I. New Mutants

The classroom was silent as a graveyard. That's how it had been for the last twenty or so minutes. It was starting to get awkward. Kyle hated awkward.

The teenager stole glances at the only other people in the room with him: two boys who looked to be the same age as himself. They were seated one row down from him and at opposite ends of their column. They were pointedly not looking at each other, preferring to stare at the walls. Or the floor. Or off into space.

The classroom was small, able to seat a couple dozen people at most. And that just made the silence deafening. Kyle shifted in his seat, a general feeling of discomfort beginning to seep into his bones. He really hated awkward.

'That's it. I'm breaking the ice.'

The blond youth leaned forward until he was on the edge of his seat, resting his arms on the crest of the chair in front of him. He grinned, knowing his voice would come out loud and clear.

"So…" The other two boys turned towards him the moment the word left his lips. "Mutants, huh? Just guessing that's the reason we're all here."

"Pretty much." One of them answered. He was the tallest of the three, with short, well-groomed dark brown hair. From looking at his solid build, Kyle guessed the guy was either an athlete or a gym freak.

The other boy, also taller than Kyle, was slender rather than muscled. He was a wiry fellow with sharp features and jet black hair. He had a slight tan… Or maybe he was latino? Italian?

Tall & Dark gave a noncommittal grunt.

Kyle's grin widened. They didn't give him much but at least it was something. Anything was better than going back to the awkward silence.

"Wild, right?" He continued, laying it on thick with the laid-back west coast vibe. He hoped the chill-ness would rub off on the other two. "I mean, just looking at the three of us, I never would have guessed. We all just look like regular dudes."

Tall & Dark snorted. "A lot of mutants look like regular dudes."

Kyle smirked. 'Finally got him to speak.'

"Yeah. And a lot of them don't."

"Like Storm," Tall & Big added. "She's a total babe."

Kyle laughed, giving a small nod of agreement. "True. Nothing regular about Storm. But that's not what I meant. I'm talking about the mutants with gills and fur and, you know, googly eyes and stuff. That's how a lot of mutants find out they're mutants, right? The obvious abnormality?"

Tall & Dark shrugged. "Either that or when a Sentinel steps on them."

"Maybe twenty years ago. The kill-bots got decommissioned." Tall & Big shot back.

"Supposedly." Tall & Dark sniffed.

"Getting back to my original point…" Kyle cut in before the two dudes turned his small-talk into a whole other thing. "There's nothing really obvious about us."

"Now I get it." Tall & Dark's lips curved into a glib smile. "You want to know what kind of mutant powers we have."

Kyle pursed his lips. He couldn't feel offended when the guy was right on the money. The blond simply shrugged. "I was working my way up to that, but yeah. I'm just curious. How'd you guys find out you were mutants?"

Tall & Big made a face like he had tasted something sour. He shifted in his chair, crossing his arms over his broad chest. Kyle had never been the type to feel insecure about his own body, but this guy was impressively built for someone in his teens. 'I really ought to start hitting the gym again…'

"I played the best damn game of football in my life." The athlete finally said after a long moment of silence. He wasn't looking at Kyle or the other boy, his eyes fixed on the wall ahead of him. "No one on the other team could touch me. Me and my team, we steamrolled 'em. And they weren't pushovers either. This school we were playing against, they had seven state championship trophies to their name."

The young man frowned, a contemptuous grumble rising from his throat. "Their coach thought I was juicing. He demanded that I get tested. So I did. No drugs were found in my system, of course. It was still concluded that 'I was performing at a level beyond what a boy my age and size could realistically reach'. Their words, not mine."

Tall & Dark laughed. The athlete shot the slender fellow a cold look, but he was undeterred.

"Your mutant power is being good at sports?" He ribbed with an incredulous smile.

The athlete tightened his jaw, visibly holding in some choice words. Kyle's mind spun to find a quick way to defuse the tension only for the taller boy to prove he needn't have bothered. Letting the laughter cascade harmlessly off his shoulders, the athlete simply shrugged in response.

"That's one way to put it, sure." Tall & Big leaned back in his seat with his arms till crossed across his chest. A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, while Kyle caught a spark of pride in his eyes. "I'm stronger, faster, and more perceptive of my surroundings than most people. I have higher levels of endurance and stamina, all that cool stuff. And when I say 'higher levels' I mean 'better than most Olympic athletes'. I'm pretty durable, too. Doctors told me I have greater bone density than what's natural. It explained a lot, actually. Like how I got hit by a car when I was fifteen and got rushed to the hospital only to find out I was perfectly fine."

"Looks like you won the mutant lottery." Kyle whistled. It was impressive, there was no doubt about that.

"Not really." The athlete frowned again, his hands coming down to rest on his knees. "The Board of Athletics ruled that my mutation gave me an unfair advantage over the other players. And that advantage naturally extended to my team. Not only did I lose all of my awards and trophies since middle school, all of the games I played in got invalidated. Naturally, everyone at my school blamed me for the whole mess. As if I secretly knew I was a mutant the whole time. Load of bullshit."

Kyle winced. Digging up bad memories wasn't on his ice-breaking agenda.

"Sorry, man." He said as sincerely as his west coast trill would allow. "That sucks."

The athlete let out an disaffected grunt, rolling his shoulders. "I'll get over it." He said simply. He then turned his eyes onto Tall & Dark who had gone back to being silent. "What about you, slim? How'd you find out?"

The raven-haired boy remained tight-lipped as he cast his eyes from the athlete to Kyle himself. Figuring they were going to drag him into the conversation eventually, he inhaled deeply and resigned himself to socializing.

"Blew a hole in my step-dad's house." His words were clipped and blunt. But infinitely intriguing to Kyle all the same.

"Shit, really?" Kyle cackled as a toothy smile spread across his face. His mind went wild trying to picture the other boy's words, imagining the chaos, the outrage, the hilarity. "How? Did you punch a wall too hard or something?"

"No." Tall & Dark adopted a sullen look, absently drumming his fingers against his leg. "Something… came out of my body."

"Gross." The athlete sounded disgusted… but a quick glance from Kyle revealed he was smirking. Tall & Dark didn't look amused, shooting a glowering look at the taller boy.

"Not like that. It was light. Or energy. I don't know what exactly but it was powerful enough to rip a hole from the living room into the garage… Right through my step-dad's Cadillac."

"Ouch." Kyle sympathized. "How pissed were your parents?"

"Kicked me out."

"Damn." Kyle frowned, aghast. "Sorry, bro."

Tall & Dark merely shrugged, looking much less broken up about it than Kyle was. "Step-dad thought I did it on purpose. Mom agreed with him. I was out on my ass when the stormy lady from the X-Men found me."

"Storm." The athlete corrected him a bit too quickly. "Black lady, white hair, controls the weather? She's Storm. Total babe."

"Got it. Thanks." Tall & Dark gave him a flippant thumbs up before turning back to Kyle. "So what about you blondie? What's your story?"

Kyle gave his two fellow mutants a look and smirked. He clasped his hands together, fingers interlocking as he rested his chin upon them for support. He glanced between the two boys again, making sure they were both listening.

"Hot redhead showed up at my house one day. Told my parents I was a mutant."

Then he leaned back into his seat, clasped hands resting on his lap, with a far too proud smirk plastered on his mug.

The other boys blinked. A moment of silence passed before Tall & Big derisively blew air from his pursed lips.

"That's it?" Tall & Dark asked flatly.

"Yep. Shitty origin story, right?" Kyle snickered, his grin growing wider.

"What are your powers?" The athlete probed, his voice laced with irritation.

"No idea. But I can do this." Kyle brought his hand up so they could all see and proceeded to do the thumb-removal magic trick. Tall & Big flipped him off then but Kyle simply laughed. It was apparently contagious as the athlete began laughing with him followed soon after by Tall & Dark.

When they finally caught their breath, Kyle got up from his seat and extended his hands, one to each fellow mutant. "Name's Kyle. Nice to meet you."

The athlete shook his hand first. "Tom."

"Jason." The other said after a brief hesitation.

Kyle nodded in satisfaction. 'Kyle Travis, ice-breaker extraordinaire…'

"Serious discussion time: You guys think I have a shot with Emma Frost? I mean, we're both blond. That's something, right?"

"It hasn't even been thirty minutes and they're already talking about hitting on us." Ororo Munroe's voice was both pleasantly musical and firmly compelling. The soft African lilt combined with her statuesque form offered a vision of regal femininity. Storm of the X-Men wasn't merely a woman. She was womanly.

Ororo was tall, athletic but with sensual curves not even her professional attire could hide. Standing there in the X-Mansion's control center in her black skirt and yellow dress blouse with her mane of white hair held back from her aristocratic face by a black headband, it was irrefutable to anyone with a pulse: She was a knockout. And despite her admonishing tone there was a small smile upon her divine face.

"Obnoxiously predictable." Answered the blonde standing beside her. "But at least they have good taste."

Emma Frost was an entirely different kind of beauty. Where Ororo was regal, angelic, Emma was alluring, resplendent. The short blonde may have looked like an angel with her shiny, golden hair and her dazzlingly white garb - blouse, pants, and a cape, which was far more modest than normal for the woman - but her eyes betrayed her true nature. They were pools of mesmeric blue, deep enough for a man to lose himself forever, and promised the dirty things you were afraid to ask of a girlfriend or a wife. If Ororo was a woman of intimacy, Emma was a woman of pure passion.

"That or they don't know any better." The third woman present was Jean Grey. Shorter still than Ororo but taller than Emma, the redhead was an appealing sight on her own. She didn't project the aura of a goddess like Ororo nor did she possess the tempting qualities of a seductress like Emma. No, Jean was a homegrown charmer, the girl next door from small town Americana. Her beauty was quieter but no less enthralling. She effortlessly projected a natural radiance, with a splash of soft freckles across her pale, delicate face, mostly clustering over her small nose and rosy cheeks. Her green eyes were wide and inviting, her full lips almost always quirked into a small smile, looking like she was ready to offer support to her friends… and a sharp barb to her rivals.

"They know enough to reference me by name. Only time will tell if they're good enough. I'm a woman of high standards, after all." Emma clicked her tongue as she moved across the room with practiced grace, stopping before a computer terminal. She was the only one of the three who had yet to read the boys' dossiers, something she was planning to rectify.

Emma tapped a few keys on the touchpad beneath the screen and the display was immediately filled with images of the boys alongside all the data the team could compile on such short notice. "Maybe the next batch we bring in will prefer you, Grey. Or maybe not. Perhaps it's for the best. We want young men with promise, after all."

"You can be cordial or you can be silent, Emma." Ororo shot the blonde a withering glare, a small but noticeable gust of wind making her white mane appear like a throng of wild tendrils

Emma, to her credit, was not visibly intimidated. She hit a key on the touchpad, sending the collection of data to her personal computer in her study. "I suppose I will excuse myself. Welcoming parties are beneath me. As well as being a tour guide. Have fun with the rutting pups. You especially, Grey. Who knows what kind of thoughts will be swimming around in their young, male minds?"

With a devious smirk, Emma turned and left the control center, her heels clicking against the metal floor.

The moment the armored door closed behind her, Ororo snorted in vexation. "Bitch."

"That wasn't cordial or silent, Miss Munroe." Jean chastised one of her oldest friends while making no attempt to hide her smile.

Ororo glanced at the reinforced metal barricade with the stylized "X" emblazoned upon it. Then she turned her white eyes back to her redheaded colleague. "It can be argued that mortal standards do not apply to goddesses."

Jean stifled a laugh. "Oh, of course."

"You think we've let these boys stew for long enough?" Ororo gestured towards the viewing screens. The volume had been lowered the moment they started talking about "hot babes"... and from what Ororo could pick up with her attuned ears, the boys were still going at it.

Jean sighed and pursed her lips, crossing her arms beneath her breasts as she regarded the boys on the screen with slight apprehension. "No female telepath is ever prepared for the minds of teenage boys. Let's get this over with."

"Very well." Ororo typed a few keys beneath the main display screen, ending the live feed from the classroom. "I've heard enough locker room talk for one day."

Jean half-feigned a look of disgust. "Lucky you."

New story. Those familiar with my work and my interests will know where this is heading. Hard M rating. Not for the faint of heart.

I haven't abandoned Twisted Desire, though. More content about the Birds of Prey is coming soon. However, I post new content to my profile on first. You can find me there under the penname "ryswell".

Thanks for reading.