Here is another chapter for all you readers!

plutospawn & Peloton - thank you for the great reviews!!!!!

Karakin - thanks for the review and I will try and explain more about Shelby and some of the other characters in the next chapter.

Crovan & GhostoftheRobotIsDead & preciousbabyblue - Come back!!!!!!!! :- (

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Chapter 5

The snow silently covered the newly formed Alkali Lake and the ground around it like a blanket. The beauty of the scene seemed to try and hide the many horrible things that had once gone on in the buildings that used to surround the lake before the dam broke. The cloak of white concealed the many people who had died in the making and the destroying of the dam.

A quiet crunching sound was heard as the old ford truck slowly made its way down the road that passed by Alkali Lake. Jake Stevens stopped the truck and got out. As he looked around he wondered why he had decided to drive here. The wilderness looked peaceful and serene. I seemed like a nice place to die.

Jake grabbed his pistol from the seat next to him and walked slowly towards the edge of the chilly lake. As he look across it he reflected on his life...

----------Sixteen years ago ---------- -

Jake and his wife had been delighted when the doctor had told him that his wife was going to have a baby. It had been a surprise since his wife, Mary-Ann, was almost forty and he was fifty. Never the less, seven months later a beautiful baby boy became a new addition to the Stevens household. His name was Eric and he was the couples pride and joy.

Fourteen years later and they were still a happy family, sort of. Eric had started the 'teen years' but was relatively a good kid. His parents were getting older but they were in good shape for their age. Then every thing had changed. Eric had changed.

-----------Flashback to July 4----- ----

"Honey, You have to come out of your room. Don't you want to see the fire works?" pleaded Mary-Ann. She sh ook her head, why was she talking to a door? Why had her son retreated to his room and refused to leave? They should not have let this go so far. Some thing was really wrong.

"Leave me alone mom. I never want to leave this room again!" was the sad reply that came from the other side of the locked oak door.

"Come on Eric," she pleaded, "You love the fireworks."

"I can see them fine from in here."

"No you can't, your window faces south and the fireworks are to the north. Why won't you come out?" A tear slipped out of the older woman's eye.

"I am a freak. I have become a freak." Eric's voice was filled with sorrow and hate.

"You are not a freak, you are the cutest boy on the block! We used to have to beat the girls away from the door. Come on out, your father and I love you."

"No you wouldn't. You would hate me...I hate you, this is all your fault, I HATE you." Eric was angry and his mother could hear him pacing around his room.

"That is it young man. Jake, come over here and take this door off its hinges." Ordered an angry Mary-Ann.

"Sure." As Jake walked over there the door to their son's room opened to reveal something they had never suspected.

Their son had mutated. His eye's had become all black and his fingers had webbed together .He was taller then they remembered and his backbone jutted out in an inhuman way. He looked accusingly at them as they made an involuntary gasp.

"This is all your fault Dad. I read it on the Internet, only the father can pass on the X-gene and you made me like this!" Eric ran past his shocked parents and jumped his used car and drove out of the garage. He did not see his father jump into the family's truck and follow him.

Ssssssssssssss..................BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 The night sky light up as blue and green sparks filled the sky. With a thunderous boom the fire works show had begun!

Eric glanced from the road and looked at the sky for a moment. Unfortunately so did the slightly drunk man driving the other way.



The two cars hit each other with a defining crunch and Eric was thrown
from the car. He hit the ground hard and you could hear his bones
crack. He lay crumpled on the ground and did not move.

Jake was watching his worst nightmare; his son just got catapulted out on to the road after some jerk hit him. Jake leaped out of his car and ran to where his son lay. He kneeled down and held his dieing son in his arms as the beautiful fireworks light up the clear night sky.

The driver of the other car leapt out of his own car in horror. "I hit somebody! I can't believe I hit a per... Monster! Damn mutant hit me." The man yelled as he jumped back into his car and roared off.


Jake held his only son and wept.

---------End flashback----------------

The snow started falling again but Jake did not feel the cold. It will be better this way, he reasoned, or at least a whole lot easier. He started to raise he gun to his head but then stopped.

He quickly did a double take. Something was lying on the shore covered in snow. It was mere luck that had caused his to see it. Hurriedly he ran over there and gingerly rolled whatever it was on its side with his foot.

He was stunned by what he saw. A woman with shockingly red hair, who moments become had appeared quite died, coughed and started to take shallow breaths. She wore, what appeared to be, the remains of a leather outfit.

Jake immediately forgot his plans of suicide and gathered the woman up in his arms. He carried her to his truck, turned on the heat and drove to his house.

Jake stumbled into his small one-story house with the girl on his arms. "Mary! Call David. This girl needs medical attention!"

Mary-Ann took one look at the girl and picked up the phone.

--------- One hour later---------

"Well Jake, I have some good news and some bad news." Informed the Steven's doctor friend, David. "She will live. That fact alone is quite extraordinary since a human would have frozen to death long before you found her."

"Then how is it that she is still alive?" Questioned Marry-Ann.

"That is the bad news. This young woman appears to be a mutant even though physically she looks normal aside from her orange eyes." Answered David.

"So do you have any idea what her mutation is?" wondered Jake and he squeezed his wife's shoulders.

"I would be impassible to tell with out her actually giving us a demonstration. Her brain appears to have partially shut down do to the amount of stress it had been under before you found her. Because of this she seems to be displaying a strange form of autism and is mute."

"So what are our choices?" Questioned the couple.

"There are not many, since she is a mutant she might be sent to an insane asylum where she would be put in a padded room and a straight jacket. That would be if she was very lucky." David looked sadly at his friends.

"We'll keep her. She will keep our minds off of...Eric. That is if you don't mind Mary." Informed Jake with conviction.

"But Jake, we don't know what to do. How would we handle a twenty year-old kid?" persisted Mary-Ann.

"Lets do it for Eric. We did not have time to show him that we loved him even though he was a mutant. Besides you heard what might happen to her if we don't." persuaded her husband.

"All right but if she is too much for us we will be forced to give her up." Answered Mary-Ann.

"That is very nice of you. I will drop by to give you any help you need. You should check out the library for any books on autism you need." Agreed David as he left their house.

"We'll call her Jeanie." Said Jake as he looked down at the sleeping red head.

"I hope we have not just made a big mistake."

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I know it is a long shot that Jean brought herself back from the dead, but in the comics when she became Phoenix she did just that. (Plus I thought it was sad that she died in the Movie.)

Please review. The more you review the faster I update! ;-p