My computer hates me. He deleted this chapter, chapter 38, 39 and what I
had started of chapter 40, just when I was about to do myself security
copies. But I am smarter. After cursing three million times, I found some
of my stuff, it was a bit erased here and there, but I'm okay (*_*). I lost
the cool begging I had for chap. 38, but it's okay, I'll redo it. That is
why I propose to everyone to do like me: do a copy that you throw in the
recycle bin (of the computer). You can go get it if you loose your work. (I
am one lucky author).
Harry Potter is out (go read it it's really cool and I think it's one of my favourites). I'll spend my time reading it, and after that, I most probably will do a Harry Potter fic. Maybe I'll enter my Matrix fic, I'm not sure yet. I'm working on a short Ororo/Beast fic, if you're interested in knowing . . . I also have a few medium size X-Men fics that will come out this summer. School is over, so I'll have plenty of time to write, and so don't worry about my up dates 'cuz I'm about to spend two moths between my computer under the gazebo and my pool. No cool vacation for me this summer. Oh well. At least I can say I'm going to tour Italy with my friends (ya know, school outing) in April (so far away . . .)
Thanks to all my reviewers, I love you all:
Blaze: Your reviews are always fun
Little angel: You live in New Zealand (¬_¬) . . . you are so darn lucky.
Brushfire: The "Next Generation" stuff is in the sequel. As for your deduction about Destiny being in coma, it's not the right answer but your close . . . muahahah. You fell in the trap (but you're surly not the only one)!
Xdivas: Yeah . . . I want you gals to update your story!
JustandalwaysMo: Yay! At least you seem interested in the sequel! Oh . . . and there are, *koff koff*, many O/Cs in the sequel. Nathan won't be the main character (but he still has a big role). In fact, he wasn't even supposed to be the main character in *this* story.
Tigereyes: Thanks, and sorry about your exams . . . mine were *all right* . . . go figure.
Prostar99: I really like Destiny too! I can't wait until you all realize what and who she is!
~Now, here's a very long chapter with full of stuff to make you all happy
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Chapter 37: Unwanted Reality
Nathan leaned back in his chair, chewing on his already half grind up pencil. His available hand clicked the mouse and dragged it down the computer screen in front of him for him to be able to read the rest of the newspaper clipping he had found on the Internet.
He sighed, and passed his hand in his hair again while he folded his legs beneath himself. Throwing his pencil on a notebook filled with his notes, he leaned forward and tapped a new Internet address in the specified bar. Soon enough, another page appeared. He rolled down the page and tapped in a blank research square the words 'genuine forecasting dreams'.
He spent the next twenty minutes reading articles on that subject, but nothing he found was truly interesting, or similar to the dream he had had. Nothing talked about a little girl talking to you in your dreams.
Nathan thought about everything she had said. First, she had asked why he left, then had told him about her being asleep and her mother waking her up. She was shocked he didn't recognize her, and said that she talked to her father in the same way, but that he didn't understand. She said she was real, but unreal because she was still asleep. She kept saying that she was ready to wake up . . . that he needed to save her, that she was afraid . . . she talked to other people because she had 'nothing else to do' . . . She caught other mutants' brainwaves . . . she was locked in a basement . . . her mother had faith that she was going to be able to wake her soon . . . She also said that she was there to fight for mutants. The 'New Generation', she had said . . . what did all of that mean? It was just like her last 'message': incomprehensible.
Unable to think more about that matter, Nate decided to take a lunch break, because it was already approaching noon. He got up from his chair and left his room, walking slowly down the hallway, saluting some of his friends. He reached the kitchen a few moments later and found it empty except for his old buddy, Max, floating cross-legged above a chair, scooping up the last remains of a small Ben and Jerry chocolate ice-cream pot.
"Hi, Nate," he said, passing his tongue on his chocolate covered lips. "How are ya doing?"
"Great, just great," Nate said, his hands in his pockets, leaning on the wall. "Long time no see, hun?"
"Yep," Max said, sniggering. "Where did you go?"
"Boff . . . I moved around a little," Nathan answered vaguely. "I have a little problem for you."
"Shoot," he said, dropping the now empty pot on the counter.
"If a kid tells you stuff you don't understand, how do you do to try and figure it out?"
Max raised his eyebrows, wondering what kind of problem Nate was trying to solve.
"A kid . . . like, a five year old kid?" he asked, receiving a nod for answer. "Well . . . a kid doesn't use the right words most of the time . . . you probably would need to find synonyms or something, for some of the words . . ."
Max paused a moment, Nathan leaning forward, interested in hearing what he thought. There was a moment of silence, broken by Nate's scream of surprise. Kitty had just walked thought the wall and through him at the same time, and had appeared in front of him, a wide smile on her face.
"Don't do that!" Nathan let out. "You can't just . . . walk through people like that!"
Kitty laughed.
"Actually, I can," she said mockingly. "It's called 'my mutation'."
Nathan shook his head in disapproval while Max called out Kitty's name to catch her attention.
"How do you understand unintelligible stuff that a five year old tells you?" he asked.
"Euh . . . who would like to know?" she asked, giggling.
"Nathan, actually," Max said, smiling. "What's your theory?"
"Boff . . . you listen and mix it up to end with something you understand, a guess. What type of question is that?"
Nathan stayed silent for a moment, thinking about what Destiny had told him.
"You know what?" he said finally, turning to his friends. "Come with me, I want to show you guys something."
Nathan brought them both back to his room, and they settled down on his bed while he sat in front of his computer, and entered a new website.
"Okay, lets try this," he said. "It a kid told you she was asleep, how could you translate it?"
". . . I don't understand what you're trying to do, here," Max said, still floating in the air, like he did everywhere he went. "If a little kid tells you he's asleep, he's lying because he's talking to you at the moment. I that what you mean?"
"No," Nathan said, shaking his head. "Lets say . . . I don't know . . . you were trying to understand . . . I don't know . . . a person who has a mental problem, maybe . . . how do you translate what he's saying? If he's saying 'I'm asleep', what could that person mean by that?"
"Okay . . . sleeping . . . hum . . . like, not awake . . ." Kitty tried to guess. "Not . . . conscious . . ."
"Unconscious! In coma!" Max said, playing with words. "Maybe that person is in coma."
"Yes!" Nathan exclaimed happily. "Let me try that."
He searched for little girls under seven in a state of coma, and narrowed his search exclusively in the United States. He came around with about forty children. The rest of these cases weren't talked about.
"What are you doing?" Kitty asked looking over his shoulder.
"A little research," he answered. "On something I was told. But I don't think you need to stay anymore, you can go."
Kitty and Max didn't argue, seeing that he was already absorbed in his work. Kitty walked through the wall after saying bye and Max flew out the window to go play basketball with the others outside.
Nathan was already in his own little world when they left, clicking on a couple of links to try and find something with more valuable information. But then it clicked: There was something important he had forgotten to specify in his demand. He rolled the page upwards and retyped a new demand: *mutant* girls under the age of seven in a state of coma, in the United Sates.
He waited a few moments but nothing appeared, and he figured that there was no one by that description, thus the little girl going by the name of Destiny was possibly not in a state of coma. He tried to reach the last page that he had seen, but the computer looked frozen. He waited for a moment but nothing happened. Finally, after two to three minutes of waiting, a black page appeared. Writing soon appeared, and Nate's eyes widened as he realized that he was on a governmental page on the subject he was looking for. It was an Internet page on what the government was going about the 'mutant problem'. There was another square in which you were supposed to write what you were looking for. Nathan typed the same thing he had on the previous site, but this time, a page appeared, on mutants of all ages that were in coma, due to many different causes. Some were in coma because of operations gone wrong, others because of their mutations, and a few were purposely in coma because the government figured that they were too dangerous to be kept in captivity.
Nathan kept on searching. He found, without too much trouble, some information about mutant children, and was horrified to see that more than one hundred youngsters were in mutant facilities, where humans were trying to 'help' them. Most of them had entered these facilities thanks to their parents. Nathan frowned.
Half of the afternoon passed and he was still looking for his mystery girl when the four o'clock bell rang through the hallways. It was close to five thirty when something interesting caught his eye. A black and white picture of a little girl in a white nightgown. At first, she had seemed oddly familiar, but she wasn't Destiny. She was an illusion a mutant codenamed Mutant 143 was able to create in one's mind. He also had the gift of creating many other illusions thanks to his mind, but he wasn't the type of mutant to come and live at the mansion. He was a mutant ashamed of being what he is, and by that, he used his mutation to harm people. That was why he had been used as a test subject in a lab, somewhere in Northern Canada. Nothing else was said about him.
Nothing else was said about mutant children in a coma. The only choice left was that Destiny wasn't in a coma.
Growling, Nathan pushed himself back in his chair. He had searched all day, yet no answers came. No answers would ever come if he stayed in front of his computer screen, waiting for unspoken words to appear. He needed to go back home.
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Nathan descended to the professor's office and knocked on the door, as he always did. As always, he received an answer almost immediately, and entered. He saluted the professor and walked to one of the chairs in which he sat down. He instantly jumped to the subject he wanted to talk about.
"Professor, what happens when a psychic falls into coma?" he asked quickly.
The professor stayed silent a moment, probably wondering why he was asking a question like that.
"Well, it depends," the professor started. "Their mind is separated from their body, and so, some might wander into other minds, but it isn't very frequent. Another thing that could happen is that the psychic is stuck out of his or her body, and needs help from another psychic to re-enter their body. According to my studies, most of them are stuck in their own body, their mind being separated from everything and so they end up dieing very quickly, or have no chance of waking up."
"Professor, you must remember . . . that psychic that comes in my head when I sleep?" he started. "Well . . . in her last message . . . she told me more things, including that her name was Destiny, and assured me that she didn't work for Magneto or anyone else. She told me quite shocking things like . . . her being asleep, locked in a basement somewhere."
The professor frowned.
"Locked up?" he asked. "Dear . . . well. I guess we should investigate then. But I'm telling you right now, I don't like this 'Destiny' too much, and I can assure you that she isn't at all in a coma, even if it was what it thought in the begging too."
Nathan asked why he disliked her, wondering how the professor could despise that enjoyable little girl.
"She's been sneaking around some of the school resident's minds during the night, when they sleep," the professor said. "She's been doing it for some time and knows what she's doing. I think she's looking for something and I don't believe that she's not working for anyone, or else she wouldn't sneak around that way, clearly avoiding my mind because she knows I can stop her."
" . . . But . . . I need to find out what she's been telling me," Nate said. "I need to ask a few questions to my parents about her, and I was thinking about giving them a visit . . .Can Scott bring me to my town with the jet?"
The professor didn't answer very quickly, but finished by accepting.
"Scott and Ororo will accompany you there," he said. "And be careful."
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Thirty minutes later, Cyclops was conducting the jet above the clouds while Storm was creating some fog to mask their passage. Nathan was sitting in the back, wondering what he was going to say to his parents. Maybe showing up without any word to them for nearly a year wasn't a very good idea. Maybe he should have called first, but now, he couldn't do anything.
Barely an hour and a half later, the jet landed in Ontario, in a forest not too far away from his home. Scott was to stay in the jet and Ororo was to come with Nate, to make sure he would be all right.
They walked about a mile and a half, and reached Nathan's house, located at number twenty White Edge Lane. Nathan noticed that two cars were parked in front of his house, which meant that his father was there. Maybe he had decided to stay at home after Nathan's disappearance.
Ororo decided to wait outside, letting Nathan walk to the door alone.
Anxious, Nate didn't hurry in crossing the street and stood a few seconds in front of his home before finally marching to the entrance. He heard Pegasus start barking inside before he had even knocked, and had a feeling that his dog could catch his scent. Footsteps were heard inside and the door opened, revealing Nathan's mother. Nate would have sworn that his heart stopped beating for a moment as he saw his mom, and he could almost feel tears form behind his eyes. He just wanted to hug her.
She looked at Nathan normally for a second, before realizing who it was. Her eyes narrowed and a nervous frown appeared on her face.
"Nathaniel?" she asked, tilting her head and making Nathan's feeble smile disappear instantly.
Shayleen Cage *never* called her son by his full first name, and Nathan knew that it meant that he wasn't welcomed, even if she pretended to be somewhat happy to see him. Nate's look saddened.
"Come in," she said, her voice lightly shaky, moving aside to let him pass.
Nathan walked in and noticed that nothing had really changed since his departure. Only one thing had changed, and it broke his heart to notice it: the pictures of him as a child had been removed from the walls.
"W . . . why don't you come and take a bite?" Shayleen continued, playing with her hands, eyeing her son that had grown taller than her during his absence. "Your father and I were just about to eat."
"Sure," Nate mumbled, looking around.
He didn't take the time to take off his shoes and walked towards the dinning room, and saw his father eating at the end of the table. He looked up when he saw that his wife had let someone enter, and dropped his spoon when he recognized his son. He rose, his chair falling to the ground with a clacking noise, and the second later, he was hugging his boy, tears in his eyes.
When they finally let go, Nate's father looked at him with half a smile on his face. He whipped a tear that had slid down his cheek and motioned Nathan to sit.
"How are you doing?" he asked immediately, picking up his chair and sitting closer to where Nathan had taken place. "Do you have everything you need? Are you coming back home?"
"I . . . I'm fine," Nathan mumbled. "I live at a school . . . for people like me. I'm continuing my studies, and -"
"Why did you come back?" Shayleen interrupted, her fist hitting the table. "You're a mutant! I don't want you in my house!"
"Mom!" Nathan yelled, his eyes flashing purple as he tried to control himself. "Fuck, I just came here to talk!"
Nathan almost heard his father tell him to watch his language since it was so familiar to hear him say that, but nothing was heard and his parents stayed silent.
He sat back down, so did his father and his mother followed, sitting in front of him.
"I see that you're both doing well," he started, seeing that they were both waiting for him to talk. "And I've been doing not too bad too. I came back because I needed to ask you if you knew something about . . . a little girl who says she knows me."
His parents looked at each other then back at him.
"Since she knows me, I guessed that she would probably know you . . . " Nate trailed off. "Do you know any girls below the age of six who are in a coma?"
"No we don't," Shayleen answered, shaking her head. "What kind of question is that? We don't know anything about you! Why can't you go away with your own sort and leave us alone? You're not part of this family anymore!"
"Nathan, come with me," Nate's father , Philip, interrupted, getting up from his seat to get away from his wife. Nathan rose and followed him out the room, passed the back door to end up in the street a few moments later.
They walked in silence up to the local store, and there, they both bought a drink. Nate took a coke and his father simply took a bottle of water. They started walking again.
"You have to excuse her, Nate," Philip finally said. "You know how she hates mutants."
"But dad . . . I'm her son," Nathan whispered, looking at his feet. "Acting like that is simply inhuman. And what am I supposed to think after this? Doesn't she know that I didn't ask to become a mutant? Doesn't she know that it's harder for me than for her?"
"Nathan . . . there is another reason . . . to why she is acting so harshly," his father said. "But we swore to never tell you from the moment we got you. We knew from the beginning that you were going to be special. You never cried, you understood everything, you never had fits. You were a kid mothers wished to have, but you still had your little particularities that you managed to hide some way."
Nathan looked up at his father, wondering where this conversation was going.
"Nathan . . . you never really were part of the Cage family," his father continued as Nate made a questioning sound. "You see . . . You were in our hearts, but besides that . . . no, wait that's a bad start . . . You see, When your mother and I got married, we discovered that she couldn't have any children . . . and so . . . since we really wanted a child . . . we . . . we . . . we adopted you."
Nathan spit out the gulp of coca-cola he had just taken, and looked up at his father wide-eyed, backing up in surprise.
"WHAT? . . . no . . . just no . . . wha- man, that is a REALLY bad joke," Nathan yelled and mumbled, still backing away from the man he had considered his father for all those years. "NO!"
"I'm sorry Nate, it's just that now . . . when you became a mutant . . . she didn't want you," Philip said. "But don't be mad, I'm still your father and you . . ."
Nathan didn't get to hear the rest as he started running in the opposite direction. He ran to his house, nearly broke down the door and entered. His 'mother' was sitting in the living room.
"Get out Nathan!" she yelled angrily. "People from the Mutant Detention Facility are coming to pick you up."
Nathan's eyes immediately turned amethyst and Shayleen saw with her own eyes the boy's skin and hair become of a darker tone, Before she knew what had happened, she saw some sort of dagger come out of his wrist. He made a step forwards and she screamed as he threw his weapon and broke ornaments on the table.
The next half hour was a blur in her mind. The MDF agents had arrived and Nathan had grew even angrier than before. He fought them, received hits that never seemed to affect him, and used whatever was coming out of his wrists to destroy everything in the room. One of the agents was killed, two were sent to the hospital in an extremely critical condition. When his father arrived, before ambulances had arrived to pick up the agents, he was waiting at the door, bruised, beaten and bleeding. His eyes had turned back to green and he looked sad. He gave him a simple good bye and walked away before he could be stopped.
Nathan knew where Ororo was waiting and made a detour in order not to see her. He arrived in the woods and started running. Moments that seemed hours for him passed, and he finally stopped just as it started raining. Kneeling in the mud, stopping his healing factor, he let his wounds harm him as he cried, cried until the pain was too strong to fight, and he let himself fall into unconsciousness.
Before slipping into sleep, he heard Destiny back in his head again.
"You know the truth . . . don't cry . . . now come and save me . . . please . . ."
But this time, Nathan ignored her call. All he could feel was pain, physically, mentally and spiritually. And all he heard besides the rain falling on the leaves of the forest, was the cracking of his back, piercing his shoulders savagely.
He wanted to be left alone. He didn't want relieve.
He let the pain consume him.
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Cliff-hanger. muahahahahah
The end is coming soon! Chapter 40 is coming! Review review review!
Harry Potter is out (go read it it's really cool and I think it's one of my favourites). I'll spend my time reading it, and after that, I most probably will do a Harry Potter fic. Maybe I'll enter my Matrix fic, I'm not sure yet. I'm working on a short Ororo/Beast fic, if you're interested in knowing . . . I also have a few medium size X-Men fics that will come out this summer. School is over, so I'll have plenty of time to write, and so don't worry about my up dates 'cuz I'm about to spend two moths between my computer under the gazebo and my pool. No cool vacation for me this summer. Oh well. At least I can say I'm going to tour Italy with my friends (ya know, school outing) in April (so far away . . .)
Thanks to all my reviewers, I love you all:
Blaze: Your reviews are always fun
Little angel: You live in New Zealand (¬_¬) . . . you are so darn lucky.
Brushfire: The "Next Generation" stuff is in the sequel. As for your deduction about Destiny being in coma, it's not the right answer but your close . . . muahahah. You fell in the trap (but you're surly not the only one)!
Xdivas: Yeah . . . I want you gals to update your story!
JustandalwaysMo: Yay! At least you seem interested in the sequel! Oh . . . and there are, *koff koff*, many O/Cs in the sequel. Nathan won't be the main character (but he still has a big role). In fact, he wasn't even supposed to be the main character in *this* story.
Tigereyes: Thanks, and sorry about your exams . . . mine were *all right* . . . go figure.
Prostar99: I really like Destiny too! I can't wait until you all realize what and who she is!
~Now, here's a very long chapter with full of stuff to make you all happy
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Chapter 37: Unwanted Reality
Nathan leaned back in his chair, chewing on his already half grind up pencil. His available hand clicked the mouse and dragged it down the computer screen in front of him for him to be able to read the rest of the newspaper clipping he had found on the Internet.
He sighed, and passed his hand in his hair again while he folded his legs beneath himself. Throwing his pencil on a notebook filled with his notes, he leaned forward and tapped a new Internet address in the specified bar. Soon enough, another page appeared. He rolled down the page and tapped in a blank research square the words 'genuine forecasting dreams'.
He spent the next twenty minutes reading articles on that subject, but nothing he found was truly interesting, or similar to the dream he had had. Nothing talked about a little girl talking to you in your dreams.
Nathan thought about everything she had said. First, she had asked why he left, then had told him about her being asleep and her mother waking her up. She was shocked he didn't recognize her, and said that she talked to her father in the same way, but that he didn't understand. She said she was real, but unreal because she was still asleep. She kept saying that she was ready to wake up . . . that he needed to save her, that she was afraid . . . she talked to other people because she had 'nothing else to do' . . . She caught other mutants' brainwaves . . . she was locked in a basement . . . her mother had faith that she was going to be able to wake her soon . . . She also said that she was there to fight for mutants. The 'New Generation', she had said . . . what did all of that mean? It was just like her last 'message': incomprehensible.
Unable to think more about that matter, Nate decided to take a lunch break, because it was already approaching noon. He got up from his chair and left his room, walking slowly down the hallway, saluting some of his friends. He reached the kitchen a few moments later and found it empty except for his old buddy, Max, floating cross-legged above a chair, scooping up the last remains of a small Ben and Jerry chocolate ice-cream pot.
"Hi, Nate," he said, passing his tongue on his chocolate covered lips. "How are ya doing?"
"Great, just great," Nate said, his hands in his pockets, leaning on the wall. "Long time no see, hun?"
"Yep," Max said, sniggering. "Where did you go?"
"Boff . . . I moved around a little," Nathan answered vaguely. "I have a little problem for you."
"Shoot," he said, dropping the now empty pot on the counter.
"If a kid tells you stuff you don't understand, how do you do to try and figure it out?"
Max raised his eyebrows, wondering what kind of problem Nate was trying to solve.
"A kid . . . like, a five year old kid?" he asked, receiving a nod for answer. "Well . . . a kid doesn't use the right words most of the time . . . you probably would need to find synonyms or something, for some of the words . . ."
Max paused a moment, Nathan leaning forward, interested in hearing what he thought. There was a moment of silence, broken by Nate's scream of surprise. Kitty had just walked thought the wall and through him at the same time, and had appeared in front of him, a wide smile on her face.
"Don't do that!" Nathan let out. "You can't just . . . walk through people like that!"
Kitty laughed.
"Actually, I can," she said mockingly. "It's called 'my mutation'."
Nathan shook his head in disapproval while Max called out Kitty's name to catch her attention.
"How do you understand unintelligible stuff that a five year old tells you?" he asked.
"Euh . . . who would like to know?" she asked, giggling.
"Nathan, actually," Max said, smiling. "What's your theory?"
"Boff . . . you listen and mix it up to end with something you understand, a guess. What type of question is that?"
Nathan stayed silent for a moment, thinking about what Destiny had told him.
"You know what?" he said finally, turning to his friends. "Come with me, I want to show you guys something."
Nathan brought them both back to his room, and they settled down on his bed while he sat in front of his computer, and entered a new website.
"Okay, lets try this," he said. "It a kid told you she was asleep, how could you translate it?"
". . . I don't understand what you're trying to do, here," Max said, still floating in the air, like he did everywhere he went. "If a little kid tells you he's asleep, he's lying because he's talking to you at the moment. I that what you mean?"
"No," Nathan said, shaking his head. "Lets say . . . I don't know . . . you were trying to understand . . . I don't know . . . a person who has a mental problem, maybe . . . how do you translate what he's saying? If he's saying 'I'm asleep', what could that person mean by that?"
"Okay . . . sleeping . . . hum . . . like, not awake . . ." Kitty tried to guess. "Not . . . conscious . . ."
"Unconscious! In coma!" Max said, playing with words. "Maybe that person is in coma."
"Yes!" Nathan exclaimed happily. "Let me try that."
He searched for little girls under seven in a state of coma, and narrowed his search exclusively in the United States. He came around with about forty children. The rest of these cases weren't talked about.
"What are you doing?" Kitty asked looking over his shoulder.
"A little research," he answered. "On something I was told. But I don't think you need to stay anymore, you can go."
Kitty and Max didn't argue, seeing that he was already absorbed in his work. Kitty walked through the wall after saying bye and Max flew out the window to go play basketball with the others outside.
Nathan was already in his own little world when they left, clicking on a couple of links to try and find something with more valuable information. But then it clicked: There was something important he had forgotten to specify in his demand. He rolled the page upwards and retyped a new demand: *mutant* girls under the age of seven in a state of coma, in the United Sates.
He waited a few moments but nothing appeared, and he figured that there was no one by that description, thus the little girl going by the name of Destiny was possibly not in a state of coma. He tried to reach the last page that he had seen, but the computer looked frozen. He waited for a moment but nothing happened. Finally, after two to three minutes of waiting, a black page appeared. Writing soon appeared, and Nate's eyes widened as he realized that he was on a governmental page on the subject he was looking for. It was an Internet page on what the government was going about the 'mutant problem'. There was another square in which you were supposed to write what you were looking for. Nathan typed the same thing he had on the previous site, but this time, a page appeared, on mutants of all ages that were in coma, due to many different causes. Some were in coma because of operations gone wrong, others because of their mutations, and a few were purposely in coma because the government figured that they were too dangerous to be kept in captivity.
Nathan kept on searching. He found, without too much trouble, some information about mutant children, and was horrified to see that more than one hundred youngsters were in mutant facilities, where humans were trying to 'help' them. Most of them had entered these facilities thanks to their parents. Nathan frowned.
Half of the afternoon passed and he was still looking for his mystery girl when the four o'clock bell rang through the hallways. It was close to five thirty when something interesting caught his eye. A black and white picture of a little girl in a white nightgown. At first, she had seemed oddly familiar, but she wasn't Destiny. She was an illusion a mutant codenamed Mutant 143 was able to create in one's mind. He also had the gift of creating many other illusions thanks to his mind, but he wasn't the type of mutant to come and live at the mansion. He was a mutant ashamed of being what he is, and by that, he used his mutation to harm people. That was why he had been used as a test subject in a lab, somewhere in Northern Canada. Nothing else was said about him.
Nothing else was said about mutant children in a coma. The only choice left was that Destiny wasn't in a coma.
Growling, Nathan pushed himself back in his chair. He had searched all day, yet no answers came. No answers would ever come if he stayed in front of his computer screen, waiting for unspoken words to appear. He needed to go back home.
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Nathan descended to the professor's office and knocked on the door, as he always did. As always, he received an answer almost immediately, and entered. He saluted the professor and walked to one of the chairs in which he sat down. He instantly jumped to the subject he wanted to talk about.
"Professor, what happens when a psychic falls into coma?" he asked quickly.
The professor stayed silent a moment, probably wondering why he was asking a question like that.
"Well, it depends," the professor started. "Their mind is separated from their body, and so, some might wander into other minds, but it isn't very frequent. Another thing that could happen is that the psychic is stuck out of his or her body, and needs help from another psychic to re-enter their body. According to my studies, most of them are stuck in their own body, their mind being separated from everything and so they end up dieing very quickly, or have no chance of waking up."
"Professor, you must remember . . . that psychic that comes in my head when I sleep?" he started. "Well . . . in her last message . . . she told me more things, including that her name was Destiny, and assured me that she didn't work for Magneto or anyone else. She told me quite shocking things like . . . her being asleep, locked in a basement somewhere."
The professor frowned.
"Locked up?" he asked. "Dear . . . well. I guess we should investigate then. But I'm telling you right now, I don't like this 'Destiny' too much, and I can assure you that she isn't at all in a coma, even if it was what it thought in the begging too."
Nathan asked why he disliked her, wondering how the professor could despise that enjoyable little girl.
"She's been sneaking around some of the school resident's minds during the night, when they sleep," the professor said. "She's been doing it for some time and knows what she's doing. I think she's looking for something and I don't believe that she's not working for anyone, or else she wouldn't sneak around that way, clearly avoiding my mind because she knows I can stop her."
" . . . But . . . I need to find out what she's been telling me," Nate said. "I need to ask a few questions to my parents about her, and I was thinking about giving them a visit . . .Can Scott bring me to my town with the jet?"
The professor didn't answer very quickly, but finished by accepting.
"Scott and Ororo will accompany you there," he said. "And be careful."
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Thirty minutes later, Cyclops was conducting the jet above the clouds while Storm was creating some fog to mask their passage. Nathan was sitting in the back, wondering what he was going to say to his parents. Maybe showing up without any word to them for nearly a year wasn't a very good idea. Maybe he should have called first, but now, he couldn't do anything.
Barely an hour and a half later, the jet landed in Ontario, in a forest not too far away from his home. Scott was to stay in the jet and Ororo was to come with Nate, to make sure he would be all right.
They walked about a mile and a half, and reached Nathan's house, located at number twenty White Edge Lane. Nathan noticed that two cars were parked in front of his house, which meant that his father was there. Maybe he had decided to stay at home after Nathan's disappearance.
Ororo decided to wait outside, letting Nathan walk to the door alone.
Anxious, Nate didn't hurry in crossing the street and stood a few seconds in front of his home before finally marching to the entrance. He heard Pegasus start barking inside before he had even knocked, and had a feeling that his dog could catch his scent. Footsteps were heard inside and the door opened, revealing Nathan's mother. Nate would have sworn that his heart stopped beating for a moment as he saw his mom, and he could almost feel tears form behind his eyes. He just wanted to hug her.
She looked at Nathan normally for a second, before realizing who it was. Her eyes narrowed and a nervous frown appeared on her face.
"Nathaniel?" she asked, tilting her head and making Nathan's feeble smile disappear instantly.
Shayleen Cage *never* called her son by his full first name, and Nathan knew that it meant that he wasn't welcomed, even if she pretended to be somewhat happy to see him. Nate's look saddened.
"Come in," she said, her voice lightly shaky, moving aside to let him pass.
Nathan walked in and noticed that nothing had really changed since his departure. Only one thing had changed, and it broke his heart to notice it: the pictures of him as a child had been removed from the walls.
"W . . . why don't you come and take a bite?" Shayleen continued, playing with her hands, eyeing her son that had grown taller than her during his absence. "Your father and I were just about to eat."
"Sure," Nate mumbled, looking around.
He didn't take the time to take off his shoes and walked towards the dinning room, and saw his father eating at the end of the table. He looked up when he saw that his wife had let someone enter, and dropped his spoon when he recognized his son. He rose, his chair falling to the ground with a clacking noise, and the second later, he was hugging his boy, tears in his eyes.
When they finally let go, Nate's father looked at him with half a smile on his face. He whipped a tear that had slid down his cheek and motioned Nathan to sit.
"How are you doing?" he asked immediately, picking up his chair and sitting closer to where Nathan had taken place. "Do you have everything you need? Are you coming back home?"
"I . . . I'm fine," Nathan mumbled. "I live at a school . . . for people like me. I'm continuing my studies, and -"
"Why did you come back?" Shayleen interrupted, her fist hitting the table. "You're a mutant! I don't want you in my house!"
"Mom!" Nathan yelled, his eyes flashing purple as he tried to control himself. "Fuck, I just came here to talk!"
Nathan almost heard his father tell him to watch his language since it was so familiar to hear him say that, but nothing was heard and his parents stayed silent.
He sat back down, so did his father and his mother followed, sitting in front of him.
"I see that you're both doing well," he started, seeing that they were both waiting for him to talk. "And I've been doing not too bad too. I came back because I needed to ask you if you knew something about . . . a little girl who says she knows me."
His parents looked at each other then back at him.
"Since she knows me, I guessed that she would probably know you . . . " Nate trailed off. "Do you know any girls below the age of six who are in a coma?"
"No we don't," Shayleen answered, shaking her head. "What kind of question is that? We don't know anything about you! Why can't you go away with your own sort and leave us alone? You're not part of this family anymore!"
"Nathan, come with me," Nate's father , Philip, interrupted, getting up from his seat to get away from his wife. Nathan rose and followed him out the room, passed the back door to end up in the street a few moments later.
They walked in silence up to the local store, and there, they both bought a drink. Nate took a coke and his father simply took a bottle of water. They started walking again.
"You have to excuse her, Nate," Philip finally said. "You know how she hates mutants."
"But dad . . . I'm her son," Nathan whispered, looking at his feet. "Acting like that is simply inhuman. And what am I supposed to think after this? Doesn't she know that I didn't ask to become a mutant? Doesn't she know that it's harder for me than for her?"
"Nathan . . . there is another reason . . . to why she is acting so harshly," his father said. "But we swore to never tell you from the moment we got you. We knew from the beginning that you were going to be special. You never cried, you understood everything, you never had fits. You were a kid mothers wished to have, but you still had your little particularities that you managed to hide some way."
Nathan looked up at his father, wondering where this conversation was going.
"Nathan . . . you never really were part of the Cage family," his father continued as Nate made a questioning sound. "You see . . . You were in our hearts, but besides that . . . no, wait that's a bad start . . . You see, When your mother and I got married, we discovered that she couldn't have any children . . . and so . . . since we really wanted a child . . . we . . . we . . . we adopted you."
Nathan spit out the gulp of coca-cola he had just taken, and looked up at his father wide-eyed, backing up in surprise.
"WHAT? . . . no . . . just no . . . wha- man, that is a REALLY bad joke," Nathan yelled and mumbled, still backing away from the man he had considered his father for all those years. "NO!"
"I'm sorry Nate, it's just that now . . . when you became a mutant . . . she didn't want you," Philip said. "But don't be mad, I'm still your father and you . . ."
Nathan didn't get to hear the rest as he started running in the opposite direction. He ran to his house, nearly broke down the door and entered. His 'mother' was sitting in the living room.
"Get out Nathan!" she yelled angrily. "People from the Mutant Detention Facility are coming to pick you up."
Nathan's eyes immediately turned amethyst and Shayleen saw with her own eyes the boy's skin and hair become of a darker tone, Before she knew what had happened, she saw some sort of dagger come out of his wrist. He made a step forwards and she screamed as he threw his weapon and broke ornaments on the table.
The next half hour was a blur in her mind. The MDF agents had arrived and Nathan had grew even angrier than before. He fought them, received hits that never seemed to affect him, and used whatever was coming out of his wrists to destroy everything in the room. One of the agents was killed, two were sent to the hospital in an extremely critical condition. When his father arrived, before ambulances had arrived to pick up the agents, he was waiting at the door, bruised, beaten and bleeding. His eyes had turned back to green and he looked sad. He gave him a simple good bye and walked away before he could be stopped.
Nathan knew where Ororo was waiting and made a detour in order not to see her. He arrived in the woods and started running. Moments that seemed hours for him passed, and he finally stopped just as it started raining. Kneeling in the mud, stopping his healing factor, he let his wounds harm him as he cried, cried until the pain was too strong to fight, and he let himself fall into unconsciousness.
Before slipping into sleep, he heard Destiny back in his head again.
"You know the truth . . . don't cry . . . now come and save me . . . please . . ."
But this time, Nathan ignored her call. All he could feel was pain, physically, mentally and spiritually. And all he heard besides the rain falling on the leaves of the forest, was the cracking of his back, piercing his shoulders savagely.
He wanted to be left alone. He didn't want relieve.
He let the pain consume him.
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Cliff-hanger. muahahahahah
The end is coming soon! Chapter 40 is coming! Review review review!