Disclaimer: Obviously I do not own the X-Men, nor do I own any of the other Marvel references I may use in this work. I DO, however, own all of the names that you don't recognize. Another thing I should probably state before you read any further is the fact that this story centers around a group of original characters and their adventures. There are two basic reasons for doing this: one, I wanted to explore and create my own characters to use as I please; and two, I do not know enough about the canon characters to do much involving them. Where I live, comics are not readily available and I do not have the type of money required to get them from subscription or whatnot. In other words, what I know about the mutant universe is a mash-up of concepts gleaned from the movies, the cartoons, and what ever else I can find on the web. I've never read a single comic. If you have any suggestions or if you would like to help me out with that, I would be greatly appreciative. Also, my geography skills aren't really what I'd call competent, so sometimes I may have to just make up towns in order to be confident in what I'm writing. I hope you all understand and will enjoy this story. Thank you!


CHAPTER 2: A Bit of a Funk

Monday afternoon at Xavier's Conservatory for Gifted Scholars, Napa Valley, CA. …

It had been an entire week since the start of term and the new students were finally beginning to mesh with the existing school body. Friendships were being forged right and left, to Professor Smart's great pleasure. One such friendship was one shared between Cameron Halliwell and Gabbie Santos. The Caribbean clairvoyant and the Latina animorph, despite a year's discrepancy in age, were finding that their personalities worked well together…and the fact that they both loved shopping was a big deciding factor as well. They weren't the only two who had struck up strange companionships with fellow students. Milo Sauvagess (the motocross riding elastic kid) and Lucky Starr (the 'strung-out' badass who fancied himself a punk rocker) had become good buddies also. What they had in common, it seemed, was their weakness for beautiful women and loud music. Sydney Carlson and Colin Murray could be seen hanging out together in The Quad (or the great lawn out in front of the school), and had a habit of scaring people off simply by looking at them. Of course, that was more Sydney than Colin… Sebastian, despite still adamantly refusing to ever engage in any sort of activity that would strengthen his already incredible powers, was finding it very difficult not to get along with a guy named Tracey King. Tracey (preferably T.J.) was already an existing student at Xavier's Conservatory, but he seemed normal enough. Although, there was the fact that his eyes were a strange golden color which contrasted startlingly with his dark chocolate skin. T.J. had been given the nickname 'Midas' by the other students who knew him because of his ability to completely armor himself in an organic metal alloy which resembled gold, and the fact that he could armor other things with the same alloy… including people. Watching all of the quick friendships develop gave Professor Smart an idea… one which she had been playing with in her mind since the previous year.

"You know what?" she asked Professor Lyndon as they strolled through the grounds one day, amidst laughing, chatting, and playing students.

"What?" He asked, catching the glint of an idea in her eyes and stopping cold as he did so. "What are you thinking about, Sylvia?" Professor Smart just smiled and gestured out at all of her students. After a moment, she turned to him and began speaking passionately "We should start some student-lead teams! It would be wonderful! We could help those in need of it and help cement all of these friendships for life!"

Professor Lyndon quirked a brow and added in, "Or tear them apart. Sylvia, don't you remember what happened when they tried to putus on a team so soon after enrolling?"

It had been that very element of doing a 'life-or-death' mission that split up their relationship. Professor Smart nodded, looking sadly down at her hands as they took her partner's. "Look, Roscoe… That wasn't about being X-Men at all. That was…I don't know… wrong place, wrong time…" She sighed, unable to complete the sentence. Professor Lyndon moved one of his hands up to lift her chin so that he could see her face. "I know…"

Suddenly, a large red ball came bouncing by, almost knocking both professors on their backs. "Hey!" yelled Professor Smart in the ball's wake, "Watch were you're going, Sauvagess!"

The young man, who had been assuming the form of a red, bouncing ball, whipped himself back into shape, tugging down his red hoodie indignantly--as if being reprimanded for his actions was unthinkable in itself--before walking away.

Professor Smart turned once more to Professor Lyndon, grinning now. "Anyway, X-Faction is still around, isn't it?" she asked, resuming their conversation. Professor Lyndon smirked slightly, continuing their walk around the grounds. "I don't know, Sylvia. Teaching and adventuring don't exactly go together like peanut butter and jelly…" Professor Smart nudged him playfully and said, "Obviously, you haven't been teaching very long."

Elsewhere on the grounds…

Cameron and Gabbie were taking in a mid-afternoon stroll between classes, after just coming from a very enjoyable lunch. All along the back end of the massive field of the estate (which used to be one of the Xavier family's most cherished possessions: a Tuscan-esque winery), the pyrokinetic, photokinetic, and electrokinetic students were lining up for their joint class under the tutelage of Professor Myers with assistance by Professor Spears. The lesson of the day would be controlling the magnitude of one's projectile powers. Mid-sentence during a conversation about the usual (boys, clothes, boys…), Cameron stopped walking as she was abruptly swept over by a feeling… as if time were slowing down until suddenly it was standing still. All of a sudden, she felt herself fade away from the present only to whisked into the immediate future.

From almost the exact vantage point she and Gabbie shared in the present, she could see a fit young blonde guy walking close to where Professor Myers had just finished showing first year students how to fire a small amount of energy, whatever it may be (in his case, fire), at a target. A distraught looking kid--no older than thirteen-- was first up. He was trying to focus on the target, but the sniggering of those behind him was making him nervous. She could see the sweat drop from his brow as he reared back and unleashed a hellish fireball the size of a large boulder (or a small mountain) towards the target…only to miss it by several feet. Instead, the ball was hurtling ever-faster toward the young blonde male, meandering his way across the lawn. There was no way he would make it in time to dodge the gigantic flume of flame…

Cameron went into instant action--she knew she only had a few seconds to react. Running pell-mell across the lawn, she was a full ten feet behind him when she heard the shocked yells and screams of the students as the heat of the ball singed over the lawn directly toward the blonde boy. Without a second thought, Cameron pushed the air with her hands-- a gesture which would have meant nothing to a normal human being, but with the focused mind of a telekinetic, meant scores. At the same time as she made her gesture, her mind unleashed an unseen telepathic bolt which to Sebastian Banks indeed felt as if a very strong person was pushing him right against the middle of his back. He was launched forward and landed hard on the ground just as the roving inferno passed between himself and the psychic who had just saved him. The entire class of electro-,photo-, and pyrokinetics rushed over, led by their teachers, to where Sebastian was regaining his composure.

"Are you okay?" the resident nurse, Professor Spears asked as she and Professor Myers helped him to his feet. "I'm fine," he mumbled gruffly, trying to hide the searing burn he had sustained on his left forearm. The azure-maned caretaker would not be so easily convinced, and decided that it would be best if she returned with him to the Med Lab to bandage up his burn. Before they were on their way, however, she walked (leading the curly blonde as she went) over to where Cameron stood. "You could have very well saved his life…" Cameron felt her cheeks grow hot as she felt the eyes of over two dozen upon her, although the ones she was really concerned with where the emerald green ones belonging to the handsome youth she had just rescued.

Sebastian looked the girl straight in the eye. He knew she had saved his life. Despite his enhanced healing and immune system, his powers would have been no match for the guaranteed third-and-beyond degree burns he would have sustained if that fireball had made contact. After a few moments of awkward silence, he looked quickly down at his feet and muttered a barely audible, "Thanks", before rushing off with Professor Spears, who was now wearing a look of confused disappointment.

The disappointment rivaled nothing seen upon the beautiful dreadlocked young woman's face. She felt heart broken, but she didn't exactly know why. So she had secretly harbored a growing crush for the guy since seeing him at New Student Orientation… That had only been a week ago. So what if she liked him and watched him from afar, this feeling of emptiness inside was completely aside from all of that (although it didn't help much that she was feeling extremely distressed over that situation by herself). No. This was her empathy kicking in, and she knew it. Sebastian was suffering more than the physical pain left by that burn… he was hurting inside.

Later that evening…

Sylvia Smart replayed the same scene on the huge viewing screen in the Council Room over and over again, much to the confusion of all of the major staff members seated around the sizeable rectangular oak table with stacks of manila folders placed in front of them. Turning to the room after replaying the scene that happened in the hind grounds of The Conservatory hours earlier for the fourth time, she asked again, "Are you sure this girl's only been X-gene active for three years?" Professor Hawthorne, who had all of the telepath and telekinetic files, flipped through Cameron's information once more. "That's all that's been recorded, although it says here in a note from one of her former instructors that her powers have been existent, and steadily growing, since around the age of ten." Professor Smart pondered once more before asking, "And how old is she now?" "Sixteen," responded Hawthorne, in a perplexed voice. Professor Smart swiveled around on her chair to look at the still-capture picture of the young Caribbean woman at the moment she had just pushed another student to safety.

"That's it. We've got to start forming teams," Professor Smart said, bluntly. Her statement met a veritable uproar from the former members of the X-Men spin-off team, X-Faction. Professor Shapiro nearly knocked his tower of student files flying in a sudden burst of steam. "You're KIDDING me!" he yelled, at the exact same moment that Professors Lyndon and Edwards set into an argument about the merits (with Lyndon defending) versus the pitfalls of establishing such student-formed teams. Everyone, with the exception of dreary Professor Greer, was setting off in a million different directions with the very idea--Professor Fenton sputtering on in several different languages and dialects (including a long tangent during which he sounded very similar to a dial-up internet connection).

"QUIET!" Professor Smart was on her feet, her blonde bob all a twitter with apparent agitation. "Good Grief! You're all acting as if I've just said I think we should filet and barbeque the children!" "You might as well have done," started Professor Lundy, "Do you remember anything from that brief degree of time you were on a 'team'?" "Kaye, that was different. There's no way these kids will be facing what we had to. That, you've got to admit, is certain," finished Professor Smart, thinking she had made her point. Here, Professor Greer made an input. "Well, actually, there is still an 38.345 percent chance that the situation we were in could reoccur if…" He trailed off, for Professor Smart had just lifted her palm up beside her face again, her eyes closed in fervid anxiety. "YES, Gabbie!"

The entire staff turned around as the door to the Council Room swung open to reveal Gabriella Santos, yet again. This time, however, there was a look of rabid fear upon her face. Immediately, Professor Smart was by her side and moving out of the door. She already knew. Something was wrong with Cameron.

Meanwhile, outside of The New World Conglomerate Headquarters, Central New York City…

A beautiful Middle Eastern woman was walking side by side with a lanky man with rusty red hair, followed by a group of five other individuals, four more men and one other woman, all dressed in overcoats. It was getting dark fast and everybody on the street was trying to get somewhere, and they didn't care who they had to run over to get there. However, the woman known in secret as Arabesque and her partners-in-crime, over half of the members of the mutant-supremacy group The Dirty Dozen, were taking there time… almost dawdling in the midst of a sea of suit-and-tie clad businessmen and -women, tourists, and others . Every now and again, the fiery red-head known as Rocket would check his wrist watch for the time…as if he were expecting something.

"How long now, Ashton?" questioned the exotic beauty, her hair braided into a long plait that rested just below her bottom.

" Twelve minutes and counting. Say, Suheir…What'd y'say if I asked you out to dinner after this is all over?" asked the man, lowering his shiny black shades so that his dark brown eyes could look into her own.

"I'd say 'When pigs fly, the sky falls, and Hell freezes over." answered Arabesque calmly, looking around with her misty-green eyes at the traffic in the streets and on the sidewalks. The pink-haired punk who called herself Riot had moved in-between Rocket and Arabesque, and was now talking with Rocket, the apparent leader of the group. "Don't you think these trench coats are a little conspicuous?" she asked, tugging at the lapel of her own as she spoke. Rocket scoffed and looked around. "This is New York, Hilary. Everybody's conspicuous." Riot shrugged and asked another question. "So, can we run over the game plan one more time, please?"

Arabesque shot an angry look Riot's way for being so unprofessional while Rocket started explaining the mission objectives over again for the ADHD mutant. "In about…," he checked his watch again, " eight minutes, the guards go on standby and the alarm systems for the entire compound shut down for a three minute reboot. During that reboot, we are going to make our way into the building… This should be easy if Arabesque is as powerful a strategist as she claims to be." Suheir Nazeem smirked wickedly at this statement before snidely remarking, "Ha, and you are a veritable Alexander the Great yourself, are you then?" Riot sighed, rolled her eyes, and fell back behind, but not before mumbling, "Why don't you two just get married already?"

As the time approached, Rocket, Arabesque, Entourage, Riot, Incubus, Mammoth, and Vortex began moving towards the front doors of the building and over to the only unlocked entry: the worker entrance, which was supposed to be keycard protected from non-employees. Instead, shielded from the view of passersby by his fellow gang members, Rocket singed the circuits of the keycard analyzer, rendering its locking mechanism on the doors null. Now, they could enter unhindered… or so they thought.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!" came the booming voice of a female guard as she advanced upon them, weapon drawn. All of the mutants stepped aside to let the devastatingly handsome man known as Incubus step through. The moment he made eye contact with the woman, she dropped her gun and fell to the ground moaning, screaming, and groping herself in ecstasy. After that, they were sure there were other surprises waiting for them around the expanses of the pristine, hospital white, ultra-modern facility that was New World.

Sure enough, a wave of armed guards came running around the corner leading off of one of the many corridors stretching ahead of them. "FREEZE!" they all yelled. This time, the pink-dreaded woman known as Riot came to the forefront. Just as they were all aiming their guns in her direction, she opened her mouth (at the exact same moment all of her comrades covered their ears) and let out a single, piercing note that not only sent all of the guards flying several feet down the hall, but rendered them all unconscious. They continued on. Their main objectives: find the main laboratories hidden somewhere within the compound, free Rodrigo and his fellow 'subjects', and finally find the penthouse headquarters of the mysterious Benefactress to find out what all of it was about.

Another wave of guards tried to hinder the team, this time trying to corner the Dozen in a span of hallway. Suddenly, the mutant called Entourage sprung into action, splitting himself into more than eight copies. Each one took out his own respective guard until the group was free to move on, at which time the copies all melded back into one being. Rocket had a feeling they were getting closer now, as more and more guards starting popping up. The next two squads of guardsmen were thwarted by Mammoth (who grew to sixteen feet in height and simply swatted them away like gnats) and Vortex (who after unwrapping his bandaged arm, unleashed a vacuum-like black hole that, after sucking up all of their weapons, was enough to scare away an entire fleet of watchmen). Now they had come to a T-shaped path, one hallway leading off into two separate directions. After checking his mission statements again, Rocket deduced that he should go with Riot, Incubus, and Entourage to the left which was supposed to lead in the direction of the laboratories while Arabesque, Mammoth, and Vortex went off in the opposite direction which lead to the Benefactress's secret elevator leading up to her penthouse suite.

On the ride up to the very top floor of the eighty-six story building, Arabesque tightened her gloves and tried to prepare for whatever was coming up next. Just as the doors pinged and opened, she leapt out ready for a fight. However, after looking around all she saw was an empty, albeit plush and humongous, hallway. Passing past several paintings of Egyptian skylines and god busts, Arabesque remarked to her two male companions, "Well, she certainly seems to have a 'thing' for Egypt…" They nodded their agreement as they moved on. They now stood in front of a pair of gigantic (at least fourteen feet tall) glossy mahogany doors. "This is it boys…" Arabesque said to her partners as her hand gripped the golden latch of the door. Suddenly the door flew open inward and a pair of feet, one in a red strappy stiletto heal and the other in a white shoe of the same kind, landed with supreme force right in Arabesque's chest. She went flying but was caught by her two partners. There, standing with their backs against the doorframe, were two identical women. Identical in everyway, that is, except for their coloration. One had extremely fair alabaster skin and winter-white hair. The other had exotically tanned caramel skin and her hair was blood-red. When they turned to face the three, with their hair draped in mirror-image fashion over opposite eyes, smiles of depraved malice graced their beautiful faces. "Ah-Ah-Ah! No visitors after five o'clock!" they spoke in perfect unison.

At the same time, back at Xavier's Conservatory…

Professors Smart, Spears, and Hawthorne had all convened in the shared dorm of Gabriella Santos and Cameron Halliwell. Gathered around her bed, the three women were looking down upon her with expressions of fear, frustration, and worry. "What's wrong with her?" called Gabbie from the door. She had been forbidden to enter the room, least it be unsafe. Why would it be? Because all around the room things were orbiting and crashing about the floating and rotating bed of Cameron, who was laying upon the sheets drenched in a cold sweat and convulsing painfully. "She's experiencing something we psions like to call 'a bit of a funk'," answered Professor Hawthorne. Professor Smart expanded the explanation. "Her empathic powers are kicking into overdrive. Judging by what I can sense from her psyche, she's feeling all of the emotions of every person in a fifty mile radius…At once." Professor Spears took a sharp intake of breath, so quickly that she had to cough before speaking. "Couldn't that kill her!" Professor Smart looked down at the twitching body of the young girl who had impressed her so greatly hours earlier. "Not if I and Deidre can do something about it first."

After a moment of gauging the exact movement of the bed, both psions hopped on and moved over to Cameron's head. They removed some of her soaked dreadlocks from about her face and placed their respective right hands upon her forehead. Then, both closing their eyes, they journeyed into the Astral Plane. Cameron's Astral-self was in even more visible turmoil than her corporeal self; shaking, screaming, laughing, and crying all within seconds of each other. As the two members of the defunct mutant team X-Faction, formerly known as Ethos and Clandestine respectively, closed their eyes, Professors Smart's and Hawthorne's Astral-selves instantly manifested around Cameron, similarly to how they were in reality.

"Oh…my…" whispered Professor Hawthorne upon spotting Astral Cameron. From every direction imaginable, strands of ethereal white coils of what appeared to be smoke (only more liquid) were streaming directly into Cameron's head.

"Those would be the emotions…" pointed out Professor Smart, motioning overhead towards the streams. "What are we going to do?" questioned Professor Hawthorne, urgently. "We've got to ebb this flow somehow," Smart replied. Professor Hawthorne gave her a frightfully perplexed look which said 'How-are-we-going-to-do-that!' "Well…," thought Professor Smart aloud, rubbing her Astral palms together, "we've got to turn down the emotional receptive center of her brain." Professor Hawthorne exhalled loudly and then said, sarcastically, "Oh, is that all!" Professor Smart looked at her coworker with slight annoyance before moving around to Cameron's back. "It's not really that difficult… of course, it would be a lot easier if we had someone like Sage around." Professor Hawthorne grumbled again and said under her voice, "Fat chance, you know the other school's have no respect for us." Professor Smart wanted to say 'That's not true', but she wasn't so sure lately. "Alright, put your hand were mine is," directed Smart. Hawthorne obeyed and then Professor Smart closed her Astral eyes. Using all of her telepathic power and most of Professor Hawthorne's, she was able to extract the Astral equation of Cameron's emotional controller. Waving her hand over it twice, Professor Smart lowered the level (which was, indeed, off the charts) and placed the controller back into Astral Cameron's head. Immediately, the many streams wavered and then disappeared leaving only a single thread of emotion behind. Looking at each other and nodding simultaneously, both telepaths were brought back to their normal plane of existence.

Cameron's body lay limp upon her bedclothes, still soaking with sweat. Looking over her with a very motherly expression, Professor Smart sighed. "Aw, now, that's better. Janice," Professor Smart called to Professor Spears, crouched in a corner shielding her head…for as Cameron was being calmed things had just started falling to the ground all over the room…and Professor Spears. Uncovering her face and swiping blue bangs out of her eyes, Janice answered, "Yes?" Professors Smart and Hawthorne stood from the bed and started moving toward the door. "Get Ms. Halliwell to the Medical Lab, ASAP. Ms. Santos, you can stay with me tonight if you wish," said Professor Smart in passing the frightened looking young girl standing right outside the door. Gabbie followed along in their wake.

As they were walking, Professor Smart couldn't help wondering just what had set off Cameron's empathic abilities at such a high level… and what on earth it could have been that kept her alive through it all.


Author's Note:

I hope I did a better job with this chapter than the first. I'm sorry that I tend to be a tinge on the overly verbose side, but it's been my experience that the more detail you push into a story, the more vividly the scene you imagined can be seen by others. I hope that makes since.

Another thing I probably should say is that this truly is a work in progress, as I am writing it almost at the same rate that you (if there are any of you) who are reading it. I have a few ideas, but nothing is really too concrete right now. If any of you have any plot ideas you think would be really interesting, I'd love to hear about them. Any little bit helps.

Also, I had no idea that my stuff sounded so familiar...or so canon. I can assure you I didn't mean for it to come across that way. I mean, I had no idea... I've never actually read more than three X-Men comics (and they were recent) in my entire life.

But as I say, any suggestions would be most welcomed!

Terence, the Terrible