Chapter Thirty-Six:
Tyron sat on the edge of his bed, reading his textbook quietly. Rashaad sat beside him, fast asleep. He had been watching him write earlier, but the task apparently seemed too boring for him, so he decided to take a nap instead.
Rashaad gave a small snore, breathing softly on the edge of his textbook, and Tyron nudged his face away, but continued to read. He was well immersed in the topic of the ancient Chinese military when he heard a knock at the door. Rashaad raised his head, looking around groggily, obviously still completely out of it. "Come in," Tyron said, watching the door.
To his surprise, Pepper Potts stepped in his room. She's never even been on his floor before. Tyron practically fell off the bed to greet her, flustered by her sudden arrival. "Ms. Potts!" He said, tripping over his shoes that he left beside his bed. His room was usually clean, but today he had been wrestling with Rashaad and looked a lot messier than usual.
"Tyron," Pepper smiled, holding her arms out for a hug. She always hugged him, and despite Tyron's distaste for them ― he didn't want his chest to press against someone and they find out his secret ― he still gave her hugs.
"Wha' are ya doin' 'ere?" Tyron asked when they pulled away, but then corrected himself for the rudely worded question. "No, wait, I mean, I--I usually don' see ya on m'level, so I jus'--I didn't expect ya to come. . . 'ere. . ."
Pepper smiled, "I have news for you," She said smiling. "I wanted to deliver it in person. I probably should have told you beforehand, though."
"Nah, I don' mind, I mean, it's ya house ― I mean. . . . buildin' I guess? I dunno, uhm, anyways, wha' did ya want to tell me?" Tyron asked, calming down a bit and moving his text books and his backpack on his bed so they could sit. Rashaad had fallen back asleep, but hit Tyron in the side when he moved the bed beneath him.
"I just wanted to tell you," Peper said, straightening her black pencil skirt. "That everything is ready for the rally and it'll start tomorrow." Tyron's eyes went huge and he covered his mouth with his hand. Tony had told him that it wouldn't take too long, but he felt a bit shocked that it was actually happening.
"That's great!" Tyron cheered. "Thank ya, Ms. Potts!"
Pepper smiled proudly. "The arrangements have been set, the streets have been closed off for the march down to 80th." Pepper stopped and looked at Tyron, raising an eyebrow, "I was hoping you would be willing to give a speech?" Tyron blinked, shocked.
"A--A speech?" He repeated.
"Yes," Pepper grinned, her green eyes filled with optimism. "I mean, you are the one who wanted this to come to reality the most. I have no doubt that you're able to give a speech. If you need help writing it, then I have an entire team ready to assist you. The people who usually help Tony with his speeches already have a few points I suggested. They can help you write it tonight and it will be ready tomorrow for the rally."
Tyron swallowed, twisting his fingers. "I. . . I don' know. . ."
Pepper placed a hand on his knee, giving him a comforting look, "If you don't feel comfortable about it, then we can have someone else give your speech for you. I just feel that it would be a lot more powerful if someone who has been in your position at least wrote it. This is your chance to tell your story, Tyron. Someone else can say your story for you, but I don't think anyone will be able to give it as powerfully as you can."
Tyron looked at Pepper for a minute, then he glanced behind him at Rashaad, who was sleeping soundly, his scaly black wings twitching every now and then. "Will you do it?"
"I'll do it," He replied, nodding slightly. Then he sat straighter and gave a small grin. "Who's gonna help m'write it?"
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Tyron groaned, leaning back in his swivel chair. "Is there any other main points you want to give?" One of the women, Lindsey asked. She was indian, had dark hair and copper coloured skin. She was twisting a stylus in her hand, writing on an iPad.
"There's a lotta other points I wanna give," Tyron replied sourly. "I jus' don' know if it will match th' rest of th' speech."
"Don't worry about that," Cherise said. She was hispanic, with thick, brown hair and tanned skin. She had an accent that made it obvious that she was bilingual. "What do you want to say?"
Tyron sighed a bit, leaning forward on his knees. "I wanna talk 'bout m'time wit' Baron, but if I do, I might get sent to jail."
"What about just the things you endured from him?" Conner asked. He was white with blond hair that was grown very long. He also had intersting old scar on his cheek. When Tyron asked him about it, he said that he cut it on a fence at a party when he was young. "The punishments, the tramua. Are you comfortable with talking about that?"
"No," Tyron said immediately. He wasn't even comfortable thinking about it, much less telling a hundreds of people what he endured at the hands of Baron.
"What about your ideas for Mutant Rights?" Lindsey asked. "The things you want for people like you, like equality, hope, equal rights, mutant restrictions lifted, et cetera."
"Yeah, I defintely want to talk 'bout tha'," Tyron nodded, a few ideas coming to the surface. "I want to give m'own accounts of thin's like tha' happened to me. I wanna talk 'bout havin' to starve because I knew that if I looked suspicious in a store, they either thought I was tryin' to steal somethin' or I was a mutant lookin' for trouble. Oh! An', I wanna talk 'bout not bein' able to get a job if they got ya bein' a mutant on record. Like being a mutant is the same as servin' twenty in prison. Like it's a fuckin' crime." Tyron huffed angrily, getting himself riled up at the thought. Meanwhile, Lindsey, Cherise, and Conner were bullet pointing all his words, writing a few notes beside them.
"That's another thing," Conner said as he finished writing his last words. "The stereotype that most, if not all, mutants are vigilantes or thugs. The majority are teenagers suffering through traumatic experiences in schools like bullying, domestic violence, or sexual abuse." The others murmured their agreements, writing down his thoughts.
"When we get up there," Cherise spoke up. "You can't swear. It'll make you look like a threat or a thug to the press."
"Yeah, look at people like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, or Dorothy Height. Swearing would only make causes seem minimal," Lindsey agreed. "You need to stay calm and collected while you're talking. You can be emotional, but don't let that emotion twist into hate or anger, alright?"
Tyron nodded, thinking more on what he wanted to say. "We need names," Tyron suddenly said. "Mutants who died for this to get here. We need them to know tha' it wasn't jus' Lars, tha' he's not new. He was one out of hundreds of thousands of others ― people who have been turned down or crushed by society. We need to remember then. I want to remember them."
"Got it," Conner nodded, "Great point. Anything else?"
"This speech sounds like it's going to be powerful," Tyron turned to see Steve and Tony standing in the doorway. Steve was smiling at him proudly, "Are you ready?"
Tyron only scoffed, turning back around. "Not really," He admitted. "It's pretty short notice."
"Yes," Cherise agreed, "But we can do it. We've had it shorter."
"Yeah, a night in advance is a blessing," Lindsey said, with a small laugh. "Mr. Stark sometimes only gives us hours, if that."
"I don't!" Tony defended, crossing his arms sourly.
"You do," Conner agreed. "The speech in Chicago in 2013? We literally just landed and the speech needed to be prepared and ready in two and a half hours."
"The most stressful day of my life," Cherise agreed and they all laughed.
Steve clapped a hand on Tyron's shoulder, "Well, it's good you guys have time to make it perfect. Thank you."
"Thank you, sir," Cherise said, her cheeks slightly reddening, and she leaned forward in her chair. She was obviously eager to keep the conversation going, despite the task at hand.
"Be sure to eat," Tony said and messed with his growing afro. One of these days, he was going to get around to cutting it shorter.
"And get lots of sleep," Steve agreed, and Tyron rolled his eyes.
"Ya both sound like m'mom," He teased, but Steve grinned.
"And don't forget to eat your vegetables," He said.
"And brush your teeth for two minutes, twice a day," Tony continued, obviously enjoying messing with him.
Tyron shooed them away and they both chuckled, leaving the room. Tyron and the others continued to work a bit past twelve before they demanded he should go to sleep in order to prepare for the big day. Eventually, Tyron agreed.
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Tyron felt as if he were going to have a heart attack the next day. He looked out at the crowd of people all of them holding homemade signs and chanting phrases in the street. He didn't know how many of them there were, it felt as if there were millions of people gathered at the start of the street, ready to hold up their signs and chant loudly to the world. They declared their pride to be a mutant, demanding their equality to be represented in the laws passed by the government.
Tyron stared at the people. A few were clearly displaying their mutations, floating in the air, covered in bugs, having multicoloured skin. It was amazing.
"Are you ready?" Tony asked. He was standing behind them, fully armoured. In fact, all of the Avengers were here, minus Sam Wilson and James Rhodes, who were occupied doing something else. Wanda and Vision were here, and so was Clint and Natasha. They were smiling and looking proud.
Tyron tried to give them smiles -- they deserved smiles -- but the nervousness gnawed at his stomach, and he felt like he needed to vomit. He thought he might, he ate a lot of metal to keep his face completely steel and hardened for the opposition.
Natasha must have noticed and stepped over, placing a hand on his back. "Don't worry, it's going to be fine," she said. "You're ready for this. You're going to be great."
"Yeah..." Tyron said, looking back at the crowd of people ready to follow him down the street, signs held high and voices at top volume. He remembered Pietro and Lars, wishing they were at his side. He knew they wouldn't be back, but the thought of them made his nervousness ease a bit. He was going to do this. He was going to do this.
"Okay... Okay, m'ready," he said. Tony smiled, and put his face mask on. Then, he flew off the roof of the apartment and to the crowd. He could hear him in his suit even as he descended on the people. Tyron turned to the rather rickety stairwell and made his say down, listening to Tony's electronically-filtered voice chant. "Mutant and proud! Mutant and proud!..."
Tyron finally got to the ground and joined the people. When everyone was on the ground, they began to walk, their palms were in the air, arms crossed in an 'x' above his head as he chanted with everyone. "Mutant and proud! Mutant and proud!" He cheered loudly as they walked.
People soon recognized who they were -- it wasn't hard from their very distinguishable suits -- and parted the crowd. They still chanted loudly, if anything, the presence of the Avengers urged them to cry louder. As if their goal was not only to bring equality, but to shout to the heavens what they wanted, what they needed. That way, there would be no mistake that they were proud to be what they were. Even though the world may treat them like dirt benesth a boot, they would still rise up and make it clear that they were proud to be who they were, no matter how hard the people made it for them to survive in society.
It didn't take the group of hundreds of thousands long to gain the popularity of media and their Anti-Mutant counterparts.
Tyron heard angry women and men scream at them. Prejudice people enraged that an oppressed group would even have the audacity to rise up. Tyron heard a woman scream at him when his eyes caught hers. "You disgusting abominations!" She screeched, "Go back to Hell where you belong!!"
Tyron inhaled and continued to march, not giving to the crowd of angry people the satisfaction of his reaction. Instead, he chanted louder, "Mutant! And! Proud!!"
It took them a while to get there, but eventually they were in front of the jewelry store where Lars was arrested. Tony stopped and everyone began to sit down on the side walks and in the streets. Tony looked at Tyron and handed him a megaphone and a small handful of papers. His notes that he wrote the night before.
Tyron swallowed, this was it. It was time. "Two months ago, a boy named Laurence Dean was arrested for shopliftin' at this store," Tyron announced to the hundreds of thousands of people sitting around him. "He was tryin' to return th' goods stolen from th' store to th' police. Because of this, Laurence was shot at an' beaten." Tyron inhaled, remembering the sight of his friend bloody and bruised in the hospital room. "He was nearly dead! And, d'ya know what happened? They police pushed it under th' rug!"
Tyron cleared his throat and continued. "This is only one out of tens of thousands of incidents where the police brutalized mutants, where our government pushed people like us for being born! James Devor, a fourteen-year old shot an' killed in San Antonio, Texas after openly showin' his mutation -- the ability to produce small cyclones -- in a park. Alicia David, a twenty-three-year old killed in Greenville, South Carolina for having her mutation -- visibly turnin' green an' other colours similar to that. She was taken from her home, beaten and then drowned. Jason Wu, chained at the end of a pick-up truck in dragged forty miles on a dirt road because he was exposed as a mutant by his parents. The twelve victims who died after a mutant shelter was burned down in by Anti-Mutants Activists."
"Laurence Dean is not a ananomly," he shouted, his words ringing around him. "He just the most recent victim to this brutalization of mutants. What did any of these victims do to deserve such a death!? Was bein' brought into this world worthy of bein' murdered by grown men and women? By their own flesh an' blood? Their parents? Their aunts, uncles, or cousins!?" Tyron felt tears in his eyes and inhaled, looking away before beginning to speak again.
"In our country, mutants are treated less than tha' of non-mutants. The government has made it virtually impossible for a mutant to get a job. If ya blood is tested an' they discover th' X-gene, ya are unable to get tha' job. So, where do mutants turn to? Drugs, prostitution, and other criminal acts of violence! Jus' so they can have sufficent funds in order to feed their family! Why do we discriminate against a group of people who make up twenty percent of this country's population!?" The crowd roared in response, a few clapping loudly, showing their support.
"Teenagers between twelve an' twenty-one make up fifty-six percent of th' mutant population. Of this, th' percentage of students dropping out or being forced out of their schools is eighty-six percent! Th' government finds is in th' schools, students, children, an' takes away our right to an education. They take away our right to learn about th' world we live in. Without schooling, where do we turn to? Wanderin' the streets, drugs, homelessness, or gangs."
"If the government wants to know why mutants make up a third of the crime in America, why we are being killed, they need to look at their school systems! Look at their workplaces! Look at the homes, th' parks! They need to look at Laurence Dean walkin' down the street, innocently, and bein' murdered for it." The crowd roared in appreciation, and Tyron felt excitement flare in him. He was excited and ready to fight.
"It is time for action! We will not be oppressed anymore! Th' mutant bill tha' will authorize the right to categorize Mutants -- human beings -- as Subhuman is B.S., an' we won't stand for it. We will be mutants and we will be proud! We will honour the day Laurence Dean was unjustly murdered! We will protect our brothers and sisters as family! We will rise up an' we will fight th' system! Fight th' government! We will succeed an' when we walk out we will have our hands raised to the air an' we will shout mutant an' proud! Mutant an' proud!"
The rest of the crowd continued to chant, loudly. It rang down the street, echoing through the city. Tyron wondered if they could hear it in the City. He hoped they could. He hopes everyone would hear his pride, his happiness to be what his is. For the first time in his life, Tyron felt as if he were apart of something, like he was leading a revolution and would not be stopped.
Tyron grinned as the crowd got louder. He turned to Tony and the others who were all smiling and had their arms cross too. He actually did it!
Then, he heard the loud, rapid fire pop! pop! pop! of gunshots.