i've got all the change
everybody knows
it hurts to grow up
but everybody does
it's so weird to be back here
let me tell you what
the years go on and
we're still fighting it
and you're so much like me
i'm sorry
—Ben Folds, Still Fighting It

you know this is breakin' me up
you think that i'm some kind of freak
—Weezer, Getchoo

SHADES OF GRAY

Profile:
Subject: Fiona Crowley.
Alias: Predator.
Age: 15.
Gender: Female.
Home: The Willows, Virginia.
Mutation: Ability to change into any predator.
Weakness: Mutations, when untrained, are uncontrollable. A residue of the animal's mind remains after the change back.
Eyes: Brown.
Hair: Brown.
Height: 5' 2"
Weight: 127 lbs.
Distinguishing marks: Freckles, some small scars.
Favorite subject: Gym.
Least favorite subject: Math.
Reads: Anything so long as it isn't assigned.
Style: When away from home, vaguely skater.
Personality: Despises school, but is intelligent. Fairly gentle except when in predator form. Enjoys reading but is not intellectual. Slow to anger, once angered, hard to forgive.
Race: Caucasian, Anglo-Saxon descent.
Religion: Nonobservant Catholic.
Family: Parents, Robert and Cathy, little brothers James and Nick.

Profile:
Subject: Daniel Brown.
Alias: Thorn.
Age: 16 ½.
Gender: Male.
Home: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Mutation: Control over plants / can grow plants from his palms.
Weakness: Not physically strong.
Eyes: Green.
Hair: Green, dyed.
Height: 5' 11"
Weight: 159 lbs.
Distinguishing marks: Dyed hair.
Favorite subject: History.
Least favorite subject: Gym.
Reads: Constantly.
Style: Punk.
Personality: Volatile, mercurial. Writes poetry / plays bass. Grows / sells pot to make extra money. Causes fights, and gets beaten up.
Race: Korean / Caucasian. Korean mother; white father.
Family: Father, Sam, deceased; mother, Mo-rae, abandoned him. In a foster home, Sheryl and Dave.

It was a cool autumn day with a snap-chill in their air that indicated the change of season. A changing time, in more ways that one; autumn to winter, day to night, month to month, and.... Something else. Something – stranger. More dangerous. There was change in the air, but Fiona Crowley didn't know it yet. The girl, fifteen years old and solid-built, hearty farm stock, walked through the woods alone.

It was not a particularly odd thing to do; the Woods was not the same as an inner city, a jungle of a completely different sort. No, it was part of their property. The Crowley family was poor in material goods, rich in land; technically, their land stretched through both forest and field, in the stolid Virginia back woods.

In the autumn the trees wilted and burned themselves golden, and she stepped carefully through the paths, feet making hardly a noise as she navigated the crunching leaves on the path. Fiona and her younger brothers each had been hunting and stalking since they were little children. Jim and Nick had liked killing their prey, though, while Fiona didn't like using the rifles for fun; she would try to get as close to the animal as possible without scaring it off.

Once she was only a foot away from the deer, staring the doe in the eyes. It had frozen, partly from fear and partly because this odd elf-child did not seem as though it would cause harm. And then Fiona had held out her hand and it had run off, through the forest, away to some secret deer-place.

She was not a pretty child, at least in a conventional sense. The eyes were too large and dark, the face sun burnt and peeling across the nose; there were too many freckles and her nose was too strong. She looked stubborn, no mean feat in one barely into teenaged years. Nor was Fiona's build ideal: she was short, and solid, her breasts were small and her hips slim. Her hair was pulled back in a messy braid that dangled to the small of her back, an unremarkable wheat-brown.

And Fiona Crowley walked, enjoying the weekend. On Monday there would be school, with the teachers trying to shove the long dancing lines of math into her head, incomprehensible letters and symbols and signs.... The teacher was creepy, too, an old man who watched the girls too closely for Fiona's liking. Hungry, she thought, stomach grumbling.

She should head back home. Fiona looked at the sky; it was growing darker, clouds drifting lazily across the Virginia skyline. A shortcut would be good, she thought, get home sooner and have something filling to eat. Mom had made a blueberry pie earlier – Fiona could almost /smell/ it drifting across the horizon. Her nose twitched slightly. That was odd. She /could/ smell it, though home was a mile away. Shrugging to herself, although with a growing sense of unease, Fiona Crowley veered from the path and into the woods.

It began to drizzle lightly, abruptly, wetting the frizzes of curls that escaped her braid. Fiona picked up her steps, not even bothering to soften the sound of her feet. Branches and twigs cracked audibly beneath her scuffed sneakers. Home home home. For that odd reason, again, Fiona felt strange and panicky. As though she was trapped in a closed-in room, with no windows.

That's silly, she told herself, You've always been at home in the forest. It's just the rain. Just the night. You're not even afraid of them.

A soft growl from off to the side startled her out of her distracted reverie, and Fiona whirled, eyes wild. Sitting on its haunches in the clearing was a wolf, brown-yellow eyes gleaming. Curioser and curioser; she thought wildly, wolves normally didn't behave like that. They preferred to avoid humans, and definitely did /not/ grin like that, panting, tongue lolling around those teeth.

It moved closer.

And Fiona felt herself /change/.

There was no time to think. No time to cry out or scream.

It felt like her bones had been set on fire and were melting slowly, shifting shape to fit with some weird preordained mold. Oh my god, she thought, although her thoughts were suddenly.... simpler. The pain was gone, and the world had metamorphosed.

It had gone black and white, although she no longer needed color – not with smell! Vibrant, vivid smell, mapping out the area around her. Fiona looked down and was not surprised to find that her feet were no longer five-toed and encased in sneakers; instead they were rather hairy gray furred paws. The other wolf was still growling – wait. /Other/ wolf?

Sudden realization, a basic knowledge, kicked her in the head with steel-toed boots. She had known all her life that she was human, and now, every instinct was telling Fiona Crowley that her previous conceptions were complete bull, she was and always had been a wolf.

Perhaps that was why the other lupine was watching , silent now, with raised hackles and a toothy grimace. Fiona-the-wolf was an intruder upon his territory, and what was more, she was /unnatural/. The real wolf was uncomfortable with this creature that smelled of both man and beast. Such things were not meant to be. He leaped, teeth outstretched.

Fiona was ready for him. She twisted snake-like underneath the wolf, avoiding his claws and teeth, and sank her own jaws deep into his side, worrying the animal. What am I doing?! cried the part of her brain that was still human, but it was mostly submerged by the other, newly surfaced part that was yelling, Kill! Blood! Kill!

The wolf growled and pulled free, circling more carefully now. Fiona darted in (No! No! I don't want to! What /am/ I? Help—me!) and snatched at his throat with her teeth, ripping. Blood spurted over her, warm and smelling of triumph. Her opponent had been elderly, unimportant in the pack, just a scout along the forest. And he had met his doom! Soon, she would be head of the pack—never mind the fact that it was usually the males who ruled—

NO! Fiona struggled with herself, remembering details of her human life. Jim and Nick, giggling as they fought over a piece of candy. Her father, singing to them on Sundays. Mother, always re-painting some part of the house.... Fiona herself, smiling as she read 'Good Omens'....

When they found her later, she was naked and shivering against the trunk of a scarred oak, covered in blood with the dead wolf at her feet.

No one knew what to say.

It was one of those things that wasn't mentioned.

Ever.

X

Daniel Brown's long fingers deftly packed the weed into the piece of paper, rolling it shut and twisting the edges with a practiced gesture. He fished in his pocket for a lighter, holding it to the edge of the joint until it caught fire. That done, he returned the small black object to his pocket, and inhaled slowly. The window was open, of course, and the door shut.

Sheryl was downstairs entertaining friends. Most likely complaining to them about Dan's inexplicable fascination with horrible bands like the Sex Pistols and something with Murphy in it. It was funny, especially considering that she listened to things like Herman's Hermits, or some shit like that.

At least he had good taste in music.

Dan lay back on his bed, relaxing as he let the drug take hold of his brain. He was tall and very skinny, with hardly a defined muscle on his body. Although his face had a rather Asian look to it, especially in the shape of his eyes, the color of them was wrong; dark green, the shade of a forest at night. Otherwise, he looked like any other rebellious teen: spiky hair dyed neon green, baggy jeans bought in a thrift shop, and a Mighty Mouse T-shirt.

His room, again, was rather odd. Although it was covered with posters of various bands and ticket stubs from various concerts, there were an unusual amount of plants in it. Dan liked plants, they liked him; foliage he tended rarely wilted. And, of course, in the sock draw were the marijuana plants that didn't seem to need the sun – /that/ was the odd thing, in his opinion.

Dan listened to the chatter downstairs, and frowned. Sheryl Brown was, well, nice, but nice only went so far. Her friends annoyed her foster son by their very existence. Perhaps it was because he had no friends of his own. He'd always had a feeling that he had no place in the world – he was a cuckoo taking up the space of the rightful child. He wasn't Korean enough for the Koreans or white enough for the whites. His acidic tongue didn't win friends, either, nor did the angry, bitter songs mocking his school and everyone in it.

No, he had no place at all, and it bothered him. But there was.... something else.... that he couldn't explain but felt instinctively. Maybe it was the influence of the weed, but a closed, slightly paranoid feeling descended upon him. To cover his discomfort he blared the Screeching Weasels at high volume and heard the voices downstairs falter. Feet on the stairs, door thrown open.

"Daniel!" Dave exclaimed, voice sounding warped in Dan's ears, "Turn the music down, you're bothering your Moth—wait a minute," he growled, sniffing suddenly. "I /knew/ it! You've been smoking again – and TODAY – well, hand it over, young man, I'm ashamed of you!" Dave smacked him once on the side of the head.

He cringed away from his foster father. Dave didn't hit often, but when he did.... "Leave me alone," Daniel said, eyes narrowing dangerously. That odd feeling again. Was the room shrinking?

"We've told you again and again," slap, "We will /not/ tolerate drugs in the house!" Slap. Slap.

"Don't touch me," Dan said quietly, looking up. There was a strange light in his eyes. Dave fought the sudden urge to back away. "DON'T touch me," the boy repeated, louder. His hands lifted up, palms outstretched, the rage that had been building inside him since childhood seeping dangerously into the open.

This is not happening to me, Dave thought deliriously – it could not happen. Vines could NOT grow from someone's hands like that, especially not thorny vines, and they could NOT lift him up in the air like that. "D-Daniel?" he stammered, "Put me down, boy!"

"No," Daniel said coolly, "I told you not to touch me."

The vines twitched and Dave was thrown upside-down, with the thorns digging deeply into his wrists and legs. "SHERYL!" he screamed, "GET OUT! MUTANT!"

There were answering shrieks from downstairs as the pampered women panicked. They very rarely exercised; the most that many of them had walked that day was the distance between the parking lot and the tanning salon.

Dan, meanwhile, felt detached from himself, as though he watched a tiny-model of a boy. The boy had a frightening smile on his face, and there....were....vines....growing from his hands. What am I? It was a question he had always asked, but now, now he knew.

He was a mutant.

X

The police came too late. By the time they had chopped down the vines (which, oddly enough, had taken root in the bedroom floor) and released Mr. Smyth, the monster was gone. The terrified man showed them the deep puncture wounds in his arms and legs, modern day stigmata, and the bloody thorns that lay on the crimson stained carpet, sad and forlorn. They questioned him, but he could not tell them much, except that Dan had been such a sweet boy when he was younger.

No, sir, they had not known he had....any....strange powers.

This? In the sock drawer? ....Oh. We didn't know he was growing /that/....

Find our Danny. Please.

They never did.

X

"Fiona? Are you all right?" the voice said cautiously from outside of the door. Since the "episode," as her family termed it, they'd walked quietly around her.

"F-fine," she stammered, curled up into a ball on her bed. After the first violent change, she'd found that wolf-body was not the only one she could take. Fiona, who couldn't even eat meat because the blood sickened her, could morph into predator after predator – wolf, cougar, fox, hawk. And each had needs and thoughts of its own – the downside to the transformations was that they left a residual animal mind jostling with hers.

It was disconcerting to find that, when bothered by your little brother, your first thought was to go for the jugular.

Fiona was afraid she was going crazy. What if the transformations weren't real at all, and she was just imagining them? Was she insane? And then, she'd remember the first corpse at her feet, the wolf still warm and twitching, and she knew that it was real.

And it scared her even more.

X

It wasn't hard to find food. Well, most of the food which he actually /found/ was inedible at best, but it was simple enough to make money and buy his own. It was more difficult to find a place to sleep, and for the first week Dan lay down on park benches, clutching his small bag of extra clothes and money, as well as, hidden in a secret pocket, a fresh supply of pot to sell. Nothing was stolen, surprisingly enough, but it was time to move on. Restless feet and a persistent worry that the cops would follow, along with Sheryl and Dave screaming for their child back. No one came.

After two weeks he no longer worried about anyone following. Dan had become transitory, another faceless kid on the street. Once he watched, through the window of an electronics store, an arrogant, well-manicured newscaster doing a special on the street kids in New York. "And you say you were sexually abused at home?" she asked a vacant eyed brightly painted young prostitute. The girl was no older than sixteen and she stared at the camera like a trapped animal.

Dan laughed and imagined the newswoman interviewing him; fanatical, ratings-hungry eyes determined to smile. "And you're selling drugs for a living?"

"Why yes, ma'am, I am."

"Do you miss your parents?"

Pause. "What parents?"

"Oh," the newscaster would say, slightly put off, then eager; "Are you an orphan, then?"

"No. Plants sprouted out of my hands and attacked my foster father, so I ran away."

"Oh!" Pause. "How tragic."

It was not a bad life as those things wen, and he was growing rather attached to the freedom. That would change in two weeks when, on a sudden whim, he hitched a ride in a truck to a small town called Bayville.

X

Lance Alvers was, like Daniel, a foster child. His parents – hah. Some parents /they/ were. The woman was a complete whore and the man was an alcoholic who drank away her earnings, or paid for other whores with the ill-begotten money. It was not a life much better than the one Lance had left behind – no, don't think of it – but at least Frank didn't hit him. All of that was gone, as was the school below him, in a pile of smoking rubble.

His head ached.

And then there was a woman, stern and ugly in her rigidness, naming him Avalanche (HER Avalanche, as if Lance had ever belonged to someone) and promising a better life.

After all, what had he to lose?

That was last year.

This is now.

X

"Two newly active mutants," Xavier murmured to himself, shaking his head. "Confused, both of them...." He glanced at Ororo Munroe, who sat at a desk, writing. The pencil scratched and filled the comfortable silence between them.

"Indeed," she said, and nodded. "I'll tell Logan to ready the jet."