat.

Before he could do so, she had given another of her ear-splitting screams and was charging towards him once again. He hadn't left her enough room to pick up any momentum, but it was enough to knock him on to his back, and again her little fist smashed into his face. Enraged, he grabbed at her arm, with the intention of snapping the bone in half, but she had already spun away and kicked him in the ribs. She missed the one he had cracked earlier, and Vertigo flipped back upright, facing the child.

"You're a fast learner," he growled at her, wiping away blood from his mouth. "Pity you won't survive to learn anything from this fight!"

"I make up some of my own moves too," Accel retorted. "Watch this!"

She was so fast he had no chance to prepare himself, as she accelerated across the room towards him, then launched herself into an impossible midair quadruple pirouette, kicking him in the chest, flinging him headlong across the room with the unstoppable force of the attack. Vertigo screamed in agony as he collided heavily with the living room fireplace, and dropped to the floor, pain racking every fibre of his body. As he looked up and saw the child sprinting towards him again, he felt something he had never before felt in his life while engaged in unarmed combat. He felt fear, as he suddenly realised that Accel, driven by her anger, was more powerful than he was.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something. The gun. It had landed on the floor after the little slut had kicked it out of his hand. Vertigo grabbed it, pointed it at the onrushing child and pulled the trigger.

Accel screamed, not out of fear, not out of pain, but once more with the overpowering rage that burned through her veins. She felt powerful. She felt powerful enough to do anything, to withstand anything, to survive anything. She wasn't afraid of bullets. Bullets were just metal that moved fast. She was faster. Spinning into another impossible pirouette, Accel swatted the bullet out of the air with the palm of her hand, sending it ricocheting harmlessly into the ceiling.

Then she dropped to her knees, exhausted, dizzy, overwhelmed by what she had just done. Desperately she struggled back to her feet to continue the fight, but the fight was already over. She'd won. Vertigo was fleeing in terror out of the building, and she heard the front door slam. Before she could go after him, the humans were surrounding her. For a second she flinched, expecting attack, but instead she found herself the recipient of an enormous hug from the astonished grandmother.

"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful little girl," the woman breathed with relief. "I don't know how you did that, I don't know how you stood up to him, but I'm so thankful you saved my husband."

"Are you all right?" the grandfather asked. "Did he hurt you?"

"No – no, I'm OK," was all the exhausted little mutant could pant out, getting her breath back.

"Hey, what's your name?" the little boy asked.

"A – Accel," she gasped, taking huge breaths and trying to slow her heart rate.

But her heart suddenly jumped again as she heard the sound of a gunshot from outside. Then she screamed, "Phoebe! Bibi! No!"

Twisting free of the relieved humans, she ran to the door, and flung it open, terrified that the gunshot she had just heard might have been Vertigo shooting one of her friends. She heard the roar of the car's engine and could only watch as it screeched off down the street into the distance. Only Vertigo was inside. Standing in the garden in front of the house were a sobbing Phoebe, with Icarus holding her.

"What happened?" Accel asked.

Then she saw Turtle and Bibi both lying face down in the grass.

"No!" she screamed, running towards them.

But both of them were moving, and as she got there, Bibi sat up and gave a sudden gasp, "What was that?"

"Ow," Turtle was grimacing. "Man, that hurt."

"Are you guys OK?" Accel cried.

"I got shot in the shell," the boy groaned. "Just as it was opening out. The force of the bullet knocked me into Bibi and I landed on top of her."

"Yeah, mate, your shell weighs a ton," the smallest girl complained.

Accel gave a relieved laugh and hugged both of them tightly, "I'm so glad you're OK! I thought you got shot!"

"I did!" said Turtle.

"Well, I thought you'd died!"

Then Icarus and Phoebe grabbed their friends and hugged them out of relief too, and the five of them sank down breathlessly on to the grass.

"What happened in there?" Phoebe demanded. "Why did Vertigo go completely crazy? He came out of here screaming at us to get out of the car, and when we didn't move fast enough, he pulled a gun on us and started shooting!"

"I don't know," Accel shook her head. "I really don't know. He was trying to kill the people who live here. He was completely crazy. Then he tried to kill me. I managed to fight him off, but...I don't understand. I think something must have happened to him."

"I'll say," Icarus snorted. "Like going completely nuts!"

"No, I – I mean something that happened a long time ago. Maybe when he was the same age we are now. Something happened to his mother."

"His mom? He's got a mom?"

Bibi rolled her eyes, "What, you think he was born by magic?"

"Shut up, Bibi," Icarus snapped. "What happened to his mom?"

"I don't know," said Accel. "I've never heard him talk about her, or any family. I don't have any idea what happened."

"I do," said a voice from above their heads.

The five children looked up from where they were sitting on the grass, to the old man who now stood over them, the grandfather who lived in the house, whom Accel had saved. Instinctively the children got to their feet out of respect for someone much older than they were, and waited for him to explain.

"I didn't recognise him at first, but that young man used to live around here," the man told them. "Little Mikey, his mom called him. I haven't seen him in over nine years."

"Vertigo used to live here?" Phoebe said in surprise. "What did you say his name was, sir?"

"Mikey. Or Michael. He was Chuck and Stacey's kid."

"Who are Chuck and Stacey?"

"I didn't know the family. We used to live two streets over, but then we moved in here when they died, and our daughter now lives in our old house. But Little Mikey used to come play around our street sometimes."

"What happened to them?"

"Nobody really knows. There was an accident in the house and Stacey died. Some say it was a home invasion. And some say it was Chuck who lost his temper and killed her. And then two years later Chuck died too. Nobody knows what happened to him either. Little Mikey was in the house both times, but wouldn't say a word to anyone about what happened on either occasion."

The man's wife, the grandmother, was beside him now, and she added, "I used to teach at the local elementary school. I remember Little Mikey – he was an adorable kid, and one of my best students, until Stacey died. After that he changed – wouldn't speak to anyone, didn't do anything he was asked, didn't seem to care about anything at all. A lot of children at the school picked up mysterious injuries, and nobody knew why. But it stopped when Chuck died and Mikey was taken away to an orphanage out of town. We never heard another word about him or saw him again."

"Until today," her husband corrected her. "I can't even begin to imagine what's going through that young man's head. We'd all be dead if it wasn't for our little rescuer here – what did you say your name was, honey?"

"Accel."

"Is that German?"

"No, it's, um, it's short for something."

"Oh, what?"

"Um, Acceleratus."

The two older people looked at each other, then the woman said, "You're a mutant, right, honey?"

Accel swallowed nervously, "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

She tensed herself, waiting to be attacked or to be yelled at or cursed.

"And your friends here?"

"We are too, ma'am," said Phoebe.

The old woman nodded, "We saw on the news about the attacks on the UN conference centre. There have been a lot of people saying mutants are responsible and saying we should attack mutants on sight."

The children exchanged frightened glances and instinctively found themselves moving closer together to feel safer.

"That's why you're here, right?" said the old man. "You're running from people trying to hurt you?"

"Um," said Accel. "I guess so. Vertigo was supposed to be looking after us but he just went crazy when he got here."

"Vertigo? Is that what Mikey calls himself now?"

"Yeah. We didn't know he was ever called Mikey."

"That was what people called him. His real name was Michael. Michael Messenger."

Then the old woman said, "Look, you must all be hungry and tired. Come in and have something to eat, and we'll try and find somewhere you can sleep."

The children hesitated, and Phoebe said, "You're – you're not going to hurt us? I thought you said people were hurting mutants because of what happened at the conference."

"Sure they are, but we don't believe in attacking innocent people for the sins of others. Besides, Accel here saved our lives, and how can we leave little children cold and hungry out on the street? Come in, all of you."

The five children realised they were hungry, and cold and tired, and with Vertigo gone they had no money or transport or any adults to care for them. They didn't know these people, but they decided they had to take the risk, and followed the two elders inside.