Author's notes: I do not own ANY of the characters except Justin, Montacera, Struthio, Compy, Raptor, and Plateo; the soon-to-be-revealed cartoon I'm crossover with this universe belongs to Coca-Cola Telecommunications Inc. and DiC Enterprises. The Misfits-universe is set in the "X-Men Evolution" and "G.I. Joe" timelines, both owned by Marvel Comics and Sunbow Entertainment respectively. The original characters of the Misfits: Althea, Xi, Trinity, Blind Master, and Lina Chakram all belong to the wonderfully talented and brilliant fellow fan fiction author, "Red Witch". I am in no way using this story to make money and I hereby acknowledge all facts I have earlier stated. So please for the love of God don't sue me! )

A Light in the Heart of the Misfit

CHAPTER 1: Tears of the Past

"Ew, what is this kid?!" whined a girl sitting nearby.

"Get out of this café, you miserable scamp!!" yelled the burly, mustached proprietor.

"But...but I just wanted to buy something...I'm so hungry," whined the five-year-old Justin, but then another woman sitting nearby lost her temper, and snarling, she took her ceramic mug of hot coffee and threw it hard at Justin's head. Shrieking, the child ducked, but it still managed to graze his forehead painfully, causing it to swell into an ugly, purple bruise which then started to bleed.

"Get this trash out!!" she screeched in a tone of unbelieving anger and fear, "You have no place with respectable folk, you hobo!!"

Justin then started crying.

"But...but I have no place to go," he sobbed pitifully, "Please, I just want something to eat! I have money!"

Now red in the face from fury, the owner of the café grabbed Justin roughly by the collar of his frayed shirt, not caring if he was hurting the young one, roaring, "Get your goddamn hide of my floor, take your filthy money, and never come back to disgrace my store, you little runt!!"

With a cruel shove, the landlord threw Justin onto the pavement outside the café shop, and the child could feel his scraped chin starting to dribble along with his forehead. The skins of his knees were stinging, and his neck still ached from the nails of the fingers that the mustached owner dug into his neck. Still, the boy tried to crawl back into the café, begging for mercy and whining, "Please, I'm so hungry! I just want some food!"

Now at a new level of viciousness, the café owner bared his teeth, bellowing, "GO AWAY, YOU DUMB KID!!!"

Justin didn't expect the man's foot to brutally collide with his stomach, but Justin certainly felt the result. Winded, Justin laid curdled onto the sidewalk, whimpering with pain and hurt as the man spat at him and then left him alone.

Justin then found himself back at the orphanage where he remembered staying from the beginning of his life. He didn't recall ever living anywhere else before that, not that it did much good.

"Where did you pick up this piece of trash?" scorned Mr. Barnes, the headmaster and supervisor of the Cedar Crossroads Orphanage, and the look of disgust and contempt on his face was so demeaning, Justin just tried to shrink closer to the bailiff who found him, but also sickened, the bailiff shoved Justin away roughly, sending him to the wooden floor in a heap.

"Found the vagabond in a dumpster, trying to burrow in the garbage for warmth," he spat with revulsion, as if Justin wasn't anything else but a beggar. Justin shivered with fear as he continued, "Don't see how you're going to get some couple to adopt that brat, though."

"We'll give him two months, then," Mr. Barnes said soothingly before smiling evilly, like a cat cornering its prey, savage and full of sickening anticipation, "If this child can't get any parents to feel sorry for this hopeless charity case, no one would...miss him."

Justin then was surrounded by older kids, both girls and boys, at the orphanage playground. He remembered that no one wanted to play with him, with the girls spreading vicious rumors behind his back and running off, giggling and laughing at his expense. The boys were much more sadistic, with them giving Justin the cold shoulder whenever he tried to join in one of their games to shoving Justin in the dirt to poking him in the middle of the night after curfew during his sleep, constantly tormenting him from having a peaceful rest, to ganging up on Justin and beating him to the ground. Sometimes, the girls stood by, cheering and encouraging more violence. And none of the administrators of the orphanage ever stopped it. And when Justin tried to tell a teacher, she slapped him hard across the face.

"Lies," she hissed as she marched Justin to Barnes office by the ear, tugging painfully, "I should have known to expect nothing but filthy lies from such a piece of ill-forsaken, awful dirt like you! You filthy, horrible piece of waste!!"

Barnes then had Justin remove his shirt and get down on all fours, like an animal, as he took out the slim, smooth, wooden pointer he used for his chalkboard and gave Justin a vicious beating, causing ugly red welts to pop up on Justin's smooth back, like roses of blood or a cherry tree in full bloom.

"It's been only one week, and I can already tell you are nothing but trouble," Barnes panted as he used all of his exertion to bring the pointer down harder and harder on the boy's back, "You soil everyone you meet, like a horrible plague, ruining the potential of every pure and saintly child I have here!! You're nothing but a curse on all decent folk, you stupid, worthless, little horror!!"

It was amazing how Justin thought the words were much, much worse than the whipping he was receiving, even at that young age.

Then Justin found himself wandering the streets, cold, shivering, and soaked to the bone under the dark streets during a heavy rainstorm. Barnes had thrown him out of the orphanage and left the child stranded in an unknown alley. He remembered a police car, doing its evening watch of the neighborhood, stopping when the two police officers inside immediately spotted him, like a pack of hounds closing in on the foxhunt.

"Where the hell do you think you're going, kid?!" growled one policeman as he shone his flashlight painfully into Justin's eyes, blinding the six-year-old. Justin was so scared; he couldn't utter a single word. He just whined and whimpered painfully, cold and sick. The other policeman then lost his temper as he continued staring at the child, as if merely looking at Justin was enough of a reason to hate him. With a flash, Justin felt the adult's hand slap down on his head painfully, sending him reeling on the pavement. Justin tried to scream, but the officer then had his hand tightly wound around the child's throat, strangling him slowly and excruciatingly. Justin tried to struggle and fight, but all he could see was the rage and hate that were blazing from the lawman's eyes, red and dangerous.

Justin didn't remember much after that, but he next became aware that he was riding on something moving, bumping softly every one in a while. The child could see that he was in the back of the police car, and somehow, it was about noon, the sun radiating its hot sunbeams all around. Justin couldn't move, was so tired and sore that even his brain could barely make out a single conscious thought, and all the boy could do was silently cry tears mixed with the blood dripping down his head. Each part of his body was screaming in agonizing fire. Every once in a while, the two policemen would glance behind into the backseat to scowl at the child.

"Think he's still alive after what we did to him?" one asked impassively, as if he was simply discussing the weather.

"He better not. That damn son of a bitch ruined the upholstery with his blood, and it's going to take months to clean and rid this unit of the smell. Dumb mutt! But if he's still kicking, it won't do him any good anyway."

He was no better than a dog. No, he was even worse than a dog. People would actually take pity on an abandoned animal.

Justin then found himself waking up in the middle of a desert, with the sun beating on his neck and heated hair, where the police officers abandoned him. Apparently, they must have driven him for quite a while for Justin felt so dazed and stiff, as if he slept for days. The city was nowhere to be spotted along the horizons, so the grownups must have taken him past the city limits. Lost and alone, Justin tried walking across the desert plains, the heat becoming unbearable as his skin cried and cracked underneath the dried blood, but he had no idea what to do. There was no one around, and there were no houses or buildings for miles. As far as Justin could tell, he was in a wasteland, left behind like a piece of junk. For two days, Justin made his way towards the mountains of the arid region, having no food or water, his throat parched and his stomach growling.

It was night time, with the stars and moon high above, when Justin finally collapsed, now close to death. Justin tried to pick himself up, but he just wanted to die. To pass away so that he wouldn't live with the torment anymore. With the cold temperature of the desert now setting in at freezing and the dry air blanketing him with grime and dust, it would only take a matter of hours. He then remembered hearing someone large and heavy move around him, then two more people, then a crowd. Instinctively, Justin knew, like every person who had ever come across him, that they would kill Justin the instant they set their eyes upon him. This would be it. Motionless and drained, the child could only lie sprawled there, severely weak and almost drowsy with exhaustion and sickness. Something cool and bumpy was softly touching his bloody, sunburned back and neck, then his forehead, and it was a refreshing welcome, so relieving. It didn't hurt at all...for once.

"He's burning with fever, and...he's been...by Reptilion, he's been brutally assaulted!!" a figure said in horror, probably the one handling him.

"Dear mother planet, he's just a child!" gasped a female voice, full of shock.

A set of sharp points were now probing his skin, feeling along Justin's shoulder, his head, and his back. A voice then said in a controlled, cool tone, "Lacerations and bruises everywhere...signs of extreme dehydration...infection has started to set...and I think one of the boy's ribs is severely fractured as well."

"Let me," a deep, baritone yet kind voice said as the hulking form pushed his way through and under the full moon, Justin could see clearly who the figure was, face to face. Justin felt the tears of fear and alarm drip down his cheek again as he could now fully view the creature. It was a huge brown lizard, no, make that a dinosaur, standing on his hind legs and wearing some sort of odd suit, green and gray and blue, that was made of some kind of metal. The dinosaur-man then reached over and picked up the six-year-old boy, cradling him gently, like a tiny bundle of bloody rags in his massive arms. Justin tried to whimper and move away, but the dinosaur held him soothingly, shushing kindly. Being so weak, Justin could only go limp.

"Shhhh, shhh, shhh, it's all right, kid, I'm not going to hurt you," the dinosaur-man said gently, his eyes full of concern and pity, "What's your name, little one? Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you. We're your friends."

Justin then started sobbing as he burrowed his face into the dinosaur's chest, now completely broken.

"It sounds like he really likes you, Allo," one figure commented very wryly and sarcastically.

"Shut up, Tricero," shot back the dinosaur-man in good humor as he continued to hold Justin gently in his arms, cuddling him and soothing him. Justin then opened his eyes to look up to the dinosaur-man, but to his horror, he saw that it was no longer the dinosaur who was holding him, but a human, a tall, strapping man with meticulous brown hair, a trimmed goatee, and the adult was wearing a white robe laced with a hem of the purest silver. Only this time, like all the other people Justin had ever met up with, this man was glaring hatefully at him, and Justin could not even control his own mouth to yell as the man took out a jewel-encrusted obsidian dagger from the sleeve of his garment, the moonlight glinting off the razor-sharp black blade.

"A reckoning, half-breed," the man snarled as he raised the knife over his head, "A reckoning on your sixteenth year of birth!"

Justin's voice then finally found itself fully functional, and Justin screamed with all his might as the weapon plunged into his chest.

Author's note: Well, check back next Friday for the chapter "Bitter Sixteen" and a thousand fan points to whoever can guess which cartoon I'm bringing into Red Witch's Misfit-verse! Hint: it was an 80s cartoon and had a very catchy theme song. Check back next week! Read and review! Constructive criticism welcome! Flames will be ignored and deleted.