Once again...Disclaimerness. The X-men are marvel's Allie is, well, Allie's. Anyway, this is the beginning of Allie's introduction. Please don't hate her! She has reasons for being how she is! Just...hold tight until chapter eight...It's already being written.
"Mutants can be dangerous! If we don't keep tabs on them, what's going to stop them from taking over the world?" I mentally cheered her on, although I thought the whole "taking over the world" thing was a bit extreme. My debate class was having a mock competition to practice for the big debate tournament that was coming up in the next few weeks. The topic for today's debate: Mutant RegistrationIs it good or bad? I was ecstatic when I heard the topic, until I was assigned to be on the opposing side. Hence the mental cheering. Now, don't get me wrongit's not like I'm massively anti-mutant or anything. I think that there are probably a few good mutants out there, but a majority of them don't like us normal humans. It's almost as though they think that they're secretly better than us or something.
One of my teammates suddenly nudged me. "Hey," he said. "You're up." I nodded and walked to the front of the room. I didn't have any notes with me this time, because, quite frankly, I could care less about this debate. I was on the "Against" side, when I was really for Mutant Registration. We weren't getting graded on this, so it didn't matter to me at all.
"I don't think that we should have Mutant Registration because it's an invasion of privacy. Besides, if the Mutant Registration Act is passed, who's going to make the Mutants register? Nobody is going to go out and enforce the law. So there's really no point in passing the act." I sat down. You would think that with the horrible job I did my teammates would be mad at me, but most of them were for the act anyways.
As we were all getting ready to leave at the end of class, the teacher called me over.
"You didn't do your best today, Allie," he said. "Any reason why?" I sighed, and tried to think of the best way to put it.
"Well, to be honest, I didn't care for the topic I was opposing. I'm all for Mutant registration, minus the invasion of privacy; I think it's a really good idea. And since we weren't getting a grade for it, I decided that it wasn't worth the effort." He nodded understandably.
"I was afraid that we would run into something like this with this topic. The only way it would be fair was to assign people." I nodded.
"Yeah, I know. Look, I've gotta go. I don't want to be late for my next class." He nodded.
"Alright. See you tomorrow!" I waved as I left the classroom. I had to practically sprint to be on time, but that's fine with me. I like to run after school a lot so that I can stay in shape. Plus, you never know when someone could try and kidnap you and you have to run as fast and as far as you can.
Walking into the classroom, my heart just about stopped when I read the board. TEST TODAY was written across it.
Oh crap! We have a test today. How could I have forgotten about that? I'm going to fail! I can't afford to fail!
Sitting down at my desk, I reached into my bag and pulled out a wooden number two pencil. I tapped it nervously on the desk, fighting the urge to bite my nails. Guys don't like chewed off fingernails. It's a bad habit that I have when I get nervous.
When the tests were passed out, I wrote my name at the top and looked at the first question as I chewed on my thumbnail. Something about a train crash. I don't know when the two trains would meet up with each other. Oh man. I'm gonna bomb this test. There goes Harvard University. Next question. Wait, the trains didn't crash? Third question. Where'd the donkey come from? I thought they were talking about trains. For awhile I just sat there, reading the questions and just getting more and more confused and worried. I ended up chewing off all of my fingernails in the process. As I was tapping my pencil, I noticed that there were some brown spots where I was holding it. They almost looked like burn marks. My eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and I looked back down at my test. My confusion increased as I noticed that the paper was also turning brown were my fingers had been. What on earth? I know that I don't have dirt on my fingers. Suddenly, I wasn't feeling too good. I raised my hand.
"I'm not feeling so good. I think that I need to go home." The teacher nodded, knowing that I wouldn't make stuff up like this. After all, I was obsessed about getting into a good college.
"You can take a different version of this test another time," she told me. I thanked her, picked up my stuff, and left the classroom, still wondering what was going on.
I slid into my car, tossed my bag onto the front passenger seat, and started it up. As I backed out of my parking space, I decided to not stress about what had happened with the pencil or with the paper. I had enough to stress about, what with the test that I had almost failed. It looked like it was going to be an all-nighter for me once more.
I pulled into the driveway about twenty-minutes later. Grabbing my bag, I headed inside, making a bee-line for the kitchen When I get stressed, I get hungry, and I eat a lot of junk food. That's another reason why I go running a lot. I seem to have this knack of getting stressed out a lot; therefore, I eat a lot of junk food. I don't want to put on a lot of extra weight, so I go running.
In the kitchen I found a note from Mom, asking if I could start on dinner for her, and that she'd be home fairly soon. I got out a pot and started some water boiling. Walking over to the chair where I had put my backpack, I pulled out my notes and started studying. About eight minutes later, I heard the water boiling so I grabbed my package of RamenChicken Flavorand headed back over to the stove. Unfortunately, my hands were shaking slightly for no reason at all (or so I thought), so when I opened the package, the little pack of seasoning popped out and landed on the ground. I promptly bent over to pick it up. In doing so, however, I bumped the handle of the pan in such a way that it flipped off the stove, spilling the boiling hot water all over my back. I screamed in surprise, and what I thought was pain, until I realized that it didn't hurt in the least. The water was warm, but it wasn't burning me in the way it should be.
What the crap! I continued screaming for a moment in fright, but they quickly diminished into squeaks of confusion. I backed away from the stove, stunned, and leaned against the table. First my pencil and test get weird burn-like marks where my fingers had been, then a pan of steaming hot water fails to harm me. What was going on? This was far from normal! Something strange was going on, and I wanted to find out what.
It was at about this time that my mom came home from work. She came into the kitchen and saw me freaking out next to the table.
"Honey, are you okay?" Mom asked, then her eyes widened. "Allie, the table!" I let go and whipped around. Looking down at the table, I saw a smoking, darkened hand-print. The doorbell rang as I looked at my hand in horror. It didn't even register in my mind until someone yelled my name.
"Allie!" The voice was not a familiar one. My head whipped around to see two women standing behind me. One was a red-head the other was a dark-skinned woman with white hair. Both wore what looked like black leather uniforms, the white-haired one had an added cape. Cool cape, I thought. I shook my head. Who were these people, what were they doing here, and how the freak did they know my name!
"You are Allie, are you not?" asked the darker woman. She had a strange accent that I couldn't place.
"That depends on who's asking," I said suspiciously. I was beginning to panic. Again. This day was not going well. Let me rephrase that…This was the worst day ever.
"My name is Jean Grey," said the red-haired woman, "and this is Storm. We were sent by the Xavier Institute. The professor there understands that you have a bit of an…unusual talent." I raised an eyebrow.
"My story writing is unusual?" I asked. I loved to write stories in my spare time, and hoped to be an author one day. Although, I had no idea how they had found out about it.
"Um…not exactly," she said, grinning cryptically.
"We'll explain on the way there," Storm said.
"On the way where?" I asked. Jean smiled.
"To the Institute of course." She turned to my mom. "I do hope that's alright. We'll come back to get her things later." My mom looked like she was going to object, but then she seemed to change her mind.
"Yes, that's just fine," she said. "I love you, Allie. Be good, and remember who you are." Storm raised an eyebrow at that, but otherwise remained motionless. I just rolled my eyes. At least one thing stayed the same: Mom was just as weird as ever.
Storm led the way out. Parked in the middle of the road was a black…helicopter?
"You guys came in a helicopter!" I cried. I was not getting in that thing. I don't do heights.
"We're well trained. You'll be perfectly fine," Jean said soothingly. For some unknown reason, I found myself believing her, so I climbed in.
