Sorry about the initial formatting errors.
Full Summary: It's tough to be different. It's tougher to be a Mutant. Especially when the world hates you, Congress is trying to tag you like an animal, and the whole world is panicked about the possibility of a war between Mutants and Humanity. Magneto's created a guerilla army of Mutants and Charles Xavier has created a haven for Mutants. But what about those outside of the conflict? Those who haven't chosen a side? This is a story about Gabriel Brookes- only child, high school senior, and Mutant.
Clarifications: Not all mutant abilities are unique. Jean Grey, Charles Xavier and Emma Frost are all telepaths, Wolverine, Sabertooth and Lady Deathstrike (Yuriko) all have similar mutations, and a character in this story has powers similar to those of characters in the movies and comics. He isn't the same character, but it was too good a element to pass up. Just so we are clear.
Gabriel Brookes peeked into the window in the door of his first hour class and groaned. He had slept through his alarm and now he'd have to go ask Mrs. Young for the homework. He pulled at a thread coming out of his shirt and sighed.
Mrs. Young would just blame this on the lack of a strong male role model in his life. He tugged the thread harder. He didn't understand why Mrs. Young thought having a father would keep him from being tired. Or why she thought that his family was any of her business. Gabriel looked down at his chest and realized with horror that his shirt was unraveling. He grabbed the thread, but it just streamed out of his shirt faster. The bell rang. kids started spilling out of classrooms and Gabriel found himself shirtless in the hallway. And people were starting to scream.
"Gabe's got a wings!"
"Gabe's a mutant !"
Gabe tried run, but he was glued to the floor. He tried to tuck his wings back in, but they wouldn't move. And now the crowd was enveloping him, still screaming and now starting to attack him, clawing at his skin and yanking out his feathers.
"Gabe's a monster!"
"Gabe!"
"Gabe!"
"Gabe?" he felt someone pulling at his wing, "Gabe, honey wake up!"
He jolted up and frantically glanced around the room. He was in his room, not at school,
he could move his wings, and there was no one here but his mother, Martha Brookes, standing on the other side of his bed and holding her hands placating in front of her.
"You okay?" She asked, head tilted in concern.
"Yeah," Gabriel sighed, "Yeah," he gave her a weak smile, "I just had a really weird dream."
"All right," she sounded unconvinced, "Whatever you say."
"What time is it?" Gabriel asked before his mother could inquire further about his recurring nightmare. At least it didn't seem like he'd been talking in his sleep this time. Last week he'd woken up screaming "Don't pull! Don't pull!". That had been hard to explain.
"It's morning, you might as well get up for school now," Martha shrugged, "We're out of cereal, but we've got bagels in the fridge."
"Kay," Gabriel said getting up and stretching.
"Oh, and I'm giving a late massage tonight, so you'll be on your own for dinner."
"Can I have some money for Chinese?" Gabriel asked hopefully.
His mother gave him an appraising look, "You promise to order something with vegetables in it and have a glass of milk with your supper?"
"Of course," He nodded.
"Fine"
"Thanks," Gabe smiled, grabbing a leather harness made from an amalgamation of belts off a hook on his wall. He threw it over his shoulders and folded reddish brown wings and started pulling the belts together.
"I wish you wouldn't wear that thing," Martha sighed as Gabriel pulled the straps tight around his stomach.
"Well, mom, it's like a corset. It hides that unsightly bulge," He gestured at his back showing off how the harness helped pull his wings, which naturally folded in quite close to his body, even tighter to him.
"Doesn't it hurt?"
"It's better than the alternative Mom," Gabriel said. He lived the alternative in his sleep most nights. He would rather put up with leather straps ruffling his feathers.
Martha walked out of his room shaking her head and closed the door behind her. Gabriel went over to his closet and started pulling out clothes.
Up until he was about 13 his mother had been able to hide what she annoyingly called his "little cherub wings" in oversized T-shirts, but Gabriel's normal pubescent growths spurts, like shooting from 4'11 to 6'1, and going from a size six shoe to a size eleven, had included his 3 foot wingspan stretching to 15 feet.
This had called for a major wardrobe overhaul and after some experimentation Martha, who had a lot of talent with a sewing machine and an eye for style, had come up with a look that Gabriel appreciated for one reason: it gave him an excuse to wear a big enough coat to hide his wings.
In a perfect world, Gabriel whined to himself as his pulled on tight fitting flared black jeans and a black T-shirt, he'd be able to go to school in normal jeans and the shirts his mom had made him for wearing in the house that had slits in the back for his wings to stick out of. But in this world he had to get up and extra half an hour early every morning to put on white face powder, black eyeliner and black lipstick to make sure his "creepy gothic look" was "over the top enough to justify the coat" as his mother put it.
Gabriel thought the full look made him look like an Edwardian vampire and had made the mistake of telling his Martha this. She had rather gleefully made him several more coats from reprints of antique patterns and even a couple poet shirts to go with them that made him look like a vampire in earnest. Whenever he wore the complete vampire look, poet shirt and all, he would invariable catch several girls that never talked to him eyeing him in a disconcertingly hungry way. This freaked him out.
Actually, Gabriel thought, in a perfect world his mother would be able to home school him and he wouldn't have to worry about mobs of people trying to pluck him like a chicken, sexually repressed teenage girls with vampire fetishes, or the basic teenage woes of not fitting in, which was hard enough for normal kids, let alone boys who had to hide their wings by dressing like a character from a bad made-for-TV horror flick.
Martha was sitting at the table flicking through the paper when Gabriel came into the kitchen. The Brookes kitchen table was used for basically everything but eating as evidenced by the pile of Gabriel's school books in one corner, the pile of clean laundry next to it and the assortment of mail, magazines and other random things that tended to accumulate over any empty surface space on it.
"That Magneto man is on the front page again," she sighed, "I wish they would try to catch him."
"They are trying mom," Gabriel yawned, "But they're still using metal cars and metal guns and metal hand cuffs to chase and attempt to capture a man who can control metal."
"Those cable hacks of his make me so nervous. It's unnerving to be watching TV and all of a sudden see this crazy terrorist in a helmet and cape saying he wants to kill everyone."
"He doesn't want to kill everyone Mom. He just wants Mutants to be given some of the rights humans have."
"Mutants are humans," Martha said firmly.
"Right," Gabriel sneered, glancing at the article under the picture of Magneto, which covered the debate of the Mutant Registration act in Congress, "God knows we're treated like it."
"Your bagel's in the toaster," She said in a tone that very clearly was intended to change the subject.
"Thanks."
"Oh, and I've got yesterday's mail here somewhere," Martha set the paper on the floor and dug through the pile under it, "Here we go, you've got a lot a late notice from the library, a chance to win a million dollars, and a bunch of college stuff," She handed him the stack of envelopes, "The top one looks pretty great."
Oh, no. Not again, "Mom, I told you-"
"And your guidance counselor called. You missed your meeting again. She's starting to really get on my case."
"Mom, I don't want to have this conversation again. I'm not going to that meeting," Gabriel said trying very hard to keep the aggravation out of his voice as he bit into his bagel.
"Mrs. Larson just wants to help you find out where you're going after high school. She's says with your grades and test scores you have your pick of schools-"
"No I don't!" He exclaimed, angry now. He understood that love was supposed to be blind, but sometimes he wondered if his mother honestly didn't get it, or if she just pretended everything was normal for his benefit, or possibly her own, "Mom, I can't go to college. And even if I could what am I supposed to do afterward? What great job am I supposed to get to pay off all the tuition we can't afford?"
"Gabriel!" She started in on him, "Tina, my friend out in California? Her son is a Mutant, and he's a doctor."
"Is his lab coat long enough to cover his wings, Mom?" Gabriel asked with sarcastic sweetness.
"Well, he's telekinetic he hasn't got..." she trailed off, "Well it doesn't matter," she asserted.
"Yeah Mom, it does!" Gabriel yelled, "Best case scenario I'd go to a college that doesn't require students to live on campus, get an apartment to myself so I don't have to try and keep my big secret from a roommate, and not be able to pay for it because I can't get a job because no one will hire Mutants, and then just end up getting thrown out of the school anyway when the Registration Act passes."
"And what if the Registration Act doesn't pass?" his mother demanded.
Gabriel started sliding his books into his book bag, "Then we will have spent a lot of money on an education that does me no good because I can't wear a suit!" He stormed out of the kitchen and out of the door, fuming and wishing he had made some sort of overly dramatic gesture like pushing something off the table or picking up and dropping a chair, but at the same time being glad that he hadn't. He would still have to see his mother later after all.
He hated thinking about his future, because unlike nearly everyone else at school who had been able to spend their senior years buried under a pile of options and surrounded by potential career paths there was no denying that despite his skills and intelligence, Gabriel didn't have a future. Even the dreaded life behind a counter at McDonalds that the teachers had been threatening students with since the beginning of high school wasn't an option for him. He couldn't wear the uniform and no one would eat Chicken McNuggets served to them by someone with wings.
There were colleges that welcomed Mutants. Usually very good colleges, because better colleges tend to be very liberal, but again, even the best grades at the best college weren't going to get a freak a job.
But just because he didn't want to think about his future didn't mean that hadn't thought about it. He just couldn't think of a way to tell his mother that he only had two options. Either he lived in her house, ate her food, and drove her car for the rest of his life... or he joined Magneto's Brotherhood.
And there were times when living at home forever didn't seem so bad, but most of the time, when he was watching kids happily playing the sports he couldn't, or watching the normal kids at school enjoying the relationships he'd never have, like friends and girlfriends, or recycling the view books for colleges he couldn't go to, or telling his guidance counselor he was considering a career he couldn't have... he thought Magneto might have the right idea.