Yodaesque Disclaimer: X-Men I don't own.
Kudos to: Absolut Cajun, for teh first review! I hope you enjoy this part of the story.
2
The Foundation of Trouble
Lexington, Nebraska.
Three years earlier.
Slender fingers caressed the frame of a picture sitting on top of a computer monitor. Jessica Saenz stared at her own image tossing its arms around a short, slim boy with curly light brown hair, a wide smile on their faces. She jumped when the door was swung open and closed so furiously that the walls trembled, sending several comic-book posters to the floor. The boy from the picture, now a young man dressed in a dull black suit, leaned on the closed door and slowly sat down right there on the carpeted floor.
"How's your brother?" asked Jessica looking worriedly at her boyfriend from the place she was standing on, but she received no answer from him. Sitting down on the bed, she said "I don't like it when you smoke."
Alex frowned, and said limply "It eases the headaches."
There was a moment of silence, which they spent staring at each other. The smoke from the cigarette on the young man's hand formed coiling and twisting snakes between them.
"So, what Enzo said is true, huh?" he uttered finally, sliding his left foot towards his body and placing his arm on the raised knee.
"I'm sorry, Alex" she said with a bleak look. "He knew all the time—?"
"He knew long enough" he answered abruptly. "Jessica, when were you planning to tell me?"
Jessica hesitated, then said "It was difficult. I wanted to tell you Alex, I really did. You didn't deserve thi—"
"Deserve what, exactly?" he interrupted her, squeezing the lit remains of the cigarette with his right hand. Scoffing bitterly, he raised his voice to an angry, trembling bawl "To find out in the day of mama's funeral? The whole fucking town knew about you and Gary!"
There was a rage in Alex's voice, under which the girl cringed. Jessica could swear she felt the air get heavier as the young man's olive eyes brimmed over with tears of anger. Alex seemed to notice this, because he lowered his head in pain and regret at the girl's reaction.
"Jessica," he said. "I'm… really sorry" shaking, he pushed his hands against his temples. "You'd think I wouldn't give a damn about it after what happened to my mother. Seems so small and hollow doesn't it? But I do Jess, I wish I didn't feel anything but I do. You were one of the few reasons to stay strong today."
Jessica looked down at the carpet. She felt so guilty and sorry as she saw how her once geeky and charmingly sarcastic boyfriend was reduced to a miserable, shaking lump on the floor. His emotional pain seemed to be too physical; the sick color on Alex's skin and the thin layer of cold sweat forming above it scared her, but she couldn't think of anything helpful to say.
Alex took notice of her worried stare, and tried to pull himself together. "Don't worry. It's just a headache. So much has happened in the last few days, these headaches just keep getting... worse" he painfully slammed his fist on the door when the last word was pronounced.
"Oh my god!" said Jessica jumping off the bed, horrified.
"Calm down, I didn't mean to—" he was interrupted by the shrill squealing of rubber against pavement and a very loud crash. "What was that?" he said moving to the window.
"Your eyes!—" Horror-struck, Jessica let out a shriek when he moved closer. "Get away from me!" She thrust him forward in desperation and ran out of the room as fast as she could
With a dry thump, Alex fell over flatly. "Jessica, I didn't mean to yell at you!" he said standing up and running after her. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw once he reached the end of the staircase.
"Oh, god…" he exclaimed.
The whole lower floor of his house was covered in curtains of fog so thick, that vision beyond a foot was nearly impossible. He tried to look down on his hands, but all he could see was a shadow.
"Brother!" said a wobbly shadow inside the whiteness.
Trembling, Alex exclaimed "Enzo! Are you okay?"
"Brother, what's happening!"
Alex didn't answer, because he couldn't describe what he was feeling. For a few seconds it was as if he could touch everything around him, he knew exactly where everything and everyone in various street blocks was, in spite of the mist. This made his head hurt more than ever. With an alarmed look, he ran to the doorway and yelled with all his strength "Jessica, look out!"
And on the streets, everyone could hear a girl's scream and the now familiar sound of tires screeching. In terror, Alessandro Bianco realized that his head had stopped aching.
A few months later.
It was nearing noon and the Principal was growing anxious. He sat down for the fifth time after staring tensely at the window for minutes, opening the gray folder that sat alone on his desk to read its contents once again. Most of it managed to slip through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning; but a few sentences had caught his attention from the first glance, and the term Homo sapiens superior was on the top of the list.
A female voice on the speakerphone said "Mr. Evans, Enzo Bianco is here."
"Send him in."
Through the door walked a young man dressed in street clothes, carrying a blue bag behind his shoulder. He was tall for his age, Mr. Evans observed, lean and solid. Not football star solid, but certainly not on the scrawny side. Straight lines of dirty blond hair fell over his forehead touching his nose— a broad nose— and his eyes were partially shielded by semi-clear glasses that changed shading with the sunlight.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Evans?" he asked.
"Yes, please sit Mr. Bianco" The principal motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk, but Enzo was sitting already. "It has been brought to my attention that the works you have been presenting lately are, yet again, causing quite a bit of controversy amongst teachers and students alike."
Enzo stared at him with a quirked eyebrow. "I don't understand."
The principal flipped the folder open and said, "Your essays, Mr. Bianco. Every single free-topic paper you have delivered to your teachers in the past few months, while proficiently written, it's about mutants."
"Still, I don't see the problem of exploring actual social phenomena in paper."
"Are you trying to impress me, Mr. Bianco?"
"Not at all."
"Good. It should remain clear who has the PhD in this room and thus, the authority and maturity to deal with these... scandals." Enzo wanted to laugh so hard he thought he would blow up at any moment. Thankfully the principal was too busy re-reading the contents on that folder to notice this. "Do we really need detailed descriptions of diverse mutant physiology? And this one here describes the feeling a particular mutant has when displaying its abilities—"
"His or her abilities" the young man corrected. "Mutants are people, Mr. Evans, not things."
"Ah, but that's not what this other one says. Here you emphasize the supremacy of mutants above normal people."
"If you read further you'll see I was trying to make a point—"
"A point this school does not care about" the principal interrupted severely. "Tell me, Mr. Bianco… Are you a mutant?"
"That's none of your business."
"Yes, it is. This is a high-prestige private school, Mr. Bianco. We can't afford to have mutants among our students… or mutant-supporters for that matter. I'm afraid if this behavior continues, you will face expulsion."
Enzo rose up in exasperation. "That's bullshit!"
"May I remind you who are you speaking to, Mr. Bianco?"
"Don't bother" he said tossing the bag around his shoulder. "I'm out."
"Understand my position Mr. Bianco!" shouted the principal, but the young man had already stormed out of the office. Once alone, he hurriedly picked the phone, pressing one of the many quick dial buttons.
"Sir?" he whispered. "I think I found one."
…
Alex was standing out of school, waiting for his younger brother. Minutes earlier, he had been looking everywhere without any luck until finally, one of his friends told him he had been summoned to the principal's office. What kind of trouble was Enzo in this time? Last time he got called for publishing one of his essays on the school boards, which got graded with a B. The problem was that it was nothing but seven pages of nonsense under a fancy title and an opening and ending paragraph, proving that his Spanish teacher didn't even bother to read their essays.
Taking a quick look at his clock, he took a long drag of the cigarette he was holding and tossed it away at the sight of his brother exiting the building. The provoked look on his face and his long, quick strides would've been enough to scare any normal human being from nearing him, but his brother had been growing used to it. Also, he was no normal human being.
"Hey" mumbled Alex joining his brother's march. The look on his face told him he wasn't going to get an answer, so the only thing he could do was keep walking. It was hard to keep up with his irritated strides.
Once the school was out of sight and there was no one close enough to hear them, Enzo stopped abruptly and stared at his older brother, who was shorter than him by a head. It had been like that since they entered puberty but, while most people found this amusing, their ages differed only by a year. Their mother used to cheer up Alex by telling him he wasn't done 'stretching' yet.
"What's wrong man?" inquired Alex.
"I got me out of school."
"You got suspended again?"
"No. It's for good this time."
"You mean—?"
"Yeah."
"Damn. Papa will be pissed. What did you do?"
"I said I was out. Listen," he said pulling his brother into a nearby alley, where there was nothing but a pond of extremely unpleasant smell. "I think Evans is up to something."
"The principal?"
"Yeah. He was trying to make me say I was a mutant."
"But you're not!"
"I know! But what if he calls you too?"
Alex looked down to his hands, sighing. Since that day in his house, when without knowing he enclosed the whole neighborhood in fog, there hadn't been any incidents to expose him as a mutant. The only ones who knew he had been responsible were his brother and Jessica, but the girl apparently had no recollection of the incident in his room after she was hit by a car while trying to desperately escape his house. Apart from a light white haze surrounding his house when he slept, his mutant powers had remained inactive. But he didn't know how or when they would kick in again. His brother had a point.
"So, what are you saying? Should I get out too?"
"Maybe. I don't know" said Enzo sulking. "I wouldn't want you to be exposed because of my fault…"
Before they could react to it, from the other end of the alley came a third, faded voice. "Hmm, so we were after the wrong one."
"What? Gary?" Alex recognized his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend pointing at them, but behind him were three strangers: identical men dressed in dark business suits, their eyes covered by square mirrored shades. They looked like bodyguards.
"Yes… Gary, whatever. You, the short one, you're coming with us to answer a few questions" said Gary boringly.
Alex looked worriedly at his brother, then stepped forward in an childlike, yet smug manner "What the hell are you talking about?" He tried to remain calm. The last thing he wanted was a cloud forming out of nowhere.
"Don't toy with me, kid" He made a discrete hand sign and the three bodyguards stuck their hands into their coats at the same time. "We need you to come with us for a—"
"Run!" said Enzo, and Alex didn't think about it twice. They started running to the opposite end of the alley as fast as they could, and Alex could hear the firing of what could have possibly been a handgun, but when the shot missed both of them, he didn't dare to turn back for confirmation.
"Don't shoot you idiot, we need him conscious!" yelled Gary furiously. Sighing jadedly, he said "Go get him" and the three identical bodyguards dashed to follow the brothers.
Gary leaned on a wall with a sigh. They always ran, he had said, but no one ever listened. "He ran with the brother" he confirmed to the tip of a wire attached to the left sleeve of his jacket. "Madrox is after him. We might need you after all; I don't know how long we have."