Disclaimer: I do not own any Marvel characters; please don't sue me I am a poor college student. I am not making any money off of this and I am just writing it for the benefit of my own entertainment as well as the entertainment of the other fans out there. Also, this is a story from my own imagination, any resemblance to real life events, or even those in fiction is completely coincidental. As an additional note, there are so many fan fiction stories out there on this site as well as others, so any similarity is coincidental or great minds just happen to think alike. I do claim the non-Marvel characters, such as the Williams family and the new offspring of the LeBeau and Summers families. Thanks!
Through the Years
Chapter 34: Of Mythical and Biblical Proportions
Gambit sighed with defeat. He had his lesson for today all planned out, to teach his third period literature class about the mythology of the Phoenix, the bird that would rise from the ashes. After all it was a very famous story so it fit in well with his unit on mythology in general. He didn't take into consideration that his students would rather hear about the legend of their local Phoenix, aka Jean-Grey. So he threw his plan out the window and proceeded to tell them all about the Phoenix saga. He looked over at his daughter to see if she was bored, after all she had heard this story at least a thousand times over the course of her life. In most schools children would not be placed in their parents' class but the Xavier Institute of Education was not as large as a regular school so it really couldn't be helped. None of the X-men teachers played favorites with Jessica, Nathaniel, and David; they expected the same caliber of work from them as any other child in the school. However, times like this, where the students wanted to hear about something the X-men did might prove slightly boring for those three, after all, they had grown-up hearing about the X-men's greatest battles, but in reality they didn't mind hearing the tales over and over again. David didn't mind because he thought they were cool stories and Jessica and Nathaniel loved that these tales were a part of their heritage. While he was telling the saga, Gambit caught his daughter's eye and winked. Jessica winked back. She knew what he was thinking because she thought about it too every time she heard the Phoenix saga…:
One day during a summertime barbeque when she was about three years old, Cyclops had gathered the children together to tell them the story of Phoenix. Since the children were so little they had a hard time understanding that Phoenix and Jean were ultimately two different people since the real Jean had been encapsulated at the bottom of the Hudson during the time of Phoenix. To clarify this in their own little minds they started to call her Jean-nix. It was the only way it made sense to them and it took Jean quite a while to get David to stop calling her Ms. Jean-nix, Jessica to stop calling her Aunt Jean-nix, and even Nathaniel to cease calling her Mommy Jean-nix. After the whole incident with the Jean-nix saga, the X-men waited to tell more complicated stories until the children were a little older.
Professor Xavier was a little nervous at first about allowing David, Jessica, and Nathaniel to attend the Institute. He didn't want the other students treating the children of the X-men differently, nor did he want David to be shunned for being a flatscan. But things worked out better than he had imagined. Not only was David well received by the mutant student body for the role that his father, and now his newly politically active older sister, had served in trying to secure mutant rights, but his own role as an everyday human friend of mutants allowed the students to identify with him. Most of them had their own accepting human friend or friends back home that stuck by them, and David was a symbol of that to them. Jessica also adjusted to the new school quite well, being even more outgoing than she had been at the regular public school. Only Nathaniel had a bit of work to do socially. He had been so use to being at the top of the popularity podium that it took some time to work his way up from the bottom as the new guy. But he eventually found his own niche, starting up a few casual mutant football teams with the other students of the Institute and playing the teams against each other in weekly games. His efforts in starting mutant sports helped build more school spirit, especially among other former athletes like himself who missed the thrill of the game. With the help of Beast, another former mutant athlete, he started to write up special mutant adaptations to popular sports games, hoping to get some teams established in his school, as well as with the few other sanctioned mutant schools Xavier knew of or helped start around the country.
The three of them quickly finished out the rest of junior year, got summer jobs, and proceeded to enjoy senior year of high school at the Institute. They attended sporting events, dances, and other activities together, although when it came to the dances they would always be joined by Nathaniel's flavor of the day as they teased between themselves at Nathaniel seemingly revolving door of girls. His response was always the same: "Look, just because you two found your soulmate right away doesn't mean that everyone else is that lucky! SOME of us need to test the waters before jumping in." That would usually result in someone getting smacked with a pillow or a notebook or getting tackled and a good-natured fight would breakout with all of them bursting into a fit of laughter before it was all over with.
Before they knew it graduation day was upon them, and none of their parents could be prouder when they saw their children receive their diplomas and head onto college. That would be the first time the three youngsters Iceman long ago dubbed the "Diaper-Wearing Trio" would be away from not only their homes but each other. Nathaniel stayed the closest to home; in fact he lived at home and commuted to the local college that Monica Williams, David's mother, taught at. He wanted to say close so that he could continue his training with the X-men. His longtime dreams of becoming a full time member were realized in his first year of college when he was pulled from the ranks of reserve team member to active member. Xavier said that it was on the condition that he put his studies of law enforcement first. Nathaniel felt it was a surreal moment when Xavier called him into his office and made him a fulltime member, presenting him with his own uniform, a black jumpsuit with red trim and the X-men insignia on the left side. It also had a headpiece similar to the one his mother and his Uncle Remy had with their uniforms.
Jessica and David both attending college a little further away, thus they lived away from home. David attended a school in New York renowned for its computer education program and honed the skills that Beast had taught him as a child. He was grateful that he had a girlfriend who could fly, thus she would make trips to his school every couple of weeks to visit him. Jessica went to a liberal arts college in New Jersey that had a good teacher education program. She shared a dorm room with her friend Jane, a girl she knew in regular high school that stuck with her after finding out that she was a mutant.
Time passed quickly as it often does in college and before they knew it three years of college passed and they were home for summer break. Their time was always filled either helping out at the Institute, babysitting the school aged Summers twins or pre-school aged Munroe, or helping David's sister Carlie, who had been politically active for some time now, with her campaign for election in the House of Representatives. At 27 she would be one of the youngest members of Congress since you had to be at least 25 years old, but it didn't hurt that she was a legacy, the child of a former Congressman. And although it was a dangerous move politically, she ran on the same mutant rights platform that her father had so many years ago. One day Nathaniel surprised his friends with their own X-men uniforms, something he and the Professor had been planning for sometime. They might not be active members, but as reserve members it was high time for them to get real uniforms instead of battling in old hand-me-down jumpsuits. David's uniform was similar in style to Nathaniel's only the colors were black with blue trim. David also had a utility belt in which he could keep the various tools needed for missions, such as some of his computer equipment. Jessica received a simple green and black jumpsuit, insulated to help keep her body temperature constant during battles.
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"Jessica, Jessica, come on petite wake up," Remy said as he gently shook his daughter awake. She grumbled something incoherent and rolled over back into dream land. Remy sighed and smiled. Ever since she was a little girl it was impossible to put her to sleep and then impossible to get her up in the morning. "Girl, it's amazin' you get up for classes at school." Sighing again Remy got off the bed and walked to the door, pausing to lean over his shoulder and say, "Well alright you sleep all day, but Uncle Warren will be disappointed dat he missed you."
That achieved the desired result. Jessica quickly shot up, "Poppa, that's today?!"
Remy chuckled, "Jus' get ready, we'll meet you downstairs."
Jessica rushed around to get ready, throwing on the clothing she laid out the night before. She hadn't seen Uncle Warren in years. The multi-millionaire X-men didn't visit that often, but when he did it was always an event to remember. He always had great stories to tell and spoiled all the X-children rotten, making him a favorite for all of them. After having a leisurely brunch with everyone at the Mansion, he tossed Jessica the keys to his new, expensive car and sent the kids to ride around town for a while. So Jessica, David, and Nathaniel gathered Munroe and the Summers twins, Alex and Charlie, buckled them securely in the backseat and decided the head to the mall.
While the younger generation had fun riding around in Warren Worthington III's car, the other X-men had some laughs over coffee and cake. They didn't even notice that their house guest and the Professor silent left to go to his office to discuss a matter of grave importance.
"Warren, I am very grateful that you were able to secure this information for me," the Professor said as he looked over the documents his former pupil handed to him.
"I'm just glad that my wealth and connections could provide useful to you Professor," Warren, aka Archangel, said has he took a seat and stretched his wings. It was refreshing for him to be in a place where he could truly be himself. Sure it was really no secret to the rest of the world that he was a mutant, but his money and fame somehow made that less of a factor for the most part. But since he was a public figure he still couldn't truly be himself, it was only in this house with these people, his friends…no family, where he felt truly comfortable.
"Yes indeed it has," Xavier said scanning the documents.
"I just don't understand the context though, it didn't make much sense to me," said the blonde haired angel. "I assume I'm missing something though? What I did get out of it though is that this is a serious problem."
"Yes," Xavier said gravely, "I have the rest of the information though; Bishop and some of the other gathered it. I've been studying this problem for years, naively hoping that it would go away or they would somehow get shut down. But we have to act soon or I'm afraid it will be too late."
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Jackson Porter looked at the e-mail he received with delight. The machine was ready. Codenamed Project: Noah's Ark, its job was to purge the world of the mutant genetic code permanently. It had taken much longer than expected, years longer in fact, but it was worth the wait! It would destroy not only mutants but the human carriers as well, leaving only the genetically pure behind to give rebirth to humanity. Sure, they all wished there was a way to spare the human carriers of this gene, and even the mutants once their abomination was gone, but there was no way to do that. Their death was the only way. On a small scale test of lab animals injected with the gene as both active and carrier revealed that the death would be quick and painless, their bodies would just cease to function and they would die almost instantaneously. Some FOH members wanted the mutants, and even the human carriers to suffer a much harsher demise, but Jackson Porter was glad that it would be quick and painless. He knew that no one asked to have this burden, but at the same time it would be better to put them out of their misery without the constant fighting and struggle. Being a mutant wasn't a matter of right or wrong, it just wasn't natural period. If the world was meant to be populated by mutants, then humans would have been mutants from day one, none of this danger from superpowered people because then everyone would have had powers. There wouldn't be this unbalance between the powered and the unpowered. What probably scared him the most was something that he never revealed to anyone, not the FOH, not his children or grandchildren, not even his own wife: He feared that the natural progression of humanity was that one day, after generations and generations passed, everyone on the planet would be a mutant, and that though scared him more than anything. That is why he was glad Noah's Ark was coming to save humanity and wipe the world clean of the mutant genetic sequence, once and for all.
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Author's Note- So I apologize for this chapter taking so long as well as the last chapter being so flawed. I didn't have a chance to read it over because of finals and everything so I missed all the mistakes in it. Those have since been fixed and now that the holidays and everything are done, I am able to get this chapter out to you. I really hope you have enjoyed reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it, we are nearing the end of our journey in "Through the Years" and I just wanted to thank you for taking it with me :-) This chapter is shorter than usual, but the next chapter makes up for it in length and everything, hehe. See you in the next and final chapter.
GiveGodtheglory- Oooops! Thanks for catching that mistake with Xavier's powers, I corrected it. I really didn't read over the last chapter which is really unusual for me. But it's all fixed now. :-)
Ishandahalf- Yeah, it has been a while between updates, but you know how it is, school and stuff. That's why I didn't post this next chapter until I was completely done with the story, that way I just have to upload chapters and not have to worry about finishing. I'm so glad you liked the last chapter despite it's many flaws, that's the last time I write a chapter during finals, paper writing, holidays, and such. As for Remy's wife being Rogue's job, I mean who else is more qualified? :-P
Tammy- I'm so glad you liked the different reactions of Cyclops and Rogue at the school. I hope you continue to enjoy what happens! :-)
Sweety8587- Hehe, I like the analogy, a living Picasso, I should have used that…:-P
Kizmet - I hear you about being a romantic, who doesn't like a little fluff every now and then:-P As for the fight scene, I'm glad that it came off realistic, I was afraid that it wouldn't. Hope you continue to enjoy this story! :-)
Quing- I know, I didn't update soon, but I hope this chapter makes up for it anyway. Hope you enjoy it! :-)
Calliann- You know what, if the children weren't present maybe the X-men would have rearranged the principal's face, after all the adult X-men must know how embarrassing parents can be to teens when it comes to their safety. And they have to set a good example about violence not solving anything, hehe :-P
Liliput83- Oh I hear you with being 'away' because of other priorities, life can be so complicated sometimes! Anyway, the FOH might not be as dangerous to the world as other villains such as Sinister or Magneto or whoever, but they are almost more dangerous to mutants since they are so illogical. In the old cartoon series there was a quote from MasterMold about him needed to get rid of humans because in the end mutants are humans too, so stupid FOH doesn't really think things through do they? :-)
Egokreep- Thank you for your kind words, I hope you enjoy the rest of the story :-)