Disclaimer: X-Men Evolution and all things mutated belong to the good folks at Marvel. I wish them luck. The Weavers are mine. (Wish me luck.)

A/N: I'll admit the first chapter was a bit of tooth-cutting, getting into the groove of the X-Men Evo characters. (I haven't seen the show for a year or so, give me some credit...) This segment introduces my OC Sprig. There will be some back and forth, I think, before her path crosses the X-Men's.

Seeds of Power

'To think parents these days worry about prying there kids away from the TV. I'm beginning to wonder if she'd remember to come back inside without us reminding her...'

'She gets hungry like other kids, Alana,' her husband chuckled. 'She needs to come in for dinner.'

A small grin slid onto the woman's face as she withdrew from the window. 'True, but perhaps it's only a matter of time before she starts telling us worms are a good source of protein...'

'Don't be silly. Everyone knows worms provide carbohydrates.'

Alana let out a silvery laugh, then joined Rory at the kitchen table, allowing him to drape a bear-like arm about her shoulders. Rory was a large man, tall and broad, whom Alana had always found comfort in cuddling into. She was a stocky woman of average height and stature, with curling hair, milk chocolate skin, and kind eyes. He had a ruddy, freckled face matched by scruffy, reddish reddish brown hair and beard. Their daughter, the small girl they watched through the window as she dug at the firm earth, had Rory's cat-like green eyes, and a mop of brown hair that swung forward into her eyes all the time because it was too short to tie back properly. Her light brown skin was peppered with freckles- freckles that had turned from brown to orange to a curious pale yellow in recent years. They had seen a doctor about this, but her kindly, if somewhat perplexed, response had been that it was simply a surface appearance that bore no signs of deeper trouble. Random mutations occurred from time to time, after all. As everyone knew all too well.

'She spends more time gardening than you, now,' Alana remarked.

'Student has surpassed the teacher, an' all that,' Rory yawned. 'My back'll probably thank me for spending less time hunched over a crop of daffodils.'

Sprig liked working with her father in the garden, but there was something soothing about gardening on her own. There was just the rhythmic grinding of the hoe, or the trowel, or the fork, into the ground, and the quiet breeze that would usually pick up, breathing the sweat from her face but never penetrating the warm wool of her thick, green cardigan. And there were the plants. Of course. With them around, she was never really alone.

After preparing the soil adequately, the girl turned her attention to the treasured contents of the numerous yoghurt pots gathered on a study plastic tray on the grass beside her. Pansies. She had promised herself, or rather, her scant purse, that she would cut back on the amount of flowers she purchased. Besides, as her father had jovially pointed out, the garden would be getting crowded soon if she didn't let up. But flowers were like a collection with her. Just one more, she would think. She still loved the ones she had planted ages ago, back when her dad was showing her how it was done. But when a child gets a new toy or pet, she is utterly enraptured with it, from the time she glimpses it in the shop until she finally drifts back down to earth, and the rapture becomes a more sensible kind of love.

She glanced skyward, taking in the greying clouds with satisfaction. It would rain soon, and her babies would be given a drink. A concerned frown played over her round face as she drew the tray of yoghurt-potted seedlings towards her. 'I hope it's not too cold for you,' she murmured. A painstaking week had been spend getting the young pansies used to the harsher environment of the garden. Tremors went up inside her every time she left a cluster of plants in the shade of the outer porch for the first time. It made her nervous, not being able to care for the babies as she used to, keeping them safe in her room, protected from the elements.

'It's a tough place to survive out here,' she sighed, easing the first pansy and the soil moulded to it from the pot, with the aid of a trowel, and into the shallow ditch she had made. She hadn't always realised this. Her father had given her enough leeway in learning to make her own mistakes. The first flowers she had moved from greenhouse to garden hadn't survived the transfer. It was a while before Rory Weaver gently introduced the idea of acclimatisation to her. 'I want you to stick it through though, okay?' She patted down the soil around the pansy's young roots, tucking it snugly into its new bed, her hands feeling nicely warm though immersed in cool soil. 'You're going to grow up to be so beautiful.' She smiled at the encouraging prospect, then picked up the seed packet she kept in the tray alongside the potted seedlings. 'Like this, see?' she grinned, showing the picture on the packet to the newly transplanted pansy. The flowers displayed bore splaying petals primarily in a rich goldenrod, with some in deep violet peeking from behind. From the centre of the petals that same violet colour bled like Indian ink, forming what looked to Sprig like a shadowing face set in a glowing mane. Sprig loved pansies; they always appeared to her like tiny, but ferocious, wild cats.

She proceeded to plant the rest of the congregated seedlings, slowly and painstakingly, with warm and gentle hands, whispering words of comfort and encouragement to her charges all the while. The promised rain had started pattering down when she had reached the last few. Sprig sniffed slightly, but didn't hesitate in ploughing on. The sooner her flowers were in the soil, the sooner they could all enjoy a nice long drink... 'I'm sorry the water's a bit colder than what you're used to...' she sighed apologetically as she uncupped her hands to release a seedling and its soil into the trench. 'Stretch your roots down deep, now,' she told it earnestly. 'Get a good hold. I gave the ground a good watering, it should be nice and moist for you... Is that all right? Hm?'

A call from the back door reached her as she was finishing the batch. 'Are you about done now, little Sprig? We're going to start on dinner.'

'Okay Dad, I'll just be a minute.'

'It's started to come down quite a bit out here,' Rory noticed. 'You're not getting too wet, are you? Or too cold?'

'I'm fine,' she assured him, resisting the urge to wipe at her running nose.

He didn't fret at her further. 'Chicken and pasta all right for dinner?'

'Yummy!'

'Come in soon then, sweetpea, and remember to wash your hands.'

'You don't like soil in your pasta, Dad?' Sprig grinned.

'It goes better with worms, dear,' he chortled, which prompted an amused cry of 'Don't give her ideas!' from within.

Sprig did wash her hands, which turned out to be just as well, not just for the sake of a dirt-free pasta dish, but also because she was given over to a bout of coughing and sneezing soon that evening. The traces of a cold were gone by morning, after a mug of hot, sweet tea and an early night, but it had Alana and Rory slightly bemused. It must have been sheer chance; damp weather never affected their daughter like that.

'Yuck.'

'Oh, don't be silly, turnips are-'

'Yuck.'

'Ach, ya need yer neeps, wee bairn!' Rory exclaimed in that rumbling Scots brogue he could still ham up from time to time.

'I hate the neeps and the neeps hate me,' Sprig replied mildly, removing tumblers from the dishwasher and placing them on the draining board. 'Whenever I try and eat them, they just fight their way back up again. They revolt against me- they're revolting! Die, turnips, die!' She commanded with great gusto, darting to her father's side and casting her hands toward the vegetables being chopped as if in hope to disintegrate them with willpower alone.

Rory glanced amusedly at her as he sliced- 'Ach, away wi- ARGH!' -right down on his thumb. 'Bleedin' fool!' he cursed himself.

'Dad, I'm sorry!' Sprig cried, aghast.

'No, no, pet, I'm just so clumsy-'

'I distracted you,' she said dismally. 'H-here, let me-' It didn't look too deep, she realised as she pulled her father's large hand towards her with her own small ones. Quickly, she pulled a tissue from the box on the counter and pressed it to the weeping cut. She made sure to press down firmly, quite sure that the pressure would stem the bleeding... More than anything else, Sprig just wanted to unto the damage she had done. Her fingers, nestled in the white tissue as it began to turn red, were warm as they pressed down. The feeling of warmth startled Rory; it felt more like further blood-spread.

'Sprig, take your hand away.' Hastily he removed the tissue to see if further damage had occurred, while Sprig looked on anxiously. Two sets of eyebrows shot up. The blood was still seeping through the tissue, but it was nowhere else. It had apparently been wiped away from the cut when Rory had pulled back the tissue. Only now there was no cut either. 'What happened?' he breathed softly.

His daughter shook her head slowly, perplexed. Silence ensued, during which Sprig returned to the dishwasher, and Rory disposed of the tissue and resumed chopping. He was taking much more care, now, and therefore allowed his concentration to fudge out notice of what time was passing. But it was a good few minutes later before Sprig spoke up. 'Dad,' she murmured. 'I'm a bit tired. Would it be okay if I went to bed for a bit?'

Under any other circumstances Rory probably would have accused her of trying to weasel out of unloading the dishwasher, but she really did sound tired. 'All right. Mum or I'll a shout when dinner's ready, okay?' She nodded and left, snuffling a little and rubbing at her nose as she traipsed upstairs.

She came down again for dinner, but didn't last long through it, looking for all the world like she might doze off with her face in the turnips. After she had made an attempt at the meal, her parents let her off the hook and sent her off for another early night. Alana brought her some tea and Lem-sip for the cough that was returning.

'She's had colds before, but nothing this...'

'Sporadic?'

Alana nodded. She and Rory were sitting together watching a sitcom rerun. The volume was currently turned down so they could speak during the adverts.

'I mean, she's a healthy girl for the most part,' Alana rejoined, traces of doubt slithering their way into her voice. 'You wouldn't think anything abnormal-'

'Alana,' Rory said suddenly, deciding to tell her. 'Something strange happened earlier, before the cold.'

'Strange?'

'But good,' Rory ammended quickly, a tentative smile forming on his rosy face. 'I cut myself while I was chopping vegetables, and-'

'Rory, you need to take more care-' his wife started to chide him, but he went on:

'And she pressed a tissue to the cut, and when I took it away, it was gone.'

Alana's brow furrowed. 'The tissue was g-'

'The cut was gone!' he explained. 'Completely vanished, just like that. All she had done was put a hand to it.' His smile was widening to an excited beam. 'Do you know what this means?'

Alana was staring forward to the television, her expression indiscernible. The adverts had ended and the programme was back on, but she no longer had any interest in it. She was still trying to absorb what Rory was telling her. And it started to dawn on her exactly what this must mean.

'Our little girl is a miracle-worker!' Rory concluded in hushed glee.

'Rory...' Alana said, her tone carrying more foreboding than joy. 'Our little girl is a mutant.'

There was a pregnant pause during which the smile on Rory's face became both fixed and faded as he processed the startling revelation. It seemed to catch him off guard more than his discovery had done for Alana. But after that one moment, the confident grin relaxed his lips once more. 'But it's all right, Alana, she's not dangerous. She never could be! If her power is just something as harmless as healing, well then we have nothing to worry-'

'But what if it isn't?' Alana put in soberly. 'What if this is only part of her powers, what if they develop and there's more to them? She's still young, and this is only the first we've seen of them...'

'She's still young!' Rory barked triumphantly, half standing now. At a concerned look from his wife, he lowered his voice again. 'Mutant powers don't, you know, show up until puberty, and Sprig's not-'

'Just because she's not a teenager,' Alana interrupted again, 'doesn't mean she hasn't started puberty. She's certainly the first, or at least one of the first in her class to- start maturing. That time of the month and all that.' She laughed slightly out of awkwardness, and shook her head. 'Kids always learn the facts of life at her age, but we don't really expect things to start happening until... a little further on down the line. She's still just a child,' she sighed, wisps of forlorn lacing her motherly voice. 'She's not in a great hurry to grow up, but her body's just rushing right along...' She looked up at her husband to find staring back at her with an expression in his eyes somewhere between disbelief, worry, and her own sense of loss. 'So you see she really could be a mutant.'

'S-so... So supposing she is,' he said hoarsely, still not sounding willing to accept it. 'What do we do?'

'The rational thing,' said Alana, trying to insert some decisiveness back into her tone. 'We take her to a doctor. We need to have something done about that cold, anyway.'

A/N: I don't think it's necessary for me to repeat that reviews are welcome... except that I just did. Hum. Well, anyway, if you survived to the end of this chapter, I'm very grateful for your time! Peace out!